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Rouge had asked him to do the impossible.
In her hand was a chaos emerald. The same one they shared during the Neo Metal incident. It was unusual of her to so willingly give up something so valuable. Her lips formed a reassuring smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"You're the only one who can do this."
The emerald looked small in his claws. Almost unassuming.
"I'm counting on you. We all are."
He hated her for it. He hated them both for it. How easily they could throw their lives away, how easily they could sacrifice themselves to the jaws of time. Omega had no say in it- he hadn’t been there to help them, to stop Shadow from staying in the future. Even if it was necessary in some cosmic sense, it still flooded his circuits with rage.
Rouge already had the date he’d need. Over 200 years from now.
“From what I’ve gathered, in our present, things will heat up in far less time than that,” she laughed, her voice hollow.
Rouge wasn’t looking at him. She tilted her head down, obscuring her face.
“Maybe the wait won't feel so long then, after things go south.”
Omega’s claws tightened around the emerald.
“And who knows, maybe one day I’ll just… wake up and be right beside you and Shadow again, when you two fix the timeline or whatever.”
Rouge turned and stared out at their surroundings, pretending to be busy admiring the sprawling jungle. This place too was familiar, foliage and giant fauna alike.
200 years. It had taken far less time than that to develop a burning hatred for Eggman, to defy his code, to rewrite his priorities and reinvent himself from the ground up. A lot can change in two centuries. He could grow spiteful, abandoning his mission to turn his hate against the world. He could grow morose, caring neither for his mission nor his own self preservation.
Behind his eyes, Omega stitched together a new program. Nestled deep within his processor, near his core priorities and the jumble of suppressed Eggman directives, would lay a function to ensure he'd complete his mission. One that would force him to ignore attempts both internal and external to stop himself from finding Shadow and giving him the emerald in 200 years.
Conflicting thoughts slammed through his processor. Omega’s fans whirred as his internal temperature skyrocketed.
He didn’t want to do this. And yet he did.
“Maybe neither of us will feel a thing.”
Rouge had briefly described the kind of future he could expect. The toppled buildings. The rivers of fire.
“Maybe it will feel like nothing happened at all.”
And the rest was a blur…
Or at least, it was. Until now.
Blinding light reflected off the sandy shore of Wave Ocean. The sky was still blue, the tide still rumbled, the sand still crunched beneath his heels, but Omega processed none of it. Within this sensory void was nothing but him and his target. Mephiles.
Omega’s machineguns roared. Bullets slammed into the Shadow-shaped body that stood across him, cracking against its crystalline frame. Even above the shrieking of rotors and the storm of screaming bullets he could still hear that thing. Could still hear it laughing.
Don’t tell me you didn’t know?
Omega’s makeshift program had been compromised. It wasn’t the kind of thing he could easily debug, let alone test.
You may have been programmed by humanity…
He had planted a metaphorical bomb in the base of his own neck. A backdoor into the deepest recesses of his processor. It was meant only to be a failsafe, ensuring that no matter what, even if he didn’t want to, even if it meant sacrificing Rouge, he’d preserve and prioritize himself in order to get the chaos emerald to Shadow.
But what you did to Shadow in the future…
There were variables he hadn’t accounted for. G.U.N knew too much about him. They had blueprints he didn’t think still existed. They caught him off-guard. After the Flames of Disaster were released, after the following cataclysm left him wounded and weakened, they found him in standby mode.
That was your…
Omega awoke in a G.U.N base, surrounded by glowing computers, cables, and unfamiliar faces.
He asked where Shadow was. He received no response.
He asked where Rouge was. One scientist flashed him a pitying look.
Omega tried to move, but something mechanical kept him in place.
He counted his ammunition stores, and- to his surprise- found they hadn’t been depleted. The mechanisms in his arms shuddered and growled as his wrist cannons fought against his restraints. The clanging of metal sent a jolt of fear through the room. The sound of typing grew louder.
They were desperate. They couldn’t fully deactivate him. They couldn't break him. But why?
Omega pivoted his head wildly, the cables affixed to the back of his visor swishing angrily.
He demanded to be released. The humans nervously avoided his gaze.
He threatened to blow them up. To detonate the missiles within his own chassis, to ignite what remained of his own flamethrower fuel.
A nervous hand performed a flurry of keystrokes, pushing a final update.
And Omega stopped.
They never told him who wanted this. If it was G.U.N, the UF, the kingdom of Soleanna, the Commander, or anyone. And they never told him why. It didn’t matter. They didn’t care.
Shadow had been blamed for the Flames of Disaster. All they needed was the Eggman robot specifically designed to seal him away.
They hijacked Omega’s program. They used it to bypass his lattice of suppressive code and access his primary directives. They undid years of work, years of repressing the commands Eggman wrote into the core of his being. His priorities realigned. His mental cache was dumped. A single task pushed its way to the forefront of his mind.
Then, they let him go.
The sky was dark. Rolling clouds of smoke obscured the sun. Static electricity hummed in the air, the oppressive heat and bitter wind beckoning an oncoming storm. The electric tension fueled him, dancing across his chassis and reverberating in his power core.
The clouds flashed. Thunder roared.
He had every advantage. The oppressive heat did not cling to his frame, the billowing ash did not clog his receptors, he had no limit of ambient energy to draw from. The Ultimate Lifeform, the weary hedgehog that stood before him, the pinnacle of medical and chaos research, was still pitifully organic.
Shadow asked him why. Asked him about Rouge. Omega did not respond. He could not respond.
That directive would expire in 200 years, when the next in queue took its place.
Rouge and Shadow had found him on the beach, his weapons drawn.
He could still see the billowing smoke. The sea of fire. The rolling storms that blotted out the sky. He could still feel the ambient electricity arcing in his chest. The impacts of fists, boots, and chaos spears. The impacts grow weaker over time.
A gloved hand touched his arm.
The creature in his grasp continues to struggle. Its movements are uncharacteristically slow. Weak.
Two figures stepped before him, looking up at his vacant receptors.
It was his program. His doing. His fault.
“Hey big guy, you okay?”
The world slowly faded back into view.
The rolling waves, the glistening sand, the foliage gently swaying in the wind. Mephiles was gone, leaving no trace of him ever being there at all. It was just him.
But Omega wasn’t alone this time.
Rouge wore a familiar reassuring smile. But now, the tense edge of hopelessness was replaced with genuine concern. Shadow was anything but weary, and regarded him with a focused and confident gaze.
It hadn’t happened yet. Or would never happen. The traces of memory that remained begged to differ.
Omega had to tell them. Despite having no logical reason to do so, he felt willed to. Perhaps that data could help Shadow in the future.
Or maybe it wasn’t just Shadow who needed help…
Omega would do everything in his power to stop that future from coming to pass. On his own he had failed, but with the assistance of his team… perhaps they could all change their fates.