Tails' POV:
Tails flew after Eclipse, telling himself determinedly that there was no reason to be nervous. Eclipse was intimidatingly powerful, sure, but the alien wasn't violent or menacing like Tails had been worried about. Nothing would happen--nothing bad, at least; he knew that in his heart.
But, the young fox couldn't deny that the idea of speaking alone to the Black Arm away from the group still made his fur stand on end.
It's mean to judge people based on what they are, Tails thought determinedly, thinking of how Shadow had intimidated him back in the day, too. Eclipse is an agent of G.U.N. now, and, besides, he's probably just as nervous to be around all of us as we are him. He's in a completely new environment, and it's not like Knuckles hasn't been hostile to him all day. Besides, he's way younger than me, anyway.
Tails wondered for a moment if he could be considered Eclipse's senior; he certainly hadn't ever felt like Shadow's senior, even though he was technically quite a bit older than the two.
Shadow said to ask about the Black Arms' technology, but I'm not sure that I know enough about it to ask any good questions. I'm not even sure if it was mechanically based, he thought to himself. Try as he might, he couldn't remember ever learning anything about the Black Arms' society, besides knowing they were world consumers--though, hadn't he seen some of the Black Arm soldiers carrying blasters during the invasion? Maybe I should ask Eclipse about it... If I can figure out a way to ask without offending him.
With his quick flight, Tails caught up to Eclipse easily, the alien merely walking over the leaves now, having abandoned the stressed, hurried strides he'd had earlier. The young fox took a moment to gather his courage, then descended, dropping to the ground next to the alien.
"Um, Eclipse?" He asked, and the golden, fiery eyes turned toward him, singularly unnerving up close but also really, really cool--Tails couldn't help but wonder how Eclipse's Chaos Energy caused such an interesting phenomenon as his constantly changing irides. "Are you okay?"
It was a bit of a clunky question, not knowing the alien very well, but Tails couldn't in good conscience ignore the fact Eclipse had been quite upset recently. He only hoped that Eclipse didn't take the inquiry as an insult.
"Yeah, I'm alright," Eclipse answered, cocking his head ever so slightly as he looked curiously at the Mobian who'd just dropped out of the sky; Tails felt his namesakes puff up behind him at the motion, but Eclipse didn't seem to be threatening him. The young fox was pretty sure that motions like that were just how Eclipse moved, every action unsettling with its alien grace.
Eclipse, Tails had concluded, was very much a predator in nature, though not necessarily an evil one.
"That's good," the young fox managed, watching as Eclipse's tail swiveled, balancing him as the alien strode silently on the balls of his feet over the grass. The alien had an odd, stalking gait, and Tails wasn't sure he'd yet seen Eclipse put his heels on the ground when he wasn't standing still. It was fascinating, watching him move; Tails could only imagine how much G.U.N. had learned from observing the alien for months. "Shadow said I was too young to stay and listen," he added, not wanting Eclipse to think he'd singled him out on his own.
"He's probably right," Eclipse replied, without a hint of the emotions he'd had earlier on the subject. "It's not a very pleasant story."
"It didn't sound like it," Tails agreed, walking quietly next to Eclipse for a few seconds. The alien was swiveling his head almost constantly, looking up at the backlit leaves or down at the small buttercups and clovers lining the path, the light from his eyes more noticeable in the darker patches of shade, and Tails wondered if he'd ever been in a similar environment to the Castle woods. "Do you mind if I ask you a question?" Tails queried cautiously, not knowing if the alien was in the mood to talk, but Eclipse merely returned his attention to the fox with an amused expression.
"As long as it's a good question," Eclipse responded, the dagger-sharp points of his teeth visible as he grinned slightly.
"Um, okay," Tails replied, suddenly more nervous as he wondered what qualified as a 'good' question. "I was wondering, was the Black Arms' technology more mechanically or biologically based?"
"Oh, well," the alien said, hesitating for a moment, and Tails internally regretted using the past tense for that question. "Only some of it was mechanical, particularly our ranged weapons and our ships, and we borrowed a lot of those concepts from other races. A lot of our original technology was biologically based, such as the trees that grew Black Swords for the Assassins and the Orlolunrek."
"The what?" Tails inquired, becoming curious at the odd word, and Eclipse gave him a smile that Tails couldn't help interpreting as anything but genuinely kind.
"Shadow translated it once. It was..." Eclipse put a two-fingered hand to his chin, thinking, then snapped his large fingers with a nod, producing an oddly deep sound. "'Conduit Gel,' as he put it. It's a fungus that we bred to transport only those with Black Arm blood, to prevent it from being used by our enemies. Literally speaking, it means 'gel that transports.'"
"Do the Black Arms have a language?" Tails questioned, mind whirring--that would certainly explain Eclipse's unique accent.
"Yeah, we did," the alien winced, but he didn't seem upset as he looked up at the trees shading their walk. "My father didn't use it much after Black Doom learned English from Professor Gerald, as it's not nearly as comprehensive, but I loved practicing it when I was younger. I think it has a beauty that English can't capture."
"How did he learn English so fast?" Tails asked, thinking of how long it took non-native speakers to learn and wondering for the first time how Black Doom had gotten fluent in the short window the Black Comet was close to Mobius.
"Memory transfers, based on the hivemind. That's how Shadow learned language before he was awoken," Eclipse replied, smiling at the young fox's genuine interest. "I learned English right after I was created, from my father's memories. Actually--well, this is kind of embarrassing, but," he paused, grinning sheepishly and rubbing a slate gray hand behind his head; Tails found that he felt much more comfortable with the alien than he had a minute ago, seeing how genuine Eclipse's movements were. The alien's body language opened up a lot once he started enjoying himself, replacing the predatory motions with more traditionally Mobian ones. "I thought English was such a crude language, something that didn't suit our voices. So, I took our own language, Raennep, and added some of the sounds to English. That's where my accent comes from--my father spoke with hardly any dialect."
"Wow, really?" Tails couldn't help feeling amazed at the idea. Inventing an accent! He'd never heard of something like that, save for--didn't British accents develop as a status symbol? "That's so cool! Can you speak some of it for me? Some of Raennep?" He stumbled on the 'hghh' sound that accompanied the 'ae,' never having heard a sound quite like it before.
"Sure," Eclipse said happily, and Tails waited eagerly while the alien thought for a moment. "Liidra, naoraii aguur ortuinoeskiraeiok."
Tails blinked, letting the alien sounds wash over him--Eclipse's voice distorted a lot more on some of the syllables, but how? What caused that unmistakably alien burr in his voice, that unsettling feeling that several voices were speaking at once? Was it the Black Arms biology, some unique part to his vocal cords?--and Eclipse grinned.
"Literally translated, that means 'Young one, you have a mind that resembles a star.' In English, I would translate it as 'You're a really bright kid.'"
"Woah," Tails said in awe, and he returned Eclipse's grin, not missing that the alien had complimented him. "That's awesome! How--How do you make that distortion sound? I've never heard anything like it."
"You mean, why does my voice sound so weird?" The alien responded with a sense of amusement, and Tails shrugged, not denying that the sound was very odd. "That is a relic of our ancestral race, which was similarly warring to us, though nowhere near as powerful, as the Chaos Emeralds didn't exist then. Much as humans have 'false folds,' a secondary pair of flaps similar to vocal folds that make a distorted sound to scare away rivals and predators, that race developed multiple sets of vocal folds, which could be used in battle to produce intimidating sounds. I have several sets of what Mobians would consider 'vocal cords,' and I can choose to use more than one at once to produce different sounds. Layering them all produces a lot of distortion, which, as you seem to have noticed, gives Raennep its unique inflections."
"Do you usually speak with just one?" Tails asked, completely fascinated by the idea.
"I usually speak with two, as that's my natural 'speaking voice,' if you will. I can speak with anywhere from one to four to various degrees. To demonstrate--" Eclipse paused, seeming to focus on something for a moment. "This is my voice with one vocal cord."
Tails jumped at the sound; the voice didn't sound anything like Eclipse at all. The words were the same tenor, uniquely accented ones he'd come to expect, but the voice was--
Well, almost unsettlingly smooth, smoother than any Mobian voice. It almost sounded like Eclipse was singing, in an eerie, unnatural way; Tails shivered, quite sure he didn't like Eclipse speaking with only one vocal fold.
"Then I can add my second fold," Eclipse continued, the smoothness disappearing as the normal distortion crept back into his voice. "Then I add three--"
Tails fur shot on end, a deeper, more menacing voice speaking underneath Eclipse's usual tenor, and the alien smiled apologetically.
"And then four," he finished, the last snarling, raspy voice producing the same incredibly distorted sound Tails had previously only heard on a few syllables of Raennep. Tails could tell he was as fluffy as could be, ever strand of fur stiff in instinctual fear, and he decided that Eclipse was right--the distorted vocals would be a very effective way of scaring the alien's enemies.
"So, essentially, I'm just speaking with multiple voices at once," Eclipse explained, and Tails nodded numbly, hoping that he would never hear the alien do that again. "I can combine them in different orders to produce different sounds, as well."
"On an intellectual level, that's really cool. On a personal level, that's really terrifying," Tails said, sure Eclipse could already tell he was scared even if he didn't admit it.
"That's the point," Eclipse laughed in his odd guffaw--for the first time, Tails had an idea how it worked, almost able to hear the alien's voice cycling through his different vocal cords as he chuckled.
"Can you tell me more about Raennep?" The young fox asked, now more curious as to how the language actually worked.
"Well, Shadow says it's a bit like German, the way root words are combined to form names and phrases," Eclipse responded, clearly as enthusiastic to tell Tails about his language as Tails was to hear about it. "He doesn't really speak it, even though he can understand it pretty well. Some of the sounds are too hard for him to replicate."
"I can imagine why. Doesn't he have just one vocal fold?" Tails questioned, now wondering if Eclipse would be willing to help him input Raennep into his alien language translator--though whether it was worth the effort if only one person could speak it, he wasn't entirely sure. For preservation purposes, at least, he knew it was--and the alien nodded in answer. "Do you know any other languages?"
"I know 'Au,' the general trade language of the galaxy. It's based on simple syllables that have different lengths and inflections to convey meaning, to make it as easy to speak as possible, and there's also a corresponding series of clicks for species without vocal cords. There's no grammar to speak of, even," Eclipse said, closing his eyes and squinting as a patch of sunlight glinted through the leaves above, and the young fox's eyes widened as he realized--he had the most well-versed galactic expert on the planet next to him. He could ask Eclipse anything.
It was daunting.
He had so much he wanted to ask that it was hard to pick a question. He struggled for a moment to think of what he wanted to know most of all, but he knew so little about the universe that it was hard to even know where to start.
"Eclipse, can you tell me more about the Black Arms?" He asked at last, figuring he might as well start where Eclipse was most knowledgeable. "Like, how did you create so many different soldiers?"
"Now, that's a question!" Eclipse exclaimed, his tail curling and waving as his golden eyes glowed suddenly brighter, looking like miniature suns in the shade. "How about, how we're one species despite having so many variants?"
"Yeah! I've always wondered about that!" Tails replied with a sudden energy, remembering how the designation of the Black Arms as a singular species had confused him back during the first invasion. "Were all the variants just subspecies? Or--?"
"See, that's the cool part," the alien responded with a smile, raising a finger. "Are you familiar with the concept of epigenetics?"
"I don't think so," the young fox answered, so excited that he was hovering off the ground for a lack of being able to stand still. "Can you explain it to me?"
"Can you fly as high as I can climb?" Eclipse replied, a twinkle in his bright eyes, and Tails hovered in confusion for a moment before realizing that the alien wasn't just speaking in riddles--Eclipse was bouncing on his toes, clearly just as energetic as he was.
"Of course," Tails said, and Eclipse grinned, his shark-like fangs revealing themselves with the expression.
"Then, catch up, and I'll tell you!"
With that, Eclipse leapt away, pushing off the ground with such power and speed that Tails almost thought he would break the sound barrier. But, the alien simply raced across the grounds, making a beeline for the tallest tree in sight, a massive oak near the castle. Tails followed at full speed, laughing as he thought of all the times he'd trailed behind Sonic like this and thinking that, for all their differences, the alien reminded him surprisingly of the blue hero. Both were intimidating from a distance, so powerful, awesome, and charismatic, but even a few minutes alone with either had Tails forgetting that he'd ever been intimidated in the first place.
Tails watched in amazement as Eclipse ran straight up the tree, leaping up to perch on a medium branch at the top and grinning as the young fox flew up to join him.
"Sorry, I wanted to see more of the view," the alien said, shrugging sheepishly, and Tails returned his smile as they both studied the lush horizon.
"That's alright. Sonic does things like this all the time," Tails replied, sitting next to the alien and lightly kicking his heels against the branch. "He can never sit still for long."
"I understand why. Being outside is such a novelty," Eclipse sighed happily, hooking his calf crests into the bark and hanging backward over the branch; Tails watched in surprise, having thought the alien would fall. What was it like having all those spikes? Did Eclipse often use them like this? If he hooked them together, he could hang from almost anything with no effort at all--was that their purpose, or were they specifically weapons? Tails decided he would ask as soon as Eclipse explained the Black Arms' creations.
"Epigenetics," Eclipse began, swinging himself back into a sitting position with nothing but his undoubtedly immense core strength, "is a field that studies how genes are turned off and on by various biological mechanisms. Essentially, the same organism can express different genes without its genes actually changing, such as when hair turns gray from old age or how skin and muscle cells are very different despite working from the same DNA. Internal and external factors can change gene expression, and my species exploited that to create many types of soldiers."
"But, how?" Tails asked, puzzled by the explanation--there was a long leap between skin and muscle cells and completely different living beings.
"We used a large variety of different environmental conditions while creations were developing. All types of Black Arms started as eggs and incubated for several months, and a series of environmental changes would cause different phenotypes, or physical expressions of genes, to appear. Over the millenia, the hiveminds perfected how to recreate the best combinations of traits, and those combinations grew into the distinct varieties of Black Arms that you're familiar with," Eclipse said animatedly, his articulating gestures not seeming to affect his balance in the slightest.
"Essentially, think of designing a person: You have a long list of traits, which you can achieve with various environmental changes. You can change how pronounced these traits are, as well. To design a new subspecies, you just check different things on the list. I was particularly difficult to create, seeing as I was supposed to be intelligent and smaller than the average Black Arm, so I took about half a year to plan, then about a month to create."
"That's so fast," Tails replied in amazement, knowing it had taken over a decade for Project: Shadow to reach the Ultimate Lifeform himself. "Did anything go wrong?"
"No, though some things were unexpected. For instance, my facial skin is white, which is supremely unusual among the Black Arms--only genetically defected creations have ever been observed with it before. But, since I'm the first of my species with a muzzle, my father never had an opportunity to experiment and find a way to make my skin darker. In addition, some of the environmental changes he used to, say, make me smaller and more compact, led to minor changes like my skin being a lighter gray than my brothers. Changes like the locations and shapes of my crests, though, were purposeful; he exposed specific parts of my body to a salve that causes a Black Arm to grow mineral crests as an adult, with longer exposure on the parts he wanted to form spikes. There's a very particular technique to safely opening and resealing an egg to do so--it took a long time to perfect the process to the point the creation would always survive."
"That's incredible," Tails responded, genuinely meaning it, and Eclipse grinned proudly.
"It was a far sight easier than creating Shadow, for sure. The various species were perfected over millennia, often through hundreds of years of experimentation, but, once you have a basic grasp of what changes occur from what, you can design specialized soldiers quite quickly. Not," the alien added, "that it's possible to do so anymore. Theoretically possible, yes; however, it would probably take decades to find Mobian materials that could substitute the ones lost when the Black Comets were destroyed, and the process would have to rely heavily on Mobian technology. Unfortunately, those ages of knowledge have become rather redundant."
Eclipse sounded unmistakably sad, and, despite his fear of the Black Arms in general, Tails couldn't help a small twinge of sympathy for the loss of all that knowledge and craftsmanship.
"It's still very interesting," the young fox said, and Eclipse sighed, seeming a bit deflated. For a moment, Tails wondered if he should leave the alien be, but, almost as soon as Eclipse had started sulking, he'd stopped, stretching upward without the melancholy he'd had only a moment ago. Unsure about the change in Eclipse's demeanor, Tails was hesitant to ask his next question, but Eclipse didn't seem to be opposed to conversation--indeed, compared to a moment ago, he seemed quite cheerful.
"Um, so, what's the purpose of your crests?" Tails asked, watching Eclipse slightly warily; the alien's sudden mood changes weren't like anything he'd seen from a Mobian, and he wondered if they were merely part of Eclipse's personality or actually rooted in his biology.
"Mostly to be armor," Eclipse answered, tapping a claw on one of his forearm crests. "They can be weapons or tools, as well, depending on the situation. My tail, particularly, is quite useful as a sort of 'pocket knife,' I've found."
"It's that sharp?" Tails asked, surprised, and Eclipse swung his tail upward to demonstrate, grasping his tail right beneath the triangular tip.
"Quite. I could dull it if I chose, but then I would have to sharpen it again, and that would be rather inconvenient," the alien replied, the scales on his tail rasping slightly as he showed Tails the edge. In the sunlight, Tails was fascinated that the flat of the blade seemed to sparkle slightly, much like a rock with quartz deposits. "It's actually very sharp right now; it got dull after several weeks of training exercises, so I took the time to sharpen it the other night."
"How do you sharpen it?" Tails inquired, studying the wedge of solid crest curiously.
"Like this."
Eclipse, still grasping the blade in his left hand, brought his right forearm crest up, turning his arm over so that its spikes were facing downward. Then, he brought the side of the blade down in a slow, methodical motion, producing a steely, scraping sound. Tails watched as he repeated the motion on both sides, and Eclipse brought his hand up to the blade once he'd finished, testing the edge with the pad of his finger.
To Tails' shock, the sharpened edge of the alien's tail sliced through his toughened skin easily, and Eclipse flicked a small tendril of green blood away with a casual motion, seemingly unbothered by the minor injury as he brushed a fine coating of red dust off of the blade.
"My crests are harder than most materials, including steel, but regular use dulls them over time. They grow constantly, and my spikes usually self-sharpen by shedding outer layers on a regular basis, but my tail never gets quite sharp enough without extra care," Eclipse continued, as if he hadn't just sliced his finger open to illustrate a point. Tails could see, though, that the cut had already ceased bleeding, so maybe it really was just a momentary inconvenience to the alien. "They're also bulletproof, which is good news to me, as I'm generally not."
"Have you ever broken one?" Tails asked, remembering what the alien had said earlier about being shot and shuddering, not wanting to think about how much that would hurt.
"Not as of yet, but it's possible. If I went a while without eating Red Fruit, they might weaken enough that they could shatter," Eclipse answered, and Tails shivered again, wondering how the thought didn't seem to bother the alien. "If I ever ran out of nutrients to grow them, they would be replaced by gray skin, like the rest of my body. If one shattered, though, I'm not quite sure whether there would be a layer of skin underneath or not. It's possible that breaking one would reveal my muscles directly."
"That's--um--" Tails tried to think of a polite way to say 'absolutely horrifying and disgusting,' then decided it was better to drop the matter. "What are the Black Arms classified as?"
"I don't think we have an official classification, but I believe we would be similar to parasitoids," Eclipse responded, tapping the flat of his newly sharpened tail against his calf crest.
"Parasitoids?" Tails questioned, confused--he'd been thinking more along the lines of lizards.
"Well, technically, parasitoids grow by feeding directly on a particular host, but the idea is similar. Essentially, parasitoids are parasites that kill the host. In our case, you could consider various worlds as the hosts," Eclipse explained, and Tails wondered if he was imagining the slight look of discomfort on the alien's face. "Particularly in the case that parasitoids often kill their hosts slowly, sometimes causing them paralysis, my species was known for incapacitating and consuming individual creatures in order to grow stronger."
Tails did his best to ignore the very sudden, nearly-uncontrollable urge to fly away from Eclipse as fast as possible, instead remaining where he sat next to the alien. Neither of them spoke, both unwilling to continue after that sentence, and Tails wondered if they'd spend the whole rest of the day in awkward silence.
"Oh, Shadow's saying it's time to go back," Eclipse said suddenly, and Tails flinched as the alien stood up quickly, his heart still racing from the reminder that Eclipse hadn't been too far off from personally consuming Mobians. "So, um, let's go do that."
Tails hadn't thought Eclipse was capable of looking as uncomfortable as the alien did right now, and he reminded himself that Eclipse had changed. If Eclipse was half as uncomfortable with the subject as he seemed, then he was probably still struggling to reconcile it with everything he knew about Mobians now--and Tails didn't think it was easy for the alien to think about potentially having devoured his current friends had he not reformed.
The young fox couldn't even imagine how that knowledge felt, and he was in no hurry to try.
"Um, sure," Tails replied, feeling a wave of relief as Eclipse jumped down to the ground, away from him. Tails followed slowly, trying to think of happier, friendlier thoughts, and he noticed that Eclipse shied away from him slightly as the young fox landed--apparently, Tails wasn't the only one having trouble forgetting what had just been discussed.
"So..." Tails cast around for another subject, anything that could break the awkwardness, and he remembered what Rouge had mentioned right before Eclipse and Commander Tower had returned to the group. "You've seen My Hero Academia?"
...
Sonic's POV:
"Let me get this straight," Sonic interrupted, feeling bad for cutting Shadow off but still struggling with disbelief at the black hedgehog's explanation. "We're not talking, like, robot imitations of the Black Arms, here, right? We're talking real, flesh and blood creations?" Shadow nodded solemnly, and Sonic stood, stunned, for a long moment, his expression mirrored on the faces of the other Freedom Fighters. "And they were all too far gone to save?"
Shadow nodded again in confirmation, and Sonic stared at his rival, his mind numb as he tried to wrap his head around the sheer cruelty of the situation.
"And he just had to deal with that knowledge? For the entire rest of the mission?"
"It was pretty much over by then, but, otherwise, yes," Shadow answered simply, which Sonic supposed was fair. There wasn't much he could say for that, either, besides...
"Dear Chaos, that poor kid," the blue hedgehog sighed, running a hand through his quills. He hated hearing about people suffering after the fact, when he'd lost his chance to help them. He wouldn't have even known if Shadow hadn't told him--Eclipse hid his grief remarkably well, to the point that Sonic hadn't picked up any sign of the alien's recent loss, save his emotional outburst at Knuckles. "I can't even imagine. No wonder he got so upset. How is he taking it, now that...?" The blue hedgehog gestured with his hands, not wanting to speak about the tragedy they were all thinking. Even knowing the creations were Black Arms soldiers, Sonic couldn't help thinking of Shadow and Eclipse and how devastated he would have been had anything happened to either of them--if he hadn't ever gotten a chance to meet them.
"Surprisingly well, actually," Shadow answered, shifting his weight and shrugging slightly. "Things have been keeping busy, which has helped. There's been a few points where I think it's hit him hard--after getting the Dark Arms back, for example--but he's been generally cheerful. He's been having nightmares recently, which he'd been getting over, but I'm pretty sure that's just from the stress of his public reveal."
"Didn't he find the Dark Arms right before our call? I didn't notice him seeming overly upset," Amy said in surprise, and Sonic nodded, agreeing with her point.
"He handled the call fine, but I'm sure you noticed him getting a bit antsy toward the end. Later that day, it all came crashing down on him, and he had a breakdown," Shadow replied, and Sonic felt a strong twinge of sympathy for the young alien.
"I mean, does he mind? You telling us that, I mean?" Amy questioned, apparently worried over Eclipse's privacy, and Shadow turned to give her his full attention.
"He'd rather I tell you so that you know he's not so different from a Mobian. He doesn't like to talk about this stuff, generally, but it doesn't embarrass him. Trauma is just..." Shadow trailed off, as if searching for the right words. "Its just something he's learned to deal with."
"Well, he deals with it pretty well, at least on the surface. I would never have guessed that all this just happened," Sonic commented, and several of the Freedom Fighters nodded, agreeing. "Doesn't that wear on him, though? Pretending everything's fine?"
"He's incredibly emotionally resilient. He tries to look mostly toward the future," the black hedgehog replied, but his shrug said that there was more to the words that he couldn't quite explain. "I worried the first time I saw him grit his teeth and put on his cheerful face, but it seems to be how he handles these kinds of things best. I didn't used to understand it, but it makes more sense the longer you've known him."
"It's deceptively simple," Rouge added, and Sonic looked at her curiously, not having expected her to comment on her teammate's mindset. She seemed a bit different--more serious, at least sometimes, as if she'd grown in the opposite direction to Shadow's more relaxed demeanor. Team Dark was mellowing out somewhat from the extreme characters it had before, something that the blue hedgehog hoped would help everyone on it in the long run. "He likes to have fun and be happy, and it's hard to do that when you're sad all the time. And, he's like Shadow; he's got a lot of things to be sad about. So, he puts his sadness away for the times when he has to face it and lives the best life he can while he can, staying firmly in the present and future."
"So... Like, the opposite of Shadz?" Sonic questioned with a grin, appreciating the opportunity to shift the tone of the conversation, which had been far too somber for far too long, and the white bat nodded emphatically.
"Shadow's brooding is Eclipse's joking," she agreed, and the black hedgehog gave her an offended look, his ears twitching back.
"I don't brood," he disagreed, looking like he wanted to expand on the defense, but he was drowned out as the air filled with laughs and cries to the contrary from the Freedom Fighters and Rouge, even Amy and Bunnie having to hide their smiles behind their hands. Sonic wiped a tear of mirth from his eye at his rival's scowl, flashing over to clap the black hedgehog on the back.
"And I'm not the world's beloved number one hero," the blue hedgehog said, grinning, and Shadow raised a dark eyeridge, evidently a bit irritated that no one believed him.
"I wouldn't get used to that title. Eclipse would be more than happy to claim it," he replied, unimpressed, and Sonic laughed.
"Not gonna pursue it yourself, Shadz? Why, are you worried you might lose to me?" He asked gleefully, and Shadow scoffed.
"I don't do PR. Remove the 'beloved,' and I think you've got yourself a competition."
"Aw, not even with your cuddly new demeanor?" Sonic teased, but the temptation to take up the offer was too much to resist. "You're on, Faker."
Shadow blinked, then a smirk spread slowly across his face, replacing the irritation with the black hedgehog's familiar competitive amusement.
"When you called me that during the video call, it took me a moment to recognize it. You'll lose your place as my main rival if you're not quick on your feet, Hedgehog."
"As if!" Sonic exclaimed, fired up. "I'll fight Eclipse right now!"
"No, you won't, because I took dibs before you even met him," Knuckles grumbled, and Sonic looked at the red echidna in surprise. For the first time since Team Dark had arrived, he didn't seem angry--Sonic grinned at the thought that Shadow might have finally convinced Knuckles to give Eclipse a chance.
"Well, I have second dibs," the blue hedgehog proclaimed proudly, and Shadow let out a warm chuckle--Sonic found himself in shock, sure he'd heard Shadow laugh more in the last few days than he ever had before.
Had he even heard Shadow laugh before the video call? He doubted it. He'd have to thank Eclipse for that one.
"In that case, I suppose I better call him back," Shadow said, sounding genuinely amused. He cast his crimson eyes toward the horizon, apparently sending some sort of mental message, and Sonic scanned the grounds expectantly. "He's on his way. He and Tails will be a minute."
"What I don't get," Knuckles began, breaking the momentary silence, and Sonic saw Shadow tense, their earlier argument set aside but not forgotten, "is why he didn't just tell me that himself."
"He was trying to move the conversation along. He doesn't like to talk about his past," Shadow replied shortly, crossing his arms, and Knuckles raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, I noticed. But, you know, if he'd just told me to shove off and let you explain, we could have gotten past this a lot sooner," the red echidna replied, stretching his hands in an apparent show of peace. "I thought he was just tiptoeing around saying something evil or something."
"Hon, the only time Eclipse ever says something 'evil' is when he's being an idiot," Rouge interjected, rolling her teal eyes skyward as Knuckles looked at her in surprise. "I already told you--he's not evil. He's just a chaotic dumbass."
"Rouge," Shadow groaned, looking exasperated and--Sonic thought--quite defeated. "You're not supposed to curse."
"But, he is!" She responded, putting her hands on her hips and fluttering her wings in irritation. "There's no other way to describe it, is there? Chaos, he's nearly as strong as Shadow and probably even more intelligent, and he was the most incompetent villain I've fought this year! That's not to say I wasn't scared to death of him," she added, and Sonic watched in confusion as she rubbed her shoulder self-consciously. "But, he's terrible at being evil, almost laughably so. For as powerful as he is, he should have been a huge threat, but he's just a fun-loving idiot," she shrugged, and Sonic jumped as the alien's voice suddenly scoffed from behind him.
"'Chaotic dumbass'? Really?" Eclipse asked incredulously, and Sonic heard several of the Freedom Fighters exclaiming in surprise as he whirled around to see the alien raising an eye ridge, hands on his hips, but Rouge seemed completely unconcerned at his sudden appearance.
"Mmh-hmm," she replied, smirking slightly as she turned to address him. "Why, did I offend you?"
"No, actually. I kind of like it," Eclipse answered, tapping his finger on his chin as he thought for a moment. "'Chaotic dumbass.' That's, like, my whole vibe."
"And herein lies my life," Shadow sighed--that was definitely defeat, Sonic decided--and Eclipse grinned, bouncing up on his tiptoes as Tails suddenly appeared from the trees, flying over the grass. Sonic noticed that his little bro seemed genuinely excited after his talk with Eclipse, which made the blue hedgehog smile as Tails dropped to the ground in the middle of the group.
"Have you guys finished talking?" The young fox asked, looking around at the group, and Shadow and Sally nodded, glancing at each other in agreement.
"That we have. Did you ask Eclipse anything?" Shadow queried, and both Tails and Eclipse exchanged a quick look, not dissimilar to the looks Tails and Sonic would always exchange when they knew they'd done something Amy or Sally wouldn't like.
"Um, yeah!" Tails answered, his guilty expression gone as quickly as it came. "Did you guys know Eclipse has four pairs of vocal cords? He can use them all at the same time! And, he sharpens his tail using his crests! And, did you know that he only grows crests where Black Death used a salve on his skin when he was being created? And, he speaks Au and Raennep!"
"He speaks what?" Sonic asked, a bit confused by the flow of information--had Tails said Eclipse has four pairs of vocal cords? How did he ever keep them straight?
"Au is the general trade language of the galaxy, designed to be as easy to speak as possible," the young fox told the group excitedly. "And Raennep is the native language of the Black Arms! It's where Eclipse's accent comes from!"
"Raeghh-nep?" Sonic tried and failed to replicate the sound, tripping over the syllable, and Tails giggled, looking at Eclipse.
"Well, properly, it's Raennep," the alien amended, and Sonic blinked--Raeghnnep? How did Eclipse even say that? "But, a lot of its sounds are unpronounceable to Mobians. It requires all four vocal cords to speak fluently, but a lot of the finer inflections aren't particularly necessary, with the hivemind. Mostly, they're just there for dramatic effect, to allow a wide range of emotions and subtleties to be expressed verbally."
"I didn't know the Black Arms had a language," Sally said, sounding interested. "Do you speak any other alien languages?"
"Uh... Beyond English, Raennep, and Au..." Eclipse trailed off for a moment, evidently thinking as he brought his hand up to his chin again. "I'm learning a bit of Spanish?"
Knuckles coughed, and it took a moment for Sonic to realize his friend was laughing; the red echidna looked amused as Eclipse gave him a wary side-eye.
"I suppose that would be an alien language, to you," Knuckles observed, but, to his surprise, Sonic didn't hear any hostility in his friend's voice--merely benign commentary. "How does it feel to be surrounded by aliens all the time?"
"Rather normal now, but it took a while before I got used to the idea that Mobians don't have a hivemind. It's very inconvenient, having to spell out exactly what I mean every time I speak. Sometimes, I don't get it entirely right," Eclipse replied casually, which was the closest to an apology Sonic figured the red echidna was going to get.
"I guess I can understand that. You were built like Shadow, right? To be a weapon?" Knuckles asked, and Eclipse looked at the echidna with a cautious expression, apparently apprehensive that this wasn't going in a good direction as he nodded slowly. Sonic, though, was rather impressed by his friend, not having thought Knuckles would try this hard to make conversation with his former sworn enemy. "So, you're a pretty good fighter, right?"
"Yes," Eclipse answered, his wariness audible now, and Sonic saw Shadow keeping a close eye on Knuckles from the side, ready to intervene if things went south.
"I don't suppose you'd ever be up to spar, would you?" The red echidna questioned, and the relief in Eclipse's posture was immediate.
"Anytime, anywhere," the alien answered, lifting his arms into a mock boxing position, his joking manner returning almost instantaneously.
"How about now and here?" The red echidna smirked, clearly fired up, and Sonic looked back and forth between the two in confusion. Knuckles didn't seem mad, so why was he asking to fight now? This was supposed to be a peaceful meeting between G.U.N. and the Castle of Acorn--not that it had been going all that smoothly, but still.
"I thought we settled this," King Nigel interjected worriedly, apparently thinking along the same lines, and the red echidna cracked his knuckles, shrugging his shoulders to loosen them up.
"We did, and now I want to settle it for real. What do you say?" Knuckles asked, glancing at Commander Tower, who was watching with an unreadable expression. "Can we spar our feelings out?"
"If this can be a resolved issue for the remainder of today and tomorrow, and no one gets injured, then I don't have an objection," the tall human replied, clearly coming to the same conclusion as the rest of the group. It seemed Knuckles wouldn't be satisfied until he got to cross his fists with the alien, and if that was the easiest route to a truce...
"Oh, go ahead," King Acorn sighed, folding his arms together. "But, don't hurt each other."
"We won't," Knuckles answered easily, and Sonic almost felt the spark as he and Eclipse met eyes for the first time as former enemies, now rivals--he knew exactly the feeling from his first time sparring with Shadow. The blue hedgehog grinned as Knuckles and Eclipse sized each other up, their eyes narrowing competitively at the opportunity to put their conflict to rest, and Knuckles cracked his knuckles again, looking fiercer than Sonic had seen him in a long time.
"Much."
Author's Note: Sorry about the slight delay for this one, homework hit me like a train! Thankfully, the next chapter is almost entirely written (if you remember from how many times I've drafted it), so that one will be on time even though it's hitting right during finals. I hope you guys are ready to rumble, because next month we're gonna have some serious action!
Currently, there are eight chapters of Brothers in Arms after this one, so we're nearing the end! Not to worry, though--we've got eight months of content and then more deleted scenes than you can shake a stick at. On top of Sonic One-Shots and Sonadow: Romance in Highschool (soon to come off hiatus for a conclusion and connected Eclipse-centric sequel--for those of you who are 15+ who like him in Sonic Oneshots, that sequel is for you!), I've got the miniseries on Tower and my other stories to finish, and I might (might) publish some original content that I've had around for a while. If you guys would be interested in seeing some of my original characters and concepts outside of the Sonic Fandom, please tell me! I'd love to tell you about them, and I'd be happy to give you a sneak peak into some of the novels I'm working on for future actual (!!) publishing!