The Second Capsule

So close yet so far

Maria carried a bowl of soup down to the basement lab and found Eggman and Tails hard at work collaborating amongst each other.

“Cousin” Maria said softly hoping not to startle them, “I brought you down some soup Abraham would have done it but he was busy on the phone again.” She said putting the cup on his desk.

“Oh is he? That’s alright, thank you.” Eggman said looking at the bowl and back at his work.

“Hi Maria.” Tails said quickly placing his eye up to a looking glass and trying to focus in on the subject.

“Hi Tails.” She smiled, “Any luck?”

“Eh… it’s kind of hard to say.” Tails said shaking his head with a shrug, his two fluffy tails twitched behind him, “We’re so close but something isn’t taking right. We’ve pretty much cured almost every illness known to mankind with Shadow’s DNA, it’s just getting the human body to accept it…”

Eggman grumbled from behind the bowl of soup he was sipping out of, “If Shadow had to be engineered just to be able to accept the DNA, it’ll take a whole lot of dilution of the right substance to make the antidote just as powerful, and yet not deadly.”

Tails nodded to agree, “It’s amazing. I guess that’s why Shadow never participates in those blood drives.”

“Oh of course, aside from G.U.N forbidding it anyway.” Eggman said slurping up some soup more.

“What happens?” Maria asked peeking over on the desk, “When his DNA comes in contact with mine?”

“Yikes, it wouldn’t be pretty if it was done to a real person.” Tails shuddered, “but here on the microscope, it shows that it is basically like acid and burns up the blood cells, which would be one, very painful to feel, and two cause a blockage in veins and arteries, you’d probably die from a heart attack before it consumes your blood leaving it like baked blood in chicken bones.”

Maria’s nose wrinkled and she shuddered, “Ugh, that’s horrible.”

“Yes, however when it is introduced to a virus, or illness it instantly becomes an antidote quickly curing whatever is trying to cause the illness, we just need to dilute it somehow…and that’s the problem we’re having.” Eggman wiped the soup away from his moustache. “We’re stressing everything we have at the moment; I’m seriously considering we dilute it with syrup if we have too. I was reading my grate grandfather’s journal and he believed that what it is we might need, might not be in this universe.”

“That isn’t too helpful.” Tails scowled looking up from the eye piece.

“No kidding.” Eggman sighed.

“What if… what if you engineered me?” Maria asked quietly more of an internal thought spoken out loud.

“What??” They both looked up with question.

“Oh, I um… well I was thinking what if you was able to make me; an new body so to speak, that would accept Shadow’s DNA.” Maria scratched her head thinking about it, “I-it was just a silly idea I didn’t mean-“

“No, it would have been a good one.” Tails said, “But there are things that wouldn’t work out, like even if we had a body how would we transfer, you to this new vessel? It isn’t like upgrading a robot, where you save everything on a flash drive, and then just download it again.”

“Sounds like a good project to work on though…” Eggman pulled at his moustache, “a very life consuming expensive project, that I won’t be able to do, I’m already robbing stores and junkyards for my own workings!”

“Oh is that why Sonic beats you every time?” Tails looked up with a large smile.

“Tch, of course!! You think if I had some real steel with hardy hydraulics and latest up to date G.U.N weaponry that egotistical blue nitwit pincushion would beat a great super evil genius like me!?! HA!”

“Evil genius?” Maria gasped.

“SUPER “evil” genius.” Tails mimicked, “If you’re that smart why don’t you just get a job that automatically makes you millions that way when you build your terrifying robots and betray the world you’ll have a valid argument.”

Eggman continued to grumbled under his breath his face turned red and reached for the Tails doll that stayed in the corner and began to choke it, “I hate that fox he’s such a smart a-“

“Shouldn’t you be working instead of playing with toys?” Shadow came out of the elevator looking at the frustrated doctor.

“You don’t know what it’s like to work with a bratty kid fox who thinks he knows everything!!” Eggman jumped up in down pointing at Tails.

“I don’t think that!” Tails yelled back pushing back his ears.

“You do! Sonic spoils you and boosts you ego 10X higher than what you really are! ~Oh tails your soooo smart ‘little buddy’~ The fact is that everything you know even a pre-k student can figure it out!!”

“I-I’m only trying to help, I’m not trying to be a show off!”

“G-guys stop it!” Maria called putting her hands on Tails’ shoulders, “Don’t fight, it isn’t helping anything get done at all.”

“She’s right, Doc grow up stop fighting with an eight year old. And Tails, ignore his childish behavior set everything aside and work together on this, Commander is tight on money now so every little thing counts.” Shadow said, “It’s a big sacrifice to take but more than half of the troops standing guard here has opted out of pay to help fund this project. As for keeping the suspicion low… there’s only so much we can do when the G.U.N is seemingly teaming up with the top most wanted criminal of the world.” Shadow shrugged while rolling his eyes. “Sonic is keeping the media busy though. He doesn’t go looking for fights but he’s made an accepting and got on a certain water demon’s nerves and is trying to drag out the fight for as long as he can before he actually starts to take real damage. As long as the press doesn’t come knocking at the door we’ll have no problem for the most part.”

“Sonic is so brave.” Maria said more to herself.

“I originally came down here hoping to get be a bit closer to what we’re working for, but when I saw your two barely getting along, I’m not even going to bother asking.” Shadow grumbled.

“Sorry I was a bit of a distraction to them, I’ll go back up with you Shadow.” Maria said joining the hedgie in the elevator again. “Keep up the good work you two!” She said giving them her thumb up and a smile to encourage them.