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Shadow remembered one thing when he was awoke - Maria.
All he could think about was the boiling rage in his mind when he was freed - but what faced him when he was finally free from containment was a man one could describe as well rounded, looking at him as if he’d struck gold.
As it turns out, there was at least one Robotnik still alive.
And Shadow didn’t like him much.
To be frank, Frank- no wait, I mean Shadow- yes, Shadow couldn’t tell left from right at the moment.
And his first thought was to attack this egg shaped individual with fighting skills he couldn’t recall learning, let alone performing them before.
One cup of coffee later (thank you man who dressed oddly like someone from that day who he kicked in the face first) and Shadow was now fully convinced that Maria’s last words, her dream had been to take over the world and that the one and only Ivo Robotnik now fought to make a reality.
A world where nobody would suffer like she had.
Considering he had been awake for less than an hour, Shadow went along with it without much question.
This led him to finally see the planet Maria only dreamed of, stepping off onto an Ark-crashed Earth. Only then he could understand why she’d wanted to come back in the first place - it was beautiful. He hoped to retain some of that beauty when it was taken over.
Unfortunately, that plan left him stuck with a Robotnik that reminded him of Gerald, his own creator at his worst moments: full of himself and sounding almost mad, no trace of the softer side unless he started asking about Gerald’s work.
Then there was Stone. He made good coffee but he couldn’t get behind how much he sucked up to Ivo. Who can be that committed to a man shaped like an egg?
Then there were robots his size - a buried memory of something with blue-ish ‘eyes’ vaguely resurfacing. One was even shaped somewhat like him, painted a bright gold.
But of course there were others - others that he didn’t focus on.
If someone were to ask Shadow what he thought of Fang, he’d kick them in the crotch and run off because there aren’t enough curse words in any language to describe how much he hated the weasel that Ivo hired.
Getting to the island happened soon enough, more nature and animals living peaceful lives, so innocent, so… alive.
The old Shadow would’ve smiled.
But the old Shadow died around forty years ago.
The old Shadow would’ve had someone to share that excitement with.
Perhaps the old Shadow would’ve had his current selfs urge to shove Fang into a pit full of spikes. And then drop a cartoonishly large bomb on him.
…then Fang ‘recruited’ a local of the island to help them. Frankly, Shadow still didn’t know what was going on. All he had been trusted with was something about something called a dragon, but according to ‘Trip’ (he found calling her ‘armoured thing’ somewhat annoying) it was very real… and she’d lead them to what they need.
‘or else’ according to Fang
Eggman had crushed a flower underfoot without issue. Eggman had left the three of them (he’d told ‘Stone’ to stay behind and watch over Badnik production.)
Eggman told him that placing the animals in robotic shells was to keep them safe. To let the grounded fly, to let them move at speeds they couldn’t before.
But they never seemed happy about it. Were they being fed? Given the water they needed?
He at least had that common decency back then.
…was it still a common decency now? Was it a basic need?
There was a colourful bunch to deal with. Fang had decided to fire at them from above. A pink hedgehog with a giant hammer, a two-tailed fox, a cyan (turquoise? He’d only seen most colours in books Maria read with him) hedgehog and some sort of red thing he wasn’t sure about.
Shadow elected to upstage him and take them on himself.
Fang was sent spinning below the surface (damn modern technology) with a little bit of trickery.
But Shadow? Oof, Shadow! He’d put up a fight, striking the fox with a kick and dropkicking the blue one before-
To be quite honest, he hadn’t seen being shot with a small laser cannon in his future, nor getting hit upright the head with a giant hammer that sent him into the ceiling, then smashed into a wall by some sort of blue blur-
-no, no, no! That was not fair! He was supposed to be the ultimate life form, not defeated by some deformed child and a few who hadn’t even entered puberty!
So he refocused his anger on the red one. The fox had the cannon, the pink hedgehog had the impossible strength, the blue hedgehog had the speed-
As it turned out, the red one was also strong. Strong enough to catch him mid-run and toss him back into the ceiling, giving the four ample time to combine various attacks to send him plummeting underground.
(SHADOW UNDERGROUUUUND)
And that, dear readers, was how Shadow T Hedgehog got his ass thrashed by a squad of children.
Maybe he’d have faired better if he had one of those chaos rocks or whatever they were called.
He liked to think he was doing something good by speeding through the maze before the others could, giving Trip something she called a ‘piggyback ride’.
Fang took all the credit for taking on the snake while Ivo observed some sort of mural-
gerald had shown him one once,
or at least a picture of one.
something of a giant machine and a yellow being with ‘quills’ like his.
In Shadows defence, he had recently had the living snot beaten out of him. That or his blood was green.
Trip was of little to no use in a fight. Heck, she had pity for the thing once it was down. Down or dead, he didn’t want to think he cared. Anything in his way of making a world that wouldn’t let someone like Maria meet that unfair was his enemy.
So why did he make the effort to get her out of the way? Why did she pass him some fruit?
..he hadn’t eaten in around forty years if he remembered correctly.
——
if he had the ability to fight
why hadn’t he used it to save her?
he couldn’t remember learning them
had his best not been enough?
——
Trip had failed to activate a trap door. She’d fallen down when she stepped on it herself…
The previous trip activating on Fang had been funny enough. Just barely losing to that small blue hedgehog while he and Fang were chasing him? Not so much. Hell, Fang was injuring him most of the time. Shadow was sure that was intentional.
But he’d gotten his hand onto one of the emeralds - that’s what the doctor had called them. He wasn’t sure what emeralds were actually shaped like.
Fang wanted it - so he kicked him into the nearest pit, gun and all.
Finally. Trip would only slow him down anyway.
Yet he followed her down there anyway. And by that I mean he did that eventually. And by eventually I mean a few minutes.
What surrounded him were giant fruits and that pink hedgehog carrying Trip on her back, hammer tucked into nothingness.
So he followed them. Trip’s leg wasn’t in the best state, armour only lightly damaged.
The pink one kept her safe. The doctors creations had no issue attacking Trip-
The animals squirmed in shock when they were freed. They weren’t happy like this.
The hedgehog even gave Trip food. She was… excitable, talking about the doctor as if he was some evil madman who tried to enslave an entire planet, plans of giant theme parks with terrible admission costs (Shadow understood like three of those words), animals used as power sources, entire ecosystems damaged and how he was seemingly determined to destroy nature-
That was what made Shadow stop and think. He didn’t know if she was also carrying a chaos emerald, let alone if he might hit Trip in the process.
Destroying nature.
That wouldn’t be what she wanted.
——
focus on what maria would want
but it didn’t line up with other memories of her
and she only existed now in his memories
The emerald felt right in his hands, like something in him was waking up. A rush of power he’d never felt before…
His memory felt slightly less scrambled - had he held one of these before? Had he used this power before?
He didn’t tell the doctor he’d obtained an emerald earlier, stuffing it into his quills as it was food.
the professor would always lecture him against doing that.
——
children.
these were children that the doctor despised so much.
——
He did try to take the emeralds as soon as he could - he wasn’t about to let the doctor get his hands on them and why should children be allowed to handle something that he, the ultimate lifeform, should?
Nobody had seen it coming. He clutched the emerald in his hand as soon it was in reach.
And just like that, time was frozen. He ripped away five emeralds, now floating around him.
But where was the damn-
WHAM!
The red one appeared behind him, eyes glowing a vibrant shade of pink.
He wasn’t the only one with the power of chaos control. No, this was someone who had a connection to it he couldn’t quite understand.
The doctor looked at him like an enemy.
The children looked as if they were going to beat him down again if he tried to attack them.
But he still had most of the emeralds… but they didn’t float back towards him.
Then the doctor electrocuted him.
he’d never seen that coming.
The emeralds reacted to Trip. He didn’t know why- there was something about it he couldn’t understand.
A hand. Why would one of them reach out their hand-
And there was that damn Robotnik, loading himself into piloting a machine and hauling himself further away to release a ‘dragon’ and-
Suddenly the enemy side seemed much more appealing.
He took the hand. He was now an adult on a team of children. How long had he lived? Was he counting mentally or physically? Why was his blood green? Was that normal?
He still had a chance to enact Maria’s final wish.. it just wouldn’t be with another Robotnik.