Chapter Text
Shadow The Hedgehog blasted through the Badnik and came out the other side too fast to follow.
Three more followed in quick succession, a single blow enough to destroy each one.
More Badniks rushed in from all sides to surround him. Others lined the roof tops overhead and opened fire down on the ultimate lifeform.
They never came close to touching him.
"Chaos Control!"
Shadow vanished in a burst of green light and reappeared behind the badniks. Shrapnel rained down on the bots below as he cleared the roofs in the time it took to breathe and leapt off, hurtling downward. An unlucky Badnik didn't move fast enough and was crushed under him. Five more joined it in disassembly in quick succession.
More Badniks joined the fight, pouring out of alleyways and ruined buildings. More badniks were reduced to scrap. Shadow didn't know how many he destroyed. He just kept going.
The ground trembled with mighty foot falls. Shadow ripped his fist out of a badnik's chest and turned, knowing what he'd see.
A Death Egg robot.
The towering war machine loomed over the crumbling buildings of the war torn city. Shadow was loathe to give Eggman any level of credit, but he had to acknowledge that such a machine would be a challenge for even him to defeat alone.
Good thing he wasn't alone, then.
Explosions swept across the massive badnik's armored frame as G.U.N soldiers fired shoulder mounted rocket launchers at it. While Shadow had cleared the square, they had set up weapon emplacements and established firing lines for the Death Egg's inevitable appearance. Mounted machine guns volleyed armor piercing rounds at the killing machine, grouping their fire onto key locations to maximize their effectiveness. More soldiers spread out through the square, clearing out the remnants of badniks and securing alleys, buildings, and side streets against bot incursions, trading fire with more of Eggman's smaller badniks as they tried to push back the G.U.N. troopers.
Shadow shot towards the Death Egg bot in a crimson blur, skating over the rubble strewn ground on a curtain of air. He wrapped around behind it ahead of a missile barrage that struck the ground just shy of hitting him and shot up the back of its leg, making for its oversized head.
Shadow's job wasn't to destroy the Death Egg. He had to remind himself of that. Though he could feel the urge to do just that burning inside of him, to take this thing on, one on one. Both to prove his strength and to protect the G.U.N. soldiers fighting alongside him.
But that wasn't his job here, and the G.U.N. soldiers were just that: soldiers. They were fighters just as much as he was, and he wouldn't insult them by treating them like civilians in need of rescuing. They were his comrades, and he fought alongside them as such.
Shadow reached the top of the badnik and soared into the air above it. The bulbous bot tried to tilt its head back to follow his ascent, but its lack of neck made that impossible.
Just like the doctor to build a machine with such a flaw just so that it would resemble his egotistical mug.
The Ultimate Lifeform angled his fall for the left shoulder. Once in position he drove himself downward, curled into a spinning ball. His quills bristled with energy, extending outward as he dropped like a comet. He hit his mark perfectly, metal crumpling with a shriek as he crushed the hatch of the AA battery shut, rendering it useless. He rebounded back into the air and uncurled, vanishing in a flash of chaos energy to reappear on the right shoulder. He grabbed the second hatch in both fists and ripped it open, peeling the metal back like the lid of a sardine can. The Death Egg shook as more explosions rocked its frame, the G.U.N. soldiers keeping it engaged so it couldn't focus on Shadow. He heard explosions and screams as the massive badnik responded with its own considerable arsenal.
Shadow drew his hand back with a furious snarl. Yellow Chaos energy crackled in his palm and formed into a jagged spear of lightning.
"CHAOS SPEAR!"
Shadow flung the bolt of pure chaos into the open hatch and struck one of the missiles hidden within. He flung himself off the robot into the open air as the struck missile detonated, setting of a chain reaction that blew off the Death Egg Robot's arm.
"AA is down!" He called into his comm, finger pressed to the commbead in his ear. "Call them in captain!"
"Understood! This is captain Rieger to Blizzard Wing. Grid is clear, repeat grid is clear. You are go for strike mission!"
"Roger that Captain, Blizzard Wing is moving in for danger close air strike. Keep your heads down, ground pounders."
Shadow hit the ground running, skating over rubble as he made for cover. G.U.N. soldiers ducked behind rubble and walls or threw themselves prone, head over their hands. Shadow snatched one unlucky wounded man stranded in the middle of the square by the by the back of his ballistic vest and yanked him into a blown out home just before he heard the jet engines screaming overhead.
Five Wind Knight fighter craft soared over the square almost as fast as Shadow.
"Fox one, away!"
Shadow threw himself over the wounded man to cover him from any potential shrapnel as the missiles struck home and detonated with enough force to shake the entire square. An ear splitting metallic groan shook the air as the Death Egg toppled, chest blown open and spewing fire and smoke as the fighter wing howled away, low and fast.
"END EXERCISE."
The familiar voice came from seemingly everywhere, and the ruined city vanished as though it had never existed.
Which, of course, it hadn't.
Shadow offered the 'wounded' man a hand and helped him up. He took it with a sigh. "Thanks, Squad Lead. God, those bolts sting."
"Better than actually getting shot," Shadow remarked as he looked around. G.U.N. soldiers stood up from cover as their 'dead' and 'wounded' comrades stood up, grumbling about their foul luck at getting hit this time and dusting themselves off.
It was a common exercise G.U.N. ran with its artificial reality training facilities, one built from the lessons learned in the war to take back the planet from Eggman and Infinite. The vast dome structure supported a very advanced hardlight holograph system that could project just about any environment found on earth, as well as projections of all sort of enemies G.U.N. might have to one day face, the most notable and hated being Eggman's badnik legions.
G.U.N. had a standing grudge with the mad doctor after he had nearly wiped out the organization during his conquest of earth. With Infinite's power over the Phantom Ruby and a seemingly endless legion of robot soldiers, Eggman had overwhelmed G.U.N. and destroyed it.
Or so he'd thought.
Though the organization had been battered and bloody, it hadn't been destroyed, and it hadn't given up either. Commander Tower had issued a single order to all G.U.N. forces remaining before going off the grid: go underground, and take the fight to Robotnik. With global communications compromised by Robotnik it was near impossible for the dispersed forces to remain in contact, but that paradoxically also made it harder for Eggman to hunt down and destroy the disparate guerilla units that suddenly found themselves well and truly off the leash and at liberty to engage badnik forces as they pleased.
There had been an old saying about G.U.N. back in Shadow's time, when he'd lived on the ARK with Maria. Killing a G.U.N. officer was about the worst thing you could do on the battlefield. In other militaries, the loss of their immediate commanders would demoralize soldiers. In G.U.N. it just meant that the grunts didn't have anyone to tell them to reign it in before they leveled everything in a mile radius as they sought to avenge their commander.
Though the G.U.N. of today was a very different beast than its incarnation back then, some things remained the same. Such as soldiers left to their own devices without supervision from the brass inevitably finding new and inventive ways to blow up anything that got in their way. In the post war world, that attitude of ruthless cunning and grim determination persisted in G.U.N., but was tempered by having high command around. Suicide missions to destroy a badnik factory or free captured animals that were intended to be used as living batteries were generally frowned upon by the higher ups.
Not that it stopped Shadow from doing just that when it suited him.
"Hey, Shadow!" Captain Rieger walked over to him, a smile on his face. The captain was young, in his mid twenties, but Shadow knew better than to mistake his youth for inexperience. Rieger had been a private when Eggman's world conquest began. By the time he'd been beaten Rieger had been leading his own cell of G.U.N. soldiers as well as citizen militias. Commander Tower had promoted him straight to captain when G.U.N. officially reformed. He removed his helmet, exposing his perfectly regulation crew cut brown hair and blue eyes. He gave Shadow a casual salute, which the hedgehog returned. "Good work out there, Squad Leader."
"Is the rank really necessary?" Shadow asked. "Considering I was acting as a lone agent and not leading my team for this exercise."
"You're still a Squad Leader even if Agents Rouge and Omega aren't around," Rieger said confidently, still smiling. "It's only right you be called your proper rank."
Shadow wondered if Rieger fussed over rank so much because he worried he didn't deserve his own. If that was the case, it was unfounded worry. Rieger was capable, adaptable, and cared for his soldiers' well being above all else. He knew every man and woman in his company by name, and was well liked. True, being bumped from private right to captain was unusual, but it had been unusual circumstances to begin with. The conquest of the world wasn't exactly an everyday thing.
Though not for lack of Eggman trying.
"Do you have any thoughts on how the exercise went?" Rieger asked as the two of them walked to the exit with his company.
"You and your men did well," Shadow replied. "But I still think I should handle the Death Egg myself while your men focus on securing the square."
It was an old argument, and not between himself and Rieger. Shadow didn't like the idea of G.U.N. soldiers having to fight those stomping monstrosities, but Commander Tower insisted that they had to be ready to do just that. Shadow couldn't be everywhere at once. While that was true, and Shadow wasn't nearly arrogant enough to suggest otherwise, that didn't change that the fact that Shadow could handle a Death Egg robot on his own. He didn't need fire support from G.U.N. to do it, and more importantly he didn't need soldiers putting themselves in harm's way by drawing its ire from him.
Today had been an exercise, a simulation. No one had actually been hurt. But in a real combat scenario? If G.U.N. foot troopers had to fight a Death Egg there was going to be deaths.
"Commander Tower disagrees, unfortunately." Rieger sighed and raked his fingers through his short hair. "Though I see where he's coming from. Isn't it better if we all work together? Rather than as two separate forces that happen to be sharing the battlefield."
"We can still do that without putting your men in needless danger," Shadow argued. "I'm the Ultimate Lifeform. I can do things you and your men simply can't."
Rieger grinned. "True. But give us a chance, and I think you'll find there's things we can do that you can't."
"Oh? Like what?"
"Reach the top shelf in a human marketplace," sergeant Handers quipped as she walked by with her squad. "Without jumping."
Shadow blinked, unsure of how to respond to that. Rieger chuckled and shook his head. "See? We're already surprising you."
That earned a slight smile from the black and red hedgehog as they exited out of the hardlight training dome into the hallway beyond. "Fair enough, captain."
"Shadow!"
He looked over at the familiar voice of his teammate, Rouge the Bat. She and Omega approached him quickly.
"Agent Omega, Agent Rouge." Rieger gave them both a respectful nod. He looked down at Shadow. "Looks like duty calls."
"That it does," Shadow agreed. He was surprised when Rieger extended a hand to him.
"See you around?" The captain asked hopefully. "I still owe you a drink for pulling us out of the fire back in Spagonia."
Spagonia. Shadow had almost forgotten about that. Clearly Rieger hadn't.
Shadow took the hand and shook it. "You don't owe me anything, captain. I'd have done the same for anyone else."
"Sure, but I'm still going to buy you that drink." He grinned widely. "See you around, Ultimate Lifeform." He turned and walked away to his men, no doubt headed to shower then eat in the mess hall.
"Abe wants to talk to us," Rouge explained to Shadow. "He's got a mission."
Shadow nodded curtly and started down the hall towards the mission room. Rouge and Omega followed beside him.
"What happened in Spagonia?" Rouge asked.
"I was coordinating with Rieger's cell to destroy Eggman's major badnik factory in the area," Shadow explained as he walked. "Turned out to be a trap. The factory was actually a massive bomb, designed to bait in and wipe out whoever tried to destroy it. I figured it out before the place blew and got the main doors open. Everyone just managed to clear the blast radius before the timer hit zero."
"Ooh, sounds like a juicy story!" Rouge gushed. "I'll have to get Rieger to tell me the full version. I'm sure you left out all the fun bits."
"You wouldn't need someone else to tell you the story if you'd just been there," Shadow thought crossly. He bit back the scowl he felt forming on his face.
When G.U.N. had gone underground to continue the fight, Rouge had joined the Mobian resistance instead of staying with the organization she'd at least technically been a part of for years now. She hadn't given a reason why. She had just... left G.U.N.
Left him.
When G.U.N. was reinstated, Rouge came back like nothing had happened. No explanation for why she had gone dark on them. No apology or even an excuse. She'd just come back like nothing had happened. Tower had reformed Squad Dark and officially promoted Shadow to Squad Leader, and of course Rouge and the rebuilt Omega had been reassigned to him, just like old times.
Except it was nothing like old times.
"Shadow!"
He stopped and looked back. Rouge and Omega were at a turn in the hallway, one he'd walked well past without even noticing. The very turn he'd need to take to reach the mission room.
The thief gave him a coy smile. "Someone's extra broody today."
Shadow bristled, quills raising a bit before settling back down. "I'm fine." He backtracked to the hallway and moved down it. This time he couldn't help the scowl on his face. Though it worked even better than Omega's bulk did in clearing the way before them of traffic as people wisely moved to the side of the hallway as Squad Dark made their way to the commander. As a squad leader Shadow was technically required to salute the various officers he passed, as were Omega and Rouge. But everyone knew better than to demand Shadow's respect, Rouge was forever laissez fair about things like rank (she was the only person in all of G.U.N. who openly called the Commander 'Abe' in public and got away with it, after all), and Omega was a literal killing machine.
In other words, Squad Dark was both eccentric enough and useful enough that the usual regulations were ignored when it came to them.
Shadow pushed the doors to the mission room open and stepped in.
The proper name for the nerve center of G.U.N.'s Headquarters was the 'Tactical Analysis and Force Distribution Center', but everyone just called it the mission room. It got the same point across with less hassle.
The center of the room was dominated by a real time holographic projection of the earth and surrounding celestial bodies that was constantly updated with data provided by the smart satellites orbiting the planet. With this information G.U.N. could respond to an emergency as it happened, forming a quick response force to fit the situation's need in a matter of hours. Not just for conflicts, but natural disasters as well. G.U.N. responded to all kinds of calls for help all over the world, be they from humans or Mobians. And of course they always watched for Eggman, ready to spring into action if the mad scientist did so much as sneeze the wrong way and Sonic wasn't on hand to end his latest scheme.
People, mostly humans, moved about the room, reading and distributing reports and intel as needed to forces out on missions or to the various G.U.N. bases and outposts scattered about the globe. Commander Abraham Tower stood at the center of the room, looking up at the projection of the earth.
Shadow came to a halt behind him and saluted. Commander Tower was one of the few people in G.U.N. who could confidently say that they had Shadow's genuine respect. "Commander. Squad Dark reporting." Rouge and even Omega likewise saluted.
Tower turned sharply, a parade ground worthy about face, and returned the salute. "At ease Squad Dark."
Shadow and Omega dropped their salutes and clasped their hands behind their backs. Rouge simply stood there with one hand on her cocked hip. Shadow glared at her and considered ordering her to attention, but dropped the idea as soon as it entered his head. He wasn't about to start a scene in the mission room, and it wasn't like Rouge would obey anyway. If the Commander wanted her to show some more respect to his rank, he'd say something.
"I'm sorry to call you in just after finishing an exercise Shadow, but this is important. We've got a report of a bot attack on a Mobian settlement."
The commander raised his hand to the data techs on the upper ring overlooking the ground level of mission control. One of them nodded and tapped away at her keyboard. The image of the Earth changed, narrowing to focus on a region deep in the mainland of the southernmost continent.
"Eggman is up to his tricks again," Shadow growled as the image turned into an overhead view of a village that had been expertly designed to fit with the natural shape of the forested landscape. "I can't wait to see what hairbrained scheme he's concocted this time."
"That's the worrying part. We don't think this is Robotnik."
Shadow looked at the commander, surprised. "A bot attack that isn't Eggman's doing?"
"Precisely. You'll see why momentarily. Pull up the video file."
The data tech tapped a command into her keyboard and a paused video appeared beside the overhead view of the village. "Be warned, Squad Dark. This footage is... disturbing."
The video played. Shadow quickly picked up on the differences that the Commander had. The bots were very different from the usual Eggman Badniks. The designs were more brutal, sporting sharp edges and hard lines without so much as the barest resemblance to the mad doctor. Nor were they designed as a mockery of real animals. Disturbingly, they looked more like G.U.N. mechs than anything Ivo Robotnik had ever crafted.
But what truly set them apart from badniks were their actions.
For all his faults, for all his cruelty and egomania, Eggman did not kill indiscriminately. He wanted living subjects to worship him, to serve him as slaves and work in his factories to make his machines. He was not a good man by any means, but even when he had conquered the world, he hadn't killed without cause.
These machines slaughtered the fleeing villagers.
Shadow's eyes widened, crimson irises shrinking to pin pricks as the machines methodically marched through the main street of the town, shooting anything that moved. Rouge gasped and covered her mouth, horrified. Even Omega tensed up, metallic claws curling into fists at his photo receptors glowed with a dangerous red light.
The video was being shot by someone hiding in an alley, hunkered down behind a pile of pallets and breathing erratically as they videoed the senseless slaughter. Shadow swore he could almost hear their heart pounding through the video, only to realize it was his own hammering in his chest furiously.
He watched, helplessly, as a feline Mobian fell with an agonized scream as one of the bots shot her in the back. She tried to pull herself forward, clawing at the cobblestone street helplessly.
The mech stood over her, lowered its large caliber gun, and shot her once in the head.
Memories hit Shadow like a wave crashing over stone. The Ark, the fight to get to the escape pods...
Maria.
Shadow's entire body crackled with energy as his highlights ignited with furious red light as he fought off the suffocating memories of his past. He felt like he was about to explode with all the fury building up in him. Tower paused the video and it vanished. But Shadow couldn't get the image of the mobian girl lying on the ground in a pool of her own blood, that heartless thing looming over her with its gun leveled to end her life.
"Where was this?!" Shadow snarled. His eyes were glowing, same as his highlights. Activity around the mission room slowed to a halt as he drew people's wary concern. Everyone here knew just what he was capable of doing when his rage was stoked.
"A little village deep in the rain forest. The video was uploaded approximately an hour ago. Our data scrubbers got their hands on it ten minutes ago." The Commander frowned, clearly unhappy with the amount of time it had taken G.U.N. to learn about this. "This clearly isn't Robotnik's work. Whatever is going on here, someone else is pulling the strings this time. Perhaps your mystery strategist, Squad Leader."
That pulled Shadow just enough out of his rage to think somewhat clearly.
Eggman's initial conquest of earth had been two things that Eggman wasn't usually known for. Swift, and efficient. Eggman's schemes were always over the top and grandiose. While he could work surprisingly quickly, his invasion had been conducted with a precision Eggman very rarely employed. True, he'd had the help of Infinite and the Phantom Ruby, which had on its own been enough to turn whole battles in Robotnik's favor, but that alone wasn't enough to account for the precision strikes that had undermined G.U.N., turning what should have been a world wide war between the eggman empire and the Guardian Units of Nations into a clean up job of a few weeks that forced G.U.N. to scatter and go underground to survive.
During the months of occupation Shadow had presented a theory to Tower that whoever had masterminded the attack hadn't been Eggman at all. Someone else had directed the badnik legions while Robotnik had been the 'face', for lack of a better term. Tower had agreed that it had all felt wrong, noticeably un-Eggman like, but all attempts to learn who this mystery strategist was had turned up nothing. Still, Shadow maintained his theory, confident that someone as eccentric and self absorbed as Eggman wouldn't have been able to pull of such acts of pure strategic genius.
In the months after the initial take over things had begun to settle back into the rhythms Shadow had come to expect from the mad doctor. G.U.N. had even started making headway in its fight back thanks to their unorthodox and fierce attacks on Ivo's forces, though the Mobians hadn't managed to do the same until Sonic was freed from his prison in the Death Egg. The fact that things had so quickly started to turn against Robotnik only confirmed to Shadow that whoever had orchestrated the start of the invasion hadn't been Robotnik himself.
"When do we go?"
"I have a craft ready to go in the hanger right now. We're forming a quick reaction force at our closest base to secure the village and bring them medical aid, but you're going in before they're ready to leave. Clear out any mechs, locate as many survivors as possible, and figure out what exactly is going on."
"On it." Shadow shot out of the briefing room, skating down the hall on his air shoes, just slow enough to not miss a turn and avoid slamming into anyone. Omega and Rouge followed behind, matching his speed.
That image burned in Shadow's mind, the Mobian girl lying helplessly on the ground as the machine ended her with a single, brutally efficient shot. He snarled, fangs bared, as he fought to contain his burgeoning rage.
He didn't care who was responsible for this senseless murder. Robotnik, his mystery tactician, or someone else entirely. It didn't matter.
Shadow the Hedgehog was going to find them. No matter where they hid, no matter how fast they fled, he would find them.
And he was going to kill them.