Heart of a God, Soul of a Warrior

Operation: Gaia

"Did you hear something Shads?" Annabelle asked Shadow as she turned around. She thought she heard something, and wanted to ask Shadow if he heard it as well. Shadow looked at Annabelle in a weird way and shook his head. "No. I didn't heat anything. Why?" he asked. She sighed and shook her head. "It's nothing," she ended up saying. After when Shadow told her to suit herself, they both returned to the university, with Annabelle swearing she heard something.

Back at the university, the others were getting ready for Operation: Gaia, the plan they were going to set up to try and rescues Sonic from Dark Gaia's clutches, yet they didn't know that Sonic was on the surface looking for them or the fact that Sonic was Dark Gaia itself. "Shadow I'm telling you I really did hear something!" Annabelle told him. "It was probably the wind. Stop worrying," Shadow said to Annabelle to calm her down. He gave her a headpat, which did soothe her a bit.

Tails was doing some research on his big screened laptop with Amy helping him out. The others were waiting on the two to get finished with their research. "If Sonic really is alive and is in the clutches of this Dark Gaia, then we won't let it keep him down there forever!" Knuckles exclaimed holding up a grape he had been snacking on. Rouge rolled her eyes at the sight of the grape. "What?" Knuckles asked. "I'm being serious!" Rouge then slapped Knuckles' face, with Rouge telling him that she knew that but he didn't have to raise the grape he was holding up.

"Hey Tails, check this out," Amy said tapping Tails' shoulder. He looked over and saw what she'd found. It was a news article that talked about Sonic's "death", but Eggmanland was in the mix too. "This article talks about Eggmanland," Amy explained. "It seems that Egghead wanted to use the original Dark Gaia's power to power it up. That must of explained the sudden tremors when the world was shattered. It was getting very cranky due to losing so much energy." Tails then began to feel sorry for the creature. It was the Earth god of darkness, but yet seeing it lose energy and going completely nuts due to that fact made Tails feel a bit sad inside. He wondered if Abyss felt sorry for it as well.

Amy even happened to look at the Gaia Manuscripts again. The same ones that Abyss stole when she was working for Eggman. She sighed and rolled them back up. Tails continued his research, wondering if there was anything else that could be useful. Then, he found something. Actual GUN scientists who had traveled to the Underground. "You may want to see this," he told Amy, who gasped when she saw it. "Are those.... GUN agents?" she said in shock. "You bet they are," Rouge chimed in. "It seems like this post was posted last year too."

Shadow and Annabelle joined, with Shadow recognizing those agents as well. Tails then began to read the post, and then hit the video that was attached to it. It seemed like there was another entrance to the Underground according to the video. It was hooked to a huge crater in the ground where Eggmanland used to be. There were GUN agents going into the crater and exploring the Underground. Surrounding them were Dark Gaia spawns, with most of them being Deep Nightmares and Dark Mages. Even the Dark Guardian from Shamar was in its own personal spot. In the video, Amy happened to notice Abyss flying above them. She was headed towards a chamber room of some kind. When Silver and Blaze saw the video, it almost reminded them of Crisis City in the future, where Iblis once reigned.

The video then switched to the chamber room. "This room doesn't look like the room Dark Gaia is usually in," Tails said as he took a good look at it. Shadow and Rouge then remembered back at GUN one year when they showed the footage of the agents in the Underground, and how they saw that same chamber room. As the video continued, the agents were looking around the chamber room until Dark Gaia came from a huge lava pool, but it didn't look like how the others imagined it to be. It was so dark, they couldn't even see what it looked like. Amy made out some hedgehog features on the creature while also being a bit draconic as well. "They actually encountered Dark Gaia...." Tails said in shock.

During the video, Dark Gaia looked at the agents and growled. It roared, and then summoned a tendril from its back, hitting some of the agents, leaving them badly wounded. The agent that was filming the video was starting to run, but Dark Gaia struck the camera that the agent was holding, cutting the video off. "It cut off just like that?" Silver asked from behind. "That's weird. Was that Dark Gaia in the back?" Blaze asked confusingly. Tails and Amy both nodded. "I imagined Dark Gaia to be more of a dragon like figure," Amy told Tails. "Why does it also look like a hedgehog?" Tails, shaking his head, said, "I don't know. The manuscripts always describe Dark Gaia as a draconic beast. Not a hedgehog. Maybe it is gaining a Mobian form?"

Shadow and Rouge both doubted it. Even though the stories said that Dark Gaia could take on a smaller version of itself and travel to the surface, they never said anything about Dark Gaia looking like a Mobian in its normal self. Shadow explained that to them after hearing Tails say his sentence. "Onto the point. If there really is a crater that leads to the Underground, then that means we have found a way into the home of Dark Gaia. We can go through it and rescue Sonic," Rouge explained. "After all, this is why we came up with Operation: Gaia. We'll get Sonic back, whether he is alive or dead, on the surface or not." Tails was about to speak, but Annabelle agreed with the bat.

Tails, realizing that he had lost, nodded. He then said, "Let's get to work then! Operation: Gaia is on a roll!" The others cheered. They were ready to bring back the great hero of Mobius to them. They were going to bring Sonic home, even though they didn't know that he was on the surface looking for them, with the bigger secret being that Sonic WAS Dark Gaia, and they just didn't know it either.