Chapter 13
Zay couldn't help but rejoice at being at the one place he loved being back at: home. It was still the lush snowy landscape that he remembered since the war started and came to an end, so there was nothing else to deal with now that Pirates, Redemption Force and Ice Warriors refuse to mess with one of the greatest armies to stand.
He was dashing down the mountain he loved known as Bunny Hill, the skiing hill that everyone loved and had the most opportunities for trick shots. Zay was sliding down on his red inflatable ring and steered left and right, avoiding obstacles that stood upon him. Shadow was just catching up to him after leaving everyone in his dust and smirked at Zay without paying attention. This caused him to slide on ice and failed to jump off a ramp and rolled around just at the finish line and stopped face first in the snow as Zay raced past him and won. "DCP hero one, a hedgehog zero." Zay counted the score.
Shadow pushed him from behind as a joke and went back to town to go to the Dance Club, where everyone was celebrating. Blackheart was watching while vigilant in the blend of branches covered in snow of spruce trees. He now found his chance to attack Zay. "I should probably turn into my Super form, try to see how fast I can go." Zay suggested to himself. That was when he got the Chaos Emeralds as they began spinning around.
That was when Blackheart appeared behind him and shot a force of energy that struck Zay. The emitting power took out so much of Zay's life in him that once it was over, he fell to his knees with his hand on his chest before falling to the ground in death. Blackheart cackled in amusement and success that he'd finally killed the one who always foiled his plans, the jackal who was a bothersome and the General of the Army of DCP. Shadow noticed Zay falling and zoomed over. "Zay, wake up!" He demanded in sorrow. His brother was now dead and all of a sudden, an orange trail of fire circled around in the sky.
Gaia was only a mass of darkness and he impacted the ground, where he was. Gaia floated like a worm mid air with its massive head of a jagged jaw, unopened. The same scaly blue fins ran down its back and had the same neon-blue claws. It had scales throughout its body like of a snake, and had the same four horns and white eyes on its forehead. It's tail was pointy at the end and there it stood upon Shadow. "What have you done?!" He demanded. That was when the Chaos Emeralds began circling around Gaia.
"All the Chaos Emeralds are here at last," it growled in victory. "What do you think you're doing with them?" Shadow demanded an answer from the spirit but it refused to answer and replied on how it planned to use them to merge with Iblis into Solaris at last. But Shadow kept it from happening. He performed a Homing Attack against Gaia, but the Chaos Emeralds suddenly disappeared. Did it just take in the power? But they appeared again after a split second, but something seemed off.
The colors from the gems were fading away and soon enough, they were black and out of power. Once their color changed like so, they fell to the ground until Gaia realized what it had done. It was too late to counteract any other power interfering with the Perfect Dark ritual. Legend has it that during this process, absolute focus must be placed on turning into Perfect Dark Gaia and nothing shall distract the ritual at any time. If this happens, it causes the Chaos Emeralds to react with negative energy and run out of power, to where the only way their power can be recreated is by going to the seven temples of the Gaia Colesseus.
With the negative energy forming on the gems, this meant a Super transformation was completely unavailable. If the user attempts to try it with negative energy anyway, it will harness Gaia's energy and turn them into a terrifying werewolf creature. Trust me on this, you don't wanna know the last time it happened. "Now that I'm free in this world, my search for Iblis begins." It cackled in amusement and warped out from existence away from Shadow. "What the-?" He asked himself, puzzled.
Shadow looked down at the Chaos Emeralds of negative energy and black. "I gotta warn the Resistance about this. I'm sorry Zay, I tried everything I could. But we'll get you back and kill Solaris for good," Shadow suggested himself and scrambled up the emeralds and quickly boosted as fast as he could to Resistance HQ. He ran past everyone who greeted him and kept running no matter what was in his path. Once he reached the headquarters, he rushed in and tripped at the door, dropping the Chaos Emeralds as they rolled across the ground upon everyone.
"Shadow?" TheMightyA asked in confusion. Shadow got up and grabbed the emeralds off the ground and got himself together. "Zay was just killed by Blackheart and Gaia replaced the energy of the Chaos Emeralds with negatives. We can't do a Super transformation otherwise we become the creations Gaia wants," Shadow continued and shocked everyone. Everyone was angry that they just got back from war and now they're being recalled immediately.
"Shadow," Vivala added. "I know you really wanna defeat Solaris, but we're not in the conditions to fight. We just got back from a full-scale war that was extremely lengthy and exhausted our troops. And that is a spirit we're being dragged in to fight. No regular tool is going to kill that monster." And that was all true. Gaia was difficult to kill alone, and the combined power of one in a Super transformation would be required to even fight it alone, with the partnership of the Gaia Colessieus, powered by Light Gaia.
As for Solaris, three people in a Super transformation would be needed to even hit its core so many times that it subsequently erases Gaia and Iblis from existence for good. But the first step to coming back against Gaia was to restore all power to the Chaos Emeralds. "Alright then, we have no other choice but to send Aloy Morningstar with you, Shadow." 32op suggested.
Aloy was looking up at the large-scale screen depicting a blue radar of the map, and heard what she was hired to do. The perils of scrambling to restore power to the Chaos Emeralds was underway. "Shadow and Aloy, you will be codenamed as Team Chaos. Your mission: restore the Chaos Emeralds to resurrect Zay from the dead. Dismissed." Mustapha said to Shadow and Aloy before saluting them as they left. Outside of the headquarters, Team Chaos were going aboard a reserved private shuttle, a luxury aerial ship stolen from the Freezie Fleet. "So first off, there's seven Gaia Colessieus Temples," Aloy broke the silence along with the roaring engine, as they floated up and drove up in the sky out of Summit.
"But those temples are far into other terrains! Desert, tundra, tropical; who knows what we'll find!" Shadow said, setting the autopilot GPS to the location of The Epicenter, a tundra ruin of a factory where the first Gaia Colessieus temple was located. "New destination route set to: The Epicenter." The PA intercom quietly said. Shadow stepped over to the red lounging couch and looked out the window where the clouds were almost blocking the view.
The daytime was still around the afternoon and soon enough, the panic of Zay's death was just about taking over. But he was killed in the middle of nowhere near the forest, so nobody would realize what happened. And the Resistance would plunge the data away from the public. "How did Blackheart come back to life?" Shadow asked. "The last thing we wanted was he came back to finally kill Zay - especially after last time." Aloy didn't like answering the kind of question of why anybody would want to kill the General of the Army of the Resistance. But the way Blackheart came back to life was even a mystery.
"The way I heard, Dark Warriors were attempting to flank the Redemption Force in order to kill their commander. Their research team apparently found Blackheart and secretly took him back while we were fighting that giant spider mech. And they took him to their research lab at their own headquarters somewhere in Ice Box to operate a resurrection. The only reason they brought him was the Phantom Ruby teleported to another territory and with that power they realized killing Zay would release Gaia.
Now that he's dead, they're scrambling hard at work to find Iblis and bring the two spirits to form Solaris." The entire story shocked Shadow, and didn't realize that the two were split apart when they were too young to remember one another. "So, how would we defeat Solaris?" Shadow asked in curiosity. He wanted as many answers as he could. "I'm a retired scout who can do so much, and I don't know, Shadow. This is a life we're trying to reclaim. The Chaos Emeralds are what we need to bring Zay back to life." Aloy replied. And that was the end of that conversation.
A few moments of silence went by when a red light blared on the control panel of the shuttle. "Warning: enemy target detected." Shadow looked at the top of the sight to see an air fleet from Dark Warriors incoming directly towards them. That was when Shadow climbed outside to the top of the shuttle as it boosted and roared with power, ordering Aloy to take control as he fought off the enemy. He stood upon the shuttle as it flew around, dodging the Wispon shots that they launched all around, attempting to hit the thrusters.
"You're not getting to the Emeralds!" Shadow said, curling up to a ball and and started spinning in place and zoomed directly into one of the air fleet ships, causing it to burst in flames and smoke as the nose of the plane went directly down. Shadow attempted to jump onto the largest one and with a close grab, ended up slipping off. He fell through the sky when Aloy swooped in so Shadow could land on the top of the shuttle but the thrusters were shot. It started going down but Aloy managed to keep control as they were underneath the clouds to see they had reached their destination;
The Epicenter was a ruined watchtower that was bent and made of metal, like a cell phone tower, and was completely frozen from collapsing. The shuttle was close to ground and Dark Warriors flew away. It landed with a rough finish, dragging across the snow and slipped along the ice. Shadow looked around the environment to see neatly stacked supply bins of black covered in snow and propane tanks of red and a triangular caution sign. Aloy stepped out and and walked in a random pattern, dizzied from the ride. She broke out of this and saw where they were. "Now arriving a-at The E-epic-cent-ter-r." The PA intercom said, damaged from the impact of the landing. "Team Chaos, have you found any of the temples of the Gaia Colessieus?" The communicator called to Shadow. "Just the first temple before Dark Warriors tried flanking us," he said while listening to TheMightyA interrupt Rah calling on the intercom.
"That's it? Even I would've taken them out all at once!" The communicator turned off and Aloy told Shadow to follow her inside to the temple. "Come on, Shadow. We can fix the shuttle later." Aloy said as they stepped inside to the Gaia Colessieus Temple. It was leaking with melted snow that flowed through the creaks of the stone interior of the temple despite the exterior being of metal.
The sound and ambience echoed throughout the space. Suddenly, torches of wood mounted on the walls lit up on their own somehow and gave light to the dark and quiet temple that was left undisturbed. On the walls were strange drawings of stick hedgehog figures and a starfish. The drawings were rather poorly made, but left Shadow in curiosity. It was almost similar to...Black Doom's saga. Shadow suddenly had flashbacks racing throughout his mind and realized that Gaia must've been around and people worshipped the spirit.
They even knew about Black Doom and began worshipping him instead of Gaia, causing it to enter a state of emotional response, and killed all the members of the culture. "Shadow?" Aloy interrupted Shadow's thoughts. He nodded in reply quietly and they kept walking through the ruins of the temple. Debris from the roof where the sunlight was just peeking through the cracks. Right at the end of the long hallway of the temple stood a small pillar with a hole at the top, just big enough for one of the Chaos Emeralds to place.
"This is it for the first Emerald." Aloy said, placing one of the first emeralds on there. Soon enough, the gem floated up and started spinning mid-air as the sun's natural light shot directly around the emerald, almost blinding Shadow and Aloy. That was when the gem was back in its green color. The emerald was now filled with the correct energy and didn't need to worry about negatives. "That's one down, six more to go." Shadow said. Just as they turned around, they were met with a herd of Dark Warriors who followed the Chaos Duo throughout the temple. Right in front of the crowd floated Blackheart.
"You'd think it'd be so easy?" He teased before attempting to form an energy surge to attack. "Since our last battle, the Phantom Ruby was not yet charged enough to completely take you down, giving you the easy victory. Now, I have ultimate power thanks to this army." Shadow spin-dash underneath Blackheart and through the horde of enemies, breaking their defense. The Dark Warriors laid against the walls in pain from Shadow's attack.
"But if Dark Warriors want DCP dead and Epic was friends with them..." Blackheart thought to himself and slowly changed his attitude. And Shadow remembered something he could do: as long as one Chaos Emerald is available with positives, Shadow can perform a Chaos Blast. "You keep running, I'll hold them off!" He said to Aloy, as the Dark Warriors got up and picked up their weapons of swords and Springfield Carbines and began firing.
They missed most of their shots as Shadow levitated mid air with a red aura, and released an energy burst that knocked out everyone. One of them, the commander rubbed their head as Shadow dropped in front of him, clenching his shaking fists in anger. His eyes were red with embers engulfing his pupils. "Pathetic. Don't ever show yourself around me ever again, unless you wanna die again like Blackheart." He whispered, the Dark Warrior dropping and Blackheart immediately retreating.
"Iblis and Gaia will soon merge and you are to know of their origin soon, Shadow. Radkon wanted a word but now he's gone, so the chances are small, like the ants the Resistance were. Anyway, I'll be on my way." Blackheart rushed the words he spoke as if he was in a hurry to get to places. "But why aren't you attacking?" Aloy tried shouting to Blackheart, but he was far gone and away.
While Blackheart was somehow retreating, Pirates went to Resistance HQ not for a fight, but for a deal that the leaders would never forget. And soon, a new dawn alliance would be made despite the overwhelming odds without Zay.
The resistance were hard at work to see if there were any alternative ways other than restoring the Chaos Emeralds to revive Zay from the dead. That was when a knock came from the door. When it opened, everyone scurried in a panic and hid where there stood Blackheart and Epic101 walked in. "Believe us, we're not asking for a fight!" Blackheart said, in an unbelievable move: he removed his mask and the slightly british voice he hid for so long was out in the real world instead of behind a voice synthesizer. This was his time.