Sonic GeneX: Doomsday
Chapter 11 - Of Morphs and Bingo
Stage 6 - Casino Park

Note: Sonic the Hedgehog and related characters are (c) SEGA. You knew that, right?
GeneX and related OCs are (c) 2BIT (TheGreatGator), the author.


"Can you see all of me?
Walk into my mystery.
Step inside and hold on for dear life!
Do you remember me?
Capture you, or set you free?
I am all, and I am all of me!" - I Am, Shadow the Hedgehog


Previously on GeneX…
Shadow and Kosmo brought down one of Eggman's Cloud Cruiser airships in retaliation for the doctor's attack on Station Square. They crash-landed in Casino Park.
Having received a call from Knuckles, Shadow began searching for the remains of a Temple of Gaia to find whatever secret Professor Pickle believed was there. Along the way through Casino Park, they encountered Ozzie the morph, who was searching for Nova.
Eggman's Cloud Carnival fleet dropped robots into the park, while Firepaw infected the park with a virus, causing its attractions to run amok.
Near the entrance to BINGO Highway, Shadow and Kosmo faced off against a Lost One-possessed Rouletar. Upon destroying Rouletar, they were met with Mephiles, who took Rouletar's soul as he did to Firma, and introduced Shadow to the Shadow-like spirits the Lost Ones had created using the Ultimate Life DNA they'd stolen!
Now, our tale continues...


BINGO Highway was sprawled out before the group now. They'd have to pass it to move on. However, what was left of Cloud Carnival loomed above, sending down robots to slow their progress. "Eggman will slow this trip to a crawl..." Carrie the mirage sighed in frustration. Kosmo nodded, morphing wings onto his back. "Guess someone needs to fly up there and finish the job, then!" he suggested, planning to destroy the remaining Cloud Cruisers himself. "Funny from the guy who couldn't remember he could fly over the pinball tables..." Espio the chameleon murmured, making Kosmo's face turn red. "Look, morphing into a pinball seemed like the obvious solution at the time. It takes imagination to really be good at this..." he babbled. Ozzie morphed some angelic wings onto his own back. "Mind if I join you up there? Walking on the ground is pretty dull anyway." he chuckled. Kosmo shrugged, and the pair of them took off into the air toward the Cloud Cruisers. Shadow watched them silently. He was still cursing in his mind at how he'd allowed Professor Gerald's last remaining research to be taken and tainted by the Lost Ones. "I should've secured it in a safer place... This is on me..." he thought. Espio snapped his fingers near the distracted hedgehog. "We're not going to just wait here until they finish up there, are we?" he asked. Shadow glanced at him with an unamused expression. "Hmph… Come on, then. Try to keep up." he scoffed, tearing ahead at high speed! Espio and Carrie scrambled to follow behind him. "Yeesh! Is it me or has he gone into full edgelord mode all of a sudden?" Carrie asked, huffing and puffing as she strained just to keep up with Espio's speed. The chameleon let out a thoughtful hum. "I surmise seeing so many villains that look like him has taken its toll." he concluded. He wasn't exactly wrong.


Espio and Carrie caught up to Shadow in front of a blocked door. The ninja chameleon examined it and sighed in partial relief. "I thought this door was gonna need casino chips..." he shuddered. Shadow looked at him a bit impatiently. "Well, what does it need?" he asked. The chameleon motioned to a nearby pinball table with a bingo theme. "We need to win a bingo. Trust me, that'll be much simpler. It's just getting back out of the pinball table that might be a problem..." he murmured. Carrie smirked, lifting the chameleon up with her psychokinesis as he yelped in surprise. "It might be cheating, but leave it to me. I'll get this done quickly!" she said before putting him back down. Espio sighed to himself as he headed for the pinball table. He remembered how she played the last pinball game without targets. As Espio loaded himself into the cannon that would launch him onto the pinball table, Orbinauts and Egg Flapper robots started to float down towards them from the air! "Well, this could make controlling pinball difficult..." Carrie murmured as Espio was fired from the cannon! Shadow scoffed and tossed a Chaos Spear at an incoming Orbinaut. "I'll deal with the robots... I want to hit something anyway!" he said, leaping into action to fight them off while Carrie put her focus on playing pinball with Espio as the ball. All the violence around her made the mirage nervous, though. "Well, don't gotta make myself an easy target..." she said, taking a deep breath and tightening her focus even more to turn herself invisible. Shadow made a mental note of her location as he leapt up and propelled himself toward an Egg Flapper, launching into a flurry of excessive punches and kicks to rip its metallic body to pieces. He was MAD. He needed this opportunity to just let loose.

Fortunately, Shadow was all they needed to keep the robots at bay. The frustrated hedgehog was tearing through them like they were made of paper. Soon, however, he was faced with something genuinely dangerous. He stopped short when he saw it. A ghostly Lost One in his image. One of them had remained in the casino. This was his chance to destroy it! He charged at the LoShadow, lunging into a homing attack, and...he passed right through it. Of course, it was built like Lospecter after all. "Losss… losss…" the creature moaned in a deep, low voice, turning toward Shadow. Growling, the hedgehog hurled some Chaos Spears at his ghostly copy. They made it flinch, but unlike most Lost Ones, the chaos energy didn't seem to cause much damage. On top of that, the creature mimicked the motion of Shadow's hands, and hurled its own Chaos Spears back at him! Shadow leapt to dodge them, staring at the Lost One in shock. "This isn't good. If I can't beat this thing, then the Lost Ones will have used Gerald's research to basically eliminate their main weakness!" he realized. He ran up to the creature and focused his energy. "Chaos Blast!!" he cried, creating a chaotic explosion that enveloped the Lost One! The creature was thrown back by the blast, but to Shadow's dismay, it shook off the attack. Its eyes glared at him, seeming to be angry. "Shoot..." Shadow murmured, watching as his ghostly copy began to fly around him at high speed! He looked around, wondering what form the creature's attack would take. He realized he didn't want to find out, so he started to move around the area as well, making himself a difficult target to hit. As he tried to think of a solution, he tossed a few stray Chaos Spears at the LoShadow, while it responded in kind with its own spears. "Hurry up with that stupid bingo game...!" Shadow grunted. Worrying about Espio and Carrie wasn't helping.


Kosmo and Ozzie tore through one of the Cloud Cruisers in dragon form, Kosmo in his usual lizard-dragon form and Ozzie in more of a serpent-dragon form, which was no less impressive. As the ship exploded and started to fall out of the sky behind them, they reverted to their normal winged forms and hi-fived each other. "Haha! If they though one morph was bad, they'll never stop two!" Kosmo laughed. "How should we trash this one?" Ozzie wondered as they hovered over another Cloud Cruiser. His thought was interrupted when a powerful burst of electricity suddenly came from below and zapped his body! "Yaaaaaahh!!" As Ozzie fell down onto the Cloud Cruiser, Kosmo looked and evaded a second electric shock, seeing a familiar robot catch Ozzie below. It was Eggman's lead Egg Pawn, E-5X, Jolt. The winged yellow robot shook a fist up at Kosmo. "You killed Rouletar! He was our star attraction here at Cloud Carnival!" he shouted. Kosmo scoffed. "The whole carnival's coming down anyway! You'd best leave Ozzie there and abandon ship!" he warned. Jolt set Ozzie on the ground and kicked him while he was out cold. "Dumb morphs! Think you're so big! We'll blast YOU out of the sky, wise guy!" the small robot shouted. Kosmo was surprised to see numerous cannons pop out of the ship all around, poised to shoot him right out of the air. He scrambled to dodge as they shot off...fireworks? Well, the fiery explosions wouldn't be pleasant to get caught in, anyway. Kosmo realized he'd have to land, and growled in frustration to realize that the cannons were keeping him from landing too close to Ozzie. He'd have to fight through the carnival itself to rescue him. Again. "As if one trip through Eggman's sorry excuse for a theme park wasn't enough..." he grumbled. The PA system came on as Kosmo landed. "Attention, patrons! The teacup ride is out of order...due to having crashed into a casino. Thanks, Kosmo!!" Eggman's aggravated voice announced. Kosmo shrugged. "You're welcome." he sighed.

Purple trumpet-toting Egg Pawns were patrolling Cloud Carnival at park-level. Kosmo recognized these Carnival Pawns, and recalled how troublesome their sound blasts could be. But they were purple, which gave him the idea to morph himself into their form to try and sneak by. If he could just creep past the ferris wheel and to the roller coaster, he could ride his way back to where Jolt was holding Ozzie. He slowly walked by, his robotic yellow eyes scanning around as he tried to act natural for an Egg Pawn...but he didn't think he could act that stupid, honestly. He underestimated their intelligence, though, as once he was halfway past the ferris wheel the Carnival Pawns turned on him. "Uhh… What gave me away? Lack of trumpet?" he murmured, morphing back to normal as he broke into a run! The Pawns blew their horns at him, sending powerful shockwaves in his direction! He was hit and knocked over, which served to make him mad. "I tried this the easy way. Now you face the wrath of..." his voice deepened as he took on a massive metallic form, "...Rouletar!!" If Egg Pawns could emote, they'd have very stupid, alarmed expressions on their faces as Kosmo imitated Rouletar's slot reels. They tried hitting him with their shockwaves, but even Kosmo's imitation of Rouletar's armor was too tough for them! His reels stopped on...his own face three times. "I win whatever I want... I pick Kosmos!!" His eyes fired his trademark Kosmos beams at the robots, too strong for them to handle. They were blown apart one by one, and then Kosmo morphed back, panting softly. "That was a dumb form to maintain for any length of time... Now..." He hopped on the roller coaster, and when he saw Jolt ahead, he hopped off. The yellow Pawn raised his fists. "I've already got your buddy out cold! Whatcha gonna do, huh? Huh??" he taunted. Kosmo rolled his eyes. He transformed himself into Jolt...only a bit taller. "It's this simple to outdo you, little guy." he stated. Jolt jumped up and down, shouting unintelligibly in his anger. Kosmo sighed. "Always the hard way..."


Fed up with his ghostly doppelganger, Shadow used Chaos Control to stop time, and proceeded to unleash a flurry of Chaos Spears on it while it couldn't move, finishing up with a Chaos Blast! Though the speedy creature had given him a run for his money, this amount of chaos energy was too much to handle, and it was reduced to a puddle of ectoplasm. As time resumed, Carrie returned to visible form and brought Espio back to where they were with her psychokinesis, the chameleon looking rather dizzy. "W-well... That's bingo..." he said, dazed. "Now the door should be open, right?" Carrie said, prompting them to head for the door...only to find it still blocked! "What?! Don't tell me we need to clear the entire bingo board!?" Espio groaned. Shadow rolled his eyes, and was about to say something, when they heard an explosion overhead!

A few moments earlier, Jolt had been forced to retreat, flying with his jetpack toward the next closest Cloud Cruiser now that Ozzie had recovered from his shock and left the Egg Pawn far outclassed, even with his shock powers. "Well, that slowed us down... Shall we?" Ozzie asked. Kosmo looked thoughtful. "Hey, Oz... You never did tell me WHY you were looking for Nova. How exactly do YOU know him?" he asked. Ozzie's eyes darted back and forth, and he turned away from Kosmo. "I'm not sure I should be telling you any more than I already have. Just know that Nova's not a good guy. His actions won't have good consequences..." he stated. Kosmo crossed his arms, but nodded. "Well, obviously. Let's blow this thing, then." he said, taking a deep breath before morphing into his Kosmogon form...albeit smaller than usual. "All this shifting is tiring me out." he murmured. Ozzie morphed into his serpent dragon from and nodded. "It's like a muscle. Takes training to be able to shift a lot in a short space of time!" he told him.

After hearing explosions above, Shadow, Carrie and Espio were forced to run back a bit as the Cloud Cruiser that Kosmo and Ozzie had just attacked plummeted down, the front of it landing right on top of the door and smashing it! When the dust settled, Shadow and company found a wreckage in their path. "...Oh, thank Chaos. No more bingo." Espio sighed. As the trio began carefully climbing over top of the wreck, Kosmo and Ozzie flew down, morphing back to their true forms as they reunited with the others. "C-carrie! Honest, I had no idea that ship was gonna fall on your head!" Kosmo stammered. The mirage's forked tail waggled behind her, betraying her mean expression. "You could have killed us..." she said. "No he couldn't..." Shadow remarked, continuing onward without waiting for the others. As they turned to follow, they noticed that the Cloud Cruisers were starting to fly away. "Looks like Eggman decided to cut his losses." Espio observed. "Then I guess we'll stop running into road blocks ahead." Kosmo said with relief. Shadow shrugged. "Unless more of my Lost One copies turn up. I fought one while you were all preoccupied..." he said, stopping in his tracks. It was plain to see he was troubled. "What happened?" Espio asked. "Just one of those creatures gave me a run for my money. Not quite enough for me to ditch my restraint rings, but... Those things are pretty resistant to chaos energy, the Lost Ones' primary weakness. I understand why Lospecter bothered now. The Lost Ones want to eliminate their weaknesses and become unstoppable..." he concluded, making a fist as his expression became frustrated. He blamed himself for letting this happen. Kosmo stepped closer to him and cleared his throat. "Of course we're not going to LET them get away with it, yeah? Hopefully whatever's at that Gaia place will help." he said. Shadow nodded. "Let's press on." he said.

It was indeed a fairly uneventful trip once they'd gotten past the downed Cloud Cruiser, most of the way. However, as the group neared the end of Casino Park, of all people, Nova the morph stepped into their path. Ozzie pointed at him as if to shout aha! "I knew I'd tracked you to this area! Nova, I'm here to, uh... arrest you!" the white morph shouted. Nova looked at him funny. "Do I know you? Don't tell me I'm actually missed back home...but Kosmo isn't?" he asked. Kosmo had to interject here. "So you confirm it... I had a life on the morph planet before Bucky... What happened to me, Nova!? Why was I dead?!" he shouted, "It... it was you, wasn't it!?" he growled accusingly. Nova cackled softly. "You were dead? Good... Too bad you came back! Yes, we happened to down one another's ships! Call it a difference of opinion! And you stranded me on this forsaken rock! I'll be glad to kill you again for it!" he sneered. Shadow grabbed Kosmo's arm, holding the morph back. "Where's your mask, Nova? I understand you stole it from Shade." he questioned. A new voice cackled nearby, and the group was surprised to see Tabitha the orange cat flying over on her broomstick, pointy hat and all. "Is it Halloween all of a sudden?" Espio questioned. Tabitha snickered. "You asked, I'll answer. Blue boy here has grown to fear the effect the mask is having on his mind. So, as a fellow member of the Coven Despair, I've offered to take that off his hands. I can make such an accessory work for me..." she winked, leaning against her broom. "I doubt I wanna see you in it, as much as I don't wanna see your face." Carrie scoffed. Nova growled at the spotlight being taken from him. "I don't need Enerjak's power to kill you! I'll drown you myself, Kosmo!" he shouted, his body taking on a liquid state! Tabitha started to fly up high, cackling. "I'll keep the other wretches out of your business, my drippy friend! Then perhaps you'll grant me a wish!" she laughed. Espio gulped. "Mighty and Ray warned me about this one..." he grumbled.

As Kosmo and Nova charged at one another, Tabitha flew in a circle around the others, casting a ring of fire around them. Carrie tried to grab the witch with her psychic powers, but she couldn't get a grip on her. "Ugh, she's resisting me... Well, I'm not making myself a target." she said, becoming invisible again. "I could try that too, but my focus is better served elsewhere..." Espio said, lifting a shuriken and taking aim. The witch cackled a bit and tossed a spell at the shuriken in his hand, transforming it into a snake! "Gah!!" the chameleon gasped. "I thought only we could do that..." Ozzie murmured. Shadow scoffed and stepped forward. "You all stay back. I'll handle this one and her tricks." he said. "Forgive me if I don't trust them to mind their business..." Tabitha said, snapping her fingers and somehow causing the snake Espio had dropped to multiply! As Espio and Ozzie backed away nervously, Shadow leapt at the witch, only to be repelled by an invisible barrier around her! "Not used to fighting against magic, are you?" she smirked. Shadow scoffed, unimpressed, and leapt out of the way as the witch hurled a fiery spell at him! There had to be a way to get past her defenses...

In the meantime, though, Kosmo found himself surrounded by Nova's watery form as he coiled around him in an elastic fashion. The solid morph turned his hands into large blades and tried to slice through, but you can't cut through water! Nova began to wrap his liquid body around Kosmo's head, snickering. "I'll enjoy listening to you drown..." However, though Kosmo initially gagged, he quickly composed himself, and appeared to be fine. Looking carefully, Nova could see he'd added gills to his anatomy. "That's the trouble with morph-on-morph combat..." he grumbled, turning his fist into solid glacier-strength ice before giving Kosmo a hard punch to the gut! The purple morph was knocked backward, but he was out of Nova's watery grip now. "You really like lording your ability to turn into water over other morphs, hm?" Kosmo grunted. Nova's body bubbled as his watery form started to boil. "It does open creative avenues that you can't dream of! Now, I'll scald you!" he sneered. Kosmo thought about what he could do, and suddenly transformed into Jolt again, his body sparking! "How well do you take to electricity?" he asked as Nova grabbed onto him without thinking. Electric current zapped through both of their bodies, but Kosmo was in a robotic form at least. Nova wailed in agony as the shock ran through his every atom! He returned to a solid state and fell backward, a bit charred!

Carrie was fed up. She picked up all the magical snakes with her powers and held them in the air in a coiled ball. "Hey, witchy! How's your barrier hold up against your own creations!?" she shouted, tossing the ball of snakes at her! Tabitha blocked the attack with a different, more colorful barrier. "Calling out your attack is really helpful, thanks." she smirked. She suddenly felt a weight on her broom. Turning, she saw Shadow standing on the back of it. "Would you like to hear your mistake?" he said with a smirk. A moment later, Tabitha fell out of the sky, and her ring of fire faded. Ozzie ran for the wounded Nova, but Tabitha wasn't quite down and out. She stood up and summoned another huge flame, blocking the path between herself, Nova and the others. She then scooped Nova onto her broomstick and started to fly off. "One of us needs that mask of yours for next time... Until then... Fare thee well!" she said with a cackle as she flew off. With her flame barrier fading, Ozzie started to dash off in the direction they'd gone. "Uhh, see ya, guys! I gotta catch that Nova!" he shouted. Kosmo looked from Ozzie to Shadow. "I'm tempted to go after Nova as well. Kill him for killing me... But... Saving the world from the Lost Ones is more important, right?" he said, looking to Shadow. The black hedgehog smiled and nodded. Kosmo had grown so much since Shadow had met him, and he felt a bit proud as sort of his mentor, but he didn't feel the need to say anything about it. Espio started after Ozzie instead. "They could be trouble if they start using the power of that mask. I'll monitor the situation... unless Vector needs me for something else." he murmured. This left Shadow, Kosmo and Carrie. "Well, we're at the end of the casino." Carrie said, "Now what?" Shadow tapped the communicator in his ear. "Tails? Can you hear us? We need directions, if you can help..." he said.

To be continued...