Chapter 4 - The Shakespeare in the Park

                                    

                                          
That night in the boats bridge, as they were waiting to locate Starline using satellite facial recognition, Silver was standing with Shadow. "I mean, if it's not too much trouble-" 
"No, no. It's fine," Shadow reassured. "It's a vintage set. It took me a couple of years to collect them all. Near mint, slight foxing around the edges, but..."
Silver was interrupted by another agent. "We got a hit. Sixty-seven percent match. Weight, cross match, seventy-nine percent." 
"Location?" 
"Central City. He's not exactly hiding." 
Vector turned to the black hedgehog. "Ultimate life-form, you're up." Shadow nodded and left.
***
It was now nighttime in Central City, and Starline was standing in front of a museum, dressed in much more fancy attire with his glove disguised within the outfit. He walked up to the entrance of the gala where things were starting to quiet as the head doctor walked up to the mic.
Back inside the boat, Shadow walked into the locker room. As he approached to the steel cabinet, the doors already reveal his new air-shoes. He stood in silence the entire time.
Outside the museum, guards stood in their positions. One was standing on tip of the roof, scoping until he heard a sound that caught his attention. Looking down he saw a fellow guard get hit by a kunai. 
Before he could raise his gun, another kunai hit him in the chest his heart is. He fell down, limp and lifeless as Espio and his crew arrived at the doors of the locked science building. Espio looked at the retinal scanner and pulled out a G.U.N. eye scanner instrument.
Inside the gala, Starline looked from above the museum and descends down to where the head doctor is. As he made it down and near the stage, he uncovered his Tri-Core glove. The guard there noticed him and pulled out his gun, but Starline knocked him unconscious.
Chaos erupted as guests began to leave the museum in a panic. Starline grabbed the doctor and flipped him over onto a marble table of one of the exhibits. He pulled out an optical torture device and plunged it down on the doctor's eye making him scream in pain.
Outside, on Espio's instrument, a holographic eye of the head doctor appeared and the image of the doctor appeared on the screen. The doors to the facility opened and he walked in to find a cabinet, and a glass thermos with a cylinder of iridium. 
As the crowd ran away, Starline slowly walked out and got rid of the fancy clothes to reveal his normal ones underneath. The police arrived and with no hesitation, he blasted the cars, flipping them over and over.
"Kneel before me," he commanded, but the crowd ignored him. Using the Tri-Core, he made three more Starline's appear, surrounding and blocking the crowd from escaping. "I said kneel!"
While the crowd quietly kneels, Starline smirked deviously. "Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."
As the words resonate to the kneeling crowd, an elder man refused to kneel and stood. "Not to those like you." 
"There are none like me," Starline sneered. 
"There are always those like you."
"Look to your elder, people. Let him be an example," Starline said, ready to execute the defenseless man. Right before he fired, he was knocked down by a certain black hedgehog teleporting in front of him and throwing a punch.