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The Super Egg Robot topples backward and starts falling to pieces, but Sonic doesn’t stick around to watch. He flies past it, going faster and faster – yet it’s as if he doesn’t move at all. The moon is barren, flat, and colourless so there’s no telling how far he’s travelled, no landmarks to orient after.
What reason is there to land? He has no friends waiting on him here on the moon, and there’s no one to rescue. He’s the only living being left on the moon, unless Eggman decided to stick around. But why would he? There’s nothing here. Space is a dark empty void.
On the horizon is the planet, huge, larger than life even to Super Sonic. It’s beautiful enough to take his breath away. Something in his chest twinges when he looks at it, though. The last time he saw the planet from space… the last time he’d been Super Sonic…
He stops flying and just hovers there. He looks down at his hands, his arms, at the golden glow emanating from his entire body. Unwavering.
He could fly laps and laps around the moon, so why couldn’t Shadow hold on to his super form just long enough to save himself?
Why? The question rings in his head every time Sonic glances at the moon, every time he grabs a ring. Why did Shadow have to fall? Why him, when it’s never happened to me?
And if Sonic can stay here on the moon, floating and glowing, his super form not even flickering for minutes, hours on end-
…it just doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t have ended the way it did.
Sonic raises his head and gazes at the planet again. Blue and immovable, even when surrounded on all sides by black. The planet may be the biggest, the brightest thing around – cool and blue just like me – but wherever you are on the planet, you’ll still always be able to see the night sky, that darkness always enveloping the planet. Always there, the stars and the ARK always watching. The shadow to the planet’s light.
And though the void of space first seems dark and empty and unfriendly, giving you the cold shoulder, it’s full of so much beauty, so many undiscovered things-
Things Sonic may never discover.
Or have the chance to. Because there’s no way to really talk to the dead, is there? Not for getting answers, anyway. But…
“Shadow,” Sonic says, into the absolute silence. “If you fought to keep your promise… or if you fought to protect the planet… I think I get it now. The planet really does look beautiful from up here, isn’t that right?”
There’s no answer. But once upon a time, Shadow the Hedgehog was up here in space aboard the ARK, watching the planet just the same as Sonic is doing now, and that… is almost as good as an answer.
So Sonic smiles, says, “I thought so.”
And then he finally starts flying again, taking off from the moon and back towards home.