#mostly bc

okay quick note: this is literally something thats been in my head for like 2 or 3 days if you see consistency issues ignore them bless. also for consistency purposes shadow has a higher concentration of chaos energy (bc i dont think this is ever said in any games but is just kinda implied)

the basic premise is that maria and shadow both survived the raid on the ARK and survived the fall to earth

Maria does still get injured and, in an attempt to heal her injuries, is able to use his own chaos energy to not only heal her, but more or less reverse the effects of NIDS at the cost of keeping his black arms traits completely at bay

additionally this extreme concentration effectively ruins his regulators, causing his issues with his black arms traits to be worse than they couldve been

With the reversal of her disease, Maria's lifespan and aging process is uh. kinda messed up, extending it by a pretty significant amount by making her aging process much slower

they go into hiding best they can and the 50 year timeskip that takes place in sa2 instead becomes time where they try and figure out 1. how the world works and 2. more about their past bc they were both kept in the dark about things while on the ARK (basically wtf was going on with shadows creation and why did GUN attack in the first place)

on the other hand, shadow experiences some mutations (third eye, sharper claws, increased amount of red quills/fur) and is more prone to violent episodes

these episodes are especially bad during their first few years on mobius but after awhile hes able to keep these episodes at bay much much better

i also lied when i said i wouldnt post the art this entire post is the entire au as of right now so heres their (still kinda wip) modern designs

this is where i havent thought things out as well but uhh BASICALLY maria hears about tails and how hes a genius and goes "huh. maybe this guy can help us but i have no clue on how to contact him"

this is also where things are very muddy but more or less shadow and sonic accidentally meet, maria finds them about to beat the shit out of eachother and offers sonic a meal as an apology

during this she tells shadow about tails and sonic goes "oh hey thats my brother :D" and there is no way to describe how they react in text so heres a doodle

as an agent for GUN, rouge is more or less the only true key they have to figuring everything out, so they have tails contact her (sonic and tails arent friends with her but its tails he has his ways) and she agrees to help them and uncover their past through some good ol spy work against gun, but says that theres a hefty price behind this work, that price being the chaos emeralds (this is her idea of being absurd and telling them that theres no way in hell she would do the job without being payed shittons of money) but they go "ok lol"

sonic tells tails about shadow and maria and how they want his help, and tails agrees

he does scans on the both of them and tells them exactly what happened to them all that time ago (marias disease being reversed, shadows glorified hormone imbalance) but says that he cant help with much else because he just. doesnt know enough about either of their conditions to really give any solid insight or advice but knows someone who might . this is where rouge comes in :}

this is where things kinda leave off bc like i said i thought of this like. three days ago LOL

right around this time the black arms invasion starts and through a series of events that i also havent thought out yet shadow gets like. partially assimilated into the hivemind