Chapter Text
“Wasn’t this facility supposed to be abandoned?” Shadow grumbled as he cut through another one of The Doctor’s rogue machines.
“Supposed to be, seems like someone else moved in.” Rouge shrugged as she tapped away at an access console, unbothered by the conflict around her. “Old Eggman files, and information on someone using Eggman tech. Sounds like a win-win to me.”
Shadow rolled his eyes as he finished off the last of the robots. “And we’re going to quietly forget to inform G.U.N. about anything extra we find.” He concluded.
“You know me so well.” Rouge teased as she unplugged a drive from the computer and turned to go deeper into the facility. “Logs show someone was just here actually, down in the labs. Why don’t we go say hello?”
Rouge flew off and Shadow fell into step behind her, his air shoes gliding against the floor as he began skating through the hallways.
Eventually, they flew through a set of doors revealing a recently used laboratory. The computer was still unlocked and warning whoever was here about the intruders. Although the more interesting thing was the fact the entire room was saturated with Chaos Energy.
Someone here had used a Chaos Emerald, or shattered about a hundred Chaos Drives, but the former was more likely.
It was a weird feeling, the smell of petrichor tickled his nose along with a vague staticky feeling densest around his inhibitor rings.
He made his way around the table revealing a girl passed out on the floor hidden behind it. If the room was coated in Chaos Energy, she was saturated in it. It seemed different, like something else had influenced it, warped it. Whatever had happened here, she had gotten a front row seat.
“I get the feeling this isn’t who we’re looking for.” Rouge pointed out the obvious as her wings slowed down allowing her to touch down on the floor next to Shadow, looking down at the unconscious girl. “Leave her here and keep looking for whoever brought her here?”
Shadow shook his head. “If they were smart they started running the moment we got here.” Old G.U.N. intelligence told them this place was abandoned and inactive, something that had clearly become outdated after the military organization was disbanded and reformed. Not an unheard of problem, even before The War to Take Back the Planet, yet it still threw a wrench in their plans for a quiet in and out operation. “We’d be better off interrogating the girl and combing the base for whatever is left.”
“Nice of you to volunteer.” Rouge grinned as she flew off to the other side of the room to take advantage of the still logged in computer to grab everything she could, leaving Shadow with the girl passed out on the floor in front of him.
“I hate you.” Shadow called out across the room as he carefully nudged the girl with his foot. Pulse normal, breathing steady. She was fine, just passed out.
“No you don’t.” Rouge teased back as her hands flew across the keyboard.
No he didn’t. Not that he’d ever actually admit that. He would never hear the end of it.
He looked back down and noticed that the girl's eyes were slowly opening. “Hey you, you’re finally awake.”
The girl blinked as she slowly sat up, incredulous to her surroundings. Her eyes froze when they passed over Shadow. “Am I dreaming?” She asked without really thinking about it.
“No. You’re in an old Eggman base about a dozen miles outside of Central City. He explained. “We need to know who or what brought you here.”
The girl looked at him like he had spoken ancient babylonian. “Eggman? Central City?” She parroted out of sheer confusion. “What are you?”
Shadow froze. This had gotten a lot more complicated a lot faster than he ever wanted. Surprisingly, this wasn’t the first time someone didn’t recognize his species. Living and working along humans meant he was multiple small children’s first exposure to Mobians.
Ignoring the fact he wasn’t technically a Mobian anyway, he looked just like one and shared most of their physiology so he let the nuances slide most of the time.
It was possible, if not a little improbable this girl was somehow ignorant of the planet's other intelligent species. But Eggman? The man who had managed to rule the world for six months? The man who had blown up the moon?
She’d have to be an alien not to know about that pest.
“What's your name? What do you last remember?” Shadow began, although the longer he looked at her the more he noticed signs the girl seemed to have just been in combat. “Were you fighting someone?”
“Ruby Rose, I’m a student at Beacon academy. I was uh…” The girl trailed off as her eyes seemed to go wide. “I can’t remember. Why can’t I remember?”
Shadow huffed. “A side effect of over exposure to Chaos Energy can be temporary memory loss.” Along with turning blond and immortality. “It’ll come back to you in time.” Probably. Chaos Energy tended to be, well, chaotic. “Did you wake up here before we got here? Did you see anyone else?”
Ruby stared at him with an odd look. “Uh, no? Where is here anyway?” She gasped dramatically. “You didn’t kidnap me right!?!” She asked in a panic, shortly followed by a snort from Rouge across the room.
“No, we didn’t kidnap you.” Shadow deadpanned. “Someone reused this old base and brought you here, either on accident or on purpose, with one or more Chaos Emeralds.” He carefully explained.
“Like, teleported? Is that why I feel so warped?” Ruby wondered aloud. “Also what are Chaos Emeralds?”
Shadow sighed. That was a question and a half. “The short answer is no one really knows. More importantly, you don’t know who Eggman is? Dr. Ivo Robotnik?” He clarified.
“Uhh. No?” Ruby looked at him like he was crazy.
“Then you’re clearly not from here. He managed to rule the world for a few months. Not the first time a Chaos Emerald has been used for interdimensional travel.” Shadow trailed off.
“Interdimensional travel- You’re aliens.” She gasped as she came to the realization. “I’m an alien?”
Shadow had to fight to keep the grin off his face. “We have humans here too, you won’t look too out of place.”
“Shadow was born in space. You’re both aliens, technically.” Rouge called out as she approached. “You two even have the same color scheme." She teased.
Shadow thought about it for a moment and realized she was right. Ruby did have the same black and red look to her, even if she probably just dyed her hair to make it black and red unlike his natural black and red quills.
“Wait, have you seen my scythe? Oh, there it is.” Ruby reached for a strange red box that looked like a wildly impractical sniper rifle. The moment she held it securely it seemed to unfold, turning itself into a highly impractical sniper rifle scythe.
Shadow looked it over and it was clear, wherever she had been before she got pulled to this world, she was fighting. Judging from the minor scratches and dirt attached to it, either she didn’t maintain her weapon, or she was fighting a significant number of foes.
She seemed to realize the same thing he did as she gave him a look as she folded her weapon back down and stowed it on her back.
“Was that a scythe gun?” Rouge asked, completely dumbfounded by the choice of weapon. “Are those common back where you’re from?”
“Oh yeah, well not the scythe part, those are pretty rare. Anyone that learns more than the basics designs and uses a mechashift weapon.” Ruby confirmed. “At Signal we went the extra mile and forged them ourselves. They said it would help us learn to maintain and repair them better.” She elaborated. “Although I kind of went the extra mile and made mine before even getting in.”
Shadow wanted one. He wanted one a lot.
“More importantly, there isn’t anything about our mystery scientist on these computers.” Rouge elaborated as she waved a flash drive in front of them. “Someone’s making waves in the Eggnet but this place was essentially disconnected from it.”
Shadow huffed. This simple operation seemed to get a lot more complicated far too fast. Someone with access was pulling together pieces of the Empire and someone else was crazy enough to use whatever was left and smart enough to actually get away with it. Never a good combination.
“Of course that leaves us with the problem of what to do with the little gem here.” Rouge teased as she flew up to eye level with Ruby. “I’m assuming we’re not telling G.U.N.?”
Shadow snorted. “Obviously.” He may have been willing to do contract work for them when he needed to, but he was naive enough to think they had really changed. He wouldn’t trust them with a chao, much less a stranded interdimensional traveler for them to exploit.
“Sorry but, how am I getting home exactly?” Ruby cut in. “I mean you all seem great, it's just that I have classes and stuff so…” She trailed off.
Shadow let out a deep sigh. “It’ll probably be a while before that can happen.”
“Sorry Gem, you’re stuck here for a while, at least until we do some more digging on how you got here anyway.” Rouge shrugged before giving the girl a pat on the head. “These things have a way of working out.”
She let out a grin as she turned to face Shadow. “You know… Don’t you have a guest room?”
“No.” Shadow refused.
“Don’t worry Gem, he’s lying. He got an apartment with one so I could crash on his couch.” Rouge stage whispered into Ruby’s ear. “He likes to pretend he doesn’t care to save his precious cool image.”
“I’m not letting a random girl I just met move into my apartment.” Shadow bit back although he already had the distinct feeling he was going to lose this argument anyway.
“Please?” Ruby asked kindly, joining on the bandwagon. “I don’t wanna be homeless. I’m too young to be homeless.”
“You two already have so much in common, black and red, using guns…” Rouge turned to face Ruby. “You wouldn’t happen to be fast would you?”
Ruby’s answer came in the form of an afterimage of rose petals as she ran around behind Shadow.
“See, look, so much in common it's like I’m seeing double. You sure she’s not your long lost sister or something?” Rouge joked as she gestured to Ruby.
“If you like her so much why don’t you take her then.” Shadow deflected.
Rouge pointed out. “Gems aren’t going to hunt themselves you know, and I don't always stay near Central City. Someone needs to keep an eye on her, and I’d be a terrible influence.”
And he wouldn’t? “You’re doing my paperwork.” Shadow reluctantly agreed as he began walking out of the facility. “And figuring out how to spin this to Tower.”
“Does that mean yes?” Ruby asked Rouge as she ran forward a bit to catch up to Shadow before falling in pace with him.
“That means yes.” Rouge confirmed as she began flying alongside them. “Don’t worry, you’ll understand his angst well enough eventually.”
“How fast are you?” Shadow bluntly asked as they walked outside, the lively green grass refreshing after so many metal and plastic hallways.
“Pretty fast? Faster than everyone at Beacon at least.” Ruby put a hand to her chin as she paused to consider it. “I never really had a good way to measure it for a while, and then when I got to Beacon I just sort of didn’t.”
Shadow rolled his eyes. Something to add to the to-do list then. “You set the pace and I’ll match you then.”
Ruby looked at him like he had gone crazy. “We’re running there?!?” She gestured to the city miles away. “I’ve never had to run that far before.”
“How do you think we got here? Rouge is already flying away.” He pointed to where she was, rapidly ascending. She seemed to notice and blow back a kiss for dramatic effect before continuing her flight. “You have super speed. You’d be a fool not to use it to get places.”
“My teachers always said I should save my semblance so that I didn’t exhaust myself when I really needed it.” Ruby trailed off, looking to the horizon like it was indomitable.
“I didn’t say we’d be sprinting.” Shadow huffed. “Your teachers were fools who clearly never ran a day in their lives.”
“Okay then….” Ruby took a deep breath before she began running across the ground trailed by rose petals that quickly seemed to dissolve in the wind.
Shadow quickly began skating alongside her, speeding up a decent amount to catch up before quickly slowing his pace to match. Certainly not the fastest he could go, but he had gone about this speed in more difficult terrain before.
“Never ran with someone before.” Ruby managed to say between deep breaths.
Shadow huffed. “Slow down, we’re going to lose time if you exhaust yourself.”
Ruby nodded as she adjusted their pace to something more comfortable. It seemed to help her catch her breath as she looked over the landscape. “Shadow, why is there a loop over there?”
Shadow turned his head to match what Ruby was looking at and sure enough there was a loop. “They have a habit of popping up.” He rolled his eyes once he realized what she wanted to do. “If you want to run around it, I won’t stop you.” He reluctantly offered.
“Cool thanks be right back!” She shouted as she split off from him, accelerating in the process.
As she approached the loop she seemed to accelerate further, likely due to the fear that she wouldn’t be fast enough to beat gravity at the peak despite already going twice the speed she needed to already.
The blur of red circled around before launching off the ramp with a shower of petals with a decent amount of airtime. She broke out of her running stance as she flew and drew out her weapon, firing it off enough times to counteract enough momentum to land smoothly, coming to a quick stop to which he quickly ran up and joined her at.
“Sorry just, need a minute.” Ruby managed to say between deep even breaths. “Got a little dizzy after gravity went weird.”
He wondered if it was too late to stick her with Rouge.