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The Calculations
The training room was 20 metres by 100 metres, with the lowest hanging pipes 6 metres from the floor. It had been optimised for non-mechanical weaponry exercises, up to but not including long and cross -bows. It seemed quaint to imagine GUN ever bothered to train people in close range traditional combat since their M.O. appeared to Omega to be 'Shoot first, then roll over'. And clearly whatever training they'd done had been as effective as settling snow on an active volcano when Eggman finally cobbled together an actual army. The halls to this complex had been dusty, and almost all useful rooms were collapsed or destroyed - leaving the only room without modern armaments still standing as it had nothing threatening within worth neutralising. Omega paced around every inch of it, taking in the minute changes in the levelling of the floor, where the draft changed the temperature an imperceptible fraction to anyone without a digital sensor.
"What, not good enough for you, big boy?"
Rouge made him jump as she sat on his shoulder. She was 4.3 kg heavier than usual. Just under 4 kilograms of that was her heavy riot gear. The rest must have been however much of a flaky pastry she'd eaten on the way here. He'd noticed she didn't usually eat before something that made her nervous, and when he'd noticed this she'd made a point to do just that so he couldn't read her mood. Now he was back to square one on identifying any break in her calm.
"Anywhere is fine." Shadow grunted, though they paced on the other side of the concrete arena, inspecting it with an appropriate disdainful sneer; "If you screw up, wherever we are will be reduced to dust."
"By which, Shadow means; 'we've got total faith in you Omega'!"
She launched off his shoulder, pushing pressure down and then springing off. He didn't move - he was too in tune not to predict and perfectly counteract her tiny mass. Shadow glanced his way, and they nodded once without changing their face.
"Let's just get this over with."
The Challenge
From the space between particles, Shadow materialised the emerald and rolled it in their palm. Rouge descended on the metal case she'd left at the entryway, and unmounted the Chaos drives: these ones glowed pink - to contrast with Shadow's favourite emerald so they'd be able to see where each trace went.
"Ready, handsome? Can I plug this in?"
Omega couldn't take time to speak to her. He was too focussed on holding in short term memory all the constants and variables for the contents of the air that he sampled every sixty seconds, checking that nothing about the composition of Earth's atmosphere had decided to switch up on him. So he flashed a green light from beside his eye, and she mounted it in the bracer at the bottom of his barrel torso, where a green light usually glowed suddenly flashed all colours before settling on magenta.
"All clear."
And with that, she made herself scarce, flitting up and away from him to the very furthest corner of the steely blue room. Somewhere in the back of his mind where useless thoughts were generated, he observed that this didn't look like a vote of confidence. But he set his sights from her and onto Shadow, where they tossed the emerald with just a milligram of menace and excitement.
"Then, Omega - see if you can handle this."
The Plan of Attack
Shadow threw the emerald to their off hand, and from the green arc it made summoned a spear. Shadow's Chaos could be understood as externally sourced; a particulate in the air that they took strength from as they breathed. This seemed backwards when Team Dark first tried to understand what they were attempting to achieve, but they came to consider it like oxygen in water, and that Shadow happened to be one of very few creatures with these kinds of gills. With this understanding, they could consider Omega's new Chaos energy was both internal, and foreign: He wasn't built for this much energy from such an unstable source, even in the form of drives that were so much more balanced than the raw current the crystals conducted. And he wouldn't be able to charge these newer and better Chaos Batteries without taking them back to the station, so it was as though someone fitted an oxygen tank inside a diver's lungs and told them to just trust that it would supply them. Still, he did trust their research, and breathed in from his own new source.
The rush was instant and unsettling, but it had a direction to go: it shivered through him and into his palms where it beat like two hearts in a metal and bone cage.
Shadow's eyes glinted, reflecting two tiny spots of magenta that Omega determined must have been his own claws.
"Alright, Omega: catch."
Positioning
Shadow threw a spear at Omega's right shoulder. They'd fixed their eyes on it before the throw, but even that wasn't much warning: the bolt of energy hit before it could have been visible to the naked eye, only giving 12 frames of his fastest 2^19 fps camera-eye. There was no way he could move his mechanical joints fast enough, and the ultra-fast processor installed to fight Chaos attacks made his own innate movements feel painfully sluggish. But Chaos could match the speed of Chaos, and instead of his usual tanking block he jerked his right hand: out burst a messy net of tangling Chaos beads that just caught the bolt on one strand.
The green line dissipated in a dainty puff of light; the pink web unravelled itself in twizzling drunk directions. From the furthest point of the room, Rouge squealed:
"Did you see that? I sort-of caught it on my camera, but look-"
"Back!" Shadow barked into the room, without any anger but instead a faint but unmistakable air of glee.
"Again!"
Directing
Shadow stayed stationary for five more rounds, giving Omega looking clues of which hand he'd better use. Once he'd caught his fifth, they started slowly pacing towards him. Now, angles changed as they threw the spears; Omega started backing up, mind whirring loud as he concentrated harder than he'd ever done before. For a wonderful moment, he thought he was getting a rhythm, before he realised he'd been receiving 'slow balls', when Shadow clicked their shoulder and threw him a normal bowl.
"Careful with him!" Rouge called from the ceiling as Omega sparked and seized on the ground. She gripped her camera tight, with one of the same fast lenses they'd added to Omega. She zoomed in as Shadow zoomed over.
"Absorb it! You can control it!" They snarled with a hand hovering at his side, ready to take the excess at first sign of damage.
Omega wasn't himself; each of his individual parts suddenly operated too fast to communicate with everything else in him. Arms jerked and legs trembled. He stored visual information that couldn't be processed. But emergency bootstrapping kicked in, and ran down the list of essentials to find the new one.
Chaos Overflow: send to negative Chaos terminus.
Omega's arm bolted upright, and grabbed Shadow by the neck. The belt at his hip surged green, and his eyes snapped into place, fixed on his friend.
They stared intently at each other for a moment, faces blank and eyes fierce.
"Go Again." Omega said plainly, and he threw Shadow across the room. They skidded, righted themself, and watched him rise like a zombie; knees first, rolling upright and swaying at his heavy top. He braced his claws to catch, something feral in the machine.
Illusion and Reality
Omega didn't deflect or shield any more: it was wasted energy in every sense. He braced, tanked, and absorbed. Confidence in his confidence led Shadow to speed up, and pushed Omega backwards at first before he truly stopped caring. The negative terminus battery filled and spilled into the overflow, lighting up the cylinders around his middle and coursing against itself with every hit he took in. Feelings weren't unknowable to Omega, but they were difficult to act on, and this one particular nebulous despite it's intensity: Do something. Anything. Act, jump, fight, kill, laugh, cry, bleed, run. Ideas of every kind volunteered themselves in equal frequency despite being in many cases impossible. Shadow before him leapt into the air, and something won out: Omega grabbed them again, and once he held them he twitched. Throw, shake, squeeze, hold, heal, pierce, pull. Omega settled on drop, drawing his hands to himself.
"Omega? You with us, hon?"
"You're overcharged. Expend some energy."
Hit, run, squeeze, break, burst, claw, bite-
"Target this!"
Engaging the Force
From the ceiling, Rouge tossed a dagger into the air as far from herself and Shadow as she could. It turned in a motion so boring, so predictable and so lacking in anything entertaining to Omega's Chaos fried mind it almost bored him, which angered him, which made the thoughts race faster. Explode, catch, run, eat, snap, shoot-
Shoot was okay. He'd shoot.
Without having to instruct himself a bullet discharged from his wrist. He hadn't even had time to aim it, but it flew in a darting zig-zag pattern where his eye followed the knife flipping over itself in slow motion. As it connected with the metal he realised it wasn't a bullet but a bolt of green with a purple comet tail that surged from him to explode the throwing knife. And watching the sparks and sparkling shards rain down, he felt just an ounce from the mania that echoed in his metal body.
The Fiery Attack
Shadow watched the deadly glitter with a slash of a smile across their cheeks, like sunshine bursting through the cracks of a stony face. They held a hand out, rubbing the pieces between their gloved fingers, and turned that light to Omega.
"Not bad, but not hard. Hit a faster target, if you want to impress me."
They bent their knees slightly, and their toes tapped in their boxy shoes. Omega's pupil's swelled like a cat watching a feather wand, waiting for a mystic moment to launch. Shadow fake started twice, twitching their ears like they would leap into action and forcing Omega's shaking shoulders to jerk.
When finally they jumped into action they rocketed backwards, beginning an eclectic target practice session: They darted back on themself and against the walls, running seemingly into Omega's 'bullets'.
The more he shot, the more these little chaos beads reformed to resemble his customary missiles, but glowing in both green and magenta. They had better homing capabilities than his usual projectile attacks, but also a mind of their own: when one would miss Shadow by a hair, some of them would turn back on themselves in vengeance and attempt to give chase before they dissipated. Many others, upon seeing themselves fly wide, would roll over and quietly dissolve in shame. Others still would buzz off in annoyance and spin towards the nearest target-able thing. As Shadow launched off the wall, Rouge squeaked and dropped to the floor when a stray pink dart found her for a moment turned its offences on her. Shadow and Omega both froze, becoming aware in the same breath that this fire they were playing with was in fact very hot.
Omega's joints still shook with the potential energy circling around him, but the discharge of power had quieted that attack of activity to something he could process and ignore. Shadow's fur was standing on end like a chimney brush, waving unnaturally with a few of the sparks that had found their target. In all of the energy, Omega had barely considered whether he was actually hitting them: by the time each dart of light launched he'd had another ready, it seemed unimportant to follow up on them.
The Use of Intelligence
"Status report!"
"Are you okay?"
They both kept their hands up instinctively, fingers fizzing. She unfolded herself with what little grace a crumpled umbrella could have, hands held tight around her camera.
"Oh, aren't you two being sweet - I'm just peachy! And I got some great slow-mo videos!"
Shadow rolled their eyes, but approached her: with a flick of each wrist they were normal again, sleek and controlled. Omega tried to copy, but natural motions weren't natural to him. Instead he did a full body motion check: rotating his fingers in their sockets, spinning the wheels at his wrists a full turn one way then back. He had stepped through to his knees before Rouge got bored of waiting for him and shoved a camera in his eyes.
She was playing back an extremely slow capture of his body as Chaos surged from the charger at the base of his torso; the pink and the green sources seemed to repel each other and one fizzed back and into his middle before rerouting to his other arm. They then shot almost in the same moment, and in this high frame rate the speed differential he'd been feeling was justified: one moment, the thought of shot. Then it was already at its target.
"Send me the data to analyse: it is more efficient."
"Nah, you've got all the internal data you need. You just think you look cool."
"I always look cool. Separately, I will analyse technique."
"Good." Shadow barked; "Don't think a few wayward shots on target makes you an expert."
"Oh, how encouraging! I think you mean - great job Omega!"
She hovered above him, knuckling his metal head. The remaining Chaos bounced and fizzed in his cranium.
Grab. Smile. Fight. Spin. Keep. Run. Run with.
He spun his helmet under her hand, and that instinct lead his lenses to Shadow. Maybe they could understand the unsensible flow of ideas Chaos connection seemed to let into the mind, because they tilted their head now too, like they were listening for it. It wasn't often he imagined the thoughts of organics and how they processed, but if he had to guess it might have been something like this. Maybe when he could understand it in his own head, he'd ask them, but there would be time.
And that was the point; they had so much time, not just now in this unprecedented peace but an 'ultimate' lifetime together. Chaos, the flowing infinite possibilities that could and might happen all turning over themselves and picked at random from a lottery ticket, almost made itself visible to Omega, before he disconnected from the energy terminus for the day, and all was quiet again.