Fanfiction» Fanfics» Shadow Forever

King Boom Boo gathered blue fire in one small claw, and held it in Knuckles’ direction. Knux swore the ghost king gave a smirk before he wound up and released.

"GUYS, MOVE IT!" Knuckles shouted, grabbing Gamma and heaving the ‘bot back towards Shadow. Tails and Fang were up as Knuckles ran past, and saw the incoming flame. They scrambled back, joining the rest as the fire exploded on the pumpkin they’d been sleeping against. The ghost king heaved a tremendous laugh and floated off from the top of the mountain, landing heavily on the outcropping.

"Is that their leader??" Gamma hissed to Knuckles, pointing at Boom Boo with his gun arm.

"Yeah," Knuckles breathed, wide-eyed. "I thought I’d gotten rid of it!"

Shadow growled. "Eggman had control of him the last time. His name is King Boom Boo."

Boom Boo eyed his five prey greedily, and licked his frosty blue lips with his multicolored tongue. His eyes sparkled with life that shouldn’t have been there, and Knuckles wished with all his might that this was just a bad dream.

"Hello?" Tails shook Knuckles violently. "How do we kill that thing, Red?"

Knuckles stared wildly at the ghost, but never got to answer. Boom Boo held out his claws and more blue fire gathered in them.

"SCATTER!" He yelled, grabbing Fang and jumping off the left side of the outcropping. Gamma and Shadow went right, leaving Tails alone. He stared as Boom Boo advanced slowly and greedily, too frightened to move.

"Tails!" Shadow screamed. The call made the young kitsune shake his head and move his feet, but he stumbled over his shoes, landing on the gravel with a heavy thud. Boom Boo picked the young kitsune up with his free claw, opened his mouth wide, and dropped him inside. Boom Boo’s jaws closed shut with a definitive snap that echoed too loud and too long through the air.

Boom Boo whirled to face Knuckles, and threw the fireball at last. The echidna guardian was too far away, already at Turntable Mountain, and the fireball went too far off it’s mark.

Shadow was yelling frantically, clenching his fists and trying to shoot himself at the ghost king using his air skates, but Gamma had a solid grip on him, and was dragging him off towards Church Mountain. "Bastard!!" Shadow screamed, smashing Gamma as hard as he could and having no effect. "Let me go, I need to save Tails!"

Gamma growled. "You can’t, idiot! Do you want to be eaten by that thing also?"

Fire lanced out at them again, and Gamma veered, now zipping towards Turntable Mountain. Putting all he could in his rocket boosters, he shot backwards and crash-landed near Knuckles and Fang. He climbed up and grabbed Shadow by the arm again, the black-furred hedgehog stunned by the impact, and ran after Knuckles, towards where a Ghost Train was clanking and clattering along a singular track. The group found shelter on the far side of the train, and took a long pause to regain their breath.

"What do ya suggest we do?" Fang demanded of Knuckles. "Well?? You’re th’ one who took him out th’ first time!"

Knuckles looked bewildered. "I don’t know, I don’t know...oh God, what’s it done..."

"It ate one of your friends," Gamma stated coldly. "Worry about it later; if you want to get the hell out of here with your hide intact, you’ve got to gather your wits and tell us how to beat that thing!"

"It’s only weakness is sunlight," Shadow said at last. "Natural light. It can’t be machine-made. Then it turns into a shadow and hides in the ground, where Knuckles could dig him up. We could all hit him when he was vulnerable."

"But there’s the issue of natural light," Fang sneered. "Ah could shoot flares with mah rifle if we were that desperate, but it won’t work."

"My laser cannon shoots condensed light," Gamma said in the same tone. "Nothing good."

"How can it survive with the pumpkin-shaped mountains, though?"

"I don’t know," Shadow shook his head. "Maybe they’re not strong enough. I just don’t know."

King Boom Boo heaved another mighty laugh and appeared above the four furries wearing a grin. Wide-eyed, the group moved again, Fang again hitching a ride with Knuckles as they shot towards Church Mountain.

"So the only way we can live is to get out of here!" Gamma summed.

"I won’t leave!" Shadow yelled defiantly.

"Neither will I," Knuckles growled. "Not if there’s a chance that Tails is still alive!"

Church mountain’s soil was beneath their feet again, and Boom Boo wasn’t dawdling this time. They began to run towards the rocket, the one that was nearby.

"I’m not picking up any signs of life from inside Boom Boo," Gamma reported, doing a quick scan.

"That doesn’t mean anything--hey!" Shadow cried out as Gamma lunged at him, coming away with the gray Chaos Emerald. He held it up high towards the ghost king.

"It’s not glowing," Gamma said stiffly, shaking his head. "You know the properties of the Chaos Emeralds--they glow in proximity of one-another. We’re in range where someone as large as Tails living off Chaos radiation would cause another Chaos Emerald to glow, but there’s not even a shimmer in this one." He passed the Emerald back to Shadow, aimed at King Boom Boo with his laser, and pulled off three quick shots. Each shot went clear through the ghost king without a mark.

Shadow took the rocket up, leaving Gamma alone. He watched as the smoke trail led up, and remembered something he’d told Shadow when they first met.

"I guess it’s my lack of an actual living soul that makes me want to preserve those that do have them. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last five years: traveling the world and preserving life."

A slight smile played across Gamma’s metallic face, and an idea dawned on him. He would keep the King busy until the sun rose. If Shadow and the rest escaped, or if they waited around to attack, it was fine. They would stay alive. He felt a twinge of guilt for not doing anything to save Tails’ life, but at the same time knew that he couldn’t do anything to change that. He wasn’t idealistic, where everything was his fault. He had his feet on the ground. He was a realist.

Kind of ironic, huh?

Boom Boo stopped in front of Gamma, the massive ghost staring down over his wide lips.

"Well," Gamma said, pointing his useless laser cannon at the ghost, "it’s a pleasure to meet you face-to-face."

There was a look of consideration on the ghost’s face. Gamma paused, wondering what it was about...then Boom Boo cast his glance to the top of the mountain, where Shadow, Fang and Knuckles were waiting. The ghost king regarded Gamma one last time with a slight sneer, then shot up to the mountaintop.

Cursing, Gamma realized the problem: he was no more alive then Boom Boo was, so of course he wouldn’t be interested in him! There was no life presence to detect in the heavy, metallic shell, and three was more appealing than none any day. He fired his rocket boosters and shot after the king, locking on and firing off more laser shots at that time then he’d had to in total over the past five years combined. Like before, each shot passed through without phasing it.

Shadow watched the ghastly form of Boom Boo rising from the bottom of Church Mountain and cursed. He called out to Knuckles and Fang, the latter taking the rocket back to Pumpkin Mountain, the former gliding his way there. Shadow waited for Boom Boo to arrive, backing up into the center of the poorly-arranged graveyard. The ghost king erupted over the top, and Shadow braced himself, ready to jump and do a homing attack on it.

He took a step forward and cold hands wrapped themselves around his middle, pinning his arms to his sides. The chills that the small ghost sent through his body froze him in place, and he struggled and fought to get out of its dry deathlock.

Boom Boo came to Shadow slowly, greedily. The thought of another meal was quite appetizing, and Shadow could see it in its gaze. Gamma burst up the side of the mountain next, shot around Boom Boo, grabbed Shadow by the arms one more time, and hauled him away from the mountain. The ghost that had been holding Shadow down slipped and tumbled away into the oblivion pit below.

"Thanks," Shadow said gratefully. "How much longer do we have until the sun rises?"

"We’ve got approximately four hours," Gamma reported grimly.

"Four hours? We have to play Cat’n Mouse for that long?"

"I actually view this as a rather twisted version of Chutes and Ladders," Gamma replied. "But I digress. Yeah, we’ve got to keep up like this for that long."

Boom Boo was already chasing after the other two on Pumpkin Mountain, and Shadow sighed. "We’ve got no choice. We have to get out of here."

They touched down on Turntable Mountain, and Gamma made quick work of an oncoming ghost. "You get out; I’ll tell the others and hopefully divert Boom Boo long enough so you can all escape."

"That didn’t work the first time," Shadow said, spitting on the ground and panting.

"No, but it’s the only way to save the precious gift the three of you have," Gamma murmured. He pointed into the distance. "You can’t see it, but right in the direction I’m pointing is the forest that will bring you shortly to Aquatic Mine. Go through there as fast as you possibly can, since it’s another ghost-haunt, and you should come out in Station Square, where you’ll be safe, if you take refuge in Twinkle Park. That place is so abnormally huge that you can hide yourself easily."

"What if KBB chases us all the way there?"

"Twinkle Park is a bit easier to avoid him in," Gamma replied. "It should be abandoned this late at night, so if we can get there and hit the power, then we’ll be able to lead him on a wild chase through the entire thing. We’ll have our feet on the ground more, at least, and we won’t have to carry Fang around everywhere."

Shadow nodded, fired up his air skates, and shot off in the direction Gamma had pointed him at. There was no way the group could beat King Boom Boo on these grounds. Gamma powered up his jet boosters again and shot towards Boom Boo, who was laughing and roaring on the top of Pumpkin Mountain. There, he saw Fang making a last stand, and Knuckles was nowhere in sight. With a shake of the head, the robot realized that this would be a long night.

Mystic Ruins

The underbrush was thick, and the air was as moist as a rainforest. One of Rouge’s ears flopped down across her head limply, and she flicked it up with a groan. "This weather’s unbearable," she complained, shaking her head miserably. "It makes the boring life inside the Master Emerald almost desirable. What are we doing again?" She cast a glance to the floating ball of orange light nearby.

"We’re going to one of Eggman’s old bases," Tikal replied. "There, we might be able to find some information out about Knuckles."

"Okay, yeah...now, another question: where’s the big drip?"

"Chaos is following his own leads," Tikal said in that annoyingly mysterious way. "He’s probably trying to home in on the Chaos Emeralds."

At that point, the brush parted before them, and Rouge gasped. Far below, in the valley that bordered the Mystic Ruins, was a skyscraper made of metal, neon lights and the distant sound of Techno throbbing in the air. It was so distant, that Rouge couldn’t even begin to fathom how large it actually was, and its only connection to where she currently stood was a long, telescoped tunnel that looked just about ready to collapse inward in the center.

"This is the Final Egg," murmured Tikal. "The bridge isn’t safe to cross--you’d be better off gliding to the tower and climbing up."

"Of course," Rouge grumbled, rolling her eyes. "Just more work for me. Here we go." She jumped and spread her wings, allowing the wind to catch underneath them and push her higher up just a bit before she began to loose altitude. Tikal kept by her, and by the time they reached the tower, they were almost at the floor of the valley. Rouge began the harrowing upward climb without another word.

She didn’t keep track of how long she dug her nails and the toes of her boots into the side of the tower. All she knew was that she couldn’t stop without any rest areas, and that if she did, she’d grow too weak and probably fall. An intense sweat worked its way down her brow, and she gritted her fangs and after what could have been hours, finally reached the bridge again. Tikal appeared in her Echidna form beside her, and quietly chanted a spell that caused part of the bridge to dissolve away into nothingness. With a grunt, Rouge heaved herself through the hole and tumbled into the Final Egg itself.

"Christ...that was...hard..." she grumbled, lungs flaming.

Tikal hovered about her head again in her light ball form, dimly illuminating the darkened, abandoned lobby. Rouge felt dusty metal against her wings, and suddenly felt stifled, hurling herself to her feet and wobbling unsteadily over to a raised platform for support. Her legs almost gave way beneath her, and she felt sick.

"Relax," Tikal prompted softly. "We’ve got time. Gather your strength back, and we’ll hack into Eggman’s records."

Rouge only found the energy to nod. In about an hour, she’d be ready...yeah...

From the bottom floor of the lobby, out of sight from either Tikal or Rouge, a pair of crimson eyes as red as blood shone out from the dark. If he’d had a mouth, he would have grinned cruelly.

Metal Sonic flexed his long-dormant limbs. He’d wait till the bat got her energy back, just to make things more challenging...

Station Square

Shadow burst out of a sewage drain, his fur matted and his breath weak and ragged. Behind and below him, ghosts cackled and giggled and tried to grab at him, but they were too far away and couldn’t swim. Choking out lungfuls of water, Shadow collapsed face-first into the shallow pool that sprinkled peacefully around him.

Fang erupted out next, hacking viciously and finding support in a white-washed, concrete wall. His hat was clutched tightly in one hand, and his sniper rifle was nowhere in sight. A small cut ran across his chest, moist and just starting to seep fresh blood onto his fur.

Knuckles came out last, and slammed down the manhole cover Shadow had pushed through. His Air Necklace dropped from his mouth and onto his chest as he used his knuckles to punch in parts of the cover and the floor below him, nicking them together. This would hopefully slow King Boom Boo down, since the Ghost King didn’t seem to have the ability to pass through solid objects.

He was very grateful of that fact.

"Shit’n’spit," Fang growled, wobbling as he pushed away from the wall. "Ah thought Ah’d die!"

Knuckles picked Shadow from out of the water. "We can’t waste any more time, we don’t know how long Gamma was able to hold Boom Boo off for. What’s our time count, Fang?"

The treasure hunter sputtered water. "We’ve been runnin’ fer about an hour now. Three hours more till dawn."

Knuckles closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. "That’s too long..."

"You two have to get out of here," Knuckles said quietly. "It’s mainly me KBB is after, since I’m the one that clocked it the last time. You two are too drained."

"We cin still fight back," Fang argued.

"No, there’s something else," Knuckles cut in. "We’re in Station Square."

"Yeah, yer point is?"

"People live here." Knuckles smacked a fist into one of his palms. "You all saw how Boom Boo didn’t go after Gamma that first time. He wants to feed off living beings, or some crazy bull like that. We’ve essentially led him to even more life to eat."

Fang and Shadow remembered Tails’ final fate, and nodded grimly.

"So he made a mistake after all," Shadow admitted. "Maybe he really is living. Machines aren’t capable of making mistakes that large."

"It’s not a mistake, not yet," Fang said, picking up on Knuckles’ idea. "We cin still turn this in our favor. If you wait here long enough, Knuckles, then Boom Boo will get here eventually. If you’re right, then he’ll be more attentive to ya, and ya cin lead him out of the sewers and inna Twinkle Park, where there ain’t no people! Once Shadow an’ me git back on our feet, we cin jump right in an’ help."

Knuckles grinned. "Great idea, wish I’d thought of that."

Fang sweatdropped, but Knuckles waved him off. "Go on now. I don’t want to lose anyone else..."

Shadow gave a forlonging glance at the echidna before turning and walking down a nearby hallway. Fang coughed one last time, put his hat back on his head and tipped the brim at Knuckles, then turned and followed Shadow.

Knuckles was alone now. The sound of water streaming through the astoundingly bright and clean sewers was his only company, until the manhole cover trembled mightily. A reversed dent appeared in the rusted metal, and Knuckles readied himself.

The cover was slammed several more times from the other side. It stopped for a few minutes, and then with a mighty roar, Boom Boo blasted through it, shattering it as he went, lunging for the closest life force he could find: Knuckles.

"BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" Boom Boo screamed. Knuckles ducked and jumped, grasping onto the wall with his knuckles and climbing up, hiking himself over a banister, and dashing down a narrow corridor. He could hear Boom Boo behind him. Ahead, a switch sat on the floor; he ran over it, causing a trail of rings to appear. Following it, he jumped up a hole and climbed, heaving himself over the edge and through a door. He slammed the door shut and dashed through a glass tube suspended fifteen feet above the ground, then dashed through a pair of sliding doors and into the lobby of Twinkle Park.

Boom Boo tore like a hellhound after him the entire way, exploding through the first door, then crumbling the sliding doors. By the time he got into the lobby, the doors that led to Twinkle Park closed off. With a rumble, Boom Boo gathered his strength again and charged, collapsing the doors inward.

Twinkle Park was completely dark, and he couldn’t see the guardian echidna anywhere--but he could feel his life-force close by. The inky black of the park would work to his advantage, and with a malicious grin, Boom Boo started the slow game of chasing his new prey.