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Chapter 3: Magic on Mobius (ReVamp!)
Location: Robotnik’s Base
Warning: Mild swearing ahead

Shadow found himself in a bit of a dilemma. The portal in front of him seemed to have activated and was bringing an uncontrollable, impossibly powerful being to Mobius (or so the good doctor had said). He couldn’t shut it off or destroy it unless he wanted to cause the veritable end of existence (again, as the doctor had said). So, he had to wait for the portal to bring this supposedly “ultimate lifeform” here, and then prevent it from going insane and destroying the world somehow. Or something along those lines. He wasn’t entirely positive at this point about anything; things were happening a bit too quickly for him to properly process the information overload he’d been given. And, as a nice little bonus, he had less than a minute to figure things out, due to Eggman setting the base to self-destruct in a minute.

“53 seconds until detonation.” Yes, robotic voice, thank you for that oh-so-helpful reminder that he was pretty much screwed on all fronts.

At the very least, his screwing on the portal front would be much quicker. Shadow shielded his eyes as the portal flashed in a brilliant array of colors before appearing to turn off. Blinking rapidly to clear the spots from his eyes, he noticed a short figure standing in front of the portal that had not been there before the flash. Merely reacting at that point, he crouched back into a combat stance and launched himself at the smudged silhouette, not willing to risk waiting for his vision to return to normal with a potential threat before him. His fist made contact with the threat in what he supposed was its stomach or chest. The figure let out a grunt of pain and immediately fell backwards. He stomped down on its chest, not giving it the opportunity to recover as he readied a Chaos Spear in his right hand and stabbed down at the blurred head beneath him.

“WAIT!” it called out. Shadow paused in his attack, though not of his own will. Glancing over to see what had stopped his assault, he was surprised to see a pink aura surrounding his fist, keeping it held in place. Not wasting a moment, he readied another Chaos Spear in his other fist and attempted to finish off the creature beneath him once more. His gaze snapped back to the thing laying prone beneath him to make sure he would hit it, but once more, just before the Chaos Spear penetrated its flesh, he stopped. But this time, there was no aura holding him back.

This… there’s no way this is the supposed ultimate life form Eggman was summoning, Shadow thought incredulously, looking down at what he had pinned. His vision had cleared up considerably, and he could now see that his spear was hovering inches above the nose of some purple Mobian girl, who stared at it with eyes wide with shock and fear. This was just a distraction for the Doctor to escape! Dammit! he cursed inwardly, letting his weapons dissipate as he backed away from the girl. Or at least attempted to, when he realized with a literal jolt of his arm that the pink aura was still surrounding his fist, keeping it in place. The girl appeared not to have noticed the hedgehog attempting to move away, likely paralyzed in shock, her eyes not moving from where his spear had been.

“Let go of me,” Shadow growled in annoyance, bringing the girl out of her stupor as the force holding his fist in place disappeared. He glared at her a moment longer before stalking away, shifting his attention to the still slightly dazed bat before him. “C’mon, Rouge, let’s try and find that Chaos Emerald before this thing blows in-“

“47 seconds until detonation.”

“Gee, thanks for that reminder,” he muttered.

“Did you say Chaos Emerald?” a feminine voice asked harshly. Shadow stopped, his back still turned to the purple girl, and nodded. “What are you going to do with it?”

There’s no time… screw it, it’s not like we could’ve found it in this mess in less than a minute. Shadow sighed. “To retrieve and protect the Chaos Emerald from falling into the wrong hands,” he explained.

“And you’re the right hands?”

Shadow barked out a laugh. “Us? No. Nobody should be able to have the Chaos Emeralds. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let somebody abuse their power to destroy the world while I have any say about it.”

Silence…

“39 seconds until detonation.”

The Doctor really needs to get a better countdown sequence.

“…I’ll help you find the Chaos Emerald.”

Shadow turned to stare at the girl incredulously. This girl… “What did you just say?”

“I said I’ll help you. If you promise not to abuse the powers of Chaos and truly wish to protect the Chaos Emerald, I’ll help you find it,” the girl said cautiously, trying to gauge his reaction to her words.

Shadow paused for a moment before scoffing, “And what could you do to find the Chaos Emerald?” Really now, if he, the real Ultimate Lifeform, couldn’t find them, couldn’t even sense them, what could this random portal girl, who apparently knows something about the Chaos Emeralds, do?

The girl’s response came in the form of her eyes glowing a bright white as she glanced around the room briefly before her eyes came to rest on the portal. “I know where it is.”

“Where!?” Shadow snapped, following the girl’s gaze, yet seeing no sign of the Emerald. A bluff? No, what reason would she have to bluff.

“I refuse to tell you until you promise not to abuse their power,” the girl said solemnly.

“32 seconds until detonation.”

Was this girl being serious? The look on her face clearly said she was. Did she not know how urgent this was? “Just tell me already, we don’t have time for this! This place is going to explode in half a minute!” Shadow snarled.

“Promise me!” the girl insisted. Shadow clenched his fist, annoyance setting in.

“27 seconds until detonation.”

“Fine, we promise!” Rouge cut in. “Now where is it!?”

The girl paused for a moment, her glowing eyes seeming to peer into their souls to judge their intentions before nodding. “Just behind that panel, on the left” the girl said, gesturing towards a small panel on the left side of the portal.

“Finally!” Shadow sprinted forward, tearing the metal panel off the portal and grabbing the green gem from within.

“20 seconds until detonation.”

“We need to go!” Shadow grabbed Rouge’s arm and held out the Chaos Emerald in front of him, focusing on the ship outside. If the troops had obeyed orders and the engine was kept running, then they could be able to clear the explosion’s blast radius in time.

He spared a glance at the portal girl. She hadn’t moved yet, apparently not understanding that she would die in 20 seconds. He sighed. He did sort of owe her for finding the Chaos Emerald and coming close to killing her. He hated to leave debts unsettled.

“Fine,” he grumbled, biting down on the Emerald and grabbing the girl with his other hand.

“CHAOF COMPROL!” The three appeared inside the ship in a burst of green light. Shadow released the two girls and dropped the Chaos Emerald into his hand, tucking it in his quills before anything happened to it. He looked around the now empty ship to find, to his immense frustration, that the soldiers had left the ship. Cursing loudly and causing the portal girl to flinch, he sprinted outside and saw the soldiers all lounging around nearby, consumed in several games of poker.

“Everybody inside the ship, now!” Shadow shouted furiously. The men snapped to attention and quickly abandoned their games, gathering up their belongings as quickly as possible and booking it to the ship in fear of the wrath of the small hedgehog. A quick glance at the quivering base told Shadow that they had maybe ten seconds left to clear the area before it detonated. They wouldn’t have enough time to even clear the shockwave, much less the wall of shrapnel that would follow. He would make it out of the blast okay, he was immortal, but everybody else would be ripped into tiny pieces, and as much as he hated the soldiers, he didn’t want them to die. He didn’t want anybody to die. He was supposed to protect them, but how could he protect them from this!?

Rouge and the portal girl exited the ship, the portal girl crawling out on her hands and knees curiously enough. “Get back in the ship!” Shadow demanded. “It’ll provide at least some cover from the explosion. Do you want to get blown away?”

“I’m trying to get her to go back in the ship, but she’s being as stubborn as you about it,” Rouge complained, shooting Portal Girl a sharp look. Portal Girl winced, but continued on towards Shadow.

“What were you saying about an explosion?” she asked.

“That base over there is going to explode in-“

BOOM

“Shit!” Shadow closed his eyes and braced himself, waiting for the shockwave to hit. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Nothing except for possibly bleeding eardrums. Not even a bit of wind. Relaxing just the slightest bit, Shadow squeezed his eyes open the smallest bit, only to widen his eyes in amazement at what was around him. A translucent, pink, bubble-like shield surrounded the area around him and the ship, protecting them from the wind that was uprooting trees around them. The metal shrapnel that would’ve cut through them like they were made of butter merely bounced off the shield, as if they were being gently tossed rather than being hurled forward at hundreds of miles per hour. Shadow shook his head and rubbed his eyes in disbelief, thinking he was hallucinating. Ear splitting sound of metal rendering and robots releasing their death cries, great flames shooting into the steadily darkening sky, nearly blinding light coming from where the base once stood, devastation being wrought around every area of the island except their own… if this was a hallucination, it was a pretty damn good one.

“…Rouge?” Shadow said softly, not taking his eyes off the surrounding shield.

“…Yeah?” she responded, sounding equally stunned.

“Since when did GUN have a functional shield generator? And why pink of all colors?”

“I don’t know, I’d say it’s more of a magenta than a pink,” Rouge chuckled wryly.

“Not the important part of the question,” Shadow muttered dryly. Though now that he looked more closely at the color, he realized it looked familiar. He’d just seen it somewhere, and recently too. But where…?

Eyes widening in realization, he turned around to face Portal Girl. Her forehead glowed the same pink color that his hand had earlier when he was trying to kill her. That’s what had stopped him! Portal Girl must’ve had some variety of ability akin to Silver’s telekinesis that let her do these things. She looked like she was exhausting herself, though. Sweat poured down her face and her whole body shook with the effort of keeping the shield up. Shadow was sure that if she wasn’t already sitting, she would’ve collapsed by now.

Fortunately, it looked like she wouldn’t have to keep it up much longer. The blinding light of the explosion had dulled to a slight glow in the middle of the wreckage; now it was just a fire burning up the few flammable materials left in the metal skeleton. The hail of shrapnel that had been continuously slamming into the shield was now just a light shower pitter-pattering gently against the shield. The shockwave and heat of the explosion had long since passed them. Feeling that they were now in the clear, Portal Girl let her shield crack and shatter, the pieces of it raining down around them and leaving a slight warm, friendly feeling inside them. She slumped forward onto her hands, panting hard at the intense amount of exertion she’d just put out. She opened her eyes, wincing slightly at the sting of her salty sweat. She let out a soft chuckle between pants, staring at the ground beneath her.

“Oh… great… hands.” And with that, she went limp, landing softly on the dirt beneath her as she closed her eyes, fainting.

Silence reigned across the now desolate field. “What the fuck just happened?” Shadow turned to see that the soldiers had exited the ship and were now staring at Portal Girl. Shadow scowled and walked back to the ship, picking up Portal Girl and slinging her over his shoulder as he went. Rouge quickly followed, just as confused as the other soldiers about how they weren’t dead. Shadow merely passed by them, calling over his shoulder, “Get back in the ship. We’re leaving,” as he did. The soldiers took a few seconds to respond to the command, still slightly in shock, but they soon boarded the ship. Shadow offered no explanation for the puzzled crew, merely ordered that they be taken back to headquarters as he set the portal girl down on a medical cot.

For once, he was grateful that the ship they had taken was not well suited for reconnaissance. At least he had some place to put the girl down. Carrying him on his lap for the whole trip back would’ve been a pain, not to mention it would be something Rouge would tease him about for weeks on end. But as they took off and made their way back to the base, Shadow’s eyes never left the girl. The trip that had felt like it had taken an eternity on the way to the island felt like it took mere seconds as questions buzzed through Shadow’s mind.

What was she? How was she able to do those things? How did she come through the portal? Was she actually the real Ultimate Lifeform? Did Eggman’s invention actually work for once? And how the hell did she know about the Chaos Emeralds?

Who was Portal Girl?