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Reload. Aim. Fire.
A hail of bullets hit the training target.
Reload. Aim. Fire.
More followed.
Reload. Aim. Fire.
The target was barely recognizable at this point, but Omega couldn't care less.
Reload. Aim. Fire.
He'd heard that meatbags liked to imagine the faces of their enemies on targets. Omega didn't need their lowly games—he had plenty of footage of shooting at the actual Eggman—but if he did, it wouldn't be Eggman's face on the targets today.
Reload. Aim. Fire.
It would be Tower's.
Reload. Aim. Fire.
Omega's goal was to destroy every Eggman robot and Eggman himself. Everything else was secondary. Unfortunately, destroying Tower would make it harder to archive his primary goal. That was his only saving grace.
Reload. Aim. Fire.
Once Eggman was finally disposed of, Tower's time would be over. Omega would greatly enjoy riddling his body with even more holes than this target. One round of ammunition for every—
A warning popped up at the edge of his awareness. His systems needed time to cool off. Too much heat generated by his primary processors and weaponry. Omega discarded it.
Reload. Aim. Fire.
Once Tower was dead, he'd never be a thorn in their side again. He would never again look at Shadow with an expression that Omega had figured out meant disgust, he would never again dismiss Rouge without letting her finish, he would never again—
Reload. Aim. Fire.
He was a useless meatbag. Nothing more.
Reload. Aim. Fire.
A meatbag so thoroughly unpleasant that other meatbags would only come to his closed-casket funeral out of a sense of obligation.
Reload. Aim. Fire.
A useless meatbag who had a way of crawling under Omega's metaphorical skin.
Reload. Aim. Fire.
He tried to redirect his processing to another topic. It refused to budge. It kept circling back to the meeting today, to Tower's—
Reload. Aim. Fire.
Omega had already deleted the offending sound files from his long term storage, but the ghost of them still haunted his active processing.
Reload. Aim.
Another warning appeared. More incessant this time.
He slammed his arm down in frustration, slightly cracking the barrier that stopped meatbags from running into the shooting range below it. He could easily destroy it. He could easily destroy this whole place and get rid of any witnesses before his rampage could get reported.
But then his favorite shooting range would stay closed for good. Then some of the only meatbags outside of his team that he tolerated would no longer greet him.
He wasn't a mindless murder machine.
He wasn't.
He wasn't.
He-
"There you are," a voice suddenly said from behind him, and Omega only didn't point his weapons at it because it came from one of his favorite meatbags.
He swiveled his head around until his optics pointed at Shadow. His expression was a 87% match for displeasure, but the sort of displeasure that was not aimed at him. Omega concluded that he hadn't liked the earlier meeting either.
Shadow moved closer to Omega- correction, closer to the shooting range. "Take a few to cool off," he said.
In his coincidental proximity to Omega he still must've noticed the increased temperature. He wanted to snap back that he didn't need someone else to tell him because he already was doing just that, but the words didn't make it out of his voice box, choked away by the same burning drive that had caused him to empty most of his arsenal into the target.
To his surprise, Shadow summoned a Chaos Spear and plunged it into the target next to Omega's.
That behavior was highly unusual for him. Even just visiting the shooting range was. Shadow had been issued a firearm, but he never used it. Omega could make a founded assumption as to why that was—based on the countless footage he had of him flinching at sudden loud noises and what he'd learned about his past—but Shadow didn't like to talk about that. He also didn't like using his Chaos Spears all that much, citing the apparent drain they took on his energy. (Omega was still figuring out whether that was the truth or an excuse.)
Still, he didn't question him on his strange behavior.
Omega enjoyed watching his Chaos Spears hit bullseye again and again. They sizzled with energy, glowing impossibly bright enough that his CCD-sensors threw warnings as he refused to turn away. While they might only leave faint scorch marks on the target now, he'd seen how they could pierce through robots without issue. Shadow could control his output, and right now he wasn't interested in actually permanently destroying something.
Too soon, he stopped. Shadow turned halfway to Omega, the displeasure now replaced with an emotion Omega couldn't readily categorize. "You know that's not how we think about-"
"CONTINUE YOUR ASSAULT ON THE TARGET," Omega cut him off.
Mercifully, Shadow complied. He turned back and threw another spear at the target. Then, unfortunately, as he aimed the next one, he spoke again: "You know that, right?"
He threw the spear and readied the next one.
Omega knew his databanks would reveal Shadow spoke truthfully. He had hours of footage of Shadow and Rouge referring to him, and the only instances of insults like that were said in jest. He knew he was a valuable member of the team and not just an asset. Rouge and Shadow both had let him get close to them in a way they didn't for other people.
Despite all the facts at his disposal, Shadow's words still impacted his processing. He saved them to one of his protected folders.
"I KNOW," he replied, and lifted his arm again.