Chapter Text
Shadow’s eyes were heavy and sore as they opened, the room swimming around him disorientedly. It was like waking up on the inside of a wound. The walls themselves pulsed in a deep, suffocating red, much like a gentle heartbeat, shadows clinging to every corner. The air was thick, and his body felt both foreign and weighted as he tried to regain his senses.
The ebony hedgehog tried to move, tried to sit up. But at the slightest movement, he felt a tug at his wrists to keep them in place as the gurney he was strewn across began to creak. Panic rose, sharp and bitter, gripping him by the throat as he realized that he’d been chained down by both his wrists and his ankles.
Shadow scrambled to try and remember what happened before now, if only to make sense of what was going on. His pulse thundered in his ears, and each gasp that left him only seemed to tighten the air around him. Last he remembered was lying down on his bed that Mephiles had placed specially for him in the living room, and all things considered for how odd his life had become recently… Nothing was out of place today.
Except maybe..
Shadow grits his teeth, breathing sharply through them as he gripped at the plastic beneath. He had noticed earlier, as unassuming as it was at the time.. Mephiles was lingering just a few moments too long in the doorway this morning, watching as Shadow ate out of the food bowls left out on the floor.. Observing how much he’d eaten.
When he was first brought down here, Shadow had outright refused many meals - typically, he didn’t need to eat for sustenance.. But with that chip implanted, and no chaos energy even close to feed off of.. His body began to cave into mortal desires. Eventually, he had no choice but to devour anything placed in front of him to avoid the pangs of starvation that stabbed at him. Maybe Mephiles wasn’t only pleased to see that Shadow was becoming more and more like a dependent, domesticated housepet pitifully licking at every scrap off of porcelain - he’d had to have put something in there. And then he waited, patiently..
Tears immediately stung at his eyes upon realization, humiliation washing over him for being so stupid - he was the ultimate lifeform, and yet he fell to such a deplorable level. And it was so easy to trick him in his desperation, he hadn’t even considered the potential consequences at the time. He was just so, so hungry..
But before Shadow could completely break down into his woes, he froze as the door behind him slowly creaked open. A faint shuffle of footsteps ambled into the room, and the ebony hedgehog could no longer breathe, terror clutching his chest. A few stray tears rolled down his cheeks, but Shadow refused to start outright sobbing whenever Mephiles made his presence known. His captor was humming softly, clicking around with a few devices set up in front of the gurney. A bright light from a few monitors flashed against the wall, the screens facing the opposite direction of Shadow.
A small red eye blinks alive from the dark shadows, a clinical whir as Mephiles tediously adjusts the camera. Shadow finds himself too paralyzed to ask any questions, but Mephiles can see them etched on his face through the reflection of the lens staring his prey down. He simply smiles, glancing over his shoulder.
“Hello, everyone. Welcome back,” he greets, his words drifting past Shadow and towards someone unseen despite his gaze pointing directly at the ultimate lifeform.
“Today marks a momentous occasion - as you can all see,” he goes on, methodical hands continuing to twist the lens until Shadow’s face is finally pulled into sharp clarity on the monitor. “We have a very special guest joining us...”
Shadow’s anxiety spikes, but so does his confusion and curiosity - he knew about the tapes, he knew about the auctions. Was he being sold? Mephiles was getting rid of him?
His stomach knots at the thought, dreading all the possibilities of where he could end up next if all of this was what he had already dealt with on his failure of a mission. It already felt like Hell - Mephiles himself was Hell. It couldn’t get any worse than that, could it?
“Most of you have only had the pleasure of seeing fragments of this elusive specimen,” Mephiles monologues, his fingers slow and deliberate as they withdraw from the lens. He folds his hands behind his back as he observes the fright and confusion radiating from his prey, his posture almost polite. “Clips. Snapshots. Mere candids of angles televised on the news - you’ve all heard the stories of him, but tonight.. You’ll be allowed to see him as he is, fully.”
As Mephiles slowly steps closer, the soft taps of his shoes against the floor only makes Shadow’s heart rattle in his chest like a caged animal. He doesn’t approach Shadow directly just yet, moving right past him. The ebony hedgehog flinches at the sound of metal clacking and shifting, unnerved that he can only guess but no longer see what Mephiles was up to. Meanwhile, Mephiles would pause in finicking with his tools to glance at his watch, chat logs from the current stream going absolutely frantic over seeing Shadow the Hedgehog on his table of many operations.
> there’s no way. .. i literally cant believe it
> Oh man, I’m so glad I logged in to see this fuckin freak finally get FUCKED
> omg omg omg i just know his screams are gonna make me BUST
> Oh that poor little bitch… he looks like he’s already about to cry >:) he doesn’t even know
Mephiles let out a small snicker to himself, shaking his head in amusement. Gathering his tools on the instrumental table, he pushes it closer to the gurney. Shadow flinches, ears pinning back at the sound of cruel metal scraping against the concrete.
“Today, Shadow the Hedgehog is much more than just a hero - or a myth,” Mephiles calmly explains towards his unseen audience, the eyes of many seeing through one red light targeted on Shadow. So many anonymous people, with so many backgrounds and dark secrets hiding amongst the rest of society. They blended in as the average person, more likely than not. But here, they didn’t have to pretend that they didn’t have sick desires and fantasies. A shame, that this was a part of the collective for the Earth that Shadow vowed to protect.
Suddenly, a hand lashes out, gripping Shadow’s chin with clinical precision. He forces the ebony hedgehog’s face towards the camera, resulting in a defensive snarl from his prey that was quickly cut short when Mephiles squeezes just hard enough to still him.
“Aht aht - steady now,” he commands just harshly enough to remind Shadow just who he was dealing with. Mephiles carried an aura that often made the anticipation of whatever horrid thing he was going to do way worse than what actually ended up happening - most times, anyways. But when he would truly lash out without restriction, it left a scar on the mind that demanded his subordinates to cooperate, lest they wanted the full culmination of his threats to become a reality.
Shadow glares, hate festering more and more. He wanted to skin this man alive, wanted to force him to chew and swallow shards of glass, wanted to embed the same amount of fear that he had somehow bestowed upon Shadow. But for now, he forced himself to comply.. What more could he do anyhow?
> looks like meph’s already made him his bitch.. what a lucky man
> I bet he just loves begging for cock
> I’d love to fuck his throat til it’s raw and bleeding,, and then just KEEP fucking him til my dick is jutting out the other side
“Today, I show you more than just a weapon - a weapon that somebody forgot to aim,” Mephiles drawls on, fingers uncomfortably massaging Shadow’s tense jaw. The ebony hedgehog squeezes his eyes shut, the words burning in his ears. Fortunate for him, he hadn’t a clue what was being said about him in the chat amongst hundreds of viewers.
“Today, I show you all of him. Like a specimen under glass.”