A.N: Here we go. This follows after Lost and Found and comes an indeterminate time before Three There Are. Due to the peculiarities of Sonic Battle, the dialogue is going to vary a bit more than I usually prefer, but since many of the characters are caricatures of themselves and there are internal contradictions (If Eggman was so determined to get all the Chaos Emeralds, why did he dump the Gizoid at the beach with one inside? And if it already had one, why was it nonfunctional until Sonic found it? FYI, the first Chaos Emerald he gets in this story is from Tails, although it's not specified in the story.) Anyway, spoiler warnings for Sonic Battle, of course, a few hints to Sonic Chronicles: the Dark Brotherhood, and references from a lot of other Sonic games.

The Soul of a Weapon

A light flared high in the southern sky, scarlet blazing through orange to a brilliant white. It shifted slightly, growing in size as it slowly dropped down, like a white-hot poker being drawn down an inverted bowl. The increase in size was a bad sign; for it indicated how quickly the meteor was approaching the small town. But no one panicked, for the few people who saw the midmorning shooting star were already aware of its approach. Among them was a black hedgehog with red stripes on his quills and limbs, and this light was the reason for his visit . A priceless gem glowed with an inner, scarlet light in one hand as his crimson eyes steadily watched the light in the sky grow ever larger, ever lower. It was bright enough now that the humans with him had to shield their eyes, in spite of the sunglasses they wore, but his gaze never wavered. He raised the hand holding the gem, idly scratching an itch amid the tuft of longer white fur on his chest with his thumb. Suddenly his eyes narrowed, and his fingers tensed around the red crystal. As if in response it flared even brighter, and the light in the sky exploded. Shadow closed his eyes a few minutes later as the resultant gust of wind reached them, chasing after the thunderclap of detonation. Mentally, however, he was still using the gem's Chaos energy to trace all the fragments of the Black Comet section, making sure that they either flew high enough to burn up properly on the way back down, or fell harmlessly clear of human habitations and infrastructure.

Even as he traced the final pieces, he heard a cell phone go off, and one of the agents accompanying him answered quickly, then announced that another piece of debris had been reported. He returned with the humans to the helicopter GUN had provided and took great care as he climbed the (unfortunately human-sized) steps not to show just how tired he was. He strapped himself in and crossed his legs on the oversized seat as the aircraft lifted, then tipped his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.

Even with the aid of the Chaos Emerald, I'm not sure how much more of this I can do. It's not the blasting of the debris - it's not even holding the shield below it; it's the tracking of all the smithereens. Raw force I can pull from the Emerald, but the mental focus comes from me, and I'm running low on that. And that's with twice as many Emeralds as they think I have! In addition to the red one that had been presented to him by the GUN Commander at the start of this mission, he had his own, the green one, that he had managed to hang onto after releasing the seven gems from the Eclipse Cannon's core. But at least they don't think it's my fault, this time. He had been assured by not only the GUN Commander (who had been his avowed enemy prior to their 'moment of truth' on the ARK), but also by the President, a number of astronomers and other scientists, Rouge the bat, and Sonic the Hedgehog - as if he'd know anything about it! Shadow snorted mentally- that his initial calculations on where to place the Black Comet before destroying it had been correct. Between the location of the Comet at its destruction and the kinetic energy imparted by the Cannon's beam, few if any of the large fragments should have fallen to Earth. Those that were not propelled away from the planet's orbit might have been snared by the moon's gravity, but they was it. There was certainly no reason for him to expect that every single piece of the Comet would U-turn and head directly for the Earth.

The majority were small enough that they vaporized in the atmosphere anyway, but the material of which the Comet was composed proved highly resistant to burning up on re-entry, which meant the big bits could make it to the ground. So far, Shadow had destroyed seventeen of the bigger fragments, ranging from bus-sized to city block-sized. Several others had hit the ocean or uninhabited parts of the globe, causing major destruction where they hit land, or tidal waves in the sea. Sonic had put himself in the hospital briefly by trying to catch one with his bare hands, or some similarly idiotic stunt. GUN forces and the dokan military forces had turned out with various cannons and missiles to try and blow the pieces into smaller, less damaging sizes, but with mixed success. And no one else can do what I can. Sonic could go Super with all seven Emeralds, but even Super Sonic couldn't stop all of these at once, and four of the Emeralds are completely missing at the moment. So. It must be me, the Ultimate Life-form, with my innate Chaos abilities, a two-Chaos Emerald power boost, and the best mathematic and spatial geometry training flash-learning can provide, to stop as many of these as I can, whatever the personal cost. And even if it's not my fault, I'm still the one who caused this mess by blasting the Comet in the first place, which makes it my responsibility. Shadow sighed, feeling the shift in altitude and velocity as the helicopter began to descend. I can sleep when this is over; right now I have to do what I can to protect this planet, as I chose to do. He unstrapped as the door was opened, and stepped out to pulverize another portion of giant worm secretion, or whatever the Black Comet had been made of. Best guess anyone had was that since the Comet had been organic and the Black Arm's technology mostly 'alive' to varying degrees, the fragments themselves were imbued with the Comet's last orders - to land on the planet Earth; so therefore they had made this impossible trip back to target the planet. Thank goodness for small mercies - at least the toxic gas lakes burned up or dispersed as they were supposed to. Something niggled at his attention. He ignored it, focusing on the approaching boulder - Good lord, that's no boulder! That's a mountain!

Fortunately they were in a wilderness area this time, so no other buildings or people to worry about. The irregular chunk of 'rock' was easily the largest he'd dealt with yet, and he scrabbled for enough power to not only shield the area below the behemoth but his allies and the helicopter as well, and he needed still more to blast the cursed thing and track all the resulting bits. He dragged power from both Emeralds and felt a not-too-distant response. Another Chaos Emerald! Without conscious thought he grabbed power from it, as well. The meteorite exploded with a noise too loud to be heard, that would have smashed them all with the concussion if he hadn't held the shields, and he scrambled frantically to detonate the smaller but still huge secondary rocks. He'd nearly managed to get everything safely shrunken or returned to space when the third Emerald screamed inside his head, overloading his already stretched-thin defenses and plunging him into darkness with an image of shattering glass.