Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tails hums to himself as he sets the blowtorch down. The Tornado took some pretty big hits in their latest adventure, so Tails has been taking the time to do some cosmetic upgrades before going back to altering the engine to go even faster. A few seconds quicker would have stopped the plane from getting hit by all those lasers…

He waits for the metal to cool before placing his gloved hands over the wing. Seems to have smoothed over the ugly bumps, so now Tails just needs to give it a new paint job. Perfect! Not that he expected anything less.

“Heya, foxboy. Think you could do a favor for a neighbor?”

Tails jumps, hands grabbing his blowtorch, preparing for a fight. Rouge sits perched on his windowsill, one leg dangling, while she leans against her knees, a mischievous smile on her face. Tails places a hand against his heart, vows to upgrade his security measures, and straightens. “Rouge! What are you doing here?”

Rouge jumps to the ground with a flourish, wings fluttering like a dress would. She does a small bow before leaning against his workbench, eyes roaming across his schematics, before her attention moves back to Tails. Now that her whole body is shown to him, he notices one hand is holding a cartridge.

“This isn’t related to some G.U.N. mission, is it?” Tails eyes the cartridge in her hands wearily, watching as she sets it on top of his bench. “I don’t really want to get involved with them again.”

“Oh, no, this is perhaps more of a personal business inquiry. In fact, G.U.N. is completely unrelated to this.” She pauses, tilts her head, before conceding, “Well, at least, they certainly didn’t set me up to ask you for some help.”

Tails isn’t sure he likes where this is going. “So what exactly do you need?”

“You remember our fun little space traveling stint, two months ago? When Eggman’s grandfather tried to kill everyone?”

“It’s rather hard to forget…”

“Well, you remember when I read a portion of Gerald Robotnik’s diary?” Rouge taps her nails on the cartridge. “This is his diary.”

“This is Gerald Robotnik’s diary?” Tails picks the cartridge up, holding it to the light. It does look like the same thing Eggman had given Rouge aboard the ARK.

“Eggman never asked for it back. I suppose he already managed to crack the code and read the whole thing through, or at least has a back up copy. Which leads me to the favour I need to ask of you, hun. Can you finish decoding them for me?”

Tails peers at the case in his hand, before looking back at Rouge. Tails isn’t great at reading expressions, and he gives up trying to read her’s, a master spy with an equally powerful poker face. “I don’t know… hasn’t he given us enough trouble? What could you possibly need from these?”

Tails won’t lie and say he isn’t interested. He knows Rouge has pretty advanced technical know-how; her whole job is infiltration and data retrieval, so if Rouge couldn’t crack Gerald’s code even though Eggman already managed to get a portion uncovered for the rest of them, it meant there was some tight security wrapped around this single cartridge. Gerald had become a paranoid man during his stint under G.U.N., and perhaps for understandable reasons.

Rouge isn’t prone to asking for help, which means something interesting must be on this cartridge. And Tails is a bit interested in Gerald himself- he has quite a few questions over his true intentions, and over a variety of his inventions. After all, creating artificial Chaos and Chaos drives is no easy feat. Who knows what sort of engineering miracle lays within this coding?

But Rouge is often involved in things that end up biting Sonic and Tails later. And Tails knows she wouldn’t be interested in the technological advances within this file, unless someone was perhaps buying it. So either there was something else at play, or Rouge was going to sell this information, and Tails isn’t particularly fond of either option.

“I wish I could tell you, hun. Right now, I’m doing a top secret investigation. I don’t really want to spoil anything until I have all the details.”

“So this is a mission with G.U.N.?”

“Perhaps a mission against G.U.N. is more accurate.”

Tails tilts his head. “You’re… going against them?”

“Honey, I’d betray them for a cubic zirconium. They don’t mean much to me. And it’s always good to have dirt on people like them.”

Tails frowns. He’s not sure what to feel about the whole double crossing. He doesn’t like G.U.N. but if Rouge is willing to gain blackmail against her own employer, Tails isn’t entirely sure the information should escape from the confines of this cartridge.

But, well, Rouge is also a super spy. Keeping secrets is part of her job. And Tails feels like Rouge has a decent enough moral compass to know what lines to cross, and which to stay clear of, even if she betrays them all on occasion for a pretty jewel.

Besides, anything on this cartridge was already probably aired to the citizens of the Federation. G.U.N. claimed they aired all their dirty laundry about the affair, coming clean and finally taking responsibility over the ARK massacre. There might still be some secrets they didn’t hand out on a silver platter for the press, but certainly, it can’t be much worse than the civilian massacre on the ARK? Or the Biolizard’s escape? Or Black Doom?

Tails peers at the cartridge, and sighs, defeated. “Alright, I’ll do my best to crack the code. I’ll call you when I’ve finished.”

“Thank you, darling!” She pats his head, and Tails is surprised to find he doesn’t entirely hate the action. It wasn’t condescending, in the way she usually is, so Tails doesn’t bat her hand away. She’s quick, anyway, and puts her hands on her hips, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Could you do me one more favour? This one’s asking a lot, I’ll admit.”

“I can try.”

“Don’t read anything in the diary.” Her expression is serious and Tails shrinks under her gaze. “Gerald Robotnik was not a particularly pleasant man. I also don’t want this information spreading to more people than necessary. Just use what you need to to decode the rest of the diary, but nothing more.”

Tails tilts his head again. “Rouge, what exactly do you think is on this cartridge?”

“If G.U.N. becomes cheeky enough, you just might find out sooner rather than later. Can you promise me you won’t try to read all of it?”

Tails bites his lip. This is a very, very hard decision. After all, he’s insanely curious over other schematics and ideas Gerald might have up his sleeve. And he’s very curious about the exact circumstances leading up to the ARK raid and Shadow’s creation. Besides, Shadow would like some peace of mind, wouldn’t he? The invasion with the Black Arms shook him up more than he’s willing to admit, even if he claims he’s content with his identity now.

But that’s exactly what Rouge was trying to avoid, wasn’t it? Information being relayed over and over again. If Tails told Shadow, Shadow might tell others, and in the back of Tails’s mind, he knows he’d probably end up telling Sonic and Amy about what he found. A good game of telephone would pass, and the information would no longer be confidential.

And if Tails does read the information about Shadow, he’s just not at all certain he could keep it to himself. Perhaps Rouge has a point.

“Well, I can try my best.”

Rouge watches him for a moment, and somehow the air between them becomes so thick a diamond bladed knife couldn’t cut it. Rouge’s shoulders are tense, eyes peering straight into Tails’s soul, and he swallows nervously before she seems to find what she’s looking for. “I suppose that’s all I can ask of you. I’ll see you around, honey.”

Rouge gives a mischievous grin as she tosses a smoke bomb. Pink clouds cover his entire lab, and Tails coughs, squeezing his eyes shut until the smoke begins to fade. The window to his lab has shut, and Rouge is nowhere in sight. Tails rolls his eyes- always has to make an entrance, and always has to make an exit.

He peers at the cartridge in his hand, and gently takes it out of its case. It glimmers in the light of his lab, and Tails wonders just what secrets lie within such a small object.

Well, time to find out.

Tails finds a port in his super computer and modifies it to accommodate the cartridge. Gerald Robotnik may have been a man far ahead of his years, a biological and arguably an engineering genius, but even he could not have foreseen the downfall of cartridges. So Tails manages to connect the two after a few minutes of tinkering, and finally, all of Gerald’s files are loaded onto his computer, ready to be decoded.

The actual process of decoding his diaries takes roughly two and a half days. Eggman had left the very last diary entry uncoded, for Rouge to read during the ARK’s fall, and that was more than enough for Tails to build a decryption program.

Tails can understand why G.U.N. has such trouble decoding his diary, however. Their scientific program went down the drain after Gerald Robotnik’s execution, and they simply didn’t have anyone who was as genius as Professor Robotnik. Gerald had managed to not double, not triple, not even quadruple encrypt his diary, but deca-encrypted it. The diary had been put through ten completely different ciphers, many based on complete random assignments of values and letters, before finally deeming it safe enough.

It took a whole day just to unravel five layers. The second day was spent on the last three- the fourth layer had taken the longest time to try to dissect, as it was the most random out of the ten. But finally, Tails broke through the very last cipher, and the last chain hanging around the diary was dropped.

Finally, the diary was decoded, and Tails could hand it back to Rouge.

… he should hand it back to Rouge.

But Tails is eight years old, and filled to the brim and then some with curiosity. Curiosity is what drove Tails into invention, after all; without that spark, he’d no doubt still be some kit on West Side Island having his lunch money stolen. It’s this drive to understand the world around him that motivates everything he does.

And frankly, Tails is dying to properly understand the whole Project Shadow fiasco. There’s still so many elements to the story Tails feels like has been omitted either on purpose, or lost in history. The main players who seem to have a grasp on the history of the subject- Shadow, the Commander, Eggman, and Black Doom- are at best unreliable narrators, and most of them are at worst completely malicious liars. Anyone else is long dead.

But here is a first hand account of all that occurred. Finally, Tails can have a concrete understanding of the event. Tails can finally understand Gerald Robotnik as a person, figure out if he was a good guy or a bad guy, and then be done with the case completely.

He can totally keep his mouth shut about anything he reads. He’s kept plenty of secrets from Sonic before! (Well. Not really. But he could if he wanted to.)

He learned from his mistake with Eggman on the ARK. Tails won’t be giving away this information like candy, he’ll just keep it to himself like his horde of mint candies. He’s learned and he’s better than ever. Rouge won’t even realize he read them!

Tails nods to himself, confidence building. Just a small peak won’t hurt, just a little skimming, just to understand the barebones of what occurred. Just the last few entries.

Tails opens up a file on the drive. The final entry, from Tails’s understanding, was meant for Gerald to broadcast to the entire world. He seemed to have written it as a sort of script, a final warning, to those who might tamper with Shadow. The rest of his diaries, however, had more juicy information then Tails could believe.

Day 124 of Project Shadow (Day 7 of imprisonment)

I have been imprisoned for over a week now. The foolish Commander has given me a fate worse than death- to recreate the experiment they had lost, thanks to my beloved Maria. I had been afraid that once they found out about Shadow, they would want to turn him into a weapon of some sort, and it seems I was right.

Was it not enough, for men like him to hold a gun in his own hand? Was nuclear warfare not enough, for men like him? Was slaughtering young children with just the flick of his wrist and a hungry pack of wolves they call soldiers not enough? It is never enough for men like him.

Fine. I shall build him a weapon. I shall build him a similar enough replica to my Shadow and I shall command it to do what a weapon does best. I have considered long and hard the idea I am about to propose and enact, but the Commander has finally sealed his own fate. Humanity is a blight upon this earth, a plague that must be cured with the only vaccine available- extinction. It is time to learn from nature and to use hellfire to turn the wicked to ash, and allow lichen and moss to cover up humanity's sick sins. It is time to start anew.

So I shall build them their weapon. I shall build them a Shadow, gifted with a similar soul I gave to the Gizoid and my own Shadow, and I shall give it memories of Maria to latch on to. I shall give it the agonies of having loved and lost, so it shall not stray from my final command: to collect all seven emeralds and destroy the human race.

And, if it somehow fails, I at least have a back up. Black Doom intends to find Shadow when the comet passes, so if my second Shadow is either not released in time, or perhaps somehow subdued, I have no doubt the Black Arms will finish what I began.

I will leave everything to this faux-Shadow. My legacy shall be with it. What that legacy entails… I leave up to it.

Tails blinks, then rereads the entry, then again for good measure. He finally tears his gaze away from the blurring words upon his fifth re-read. He must be reading this wrong, he must be interpreting it all wrong, because if Tails is right, Gerald is insinuating that there are two Project Shadows. That the Shadow Tails knows was never on the ARK, that this Shadow was born purely out of a drive for revenge, that this Shadow was made to decimate the human race, not cure mankind of all disease, not save the world. That this Shadow never even met Maria, built in the confines of Gerald’s prison on Prison Island.

No, Tails has to be reading this wrong.

He skips to a different entry.

Day 196 of Project Shadow (Day 79 of imprisonment)

The foolish men have not found my first Project Shadow. Maria had made sure to send him down to earth before she was so callously slaughtered, just as she promised when I had first suspected such an event may occur. When the raid was launched, I had insisted on directing the soldiers as far away from them as possible, but it seems my efforts were in partial vain. Still, I am thankful that I had suspected such an event would occur- it seems my tracking scrambler I installed on the escape pod worked like a charm. G.U.N. has been searching for nearly three months now, and found no trace. Cloaked better than a chameleon, I firmly believe they will not ever find it. And while I know it is unlikely, given all that I had done, I pray that Shadow died upon impact, so no uncaring or callous hands may ever be laid upon him.

My calculations indicate the capsule should be somewhere amongst the Indian Ocean. And while I may feel as though my sanity is slipping, I know my math to be true, and I further estimate it to have landed on a place called Christmas Island. G.U.N. certainly won’t find it there, even though it is fairly close to the larger South and West Side Islands.

Just before G.U.N. invaded my lab, I managed to throw six of the Chaos emeralds I had collected overboard. They had stopped me from throwing out the seventh, perhaps in hopes that I would use it to complete the project. Well, they got their wish.

My calculations indicate that the emeralds landed on South Island. It had always been a treasure trove of the strange and unusual, and I have often wondered if it perhaps was once a part of the mythical Starfall Islands. Angel Island was rumored to be amongst those ruins, too, and I certainly wish I had been given more time to properly study the archeology of those environments.

But soon, it won’t matter. The second Project Shadow is near completion- I simply need to inject its memories, before I seal it away for good, until some foolish schmuck manages to decode my encryptions. They may be able to guess Maria as the password, but they most certainly won’t be able to decrypt my ten different ciphers, at least not for a very, very long time.

Perhaps humanity shall change, in the time when my newest Shadow is awakened. I shall leave judgment to it, though I know it will choose the right path. Wars have been waged since man first created the jagged edge of a piercing weapon. We have not escaped our past, and I know we never shall.

Soon, I shall discard the emerald, and hope it becomes ensnared in one of those special zones before G.U.N. can find it again, just like the brother emeralds likely have. And soon, the second Project Shadow will be complete. I have suspicion that once they figure my betrayal, that they shall execute me, and claim the entire raid as my own doing. Pity. But I suppose my work here is done.

Tails yanks the cartridge out of the modified port. The screen immediately goes black, and Tails grips the diary tight in his hands, almost afraid he just might break it into pieces. Would that be such a bad thing, however?

Tails has to be interpreting this wrong. He thought that Shadow’s identity had solidified, that Shadow was the one aboard the ARK, that Gerald initially made him to cure Maria’s NIDS, that Shadow was sent to earth only to later be found my G.U.N., that Gerald altered his memories before he was executed so Shadow would hate humanity and fulfill his dying wishes, instead of Marai’s. Tails thought that was it, that Shadow’s story was finished, that the only mysteries that remained were what other inventions Gerald had been up to, and how he managed to find all the emeralds, and if he had actually been on Angel Island.

Not this. Not whatever this is, not whatever these implications are, that there’s another Project Shadow out there, the one who actually met Maria, the one who watched her die and was sent to earth, the one who was made to be a savior, to cure, to heal, to protect. The Project Shadow Geraldm hoped was dead so no one could ever taint him, the one he presumes is on Christmas Island…

Oh.

“No.”

Tails can hardly even breathe. It can’t be true. No, no, it’s just a coincidence, it’s just an insane, insane coincidence, and there must be plenty of Christmas Islands out there that also happen to be right next door to West Side Island. It can’t be the same one.

“Sonic,” Tails asks, four years old and brimming with curiosity. A woman had asked where the two of them lived, and if they needed help getting back home. Sonic rejected the offer, annoyed at being thought of as a helpless child, and guided Tails back towards the Tornado. But the question made Tails wonder, about the Sonic before he stepped foot on West Side Island. Because Tails knows he didn’t live there, that Sonic crash landed after chasing Eggman. “Where do you come from?”

Sonic tilts his head, peering at Tails, matching his own curious expression. “Hm?”

“I come from West Side Island,” Tails explains. “So where do you come from? Where’s your home?”

Sonic rubs his nose, and looks westward. He seems to contemplate the answer much more than he should; by the age of three, Tails could recite the precise coordinates of the orphanage he lived at, but Tails had also been told that that was weird, and he was a bit of a freak. So maybe Sonic thinking so hard was normal.

“Eggman called the island Christmas Island,” Sonic finally answers, drumming his fingers on the wing of the Tornado, before continuing. “That’s where I found this plane, too. But Christmas Island was very boring. No action, until Eggman came. So I don’t know if I can call it home.”

Tails contemplates the answer, then nods. “West Side never felt like a home for me, either.”

Sonic pauses, then looks over at Tails. There’s a terribly fond smile on his face when he says, “Well then, I guess we’ll just have to build one together, right?”

“Right!”

No. No. No.

“You don’t really talk about Christmas Island much,” Tails can’t help but say, when he finds Sonic staring long and hard at a map on Tails’s workbench, once that includes Christmas Island on it. It was the tiniest island Tails had ever heard of, and was often not bothered with on official maps. But Tails and Sonic were going to investigate some trouble brewing on Flickie Island, and it turns out, it’s not far from Christmas.

“Not much to talk about,” Sonic answers back, though not unkindly. He points at it on the map, and the island looked like little more than a speck of dirt. “It’s so small and boring. There wasn’t much on that island, except for some cute critters, and myself.”

Tails tilts his head. “Really? Nothing?”

“Nope! Just me, myself, and I! So boring! I’m almost glad Eggman came around!”

“Don’t you miss your parents? Or your friends?”

“Dind’t have any.”

Tails’s eyes bulge. Sure, Tails can imagine him having no parents- most parents don’t really let eleven year old kids wander around the world without supervision, or adopt other kids, or fight scary old men who try to conquer the world. But Sonic is the epitome of cool, and so far, Sonic’s made friends with just about every person they’ve met. He’s got friends in far away places like Never Lake and Central City. Tails can’t believe that Sonic doesn’t have any friends.

“No friends?” Tails repeats. “None at all?”

Sonic frowns. “Well, it was an abandoned island. There wasn’t any… cities, or people, or anything like that.”

“What?”

“Yep.” He shrugs. “It’s super tiny. I guess no one thought you could build a city there, so they just didn’t.”

“But…” Tails frowns. “So you were all alone?”

Sonic hums, then peers at Tails. “I guess. But it wasn’t all bad. And I don’t really remember anything from before being on the island.”

“What?”

Sonic shrugs. “I don’t have any memories from before I was ten, not long before Eggman investigated the island. I wasn’t on the island for very long, but I don’t know anything before.”

Tails has to pause. He stares at Sonic, who remains completely nonchalant during this discussion, tapping a foot on the wing of the plane as he puts his hands behind his head while Tails tries to process all that he’s saying. “You’re… amnesiac?”

“Just a little. But it’s no big deal.”

“That’s so sad!” Tails shouts, and Sonic startles. Tails abandons his tool box and flings himself at Sonic, who catches him, but appears very confused by this train of events. “So you might have a family out there! Or friends! And you don’t remember and you think you were all alone! That’s very sad!”

“It’s not so bad. I found you, after all.” Sonic hesitantly pats Tails’s head. “Besides, no one’s come to claim me as their long lost son or whatever. So i guess I’m not missing out on much.”

Tears well up in Tails’s eyes and he buries himself even deeper into Sonic’s fur. Sonic pauses, and seems to be trying to figure out what he said wrong. “That’s even worse! No one’s looking for you! That’s sad!”

For a moment, they simply remain in place, Tails buried in Sonic, while Sonic hesitantly holds him back. “Eh, I guess. It’s really no big deal. We’ve got our own future to build, you know.” Sonic pulls Tails back so he can really look at him. “So let’s make sure Robuttnik doesn’t stop us, okay, kiddo?”

No, no, no.

Tails buries his head in his heads, fingers clawing through his fur. No, no, it’s all just a little coincidence. There’s no dots to connect here, no picture to see, no lines to be drawn. There’s nothing here other than correlation without causation.

Except Tails is a scientist, and Tails has always looked for patterns and clues and knows damn well there’s very little such thing as a coincidence in the world. Connections are made to be drawn, are the very natural order of things, no matter how mundane or how impossible, and it is always important to prove that something is wrong, just as is to prove it correct, and Tails can not find a compelling argument against the theory bubbling in his head.

Near identical looking to the Project Shadow? From the same island the capsule crashed on? Insane healing abilities? Insane speed? Insane connection to the chaos emeradlds? Insane ability to transform into a super state just like the Bolizard and Shadow? Insane ability to Chaos control just like Shadow and the Biolizard? Inexplicable bout of amnesia, like what Shadow had after falling from space?

It all comes crashing down like a house of cards knocked over by the wind.

There’s no way to one hundred percent disprove this theory, but there’s no way to one hundred percent prove it, either. Or is there? Perhaps Gerald’s journal hold all the answers, perhaps Tails may even find images of his own brother inside a journal that’s been hidden from the public eye for over fifty years. Perhaps showing the journal to Sonic might jog his memories, like how Shadow’s memories have begun to return.

Perhaps Tails could, for once and for all, figure out if Sonic was a part of Project Shadow.

The cartridge is right there, dropped on the ground after the realization. Tails stares at it for a very long time, frozen in place, the cartridge gleaming under his fluorescent lighting. It called to him, it mocked him, it asked him to put it back in the port and figure out the truth.

… but then what?

It’s highly unlikely he’ll gain one hundred percent certainly from the journal, and Tails knows there’s thousands of excuses he could make to ignore any actual, scientific proof that Sonic was who he thinks he is (Gerald was spiraling into insanity, Gerald was biased, Sonic could perhaps be Eggman’s attempt at recreating the project, etc).

But even if he did? Even if Tails was one hundred percent certain of Sonic’s true origins? What then?

Is he simply going to shove the journal in Sonic’s face and reveal the truth ot him? A truth Sonic hasn’t cared about since he was ten years olf and washed up on the shores of Christmas island with not even a name to call his own? A truth that in the grand scheme of things means absolutely nothing to him, when he’s already forged a new identity for himself, when he’s already figured out exactly who he needs to be? A truth that means nothing, when Sonic can’t even remember the horrors of the ARK, when he can’t even remember Gerald and Maria, when he can’t even remember the tragedy that caused such a drastic chain of reaction, that caused so many dominos to topple? Would it even matter to him, in the end? Especially when it was all nothing more than speculation?

But it would mean everything to Shadow, who had just begun to get himself back on his feet, who had been struggling through identity crisis after crisis, who had just started to become comfortable with the idea of being Shadow the Hedgehog, ultimate lifeform, once again? Is it far, to show him a journal that claims he’s nothing but a farce, nothing but a tool, a weapon of total revenge with no redeeming qualities? Is it fair to once again throw Shadow aloft, to pull the rug from under him, to dismantle his identity right before his eyes? Is it fair to take away what Shadow had so painstakingly fought for and earned ater he fell from the ARK? Is it fair to tell Shadow that the promise he made to Maria wasn’t even real? Is it fair to tell him that the person who he cherished above all else, that he watched die in a horrific tragedy, that guided him into becomeing the best he could be until she could no longer be there for him, had never even met him?

Is it fair, to flip someone’s entire world view on something little more than speculation?

Even if it was true, even if it was one hundred percent undeniably true, what is Tails supposed to do? Tell the entire world the extent of Gerald’s insanity? Ruin Shadow’s life again? Offer Sonic a peek into a world he doesn’t care about?

Tails picks up the cartridge, and holds it up to the light for just a moment. He watches, as the rays bounce off of the ancient storage, barely able to parse the plastic in his palms.

He sets it back on the desk, turns on his heels, and walks over to where his phone is lying on the table a few feet away. He picks it up, dials a number, and quietly places it against his ears, listening as the phone rings once, twice, thrice.

“Heya, boy-wonder,” Rouge’s silky tone slithers out of the receiver. “Did you manage to crack the codes?”

“It’s been completely decrypted.”

“Attaboy! I knew you could do it! I owe you one, honey.” She pauses, then asks, slyly, “Did you end up reading any of it?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I knew you’d make the right choice, kid.”