Shadowed Frontiers

Ares Island (Part 1)

As Sonic and Shadow see the border of the next island, a barrage of lasers blast at them. Sonic swerves while Shadow flicks away the attacks.

After that first barrage, the lasers reloaded and fired, sending in even more lasers. "Man, they're packin' a lot of firepower!" Sonic exclaims, dodging the lasers by flying above. "It doesn't matter if the bitches can't even land a single damn shot at us!" Shadow powers through, cylooping the turrets and stopping the lasers. "Whooaoaoa!" Sonic got shot by the last of the lasers, and is now barreling towards the ground.

Shadow sighs, as his body blinks in and out of Super form.

He dashes to save Sonic, but his cyber corruption acts up and the emeralds immediately get shot out of his body, scattering. He slams down on the ground, twitching. The red on his arm causing great pain to him. He gets back up, though still in great pain, and checks up on Sonic.

"Sonic, are you alright?" He asks in a weakened voice.

"'M alright..." He looks at Shadow.

Sonic looks up at the sky, now seeing the 7 trails the emeralds left behind in the sky.

"...no, it's alright, I didn't want this to be easy anyways." He says in a sarcastic tone.

Sonic notices the red on Shadow's arm. "Are you alright, Shadow?" He asks, as the Ebony Hedgehog shakes his head. "Whatever this thing is, it hurts. It ejected me out of Super form.."

"Not even the Chaos Emeralds helped?!" Sonic exclaims, shocked. 

Shadow nods. "What would I get out of lying?"

Sonic sighs. He has a point.

The red on Shadow's arm sneaks to his head, causing him a massive headache.

"Argh- My head..." Shadow clutches his head, his head threatening to split and his brain threatening to shut down. If it wasn't for his healing factor he was very sure that an ordinary hedgehog like Sonic would shut down almost immediately.

They continued treading the Arid Sands, recovering from their battle with Giganto. Especially Shadow, who still carries the Cyber Corruption. Sage looms behind them, holding out her hand enveloped with red energy.

"It would be easy to finish them off right now..." After assessing the situation, Sage deduces.

"Uncle- no, Shadow shall fall." Sage teleports behind them, earning Shadow's attention. "GET DOWN!" He shouts, as Sage launches a ball of Cyber corruption, attempting to off them. Shadow tanks the shot, kneeling. His chest rises and falls at quick intervals and his breathing is extremely erratic, the corruption now reaching the half of his body.

"I told you..." Shadow steps up, taking off his inhibitor rings.

"The next time you do that..." His body glows a fierce red.

"You. Will. Fall." Shadow teleports behind Sage, kicking her in the head, sending her flying. He calls for Sonic. "Wait, Shadow, no!" Sonic responds, catching Sage in the middle of the collision course. Shadow kicks Sonic away, making Sonic release the child.

"She's mine, Sonic!" Shadow throws a Chaos Spear at Sonic, pinning down one of his spikes.

Shadow yeets the child up into the air, adrenaline surging through him, covering up the pain from the cyber/chaos clash.

He leaps up, Chaos Controlling to Sage.

He summons 6 chaos spears, threatening to rain them all down upon Sage. She cowers in fear.

"U-uncle, please, no!" She shouts.

Sonic looks at the helpless child being threatened by Shadow. His iris and pupils shrink down to a fraction of what they had been.

He spin dashes, getting rid of the spear and launches towards Shadow at full speed, grabbing him and causing him to lose control of the spears.

"WHAT THE HELL, SHADOW? THAT'S A CHILD! A KID!" Sonic reprimands Shadow. "NO MATTER WHAT EXCUSE YOU HAVE, THAT'S NOT ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY WHAT THE FUCK YOU WERE THINKING! THREATENING A KID WHO'S BARELY THREE... WHAT THE FUCK?!" Sonic holds Shadow by his chest fur as Shadow retaliates by ripping Sonic off him.

"SHUT UP! SHE'S ESCAPING!" Shadow growls, and dashes towards the infant ai. He grabs her just as she teleports back to Eggman.

That leaves Sonic on the desert island.

On the plus side, there isn't any water, right?

-Transition!-

They both appear in cyberspace, Shadow holding Sage by her cloak.

Eggman was terribly shocked. "SH-SHADOW?!" He exclaims.

Shadow doesn't respond, instead kicking Sage's head, knocking her unconscious.

"As I suspected. You're the one behind this." says Shadow. "If you weren't there then the End won't be discovered in the first place." His voice crackles a bit due to the cyber corruption.

The good doctor tries to flee in his Eggmobile, but Shadow, being a much more efficient fighter than Sonic, grabs hold of Eggman just before the glass panel could seal the fat man.

He chaos blasts the glass with his free hand, shattering it.

"You've watched enough novels involving revenge to know where this is going, right, doctor?" Shadow is fed up. Tired of this cyber corruption bullshit.

"W-wait, Shadow! We can talk this out, right?!" Eggman asks as Shadow places a hand on his head. "No discourse. No bartering. Only elimination." Shadow takes in a deep breath. Time is running out. If he doesn't kill the doctor now, he might not get a chance to do so.

"CHAOS-"

Eggman's life flashes before his eyes.

"SPEAR!"

A chaos spear protrudes from Shadow, stabbing into Eggman's brain, ending his life immediately.

Shadow sighs. "One down..."

He looks to Sage.

"One to go."

Sage slowly comes back into consciousness, looking at Shadow. Her sensors immediately went into a frenzy as Shadow lifted his hand, ready to finish the AI off with a neck chop.

She teleported back into reality.

Shadow grunts, as the inhibitor rings reappear upon his wrists, inhibitoring his adrenaline as well as his cyber corruption. Though it still hurts, it's at least bearable now.

Sonic gets back up, seeing Sage, curled up into a ball.

"Hey, buddy, you alright?" Sonic asks, lending his hand to Sage.

She refuses to give up her defense.

"Alright then... How about this?" He tackles her into a hug, trying to melt away the mental defenses to get her to open up.

Sonic could hear sobbing as Sage takes in information from cyberspace. Her father's just been murdered.

"Shh.. it's fine, alright? I'm here. Tell me what's wrong." Attempted Sonic.

Sage recognized that tone. That was the exact same tone Shadow used before attempting to strike her down.

She teleports away, extremely scared.

Sonic sighs.

"Why does Shadow have to make this hard for me?" He sprints off.