Ruby Haze [Archie Sonic SI]

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 26: The Mislaid Plans

Fiona Fox thought of herself as a schemer at heart. Someone to whom deception and trickery came to her as naturally as breathing. It was not an instinct that Fiona thought she had in her when she was just a dumb kid. Before she realized that the only person you could rely on in this messed up world to have your back was yourself. Now that she was grown up, Fiona knew that her clever mind was the sharpest weapon in her arsenal. With her two go-to goons being a close second.

Whatever Bean and Bark were doing before she found them wasn't important. They needed someone with brains to direct them, and get them gigs. Be the shot caller. Bark wasn't going to speak up for himself, and Bean wasn't going to let the clients get a word in. She was the brains of her gang, with Bean and Bark providing the muscle needed to make her tactics stick. Not as strong as Bark, or as explosively deranged as Bean (the latter of which she was grateful not to worry about), Fiona was the one who laid out the game plan.

However, with her mark having changed into a dragon and gone flying after a smart aleck super badnik, her plot to steal Scarlet's magic ruby had gone completely off the rails.

"This was supposed to be easy!" she shouted as she climbed out of the rubble.

Fiona heard a pop, causing her ears to perk up in alarm. Examining her immediate surroundings, Fiona saw that the ground was covered in crystal dust from one of Scarlet's magic bubbles. The debris around the hole she was hiding in gave way and collapsed. He must've put a shield around her, and if it wasn't for that holding up the rubble…

Fiona Fox dismissed the thought. She couldn't afford to get distracted.

She looked around, taking in the absolute state of desolation that Scarlet and Metal Sonic left the Happyland park in after their fight. The rollercoaster was spent, having broken down into heaps of splintered wood. The merry-go-round had made its last rotation, the ferris wheel had lost a couple of spokes, and the carnival games were totally spent. Fiona hated Renfield, so she wasn't going to be shedding a tear for his dream going down in flames. Her only regret was that she didn't bring a camera.

With her ride having taken off, and this mission turning out to be far riskier than she initially bargained for, Fiona's next idea was to make her leave with that spare hover pod. Then a glimmer in the scrap pile caught her eye. Getting closer, she identified the shining object as the Mechanix. Scarlet hit them with one of those spells he cast by mistake, trapping Heavy and Bomb in a big, pink crystal.

After spending a period of weeks getting to know what he was capable of, Fiona could admit, if only to herself, that what Scarlet did was real magic. Technology that could open portals like he could wasn't portable enough to do the job. It wouldn't be something that just anybody could get their hands on, and Scarlet definitely wasn't smart enough to build it himself. The same went for the force fields, flight, and other powers.

Then there was the fact that technology didn't show you your greatest desire when you touched it. While everyone else was stunned by what Bean conjured up by touching the ruby during their ambush mission in Mercia, they weren't watching her trying to pull him off of it. The wizard completely missed that she'd accidentally touched the stone herself. What she saw while everyone else was distracted left her stunned.

Fiona saw herself, a few years older. Stronger. Sharper. More experienced. She wasn't the ruler of Mobius, because she knew what she wanted was well within the means of being a crime lord. For those who she let know her name, 'Fiona Fox' was a name associated with wealth and power. Feared and respected in equal measures, she'd spend her days surrounded by more money, opulence, and security than anyone else could ever ask for.

Robotnik's machines couldn't catch her. The Freedom Fighters would go to her to beg for scraps, and she'd only give them when their so-called 'hero' was the one they paraded out to do the begging. The power of the ruby made her completely untouchable. With but a wave of her hand, anything she wanted was within her grasp.

Never again to want. Never again to need. Never again to feel pain, or fear, or spend her nights being afraid of getting hurt again.

Never again to be powerless. Forgotten. Left behind.

All she had to do to make that happen was separate the magic gem from its current owner.

Did that overlander know how much power he was sitting on? How could he not?

Fiona got close to the badniks and started hammering at the crystal, using her spent missile launcher as a blunt instrument. She knew from asking around the Mercian rebel camps that those crystals weren't impossible to shatter. Scarlet's crystals broke apart over time, and got weaker when he wasn't focusing on keeping them there. After the repeated impacts caused cracks to form along the surface, she performed one last strike along the largest crack to wedge the crystal containing Bomb free from the rest.

"Ping ping," Bomb uttered weakly, half of his body sticking out of the crystal mass.

"Hold still," Fiona said, before lighting Bomb's fuse with a match.

"PING?!"

Fiona crouched down behind the sturdiest thing she could use as cover for miles, which was Heavy. Bomb detonated, damaging the pink crystal surrounding the larger badnik. With Bomb's body destroyed, Fiona could hear what sounded like a jammed crank or other mechanism building tension from inside the crystal, until Heavy's head spring broke out of the top and a fresh Bomb was released.

"Ping!" Bomb accused, pointing at her.

"Of course I knew that would work!" Fiona shouted back. "Now do it again!"

"Ping," Bomb grumbled, exploding a second time so he could get his partner out of there.

Heavy stumbled out of the crystal trap, magenta flakes sticking to both badniks' hulls.

"Gadzooks!" Heavy exclaimed. "What'd I miss?"

"Ping ping!" Bomb whined.

"Scarlet went after Metal Sonic, but there's something wrong with the island," Fiona answered, paraphrasing everything they missed. "Now a volcano's gone off!"

"This is most disturbing," Heavy said solemnly. "Do you have John's communicator code?"

She tried the number, but the line was filled with static.

"He's not picking up."

Heavy's lid rose again, a collapsible radio antenna sticking out of it.

"There appears to be a high amount of background radiation affecting my radar. Let's take you back to our workshop in Rock Hill so we can regain our bearings."

Resigned, she joined the Mechanix in the hover unit to their other base. She stared out from the forward window, taking in the darkened landscape of the Floating Island.

This was supposed to be simple. Tricking him into carrying all of their salvage from Robotnik's bases was only one part of it. Bean and Bark were going to take Scarlet out when she gave the signal, after he'd burned out his energy reserves, but then they had to escape the ambush from the Egg Robos. Her Plan B was to convince the Guardian and the Chaotix to do the heavy lifting for them, using the emotional blackmail she had on Mighty to sway him into taking the wizard down. Then Metal Sonic happened, and Scarlet went out of his way to make sure she wasn't hurt.

Why?

She didn't get it. Was he playing her? What was his angle? Did he already know what she was doing, and was giving her a window to back out before either of them lost face?

Was he really just being… nice?

Fiona had no idea, and the uncertainty was what was getting to her.

A green flash of light blinded the drivers, causing them to slow down until it passed.

"What was that?" Fiona asked.

"Ping!"

"I haven't the foggiest, either, but I believe that eerie light originated from the direction of the echidna ruins at the island's center!"

Heavy tilted the yoke up, setting the vehicle gently onto the outskirts of where the glowing flashes were focused, near the long river that wound around the island. Past the green lights, they could see massive rocks rising out of the ground, suspended by green auras. The loose stones arranged themselves into new forms, the jagged cliffs and spires forming into the rough shapes of walls and towers. Before their eyes, the constructions became increasingly defined, turning into finely-masoned bricks and architectural marvels.

"What on Mobius…?" Fiona gasped. "Is that a city?"

"No city we've seen on the Floating Island before," Heavy said.

The edges of this strange place were patrolled by tall, gray robots that Fiona hadn't seen before. They were as tall as SWATbots, yet their designs were subtly off in a way she couldn't place. Though, after years of dealing with Robotnik's machines, she could tell on instinct that these weren't made by him.

"Ping!" Bomb called out, pointing at the glowing figure at the center of the city.

The glowing being was the average size of a mobian, covered in immaculate gold and blue armor. His jagged, golden mask covered only the top of his white-eyed face, leaving a twisted rictus grin that was clear to see. Out of the back of the entity's head, she could see striped rows of red echidna dreadlocks. In one hand, he possessed a serpentine scepter of emerald green, which he waved to and fro like a conductor's baton.

Where the glowing man moved the staff, the masses of earth fit into place. He swung the rod forward, building a cyclopean, black citadel that stood tall above the rest.

"RISE, MY NEKRONOPOLIS! MAY YOUR DARK MAGNIFICENCE BLIND THE DENIZENS OF THE SURFACE WITH THIS MONUMENT TO MY GLORY!"

The warlock's insane cackles of delight spread far and wide, until they were cut off by a bolt of energy to the face.

"Who dares strike the almighty Enerjak?!" the being howled, superheated plasma dripping off his mask.

Enerjak turned to where the shot came from at the same time Fiona and the others did, where they all saw the red-eyed, sneering Metal Sonic.

"What, do you live under a rock or something?" Metal Sonic quipped. "Now that I lost that purple lizard and had a little pick-me-up from your energy turbines, I regret to inform you that you're squatting on Doctor Robotnik's property! So kindly vacate the premises and--"

The snarling Enerjak waved his hand, releasing a broad wave of destructive power!

"NO! The Floating Island is MINE TO CONQUER!"

Metal Sonic fired up his rockets and juked out of the way of the attack, which carved a deep groove into one of the distant mountains. Fiona didn't even need to put on her binoculars to see the devastating damage Enerjak was capable of.

While Enerjak was reveling in his power, Metal Sonic flew in a corkscrew and delivered an uppercut to the echidna's jaw with a sledgehammer attachment over his fist.

"Yours to conquer? Take a number, Enerjoke!"

With that, it was on. Enerjak projected his green blasts of energy at the evasive Metal Sonic, in what almost felt like a repetition of Scarlet's fight with the super badnik.

"You have made a fatal error, robot! Now perish for it!"

The key difference was Enerjak clearly reveled in his power. Scarlet fought with a lot more care and precision, being seriously rattled after his foray into friendly fire. This chaos sorcerer, on the other hand, threw his weight around with an almost childlike glee. His beams of force, bolts of lightning, and explosions of green energy went wide, bombarding his own city and robots. Enerjak was far more concerned with hitting Metal Sonic than the damage he was doing to his 'previous' city and the robots he put around it. Should this battle continue, he'd have to start over from the ground up.

As the two of them battled in the sky, Fiona began ripping foliage out of the nearby trees and putting them on top of the hover pod.

"What are you doing?" Heavy inquired.

She tilted her face towards Heavy and Bomb, not slowing down from her task.

"Camouflage! Now help me keep us out of their sight!"

The Mechanix got to work, helping her disguise their hovercraft until it was as concealed as they could on such a tight time budget. Meanwhile, Metal Sonic swiftly darted towards Enerjak for another attack. One that would turn out to be a tactical miscalculation. Two beams of light poured out of Enerjak's eyes, trapping Metal Sonic in a green energy field.

"C-Cheater!" Metal Sonic shouted, now totally paralyzed.

"For over four centuries, I have been denied my righteous destiny! I will not be defied by an arrogant machine for a second more!"

Enerjak spread his arms out wide. Fiona had a bad feeling about what he was planning, and screwed her eyes shut. Everything went white, and when Fiona opened her eyes again, Metal Sonic was gone.

Enerjak is untouchable.

"Let that be a lesson to all who would stand against the new god-king of Mobius!" Enerjak proclaimed, to seemingly no one.

Unless, of course, he knew they were hiding, and that was an open invitation for them to come out before he made them come out. Fiona froze, waiting to see when Enerjak would call them out, only for the divine being to fly away.

"That was a frightening display of force," observed Heavy. "Is everyone alright?"

"Yeah. Fine."

Fiona realized that Enerjak, for all of the blatant power at his disposal, hadn't noticed them at all. For a so-called god, his awareness left a lot to be desired.

That begged the question: Did he have other weaknesses she could exploit?

"Y-Yo! Mind lending me a waldo?"

Fiona and the Mechanix spun around. Behind them, they saw the smoking crater where Metal Sonic crash landed. The super badnik was in a sorry state, one leg and both arms twisted at right angles. His head was half buried in the dirt, one green eye indicating that he was critically low on power.

"Metal Sonic!" Heavy shouted, his arms raised into a boxing pose to go with his mitts.

"Ping, ping!" Bomb declared.

"Not too loud!" Metal Sonic said. "Think that chaos dynamo's gonna go easier on you three if he comes sniffing this way?"

"Give us one good reason why we shouldn't have you stripped down for spare parts while we have the chance to make it stick!"

"Maybe Robotnik will take you back?" he offered. "I'll put in a good word--"

"Don't," Fiona interjected. Not to silence Metal Sonic, but to stop Heavy or Bomb before they could permanently shut him up. "We need him alive."

"We do?" asked Heavy.

"Ping?" asked Bomb.

"You do?" asked Metal Sonic.

"We do. For all of the worthless words that came out of your motor mouth, you got one thing right. None of us stand a chance against Enerjak. Not if we're doing it alone."

"You aren't suggesting that we work with this thug, do you?" Heavy asked, incredulously.

Metal Sonic laughed.

"Look, fox! I don't think you know how this whole 'super badnik' shtick works. You help me, and I don't have the big man with the XXXL Egg-O-Matic send you to the roboti--" Fiona placed an orange and yellow boot on Metal Sonic's back. "H-Hey!"

She flicked the multitool she palmed off the Mechanix's hover pod to the flathead screwdriver, the end aimed at Metal Sonic's remaining good eye.

"You want to get fixed, you cooperate. You don't cooperate, I let those two break you down and turn you into Mister Scarlet's new punching bag. Capisce?"

"Alright, alright!" Metal Sonic said in surrender. "You've got my help for this, but after that, I'm jetting back to Robotropolis. Deal?"

As cathartic as it was to threaten to take a screwdriver to a Sonic's eye, Fiona had work to do. She took her boot off the badnik and gestured for Heavy to load him into the pod.

"Deal."

That was how Fiona Fox played the game. She used her head. She balanced personalities. She made arrangements. Now, she was going leverage what she had to pick off that wannabe god getting in the way of her ruby.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

There goes our second POV switch up chapter. I wanted to do another one since the one with Rob O' the Hedge in Chapter 13, and now felt as good a time as any to do another!

Alas, I don't have a lot to say in the notes this time, except to say that I've considered writing my own datafiles for various countries and such in regards to Ruby Haze. Expansions of the material presented in the Complete Sonic Encyclopedia, with my own additions based on what's needed for this fic. If the people reading this have suggestions for where I might want to focus these hypothetical datafiles, then let me know.

Thanks for reading.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 27: Ring and a Prayer

It was an agonizingly long time until the sun rose over Angel Island.

After Fiona and Heavy caught us up on what they saw out there, we planned to sleep in shifts. However, with Vector as hurt as he was, the robots not needing to sleep, and Fiona too rattled by seeing Enerjak carve a hole in a mountain to want to sleep, it left the crocodile and I as the two sleeping. At least, Vector got to sleep after he was cleared of a head injury that would make losing consciousness a very bad idea. Mighty the Armadillo was still under Enerjak's mind control, same as Espio the Chameleon and Charmy Bee. If any of them mentioned that one of the likely places we were hiding was Mighty's home, then the plan was for someone to wake me up before they brought the house down.

We held our breath, waited for the danger to come, and Enerjak never showed up.

He was still out there. I didn't need to see Enerjak to believe what I was told. His presence was like a shadow cast across the island, enveloping it in negative energies that the Phantom Ruby disagreed with. Out of everyone in our slapdash task force, I alone was able to sense his overwhelming aura of evil.

The hard part was keeping that wicked energy out of my head. I could hear Enerjak's mad laughter on the fringes of my restless dreams. I was able to intuit the outline of his glowing figure whenever I closed my eyes. I didn't think I could stand another day of it.

With the morning came a degree of relief. When the sun's rays touched my scales, my draconic form went up into ruby smoke. My body was my body, and my mind was my mind.

Mostly.

I was relieved to be human again, though I could feel the dragon in a state of reluctant dormancy beneath my skin. Though I wasn't sure of the exact cause of me acquiring the transformation, I doubted it would 'settle down' as long as Enerjak was in town.

That was too close for comfort. I didn't know for sure if the day would fix it.

I was able to admit that, in a better set of circumstances, becoming a dragon would've been pretty damn cool. The extra strength was greatly appreciated, but more than any other time, my mind as the werebeast was at the mercy of the Phantom Ruby's manipulations. I was two for two on attacking my own allies last night. As a weredragon, I almost went further than beating Vector within an inch of his life.

"How do you feel?" Heavy asked, once I'd returned from an extended session of morning stretches to help me reacclimate. I also spent a couple of hours meditating, during which the machinist machine hammered out a skeletal steel limb on a workbench.

I pulled my left arm back, and felt a familiar 'pop' from the motion in my shoulder. I've had that since a car accident a few years back that totaled my car and needed months of physical therapy to recover. It didn't hurt, but it was loud enough to startle the hell out of people when they took notice. A pretty fun party trick.

My body didn't feel like my body without the little things, and I wasn't able to hear that percussive flair as a dragon.

♦ 5

"Would you believe me if I said I was feeling drained?"

"That's to be expected. You put up a great showing against Metal Sonic!"

"It was a lucky shot," the super badnik said from the other side of the room.

As much as I wanted to ignore him, the Metal Sonic with emotional maturity matching his number was leaning on one of the stone walls. Heavy and Bomb spent the night fixing our temporary ally, replacing Metal's damaged parts with fresh ones that his systems would identify as authorized repairs. The super badnik was refurbished, with a new paint job to replace the sections stripped bare by energy burns. He had a black torso that should reduce his power gem's profile against instruments (or individuals) that could detect its signature, the alabaster streaks going down 2.5's quills making the badnik look like a cross between Neo Metal Sonic and a decked-out sports car.

Fiona had done what I would've thought was impossible, convincing one of Robotnik's most dangerous troubleshooters to agree to a temporary ceasefire. I was impressed enough to consider looking past her raging attitude problem.

Then again, was it that hard to believe? The Mechanix went turncoat of their own volition. Gamma and Omega are bound to rebel if they get built in this universe. There's been at least one disloyal Metal Sonics in the games, so maybe we could get this one to defect?

"We're on the same side now," I reminded him. "You can stop trying to get under my skin."

"Is it working?"

"…No?"

Metal Sonic laughed.

"How else am I going to test out my material while you guys make with the clever organic planny-plan thing?" Metal Sonic drawled, making a theatrical gesture with his remaining arm. I didn't react. "Bah, you guys are no fun!"

"I don't have a lot of time for 'fun' these days."

Metal Sonic brought his hand to his chin.

"What do you do for fun, Wiz? Curl up by the fireplace with a nice spell book?"

"No comment."

Heavy brought the new arm into range of Metal Sonic's shoulder socket, where it locked into place.

"The auto repair from your power gem matrix should do the rest," Heavy said sternly. "Be on your best behavior, Metal Sonic. We won't have any patience for funny business."

Metal Sonic tested out the new arm by making a lackadaisical 'W' shape over his chest. It was a gesture borrowed from the Walkers faith.

"Cross my power gem and hope for a system failure!" Metal Sonic trilled.

You and me both.

"Speaking of power sources," I segued, circling back to a previous subject. "I'm overdue for a recharge. Do you have anything I can siphon?"

Heavy's ball joint shoulders sagged.

"I'd offer to let you use our power gems as before, but our reactors have been overtaxed," Heavy said dejectedly. "Unlike the chaos emerald's eternal output, a power gem can only yield infinite energy over time. We'd need another day to return to our full capabilities."

It didn't sound far off from a chaos drive.

"And just so we're clear, I'm not offering," Metal Sonic contributed.

I racked my brain for other power sources on the island. The Launch Base was a no-go because I may have broken it. Lava Reef could have viable lava pumps, but I wasn't very heat resistant without prepping a fire shield first. That didn't seem to stop Sonic, so I could consider it as a viable option.

"Is there a Lake of Rings on the island I could collect rings from?" I asked.

Absent a neck, Heavy rotated clockwise and counterclockwise to simulate shaking his head.

"The only ring lake I know of is in the isolated swampland Vector calls home, but its output is approximately two in a blue moon."

He just had to say 'moon', didn't he?

"Good to know. If anyone needs me, I'm gonna go check the others."

"Before you go," Heavy said, pulling out a steel chest from under his bench. "I do have something you could use as a stopgap."

"Stopgap?"

Heavy popped open the chest, enveloping the room in a yellow glow. The box contained half a dozen gems of varying shapes and sizes, each one resonating with chaos energy.

"These are lower-grade power gems. Slower, less efficient, and less predictable. Should it become damaged, your best recourse is to throw it very far and hope for the best."

"And how bad would it be if it breaks?"

He plucked a small, triangular stone out of the pile and handed it to me. It was the size and shape of a 1D4.

"We don't have hard data for the upper limits of spacetime distortion a misaligned power gem can instigate. This is the safest one, but the advice remains the same."

My takeaway was that I should throw it at Enerjak the second it started acting funny.

"Understood."

I gingerly accepted the volatile gift, the yellow gem latching itself onto the surface of the Phantom Ruby like a fridge magnet.

⟁ ♦ 6

I could feel the effects right away. It was a steady trickle of energy, rather than the bucket of power I got per ring.

"Thank you," I said, before walking to the other side of the tunnel to check on the others.

Traversing around dumbbells and barbells of varyingly intimidating sizes, I found Bomb and Fiona at the former dining room and current war room. They broke down everything they had on Enerjak so I could be better debriefed. It amounted to a lot to handle and not much to work with. The impression they got was that the chaos-slinger was obsessively focused on completing that city before expanding his gaze upon the rest of Mobius.

Obsession felt like the right word to describe Enerjak's goal of constructing his 'Nekronopolis', as he was pouring all of his individual efforts on it. Fiona saw him fix the damage Metal Sonic caused with a mere thought. From that perspective, he was taking his time with the process by choice, in the same way a hobbyist might do the same with making a miniature town for their model trains to circle? Attacking Enerjak's vanity project to distract him was an option, assuming we weren't too attached to whoever got sent to try it.

"Okay, but how are you guys holding up?" I asked them once the chance arose.

"Ping!" said Bomb, who supplemented his answer with a thumbs-up.

"Good to hear. Fiona? You okay?"

Fiona was drooping. Her hair was mussed up, and her eyes were reddened. The fox's entire body was sluggish, yet twitchy from her attempt to pull off an all-nighter by using Mighty's tea stores as a surrogate for sleep.

"Hwa?" she murmured.

A new tactic was needed.

"Fiona, what's Vector's status?"

She sat up in her seat, at attention. Fiona ended up doing most of the first aid on Vector, because I was floundering to get it done right with my claws getting in the way.

"The croc's stable. He's lucky I could pull that off with the contents of a medicine cabinet and a roll of sports tape."

Steadily, Fiona started sliding again.

"I think you should get some rest," I said lightly to her, pouring a cup of tea for myself.

She shook her head.

"No no, I'm up. Now that you're awake, I need your feedback on this magic… stuff."

I offered Fiona a tissue so she could wipe the drool off her face. She'd accumulated some from when she was snoozing.

"You're absolutely sure you don't want to take a minute and freshen up?"

Fiona snatched the tissue out of my hands, then got up and headed for the bathroom.

"Fine, fine. Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back."

I unwrapped a protein bar from off the shelf and skimmed through the detailed (if increasingly incoherent) strategies Fiona had been working on overnight. Definitely gonna have to reimburse the armadillo later. In regards to the plans, I could see she was struggling to get around the fundamental issue that Enerjak was a rogue super form. He might be impervious to harm, making any full-frontal assaults a losing battle from the start. If we knew what he was drawing all of his strength from, then we could separate him from his power source and wail on him.

All I had to do was make a strategy to defeat myself. This was an outside context problem, when I thought I was the outside context problem to everyone else.

There's only one way we're going to match a super form, and I'm really hoping we find Knuckles before I have to do it myself.

I brought my index and middle finger to my temple.

Any luck out there?

Figment the Phantom Flicky let out an irritated tweet. In my mind's eye, I could see he was on the edge of a red desert that looked more like the Australian Outback than the sandy dunes of Efrika. The occasional breach of the surface by hungry sandworms chasing prey was enough to tell me that the disparate locales still had something in common.

Good work so far, Figment.

My familiar let out a snort.

He wasn't ecstatic to hear that his faithful service against a SWATbot horde led by twin super badnik commanders was being rewarded with more work. Enerjak's oppressive aura made it hard for me to extend my portals past the boundaries of Angel Island, with my bond to Figment being the exception. I couldn't tell if that was intentional, as a way to lock down 'his' island, but the end result was that we were on our own. I was able to rope Figment in to help us keep track of what was going on out there. At the moment, he was doing a full circle around the island so that I could establish a familiarity with the terrain. Every place he went at my behest counted as one I did for the purposes of my crystal ball.

While waiting until the Phantom Ruby was at max charge would be the smart thing to do, it wouldn't be the right one. Figment reported that Enerjak's strange, humanoid robots were stomping into the nearby settlements. The fungus-shaped huts in the Mushroom Hills, a vibrant jungle village of chameleons sequestered in what appeared to be Botanic Base, and the windmill-laden houses at the base of Mt. Ice Cap were all visited by his 'mechanauts'. The only directive of the mechanauts thus far has been to proclaim Enerjak's sovereignty; the enforcement phase hadn't started.

That could change in a matter of days, hours, or minutes. What's worse was that the Chaotix members that remained under his control were being used as the tips of Enerjak's spears. Espio, Mighty, and Charmy were spread out as the leaders of the mechanaut troops, asking the bewildered civilians that used Angel Island as their refuge from Robotnik if they'd seen Vector or a purple dragon around. I must've upset Enerjak by stealing away the leader of the Chaotix, but not to the extent of him wanting to investigate where we went himself. That, too, couldn't be gambled on to last.

Back at Rock Hill, my eyes went to the yellow strip of pleather that'd been set on the dining room table. It was Vector's belt, which had the remains of his tape player and a smaller pouch on the side. Opening his pockets on a hunch, I found one last pair of rings, which had been shrunk down for ease of transport.

Vector's a smart cookie, and lives close to the Lake of Rings. Of course he'd have a backup.

I went to the bedroom door and gave it a knock.

"Vector, you awake?"

The crocodile let out a pained groan.

"Johnny, izzat you?"

"Yes, are you decent?"

"Am I what?"

Oh. Right. Pants are more an exception than the rule here.

"Forget it. I'm coming in."

I entered the room, which was a humble den reminiscent of a Mercian abode. With the adrenaline out of his system, Vector was looking significantly worse for wear. The mobian's head and torso were bandaged up like the top half of a mummy costume. He looked frail, which was the last thing that should come to mind when you see Vector the Crocodile.

Vector looked at me with surprise and alarm.

"Yo yo yo! Who the heck are you?"

I frowned.

"Vector, we just--" I remembered that happened when I was a dragon. "It's me, Scarlet. I'm not usually a dragon. That was very much a new thing."

"So you're an overlander? That's whack, Mac."

"Why are you talking like that?" I couldn't put off asking anymore.

Vector tensed, furrowing his brow.

"Like what?"

"Like--"

Like a bad stereotype of how old people thought youth culture sounded like decades ago. I wasn't going to say that out loud, but Vector didn't give me the chance not to.

"Whaddya mean? This is how everybody talks the talk on the mean streets! If you can't handle the way the V-Man speaks, then stay out of the V-Man's heat!"

I was beginning to receive the impression he genuinely talked to everyone this way, in spite of it sounding incredibly fake. I flicked one of Vector's backup rings into the air, expanding it to full size. The ring hovered an inch above my finger.

"Look. Try to keep the funky lingo to a minimum, and I'll heal you back to normal."

He stopped, taken aback.

"You can do that? For real?"

"Yes," I said unreservedly. "Actually, I was gonna do that anyway because I feel bad for punching you. But still. Do you consent?"

"Consent to what?"

"I need you to say that it's okay for me to do this."

"Why's that? So I can't sue?"

Is there still a legal system that can sue people?

"You know, in case anything goes wrong."

"What could go wrong?"

I took another deep breath.

"I wish you phrased that literally any other way. There is some risk involved in this."

Vector laughed, and his laugh was also a cough.

"Man, you think I'd let a little risk stop me from saving me friends?" He sat up in bed, beating his chest confidently. This caused him to start coughing again. "B-Bring it on!"

I nodded, accepting that this was something I kicked down the road for long enough.

I needed Vector fighting fit. I needed him to show me where we could get more rings. I also needed to do this for myself, and Vector was volunteering to be the test subject.

No more dress rehearsal.

The ring drifted between us. If ring energy healed me, and I healed Figment using energy I got from the rings, then I could use the rings to heal Vector.

It's showtime.

I raised my hand, trying to repeat the steps I took to psyche myself up to fire off a healing spell last time. Taking it slow and steady.

What was I thinking about last time? Trying not to fail? Being worried that I'd traumatize Amy if I killed the little flicky with my power? Worried that it'd go totally fine, establishing that the forces of life and death were at my fingertips?

It was a month or two ago, so I couldn't actually remember.

What I should've been thinking about was how funny it was that, in this timeline gone awry, Amy Rose of all people ended up looking up to me. The positive, do-anything girl who was able to face her fears to save an innocent bird from Doctor Eggman. The gal who broke through the programming of Gamma to help the robot regain their heart. She convinced Shadow that people were still worth fighting for after the world took everything away from him. Helped talk Silver out of his dogmatic agenda to kill the Iblis Trigger. Over time, she became one of the most kind and empathetic characters in the cast.

This time, I used a singular mote of Phantom Ruby energy to initiate my connection to the ring, expending the rest of my concentration on the ring itself.

For some reason, this Amy looked up to me. I'm not sure how that happened, but 'Mister Wizard' couldn't let her down now, could he?

No. I couldn't.

The ring was covered in brilliant white sparkles. Focusing on the pinpricks of light, I closed my eyes and sent a clear message to them.

I need you to heal Vector. Please. His friends need him, and so do I.

The magic ring flew straight into Vector, tearing away the layers of blankets and sports tape covering him as it evaporated into his body.

"Wowza!"

The crocodile stood up in a jolt!

"How do you feel?" I asked.

He flexed his muscles. I couldn't see any on his skinny arms, though he was practically radiating with good health compared to how he was before. I felt my legs get wobbly, until Vector energetically took me by the arm and we both stepped out of the room.

"Man oh man, I feel like a million mobiums! I reckon a deal's a deal, mate!"

"Hmm?"

Vector's inauthentic 'street' accent gave way to a more natural tone.

"I'll lower my lingo for your sake, Johnny. After seeing you do a magic trick like that, I'll even sing the blues if you ask me to!"

"No need to sing me the blues, Vector. And it wasn't that hard once I got the ball rolling. All it took was a little… positivity."

Suddenly, it clicked. A breakthrough. One that was staring me in the face.

We've known since Sonic Adventure that the energy generated by the Chaos Emeralds had two polarities: Positive and negative. When the Chaos Emeralds were drained of their negative power, the positive energy remained.

Positive energy, plus positive thoughts, equaled positive outcomes. Super Sonic, freedom from Robotnik's control, curing wounds, miracles.

Negative energy, plus negative thoughts, equaled negative outcomes. Perfect Chaos, Dark Gaia, Enerjak, the Phantom Ruby.

Rings carry a positive charge, and the Ruby doesn't.

Vector walked over to one of Mighty's exercise machines. He pulled out another music player from the seat, headphones and all.

"I knew I loaned him my backup stereo!" Vector said. He looped the earpiece over his head and reattached the music device to his belt. "What else can you do with those rings?

That was a great question.

Curious, but running low on patience for its cryptic nonsense, I pulled out my copy of the Ars Ixia and willed it to show me anything it had on them. A passage I'd overlooked in my prior readings made itself known via bright magenta text. The interior of the two-page spread was decorated in intricate, interlocking circles of gold leaf.

Finally, a search engine!

"I was right about the spell book!" Metal Sonic said when he barged in. "NERD ALERT!"

"Power rings are the lifeblood of the Ixian Magicks," I read out aloud from the manuscript, trying to ignore Metal Sonic using his VTOL capabilities to read over my shoulder. "They congregate in places where the barriers between Mobius and the Otherzone grow thin. One ring alone can grant great strength, heal the infirm, or reveal a glimpse of insight beyond mortal ken. A multitude of rings forms a chain that unifies the… did that say 'insight'?"

"It means the ability to see and know stuff," Metal Sonic said.

"Very funny."

"All I'm seeing is that you've got a funny idea of allies for a freedom fighter," Vector said warily. "You sure we've gotta keep him?"

"Ping?" Bomb pondered.

"That ain't what I meant, Bomb! You and Heavy are hip with it!"

"Ping!"

"Does everyone understand what he's saying except me?" I asked. "And trust me, Vector, this'll be a temporary arrangement."

"I hear you, brother," Metal Sonic said.

"That's it!" Fiona shouted, her hair still dripping from an express shower.

"What's it?" Vector asked.

I thought she was exclaiming that she was done with our banter, when she clarified the purpose of her statement.

"Scarlet! You can use a power ring to tell us where the Guardian went!"

I blinked.

"I can?"

"That's what your book said, didn't it?"

I looked back at the book. The book didn't provide specifics, merely alluding to the fact that a ring could be tapped for knowledge.

"I guess?"

"Then try it! Unless anyone has any better ideas on how to find Knuckles?"

My third eye flipped back to Figment, who appeared to be in a heated argument with a white mobini cockatoo that was squawking at him from a tall tree.

"This is my tree, bird brain!" the cockatoo said. He said. "Get your own!"

Mobini aren't supposed to talk, right?

Figment furiously cawed back, as the parrot was making hand gestures with his wing feathers in such a way that my familiar didn't appreciate.

"No, I didn't see Knuckles the Echidna! And I wouldn't tell you if I did, outlander!

Figment chirped out a bitter response to the sharp words of the cockatoo. He scratched the ground in annoyance, talons tearing grooves into the stone. If that cockatoo kept pushing his luck, it wouldn't turn out well for him.

"Whatcha gonna do about it, you freaky feather duster?"

Figment studiously observed the mobini's wings. In a great feat of dexterity, Figment bent his own feathers in such a way that allowed him to give that cockatoo the bird.

"That's it, you drongo! I'm gonna make your scars match!"

The cockatoo dove off his perch to strike Figment, only for him to get pimp slapped by Figment's wing. The loudmouthed bird was sent flying, and not in a good way. When he landed on the forest floor, my familiar trotted towards him.

"Not the face! Not the face!"

Figment, please don't kill him.

Figment obliged, and began kicking the cockatoo in the ribs.

"John?" Fiona said.

"That Enerjak fella said he was gonna check on Knux and Archy after he'd 'settled in', so wherever they went, he wanted them alive for a while longer," Vector said. "The power ring's the best lead we've got."

"I don't have any better ideas," I said finally.

I brought out the remaining ring from the tether, doing much as I had for the ring I used to heal Vector. It was floating, and I was focusing on getting a result out of it.

The last ring I used went pretty well! Whatever this one did, I could handle it.

"Okay, ring. Show me…"

I faltered. How do I get it to 'reveal' exactly what I wanted to see? What if I worded it wrong and got a wrong result? Thinking it over, there was only one way I could ensure the ring would show me either Knuckles or the other person attached to the Master Emerald I'd want to contact.

It might be a bit early to speak to Tikal, but we're already far off the beaten path. Why not take the story arc with her and Chaos off the rails, too?

"Show me the echidnas on Mobius?" I said, assuming that would be specific enough to filter out the Nocturnus Clan.

Fiona looked aghast.

"John, no!"

The ring blasted me with a formless mass of light, bypassing my skull and filling my brain with a multitude of faces! It was a horde of identities, clashing into each other in an attempt to make room in my headcase!

⌾⌾ Athair ⌾ Bimmy ⌾ Bolland ⌾ Darwin ⌾ DIMITRI ⌾ Finitevus ⌾⌾

I fell to my knees from the inflow of information. In the real world, which felt rather distant, I heard voices.

"Strewth! What'd it do to him!?"

"He's having a seizure!"

I needed to be more specific before I developed a cerebral hemorrhage.

S-Show me the Guardian!

Rather than experience a release from the pain when I narrowed the breadth, I instead received a greater amount of depth. The mob of faces gave way to a myriad of histories that swirled around my mind. The snippets of their existences became harder and harder for me to parse or ignore. They were an entire lineage, burrowing into my soul!

⌾⌾ Hawking, son of Mathias ⌾ Tobor, son of Hawking ⌾ Spectre, son of Tobor ⌾⌾

I cut off the information deluge at the source, reinforcing my control over my mindscape by using my ruby power to dominate the fragmentary remains of the ring! The gleaming embers of knowledge went from gold to pink!

Enough!

I shoved all of my newfound, unwanted knowledge back into a ring shape, shaking it!

This is my mind! There's only one person in charge here, and that's me!

Show me Knuckles the Echidna!

The pink ring crumbled in my hands, this time showing me exactly what I wanted to see.

⌾⌾ A red echidna with a white crest on his chest, spiked gloves on his fists, and colorful sneakers on his feet. He was in Sandopolis Desert, braving the intense environment beside a tiny fire ant wearing a brown cowboy hat and matching accessories. ⌾⌾

I held on to that image as the rest of the mystical vision faded, my hands reaching for my crystal ball through the convulsions so that I could chart their location!

Heavy and Vector helped me get up, once I'd shaken off the feedback from the ring. I wasn't planning to do that again for a long while.

"You alright?" Vector asked, helping me get steady.

"What kind of question is that?" Fiona shouted at him. "He's bleeding from his nose!"

"I-I've found them!" I said when I'd caught my breath.

"Then let's go find 'em, Johnny Boy!"

I used a flush of magic to clean my face. Finding the room to make the portal, I created a gateway to the desert at the general area they were standing.

⟁ ♦ 5

Vector turned to Fiona.

"He could do that the whole time?" he asked.

"Only when he remembers," she answered.

"Hey Knuckles!" I shouted to the red echidna.

Knuckles the Echidna turned around, running towards the sound of my voice.

"Over here!"

He jumped into the air and entered a glide to pick up speed, which was when I realized he wasn't slowing down. He raised one fist higher than the other as he aimed for my head!

"ENERJAK!" cried the red echidna, who was near-delirious from sunstroke. I didn't notice sooner because red was his default color.

"Wait, wait!"

This was how I met Knuckles the Echidna. Naturally, it started with me receiving a Knuckles Sandwich.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

I wanted to get one more update out before going to the Sonic Symphony over the weekend. The surprising part was that I actually did it! If you're reading this on the night of posting, then I'll be there tomorrow. I'll take pictures… if the concert lets me!

Vector the Crocodile was introduced to the comic at the same time as all of his friends, in the Knuckles Chaotix special. His early claims to fame in the comic were his borderline incomprehensible slang, rhyming without reason, and kind of acting like an incel. He outgrew all of these horrendous character traits when the comic exchanged hands. Vector could also overclock the volume on his headphones to shoot powerful sonic blasts, which really made me wonder how he wasn't deaf by the time the reboot happened.

Next time: We do what I've wanted to do for a long while. This story is based on a Knuckles miniseries, and we can finally say hello to the main character!

Unlike in the stories with his name on them, I promise he'll be important to how this ends.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 28: Knuckles Dust Off

My first interaction with Knuckles the Echidna was one I'd been dreading as an inevitability for quite some time. Almost as badly as I'd been worrying when I'd meet another 'person of interest' like Sonic, Tails, or Sally. What would I say when it happened? How would I introduce myself? Would whatever I said get fully vetted and approved by my brain before it left my mouth? I was able to hold it together when I met with Amy because I hadn't pieced together who she was at the time, and with Bean & Bark because I wasn't nearly as attached to them. I thought I'd act weird around Vector or the Chaotix, but they ended up beating me to the punch in terms of weirdness.

My first interaction with Knuckles was happening right now, and it was happening in the worst way I could imagine.

"Wait, wait!"

Knuckles gilded towards me like an echidna-guided missile. His aim was lagging due to the heat stroke he'd suffered during his stint in the desert, but the glowing bullseye of my portal meant he had no trouble finding where to plant his fists. The hero of Angel Island made it clear he wasn't holding back, shifting his gliding punch into a lethal corkscrew drill!

Dodge? Block?

An awful lot of soft targets were standing near me.

Block!

I stowed my crystal ball and drew my extreme gear from Null Space. The Red Chimera wasn't just a piece of metal standing between myself and danger. It was purpose-built as a combat shield, with increased size and weight that made it much sturdier than your average air board. Reinforcing the dense materials of the board with crystal matter, I planted my feet and braced for impact!

⟁ ♦ 4

When Knuckles made his two-fisted landing, the crystal shell around the extreme gear shattered. A pair of fissures from the force of the strike tore through my hardware, stopping a direct hit by a hare's breath. Were I not able to stand my ground against his spiraling charge, I would've been sent tumbling into Mighty's weight collection.

"Get off!" I said as I swung both halves of the broken shield forwards.

Knuckles detached his spiked gloves from my gear and flipped back, landing on the ground with a thump. The super strong echidna was unsteady on his feet, eyes unfocused, and no less dangerous for it. Spending all day in the hot sand thinking about what he'd do to Enerjak when he caught up to him did Knuckles no favors now that he's in a rage.

That wouldn't be doing me any favors, either.

"Knuckles!" Vector called out, relief clear in his voice. "We've been searching all over for you!"

Knuckles turned towards his friend, confused.

"Vector, what're you…?" His expression rapidly hardened. "Wait! This is a trick, isn't it!?"

Vector was put on the backfoot.

"What? Get your head on straight! We need to get our friends back from Enerjak!"

"You're not gonna fool me!"

Knuckles threw a woozy haymaker at Vector, which he dodged by contorting his narrow body around the oncoming fist.

"Yo yo yo! I just got off the mend!"

"Ooh, fifty mobiums on the echidna beating his friend into a leather handbag!" Metal Sonic jeered.

"PING!" shouted Bomb, who attempted to be the voice of reason.

I had to act fast. Vector had good reflexes, but he wasn't durable. Bomb was standing between them, trying to mediate, which meant any stray attack sent his way would trigger a detonation. If Vector said I hit like Knuckles as a dragon, then I stood no chance of putting him in check as an augmented human.

That left me with one last option. At least, one that wasn't taking my chances with a gun.

"Simmer down!" I commanded, using magic to halt Knuckles before he could rush them.

⟁ ♦ 3

Knuckles' body was paralyzed by a ruby haze around his mind. He was under my sway.

"NEVER!" he cried defiantly.

Scratch that. I thought he was under my sway, when gnarled spikes of willpower tore at the edges of my influence. Unlike the Fearsome Foursome, who surrendered out of obligation, or Fiona, whose composure broke when she was taken off guard, Knuckles was mad enough that he threatened to break loose at any second.

"We aren't your enemies!" I intoned, dropping my busted board so I could bring additional focus to bear on Knuckles. Keeping my hands free seemed to help my concentration. I knew that I could push further, but I didn't know how far I could go before something broke.

"Yes. You. Are!"

"Be calm! Be at peace! I command you to listen to the words I am saying!"

⟁ ♦ 2

Knuckles was adamant, and above all else, stubborn. He let out a wild snort, lunging at me to disrupt my spell! We were both on the ground, where I struggled to get loose from his hold! The echidna grabbed me by the collar with one hand, reeling the other one back for a skull-caving wallop.

"Listen to crunch time, Dimitri!"

That name again!

"Who the hell is Dimitri!?"

My claws popped out on instinct.

It was happening again. I knew the Phantom Ruby was altering my judgment, trying to make me act more violent. More reckless. The thoughts sounded like my own, but twisted and distorted. I tried to force the claws back behind my fingertips, but not all of them were cooperating.

Stop! I don't want to hurt him!

And I don't want him to hurt me!

It's not a binary decision!

Right before Knuckles delivered his coup de grâce, or I could counter by raking his face, the two of us were doused with enough water to take the wind out of our sails.

"H-Hey!"

"What the--!?" Knuckles sputtered out.

"How about both of you cool off?" Fiona reprimanded, the sprayer attached to the kitchen sink in one hand.

Knuckles looked down at me, his delirium-induced wrath having melted away.

"Who the heck are you?"

I manifested a towel from Null Space and dried my face.

"Freedom Fighter," I said curtly.

Knuckles gave me a dubious look, an eyebrow raised.

"You sure about that?"

I furrowed my brow and handed him the towel.

"Pretty sure."

"What're more of you Freedom Fighters doing on my island?" he asked bluntly.

"Saving your life," I replied in exasperation. "You're welcome."

"For Walkers' sake, would you get offa the overlander already?" an unfamiliar, gruff voice groused from behind my back.

I tilted my head around, identifying the source of the request as a dark red, mobian ant. The body plan of the ant was vaguely in line with other insect mobians, such as Presto and Cadence. I saw four arms sticking out from the four holes of his vest, two legs, a set of antennae that poked through the sides of his cowboy hat, and a pair of vestigial mandibles.

Most notably, the stranger was half a foot tall. Small enough to fit in the palm of Fiona's hand, where he currently stood. I didn't notice him a moment ago, as he was easily the smallest mobian I'd encountered thus far.

"My bad."

Knuckles bashfully obliged the ant and climbed off my neck. I got up from the ground, drying myself off with a light whoosh of wind.

"Thank you. As Vector was trying to say earlier, Fiona Fox and I are with the Crazy Kritter Freedom Fighters in Mercia."

"Sir Scarlet's a local legend," Fiona added.

I turned my head towards her, not sure if she was making that up to try and sate my ego or make me seem more impressive.

Wait, did I get knighted and no one said anything?

Knuckles looked back to where Vector was standing, doing a double-take.

"Vector?"

The crocodile shot him a thumbs-up, tossing him a water bottle.

"I'm the real deal! And so's Scarlet! The fly wizard freed me from Enerjak's control and brought us back to Mighty's place so we could get ready for a rematch!"

Knuckles twisted the cap off the bottle, showing a lot of dexterity with his boxing gloves. He paused to rehydrate before speaking, a couple of emotions flashing across his face. Anger at Enerjak, fear for the safety of his friends, shame that he was taken for a ride, and almost did even more damage in the process.

I can relate.

"Wizard, huh?"

"So I've been told."

"And if you're all real, that means…" Knuckles started, his eyes looking around until they locked onto the super badnik in the room. "Metal Sonic!?"

"Thought you would never notice!" he said cheekily.

"What're you doing here? Trying to take advantage of me being away to--!"

I raised a hand before Knuckles could raise his fist. Again.

"Alliance until Enerjak is dealt with."

"You're kidding, right? Do you know what it's capable of?"

"Yes, and that's why we need him on our side right now."

The echidna stopped his pre-emptive attack, letting out a frustrated huff.

"Fine. But keep it on a short leash."

Metal Sonic stuck out his tongue. Not sure why he had one of those, but he did.

"I'll see what I can do."

"What about the others? Espio? Charmy? Mighty? Heavy and Bomb?"

"Present and accounted for!" Heavy shouted as he trundled in. "We were on an expedition to the wreckage of the Happyland theme park with our new allies when that eruption of chaos energy occurred and the Enerjak entity made itself known."

"Ping!" Bomb corroborated.

"That was right before Enerjak attacked us at the Grand Conservatory," Knuckles explained, while explaining nothing to me.

"They were fighting me!" Metal Sonic said.

"The others are still under Enerjak's mind whammy," Vector said. "Johnny Scarlet here's got some magic in his corner we can use to get them back."

"Is that so?" the ant asked skeptically.

By the way the ant talked and carried himself, I got the impression that he was more seasoned than the others. Definitely spent time in military or law enforcement. Couldn't pin an exact age on him, or recognize him from any Sonic media I was aware of. If he was supposed to be important, like Vector implied he was, then the ant would be another blind spot I'd need to approach with care.

"You're… Archie the Ant, I take it?" I asked the red insect.

"Archimedes the Fire Ant," he corrected. "I appreciate you fishin' us out of the Sandopolis Desert. Another day or two out there without water, and we'd both be goners."

"I was happy to--"

Archimedes cut me off.

"That bein' said, I'd appreciate you a lot more if you didn't pull that 'whammy' on any of us again. No matter your intentions, that ain't the kind of magic you sling out willy-nilly."

I nodded, not wanting to get too used to using it on people anyway.

"Are you with the Chaotix?"

Archimedes let out a laugh.

"Hardly! The Chaotix are the Guardian's friends and teammates. I'm his mentor."

The fire ant vanished in a puff of smoke, reappearing on the table. Gazing into the smoke, I could tell it was some kind of short-range teleportation spell with the lingering essence of fire. Clearly, he knew a few spells of his own.

"Never heard of the Guardian having a mentor," Fiona said as she shook the excess of soot off her glove. "I take it you're new?"

"Knuckles only overcame my trials this year," Archimedes clarified. "I trained his father, and his father before him. If you want to point fingers to anybody and call 'em new, it's the flush of outlander tourists flyin' in from the surface makin' my job difficult."

Taking his claims at face value, the ant had to be pretty old. He also seemed familiar with Knuckles' family line, something that remained an enigma in the material I recognized. A blank space full of gaps remaining to be filled.

However, one of his comments irked me. Caused me to hesitate to trust him outright.

"Does that mean you chose not to intervene the first time the island was invaded?"

My eyes flickered to the other people present, and it looked like everyone overlooked that issue, Knuckles included.

"I didn't even think of that!" Vector shouted. "What's the deal, Archy? We could've used the help with Metal Sonic!"

"Got that right!" Metal Sonic said.

Fiona shot him a look. Metal Sonic switched gears to an innocent whistle on his speaker.

Archimedes, for his part, was dismissive of Vector's line of questioning and my own.

"Vector, do ya really think I was sleepin' on the job? I was watchin' from afar until Knuckles was old enough for me to reveal myself. He handled the past couple of attacks just fine without me stepping in, thanks to Sonic passing through and then you kids forming up the Chaotix to be his support team. If he needed the extra help to deal with small fries like Robotnik, then I would've given it without hesitation."

Vector rubbed his chin uncertainly.

"I guess that makes sense."

"Glad you think so. Now that Knuckles is of age, I've taken it upon myself to make sure he's ready for the trials to come."

I closed my eyes for five seconds, considering if I should leave the comment be.

Knuckles handled it just fine?

After everything else I've had to put up with, I didn't have it in me.

"Are you really going to call Robotnik a 'small fry'?"

"We sent Doctor Robotnik packing two times before!" Knuckles said boastfully. "Then we beat up his treasure hunter, Nack the Weasel! I'll beat up as many badniks and mercenaries as the fat man sends my way!"

"So they're just gonna pretend I'm not here?" Metal Sonic whined.

"Ping!"

For a guy who's supposed to be watching the Master Emerald, his vigilance could use work. I know for a fact he couldn't take on an Egg Fleet by himself, and he certainly couldn't handle Enerjak. I didn't even know if he could keep up with Rouge if he kept that mindset, the Chaotix being present or not.

"Knuckles, you fended him off in the short-term. The man has a planet full of resources at his disposal. He'll be back again when he really wants to make his conquest stick."

"I don't know if you noticed, but up here on the Floating Island, the rest of the world ain't any of our concern!" Archimedes said brusquely. "Right now, Enerjak is top priority!"

Not any of your concern? Are you kidding me?

I lifted both halves of my board, fused them back together with magic, and twisted the internal turbine until it coughed up more power I could use.

⟁ ♦ 10

"You need as much help as you can get to contain this 'island concern' before it becomes a planet problem," I said, the words spilling out more harshly than I intended. "If you're going to receive that help, then we're going to need more intel. What is Enerjak?"

The fire ant hopped off the table and onto the tip of the Red Chimera, antennas twitching. That put him at more or less eye level.

"You know what? Upon further review, I've decided you and the little lady have done enough for us. You're free to go."

"Excuse me?" Fiona said, affronted.

Archimedes pointed two of his right hands to the door.

"You heard me. You're done your part, and now you're through. We don't need mavericks with bad attitudes causing us any more headaches while we deal with Enerjak. Shuffle back to your princedom in Eurish, and we'll take things from here."

My nerves have been dangerously frayed as-is, and Archimedes wasn't helping. I warped the board away from under Archimedes' feet, placing him on a much more precarious crystal platform.

"We don't answer to your authority," I stated. "Unless you're withholding some very pertinent information, none of you can handle an insane super form on your lonesome. You need our help to stop him, and you're hardly in a position to turn us away."

Archimedes clicked his mandibles irritably, making me reassess my earlier assumption that they were completely without purpose. I thought I saw a spark fly off them.

"And you think you can, tough guy? You might be hot guano where you come from, but don't act like you run this place when you don't know the first thing about the Floating Island!"

That was rich. I could recite Tikal's Prayer by heart, and it seemed like I was the only person who knew this place was called Angel Island.

"I know more than you might expect," I said coldly.

"Fat chance of that! You said it yourself that you don't even know what Enerjak is!"

I know that all I need is one touch, and Enerjak's power is mine.

You again!

I honed in on that second voice in my head and focused, the rest of the world slowing to a crawl. The slower the world got, the hazier it became, until I was lost in my own head.

⟁ ♦ 9

I was well past the point where I could pretend that I was alone in here. Not too long after I woke up in space, I suspected that there was something within the Phantom Ruby trying to steer my movements. Later, it started taking over when I gave into extreme emotions, and it tried making decisions for me until I could wrest control back.

Since this thing was really bad at making decisions, I was long overdue for a chat with the squatter in my mind palace.

Look. I don't know if the Phantom Ruby is talking to me, if it's my runaway id, or if Infinite is stuck here. Been guessing that one for a while. At this point, I don't care which it is. Whatever you are, we aren't in immediate danger, so come out and have a chat.

…

Are you listening? Good.

Are you stupid?

⟁ ♦ !!

It's a genuine question, because your short-sighted hijackings of my body to grab for the nearest power source are gonna get us both killed!

I was so close!

We aren't playing with horseshoes or hand grenades here, you're playing with my life!

I know I can lay the false god low!

Oh, I'm sure! After all, you're the one that's the Enerjak expert around here!

…

I conjured the image of Enerjak back into my mind. Gold and blue armor. Red skin, and dreadlocks. Snake on a stick. Chaos green eyes that leaked with noxious, negative energy.

The image burned magenta in my mind.

Enerjak isn't from any of the video games I played, shows I watched, or comics I read. And yet, my dreams told me what he looks like and what he's capable of as if I did. Care to explain how that got in my head?

There was no response.

⟁ ♦ 8

I might be going crazy in here, but if it can't be me that's familiar with Enerjak, then it's obviously you! So talk to me. Tell me what I need to know!

I felt something inside the Phantom Ruby resonate. For a time, my mind was eerily quiet. Normally, it should always be this quiet in my own mind when I wasn't thinking, but this?

This silence made me feel alone. I was quietly glad that it didn't stretch on longer.

…Enerjak is a reality warper running on the high-octane chaos power. The eleven emeralds powering him mean he can't be exhausted by sheer force.

Wait, eleven emeralds? That's impossible.

I'm talking here.

Oh, excuse me. Go ahead then, Mister Snippy.

I know there are far more than seven in this zone, and that all of the ones on Mobius are green. Seven are needed to stabilize a super form, and Enerjak has four more than that he doesn't strictly need. I can take this information as-is or leave it.

Fine, more emeralds. That's good for me, I guess.

It occurred to me that there's no use in sneaking in close to touch him if he's going to turn me to salt on contact.

Okay, we're making progress. How do we stop that from happening?

Everything I need to pin him down, stop him from escaping, is already on the island. I just need to arrange them all in order. Make a trap, lead him to it, and put him down for good.

Now you're speaking my language. What can I use that could prevent a physical god from moving or acting long enough to sap his energy?

I wracked my brain, both hemispheres working in tandem.

Phantom Ruby, Master Emerald, a lot of guns, a power gem, miscellaneous machinery yet to be decommissioned by the Mechanix--

That's it!

When it finally clicked, the trick I used to speed up my thoughts wore off.

"Got anything to say for yourself?" Archimedes chastised, foot tapping.

"I have a tentative plan on how to stop Enerjak."

Archimedes began fuming, smoke and all.

"Now listen right here, you arrogant--!"

I turned to Knuckles, ignoring the ant. Time was of the essence, and if Archimedes wasn't going to cooperate, then I'd aim higher up the chain of command.

"Knuckles. You're the Guardian. By my understanding of the situation, that makes you the local authority here. Is that right?"

"I guess?" Knuckles said, before correcting himself. Becoming more confident in his statement. "It's my duty to protect the island, and the people on it."

"Then congrats on the promotion to being its leader. Do you want to bench us as well?"

Knuckles finished the water bottle and crushed it, a pensive look overshadowing his face.

"Not yet. I don't like Sonic, but Tails and the rest of the Freedom Fighters weren't too bad. What exactly can you do? You didn't seem like much when we threw down."

I rattled off a list of my most pertinent abilities.

"Long-range portal generation, augmented attributes, crystal constructs, projectiles, seamless illusions, mind control, ring manipulation, and the ability to drain energy."

"And he can turn into a dragon!" Vector contributed.

"But only at night," I specified. "Hopefully a temporary affliction, because being a dragon shuts down the rest of my powers."

Knuckles gave me a stern look-over. I don't know what he was looking for, but he must've found it satisfactory.

"Think your magic can help us get the rest of the team back?"

"A little bird gave me a lock on where they were last stationed by Enerjak. The Mushroom Hills, Rainbow Valley, and Mt. Ice Cap. Figured we could jump 'em with my portals, rip Enerjak's enchantment out by the roots, and get your friends back to normal."

Or hit them really hard in the head. That did the trick for Vector.

Knuckles nodded, and extended a hand.

"Sounds simple to me. Once that's done, we all take the fight to Enerjak. You in?"

I extended my hand.

"I'm in."

Knuckles grinned.

"Then let's get cracking!"

Instead of a handshake, the echidna gave me a painful fistbump.

⟁ ♦ 7

I suppressed a yelp. Metal Sonic laughed at my expense.

"T-Then let's get going," I whimpered.

Archimedes' antennae flickered, his onerous senior citizen mood cooling down to a terse frown as he got back onto the table.

"If Knuckles wants to risk it all on you outlanders, then I won't try to argue with him."

"Thanks, Archimedes," Knuckles said. "I appreciate the support."

"Don't thank me. I'm not arguing because you'd be too dang obstinate to take my advice."

"Hey!"

"I'll be keeping my eyes on you!"

Archimedes teleported into another puff of smoke, and this time, he chose not to make it known where he was popping out from. Expanding my senses, I could see that he was watching us from one of the natural holes in the Rock Hill ceiling.

A moment after I clocked his presence, he teleported again. That time, he was totally out of sight.

"That was… pleasant," Fiona said diplomatically. "Scarlet, you said you figured out a plan? Because if that wasn't a bluff, we're all ears."

I looked around at everyone I'd gathered around me. Fiona Fox, Vector the Crocodile, the Mechanix, Metal Sonic… and Knuckles.

"Okay. Metal Sonic, you're on distraction duty."

Metal Sonic made a face.

"Against Enerjak? Nah, I'm good."

"Not against the Big Kahuna. You're going to be picking off Enerjak's robot mooks while Knuckles, Vector, and I liberate the remaining members of the Chaotix."

Metal Sonic shrugs.

"I dunno. Still sounds kind of boring."

I leaned over and whispered a proposition to him. A very devious proposition.

"Wait, you can do that? For real?"

"As long as you promise to play nice?" I need to figure out how to set up a geas right now. "Then I don't see why not. After all, we're on the same team."

Metal Sonic patted me on the back.

"You're not too bad, overlander!" the super badnik said amicably. "Don't worry about what those other guys were saying about you when you weren't looking."

I shrugged him off.

"Fiona, Heavy, Bomb? I need you to head back to the fairground and pick up a prize for me. Spruce it up, get it back in shape, and we'll have the perfect trap for Enerjak."

Fiona cocked an eyebrow.

"What do you need us to steal?"

"You don't mean the glut of floating barrels flooding the storage units, do you?" Heavy asked. "I don't expect them to be of use here."

"Ping?"

"No." I paused. "Actually, the barrels might be useful for later, but it can wait. The thing I need fixed should be something you're all more familiar with than Fiona or I."

Vector scratched his head.

"What's that supposed to--" I all but saw the lightbulb form over the crocodile's headset when he put it together. "Oh snap! You don't mean that, do you?"

I smiled.

"Mean what?" Fiona asked.

I made an illusion of my ace in the hole, shrunken into the palm of my hand.

"Heavy, do you think this might work?"

"Theoretically!" Heavy speculated. "Though the machine's never been used on anyone of such a magnitude as Enerjak."

"Then it's worth a shot."

I was still running low on power, and had to perform a few additional jumps across the island to power up. The Guardian had spent his whole life here, and was able to direct me to various electrical sources I had no idea of. There was a whole power grid under the island that I could tap into, though Knuckles was hesitant to show me anything more than which ancient idol to stick my hand for a recharge.

⟁ ♦ 100

At the base of Mt. Ice Cap, an iron behemoth roared for attention. The gargantuan monstrosity was decked in a brilliant blue armor and bristled with terrible might. It stood larger than the tallest windmill poking out from the nearby village.

Or at least, it would've stood that tall if it had legs. I shoved Metal Sonic into the remains of Big Arms, gave his power gem another boost with the Phantom Ruby, and let the crime against nature take its course from there. The kaiju-sized Metal Sonic ripped its gigantic claws through the snow, tearing its way towards the encampment where Enerjak's robots were set up. His stainless steel fangs bared, as he was all too eager to test out his new transformation.

"Alright, you suckers! Titan Metal Sonic is back in action, so COME AND GET ME!"

Figment confirmed that the mission had begun. On further reflection, Operation: Narcissus was all too fitting a designation.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

I like Archie Knuckles. He's a cool dude. Unfortunately, at this time in the story, and for much of his tenure on the series until the Guardians get yeeted out the cosmic airlock, he's encumbered by so many adults trying to tell him how to do his job! Or doing his job behind his back! For those familiar with the mini I'm riffing off of, you know this story ends with him thinking he saved the day while actually doing nothing. This was somehow a recurring theme in the book that would carry forward. To my continued frustration.

I hate it. It's icky. Yeck!

Archimedes was one of those characters I'm talking about, but he becomes obsolete when the other meddlesome authority figures are shoved in to complicate Knuckles' life so fast that I felt kinda bad for him. As well as the rest of the Fire Ants, whose jobs were to be the ever-suffering Jiminy Crickets to the echidna civilization. He's also the only one that realizes what they did to Knuckles was wrong, so he earns some sympathy points for later.

The original Titan Metal Sonic in the comics was derived from the Metal Sonic Kai change form that Metal Sonic underwent in Knuckles Chaotix. Titan Metal Sonic as he was actually executed was pretty lame, so I let Metal Sonic 2.5 have another go at being a giant monster on a rampage. The new design is inspired by Giga Metal Sonic from Sonic Mania.

The next chapter will be called "Plucking Narcissus," or something to that effect, as the cunning plot the SI came up with in like a minute comes to its fruition.

 

[weredrago2]

RUBY HAZE DATAFILES
ENTRY #1: POST-XORDA FAUNA

The Quaternary-Mobian Extinction Event in PXE 0000 led to the extermination of 99.9% of all lifeforms preceding it. All life on the surface of the Earth was disintegrated into a slurry of biomatter, which congealed and evolved into new species at an accelerated rate.

Not counting the flora and fungi, there are two major categories of Post-Xorda fauna: Mobians and mobini. These categorizations exist independent of the strict designations typically assigned to species classifications; you can be a mobian pig or a mobini pig, but not both.

In the most basic of terms, mobians are a broad family of sapient, humanoid animal people. They average about three feet in height, but can vary in size greatly by "species" from a couple of inches to seven feet tall. The animal species that a given mobian corresponds to has little bearing on their capacity to reproduce with mobians from different clades. In such pairings, the results are either twins (one of each parent species with a few blended traits) or a hybrid child that strongly resembles one parent while retaining a striking physical feature from the other. These mixed couples are as common as those of matching species.

Mobians can be found all over Mobius… except maybe the Lethal Radioactive Zone. They tend to gather together based on loose families of similar animals, such as the busy bees of the Golden Hive, the insurgent gorillas of the Mobian Jungle, or the felidae warriors of the País Misterioso. Villages of multiple mobian races living together are by no means unheard of, but due to their general tendency to avoid congregating in large numbers, multicultural settlements with over a thousand residents are scarce. The cosmopolitan Kingdom of Acorn and later Kingdom of Mercia were exceptions to the rule, neither older than a few centuries before they were conquered by Robotnik. The mountainous Dragon Kingdom is another example of different mobian races living in close proximity, but to describe its warring factions as "coexisting" would be an embellishment. Aquatic mobians can be found in the Great Mobocean and connected bodies of water. These oddballs are descended from pre-Mobian marine life, and are significantly less anthropomorphized; anglers are encouraged to ask their catch if they are capable of higher reasoning before taking them home for dinner.

Culturally speaking, mobians across the globe have some commonalities. They tend towards kindness to one another, open-mindedness to new ideas, and generosity to strangers. They're rarely ones to partake in cruelty or xenophobia, though there's always counterexamples. Unfortunately, the mobian tendencies towards mercy and trust are sometimes taken advantage of by those who don't share them. Being a bit naive or amenable to peace does not make them foolish or defenseless, and a surprise attack or sudden betrayal from an unwarranted aggressor is often enough for people to reassess their stance on turning the other cheek.

In terms of attire, your average mobian fellow wears what he needs to go about his day and be comfortable in his environment, which is typically a good pair of gloves and shoes. Everything else is optional. The presence of fur and scales has made the concept of nudity a tricky one to articulate or reinforce shame about, though mobian women wear more than their male counterparts on average anyway. A mobian may wear extra clothes as deemed appropriate for their livelihood or social status. The occasional outlier may forgo wearing any clothes at all, which no one comments on or thinks is weird, and therefore probably not exhibitionism.

Mobini are thankfully much simpler to explain. They're organisms akin to Pre-Xorda fauna, most of them skewing towards being less than a foot in size. Exceptions exist, and such creatures are often massive apex predators that would give pause to the most foolhardy of trophy hunters. Mobini of either stripe are unintelligent animals for most intents and purposes. You'd be given the side-eye if you opted to engage in deep conversations with, say, a mobini frog. There's anecdotal examples of mobini pets showing uncanny insight or intellect.

The small size and mild temperment of your average mobini, while making them easier to tame, have led to less robust meat, wool, and leather industries. For bigger mobians, you'd need a couple of tiny sheep or a lot of patience to knit a sweater! The demand for quality hides remains high, and has inevitably given way to a robust market of plant-based alternatives. On the subject of diets, vegetarianism is common practice among mobians. The reasons vary from moral conscience, being too squeamish to slit a helpless critter's throat (thereby becoming vulnerable to being guilted into adopting them), being without mobiums to spare on livestock, or simply not wanting to compete with predators for a food source. At the bare minimum, most mobians adopt a quiet "I won't eat anything that has my face" policy. As has been the case for much of human history, a wealthy mobian can afford meat when they want it, and a practical-minded mobian will eat meat when they can get it. Mobius has a diverse array of meat substitute recipes for those who want their chili dog fix without somebody bringing up how a chili dog gets made.


That's all for this datafile, which may or may not be the first of a series. I considered going over the technology various mobian cultures use, but… no. That is its own can of sandcrawlers and I'm not touching it here. You'll note that I didn't mention the echidnas or overlanders at all, because they warrant their own datafiles, too.

For now, I'll leave you all with these questions.

• Where did Uncle Chuck get the meat for his chili dogs?
• Would Lanolin and other sheep sell their wool if the money was worth it?
• Which characters do you think are wearing real leather and which are wearing imitation?

 

[weredrago2]

ENTRY #2: MOBIAN RELIGIONS
AUTHOR NOTE: Any resemblances these fictional religions may have to any real-world religions, while obviously not coincidental, are not worth the headache of bringing up in the thread. Let's not, shall we? I'd appreciate it.

The world of Mobius has several religions practiced by the people in it. The three largest, most widespread ones are the Church of the Ancient Walkers, Gaianism, and the Way of the Golden Lotus. There are also several others that will be mentioned here.

The largest organized religion on Mobius is the Church of the Ancient Walkers. The core belief of the Walkerist faith is that the world is watched over by three divine beings called the Ancient Walkers. They are the almighty, all-knowing, and benevolent stewards of Mobius in the Walkerist religion, represented in stained glass and frescos as a trinity of giants wearing ornate masks. One with wings, one bearing a staff, and another bearing a pestle. The three holy books of the Walker faith, the Tome of Recollections, Tome of Mysteries, and Tome of Prophecies, are among the most printed books on Mobius. A popular offshoot of the "main branch" Walker faith is Aurorism, which venerates the prophet Aurora, who penned the three Tomes and spread their words during her life, as an intermediary between the Walkers and the common mobian.

The Walkerist faith is widespread throughout Northamer, Eurish, and parts of Downunda, where it has given birth to colorful exclamations such as "By Aurora!" and "Walkers preserve us!". The religion promotes peace and harmony in all things, the Walkers' friars being regarded as the wise moral compasses of their community. In a break from their otherwise pacifistic nature, it is said in generations past that knights would be called on holy quests from the gods themselves to bring practitioners of black magic to justice. The Church and its followers traditionally frown upon sorcery as consequence, seeing the performance of miracles with powers not received from the Walkers themselves as highly suspect. However, a noble thaumaturgist acting in the service of the public good could be argued to be keeping the faith in their own way.

Rather than a specific religion, Gaianism refers to a broad category of localized belief systems with similar elements to them. These common elements include a strong respect of nature, the reverence of natural landmarks such as lakes of rings as sacred ground, and a concern for mobini welfare. The latter takes on a more frightful edge in places such as Soumerca, which contains widespread legends of terrible beasts that split the land with thunder, rain, and lightning as retribution against those who would abuse their protected flock. This respect of natural wonders also extends to dragons, which are seen by many as noble, graceful creatures that can spread no falsehood. A non-insignificant number of people who've seen Dulcy fail to land in a clear field in broad daylight suffer from crises of faith related to the "graceful" part, but no one's told her yet because she'd be absolutely devastated and start crying.

(Please pretend you didn't read that, for Dulcy's sake.)

If Gaianism was to be counted as its own religion, then its followers would outnumber those of the Walkers by a wide margin. However, since the Walker faith does not strictly conflict with the basic precepts of Gaianism, people in places where both are common go about their lives practicing a mix of traditions from both. A Walker wedding with an ordained priest, Gaianist rituals for the deceased that have been in the family for generations, celebrating Christmas (a popular holiday named after the island from which it originated), and so on. It was Gaianist principles that encouraged the Kingdom of Acorn and Wolf Pack tribes of Northamer to build eco-friendly cities in harmony with the natural world surrounding them.

In the Dragon Kingdom, where the Church of the Ancient Walkers hadn't taken root outside of a few missions to the far-off Yurashia, exists the Way of the Golden Lotus. Inspired by the teachings of the great dragons, who only experienced peace by letting go of the incendiary wrath that shaped the mountainous region into its current form, the Way encourages its followers to meditate. Only through meditation and letting go of the earthly attachments that chain your mind can one attain a state of enlightenment known as zen. The key figure of the Way is the Golden Lotus King, a powerful zen master who is prophesied to return from his journey to the west when the Dragon Kingdom needs him most. The Golden Lotus King is frequently depicted in art as a monkey of some kind; this has inadvertently led to countless statues of smiling orangutans clogging low-end market stalls throughout the land.

The Way of the Golden Lotus, in some form or another, is practiced all over Yurashia. The Golden Lotus Temples are frequented by the Free People, the humble farmers and tradesmen that hold no allegiance to the Four Houses or the Iron Dominion. These temples are treated as sacred ground by many, and are rarely touched by the warring factions. The avaricious bat ninja of the Yagyu Clan aren't ones to be kept away from valuable goods by convention, though the martial traditions of the Linshao Monastery have thus far protected their vaults of ancient relics from invasion. The monks of the Linshao temple believe that the Golden Lotus King will arrive not only as a spiritual leader, but as a protector of the Free People who suffer under the current status quo. Their warriors patrol their temple grounds for any threats to their way of life, and time will when those vying for those ancient scrolls will test the strength of their convictions

While the Overland was generally characterized as being fairly secular (if not "godless") by their counterparts in the Kingdom of Acorn, the overlanders had rites and rituals of their own. The average overlander holds their merited ancestors in great regard. The old noble houses had long genealogical records that detailed the achievements of every departed warrior and scientist, as an extension of the Overland's longstanding tradition of filial piety. The overlanders also had a zealous reverence for the office of the Overlord, around which the unity of the modern Overland was formed. The strength of this imperial cult waxed and waned with the popularity of a given Overlord, though they were all believed to have the will of the people behind them. The Overlord was to be loved, feared, and respected, as the sword and shield against the "animals" that would despoil their land if they were ever to breach the Overland's gates.

That was until Overlord Charlemagne's defeat at the hands of King Maximilian Acorn, in a duel between the ruler of one polity and the ruler of the other. The defeat of Charlemagne and his subsequent disappearance were catastrophic to the morale of Overland, whose people lost the will to fight. With the confidence in the infallible might of the Overlord shattered beyond repair, the trust the overlanders held in their own institutions unraveled shortly afterwards. The Church of Solaris, which had until this point maintained a minority presence in the Overland throughout its history, surged in popularity. In addition to the fact that the Overland was coming apart at the seams, it was doubtlessly the prospect of living closer to the holy land of the sun god's chosen people that encouraged many overlanders to immigrate to the United Federation.


Thus concludes my second datafile. I was going to post this tomorrow, but I thought it'd be really weird to post this on Easter. So I moved it along.

New chapter Monday!

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 29: Plucking Narcissus

The surface of Angel Island, covered end-to-end in autumnal forests and hostile wildlife, was only one layer of the mysterious landmass that has eluded the denizens of Mobius for generations. Finding the place was a challenge, considering how often it moved. To learn more, discover more, and uncover more, you had to go deeper than that veneer on the uppermost slice. Beyond the tropical canopies, past the ancient mechanisms the echidnas used to deter intruders, and around the singular echidna left behind to stand guard, to the hidden tunnels that ran deep into the floating island's core. It was only there where one would find the sole chaos emerald keeping this big rock afloat, and without it, the island would drop like a rod from God onto any city unfortunate enough to be standing where it fell.

We were too close to Port Mobius for me to let that happen. The tidal waves unleashed by Angel Island crashing into the ocean alone would wash away everyone and everything the Ruby Underground had been working so hard to protect. I doubted Robotnik would be too broken up about that, since we overthrew the local powdered wigs and changed the town into a Resistance stronghold. Converting a place of legends into a kinetic bomb as a lesson to any other settlement that might rise against him was certainly a move in the dictator's playbook.

With Sonic, Sonia, and Manic tangling with Doctor Robotnik from inside his newest airship, and Knuckles manning the perimeter guns to shoot down his smaller air drones, I couldn't help but notice Sleet and Dingo had taken a light troop carrier and slipped out the back. I took that as my cue to slip away from the skirmish happening topside. All I had to do was shadow the former bounty hunters and their SWATbot platoon to its end destination, a subterranean maze surrounded in reflective walls of fluorescent green crystal. The trip was a silent one, save for when Robotnik's bright orange goon almost saw me.

"What was that?" the musclebound, muscle-headed Dingo said as he heard me emerge from the murky lake. "Sleet, I think I heard somethin' back there!"

I clung to the side of one of the amphibious landing crafts. Dingo looked past the dozens of SWATbots they'd brought along to try and spot the source of the disturbance.

The Phantom Ruby tied to my neck was covered in hundreds of small facets, like a mirror ball in miniature; it soaked up the noise of the splashing water and reflected it outward, clouding my presence in the smog of vehicle emissions. The mystical ghost light of the Ruby enveloped my body, protecting my leather jumpsuit, starry cape, and silver helmet from water damage.

It'd be a lot harder for me to put on a show if my costume was soaking wet.

Dingo's partner was Sleet, a conniving gray wolf in a colorful cape and armor who spoke like a bad Peter Lorre impression. Sleet slapped his counterpart on the back of the head.

"Dingo, you eediot! We need to keep it down so that we can steal the chaos emerald while those pesky Freedom Fighters are distracted."

"I know, but I'm getting the heebie jeebies out here."

Sleet sighed.

"Dingo, are you still fretting about the Phantom?" Dingo nodded. "The Phantom Prince is a propaganda tool used by the Resistance, to make it seem like they have anyone to rely on besides those meddlesome siblings!"

"I could've sworn we fought him back in Port Mobius, when he--"

"Nothing more than tricks of the light," Sleet said, brushing him off.

"Must've been a real strong light to sink a whole submarine."

Sleet sneered.

"If you let those Freedom Fighters get to what little you have of a head in there, then we'll have already lost. You don't want to let the boss down, do you?"

Dingo rubbed the back of his head, not completely reassured by the purple and red enforcer bots surrounding them. Each one armed to bear and programmed for loyalty to Robotnik. He looked back to the smoke on the water, where he couldn't see the Phantom Prince.

"I guess not," Dingo answered reluctantly.

Sleet pointed to a pair of SWATbots, standing at attention to secure the area.

"You two! Put the chaos emerald in the container so we can get out of here!"

Sounds like my cue.

Since my escape from the dungeons of Robotropolis, I'd lurked in the shadows of this alien realm. Where the desperate people straddled the line between hope and despair. Everybody was screaming for liberty, but their voices were beaten down and their instruments were shattered. Anyone who screamed too loud, or went against the grain, was silenced by the roboticizer. The Phantom Ruby was the only reason I was spared that fate, as it was the only thing in the world that could weave the ambiance of the world into music.

Robotnik knew damn well what he was doing when he banned music. The magic of this world had deep, instinctual ties to it. Anyone with the potential who arranged sounds into a way that expressed complex emotions -- created wonder, beauty, or awe -- could evolve a powerful song into a powerful feat of magic. The skalds, bards, and rhapsodists were the first ones that Robotnik rounded up and shot once the military was dealt with. All of the maestros who could have stood against him were long dead, and Robotnik was crushing all remaining forms of music to starve out the greatest threat to his power. At its current rate of cultural genocide, Mobius was only a few years away from the death of music itself.

If you'd asked me months ago, I wouldn't have known how to make music at all. With the arcane masterwork plugging me into the musica universalis, the Harmony of the Zones, that wasn't the case anymore. The Phantom Ruby made me one of five people left who could weaponize the power of music, and the only band on the planet was mid at best.

You've got to save music, John. The very concept.

I didn't hold any scorn for Sonic Underground's rough sound. They were self-taught. Thanks to Robotnik, your average mobian literally didn't know what good music sounded like.

No pressure, eh?

I refused to let music die. A concert could boil over into a riot, and a riot could explode into an all-out revolution. It's not as though Robotnik hadn't already given the people ample motivation.

▁▂▃▄▅▆▇

It was more than raw sound that the Phantom Ruby could use. Emotions worked as well, if not better. Normally, this would be where I picked a track to rev up the crowd, but I had all these SWATbots to deal with on my own, plus Sleet and Dingo, without an audience's catharsis to draw power from. I could only pick one song before I went dark, and I needed to pick it wisely.

Putting my hand to the gem, placing it close to the patch of machinery that replaced my throat, I called up an old classic from back home to convey how exactly I felt about them all.

►

When I activated the Ruby, flashing lights and a chaotic arrangement of instrumental sounds emerged from the stone. The lights reflected off the shimmering materials on the inside of my cape and the exterior of my metal mask, bouncing across the crystalline cavern!

"What's that?" Dingo said, stymied.

He turned around when Sleet did, same as the SWATbots.

When the song started, my bones took on a bright blue gleam that bled through my skin and clothes, flesh them becoming pale and translucent. It was as though I was under a supernatural x-ray. For anyone who was still doubting, a series of wild howls and a deluge of magenta fog announced my haunting presence!

"It's the Phantom!" Sleet shouted in alarm.

"But you said he wasn't real!" Dingo argued.

Sleet's canine face twisted into a sinister grin as he pointed at me.

"Whoever's wearing that suit is about to become a ghost either way! SWATbots, eliminate him!"

The SWATbots approached my spectral form, firing their blasters without hesitation. The gesture was to little effect, the lasers seeming to go right through me.

When the lyrics kicked in, so did my weapon. A magenta bolt of lightning streaked into my hands, the jagged end becoming the long blade of a scythe as I began to sing.

"You worry too much
You make yourself sad
You can't change fate
But don't feel so bad
Enjoy it while you can
It's just like the weather
So quit complaining, brother...
No one lives forever!"​

I hovered across the cave and drove my scythe into the SWATbot horde!

"Let's have a party
There's a full moon in the sky
It's the hour of the wolf
And I don't want to die!"​

This song required me to get my hands dirty. No playing keep away, like with Great Balls of Fire.

"I'm so happy dancin', while the Grim Reaper...
Cuts, cuts, cuts
But he can't get me
I'm as clever as can be, and I'm very quick, but don't forget:
We've only got so many tricks
No one lives forever!"​

Another downside was that, unlike when I stomped around with Bulls on Parade, this form had zero defenses. My skeletal frame made for a harder target, but any shots that landed would shatter my bones. The swings of the scythe, driven with superhuman force and a blade that was so sharp as to be two-dimensional, dismembered the badniks like they were made of butter.

"Now what?" Dingo asked.

"I'm thinking!" Sleet answered, taking a few seconds to think before pointing his remote at Dingo. "You take care of him!"

I wasn't privy to the details, but Dingo had received exotic treatments that made his molecules malleable. With a press of Sleet's remote, Dingo was transfigured into a bulldozer with a face.

"Fine! I'll flatten the Phantom myself!"

"You think you got it rough?
What about your darling doggy?
Ten short years
And he's getting old and groggy!
I don't think it's very fair
Cold, chop, low, but it's all relative, my friend, 'cause
No one lives forever!"​

I flew circles around the metamorphosed thug, incensing him with the occasional nick of the scythe across his chassis before leading the slow-witted industrial vehicle on a chase.

"Let's have a party
There's a full moon in the sky
It's the hour of the wolf
And I don't want to die!"​

"Stay still, would ya!?"

The robots were trampled under Dingo's bumbling dozer blade, and the only thing I had to watch for was to make sure no one hit the emerald.

"Dingo, no!"

Dingo spun around, realizing he'd done more harm than good.

"Oops."

"I'm so happy dancin', while the Grim Reaper...
Cuts, cuts, cuts
But he can't get me
I'm as clever as can be, and I'm very quick, but don't forget:
We've only got so many tricks
No one lives forever!"​

I gripped the handle tightly and cut, cut, cut out Dingo's treads while he was distracted, rendering his vehicle mode inoperable.

"There's got to be a way to stop him," Sleet growled, his expression betraying his fear.

Sleet shifted Dingo through a variety of shapes, in the hopes that he'd find one that could defeat me. A large serpent, a giant rat, a boulder, and many others that didn't work. Dingo was dense, on multiple levels, and I couldn't get a clean cut that wouldn't be repaired with the next one.

"Did you figure it out yet?" an exasperated Dingo gasped out, before reverting to his base state out of sheer exhaustion.

Sleet pressed the remote again, only to realize that Dingo's body wasn't responding. Either Dingo was too tired to transform, or the remote had overloaded. Regardless of why, the ground had become cluttered with the remains of SWATbots, and they were the only targets left.

I approached the two of them, my scythe making my intentions clear.

"Oh!" Sleet said. "I was thinking we'd--" He turned and ran! "RUN FOR OUR LIVES!"

The duo of minions for hire hoofed it, turning this encounter from a fight into a chase that they couldn't possibly escape from.

"You worry too much
You make yourself sad
You can't change fate
But don't feel so bad
Enjoy it while you can
It's just like the weather
So quit complaining, brother...
No one lives forever!"​

I pursued them with haste, the two survivors running until they reached a dead end.

"I see a wall!" Dingo exclaimed. "Just a wall!"

"Then ram it!"

"Let's have a party
There's a full moon in the sky
It's the hour of the wolf
And I don't want to die!"​

Dingo barged into the wall at full speed, creating an exit where there previously wasn't one.

Couldn't have that. I put myself between them and freedom. They could now see the light at the end of the tunnel, but they could never reach it.

"But no one beats him at his game
For very long, but just the same
Who cares; there's no place safe to hide
Nowhere to run -- no time to cry!"​

"Let's be reasonable!" Sleet pleaded, hands slowly rising now that he was backed into a corner. "Surely we have something you want that we can--!"

I lashed out, nearly taking a couple of Sleet's fingers as he unsuccessfully went for his holdout blaster. He let out a yowl of pain as I sliced the armor around his glove instead.

"So celebrate while you still can
'Cause any second, it may end!
And when it's all been said and done...
Better that you had some fun!"​

"We have information! Assets! A-And lots of money!"

"Instead of hiding in a shell
Why make your life a living hell?
So have a toast and down the cup
And drink to bones that turn to dust!"​

With his bargaining having fallen on deaf ears, the craven collaborator fell to his knees.

"Please, Phantom Prince! HAVE MERCY!"

"Sleet, w-why's he smiling?"

My voice answered in a chanting mantra that echoed over itself, again and again.

"'Cause… No one, no one, no one…"​

I raised the scythe to those who are long overdue for a visit from the Reaper.

"No one lives forever!"​

Sleet and Dingo screamed as I brought down the blade!

"Hey--!"​

"STOP!"

My scythe dissipated before it could cut down the woman standing in the way!

◼

All the Phantom Ruby's enchantments vanished when the song concluded and the gemstone lost its luster. My body snapped back to mortality, ligaments and sinew locking into place. I fell from my state of weightlessness, to lingering upon the weight of who I almost struck.

The mobian woman had periwinkle fur with a peach muzzle. Stern, yet gentle green eyes framed by a majestic mane of purple quills, scarcely contained within the confines of her drab blue cloak. Add in her distinct voice, which could range from authoritative to remarkably gentle, and Robotnik's troublesome troubleshooters recognized her right away.

"Queen Aleena?!" Sleet exclaimed, dumbstruck.

"The Queen?" Dingo echoed dumbly.

▁

"Aleena," I greeted flatly. When the Ruby was at low power, all I could utter out was a vocoded, synthetic shadow of how I used to sound. "We have to stop meeting like this."

Now that her identity was obvious, she dispensed with the hood, letting her hair flow free. My head was supposed to be back on straight, no longer caught up in the music. However, Aleena showing up meant I was still thrown off my groove, my mind was awash in conflicted emotions.

Why was she here now, of all times?

"And these traitors need to be alive if they're going to stand trial for their crimes," Aleena chided.

I narrowed my biomechanical, red and black eyes at her.

"You can't be serious."

"I am absolutely serious. Phantom, you know quite well that the Resistance has naught the permission to take a single life without my approval."

As usual, Aleena refused to call me by my false royal title. I wasn't particularly attached to it myself, but after staging a massive prison break to a rendition of My Name is Prince with bolts of divine lightning flying off my hands, the nom de guerre took shape of its own volition.

"It was a firefight!" I protested, straining what emotion I could out of this subpar voice box. "Do you expect me to win every battle with my hands tied behind my back?"

Aleena crossed her arms.

"The battle has already been won with scarcely a drop of blood shed. As per the Mobian Articles of War, you must allow combatants to surrender as prisoners of war."

Sleet let out a sigh of relief.

"Surrendering sounds good to us?"

Dingo nodded enthusiastically.

"Yeah, yeah! We give up!"

I ignored them.

"Mercenaries aren't protected by those laws. Nor do I have a means to restrain them. They don't get any slack from me, and they shouldn't get any from you."

"They've been press-ganged by Robotnik, making them his soldiers."

I appraised her, trying to determine why Aleena was going the extra mile for these scumbags.

"Is this about the MontClairs?" I not-so-subtly accused.

Her face flushed red with anger.

"You had no right to subject the MontClairs to mob justice!" she snapped.

The very mention of them made my scars ache. The MontClairs were one of the wealthiest citizens in Robotropolis, having rode out the rough years investing in Robotnik's empire while everyone beneath them toiled to death beneath its heel.

Emphasis on was. The Ruby Underground rode onto their estate on mechanical horseback, raided their coffers, and reallocated their ill-gotten gains for the public benefit. I would have been lenient on their son Bartleby, assuming that he was innocent of his parents' crimes, but a short look into his history made it clear that the young MontClair heir was the most guilty of them all.

"Bartleby was lucky I talked the crowd down from the guillotine to a tar and feathering."

Aleena grit her teeth. A very ignoble habit she'd picked up as of recent.

"Do you have any conception of how much damage control I have had to do for your anti-noble crusade? Clearly, you must think the Resistance is funded by mobiums that grow on trees!"

"For every sympathetic aristocrat we have on our side, there are two that are indifferent to the suffering of the masses and three that are part of the problem!"

"While their material suffering is clearly less than that of the poor, can't you see the affluent are victims under Robotnik's tyranny as well? The crushing tithes they pay are the only means they can protect their families!"

"Dropping your favorite f-word doesn't automatically make you right!"

Sleet interjected, one finger raised.

"You know, I was always secretly a quiet supporter of the royal family--"

I drew my high-calibur light phaser from its holster and fired a shot between Sleet's legs.

"Then remain silent."

He lowered his finger.

I turned back to Aleena and stared down the fallen queen, who stood resolute. The Ruby Underground was loosely aligned with the mainstream Resistance. Not beholden to the queen. Her son, Sonic the Hedgehog, was an active Freedom Fighter before he ran off at the summons of the Oracle of Delphinus. The queen abandoned her throne to chase a vague fortune revealed in spoken word poetry, so she held no sway over me.

Not in the slightest.

"If we let them go, you know they're going to try and attack your kids again," I stated.

It was a low blow, but she stared back at me, not a shred of doubt in those brilliant green pupils.

"I am well aware of the risks, and have faith my children can handle them. My decree is final."

We were locked in a staring contest for several seconds, waiting for the other to break.

…Fine.

I took a deep breath and sighed, before turning back to the pair.

"The queen's given you a stay of execution," I said in resignation. "Don't waste it."

Sleet wrung his hands together nervously, trying to look as grateful as possible.

"Oh, thank you, Queen Aleena! Your mercy and generosity know no bounds!"

Dingo was less impressed, giving me the side-eye.

"Y'know, Mister Phantom, you oughta be nicer to your girlfriend!"

I paused, turning to him in bewilderment.

"What did you just say?"

Sleet was frantically whispering something to the effect of SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP, but Dingo was not one to be deterred. Or pay attention to blatant warnings of danger.

Dingo puffed up his chest and pointed at me.

"You've got some nerve to act all tough and talk to yer lady friend like that! You need to treat 'er like royalty, or she'll leave you hanging high and dry!"

"I am royalty!" Aleena said, scandalized and… flustered? "More importantly, I am not this wrathful vigilante's 'lady friend'!"

"And we aren't dating," I added.

Aleena and I met under mutually false pretenses. She was pretending to be an oil baroness seeking asylum so she could scope out my faction's intentions. I accepted that asylum so I could pump her for the information on Robotnik's supply chains. Things were civil until we caught each other in our deceptions, we clashed on ideals, at some point the argument moved to the wine cellar, the middle part was blurry, and she was gone the next morning.

Every encounter since then has been like this, with us bickering or being at cross purposes more often than not. Whatever the hell that was, it wasn't dating, and we weren't an item.

I think.

Dingo stopped, realizing that he had had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to speak to the most wanted woman on the planet. Sleet must've realized what Dingo was about to say, because the wolf was inching towards the exit.

"Y'know, I was gonna propose to your daughter and I was wonder'n if I could get your bless--"

Aleena furiously snatched the blaster out of my hands and started firing it into the air.

"GET LOST BEFORE I CHANGE MY MIND!"

Sleet and Dingo scampered away into the jungle, thankfully without so much as another word. Once they were gone, Aleena tossed the smoking blaster with a huff.

I let out a low whistle. She then cleared her throat, somewhat bashful.

"Apologies. That outburst was unbecoming of me."

I slid the melted gun into the water with my boot.

"No complaints here. I'm surprised you let them off with a slap on the wrist."

We walked out of the cave. Her facial features softened, now that we were alone, away from danger. The sounds of gunfire outside had dimmed.

"I need to set a good example. We shouldn't have to stoop to their level to liberate our world."

It was no big secret who Aleena was trying to set a good example for. She hadn't seen them in years, but the triplets were her guiding star. At the same time they tried to find their mom, the kids helped Aleena remember why she was fighting.

She has something to fight for besides her anger.

"Maybe you're right," I conceded.

Now that the highest tax bracket knew I could separate any of those fools from their wealth when I felt like it, I'd been considering offering the less odious ones an exit from underneath Robotnik's heel. For the sake of Aleena's blood pressure, if nothing else.

"I wouldn't be too distraught if Sleet and Dingo were to meet their end by Robotnik's hand," Aleena admitted ruefully. She frowned at her own comment. "It's a fitting reward for treachery."

I raised an eyebrow. I wasn't surprised that she'd had these kinds of thoughts, after all she'd been put through. I simply didn't think she'd confess them to anyone who she wasn't close to.

Are we… close?

I kept everyone else at arm's length. The Ruby Underground were loyal soldiers, but my lieutenants weren't exactly my friends. I couldn't afford to have those. Robotnik sowed the wind by turning the musical caste into a dead march, and I was conducting the whirlwind as the Phantom Prince. The truth that I wasn't some kind of supernatural revenant, that I only put on the mask to hide my own face, would only hurt our efforts.

Aleena saw right through all that. That made her the only person I could actually talk to.

"Then what was that argument about? The principle? The moral high ground?"

She shook her head.

"I didn't want your soul to be burdened with the act of taking a life. Their deaths aren't worth it."

It was only now, when I was forced to confront it head-on, that I realized I couldn't think of anyone else I was closer to on Mobius.

"I wouldn't have felt a thing," I lied.

"You always do after your first."

From the vantage point of the cavern opening, we could see several vents on the side of Robotnik's spherical air carrier popped open with bursts of flame.

"Aleena… I didn't know you cared."

Aleena gave me a small, amused smile.

"Don't be ridiculous. Of course I care for you."

A smaller craft ejected out the side of the Fortress of Altitude. By the blurry blue, pink, and green spots centralized around the small ship's cockpit, it looked like Sonic, Sonia, and Manic were able to make a clean getaway.

"They made it!" I shouted from our vantage point on the rocks. "You were right not to…"

I turned around, only to see that she was already making her leave. Making her way towards the jungle, where she'd doubtlessly stowed a hoverbike with which to get off Angel Island.

"…Worry."

My heart sank. Aleena turned back, giving me a guilty, apologetic glance. She looked at me in the same way as if she'd accidentally kicked a puppy.

"I'm sorry, John. You know I can't linger."

It was the same answer she gave every time.

"You made a vow," I repeated cooly, turning away. "I know."

"I can't let them know I was here. Not yet. Not before it's time. Forgive me."

In fear of the Oracle's prophecy being rendered null and void if she reunited with them before the time had come, Aleena had to stay one step ahead of her own children while fighting Robotnik from the shadows. She had an unshakable, almost religious faith that everything would turn out alright in the end. More hope than I could ever muster.

Hope rides alone.

It also made her miserable. Tore her up inside. Suffering above and beyond what I could see her put herself through for another day. I knew the signs, because it did the same thing to me, too.

Not anymore.

I almost let her get away again, but a surge of emotion overcame me.

"Wait! Let me help you!"

I ran after her, grabbing her hand.

"You can't!" she countered. "Only the prophecy of the Council of Four can save Mobius!"

"Aleena, please! You don't have to be alone anymore!"

She tore her hand away.

"But what if they were to use you to find me?" Aleena pleaded, tears forming around the edges of her beautiful eyes. "I can't let that happen before they're--!"

The airship exploded, erupting into brilliant light. I reacted quickly, shielding Aleena from stray debris with my cape. When the most dangerous flashes faded, the air was full of smaller, luminous streaks. Like a fireworks display in the evening sky.

"Can't we just watch the lights?" I reluctantly asked, closer to her now than in months. "Please?"

Aleena looked at the sky, in awe of the display, then down to me. Not at the Phantom Prince, but the human underneath the helmet.

"On one condition," she said finally, easing the pressure that had been building around my chest. "One condition, John, and I will entrust the destiny of Mobius to you for the night."

"Name it," I answered instantly.

"Take off your mask."

My hands were on the latches right away. It was a gradual process, detaching the sides of the helmet from the bolt-like audio receivers that were installed where ears once stood. Nothing I hadn't practiced a thousand times before. I slung off my helmet, letting it roll into the fresh grass.

"I know I'm not much to look at, but--"

"You look dashing."

I short-circuited.

"I, uh. Dashing?"

Aleena said nothing more, patting down on a patch in the grass next to where she sat.

We sat down together and, after fighting so hard to secure a better future, enjoyed the untamed joy of a sunset. These moments were rare and fleeting, so we cherished them where they could be found. Away from the pollution and strife that plagued the rest of the world.

▁▂▃

It was moments like these that I could see myself fighting for.

- - -

Spoiler: APRIL FOOLS!

Ruby Underground has been a bonus chapter idea in my back pocket for a while now. I thought it'd be funnier to drop it as a prank than a voting option.

The funniest part is that I realized I could make it even better by taking Sonic Underground completely seriously. The setting of the show is the ideal rock opera dystopia. Music is outlawed, freedom is limited, robots are everywhere, etc etc. All they got wrong was the music, the animation, the writing, the insane idea to kill SatAM so they could make a new show with songs to reap the residuals from, and the music. I gave another listen to classic concept albums like Killroy Was Here, 2112, Time, The Protomen, Year Zero, and Love Symbol to get into the mood for writing this chapter.

Next up: The real Chapter 29.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 29: Plucking Narcissus, Part 1

It'd been quite a while since I'd had to deal with performance anxiety. Usually, it kicked up something fierce before I was about to run a session of one of my regular campaigns, if I knew the stakes that night were going to be particularly spicy. It didn't matter how much planning I did in advance, when I did happen to plan how that night was going to go instead of playing it by ear, the anxiety that crept up in the leadup game time could ratchet up to nigh-intolerable levels. If I could get past that uncomfortable experience, then the game itself could proceed smoothly. Usually, my players didn't notice a piece out of place.

The reason this relatively inane worry came rushing back to my mind was that it was flaring up all over again, when the stakes couldn't possibly be higher. My scheme was explained to them all a couple of times over, so that everyone knew the parts they had to play. Simple in nature, difficult in execution, and it wouldn't survive contact with a stiff breeze, let alone Enerjak. I was expecting something to go wrong, but even if it didn't, I'd have to scrap the rest and improvise when he took to the stage anyway. I let myself get comfortable with the powers the Phantom Ruby gave me, and I knew for a fact that he outclassed them in every direction.

Just wait for the signal and go.

The forest floor of the Mushroom Hills were littered with dry, autumnal leaves, shed from tall trees that competed for space with colorful toadstools as tall as redwoods. I wished I had time to ask Knuckles about how the ecosystem adapted to the constant movement of the island, but the answer was probably magic. Between the gigantic mushrooms were more humble ones the size of houses, complete with doors and windows. I couldn't tell if the huts were made out of hollowed-out mushrooms, or were wooden constructions made to resemble fungi in case Robotnik's spy bots came snooping around. The robots that were sent by Enerjak weren't on the topmost shelf of intellect, but they had enough processing power to knock and ask the terrified civilians if they heard the bad news at gunpoint.

Like the Mushroom Hills, Charmy Bee was also an uncannily familiar sight. He was small, about two feet in height, wearing a yellow and black shirt with short sleeves the same shade of red as his sneakers. The determined-looking bug had his signature black helmet with holes for his antennas, complemented by round goggles brought down over his eyes to keep out dust. The young bug's thoughts were clouded in an aura of green, bright glints of Enerjak's influence poking out his eyes. Expanding my awareness beyond that first layer, I could perceive the enchantment as a dark, winding chord, coiling and twisting around the bee's natural thought patterns until one end bit the other.

This'll be better than what Knux and Vector are gonna do to get Espio back to his old self.

⟁ ♦ 90

I was almost grateful when Metal Sonic ran out of patience and started his rampage a few minutes earlier than he was supposed to. The echoing roar, heard for miles and carried down the mountain, was our starting gun. Figment gave me the visual confirmation that the super badnik was engaging with the concentration of bots at the Ice Cap mountain, while my familiar kept an eye out for when Mighty the Armadillo came out to fight him. That left Fiona with the Mechanix at Carnival Night, Vector and Knuckles in the Rainbow Valley, and finally myself over the Mushroom Hills.

The bee switched to high alert when he heard the sound, flying straight up, above the forest, to get a better view of the disturbance happening miles away.

"Huh? What the heck was that--?" I discarded the invisibility I'd been maintaining and enveloped the bee in a wave of ruby energy! "HEY!"

I ignored his plea and grabbed him, snatching the bee out of the air so he wouldn't go anywhere while I disabled the mind hex.

"I'm freeing your mind!" I shouted at him. "Think liberating thoughts!"

⟁ ♦ 88

Trying to defuse Enerjak's magic with finesse was a different experience than when I smashed it with brute force. The spell was a slippery and sinuous thing, guarded by large mental blocks that let it wriggle out of reach. Once I had its number, the Enerjak's rough handiwork would unravel at the pull of the Phantom Ruby.

Shoddy. Amateur.

Fix now, complain later.

Fine. Watch and learn how the master unweaves a mislaid spell.

Waves of magenta fog leaked into Charmy's mind, smothering and consuming Enerjak's magic like white blood cells on bacteria. Or a virulent disease out-competing a weaker infection. I double-checked the Ars Ixia for instructions on how to do this kind of procedure "correctly", reducing the amount of damage I did on my target, and one of the things I had to do was locate the part of Charmy that wanted this glamor to break.

"Espio, help me!" Charmy cried out, the young bee helplessly wriggling in my hands and beating his wings in a vain attempt to free himself.

I felt my grip on Charmy slip as the Phantom Ruby snatched the exposed hex by the tail. One rip, and it'd come apart. Unfortunately, if there was one thing I'd figured out, it was that the effect my magic had on people wasn't pleasant.

How did I think this was more humane? He's only a kid!

Am I so certain of that? Look closer.

Perturbed by that intrusive comment, I looked at Charmy deeper. When I grasped onto the mind control spell, a few memories shook free. I wasn't trying to pry, already seeing what I was doing as a significant trespass, but I automatically read the fragments of Charmy's life as they were presented to me.

A golden kingdom of domes, spires, and hexagons. A golden kingdom whose beauty is never tarnished, even as the rest of the world crumbles around what was once the honey-yellow jewel of the west. There goes West Mobotropolis. There goes the Wolf Pack Nation. There goes Sand Blast City. They all fall, and the Colony of the Golden Hive remains. A golden kingdom of peace, stagnancy, and--

--Expectations for me to stop playing around and grow up already, when I haven't even had the chance to see the world! Smell all of the flowers that Mobius has to offer! Live my own life! I like Saffron, sure, but thirteen is way too young for me to tie the knot and spend the rest of my life as a do-nothing king!

"Wait, you're thirteen?" I said incredulously, having automatically snapped back to the Mushroom Hills when I heard that.

I had to mentally skip over the bit about Charmy being a prince or something. That was odd, but it was already a thing in the British comic. Him being a teen was much stranger.

"How old did you think I was?" Charmy said, having been distracted from his attempt at escape. "You were gonna say I looked older, right? Right?"

How was I supposed to know this Charmy was closer to his age in the old Chaotix manual than not? He still looks like a child!

"…Younger," I answered hesitantly.

He frowned.

"Tell me it was at least eleven." I was quiet, trying to hold on to Enerjak's hex before it went anywhere. "Ten?"

"I'm gonna go ahead and focus on breaking this hex, okay?"

Suddenly, Charmy shrunk down to the size of a real bee and began whizzing around my head! With his escape, my grip on the hex came loose!

"Mom says I'm a late bloomer!" Charmy buzzed angrily. Then he flew away!

He can size shift?!

My enhanced eyes were just enough to keep up with where the minimized bee was going. Charmy dove down, and when I followed, I was buffeted with lasers from Enerjak's robots!

"You're making it a lot harder for me not to hurt you!" I said as I tried to ensnare Charmy in a net of crystal threads.

⟁ ♦ 85

Charmy flew around the net, which fell on a troop of robots instead. I flew down and swung my arms wide, battering more of the robots before they could react. When my eyes were off Charmy, he switched directions on a dime and darted towards me at full size!

"Then I'll hurt you instead!" Charmy shouted, and he turned and aimed his giant stinger!

"Charmy, no!"

He jabbed me in the chest with his dagger-sized organ!

⟁ ♦ 80

Charmy's stab went straight past the ribs, through a lung, and stopped close to the heart. The attack was a level of sheer viciousness I'd never expect out of Charmy on a good day. Then again, this wasn't a good day for anyone present.

The wound went a lot deeper than when I was shot with mere arrows, and venomous compounds were liquidating my nerve tissue.

⟁ ♦ 77

I collapsed to the ground, forcing Charmy's resolve to quaver. He got some distance from me and waved off the robots that were closing in.

"I'm sorry!" Charmy said, shocked by what he'd been forced to do to me. "Surrender now, and I'll ask Enerjak to fix you! How's that sound?"

I shrugged off the illusion of a crippling blow, which was only a little painful. I then honed in on the exposed part of Charmy that was rebelling against his violent compulsion, and stretched my hand forward until it locked onto his helmet.

"Hey! Let go of me!"

Crystal outgrowths formed from my hand across the surface of Charmy's helmet and goggles. The soft approach was only doing me so many favors, so I yanked the headgear off and smacked him. Hard.

"WAKE UP!"

⟁ ♦ 75

The hex shattered as Charmy spun, and the fight went out of him instantly. I got closer and held the woozy bee in one hand. He was free to take a rest, at the same time I was being encircled by Enerjak's mechanical goons. I attached Charmy to my back with a safety bubble and used my spare hand to whip out a machine gun from Null Space.

⟁ ♦ 70

It was a Frankenstein-style heavy weapon, cobbled together as a custom order from the hyenas. The shortened barrel and pistol grip were intended for someone whose hand wouldn't snap off from the insane recoil, making it easy for me to grind down the horde before they could return the favor.

Switching one eye to Figment's vision, I could see that the super-sized Metal Sonic was running into trouble. An avalanche of debris came tumbling down on the super badnik from the nearby village, slowing down his rate of attack.

Figment? What's going on over there?

My familiar got closer, focusing his vision towards a red dot next to a windmill. The foundation of the windmill quaked and crumbled, before falling onto Titan Metal Sonic as a heavy mass of rubble!

"Face me for real, you dust mite!" Metal Sonic bellowed.

The red sphere catapulted off the ledge, dropping like a hammer on Metal Sonic's head! Uncurling from his ball form, the black and red armadillo banged on Metal Sonic's hull with his fists and rattled the super badnik's entire body against the base of Ice Cap. Out of the brawl's participants, it seemed like the mountain would be the first to crack.

"Is this real enough!?" Mighty the Armadillo shouted.

Metal Sonic grabbed Mighty with his large manipulators and flung him into the snowdrift.

"You were holding out against me last time, weren't you?"

Mighty popped out of the snow, cracking his knuckles with enough force to carry an echo.

"I don't like to go all-out, in case the wrong person gets caught up in it, but Master Enerjak is commanding me to rip you apart!"

Metal Sonic fired up his thrusters and rammed towards him, claws bared!

"Feeling mighty confident, huh? Time to remind you why you needed a whole team to BRING THIS GIANT DOWN!"

Mighty rolled downhill to meet him in a clash. I stopped my split remote viewing when my machine gun was obstructed by another flying bee!

"Be cool, man!" the frightened bug cried out.

This new bee's attire was markedly different from Charmy's. He was wearing a blue helmet with aviator goggles, a long, red scarf, and a bee-striped bomber jacket.

"Outta the way!" I shouted at him, shooting down what looked like the last of the enemy robots. "It's dangerous out here!"

"Not without my best bud! Let 'em go, ya big lug!"

I stopped, lowering my weapon.

"You mean him?" I lifted up the snoozing Chaotix member. He was already out like a light.

The newcomer flew up in my face, waving his arms and pointing.

"Yeah, him!" I put Charmy in his hands. "Woah!"

"Please get him out of here. I'm trying to fix this whole thing and I'm on a time budget!"

The bee held Charmy by the wrists and flew upwards.

"You with the--"

"Chaotix and yes! Now move it!"

"Uh, sure! I'll take him back to his place in the Strawberry Fields while this blows over!"

"You do that."

"Thanks, dude! You're pretty alright for a--"

I warped to the garden settlement on the other side of the mountain range.

⟁ ♦ 65

In contrast to the rest of the island, which was undergoing (if not moving through) a winter season, the glass-roofed greenhouses of this iridescent region kept it nice and warm for its reptilian residents. Over half of what was commonly referred to as the Rainbow Valley was covered in this way, making its status as just another forest an impressively detailed façade. The geodesic domes were impossible to recognize as such from the ground or by looking at them from the sky, providing little glare as sunlight passed right through the strange, invisible materials that composed them.

It was obvious that the chameleons didn't want to advertise how much fine control they had over their secluded enclave on the island; all of that would've remained unseen if I didn't have the Phantom Ruby to tell me what was there and what wasn't. Including a pink chameleon girl with long hair, white gloves, and yellow boots. She was curled up in a bush. Eyes shut, breathing shallow, trying to be as silent as possible until the danger passed.

The chameleon hadn't noticed me yet. I walked forward, to ask her where the others were, when I realized that she was already too terrified to give me a straight answer.

I shifted my form, taking on the shape of a magenta chameleon. My disguise was closer to Espio as I knew him in the games than what I saw of him when we fought. This one didn't have his metal bracers, and his shoes were still green rather than purple.

"Are you okay?" I said gently, approaching the chameleon with a medical kit in my hands.

The young woman jumped up with a frightened yelp. Once she'd identified me as a fellow chameleon, her body relaxed, and her eyes went to my accessories.

"You're from the homeland!" she said, relief clear in her voice. "Like Espio and Valdez!"

The homeland? Was it because I copied Espio's ninja gear? I wasn't exactly sure what she was talking about, but I didn't have time to disagree.

"What happened here?"

She grabbed onto me like a life preserver.

"You have to help us! Espio betrayed the Rainbow Valley to invaders!"

Seemed like Espio had, under Enerjak's orders, revealed where the rest of his people were hiding. With the Rainbow Valley's proximity to Nekronopolis, devoting his forces here for the specific purpose of rounding up the stealth-inclined chameleons made sense.

"Espio isn't in control of his actions," I explained, as I checked her over for injuries.

"I-I don't understand."

She doesn't have anything useful. Move on.

Not. Yet.

"His mind's been taken over by dark magic," I answered. "Don't worry. I'm here to help."

"Who are you?" the pink chameleon asked, taking a step back. She let out a wince of pain, then shifted her weight more on one leg than the other.

Espio, Valdez. Noticing a pattern.

"My name is Inigo. What's yours?"

"L-Liza," she stammered out.

"Liza. Can you walk?"

One of her legs was injured. Probably caused by her running, losing her balance, and falling.

"I don't know."

"Try this."

I went to my medical bag and pulled out a crutch that wasn't there before. Having a couple of staves in Null Space, it only took a mote of magic for me to adjust one of them into something she could use to get out of here.

⟁ ♦ 64

"T-Thank you, Inigo."

I looked her in the eyes, to make sure she was still with me.

"Liza, I need you to take cover in the outskirts of the Rainbow Valley. The robots can't see you without another chameleon pointing you out. Tell the same to any other chameleons you run into that they need to make themselves scarce. Do you understand?"

"Yes. I… understand."

"Did you see where Espio went? Or the Chaotix?"

Liza gestured in the direction of the largest camouflaged domes. From that direction, I could hear the muffled shouts and other sounds of active combat.

"They're all at the Botanic Base! Please! You have to hurry!"

I broke into a run towards the dome, leaving Liza to handle getting to safety on her own. Breaking through one of the large, triangular windows of the greenhouse with a shoulder barge, I discarded my chameleon cover and rammed into the nearest robot I could.

"What took you so long?" Vector called out over the cacophony of the fight.

The crocodile took off his headphones, aimed the peripheral at the robots, and hit 'play'. The result was a sonic blast that knocked a line of them off their feet!

How has he not deafened himself by accident?

How should I know?

I wasn't asking you!

In the Botanic Base, a multileveled complex where living spaces were much more compact and densely populated, using any of my firearms was completely out of the question. I grabbed one of them by the neck and slammed them into the next, hard enough that I was left holding little more than an aluminum skeleton.

"Charmy was trickier than he looked!"

"But you got him back, right?"

One of Enerjak's bots fell atop the yellow plunger of a large, cylindrical capsule, like the kind that Eggman used to hold animals in the games. Several of them had been strewn about the inside of the greenhouse village. When the button was pressed, the capsule ruptured open, and several panicked chameleons went running out.

"Yeah, he's taking a rest in the Strawberry Fields! What're those containers?"

"The mechanauts are using Robotnik's leftover Prison Eggs!" Vector stated. "Hit the button on top and they crack!"

I tossed the metal frame and stretched my arm and hammered another one of the Prison Eggs open with my fist, freeing the chameleons inside them. They scrambled out of the Botanic Base, through the exit doors and up the walls towards the vents in the roof.

"Did you stop Espio yet?" I asked.

"Have you seen the new moves he's--!" Vector ran towards me! "LOOK OUT!"

"Your life is forfeit to his will!" Espio cried.

I looked up and got a kunai lodged in my jugular!

⟁ ♦ 60

Ow. Honestly, Charmy's stinger was worse. I removed the knife from my neck and cleared my throat. Looking upwards for a second time, I could see Espio the Chameleon was spinning like a top midair, throwing shurikens and other sharpened implements as he jumped from treetop to treetop. Knuckles was in hot pursuit right behind his friend, trying to catch him from the air and punching through any mechanauts that got in his way.

It beats calling them "robots" all the time.

I need to wrap this up and move on to the last one. Then I take care of Enerjak.

"FREEZE!" I shouted at Espio, a command followed by the sensation of a frigid wind that caused him to lose his concentration and drop!

⟁ ♦ 58

"You have no command over me!" Espio proclaimed.

Espio performed a ukemi, landing on his hands to zero the damage from his fall and converting the rest of his momentum into a spinning roundhouse kick to my jaw!

⟁ ♦ 55

I cast my hand out and put a portal on the wall where Espio was about to land after his counter, causing him to go from sticking on a nearby wall to falling from the ceiling.

⟁ ♦ 52

"Knuckles! Hold him still so I can--!"

"I've got it!" Knuckles shouted. He glided upwards and punched his friend in the stomach.

"Oof!"

Being exhausted by Knuckles and Vector chasing him before I got here, Espio was done. I ran to the chameleon, putting my hands to his head. The spell was identical to the one on Charmy, scrambling Espio's priorities so that he valued the word of Enerjak above all. His friends were a disorganized mess of feelings cast into second place, which meant they'd normally be near the top. I didn't have time to pry further, even if I wanted to.

"Let's try that again." I drowned out the fighting to swifty deprogram Espio while Knuckles and Vector covered me. "SNAP OUT OF IT!"

Since it worked last time, I smacked Espio to make the counterspell stick.

⟁ ♦ 50

The Phantom Ruby destroyed the hex, purging the most blatant and odious elements of Enerjak's influence from Espio's mind. His body went slack when I was done, by which point the Botanic Base had gone still.

"Is he back with us?" Knuckles asked.

I set Espio down on the ground, as gently as I could.

"Yes and no. He's back to normal, but he's not gonna be up again for a couple hours."

"We will keep guard over him," a new, more mature voice said.

Turning around, I saw a blue chameleon with red gloves and a matching red beret. He looked old enough to be Espio's older brother, or maybe his father. I could see flat-out invisible things, including the other chameleons, and I didn't notice this one at all.

"He's safe!" Knuckles said, noticing my guard was raised. "That's Valdez. Espio's mentor."

"I'll explain to the others what has happened," Valdez continued.

Vector put his headset back on once the last of the Prison Eggs were smashed open.

"Thanks Valdez! Think you guys can take things from here?"

He gave the crocodile a curt nod.

"The invaders have left enough weapons lying around that we can take care of the stragglers. Go now. You have other places to protect."

"He's got that right," I replied.

I snapped up another portal, this one going to what remained of Carnival Night's Hall of Mirrors exhibit.

⟁ ♦ 45

"You'd make a killing delivering pizzas with these!" Vector joked.

"Vector…" Knuckles started.

"Just trying to lighten the mood," Vector said, less enthusiastically than before. He walked towards the portal. "Things are getting pretty intense, you know?"

"Don't sweat it, Vec. We'll beat this guy."

Vector turned around to give Knuckles a high-five.

"You know it, Red! See ya on the other side!"

Vector stepped through the vortex. I turned to Knuckles.

"Do you remember what to do?" I asked him. "In case this doesn't go as planned, or… in case Enerjak gets the best of me."

I had just enough time to write down a short list of stuff he needed to deal with after beating Enerjak, in case I didn't make it. Once that was done, I gave it to Figment and made a secondary one for the Freedom Fighters to receive.

If I died, or turned into something else, then I wouldn't leave them all empty-handed.

"Of course I do!" he shouted. "Now go save Mighty like you said you would!"

Figment sent me another update on how Mighty and Metal Sonic were doing. The mountain village was damaged by their duel, looking like an avalanche or two had blown through. The mountain itself had taken more than its fair share of bumps and scrapes. Mighty was covered in bruises, but still standing. Metal Sonic's mecha state was down an arm, and his eyes had gone from red to green.

"Will do!"

Figment, fall back to Carnival Night!

My familiar bobbed his head and took off for the staging ground for the trap. I exited the Botanic Base through one of the broken windows and took to the air, heading northwest towards the snowy mountain. Which gave me a short-lived view of Nekronopolis.

It was plain to see that Enerjak was a big fan of the classics. The buildings were dark and brooding, hewn out of slate, pumice, and granite by magic. Several towers spat out plumes of noxious smoke, if for no other reason than to add texture to the atmosphere. Zipping past the evil fortress, but not so close that I would be in range of the mechanauts manning the laser cannons, I transmitted a psychic message directly to Metal Sonic.

"Hey Metal! Need some help over there?"

I gave him the power-up. Ergo, I was free to patch myself into his senses. Same as with Figment. I switched one of my eyes to what the badnik's cameras were looking at, which was Mighty, partially blocked by a 'LOW POWER' warning.

Metal Sonic sluggishly swiped his remaining arm at the armadillo.

"Wrapping up my end of the deal!" Mighty caught the arm, which became a liquid metal enveloping his body! "This organic still needs air! If he suffocates, then I win!!"

I flew faster, preparing to make another portal and save Mighty if he didn't back down.

"Killing wasn't in the deal, Metal! You're supposed to knock him out at the most!"

"You're really cramping my style, man!"

The metal mass reshaped itself around the armadillo, solidifying into a long cylinder that Metal Sonic braced against the nearest rock. Mighty went tumbling down the shute, as the super badnik's HUD pulled up a rangefinder widget. His targeting computer skimmed over the nearby peaks, then stopped at the lava-spewing Red Mountain at my back.

"Metal, what're you doing!?"

"It's Metal Sonic 2.5! Not to be abbreviated! And I'm out of juice! If you want him knocked out, then you take care of him yourself!"

Metal Sonic fired the cannon before I could object, launching Mighty high into the sky! The force of the shot caused the cannon and the rest of his transformed state to liquify into inert metal. The super badnik climbed out of the remains, his new body the Mechanix made for him and a scrap-eating grin being all that remained.

"You guys gave me a repair job, I played the distraction! You shot at me with a missile, I shoot at you with a missile! We're even, and I'm out of here!"

Metal Sonic rocketed away from the island, leaving us to whatever fate had in store.

"METAL!" I called out, to little avail.

"One last thing!" Metal Sonic shouted in my head. "CATCH!"

"Catch? What the hell is he--?!"

I was cut off by Mighty barreling into my chest as a dense ball of pain!


⟁ ♦ 40

The ground became the sky, and vice versa, over and over again, as we both went spinning into the base of the volcano! The ground became all-encompassing when we drilled through the slope on impact, the sky replaced with the luminous reds of the lava reefs!

⟁ ♦ 30

Mighty landed on a rocky cliff inside of the mountain's hollow, spacious interior, but I didn't stop rolling until I was falling over a shallow pool of magma!

"Fire shield!" I cried out! "Fire shield!"

⟁ ♦ !!

I breached the molten rock with a hot splash and a tremor of force from the impact. By the time I'd clawed myself out of the thick, viscous fluid, I was over a foot taller and over a hundred pounds heavier than I was moments before.

"Not now!" I growled. The intense geothermal activity mixed with the lack of sunlight down here were the perfect catalysts for me to become a dragon once more.

Mighty rose to his feet, staring down at me.

"You again?" Mighty said, putting up his dukes. "Raring to go another round already?"

"We can do this the easy way, but I have a feeling it'll be done the hard way!"

Mighty leapt off the cliff, driving his fist into the ground hard enough to cause another quake! All around us, the floor spurted out even more geysers of magma!

"Same here! I'm finishing the fight you started! And this time, I want you to stay down! PERMANENTLY!"

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

This is the fic's two-parter! I know folks were expecting the Enerjak fight to happen this chapter, and to be honest, so was I! However, I didn't want to speed through the Chaotix boss rush when there was so much action to cover! So I split them in two, and the next chapter will be the second half of Plucking Narcissus!

All of these areas on Angel Island are locations that more or less exist on Archie's treatment of the place, but weren't quite getting their fair shake. Some of these aspects (such as the Rainbow Valley and Botanic Base being the same) were very late additions from Super Sonic Digest #2. It's generally understood that the name changes were done for legal reasons, but I took advantage of them to make the story more exciting!

I'll try not to drag-on with the next chapter. See you then!

Did you know I have a Patreon and Ko-Fi? You would have earlier, but I only now realized I forgot to put them in my signature! My bad!

I've made a new boilerplate message to go at the end of each chapter, and it'll look like this:

♦ Want to support my work? ♦
PATREON | KO-FI
♦ Join the W2 Workshop Zone for previews and updates! ♦
W2 Workshop Zone Discord​

This chapter has been brought to you by the following patrons and beta readers: Captain Nameless, C-Moon, Dr.doom360, Hellatrix, Justquestin2004, and N'Oni!

Thank you all for the continuing support!

 

[weredrago2]

ENTRY #3: GOLDEN HIVE COLONY

A beautiful flower on Northamer's western coast, the Golden Hive Colony is a city state whose contemporary existence is rooted in the most recent Day of Fury, in the early 3100s. The Queen Bee Dynasty is rumored to go as far back as the Forgotten Wars, though with practically zero records from this period surviving into the modern day, that may simply be Golden Hive-sponsored propaganda. This polity of pollinators has prospered where others have withered on the vine due to a combination of shrewd diplomacy and a motherload of money.

The founding myth of the Golden Hive is one of generosity. The colony began as a humble, agrarian hive, whose inhabitants were gifted with green thumbs and the benefit of foresight. After the Day of Fury unleashed an earthquake, the rivers receded, and the forests were stripped barren of life. While the bees were spared further hardship due to their sizable granaries, which were meant to feed the hive during harsh winters, the same could not be said for the Wasp Colony. For generations, wasp warbands would raid bee farms to plunder their harvests. The wasp hive was taken to the brink of starvation by the famine, so weakened by hunger that they could not so much as raise a sword against their former victims. Rather than take their revenge, the bee colony accepted the wasps into their hive as their own.

From this act of kindness, the seeds of an unbreakable alliance were sown. The unified colony traveled the deserts and prairies further south, establishing peace accords and economic ties with their neighbors to survive the harsh seasons following the Day of Fury. The bees made for good negotiators, and the wasps were their security against aggressors that might bully the miniscule bees into less than ideal arrangements. To this day, the demographics of the Hive Guard is skewed towards wasps whose families have been protecting the colony since its inception. The fortuitous discovery of rich gold veins near their colony after the disaster were seen as a sign that this new hive was destined to blossom. The world-famous gilded hexagons of the Golden Hive Castle were erected as the hive entered its golden age, and a creative arts renaissance was quick to follow. I've been told that their mead is to die for.

While a majority of those living in the Golden Hive are bees, followed by wasps, one doesn't have to look far to find ants, beetles, butterflies, or moths. Numerous mobians have immigrated to the hive in order to escape the strife plaguing the rest of Mobius. The Golden Hive has practiced neutrality for much of its history, opting to stay out of the Great War to continue this tradition. Hoverver, it has been rumored for years that the colony took money from mobians and overlanders alike under the table. Such an arrangement couldn't be made with Robotnik, as he's unlikely to be satisfied with a few drops of gold at a time when he could ransack the whole pot. The fortifications of the bees and their sheer distance from Robotropolis would make such a prospect an expensive one, rivaling how much he'd have to gain in the first place. Rather than invade now, Robotnik has settled for closing the distance over time, building up his passion project of West Mobotropolis and breaking down the Golden Hive's former trading partners. This embargo by process of elimination has not yet borne fruit, but being steadily isolated from the rest of Mobius has caused the citizens of the colony no small amount of distress.

The Queen Bee is the supreme ruler of the colony, though this absolute power is rarely expressed by overt means. Queen Melissa Bee, while a well-renowned patron of the arts, may not be diverting all of the money in the cultural enrichment budget towards commissioning grand works to keep her bees busy. The Rebel Underground, an infrequent pain in Robotnik's western front, may allegedly benefit from the Queen Bee's patronage as well. King Winsome Bee, in spite of presenting as another foppish trophy husband, has been an active participant in the intrigue games of the major guilds that have weathered the tumultuous Robotnik Era. Their daughter, Princess Apollina "Polly" Bee won't be of age to ascend to the throne for another decade, but it's common protocol to marry off an eligible male heir to a merited merchant princess so that there's a viable Queen Bee backup. He selected Saffron, heiress of the textile guild; an arranged marriage with someone Prince Charmant was already close friends with was expected to make the whole process run more smoothly.

Prince Charmy's acknowledgement ceremony has been indefinitely postponed for reasons undisclosed to the public. He has not been seen outside of the castle in over six months.


This is the third datafile, in which I gave myself two challenges.
1. Make the Golden Hive interesting, even though they only appear three times over three issues they aren't the main focus of and are then summarily killed offscreen, giving me effectively nothing to work with.
2. Don't use the word "honey" once. Until now, that is.

I was so annoyed by the whole Golden Hive amounting to nothing after being introduced at the drop of a hat that I determined I had to do this. I did so much bee research (as well as some light research on Switzerland and Florence) that it isn't even funny, but I am now armed with a swarm of bee puns to name future characters.


Next update will be revisions to Chapter 29, followed by work on Chapter 30.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 30: Plucking Narcissus, Part 2

When one guy declared to the other that they're not going to stop fighting until at least one of them was dead, that tended to be when the conversation ended. Mighty and I were past the point of talking this out, staged to duel in an active volcano for Enerjak's amusement, and the subtle bits of the Ruby were locked away while I was in dragon mode. It didn't matter that the sun was out there, because the dire conditions of Red Mountain and the light being blocked were 'close enough' for me to go weredragon. I'd need to bring the armadillo around to see things my way by force, kicking and screaming.

"Bring it on!" I roared, driving my hand towards him!

My arm swept wide, scraping against the walls with a long claw swipe. Mighty ducked out of the way, charging at me with a reckless haymaker of his own! I flapped my wings, taking myself upwards as he punched a large dent into a cliff face. Both of our attacks triggered steady trickles of magma to leak out from the sides of the molten pit, the 'safe' sections inside the volcano to dwindle. The environment was definitely too much for me to survive as my normal self, so I had to work with what I had in dragon mode.

I delivered a jab to the back of Mighty's head while his back was turned, but my hand bounced off an incredibly dense concentration of subdermal plating. The armadillo's shell deflected the attack like it was nothing.

"That was dirty!" Mighty growled, yanking his hand out of the hard stone.

Mighty whirled around and rushed me a second time, after which came the most brutal brawl I'd ever experienced. I had a feeling he'd be the most difficult member of the Chaotix to deal with, and in spite of that I'd underestimated the level of danger Mighty the Armadillo represented. He'd swing at me, I'd try to swing back with the same level of intensity. Joints popped, ligaments stretched, bones were rattled, and muscles burned. Each attack drove another quake through the volcano, kicking up clouds of ash and lumpy pillars of igneous rock. Several of those boulders would make their way into our hands as blunt instruments with which we'd use to pummel one another until they turned to rubble.

Our fight gradually traveled far away from the crater, the rising tide of magma causing what were once stable rocks to float and ferried us further into the subterranean caverns deeper into the volcano. These tunnels were hardly dark, illuminated by the burning embers, hanging torches, and red hot skulls along the cliffs that expelling infernal gouts of flames. The odor of sulfur and brimstone was overwhelming, and the ecosystem was infrequently broken up by machinery from Robotnik's failed conquests. When I thought that the hostile terrain would give Mighty pause, he rolled off one of the natural ramps and skipped across the magma on his shell to deliver a nasty uppercut!

Savage kicks, bites, headbutts, and fireballs were thrown in for variety. There was little finesse to either of our techniques. I wasn't that experienced at hand-to-hand, having eventually drifted towards using melee weapons before the claws came in, but right now I had five knives on each hand and I was rapidly running out of reasons not to use them. I could tell that Mighty rarely had the opportunity to fight with other people at his level, having to steadily unwind more and more of the mental restraints he'd bound around his strength to avoid hurting anyone. Restraints that were steadily wearing away.

I had to admit, I was less worried about Mighty's well-being after he punched me in the head hard enough to snap one of my horns off.

When an opening made itself known, I raked my claws across Mighty's chest. The end result was a couple of gashes and only a light trickle of blood.

"That hurt!" Mighty yelled, from the fresh pain of the grazing wounds.

I thought Metal wore him down! How is he this strong?!

He's going for a grapple!

Mighty stretched his arms wide for tackle, but I snatched his extended hands and pushed Mighty towards the magma before he had the chance!

"You're not giving me a lot of options!" I shouted, struggling to pin him down with my mass.

Exposing the armadillo's lungs to the fumes leaking out of the volcano was the only 'gentle' way I could secure a knock-out. At first, it looked like I had enough of a size advantage to bring him to his knees, but Mighty wasn't budging. At all.

"You really thought your weight class was gonna carry you through?" Mighty asked, in an unimpressed tone. His eyes were bloodshot from smoke, and he was seeing red. "Pathetic!"

Suddenly, Mighty rammed me in the stomach and burst free of my grip! With the wind taken out of me, I was unable to stop him from grabbing me by the arms and pulling them, hard, until the rest of my body was dragged along by the momentum of my elastic limbs!

"I thought you'd be a better workout!" he groused, before bringing my arms upwards and bashing my body onto a stony plateau with enough force to go through it!

I went straight back into the molten drink, my eyes awash in a bright orange glow as I fought against the waves to resurface!

"You're gonna make me feel bad if this is too easy!" I heard Mighty taunt as I went under.

It was hard to describe the viscous current as anything less than perilous, more akin to a boiling mudslide than anything approaching water.

"Ha! Not so invincible after all, Scarlet!"

Bruin? Barbe Vis?!

I couldn't even sputter out a response. I clawed against the fragmented ceiling of the magma river, but the rocks above me made me feel as though I was on the wrong side of a frozen lake. My wings were more of an impediment than anything else, dragging me further down into the geothermal riptide.

I was resistant to being instantly fried by the magma as a dragon, but without my force field or any other magical intermediary to protect me, that meant I was drowning instead of burning. Drowning experiences were becoming a recurring note, but I didn't know if I could pull myself out of the drink this time.

"If you're serious about helping us, then let me know when you're willing to man up!"

I just need more time to fix everything!

"Yer big n' strong, so what're ye holdin' back fer? Put yer back into it!"

I'm trying!

Trying isn't good enough! I can't help anyone if I'm weak!

♦ !̵!̷

I surged through the magma with a renewed vigor and tore right through the surface! With a wild snarl, I ripped open more rents in the tenuous earth below and filled the air with destructive streams of fire!

"Throwing a tantrum?" Mighty said coyly, eyes flashing green. "Why don't you fly over here and face me like a mobian!"

One of those thrashes was different from the rest I did for show. I stomped down on the edge of the rocky platform where Mighty stood, flinging him towards me! He rolled into a ball, and I used my tail to lash him back against the crumbling pillars with a vicious bounce.

I noticed a pattern as we fought. Mighty would roll up into a ball to block, and pop open again when he was ready to counter. That wasn't working for me, so I changed the rules.

Mighty rebounded, and I struck him again with a two-fisted swing. He hit a half-melted mechanism that sunk into the magma. After a third battering with my foot, Mighty uncurled from his ball form and kicked off the wall with his feet!

"Take this!" Mighty called out, trying to slam two fists down on me!

I brought my hands forward, one over the other, and snatched the armadillo from the air! Pressing my hands together, I rolled him back into a ball once more!

"Put me down!" Mighty shouted, unable to uncurl with my hands keeping him trapped!

Being a superpowered armadillo, Mighty's shell could clamp down with tremendous force. The muscles that made him tighten up into a sphere were much stronger than the ones that'd let him open again. With my hands locked on him, he was invulnerable and helpless.

I raised Mighty over a jagged hunk of hard stones that caught my eye, and bashed his carapace against them. Repeatedly. Harder and harder, causing scuffs and bruises to crop up across the surface of his unbreakable defense with each impact. His shell could be as tough as he wanted, but with nowhere else to go, the rest of that force was running through his relatively unarmored body.

I wasn't fighting Mighty like a mobian. That wasn't in me.

I wasn't even fighting him like a man. I was far past that.

I was fighting like a monster, and a loud crack was all I needed to know that this fight was over. I set Mighty down on a stable rock, suspended over a sea of molten death. A wet, ragged cough from the armadillo told me he was at my mercy.

"Ray…" Mighty muttered weakly, before his eyes slowly closed.

Ray? Did something happen to--?

It was enough to rouse me from my enraged state.

Mighty! If I killed him--!

--Then it'd be a mercy compared to letting him stay under Enerjak's control.

He wouldn't be my first. He won't be my last.

I never wanted to--

"I left you alone for a @#$% hour, and this is what you got up to?!"

My train of thought was interrupted by a very irate Archimedes poofing onto my shoulder!

"Archimedes? What're you doing here?"

"Making sure you don't go too far. With beating the hex out of Mighty or renovating the whole Queendom."

"Queendom?" I looked around, taking in details that I was previously too distracted to take stock of. This new crop of tunnels that lined the interior of the volcano, rather than being vacant, contained numerous small buildings of an unmistakably Hellenistic style. I thought it was a trick of perspective, but these structures were miniscule. "Oh no."

It didn't take long for me to figure out that those were fire ant tunnels, as mobians similar to Archimedes were scurrying around to repair the parts of their village that were the most impacted by the seismic activity. Tears and rents had ravaged the place, and more sections had unglued themselves as we spoke.

"Welcome to the Molten Mounds. I'd roll out the welcome mat, but as you can see, we've got our hands full trying to avoid a total collapse."

I looked at the damage, stunned.

"Did we do all of this?"

Archimedes let out a frustrated huff.

"Red Mountain's been actin' up since you-know-who came back to town, but you two gettin' into a slugfest down here sure as Aurora didn't help any." He looked towards Mighty, a flash of concern appearing across his face. Before I could say anything, Archimedes teleported to Mighty's side to check his pulse. "He's alive. You broke a couple of bones stopping him before he brought the whole place down, but he'll walk it off."

"That's all I needed to know."

Archimedes' antennas flickered back and forth, faintly glowing in the cavern. A handful of fire ants separated from the rapid response swarm and carried Mighty down into the tunnels to safety.

Is he talking to the other ants with those?

"The Queen ordered an evac to the deepest parts of the island until the tremors pass. It's bad down here, but it'll be much safer than what's happening topside."

His antenna twitched again.

The fire ants are psionic. Archimedes has been relaying intel back to someone else.

"If I knew you lived in the volcano, I would've tried to move the fight away from here," I said after a pause, which I needed to process that new information.

He shot me another annoyed look.

"I didn't expect to see you down here, either. Enerjak has a bone to pick with our kind, and the Fire Ant Council was hoping he wouldn't notice we were still around."

I glanced around, trying to figure out where I might be able to assist with the evacuation in spite of my more ponderous size and limited toolkit. Another tremor ran through the tunnels, followed by a green luminance, and I saw a clump of the ceiling come loose! I reached out and grabbed the loose rocks before they could land on a group of fire ants trying to flee from the disaster. When the whole roof looked like it was about to give way, I froze the ceiling in place with a blast of ice.

"That's not gonna last down here!" I shouted to them. "Move it!"

Numerous fire ants in light armor crawled out of the holes in the tunnels and stacked atop each other, interlocking their limbs so as to construct new support beams over the ceiling. I took to the air and raised my hands up to assist them and hold the roof up, but I could feel a mounting pressure pushing against us.

The pressure intensified, the overhead space giving way until my feet were back against the ground. Struggling against an occult hand that was pushing down on the mountain. If there was any doubt before as to who was doing it, a psychotic cackle ran past the tunnels and through my mind.

Enerjak! Set aside your feud with the insects and face me!

Are you nuts?! We can't fight him down here!

"Scarlet!" Archimedes called out. I turned my head to see that he was gesturing towards a large tunnel that wasn't there before. "This way!"

"Not… yet!" I grunted, trying to buy as much time as I could for the fire ants to escape. The wounds I'd picked up against Mighty were taking their toll, and I was brought to my knees from the accumulated pain!

"Oh, for the love of--!" Archimedes hopped onto my snout! "We're all out except for you!"

My vision was briefly covered in red smoke, and when the smoke cleared, I saw that Archimedes relocated us to a new cave that was covered in cyan stones and bright blue crystals outgrowths. In front of us were a series of ancient echidna ruins and a red, glassy sphere on a stone altar, surrounded by bands of gold.

"You're a real load to lug around, y'know that?" Archimedes grumbled. He used my nose as a springboard to reach the ground.

When I identified my face as having a cartilaginous nose again, I noticed my snout was gone. Then, my wings and tail. Looking up, I could see that the ancient echidna teleporter had a large skylight above it, transforming me back to normal. The energy that built up in the power gem attached to the Ruby released at once, and instantly restored me.

⟁ ♦ 50

"Take the warp pad," Archimedes said weakly, having been exhausted by the jaunt. He crawled over to the side of the teleporter and smacked it, causing a red beam of light to fire straight through the skylight. "The plan we cooked up to take care of Dimitri isn't gonna fly while he has his eyes on us, so I'm giving you a shot to try your idea first."

I approached the lightbeam. I could only hope that they got the machine ready by now, because I only had the one shot to get him towards it.

"Dimitri was Enerjak's old name, wasn't it? Before he went cuckoo for chaos energy."

Archimedes let out a tired chuckle.

"You catch on quick, don't you? My predecessors jotted down Dimitri as the brother of the first Guardian, and the reason we have a Guardian in the first place. Because no matter what intentions they had going into it, for good or for ill, not everybody can handle unlimited power when they have their hands on it."

I nodded, understanding his point. Enerjak was something I could still become.

I will never become him.

That's not as comforting as you think it is.

I channeled the power of the Phantom Ruby through my body an additional time. From the heart, which I bade to beat faster, allowing the energy flowing through the rest of me.

What's going on?

I have half a tank of energy, and you need fifty rings to go super.

Don't forget, I also need seven chaos emeralds I don't have.

It worked fine in Efrika. I need another edge that'll make me stand up to Enerjak's whole 'turn me into salt' thing you mentioned, no matter how long it lasts!

That wasn't a super state. It was a cry for help! And I answered.

You're… what, the Phantom Ruby's autopilot?

I felt something bristle at the notion.

I'm me. I'll help out again, but this time, I don't even have rings to hold my form together!

Can't I burn the power gem? Heavy said it could mess with spacetime. Mix that with the Phantom Ruby, and… I don't know, fake a super mode?

Wishful thinking. No power gem could give you that much power… but it might be enough to protect you from Enerjak for one attack. Then it'll be worthless.

I can work with that.

You keep saying I can't hold back. Losing your nerve?

No. Those limiters were put there for a reason, and the black streaks on the Phantom Ruby mean they're irrevocably broken. I need to do this fast, or I'll be unraveled by the chaos force for writing a check I can't cash. End of story.

I took a deep breath. In, and out, feeling my power well up. Accepting that the only way I could stop this madness was to confront it head-on, I stepped through the stream of light.

The teleportation effect was unlike anything I'd experienced, even when I was using the Phantom Ruby to get around. I felt my whole body become weightless, my constituent atoms suspended midair before being transmitted in a straight line though the volcanic mountain and towards the sky.

All of that upwards momentum was suddenly halted in its tracks when a gauntlet wrapped in gold and lapis lazuli snapped its way around my neck.

"At long last, I've caught the meddlesome pest that's been vexing me."

My eyes fluttered open, and I was face to face with Enerjak. An echidna in gold and blue armor of a vaguely Egyptian bent, with a helmet that framed emerald green sclera and a wide grin fit only for a madman. In his other hand, Enerjak held a green scepter capped with the head and sharpened beak of a predatory bird.

My first instinct, the same as everyone else's, was to bring my hands around his and try to break free from his grasp. Around us was the eye of a mounting storm, the black clouds that have metaphorically hovered over the island making their existence more literal.

"An overlander?" Enerjak observed, his voice possessing a strong, enervating quality to it that demanded one's attention. "I was told by my new prelates to expect a dragon, but such ignorant lessers are bound to make mistakes when left unattended. Was it your kind that sent that irksome machine to test my power?"

"Hands off!"

Enerjak tossed me away, and waved his staff ostentatiously.

"You presume to make demands of a divine being? Since you went to the effort of overcoming my four champions, and making quite a show of their defeats, I'll let you have your piece before rendering judgment!"

I halted in place midair, the two of us standing high above the island.

"I'm giving you this one last chance to stop whatever sick game you're playing. You have no right to subjugate others to your will, regardless of what powers you possess!"

Enerjak laughed. When I tried to look him in the eyes, all I saw were eleven green chaos emeralds. They were separate, individual chaos emeralds, and yet, they were also a single whole in the shape of an echidna. Both at the same time, and something else.

In fact, looking at Enerjak almost felt like I was looking at--

"Is that all you sought to expend your words on? A futile appeal to morality that has no bearings on the rights of a god?"

I slowly shrugged. I didn't expect it to work, but I could feel that I needed a few more seconds before I was ready to really kick off. The Phantom Ruby was glowing brighter, my curly hair sticking up on the ends. The power gem on my hand melted away, like another ring fueling my stone of power. With its dispersal, I felt an invisible energy barrier enclose my body, denser than anything else I'd put together.

"You aren't a god, Dimitri. You're an echidna in super mode with delusions of grandeur."

His manic smile drooped, yet it remained beyond the proportions that his face should be physically capable of supporting. The dark clouds drooped ever closer, and I could see that Enerjak was toying with an emerald green bolt of lightning in his hands.

"I will not broker such disrespect from a hairless ape. Have you anything else to say before I have that irreverent tongue of yours cut for flippancy?"

"One last thing."

"Then say it, and prepare to face the wrath of a god!"

Ready?

Ready.

Then let's do it!

♦ !!

We shoved our fingers into Enerjak's eyes, creating a direct connection to the emeralds in his body! Feeling our power gem barrier rapidly evaporate under a torrent of emerald green lightning from the sky, we ran through the fastest incantation in our entire life.

"TheServersaretheSevenChaosChaosisPowerenrichedbytheHearttheControllerexisttoUnifytheChaos!"

We were wondering where the Master Emerald was supposed to be in this dimension. This version of how the game was played, and how the pieces were arranged on the board were much different from what we were expecting. Enerjak helped us answer that question.

"MASTER EMERALD! HEAR OUR PLEA! LEND US YOUR POWER!"

This universe didn't have a Master Emerald yet, because Enerjak was holding them hostage. We felt somewhere between seven to eleven jolts of limitless, infinite chaos energy jolt through our hands, through the veins, past the soul, and into the Phantom Ruby.

▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ !!

We disengaged from Enerjak and forced the boundless expanse of energy to settle down before it could split us in over half a dozen directions. We didn't have enough of a grasp of the Master Emerald's power to wrangle all of the constituent emeralds away from Enerjak, but we had just enough pull to use them as a jumpstart. Tikal's Prayer was the best way we had to get them to listen to what we had to say.

"What are you doing!?" Enerjak demanded to know.

We released all of the energy that'd accumulated at once, exploding into a brilliant star of mystical power! An inhuman dynamo, a magenta blaze of phantasmal chaos energy that burned like the plasma of a ruby star.

All of our doubts and divisions were set aside, as we were now unified in purpose.

Enerjak was knocked backwards by the energy we were putting out. Without a set of rings controlling the flow of power, nothing was holding us back now.

Which was bad because, in spite of the light show, this wasn't all the way to a genuine super state. This was a neon imitation. Enough to put on a good show, a good front, until we completely fizzled out. The candle that burned twice as bright burned half as long, and we were an infinite amount of times burning past twice as bright.

Were we Infinite? It took us a moment to decide that we weren't. The name didn't suit us.

We were a Phantom Scarlet, because that's all that we'd be if we didn't wrap this up quick. Blast shadows imprinted on the walls of history.

"Showing you what we're made of!"

♦ ꝏ

- - -

Spoiler: Chapter Notes

Not too many notes for this chapter, save to note that the initial section takes from multiple Angel Island-adjacent levels. Lava Reef and Red Mountain were significantly implied to be close to each other, if not the same location, so I wanted to showcase that. The Ice Cap in Sonic 3 and the Ice Cap in Sonic Adventure were more or less the same place, so why not Lava Reef and Red Mountain? The Molten Mounds where the Fire Ant Queendom lived were also nearby, so I brought them together as a cohesive region.

Next up, the finale of the Enerjak arc!

Next up, the first Super Scarlet Special: Shattering Narcissus!

Thank you all for reading.

♦ Want to support my work? ♦
PATREON | KO-FI
♦ Join the W2 Workshop Zone for previews and updates! ♦
W2 Workshop Zone Discord

This chapter has been brought to you by the following patrons and beta readers: Captain Nameless, C-Moon, Draconic Hermit, Dr.doom360, Justquestin2004, and N'Oni!

Thank you all for the continuing support!​

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Super Scarlet Special 1: Shattering Narcissus

It was immediately after we'd gone super and made the declaration that we were going to beat Enerjak as a united front that I felt the division start to reassert itself. I was me, the other guy was himself, and we were a temporary arrangement. My head being on fire only made the candle metaphor hit harder. I needed to hold out long enough for the others to complete the trap and lure him into it, but not so long that our body disintegrated.

As I tried to catch my breath, wild surges of energy burst out of the Phantom Ruby in all directions, the translucent bolts inverting the colors of any image that passed through them. I wasn't going to let the output go to waste, and aimed them as projectiles in Enerjak's direction. Only a handful of those scarcely-directed attacks made their mark, leaving Enerjak stunned in the extremely short term. The rest went wide, striking against the mountains and plains as jagged rods of ruby crystal.

I only had a few seconds before he righted himself, so we wove a flawless crystal ball and cut through the emerald fog to see exactly what we needed to.

♦ ꝏ

The interior of the Hall of Mirrors was heavily damaged from Eggman's prior fight with the Chaotix, littered with broken glass that no one had time to clear up since the Carnival Night park was shut down. The Mechanix were furiously repairing a large laser cannon covered in power gems, which was mounted on a heavy dolly being pushed in the back at the same time by Knuckles and Vector. Fiona was hefting one end of a heavy toolbox with both her hands and Figment had the other in his beak.

"Are you sure this'll do it?" Fiona asked.

"While Doctor Robotnik is a fiendish scoundrel, our former master's handiwork may be the best chance we have of containing that mad brute," Heavy stated.

"Ping ping!" Bomb chimed in agreement.

"How much more fixing do you need to do?" Knuckles asked between gritted teeth. The echidna was putting all he had into getting that thing into position. "We're on the clock!"

"We're applying the finishing touches before it's ready to fire!"

Look alive!

I was snapped out of my farsight by a volatile shockwave from Enerjak, which we blocked with a pink forcefield! The barrier wall had to be the largest we'd ever made to contain the blast, stretching to encompass an entire face of Red Mountain.

♦ ꝏ̌҉̳

"You dare try to drain my energy?" Enerjak screeched in rage. "Steal the divine fire of a god?! You infidel! I'll have you picked apart by the birds for this disrespect!"

"Come and get us!"

With one strike of his staff against the forcefield, my barrier shattered. There was no longer any protection standing between us except my unstable super state.

That didn't last! Now what?

Attack! Attack!

With what? He's invincible, remember?

The answer came back to us instantly.

Get creative! We can do anything short of separating him from the Master Emerald!

Anything. It was such a big concept, and the kind that terrified me when I first realized I had the Phantom Ruby. At that moment, I had to roll with it. Do or die.

Before Enerjak could reply, or, more accurately, retaliate, we flicked up the fragments of our busted barrier and peppered him with monomolecular flechettes!

♦ ꝏ̶̞ͭ

"SHIELD OF LIGHT!"

Enerjak blocked the projectiles with a sweep of his arm and a green wall of force, causing the pink shards to stop in their tracks.

"This is all you can muster? Paltry blades? Your hubris knows no--!"

You said anything, right?

We changed those polygons into round, black bombs, identical to the ones thrown by Bean, to see if a megaton bombardment would change his tune! When we saw a gap his barrier, we stretched our arm through the hole and smashed the crystal ball into Enerjak's face!

♦ ꝏ̷̰͉̊̆́

Enerjak coughed up a caustic mist emanating from the crystal ball as I flew away towards the theme park. The toxic gasses contained in that sphere would've liquified everything between his armor if he was still flesh and blood. Instead, it was only incredibly irritating.

"Get back here so I can DESTROY you!"

"You'll have to catch us first!"

The mountains were dotted with more bleached-white ruins, which were themselves covered in green ferns and vines. Puffy clouds hung uncannily close to the peaks, hovering amongst strange ruins that were floating midair, giving me more oddities I had to dodge and Enerjak would tear right past. Needing to keep him busy, we made dozens of illusory copies to give him more targets to shoot!

"There is no escape!" Enerjak yelled, and a blast of energy from his eyes shot down a number of fake mes clustered near a hanging garden. The beautiful fixture tumbled down to the ground far below.

We twisted around and released a staccato of gleaming orbs as we wove through what had to be the Sky Sanctuary.

"Roaming Chaos!"

♦ ꝏ̔̓҉̙͈́

Enerjak went past the pink and white spheres of irregular space.

"Another illusion to disorient me?"

After the moving distortions split off into a dozen directions to surround Enerjak, we snapped my fingers and detonated them with a prismatic maelstrom!

"Chaos Magic!"

♦ ꝏ̴̨̢̺̺̟̗ͬ̋ͧ͆͞

Crystalline magic splashed all across the old cityscape, covering the Sky Sanctuary in ruby growths. I slowed down to make sure that Enerjak was still following, because there was no way I'd been stupid enough to think a supercharged bombing run would be enough to put him down by itself. My suspicion turned out to be right, as Enerjak burst through a pillar of gemstone with a Kirby-crackling aura of unfettered power!

"You, a mere thaumaturgist, continue to underestimate my limitless might? A petty dabbler in the Chaos Force compared to my splendor?"

We laughed. It was only to buy time for the others. Really. Genuinely.

The fact that we thought this guy was a moron was icing on the cake.

"Oh, please! If the echidnas and fire ants could stick you under a rock for centuries, then you couldn't have been that big a deal!"

"And you think you would fare better in my stead?" Enerjak said, the metal of his mask bending into a raised eyebrow.

"If we were trying to take over the world?" If. That's an if. "Then we probably wouldn't get caught up on that part!"

"Then don't say that your god doesn't hear your prayers," Enerjak whispered into my ear, as the one I was still looking at across the red sky turned to dust! "Ask for the chance to prove your point, and ye shall receive!"

With one hand, Enerjak lifted me by the leg and shoved me into the mountain! Everything went blurry, and then I was blinded by miles of stone traveling past my body!

♦ ꝏ̸̢̫͕̣͔́͑ͥ̈́͢͢

Are you kidding me?! He got us talking to see which one of us was real!

That was foolish! I have the powers of a god at my fingertips! Why aren't I using it!?

Good question! And why the hell'd we stop to push Enerjak's buttons?

This form is unstable! Divergent ideas distract and divide. Shared traits are magnified! Any stray thought can threaten my lucidity!

No wonder Enerjak went loco. He didn't have whatever mindset was needed to handle this power in the long term, and neither did I.

Then I'll just have to hold on to what's important!

While the conditions weren't the most ideal for thinking clearly, I focused my thoughts on what I had to lose if Enerjak wasn't stopped. My first thoughts went to Mercia. Rob, Amy, and all of the other Mercian Freedom Fighters who'd be screwed if I never made it back to Eurish. I thought of the friends I'd made beyond Eurish, in the Dire Wolves. I thought of everyone I wanted to meet and the places I wanted to see beyond what little I've seen.

Then my thoughts ventured elsewhere. Somewhere near and far. Foreign, yet nostalgic. A place that I'd never been to that felt like I hadn't been to in a long, long time.

I thought of a merciless sun over an unforgiving desert, where there was no comfort to be found in the blazing dunes or in the burning stones. Any life that took root in such a wicked, hateful land was scarce, and any signs of weakness were quick to be stamped out by the strong. The only heat that did not cause pain came from those I'd hold on to for warmth, our camps set beneath a starry sky. Those who would hold on to me for protection against a world that sought nothing less than our complete destruction.

I thought of Enerjak taking everything away from me a second time.

I blasted out of the rock and touched down at another ancient site, an underground waterway with tunnels and basins made of yellow and teal bricks. I stopped on the water without breaking the surface, and Enerjak appeared shortly afterwards so that he could ominously hover over me. He raised up his arms, and twin torrents of water followed him.

"Now, BEAR WITNESS, as the Hydrocity becomes your watery grave!"

We wrenched a pipe out of the wall with a clawed construct and repeatedly bashed Enerjak with it. Our real hand burned with the mounting sting of the Phantom Ruby, which carved new streaks across our arm and embedded themselves into the shoulder.

"IT'S! CALLED! HYDRO! CITY!"

♦ ꝏ̿̆͂͒҉̸̵̫͈͚̪͡

Enerjak tore the pipe out of my projection and tossed high-pressure water lances at me!

"I proclaim it to be Hydrocity, and my word is--!"

We rapidly cycled a red, white, and blue illusion over his vision to try and trigger an epileptic seizure. It blinded him long enough that we could slam our arms down and take control of the water flow from him!

"CHAOS IMPACT!"

The reservoir took on new form, becoming wrathful water tendrils that lashed out as a deluge raining down upon Enerjak! He was hammered with tidal waves of hydraulic force, ripping through the flood controls of this forlorn facility until Enerjak was spat out at a large river serving as an outlet for the waterway. We teleported to his end destination and continued zapping Enerjak with crystal rays to wear down his resolve!

♦ ꝏ̴͌͒ͣ̏̀҉͈̫̰̯̀

"Stop wasting both of our time and give up!"

"NEVER!"

Enerjak encased my body in a subzero block of ice, lifted us out of the river, and chucked me as far as he could! I went sliding up and down the hills, reentering the air as my fiery aura started producing enough heat to thaw the ice block. I got free when it landed inside the large courtyard of an old manor home, cracking the block open.

"He really doesn't know when to… quit?"

I rose a few feet into the air and looked around, recognizing right away that I couldn't recognize the beige walls of this country house or the garden that I crashed into. This wasn't a natural garden, overgrown with wildflowers that were left to themselves. There were beets, carrots, turnips, and other vegetables that needed care to grow. The building looked no more than a couple of decades old, and was well-maintained.

Why do so many people live on this damn island?!

I heard the drop of a watering can, and turned around to see a gray bulldog woman in a purple dress and sun hat walking into the courtyard. She took a look at me, my hovering body enveloped in flames, and ran away in terror.

"George! George! Come quickly! They've found us!"

"Oh, of all the--!"

A saw a green pillar of light in the sky, steadily approaching this location. I floated into the open door of the manor so I could explain the situation as gently as I could manage.

"Ma'am, we need you and your husband to immediately evacuate!"

I turned the corner and stopped, reaching another elderly bulldog in a buttoned-up shirt and tie. The man had a stern expression and a white buzz cut, carrying the strict bearing of a retired commander. Behind him, in the next room over, I saw the old woman and a younger, brown squirrel with red hair in a blue sweatshirt crouched behind the furniture. Interpreting me as a possible threat to his family, the bulldog pointed a pearly white laser rifle at me without a shred of hesitation.

"Not a step further, overlander."

I ran a hand through my inferno, and tried my best to dampen our general intensity.

"We don't have time for this! There's a very unnatural disaster headed this way!"

The old general gave me a lookover. An appraisal of my intentions.

"Martha, you and the boy head down to the storm cellar."

Squinting with my third eye, we could see that Enerjak was looking at us looking at him with a ghastly grin.

"A cellar's not gonna be enough to--!" Enerjak blasted away the walls of the manor with a disintegrating wave of energy! "GET DOWN!"

We held out our hands and compressed the devastating attack into a fist-sized wad of annihilation!

"MAGIC HAND--!!"

♦ !̶̢͚̞̠͔͌̽̄̒̀͟!͒́́̑͠͡͏̨̥͖̳̠

A surge of energy rippled through the Phantom Ruby, went down the rupture trailing along our vein, and split our arm in half. A widening rift manifested between one side of the limb and the other, with further cracks creeping towards our torso. Exposed as they were, we could see that our internals were hollowed-out, blood replaced with a magenta radiance.

The power is tearing us apart!

We fell to the ground with a pained scream, the sphere we made with Magic Hands being shunted into Null Space to avoid disaster.

Enerjak levitated forward, being unable to resist the urge to gloat. He grabbed me by the head, bludgeoned it against a wall until it collapsed, and raised me up so I was on my knees.

"You almost impressed me, but you overextended yourself by worrying about the wellbeing of these mortals!" Sparkling motes emanated from the Phantom Ruby and wove together into pink bands of light, wrapping tightly across our arm. "There may yet be a place for you at my side, should you cease this infantile defiance and kneel."

"Never," we echoed.

Enerjak frowned, and prepared to finish me off.

"A pity. Take heart, overlander. You shall be extinguished here, but your fascinating techniques you showcase will be immortalized as weapons of my arsenal."

"Get away from him!"

"Elias, no!"

I was prepping a Parthian shot when an old candelabra was brazenly chucked at Enerjak's head. The echidna whirled back towards the homesteaders in a rage. The attack did nothing except take his eyes off of me, the only downside being that all of his attention was now on the squirrel that threw it.

"You dare attack a god incarnate?"

"You're not a god!" the squirrel bravely, if suicidally declared. "You're nothing but a bully!"

Enerjak channeled another ray of energy in his open hand.

"The sentence for your heresy is DEATH!"

The artificial rings reinforcing the mystical field around our body gave me enough strength to drag Enerjak into a portal from behind, sending us both tumbling through Null Space and then the sky above his nightmare city of Nekronopolis! Our jaunt through the pocket zone caused Enerjak to be covered in crystal matter, which we used as a focal point to rip open his foggy memories and bombard him with a psychic attack!

We can't take your mind, but we can yank at your heartstrings!

♦ ꝏ͞͏̷̵̧͟

"Cut the holy act, Dimitri! We know that you lived, you breathed, and you even had a family! Do they mean nothing to you now that you've put on the mask of Enerjak?"

I stopped midair. I expected him to lash out at me again in a rage, but for once in this entire brawl, I saw Enerjak falter.

"It has been… too long since I have been coherent enough to think of Cynthia-Wa and Menniker. They're both long dead, made the pariahs by my failure. I was too weakened to intercede as the simple-minded masses took their vengeance on them, as I was driven to madness by the indignity of my state!" Dimitri gestured his hand to the island below. All of the ruins of what I knew from his memories was once a vast city of wonder. "After everything I strived to accomplish, a great disaster that I could have been there to prevent washed our people away! My Nekronopolis is a mausoleum of our civilization, as only I and the last son of my brother's line remain!"

I paused to consider his words as more protective bindings clasped into place around my destabilizing frame. His words and his sorrow were genuine.

"That isn't the case, Dimitri. There are others who survived the disaster."

Enerjak's somber expression reflexively contorted back into a sneer. The rest of the crystal powder on him was scoured away.

"You lie, as your perfidious kind always does! I alone remember our glorious past, and I shall be the one to drag Mobius into a new golden age!"

"They're trapped in another zone called the Twilight Cage." I don't know if that isn't true here. "We learned of them when we popped a power ring for knowledge. Been at full power for two days and you didn't even think to check, did you?"

"SILENCE! I was going to scour this world and beyond for remnants I could reclaim when I had the chance!"

"When was that going to be? After you got bored of being the God-Emperor of Mobius? His silence said enough. "You have all of this chaos power at your fingertips, but your narrow-minded obsession has blinded you!"

"Don't lecture me on the power of chaos energy, you neophyte! I studied it for my entire life! I wrote the book on the field!"

We generated a long, crystalline mirror as a trial run, forcing Enerjak to confront the snarling maniac we'd been dealing with in his own reflection.

"Then you should recognize the side effects when they're staring you in the face!"

Dimitri brought an armored glove to the mirror, taking in the distorted features of his own face and the alabaster eyes behind the mask.

"Is that me?" the echidna asked, using a softer tone than I'd ever heard him use. "Is this what the Chaos Syphon turned me into?"

I can't help him. I shouldn't help him!

What if he wasn't in control? Hell, what if we lost control? Shouldn't we try to reach out?

I have to try.

"All of those Chaos Emeralds inside of you are messing with your head!"

"That's impossible!" Dimitri denied. "I made all of the calculations to protect myself from the side effects of chaos radiation!"

"Dimitri, you're super. Whatever you tried to do to avoid exposure, it failed."

Dimitri's face changed again, becoming frantic.

"N-No! It was Edmund! He was the one who betrayed me to the council! He must've sabotaged the machine!"

"You admitted that you hadn't been able to think clearly in centuries. How do you know that you're lucid now, when your brain, the only instrument you have to assess your mental state, has been converted into a bunch of magical particles?"

He gazed at his reflection in a fleeting moment of contemplation, the bright lights around his eyes dimming until I could see that they were naturally green.

On his face was a dawning realization. A dawning horror.

"I don't know. By Aurora, I can't know."

"Imagine what you could do if you took the emeralds out and harnessed them as a limitless source of free energy! You could build anew on Angel Island! Make a free city for everyone, your returning people included!"

Dimitri looked away from the mirror, towards me. Enerjak's eyes were once again clouded with white light.

"If I was to allow my power to be taken away from me?"

I didn't like that phrasing.

"That's not quite what we said."

Enerjak spared one final glance at the mirror before smashing it with his fist!

"Only a fool would let go of this awesome power once he has it! You're trying to trick me again! THUNDER ARROW!"

Enerjak launched more green bolts from his hand, and I was forced to fly down towards his city for cover. Nekronopolis, the enshadowed blight on Angel Island, had several high towers scorched with burn marks by his anger.

"The sacrifices I've made to reach the apex of my potential shall not be in vain! This city will be where the Age of Enerjak begins! Only when my enemies are scoured from this zone can I repopulate the capital with a new, more subservient echidna people!"

Satisfied?

Hardly. I think I got close, but he's too far gone for me to talk him down.

Then we'll make this a mercy kill.

We extended a red thread several miles across the island to the Marble Garden in an instant, grasping onto a derelict giant top and reeling it in!

"If you need this city to do that, then you're gonna hate what happens next!"

Though I had no idea why Marble Garden had giant tops amongst its other relics, what I did know was that dragging a movement-powered object across Angel Island caused it to rev up with enough force to effortlessly breach the onyx walls of Enerjak's city!

"My walls!" Enerjak cried out in shock. He waved his scepter at his mechanical army, then to me. "Mechanauts! DESTROY the intruder!"

As the spinning top crashed against the stone buildings of Nekronopolis like they were bowling pins, we generated a strong gravitational pull and a massive portal to Null Space over a boxy structure producing robots on an assembly line. After the factory installation was dragged through the magenta abyss, we released the robots back through the vortex with glimmering coats of ruby crystal over their heads and limbs.

♦ !̸̢͈̹̣̦̪̬̇̆̃͊̍̾͘͘͢͡!̡ͫ͌ͥ̑ͥͨ́͜͡҉̯͇͈̮̲̮͘

One of the rings around our torso snapped open, causing a rift to manifest to separate me in two. Another crack spun off the major fracture and gradually crept up our neck.

"OVERRULED. Mechanauts, we command you to turn against your master!"

The traitorous batch of crystalized machines turned their weapons upon Enerjak and the loyalist robots, the rocket launchers I loaned them, allowing the bots to cause total pandemonium all over Enerjak's passion project. It was around this time that the Hydro City pipes uprooted by my gravity field burst open, flooding the vacant streets.

"HEAVEN'S JUDGMENT!" Enerjak called out, as more green bolts of lightning poured out of his hands. He was trying to put out the fires I was starting with more fire, which only became more evidently fruitless when the giant top barreled through the Nekronopolis power plant and exploded. "You're ruining EVERYTHING!"

Enerjak was mad with power, and generally irritable by default, but it became clear that I needed him well and truly furious if he was going to be led by the nose into the trap. I flew up to the twisted centerpiece of his dark designs, an ominous tower with a ghoulish expression that loomed over the rest.

This'll do nicely.

Enerjak teleported in front of me, glowing green like a neutron star.

"You wouldn't dare," Enerjak seethed. "I'll transmute you into a unique microorganism that shall exist exclusively to--!"

We slugged Enerjak's disintegration attack past him like it was a baseball, causing his eyesore of a landmark to atomize on contact.

"We tried the peaceful way!" we proclaimed, as we prepared another spell to relocate us to Carnival Night. "You've only got yourself to blame for--!"

♦ !̷̷̧̗̥̮̭͖̘̐̊̑ͥ̓̽͘̕͢!̢̅̄ͮ̐̽̚͜҉̶̴̛͇̼̻͉̺͔

My vision was obscured by two magenta lights. One directly to the right of my left eye, and one to the left of my right. Belatedly, it came to me that a wide crack was running across the middle of my face.

"No, no, no! Not now, not yet!"

All Enerjak needed was that lapse in my concentration for him to strike me down with renewed fervor, a chaos spear destroying all of the fake rings keeping me in one piece.

"I tire of your game!" The world around us changed once more, becoming a vast, endless desert. I limply fell, the Phantom Ruby expelling chaos energy while my body, mind, and soul steadily burned away. "And you have reached your limit."

Get up! I can't give up when I'm so close!

I heard someone calling for me, but I was too tired to hear what they were saying.

"T-twice as bright, huh?" I sputtered, too weak to save myself this time.

I can't give up! I can't!

I hit the ground, and everything went dark--!

♦ I̴̢̛̠͚͎̣̓ͣͦ̀̚'̢̟͎͕͉̽ͨ̽̎͡͠͠m̶͚͖͍̺̌̋ͤͮ́́͠ ̵̛̟̺̞̮̇̍̔̋͘̕n̴͇̻̘̥ͥͤ̂̈̕͡͡ȯ̵̧̧͔͚̺͉̇̋ͭ͡t͆̉̆̿҉̴̦̜͇̫͘͡ ̨̭̠͓̂̏̉̈́͜͠͝ͅd̴̠͎̼̗ͦ̃ͯ̌͟͡͠ǫ̛̮̲̣̦́̉ͥ̍̀͝n̵͙̤͇̳͌ͩ̈̐́͟͜èͮ̎̋͏̦̖̖͘͞͞ͅ ̨̙͖̦̱ͧͬͩͭ̀͘͝y̵̸̽ͧ͋̌҉͖̦͔͓̕ę̵̨̳̪̘̜̈̀͛ͦ͡t̡ͥ͒̈ͯ̕͢͏̺̹̱̹!̶͇͈̣͉ͮ̆ͭͪ͜͠͞

I rose from the dunes as a shambling mass, my loose outline held together by a multitude of power rings wrapping around my body. An additional limb of light spooled out from my spine, solidifying into a thick tail ending in a symmetrical, five-fingered hand.

♦ ꝏ̶̵͓̟̞̗ͨ͂͋̑́͟

"Another surprise?" Enerjak scoffed, sounding unimpressed. "Well, get on with it!"

The rift that split my head was sealed by a round mask forming atop it. A horned mask of steel and gold, with two jagged slits for my red eyes to see this baleful world through.

I don't remember what used to be under the mask. I don't even remember my name.

There is only I, and there is only me. The rest has burned to nothingness.

I called upon a weapon from Null Space, expecting my scimitar. Instead, I received a sharpened slab of orichalcum with a red hilt and pommel. A long column of Ixian sigils ran down the flat of the blade, which further enhanced its durability.

This will have to do.

I used my tail as a springboard and pounced towards Enerjak, my sword impacting against his armor with enough hate behind the swing to send him flying back!

"What is this? Found your second wind?"

"You want wind?" I drove out my hand and summoned a dust devil of unprecedented size, eclipsing the Great Pyramids of Mobigypt, out from which poured a legion of shadowy jackals. "Then reap the whirlwind!"

♦ ꝏ̢̿̏̇̊̊̋͏̴̨͏̠͖͎̲̖͔̕

Enerjak was buffeted with strike after strike, blow after blow. For every jackal he killed, two more would take their place. Only this time, the numbers didn't have a limit. The ghosts of his slain were real and illusory, all at the same time. Enerjak trying to deny their existence wouldn't do anything to stem the horde's ceaseless thirst for vengeance.

You may not be the echidna I burned to destroy, but you wear his mask!

Enerjak put dozens of projectiles in my way, but I cut and parried every last one!

"What are you!?"

"A PAST YOU CAN'T ESCAPE BY CHANGING YOUR FACE!"

I rode the wind and drove my sword down with an edge cutting sharper than infinity.

"CHAOS PUNISHMENT!"

♦ ꝏ̧̉̀̍ͦ̔ͯ̃́́͟͜͝͏̶̤͕͕̻͉͇̹̟̀ ̵̧̬̣̳̝͍̖̰̰ͭ̓̏̀̾̓̊́̚͘͘͜͟͜!̴̌ͣ̓͒ͣͨ̋̌҉̸̨̛͈̖̺̺̗̮̗̹͘͢͝!̷̧̛̲̟̝̥͇̞̰̤ͫ͌ͧ̄̅͆͑͂́̀́͘͢

I awoke with a jolt, feeling my body be stretched in all directions by the mounting instability of my Phantom state! Before me, I saw Enerjak's helmet had been cracked open, revealing him to be a maroon-colored echidna with orange stripes along his dreadlocks. Whatever happened to him, he was temporarily disabled, and Morglay was in my hands.

Did I do that?

We need to end this!

I tore my eyes away from Enerjak and prepared for the big finale. Together, we focused as much of our energy as we could into moving him and ourselves to Carnival Night!

♦ !ͪ̎͆͑͛͑ͣ̀͡҉̢҉̵͘҉̸̠͎̺̞̺̫͙͉!̇ͫ̇̅͐̓͂͆҉̷̧͜҉̷҉͉̜̠̩̟̘̟͚͠

The Phantom Ruby spilled magenta light in all directions, erratically opening portals through space! I saw random slices of the theme park translocated to the Sandopolis desert, coming out as chopped-up rides and attractions spilled onto the sands. From one of those wild tears, I could see Knuckles, Fiona, Figment, and the Chaotix with the cannon!

"My word!"

"Ping! Ping!"

"Outta sight!"

"Through there!" Fiona shouted, as everyone got behind the laser turret and pushed it through the portal before all of them snapped shut.

"Move it or lose it!" we desperately called out to them.

"We're ready to fire!" Heavy declared. "John, conjure the trap!"

With the last ounce of our super mode, we shaped the sandstorm behind Enerjak into a gigantic sheet of glass with a dull crystal back! The biggest mirror on Angel Island!

♦ 1҉́͠͝҉͝҉͝0̴̢̢̛҉̨͜͞0̵̶̡̛́́̕͜

"You irritating… Insufferable… RRAAAHHHH!!"

Enerjak's helmet reconstituted, and he abandoned all pretenses of divinity so that he could rush forwards with his bird-headed staff and smack the Phantom Ruby off my hand!

♦ 1̡̨̛̛͘̕͟͠ ̛͠͏̸̨̨͢͞0҉̴̧̢́͟͜͠ ̷͟҉̸̢͠͝͠ ̀̕͟͞͞͝͝͠0̸̷̵̕͜҉͏̴ ͢͝͝͏̶́͘͟ ̸̴̢̛̀́͘͞ ̵̸͏̸͏̵̀͟!̢̡͟͢͞͡҉̨ ̧̢̨̢̧̛͘͝ ̴̵̨̨́̀͢͞ ̸͟͡͠҉̸̵͞ ̸̴̶̀̀͘͞͞!͟͏̴̀̕͠͏̀

The Phantom Ruby rocketed off into the sand, and what was left of my vitality went with it. My left arm spooled out, my cratered hand hanging by a thread, both legs crumbling away into piles of ruby dust when I tried to stand.

"Someone get him out of there!" Heavy shouted.

The color drained out of my vision, images accumulating too much s͞t̨a͏t͝įç to see clearly.

"Turn the dang cannon down!"

"PING!!"

"He said the weapon is already charging! We can't stop it!"

I saw a blurry streak of light dart towards Enerjak, pecking him in the face!

"Must this entire wretched ecosystem rebel against me!?"

"ENERJAK!" Knuckles called out to the demigod. "Why not pick on someone your own size?"

Enerjak turned away from my rapidly deteriorating form and tossed Figment into a cage manifested out of blocky stones of the desert.

"The last descendant of Edmund wishes to test his mettle? Very well! I'll lower my phenomenal strength to more reasonable levels so that you might stand a--!"

The sound of a right cross rattling Enerjak's skull told me that I wouldn't die in vain.

That was… n̶i̡c̀è… to think about.

We all had to die. Why couldn't it be for a good reason?

…

Guess it wasn't too much to ask for after all.

I felt something lift me up on my shoulders. At first, I thought it was the Grim Reaper, or a mobian angel carrying me off to visit the Walkers, but I didn't think either of them were in the habit of wearing crocodile leather.

"We're getting you out of here, okay!?" Vector said, trying to keep one of us calm as he dragged me away from Knuckles throwing hands with the most powerful entity on Mobius.

It wasn't working. My senses were shot, and were getting worse by the second, but I could see that Fiona Fox was nearby. She was ducked around one of the piles of scrap that was moved to the desert, observing us get closer from the safety of cover.

"Hey, fox girl! We could use some help over here!"

There was something haunted in her eyes, and her breathing had become erratic. I thought she was having a panic attack.

"Fiona," I said slowly, trying to approach her. "Are you okay?"

"Am I okay?" she asked in sheer bewilderment. "You're the one that's falling apart!"

"I'm all tapped out," I admitted. "Probably dead already."

"Don't talk like that!" Vector ordered.

"S-Sorry," I said hoarsely. "Let's hope Knuckles can take it from here?"

Fiona looked at me, confused and upset at what I said.

"That's all you have to say after getting half your body destroyed trying to be a hero? That you hope things will turn out okay?"

I didn't have the Phantom Ruby. No rings, either. If I could still do magic, then it'd need to use something as the fuel source. I was one spell away from withering away to nothingness, meaning that another fireside chat with the emeralds was out of the question.

"Hope's all I've got to lose."

She stared at me, deeper, tears welling up in her eyes.

"I-- You-- I don't GET IT!"

Fiona thrust a lump of something that felt like a jagged rock into my good hand and ran towards the destructive duel between Knuckles and Enerjak!

"Fiona, what're you doing!?" I asked her. "GET BACK HERE!"

Instead of answering me, she picked up Morglay from the sand and started swinging the heavy sword around in a circle, building momentum with her spin!

"THE WEAPON'S ABOUT TO FIRE!" Heavy bellowed, the power gems on the end of the laser cannon glowing green, yellow, and blue.

Enerjak was on the ropes for most of the fight, but he must've gotten sick of losing, because he caught Knuckles' super strong punch in one hand and tossed him aside.

Suddenly, I felt the rush of the Phantom Ruby's energy return to me!

♦ 50

I looked down, and the Phantom Ruby was back on my left hand. Like the rest of my arm and my legs, everything was set back to normal. Like they had never left at all.

Fiona?

Fiona threw the sword, sending it flying, and the next thing Enerjak caught was the so-called traitor's sword in the back.

"All of your attacks are for naught!"

"How about this one?" Knuckles said, as he shoved Enerjak's back into the mirror!

"Another worthless--!"

Knuckles took to the air and glided away from Enerjak, right before the cannon fired upon him and the mirror! I grabbed Vector and Fiona so they could be dragged into safety before the air was filled with a dazzling array of light!

When the flash faded, we could all see Enerjak, trapped on the wrong side of the mirror: The reflection.

"What did you do to me?"

For all of the awful things Eggman has done to Mobius, he had a way of coming in clutch. Case in point, this laser gun he made that could suppress anyone's special powers and trap them in a unique mirror zone where they were powerless. Heavy said the machine was only good for one more shot, so I really hoped this worked.

"Release me this instant!"

"Not gonna happen," Knuckles said, approaching the surface. He put one hand on the glass and began reciting Tikal's Prayer. "The Servers are the Seven Chaos!"

Enerjak banged his fists against the mirror impotently, his head face taking up a majority of the surface area on the glass.

"Chaos is Power, enriched by the Heart!"

The glass started to glow green. Enerjak must've sensed that something was wrong, because he switched tactics. From anger to bargaining.

"Knuckles! We could do so much together! I can tell you about the legends of your ancestors! Our history! Our science! We can rebuild our society from the ashes! Don't let them take this opportunity from you! Let me go, and all will be forgiven!"

"The Controller exists to Unify the Chaos!"

Enerjak continued to bang on the glass, hoping that it might crack if he willed it so.

"You stupid, stupid child! I should have killed you all when I had the chance!"

Knuckles paused, gulping. The last part was always freeform.

"Master Emerald… That's what the wizard called you. You were the eleven Chaos Emeralds that Dimitri stole! You all existed as separate gems, with the twelfth remaining to keep the island in the sky! But you were always meant to be together, weren't you?"

The green aura over the mirror intensified. Enerjak became desperate, begging for mercy.

"Knuckles! Please! Don't let them take my power away! I'll die without it!"

His plea fell on deaf ears, because there were three simple rules with Knuckles.

One, you didn't mess with his friends.

Two, you didn't mess with his island.

Three, you didn't mess with his emeralds.

Guess who broke all three?

"Master Emerald! Leave Enerjak, and become whole again!"

Eleven green lights shot out of the mirror towards the other side of Angel Island, and Enerjak's wails filled the sky until the mirror shattered into a kaleidoscope of lights.

Just like that, the Enerjak Era was cut short. The shadow over Angel Island, which turned friend into foe and nearly tore us all apart, was cast away at the eleventh hour. The nightmare was over, and as far as we knew, Enerjak was gone.

Now all we had to do was pick up the pieces.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

I don't know what to put here, besides pointing out that over 3,000 words of this were written in one day, and that's an extreme deviation from my usual progress. That's INSANE! Why can't I write 3,000 words a day every day!?

(That couldn't have anything to do with the fact I had a lot more sleep last night, could it? Nah, that's probably a coincidence…)

Other than that, all of the spells/chaos powers used here show up somewhere in the games. You can make a scavenger hunt of it.

Lastly, I want to thank everyone for reading. Again. If there wasn't a following of some kind, I probably would've given up on this years ago. Since people are here, then I'll stick around for as long as I can, too.

Maybe wait a bit for the next chapter. This quick turnaround was a miracle unto itself.

♦ Want to support my work? ♦
PATREON | KO-FI
♦ Join the W2 Workshop Zone for previews and updates! ♦
W2 Workshop Zone Discord

This chapter has been brought to you by the following patrons and beta readers: Captain Nameless, C-Moon, Draconic Hermit, Dr.doom360, FourthMonado, Justquestin2004, and N'Oni!

Thank you all for the continuing support!

 

[weredrago2]

KINTOBOR FAMILY TREE - 1.0 VERSION

Normal Box - Canon character, mentioned or otherwise.
"Sketchy" Box - Ruby Haze addition.
† - Deceased.
- In space!

I was going to make a brief blurb and append an image to each one, but the final count is 25 people. Which is a lot to make up on the spot!

For now, anyone who figures out the joke/nods to the names of all the extra characters can give themselves a cookie.

 

[weredrago2]

Please vote on which of these scenarios you'd like to see as the next Bonus Chapter!

Ruby Haze: What If Bonus Chapter - ROUND 3 - Online Poll - StrawPoll

What's your opinion? Vote now: Silver's Spring [Silver the Hedgehog SI], Birdland [Battle Bird Cockatiel SI], Valtron Child [Moebius SI], Wango Tangle [Tangle the Lemur SI], Hyperst...

strawpoll.com

Silver's Spring - In the year 3437 PXE, Silver the Hedgehog is the last hope for his doomed timeline. After scouring the ruins of Mobius for clues as to the location of Little Planet and the Seven Time Stones, Silver performed chronos control to travel over two hundred back into the past, at the tail end of the First Robotnik War. More even-tempered and pragmatic than the Silver of the Prime Zone, this psychokinetic Knight of Chronos will do whatever it takes to change the course of Mobius from a bad future into a good one. Even if he must reach beyond the boundaries of time itself to make his dream come true.

Birdland - Fritz the Cockatiel is among the flying elite of the Battle Bird Armada, a militant order whose wings of terror spread across the skies of Mobius! Taken away from his family at a young age due to his high potential as an asset to the Armada, Fritz grew up knowing that his only desire was to break free from his cage. While outwardly espousing a loyalty to his Battle Lord and his desire to reclaim the lost glory of their Babylonian ancestors, Fritz thinks the Battlekukku XV a bit too coo-coo to be calling the shots. He and his esteemed Flying Circus Squadron remain loyal for now, but their maverick strikes against the nominally-allied Robotnik regime has put them all on the propeller's edge of being declared Babylon Rogues.

Valtron Child - On the opposite end of the Cosmic Interstate from the Mobius we might recognize lies its grim counterpart, a zone where good is bad, and right is wrong. Virtue is vice, and vice is virtue. The era of the Great Peace, a temporary break in what has otherwise been a history plagued by ceaseless strife, was shattered by the destructive acts of one Sonic the Hedgehog and his Suppression Squad. The Principality of Mercia in Eurish employed draconian laws and shows of force against the populace to weather the waves of anarchy that Sonic had left in his wake, only for Prince Robert to be overthrown in a peasant revolt led by an enigmatic revolutionary named Jean Valtron. Chances of reform and liberty under his sapphire blue banner were quickly crushed, as Valtron tightened the noose around the very concept of hope and instituted a reign of terror worse than anyone could have ever imagined.

Wango Tangle - Unexpectedly dropped into the Great Forest with the body of Tangle, this SI has been rolling with the punches and punching the clocks of badniks with the gigantic fist on her stretchy tail! Going by a tweaked alias to go with the new identity and playing coy with her (somewhat convoluted) origins, Jeanne the Lemur has nonetheless turned into a core member of the Knothole Freedom Fighters. Being much older than the others in the group, if only in the mental sense, Jeanne finds herself becoming a rock of stability in a group of child soldiers going through puberty. If that wasn't difficult enough, that damn skunk is one more ill-conceived pass away from Jeanne getting court-martialed for breaking his nose.

Hyperstone Rhapsody - At the juncture zone between the Cosmic Interstate and a multiverse in which it's ninja turtles all the way down, an oddball everyman arrives in late 80s New York with nothing but an alien artifact and the clothes on his back. Shoved into the Technodrome's waste disposal by an over-eager Bebop & Rocksteady, the SI is submerged in ooze within close proximity to alien spores and a broken set of the Shredder's armor. Reanimated as a shellshocked, arboreal mutant with dominion over the plant kingdom, John Evergreen's only goal is to protect the Earth against the myriad threats pointing daggers at it from Dimension X. If anyone want get in his way, then COWABUNGA IT IS.

The closing date for voting is when Chapter 31 is posted.

 

[weredrago2]

Hyperstone Rhapsody
Very Non-Canon Bonus Bonus

It was a cool, quiet night in the African shrublands when we stopped the Neutrinos' flying convertible over a blighted hole in the ground that was once a major mining complex. At least, I had to assume it was fairly quiet, until a bright red hotrod burst through it with a radical roar of its engines and a transwarp vortex from Dimension X killed the silence.

"What the @#$% is that!?" I heard one of the mine workers called out from below.

The mine worker that was still working.

I frowned. Not that anyone could tell with my wooden faceplate on.

"It's a flying car!" shouted another one of the miners with grossly inadequate protection.

"And it's full of freaks!" shouted one of the many armed guards in military fatigues with Null Corp insignias. "FIRE! FIRE!"

I had to assume they were speaking French, Swahili, or any of the other local languages, but after being exposed to transwarp particles it all sounded English to my ears. That was convenient, certainly, but what wasn't convenient is that this allegedly abandoned mine was still in use. 'Arisianal' nothing, this was an industrial-scale operation to extract raw uranium out of Central Africa and into the international black market.

"Are you sure this is the mine we're seeking?" the vocoded voice of black and gold robot in the driver's seat tiredly intoned next to me, loud enough that he could be heard over the bullets bouncing off the hovercraft. "It appears to be occupied!"

For all of his mechanical aspects he'd taken on after his incident with the mentawave, Professor Honeycutt's weariness about engaging in violence was all too genuine.

Our entrance was anything but subtle. I thought subtlety would be redundant, what with us being too odd and too noisy to benefit from stealth for more than five seconds. Honeycutt's mastery of transdimensional travel meant he'd triangulated a way straight to the goods. That way, we didn't have to wade through the Congolese army and hordes of suspiciously well-armed American tourists that happened to pick a classified uranium mine as their vacation spot. I'd overlooked the possibility that somebody else besides the United States got to it first, on the account that such an idea was patently ridiculous.

Yet here we were, being attacked by Cold War leftovers benefitting from Null's patronage. Clearly, the shadowy international conglomerate didn't know when to make way for the mutants and other strangeness.

"This is definitely Shinkolobwe!" I answered, as I uncoiled a long vine from my body onto a crane and swung down to the ground with a flying kick into the nearest mine guard.

"Then why are they here, shooting at us?"

I raised my arms and took down a corporate hatchetman with thorn flechettes.

"They're here for the same reason we are! Illegal extraction! Let's not waste any time for those of us with a low tolerance for radiation!"

The Fugitoid landed the hotrod in the nearest open area, from which the rest of our strike force disembarked. I'd have to thank the Neutrinos for the free ride some time, once I got them out of prison and gave them their homeworld back.

"Oh, dear!" Honeycutt tutted, switching his fine manipulators out for a pair of nonlethal stun cannons. "Please, do not resist!"

I felt bad dragging Honeycutt all this way to do something he wasn't comfortable doing, especially with this being his first experience visiting Earth, but you couldn't save the world without cracking a few uranium mines.

"Never thought we'd be headin' to Zaire!" the green frog man in a floral shirt, shorts, and shades commented with his typical drawl. He hopped out of the backseat and gave his amphibious legs a warm-up stretch by kicking the firearms out of the guards' hands.

I was going to correct the Punk Frog on the name of the country, but he was right. This country wouldn't be known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo again for a few more years. Besides, I had to fight off the Null mercs and miners armed with power tools first.

This scheme started when I'd accidentally introduced Krang to the concept of stealing from places besides New York City. Krang chewed Shredder out for getting sewer tunnel vision, and then he began breathing down my neck to find an energy source for the Technodrome from somewhere those turtles wouldn't even think of going to. Chernobyl was less than five years ago, and that made a raid on the USSR for plutonium less than smart. I graciously let General Tragg try his luck against Tomsk-7, which I predicted would get him and his Rock Soldiers crunched. Play my cards right, and this mission will leave me the only person that Krang can rely upon until his new body completes its repairs.

It's a shame the new model won't have extra armor plating around where I'm plotting to stab Krang in the back.

"Never thought I'd be back in Mother Africa!" the South Africa-born, Jamaica-raised wolfman in the other seat muttered. He was a mutant canid with red fur, a black muzzle, and thick dreadlocks with miniature skull accessories. I'd convinced him to switch out his old rags for a dark blue suit that retained his freedom of movement. When he found a target, the wolfman pounced out of the convertible and landed on a soldier of misfortune. "Not a whole lot of good memories, either! What's de orders, boss mon?"

"Dreadmon, slice the phone lines before they call in reinforcements! Honeycutt, fire up the portal generator for Stockman! Genghis, you're with the Foot and I on cleanup!"

Dreadmon took off on all fours, the cursed talisman that transfigured the man into a mutant granting him enough speed to make his task child's play. Genghis Frog pulled out his battle ax and gave it a practice swing through an emplaced gun turret.

"Can't say I'm a big fan of inviting the Shredder's people to this shin-dig, but you haven't steered us Punk Frogs wrong yet! Even if you still look like the jerk who took us for a ride!"

My continued physical deviation from Oroku Saki was doing wonders for my mental health. I began my second life a bloated mass of moss and flesh barely held together by Shredder's armor before the Hyperstone settled. Now I was a semi-stable chimera, more plant than animal, with ridged edges of steel bramble and echoes of Foot martial arts in my turgor memory. The increased mass from my mutation meant many of the techniques I inherited from him became worthless, so one of the first things I did when I got my autonomy back was rebuild my combat style with help from the source.

"We are not that obsessive fool's people," a woman sternly rebuked from inside the trunk.

With the trunk's 4D storage space kicked open, the shadows filled themselves in with the silhouettes of shinobi in black outfits treated to keep out radioactive dust. The ninjas clambered out the back like a multitude of rodeo clowns. Even with their intense discipline limiting their movement as they fought off the security corps, it was evident that these ninja were more lively than their mechanical counterparts in Shredder's employ.

In the center of the group, I could make out a young woman in a black suit, a purple vest, light armor on her joints, and two red sashes. One as a belt, and another as a headband wrapping around her dark hair bob. The woman's stance was imperious by default, and she bore a cool expression of keen, sharpened indifference.

"Karai," I greeted her calmly. "I hope your squad wasn't overly-affected by the--"

Karai cut me off.

"You, Evergreen, would do well not to leave a kunoichi waiting. In the trunk of a car, only to bring us out while we are surrounded by enemies!"

What'd she think I brought her here for?

I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that Karai not only existed in this universe, but could be of use to my plans. The ambitious kunoichi had no love for the man who had driven the Foot into the ground, tried to dissolve the clan out of spite after being sanctioned by the elder council, and replaced the Foot Soldiers of his New York branch with disposable machines. Karai was looking for any advantage she could get to put her Foot back on the map before the Dog Star Gang stamped them out, and that's exactly what I was offering to her. She scratched my back, and I scratched Chien Khan.

At the moment, however, I didn't relish being interrupted!

I identified the spike in rage and stopped so I could find my center.

Okay John, just breathe. Carbon dioxide in, oxygen out.

"We got held up." That was one way to describe a quantum drive-by from Dirtbag & Groundchuck. I brought my hands together and did a short bow. "My apologies for the inconvenience, Jounin-san. I'll make sure to add an extra zero to your paycheck."

Karai's anger was mollified, and she dropped the issue by dropping a gunman with a handful of shurikens. Dreadmon came to a stop next to us, a sour look on his face.

"De phone lines are cut, Evargreen. Ain't nobody's gonna be calling for backup now."

The wolf mutant spared a sympathetic glance to the workers we'd had to fight off with this mission, before using his speed to rush a soldier with a machine gun. Couldn't have anyone calling this in, a much less impossible task in this decade than mine.

Ahh, the wonders of a world predating the mass adoption of cell phones.

In case anyone tried to call them, an illegal uranium mine not picking up the phone was also a cause for alarm. So we had to work fast. Honeycutt attuned the transmatter projector on the hood of the car so that Stockman could egress from Dimension X next.

"You said the Earthlings used the uranium for fission plants?" Honeycutt said, scandalized.

Another vine extended from my shoulder to bludgeon a line of men with a sandbag. I was resistant to radiation, but I didn't want to risk any unforeseen side effects from rooting myself to the contaminated soil. Karai's choice to not wear a mask on a mission to the uranium mine that fed the Manhattan Project was questionable at best.

"Among other uses. Unfortunately, Professor, fission is the best energy production method we've figured out thus far. And many of them still burn coal because it's readily available."

"Simply dreadful. You don't suppose I could leave them the blueprints for cold fusion when we're done? Or perhaps another adjacent country?"

Dreadmon barreled through another soldier, applying slightly more force than strictly required to make them no longer be a threat.

"Maybe after some regime change," Dreadmon snarled. "If we were gonna give anybody de keys to unlimited energy, then Zaire and de RSA should be at de bottom of de list!"

For Dreadmon, whose late father died protesting against the still ongoing Apartheid, this mission cut geographically close to home. He had zero compunctions about helping me clean out a condemned uranium mine in Zaire if it meant I would use my resources to fund "policy changers" in South Africa. The fact that we were fighting Null here too was a side bonus.

"O-of course," Honeycutt said, taken off balance by the normally cool-headed Dreadmon's outburst. "This planet seems to have very different rules from D'Hoonib."

After a few minutes, the mine's security was completely overwhelmed. The workers and guards alike were knocked out and tied up in a corner. I had requested that the Foot bring a signal gun for use before we left, being well aware that the radiation levels in this place were too high for us to leave anyone here overnight.

How many of them signed up for this job without knowing that the mine was lethal?

Considering my previous interactions with Null, I had to guess that Shinkolobwe's extreme conditions were only mentioned in the fine print. Which was written in a language the miners couldn't read, because the miners were going to be paid poverty wages until they keeled over from radiation poisoning anyway.

And people have the nerve to say I'm evil.

One of the tied-down soldiers had enough fight in them to hurl a threat at me, the mutant clearly in charge of this strike. This one wore more badges and insignias than the rest, demarking him as some kind of captain for Null's troubleshooter corps in the Congo.

"When Mr. Null finds out about this, you gene freaks are dead! You hear me?"

I crouched down to stare the captain in the eyes, raising his chin up with the sharpened barb of a taloned hand.

"An interesting choice of words, for someone whose corporate raiders are in no a state to run if I was to begin slicing the throats of every witness here." The man went awfully quiet, becoming petrified as a trickle of blood slipped down his neck. "Like so."

He went from silent to screaming when a hungry vine branched off my arm and absorbed the blood, growing over his face until it wrapped snug around his eyes and mouth.

I cut the stray vine loose and stood up to my full height as I addressed the rest of them.

"Let that be a lesson to all of you! Speak of what you have witnessed at your peril."

There were no more outbursts from the captives after that.

Honeycutt backed the hotrod into the open pit area of the mine and pressed the button on the hovercraft to reopen the vortex. A purple fly man with four arms and a shock of red hair flew out of the portal, followed by hordes and hordes of mousers. These cheap and formidable drones were wasted on the war against Manhattan's rodent population when they still haven't tried putting their trash in garbage bins like civilized people.

By that metric, New York City wasn't a civilized society. Which completely checked out.

"Go, my prettizzz!" Stockman buzzed, a comically large remote control in one hand and a laser rifle he was firing into the air with in the other. "Siezzze the uranium from the minezz so that it can be mine! HEheHEH!"

I sighed, sidestepping a "Stocktech Atomic Mouser" that took a bite out of the ground to gobble up a uranium chunk. Once they'd chewed through the cement put in place when this mine was shut down, the mousers deposited their payloads into a hardened receptacle in the Neutrino car's trunk. We only needed to be here until we got enough raw material to make the reactor we were setting up back in Krang's slice of Dimension X viable.

"Baxter, did you take your medication today?" I asked the mutant fly man.

Dr. Stockman, though turned into a giant, mutated fly man with giant red compound eyes on an insectoid head, still had enough translatable facial features to look guilty.

"Yezzz?" Stockman lied.

"Do you want to take it as a pill or as a needle?" I offered to the destabilized mutant, shaping one of the thorns along my arm into a medicine-laced spike.

"Pill, pill!" Stockman squeaked, as he scrambled to open his lab coat and find his meds.

A few seconds after swallowing the serum capsule, his flight pattern became notably less erratic. He holstered the laser gun and used his two primary hands with full articulation to monitor the mousers on his control deck.

"Feeling better?"

He nodded, readjusting his bright yellow bow tie with the pair of pincered hands poking out of the sides of his lab coat.

"Thank you, Mister Evergreen. My brain chemistry izz approaching normal levelzz again."

Fear makes the medicine go down.

"You still have to take one a day until we work out the bugs in the retromutagen, Stockman. This night isn't going exactly as planned, but we don't need any unexpected incidents."

"Unexpect this, fertilizer breath!"

It was then that, if I was more cosmically aware, I might've started hearing theme music. Instead, my first three indicators that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had arrived were the insult, the bang of a five foot tall turtle landing onto the car hood, and a hardened bo staff thwacking me in the back of the head!

"OW!"

Alas, I had all the averaged-out reflexes of Oroku Saki and a potted plant. Turning around, I could see that the Turtles were well and truly here. Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelango, and Raphael had entered the fray, attacking all of my forces in sight!

There was probably a "TURTLE POWER!" in there, but I missed it due to the head injury.

"The Hamato Clan?! How did you even--?!"

"Cowabunga!" Michelangelo cried, as he swung his nunchucks towards an atomic mouser!

"MICHELANGELO!" the Fugitoid called out, and he used his telescoping limbs to shove the orange-clad turtle out of the way! "THEY'RE RADIOACTIVE!"

Any sense of levity the turtles had going into this died when he saw the ionizing radiation trefoils on the heads of the mousers. As well as the walls.

They were on everything, really. This place was kind of hazardous.

"Uranium!?" Dontatello read out, identifying the element the Mousers were carrying by the indicators Stockman put on them. "Guys, they're trying to make Krang an atom bomb!"

It was a fair assumption to make, but not an accurate one.

"Actually, it's for a--"

"Have you gone nuts?" Leonardo shouted in horror, both of his ninjato pointed towards me. "Nuclear terrorism is too far! Even for you, Eco-Shredder!"

I decided I didn't want to explain anything to them anymore.

"It's Evergreen!"

I let out a roar, and the irradiated ground broke up into flowering green tendrils! Being the closest to me, Donatello was immediately ensnared and hefted up into the air!

"You really had to set him off while I was in vine distance?" Donatello groused.

"Donnie!"

Leonardo did a flying leap so he could cut Donatello free with his ninjato, only to be cut off by Karai's identical set of swords!

"Not a step further, turtle!"

"Karai!? You're in on this, too?"

"You have no comprehension of what the true Foot Clan is involved with!"

Karai led Leonardo away from the main fracas to another section of the mine, presumably for an intense solo duel that'll be laden with romantic tension. With Leo distracted, the rest should be more manageable.

"Everclear over there's really trying to put the rad in radical, huh?" Raphael quipped, his head tilting at an angle towards an unseen audience as he slashed and pruned his way through my spontaneous jungle. "Topical target, too!"

Raphael was then met by a half-hearted ax swing from Genghis Frog, who smacked the red-masked turtle with the blunt side of his weapon.

"Sorry, Raph!" Genghis said. "We're less evil than we look!"

Raphael dodged the next ax swing and brought his sais down to hook around Ghengis' shirt, throwing him onto his back.

"I don't know what made you and the rest of the Punk Frogs throw in your lot with Krang, but hey! Keep fighting like that, and I think I can look past it!"

Michaelangelo drew the short end of the stick. He had to take a couple of Foot goons down on his own, and then had to tango with the Fugitoid.

"Professor Honeycutt!" the empathetic turtle pleaded with him. "You're one of the coolest guys we know from Dimension X! Why are you working with Krang and Evergreen?"

Honeycutt blocked the attacks, but he didn't have the will in him to hit Michaelangelo back.

"I'm sorry, Michelangeo! If only I could explain my motivations to you!"

I shot him an annoyed look.

"Whatever's going on, we can help you out, dude!"

Mikey was struck from behind with a high-speed kick to the shell from Dreadmon.

"No can do, blabba mout! You're only gettin in de way!

Seeing that Dreadmon had the party dude under control, I lowered the vines constricting Donatello down to eye level. The one with the purple mask was the smartest one, that one I knew for certain, so I got straight to the point with what I needed.

"How did you all even GET here?!" I shouted in exasperation. "We're in %$#@ing Zaire!"

"We have a giant, interdimensional cow head in our rolodex! What about you?"

I blinked, unsure if he was making that up. It sounded familiar. Shockingly, a teleporting cow head big enough to swallow the turtles at Point A and spit them out at Point B was the only way I could imagine them going from Manhattan to the Congo on such short notice.

Nonsense like this is why I grow my own stash on the Technodrome.

"…No cows that I don't intend to cut into prime rib later, but Groundchuck will have his time. Care to tell me who told you about this operation?"

"A little bird told us--!" I made the vines constrict harder. "Fine! They were a big and stupid pair of birds named Bebop & Rocksteady!"

Who was dumb enough to tell Bebop & Rocksteady?!

There was only one person who fit the bill.

"Oh, are you kidding me?!"

I could forgive them for turning me into a mutant abomination, considering the long-term benefits, but this is the last straw! Next time I see those two morons, I'm shoving them into the Transmat with the coordinates set to "Surprise me"!

I blasted Donatello's face with paralytic spores, causing him to hack and wheeze while I surfed through the contact list on my alien communicator.

-ANTONIO'S
-CLINTON
-DREGG
-IRMA <3 [27 UNREAD MESSAGES]
-JOBS
>KRANG
-SHREDDER
-ZORAX

The grotesque utrom warlord appeared on the rounded vidscreen of my comm seconds later, a robotic Foot Soldier holding the plastic handset for him.

"What is it? Krang burbled. In the background, I could see that he was watching that Dimension X wrestling channel. "I'm busy!"

"Did you tell Bebop & Rocksteady about the uranium extraction job?"

Krang lashed his tendrils at the camera with a guttural noise.

"Me, tell those imbeciles anything? Don't be ridiculous! I only told Shredder!"

Deep breath.

"Why, my Warlord, did you tell Shredder?"

Krang laughed, tossing spittle onto the camera lens.

"For the same reason I told him about how much you were cozying up to his old clan that kicked him out! How else was I going to rub in how much of a screw-up he'd become?"

Oh. So this was Saki trying to undermine me with sabotage, then.

Deep. Breath.

"The Turtles are here because they found out from them," I said slowly. "So thanks."

Krang rolled his eyes, one tentacle hovering towards the innumerable buttons on the communication array of the Technodrome.

"Then destroy them! Or figure something else out! But if you don't have enough fissile material to break even, then don't even think about crawling back here! I already have one Earthling failure begging me for extra chances, and I don't have room for TWO!"

Krang hung up, and I crushed the device in my hand.

Why would I kill one of my backup plans, when I still can't be one hundred percent sure that my usurpation will succeed?

It was time to exercise the better part of valor.

"STOCKMAN!"

Stockman flew towards me, trying to avoid the active battle the best he could manage.

"Y-Yezz?"

"Have the mousers take whatever they can and bail! We're returning to Dimension X!"

The startled fly man nervously put away his device and began refueling the uranium-enriched engines of the hotrod with neon green fuel tanks from the back. I brought Donatello closer so I could put him to sleep, but at the same time, Raph swept Genghis Frog's legs and lunged towards me with his sais bared!

"Get your hands off my brother!"

Dropping Donatello, I shot Raphael with a jet of all-natural pepper spray.

"MY EYES!" he screamed. He dropped his sais so he could clutch his face in pain.

"No more cheesy one-liners?" The flash of the portal opened behind me as I approached him, lifting my boot up so I could make certain the hotheaded Raphael would stay out of the fight. "Don't worry. I won't hold that Everclear joke against you when I rule the world!"

Michaelangelo got his nunchucks around my neck! With my leg extended and my body off balance, he used the momentum to fling me backwards!

"Don't you mean, 'when Krang rules the world'?" Mikey corrected me, both of his weapons spinning in his hands. "Or were you skipping a step in your master plan, dude?"

I landed on my feet and ran the numbers. The Hamato squad could only take on Shredder as a cohesive unit, and with only half of Shredder's experience, I should be capable of handling a singular ninja turtle on my own. However, Raphael and Donnatello could've gotten up again at any minute, and if Leo won that grudge match with Karai, then I was finished.

Work smarter, not harder.

"A slip of the tongue," I explained, before pointing at nothing in particular past Mikey's head. "LEONARDO'S DEAD!"

"WHAT?!"

Michelangelo spun around to confirm his brother's fate, and I used his distraction to throw my entire hand at him! The hand clutched onto his shell and rapidly grew outwards, the fingers and digits becoming snaring roots that trapped him in place!

"Evergreen, we're ready for liftoff!" Professor Honeycutt declared.

I walked towards the Neutrino car and entered the shotgun seat. Everyone else -- the mutants, the mousers, and the Foot ninja -- had already gone through the portal. Raising the stump on the end of my arm, I could see that a new one was slowly growing in its place.

"Where's Karai?" I asked.

"I have her!" one of the male ninjas who stayed behind shouted.

While they all wore the same uniforms, I recognized the shinobi by voice as Karai's second. Tatsu had carried the thoroughly beaten Karai on his shoulder and loaded her into the backseat of the hotrod.

"Then let's move!"

Honeycutt brought the car into the air. From the ground, I could see Leonardo chasing after us. He only stopped to look down at his hurt brothers before staring back at me with a determined glare. I had a bad feeling he was about to do something drastic.

"You're not gonna get away with this!" Leo cried, as he threw one of his ninjato straight into the alien car's fuel line!

For all of the added bells and whistles, a car needed fuel to run, and a ruptured plutonium fuel line meant our car wouldn't fly. The hovercraft made a sudden dip, and it looked like we were going to enter a nosedive!

"YES, we will!" I countered, and four massive tendrils whipped out of my back to carry the car the rest of the way through! "Adios, turtles! Don't forget your iodine tablets!"

The shrublands of the Congo vanished behind us, and we were once again in the colorful, star-studded expanse I'd grown accustomed to. They said the past was a different country, and after a few months on Krang's various interplanetary campaigns, Dimension X had become more like home than the Earth of forty decades ago could ever be.

The Fugitoid landed the hotrod on the outskirts of the Technodrome.

"That comment about ruling the world was a bluff, yes?" Honeycutt asked softly. "To sell your persona before later revealing our noble intentions?"

I stopped my evil laugh and cleared my throat. I'd prefer not to have this conversation while there were ninjas in the backseat, but it's not like anything I had to say conflicted with Karai's vision for the Foot. Whether she was even conscious back there. I turned on the "roof" of the flying convertible, covering the Neutrino car in a soundproofed bubble.

"Yes, of course it was a bluff. All of this world conquest nonsense doesn't make me happy, but it's what people expect to hear when they see a terrifying mutant. It's what Krang expects from his minions, press-ganged or not. You know how Krang buys the theatrics hook, line, and sinker. Tell him what he wants to hear, and he won't know what hit him!"

I told Honeycutt the truth. Kinda.

Taking over the Earth as a private fiefdom, taking Krang's place here would have never been satisfying to me. Never mind that the inhabitants of Dimension X were getting increasingly fed up with Krang's ilk. Krang was gradually losing more ground than he was gaining, to the extent that he was considering an alliance with Maligna or Dregg as a triumphant "last stand" for a dying breed of tyrant. I had a bit of a moment there where I thought becoming the next Warlord would make me happy, but the time I spent reconnecting with Oroku Saki's withered zen roots allowed me to clear my head.

Shredder's influence or not, being the ruler of any kind wasn't really my bag. If it was, then I could've gotten the uranium in a nastier, bloodier way. Which I didn't.

There was more to life than vain delusions of conquest, and that's why I wanted to become filthy rich instead. With all of the future AAA stocks I could invest in, and all of the alien technology I'd patent when Krang was dead, I could afford to retire from all of this mutant nonsense as a very happy plant man. Becoming the wealthiest man on Earth wasn't too much to ask for, in the grand scheme of things. If I ever needed to, I could then put my green thumb on the scale to alter this world's history in any direction I saw fit.

Now if that isn't a happy ending, then I don't know what is.

"I see my confidence is well-placed!" Honeycutt said. "Shall we tell Krang the news?"

"Certainly." I stepped out of the car. "Tatsu, the Foot Clan are permitted to stick around until Karai is prepared to make the journey back to Earth. The uranium's being enriched as we speak, and the energy demands for the transmat will no longer be an issue."

"Hai."

Tatsu gave a professional bow, and led Karai to the battlestation's healing chamber.

With that handled, Honeycutt and I helped Stockman unload the atomic mousers' payload into the new power plant. One that was being built outside of the Technodrome, because making it another component of the vessel would only ensure that the turtles broke it later. Besides, having a facility on this side of the gateway meant that we could quickly return it to Earth the next time somebody tried kicking back to Dimension X.

How Krang and Shredder got anything done without me would've been a mystery if Krang and Shredder had ever accomplished anything the second the turtles arrived.

As I entered the Technodrome, I all but pranced past a mourning procession of Rock Soldiers on the mend from their failed Soviet invasion. They were carrying wounds from armor-piercing rounds and a box containing the labeled remains of General Tragg.

I pat the gray stone man who replaced Tragg on the back.

"Congrats on the promotion, Granitor. My condolences."

The mutagen-enriched golem could do little more than grumble.

On the way to the command deck, I stopped and took stock of a mutant warthog and rhinoceros, the two of them taking turns at a pinball machine liberated from a movie theater arcade back in NYC. I patiently hung back and watched them play for my turn, until the last pinball fell down when their hands were off the table.

"Aw, man!" Bebop groaned. "Game over!"

I put my hands on their shoulders, the old one and the regenerated one, until they were too covered in spores and vines to run away.

"Bebop! Rocksteady! Just the two mutants I was hoping to see!"

- - -

Spoiler: Chapter Notes

Surprise!

When I saw that Hyperstone Rhapsody was going to be in second place for the What If vote, I drafted ideas for what that bonus chapter should be about. Same thing I did with Wango Tangle, which I hope will be done some time this month. Then I accidentally went and wrote the whole thing.

My original idea, which showcased the aftermath of a final showdown in the Technodrome, was rejected for being more talk than show. In the spirit of the TMNT Adventures continuity that this loosely takes place in, I ended up doing this scene in an unexpected part of the world in the cultural zeitgeist… circa book's time of publishing. For better or worse, Adventures wasn't afraid to have stories with an environmental or politically-aware focus. While a lot of these haven't aged well, I can appreciate the attempt to impart some sort of positive message to their young reader base.

(Let's just pretend that Tattoo and Charlie Lama didn't happen.)

While my chapter notes would usually include context on the featured setpieces, I am not qualified to write out a summary of the Democratic Republic of Congo or Zaire's geopolitical status during the Cold War. If you want to know more, you'll have to use Wikipedia and other online resources like I did.

As TMNT Adventures spun out of the 1987 show (not the original Mirage comic), all of the characters in this chapter are from the Fred Wolf cartoon, the Archie comic proper, the show's accompanying toyline, the loosely-associated family of contemporary video games, or somehow got grandfathered in like Karai in the DLC for Shredder's Revenge. Tatsu was from the 1990 film, but he gets a pass because he's the Foot Clan employee of the month.

That's all. Thanks for reading this offbeat chapter!

♦ Want to support my work? ♦
PATREON | KO-FI
♦ Join the W2 Workshop Zone for previews and updates! ♦
W2 Workshop Zone Discord

This chapter has been brought to you by the following patrons and beta readers: Captain Nameless, C-Moon, Draconic Hermit, Dr.doom360, EndlessHope, Justquestin2004, ModeGone, and N'Oni!

Thank you all for the continuing support!

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 31: Picking up the Pieces

We spent a whole day searching through the Sandopolis Desert until we could all say with something approaching confidence that Enerjak was dead. The nearby dunes were coated in hundreds of crystalline shards, a hazard I had to sweep up before anyone got jabbed, and not one of them had a shred of Enerjak in them. Knuckles handed me a spare ring so I could ask them flat-out if Enerjak survived, only to see a wall of green static in turn.

That takes care of that.

He was as good as gone. If we were lucky, then Dimitri was telling the truth about needing them to stay alive. Nevertheless, we won, and the Phantom Ruby healing my body back to normal meant that the only scars I had to mark the experience were the mental ones.

I almost died.

It's only been a day, and I could very clearly remember my body falling apart under the overwhelming pressure of the Phantom Ruby's power. I'd gotten accustomed to being beaten, broken, and mangled, but never severed. I couldn't describe what it felt like, because it felt like nothing. Whole one moment, dismembered the next.

Everything was supposed to be back to the way it was before, so why did I still have phantom pains along the fracture lines?

It's probably wrong that I was okay with dying at the time.

I opened my left hand. I closed my left hand. I moved every digit on my left hand, individually, as if they wouldn't be there when I closed my eyes again.

It will be there.

I opened my eyes, and my left hand was still there, along with the Phantom Ruby.

I was okay now. I was okay.

I am okay.

…

I think I was too okay with dying.

Going into the Phantom state was enlightening, to say the least. Forming a temporary union with the entity bouncing around in my brain told me that he was a person, or at least used to be one, but he hadn't said a word since. Enerjak's presence had dissipated, his evil stain scrubbed out, and the Ruby's voice retreated to the deepest recesses of the gemstone. I didn't change into a dragon again overnight, and I didn't know how to force it, but I had the sneaking suspicion that both the dragon mode and the voice weren't gone forever.

It's never that easy.

The whole event had made it clear how much the Phantom Ruby's energy demands were holding me back. It was the ultimate bottleneck on what I could do, more than I'd ever realized, with the second one being my mastery of the mystical energies the Phantom Ruby was throwing out. Phantom Scarlet was a terrifying balancing act between glory and oblivion. There was no way I'd try it again without more experience under my belt. Or a damn good reason on par with Enerjak to roll the dice for a second time.

Oh, who am I kidding?

If I was a betting man, I'd be broke. Obviously, I'd need to get used to using the Phantom Ruby to its fullest. There were a whole lot of other horrors out there besides Enerjak, and I couldn't trust Sonic to take care of everything for me.

"Friar Buck was to take Rosy to our distant allies in Northamer, but the High Sheriff has redoubled his forces at the edges of Deerwood Forest since your appearance in Mercia days ago," the memory of Rob's voice echoed back to me. To when we first met.

Cause and effect. My presence in Mercia meant that Amy wasn't sent to Knothole, because Mercia's resistance hadn't been crushed. I was the reason that Eurish hadn't fallen under the war machine. What would they have done without me? Flee? Get roboticized?

…They'd all die without me, wouldn't they? I think I understood that on a basic level, but seeing everyone who got hurt while I was in Leonus really drilled the fact into my skull. People were permanently injured as a result of my leave, even if it was the right call.

Who decided that I have to be so damn important?

Hell, Angel Island might've been lost if I wasn't here, because I couldn't know if Knuckles could've done all that on his own. I'd like to think he could, but how could I know?

I… Do I have a death wish?

Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw the mask I'd dug out of the sand dunes next to Morglay. It was a rounded shape in ebony and ivory, with two big ears like a jackal, and a 'Y' shape made of gold that was over the eyes. Unmistakably, eerily familiar to the one worn by Infinite the Jackal, this mask was what the entity wore when he took control of my body. There were gaps in my memory that I couldn't account for, adrenaline or not. At first, all I could do was assume that he was at the wheel while I was away and try to shake off the feeling that I had critical gaps in my memory.

Then I remembered that I didn't have to leave that to chance. I'd already become well aware that Phantom Ruby was always recording. My thoughts, my memories; everything that was happening around me were readily available for instantaneous analysis. In an instant, I was there again, in the maddening rush of power, where I confirmed that the other guy was still fighting for me after I'd gone into shock. Whatever he was, he was driven by single-minded determination to seize victory from the jaws of defeat.

While I, on the other hand, gave up the ghost.

I don't want to die. Right? Not after everything I've done. Everything I have to do.

Why is that a question I'm asking myself?

Why would I ask that? Why did I think that?

"Hey Scarlet!"

I made an illusion of being totally fine as I turned around to face Knuckles.

"Yes?"

Looking past the red echidna, I could see that Knuckles had been making adjustments to the new altar that the Master Emerald stood upon. The gigantic gem was nestled into a rocky base, wreathed by a ring of smaller, inert shards. The Master Emerald laid in a dazzlingly reflective cavern, the walls covered in peerless mirrors, and up until this point I was trying to make an effort not to stare.

"I gave the emerald a look-over. It's feeding a steady trickle of energy to the island."

"That's… good, yeah?"

"Depends on how you feel about going into freefall." Knuckles raised his hand away from the Master Emerald, turning towards me. My illusion must've cracked, because something on my face read as stress, or a general malaise to him. "Hey, are you doing alright?"

I tried once again not to focus on the Master Emerald, locking my tied eyes onto Knuckles instead. The Master Emerald was stronger than seven chaos emeralds, of which I had none. I got a taste of that infinite power, and it was intoxicating, but it almost killed me. Even when I could feel the limitless chaos fountain was on my side against Enerjak, I was a hair's breadth from not making it out the other side.

So why do I still want more?

That was an easy question. There was so much I could do if I touched it again, and the only person who could stop me was the last echidna.

This struggle would be much easier if I had something else to rail against. The only person telling me to grasp that power before it was too late was me.

No. No. Knuckles let me get this close to the Master Emerald after the danger passed. That's a show of trust, and I can't betray that.

I can't.

"Exhausted," I responded honestly, turning away from the glowing beacon of chaos energy. "The bright lights are giving me a migraine."

If Knuckles had any suspicions of my inner conflict, he didn't say anything about it.

"Then let's get out of here. We're almost done with damage control from Enerjak, and your warp spells came in real handy for that."

Once we ran out of grains to comb over, the next thing to do was take stock of how much damage Enerjak left in his wake. I used my portals to visit every settlement on the island, letting Knuckles and the others handle the hard part of explaining what had happened. There were a lot of questions, some explanations, and then guarantees from the Guardian that the Chaotix would help fix everything that was broken. I also made a brief stop by Sommersbys' home, but all they asked for was for new bricks to fix the hole in their wall.

Archimedes poofed in for a couple of seconds during our island tour to say that the Fire Ants were fine, and dropped off a somewhat battered-looking Mighty before poofing away. I didn't know what to say to Mighty after beating him half to death, so it was for the best that he turned in early before I had the chance to fumble it.

One thing I was keenly aware of was that my battle with Enerjak screwed up several of the ruin sites that Knuckles' people left behind. I knew that would've hurt him on some level, but the echidna didn't say a peep about it to me.

"Where to?" I asked.

"Isolated Island. It's where the whole team's meeting back up."

No complaints there. I didn't think I had it in me to withstand the temptation while I was near that almighty thing for another minute longer.

"You've got it."

I brought the purple-hued swamps we passed over during my last sweep of the island to the forefront of my mind. Rather than generate a portal for us to walk through, I simply closed my eyes and took us there in a flash of light.

Maybe distance is an illusion, too?

♦ 30

We were standing in front of Vector's bachelor pad seconds later. This Chaotix hangout spot was a jumble of beige quadrilaterals. No bigger than a shotgun house placed on stilts over the wetlands, crowned with brown roof tiles and a broken weathervane shaped like a rooster. The outline looked a lot like the home of the Chaotix Detective Agency in Sonic X. Identifying that somewhat familiar place put me at ease, because watching 4Kids every Saturday morning was a positive memory this world has yet to spoil.

At least until the Metarex showed up.

I shook off my more noxious thoughts and walked up to Vector's place, with Knuckles in tow. Which was still a weird experience that I didn't know how long it would take to get used to. I knocked on the door to see who was in.

"Anyone home?"

"Get in here, will ya?" I heard the crocodile shout through the door. "We've got an open-door policy for Freedom Fighters!"

Knuckles entered first, because I had hesitated at the entrance. I followed along, pushing past the first door and the pair of green saloon doors behind it. The interior of Vector's place was simple, with a wooden plank floor and green drywall riddled with cracks, but if he built all of this by himself then that was a lot better than I could manage on my own. As for furnishings, there was a brown couch, some scattered boxes, a stack of storage lockers, a hanging dart board, and a water cooler in the corner.

It wasn't only the house that was familiar, but the people inside it as well. Vector was taking it easy, feet propped up at his desk and bobbing his head to a big boombox. The track playing on the tape sounded vaguely like Passing Breeze from the OutRun soundtrack, but that could've been my imagination. Espio was quietly sipping tea, an uncannily sedate Charmy sitting next to him on the couch with the honey stirrer still in his cup.

"Howdy," I said awkwardly. Since we weren't in a crisis anymore, me being much older than everyone else here made these interactions way more strained.

Charmy and Espio gave muted responses.

"Hi."

"Greetings."

I almost killed both them and Mighty twice over! Of course they don't want to be near me!

"Hey John!" Vector said. He sounded unaware of the tension in the air, but I think he was trying to turn it around. "And Knuckles! Glad you two could make it! How's that jumbo emerald in the Chaos Chamber holding up?"

"It'll take time to get used to the new look, but the Master Emerald's here to stay."

"Groovy! Help yourselves to whatever you can find in the fridge!"

"Uh, sure."

Utterly bewildered at where my life has gone, where it is, and where it'll be going, I took a gander at what was in Vector's kitchen. It was cramped due to the space-economical dimensions of the house, but not dirty. Not too dirty, for a house used exclusively by a bunch of teenagers. I wasn't in an eating mood, so I borrowed some leftover coffee from the burner, a small carton of milk in the fridge, a dollop of sugar, and a spare mug.

"Do we have grape juice?" Knuckles asked.

Raising the temperature of the milk with my fire magic until it reached a scald, and not to a boil, I mixed it with the coffee to create my best impression of a café con leche.

"I'll check."

Confirming that yes, Vector had grape juice, I poured a glass for Knuckles and passed it to him when I got back to the main room. We sat in total silence for over a minute, the only noise being the boombox and the faint, but steady whirr of the ceiling fan.

"So," I started cautiously. "If we're all situated, I think I need to clear the air about everything that happened."

"What about it?" Knuckles asked. "We beat Enerjak and already did one of those after-mission report things."

"I don't think he's talkin' about a debrief, Knux," Vector replied dryly.

Out of the two, I could believe that Knuckles hadn't noticed there might be some hurt feelings after I'd savagely hurt his friends in the process of 'saving' them. If Vector's account was to be taken at face value, that meant Espio, Charmy, and Mighty would've remembered everything I did to them as well.

"Where is Mighty?" I asked, thinking it would be better if he was present.

"Talking with that ch--" Vector caught himself, visibly flashing back to the last time he called her a 'chick'. "That girl you brought along. They're chatting out by the ring lake."

"Noted."

You'd have to be blind not to notice the way Fiona glowered at the very mention of the armadillo's name. There was history there, and not the good kind. Unless that history spilled over into becoming my present, I wasn't going to stick my foot in it.

This, on the other hand, couldn't wait. I took a deep breath. Inhaled, and exhaled.

"I'm just gonna come out and say it. I'm--"

Perhaps not unexpectedly, Charmy was the first one to break.

"I'm sorry I stung you with my stinger!" Charmy said, tears gushing out his eyes.

"What?"

"I stabbed you really hard and th-thought you were gonna die!" he babbled.

Ahh.

I should've known better. Charmy was more shaken up about his use of lethal force on me than what I did to him.

"Charmy, it's okay. You didn't hurt me that bad."

The sting was agonizing, and the venom likely would've killed me without the Phantom Ruby.

"There was blood on my stinger," Charmy said, looking much smaller than he had before. "I didn't know how to wash it out until Mello showed me."

We were all shocked. I knew he was older in this universe than in the games, but that was a lot for anyone to bear. Vector sat up in his chair and shut off the music.

"Aw, Charms…"

It took me a second for my brain to register that his shrinking wasn't metaphoric. Charmy was buzzing around the shallow coffee table to try and work off his nervous energy.

"I stung a lot of badniks before, but I never wanted to sting a person!"

"You didn't have a choice!" Knuckles argued.

"I know that," Charmy stressed. "But it didn't feel like I didn't have a choice! It was like I wanted to do whatever Enerjak said, and that meant hurting anyone he wanted to hurt!"

"And you still hesitated when you thought I was really hurt," I pointed out.

Charmy stopped to consider what I said, before returning to his normal size. The bee rocked back and forth on top of the couch rather than on his prior spot.

"I guess."

"Charmy, there were parts of you that knew what you were doing was wrong, and that's what helped me break the hex around your mind. No one should judge you by what you did under Enerjak's influence."

"I wish I could say that I showed the same amount of contriteness," Espio cut in with a rueful murmur. "Or restraint when fighting my friends."

"What were those moves?" Vector asked. "I've never seen you do anything like 'em before."

Charmy excitedly tilted his head towards Espio.

"Yeah! I didn't see you throwing knives and doing crazy flips, but it sounded really cool!"

Espio set down his cup.

"They were techniques Valdez showed me, as a part of my training in… the ways of the chameleons. He thought I was ready for the responsibility. With my betrayal of the Rainbow Valley, that assessment was proven to be an incorrect one."

Charmy poked Espio in the arm.

"Espio, if me and Mighty can't beat ourselves up over this, then you can't either!" he prodded. "Whenever Enerjak asked us to do something, we did it!"

"That's the problem," the chameleon said, struggling to speak through gritted teeth. "The Botanic Base came into being centuries after Enerjak's time. He didn't have an inkling of our existence until I volunteered the information."

"What exactly happened to you three after I saved Vector?" I interjected, pre-empting the barrage of questions the others wanted to get out first.

Espio opted to stare into his tea as he provided his account.

"With Knuckles and Archimedes sent to the desert, Enerjak assumed the Floating Island to be defenseless. Our encounter with you made him reassess that assumption, and he forced us to speak of everything we knew about the island as it was in the present."

"You spoke with him for hours, then?"

It was phrased as a question, but I could see the answer in his eyes.

"Yes," Espio responded hoarsely.

"Espio's spent the most time exploring the island out of the whole team," Vector explained, for my sake. "Except for Knux, of course."

"As outlanders, Charmy and Mighty only had so much to reveal. No offense, Charmy."

"None taken!" Charmy lazily chirped, almost disarmingly so.

I had gotten so concerned for him after the blood comment that I had to make certain that Charmy wasn't going to have a mental health crisis. Careful not to cause him any more harm, I opened my mind's eye to discover the emotions he was feeling, but not telling.

I'm not better yet. But that's okay. There'll always be flowers, you know?

"There are always flowers for those who want to see them." - Henri Matisse.

I like the sound of that.

Charmy looked up, his eyes meeting mine for a fraction of a second. I disengaged my surface reading before I could happen upon anything deeper. I'd figured that the prince thing, if he hadn't told the others yet, wasn't my information to share.

"…Compelled or not, I was seeking to prove my loyalty to a monster!" Espio finished.

"It doesn't mean anything!" Knuckles shouted at him.

"How could it not!?" Espio shouted back.

Knuckles and Espio had, by this point, stood up and gotten in each others' faces.

"You weren't in control! Get over it!"

"Being unable to resist Enerjak's control proved that I am untrustworthy!"

"That's crazy talk!"

"Alright you two, break it up!" Vector said, having gotten up and pulled them apart. "We're all on the same team, so you two shouldn't be slugging it out!"

"A traitor who'll stab his friends in the back has no right to be on a team!" Espio spat out, the thing that was really bothering him made loud and clear.

I stood up, taking off my hat so I could run my fingers through my hair. Charmy was eying my magenta hat, so I passed it over for him to examine.

"Ooh, wizard hat!" Charmy cooed, trying it on over his helmet.

"Espio, I don't think any of you could've resisted Enerjak's mind spells," I articulated patiently. "I have… let's call it practical experience, so try to take me at my word?"

"Practical experience?" Charmy repeated. "Whazzat?"

"I could reverse what Enerjak did to all of you because I could do the very same."

Charmy frowned. I had revealed this all before, but he wasn't listening last time.

"But you're a good guy," he said, sounding only mostly sure of the statement. "Right?"

"I try to do the best I can. It's why I don't use my mind powers to hurt people."

"Knuckles said he was able to resist you without issue," Espio countered. "Therefore, the failure was on me for not being strong enough to resist Enerjak's sway."

"That's because I was trying to calm Knuckles down, not break his brain," I clarified.

"Hey!" the red echidna protested.

I brushed off the bristling echidna. There was something odd about the way Knuckles reacted to my mesmerism, but I didn't have the time to dissect what it meant. Besides, having one less reason to whip out my most loathsome power was always a plus.

"The point stands, Espio. Enerjak could brute-force his way past any amount of 'willpower' or 'discipline' put in front of them. That doesn't make you weak, or unworthy of being trusted by others. If Enerjak had a mind to, he could've controlled us all with ease."

Espio crossed his arms, all but pouting like the little genin-in-training he was.

"So that's it? I give up, and accept that I was just a victim in an evil god's scheme?"

"Talk to Valdez about building up your mental resistance. Doing long hours of meditation under waterfalls and other esoteric stuff like that."

"But you said--!"

I held up a hand.

"What I said was that Enerjak was special. If there's other people with powers like mine, then Valdez might have ways to help you overcome them. Don't undersell the benefit of having friends, either. Last I checked, they helped you get your head back on straight."

"Removing the dark spell was mostly your doing," Espio said.

"And why can't I be a friend?" I offered lightly.

Espio stopped to ponder the conundrum, before accepting my point.

"I don't see why not," the chameleon ninja answered, after some hesitance. "You've earned that much by helping save us from certain doom."

Knuckles gave him a thumbs-up.

"That's the spirit!"

"Of course he's our friend!" Charmy belted out. "He gave me his cool hat!"

"Charmy, that was a loaner."

"Nuh uh!" Charmy flew away with it. "Thanks to this, I'm the wizard now, too!"

"Charmy, you don't know where that's been!" Vector called out, trying to chase after him.

We all laughed at Charmy's antics, and the tension inside the place slowly melted away. Before anyone could score the hat off of him, or I had the opportunity to cheat and make the hat reappear on my head, Fiona walked into the house.

"There you are!" the fox girl said to me. "The Mechanix gave me an update on the radio. They're bringing the plane around. We can warp back to Mercia whenever you're ready."

"Is Mighty still out there?" I asked.

"Yes," she said irritably, hooking a thumb towards the door. "Out where I left him."

I got up, not wanting to leave things unsaid between the armadillo and I.

"I won't take long," I said to her as I passed through the door.

"Whatever. Hey Handbag, you got any Chaos Cola around here or what?"

I exited Vector's dwelling, walking past colorful palms and mangroves to one of the wide marshes dotting Isolated Island. The white sparkles that danced across the ring lake's pristine surface marked it as unique amongst the other ponds, and that was where I saw Mighty skipping stones to pass the time. The armadillo had one heck of a wrist, because his rocks kept skipping past the ring lake and onto the shallow bodies of water beyond it.

"Mind if I sit here?" I asked, gesturing to the flat rock he was sitting on.

"Suit yourself," Mighty drawled.

I sat down next to him, admiring the view of the water.

"Not too injured after…?" I trailed off.

"Nah," Mighty said lightly. "Fire Ants said there shouldn't be any lasting damage."

"When I hit you against that rock, I thought I heard a crack," I disputed warily.

"My shell's a lot harder than a rock," he declared assuredly. "What you heard must've been the stone giving out. I haven't had any broken bones since I was a kid."

"Oh. Good. I was… worried."

"Don't be," Mighty remarked, his expression losing its dash of levity. "For years, I've been afraid that if I ever lost control, there wouldn't be anyone to stop me. You taking me down when I was a danger to everybody around me put some old nightmares to rest."

"You're welcome, I guess. I wish I could've been more gentle about it."

Mighty chuckled.

"Gentle? The name's Mighty, man! I'll bounce back from our brawl in a week, tops."

"Is that normal?"

"Normal for me, and it seems like you're already patched up."

"The magic heals my damage. Without that, I'd be more than out of commission."

Mighty skipped more stones as we chatted, the last one veering slightly.

"And from a dragon to an overlander?"

I shrugged.

"This is what I was born as," I clarified. "Still working out the details of the dragon thing."

"How's Mercia been?" he asked.

That took me by surprise. It seemed like a non-sequitur on the nose of it, but I had a hunch that this was something on his mind.

"Could be better," I understated. "You from there?"

He nodded, still staring at the lake.

"I lost the accent after a good decade in exile."

"Exile?" I echoed rashly, realizing that he would've been a kid at the time.

"Our parents were thieves. Not that Matilda and I knew that until they were arrested. By then I figured out that I was stronger than anyone I'd met, adults included. I tried to use that strength to break them free, but… all I did was cause people to run screaming. I was stopped, King O'Hedge banished me from the kingdom, and I never saw my family again."

Mercia was devastated by the occupation. His family had to be roboticized or worse.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that," I said in sympathy.

What else could I say? I thought I would've known these characters – these people -- better from my past life, but that wasn't the case at all.

"It's not your fault, and I'm not putting that on O'Hedge's son, either," Mighty said firmly. "Prince Robert's your leader now, right?"

"He's the current king. I'm not quite a Mercian citizen, but Rob leads the Freedom Fighters in Mercia, and I pitch in however I can."

"King Robert, huh?"

"These days, most folks call him Rob o' the Hedge."

Mighty was unimpressed with the title.

"Hmph. Catchy."

"Look, I've heard things about how the late Richard O'Hedge ran things, and I'm not planning to defend him, but Rob's not like that. I know that he'd lift your exile in a heartbeat if I told him about what his father put you through."

Mighty shook his head.

"Thanks for the offer, Mister Scarlet, but after a while I was strong enough to go back any time I wanted. There just wasn't anything for me to go back to, especially once I discovered a place where I could have a clean break from the past."

"Angel Island?"

"Knuckles mentioned the name for it a while back," he paraphrased. "Said it was a real old one, named after an old echidna saint or something. Using the old name instead of what everyone else called it might've bumped you up a couple points in his book."

Mighty stood from the shore with a pained grunt, his stance betraying the extent of his injury. Past his shoulder, I could see his red shell was discolored with splotches of purple.

Ouch. If I had a ring, I could--

Suddenly, a shimmering ring of gold floated up to the surface of the ring lake.

Huh. Good timing.

I extended my arm, and the ring was drawn to my hand like a magnet.

"Mind if I use a ring to patch you up? It's the least I can do."

"Knock yourself out."

Wanting to avoid that, I tried to conjure the same feelings that allowed me to heal Vector. Not anger, or fear, or shame, the emotion I settled on was my empathy for Mighty's predicament. While it wasn't an issue I would've ever imagined having in the past, I could more recently relate to the weight of feeling too powerful for your own good.

Your strength is more than physical, Mighty, but everyone has a limit.

Ring, let me lighten his burden.

⌾ !!

The ring boomeranged into Mighty's back, becoming a splash of light that caused his bruises to fade. What little damage remained was far less severe than before.

"How do you feel?"

"A lot better," Mighty said, stretching. "You and Fiona heading out?"

I saw Heavy & Bomb's hover unit flying over the bayous, Le Duck's biplane in tow.

"Looks like."

"Then I wish you luck. If you're heading back into occupied territory, you're gonna need it."

"Thanks."

"And could you tell Fiona that I'm sorry?" he added at the last moment.

"I'll see what I can do."

Mighty let his shoulders sag, as though a weight was taken off his shoulders.

"I'd appreciate it."

I made my way to where the hover unit landed, right outside of the house. Examining the biplane, I could see that they had to replace a lot of parts from the rusty warbird that was broken by Big Arms, to the extent that this might functionally be a new aircraft.

The chain gun mounted to the front, for example, wasn't there the last time I saw it.

"Tragically, we were unable to salvage the plane's original 7.82 millimeter machine gun," Heavy intoned sadly while going over the new changes with Fiona. "Alas, we had to replace it with a 25 millimeter autocannon we had lying around and a homing missile launcher. I hope that Le Duck fellow isn't too put out by the substitution."

"Ping!" Bomb concurred sagely.

"He'll cope," Fiona remarked, tone laced with more sarcasm than either could register.

With all the new bells and whistles, Le Duck's plane looked closer to the Tornado than not.

"We'll taxi it through the portal back home," I explained to her, before turning back towards the members of the Chaotix that had come out to see us out. "It's been fun, Chaotix, but I don't think we'll be heading back around these parts for some time."

"You weren't too bad out there, Scarlet," Knuckles said, offering his hand. "And some Freedom Fighters could stand to learn some manners from you."

I was able to locate our end destination within the interwoven folds of realspace in spite of being momentarily distracted by Knuckles' praise. I shook hands with him.

"Thanks."

His words meant more than I could ever say.

Not the manners thing. Sonic needed the lessons, but I wasn't the one to give them.

"Catch ya later!" Vector shouted, as I opened a pink vortex to Mercia.

♦ 25

"So long!" Charmy yelled.

Charmy tossed my wizard hat into the air, the accessory going wide. I caught it with a redirection of the wind that put it back on track to my hands.

The others said their goodbyes or waved as Fiona brought the plane through the gateway, taking us back to the snowy forests of Mercia.

"I can't believe we left empty-handed!" she groaned in frustration, once the plane had been parked at a covert landing strip within range of Sylvania Castle. "We went through all of that trouble for scrap metal and their 'thanks'? What a load of--!"

I opened my left palm and formed a miniature aperture into Null Space. From it, a fist-sized sliver of emerald green crystal slid into view.

"Who said anything about leaving empty-handed?"

A jolt of chaos energy ran through the gleaming emerald shard, flowing down my hand as green electricity that was sucked into the black and magenta abyss of the Phantom Ruby.

◊ ♦ 35

"How?" Fiona sputtered out, shocked at the reveal of my contraband or the sheer audacity of my crime. "The Guardian was watching the emerald like a hawk!"

"He was only watching the finished product. Not the pieces left on the cutting room floor."

During one of my 'replays' of my fight with Enerjak, I saw one of the eleven beams of light that came out of him breaking in two. The main beam went with the rest of them towards this world's equivalent of the Emerald Shrine, while a smaller one flew off course while everyone was distracted by the light show. Retracing its trajectory to a far-flung oasis, I collected one free Master Emerald shard that no one was looking for.

Fiona eyed the glowing shard, before setting her eyes on me again with a wide grin. She burst out into laughter, nearly falling out of her seat on the plane.

"Hahahahaha! I underestimated you, overlander! You had us stick around another day to make friends with everybody so they wouldn't notice it was missing!"

I wanted to help repair some of the damage done by Enerjak, too, but she was right. Kinda.

There was an ulterior motive to me watching the Master Emerald with Knuckles: I had to ensure that there were no visible gaps in the gemstone before making amends with the Chaotix and making a clean getaway. After all, how could Knuckles notice that it was smaller than average if he'd never seen the Master Emerald before?

It didn't count as stealing if it was unattended, right?

Eh, @$&* it.

I had power now, and could return it after I saved the world.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

Thus ends the Enerjak arc! This chapter was on the longer side because I wanted to say everything left I wanted to say about Angel Island before returning to Mercia. Which included allowing the SI to talk to the members of the Chaotix he wasn't able to before.

Next time: Wango Tangle & Chapter 32!

♦ Want to support my work? ♦
PATREON | KO-FI
♦ Join the W2 Workshop Zone for previews and updates! ♦
W2 Workshop Zone Discord

This chapter has been brought to you by the following patrons and beta readers: C-Moon, N'Oni, and Rise Shine!

Thank you all for the continuing support!

 

[weredrago2]

ENTRY #4: THE LOST TRIBE OF ECHIDNAS

AUTHOR NOTE: This datafile is derived from an original document brought to you by Storyteller222, with revisions from myself. You can check out his Ko-fi here.

The echidnas are an ancient people whose ruins can be found across Eurish, Soumerca, and the fabled Floating Island. What happened to them all has stymied historians for centuries, especially since the last Day of Fury cleaned the slate on most physical records predating it. While Knuckles the Echidna is the most famous of his enigmatic people in the modern day, he is not as alone in bearing the echidna name as the layman might be led to think.

By early 3235 PXE, the Lost Tribe of Echidnas are believed to be the last major population of echidnas on the face of Mobius. According to the Lost Tribe's dense oral history, this nomadic group has been wandering across the eastern hemisphere for the past six hundred years, ceaselessly searching for their "Journey's End" that was foretold in the Ancient Walkers' Tomb of Prophecies (Datafile #2: Mobian Religions).

Their origins are one of earthly ties, faith, and endurance; one spoken of few outside their own. As recounted by an anonymous member, their voyage began when an echidna spiritualist called Arakkis led his people on an exodus from their homeland. Forced to leave in the face of a great disaster to come, the first generation of the Lost Tribe took only what they could carry with them on their search for a new place to call their own. The city they left behind was said to be gifted with great technology, but little remains from that time. When their motor vehicles broke down, the Lost Tribe pulled their wagons by beasts of burden or walked. They are peaceful by nature, but when their weapons of self defense ran out of ammunition, the Lost Tribe learned to defend themselves in more simple ways. The Lost Tribe don't shun technology, so much as they are wary of becoming overly-reliant on fragile devices that can't withstand wear and tear, or advanced machinery that they would have little means of maintaining by themselves.

As itinerant travelers, the Lost Tribe move from place to place, seeking good land to forage, grazing areas for mobini livestock, and friendly towns where they can trade with the locals. Their non-confrontational ways mean that the Lost Tribe are tolerated in most places they stop to rest, but rarely are they able to camp for long. Seeking to avoid unneeded confrontations, either from hostile powers in the regions they pass through or the badnik patrols that have encroached on their old routes, the nomad caravans will change up their migratory patterns and travel in the dark of night. The Lost Tribe is composed of multiple distinct, but tightly-knit families; "brother" and "sister" are common terms of address amongst all members. It had become common practice for members to place permanent marks upon their fur to commemorate important events, of the individual or the Lost Tribe as a whole. Crimes committed by echidnas of the Lost Tribe against other members are sternly punished, and the worst sentence for such offenders is to be exiled from the exiles, leaving them truly alone in the world.

The Lost Tribe's religious beliefs can be described as a form of Walkerism that's tinged with strong Gaianist elements to the faith. They credit the Ancient Walkers for nature's bounty and venerate the natural world as accomplishments of their stewardship. Even natural disasters are respected, as their destruction gives birth to new forms of creation. A Walkerist hymn from the time of Arrakis has weathered the centuries, being passed down from parent to child:

"O Walkers, O Walkers please,
hear my plea. May I live to see destiny.
After the sand and sea…
The rustling of the water,
The flash of lightning across the sky,
the boom of thunder violently crashing.
The quaking of the ground beneath our feet.
Hear our prayer.
Our prayer of hope.
Our prayer of a shared dream.
A dream spanning ages old and young,
We dream of the end, the journey's end.
O Walkers, please,
Please hear our prayer, O Walkers.
The prayer of the lost."​

The leader of the Lost Tribe is known as the Mitre. A title descended from the priests of the ancient echidna caste system, the Mitre is both a leader and a spiritual guide. They're entrusted with the survival of the Lost Tribe in a world that has only become increasingly hostile to them, consulting the Tomes and (so it is believed) the Ancient Walkers themselves to aid in their decision-making process. Other members of the Lost Tribe will collect food, mend torn clothes, repair their equipment, barter for new goods, or scout for danger, among any number of minor tasks that need to be performed on a daily basis to ensure their survival. While he is not a member, to those who have encountered the Lost Tribe, it is perhaps poetic that one of the most famous echidnas in recent memory stands watch over an island that never stays still.

The phrase "the course has been decided" is one of great significance to the echidnas of the Lost Tribe. They have endured so much, and there were so many that came before them who lived their whole lives without seeing the Journey's End, but all within the Lost Tribe pray that they will reach the promised land within their lifetimes.


Another datafile is completed! I wanted this to come out after Chapter 31, but before 32. With that criteria, this was the only time I could've dropped it.

Once again, you can thank Storyteller222 for compiling the original document this datafile was derived from and giving me a lot of material to work with.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 32: Enshadowed Fraternity

Oh Grandfather Dimitri, look at the mess you've made.

For almost every member of the Brotherhood of Guardians, the clandestine stewards of the Floating Island, the return of Enerjak was nothing less than the worst-case scenario. Enerjak was two centuries centuries older than the bicentennial Hawking, an echidna too decrepit and senile to remain a member of their secret society on anything more than a temporary basis. At his full power, Enerjak was a hyper-energy organism, impossible for them to contain if he was ever freed from his mountain prison. Even as a weakened shade, it was the mad whispers of Dimitri that encouraged his son Menniker to turn the victims of the anti-technological paranoia that swept the Floating Island after Enerjak's failed conquest into the founding generation of the techno-radical Dark Legion.

It was by circumstance that the Brotherhood were able to abscond with Dimitri's body without Knuckles' awareness, but to allow Enerjak to roam free would be an unthinkable violation of the Brotherhood's prerogatives to protect the echidnas, the Floating Island, and Mobius as a whole. Not every member of the Brotherhood, of which there were currently seven, could agree on the best course of action if such a catastrophe were to come to pass. As a temporary measure, it was deemed that Guardian Tobor would monitor the chaos radiation signatures around Enerjak's prison in addition to his normal duties of following the regular political upheavals that have been plaguing the Dragon Kingdom.

The only problem with assigning the ever-honorable, ever-reliable Guardian Tobor the task of monitoring for signs of Enerjak's return was that he had no intention of sharing his findings. Instead, the warning signs were surreptitiously ignored, alarm bells silenced, before any such state of emergency could be declared. By the time Enerjak bombastically arose from his imprisonment beneath Mount Fate, Tobor had already doctored the records to make it seem as though their instruments were never up to the task to begin with. It was then his plot changed to waiting until Enerjak killed Knuckles and all of his companions so that he could join the spiritual father of the Dark Legion in his subjugation of Mobius.

In the Brotherhood's covert headquarters of Haven, Guardian Tobor sat at the host position of the wooden table the Brotherhood used for their regular meetings. While he could have easily replaced his cybernetic visor with more realistic prosthetics years ago, the red orbs made hiding his emotions even easier than it would've been otherwise.

"We shall continue where we left off last time," the maroon echidna who wore Tobor's face and sat in his chair said to his 'fellows'. "In regards to determining the fate of Dimitri."

It bore mentioning that 'Tobor' was not the echidna that the other Guardians thought him to be. Rather, he was Moritori Rex, the former leader of the same militant order that the Brotherhood had committed themselves to battling since their inception. Perhaps owing to their passing physical resemblance, Moritori's limited experimentation with chaos energy prior to his chance encounter with the real Tobor, or some other quirk of their mutated genetics, it was not Moritori's followers who dragged his disfigured body out of the rubble. The Grandmaster was rescued by none other than Hawking, a spawn of his clan's most hated foes. So bereaved was Hawking at the loss of his son that he had deluded himself and blinded the other Guardians into accepting Moritori Rex as one of their own.

Unlike his predecessor, Grandmaster Menniker, Moritori Rex made a point of studying the ways of their enemies before sheer luck granted him the opportunity of a lifetime. He played the rube for as many years as it took to earn their trust, faking retrograde amnesia in regards to anything the real Tobor would've known. The years became decades, and decades became centuries, until all the echidnas and fire ants preceding his 'father' were long dead. With Hawking's infirm state, and the other remaining Guardians too young to have known the original, his cover as Tobor went from tenuous to unassailable.

"The fate of Enerjak," Spectre corrected. "I do not see what more needs to be discussed."

The black-furred echidna, his head imprisoned in a cybernetic helm fused to his skull, was fuming. Fuming more than usual, as Spectre obnoxiously emanated a supernatural fog wherever he went. The billowing mist waxed and waned with the intensity of the chaos adept's foul disposition. He could turn it down whenever he saw fit, which, as a cantankerous ancient many generations older than he appeared, was never.

Morituri Rex waved a waft of smoke away from his face. If he didn't know any better, he'd have thought that Spectre was trying to short out his visor on purpose.

"From our past discussions, I received the impression that you were unconvinced of the merits in sparing his life."

"That is because there are none," Spectre said.

"On the contrary, Spectre. Should we keep him alive, Dimitri could be the key to resolving our eternal conflict with the Dark Legion!"

"You know as well as I that Enerjak remains a threat so long as he lives!" Spectre shouted, dispersing the mist where his arm gesticulated.

"I concur with my father that this relitigation is pointless!" Sojourner loudly opined. The red echidna's metal-plated brow furrowed at the intractable deadlock that had gripped the Brotherhood. "Do you not understand the risk of allowing him to live?"

They had debated back and forth since they spirited the powerless Dimitri away from the Sandopolis Desert and placed him under sedation. The heavy shielding and arcane wards around Haven were such that the former host of the Enerjak entity would be practically impossible to detect, by conventional means or otherwise.

"Of course we understand the risks," Thunderhawk reassured, the lilac-toned echidna once again serving as a mediator for both sides of the divided table.

"Then why must we take the matter so lightly as to entertain Tobor's naivety that we could ever make peace with the Dark Legion?" Sojourner challenged.

"This is hardly a proposal we're taking lightly," Sabre said, readjusting his digital monocle as he spoke. "With their founder Menniker long dead, proof of Dimitri's survival may be the only thing that could get those extremists to come to the negotiating table."

"They can't be reasoned with."

Sabre raised a whitened eyebrow.

"What would you propose as an alternative, Spectre? Breaching into the Twilight Cage so that we can purge every Dark Legion man, woman, and child?"

"They hadn't invaded once since your tenure, Thunderhawk. Their confinement has weakened their forces, while we have grown in strength with the years."

The utter arrogance.

Were Moritori Rex a younger echidna, he would've lunged across the table to wring Sojourner's neck. Instead, he simply logged the slight away for future rectification.

"Does that not bother you, Sojourner? That our enemies are long overdue to attack?"

Traditionally speaking, the Brotherhood of Guardians made all of their decisions by consensus. On the issue of Enerjak, the Brotherhood was divided in ways it hadn't been for many years. Hawking was asleep, and the Fire Ant Council had abstained from participating in the discussion. That meant the only people Moritori Rex had to convince to spare Dimitri's life were the six other echidnas in the room. Moritori Rex didn't want to call a vote until he could ensure that he had the majority, but the Legionnaire only had so much time to convince them before Dimitri's chronological age caught up to his body.

Spectre and Sojourner would vote to stick a needle in the comatose Dimitri's neck and be done with it. The former due to his incandescent hatred of the Dark Legion, and the latter because Enerjak had nearly killed that Acorn prince Sojourner had gotten attached to. If Moritoroi Rex knew that poisoning Janelle-Li was going to make the sentimental Guardian so compromised that he would latch on to that orphaned squirrel as a replacement for his granddaughter, he would've done it much sooner. Both of them could make appeals to tradition and protocol as much as they liked, but Moritoroi Rex saw right through them.

Thunderhawk and Sabre were predictable, in their own ways. Thunderhawk took years to come to terms with his daughter's sudden decline in health and death, but he had moved past it, and Sabre was more wounded by his father Athair staying in exile with the Lost Tribe on the surface than his grandmother's passing itself. Their colder, more rational approach to Brotherhood affairs made them susceptible to logical persuasion from Tobor in the possible benefits of keeping Dimitri on life support. The two suspected nothing untoward from the hidden architect of the Brotherhood's downfall, because for one their own to purposely lead the family astray would be unthinkable.

As for their last member? For all of his accumulated acumen on what made the Brotherhood tick, Moritori Rex had no idea how that wild card would be played.

"We're going in circles again!" Sojourner groused, after the Brotherhood had once again wasted hours being unable to make an iota of progress.

"You've been rather quiet," Sabre observed, his head turning to the most recent Guardian to join the Brotherhood. "A mobium for your thoughts, my son?"

"I was merely waiting for the bickering to taper off so that I could get a word in."

Locke, to no one's surprise, could be found brooding at the far side of the table. He was the youngest of them, but what years Locke had weighed heavily upon his shoulders. The Guardian's restless soul could be seen in his eyes, which were almost always tinged with redness by his near-constant electronic surveillance of the Floating Island. His vigilance would be an admirable trait in anyone else. For Locke, it was merely another outlet for the self-destructive, obsessive tendencies that have defined his time as Guardian.

Tobor gestured to his junior, inviting him to speak.

"If you have something to say, Locke, then say it. You are among equals here."

"I have several questions that none of you have answered to my satisfaction."

Moritori Rex suppressed a frown.

"Very well, Locke. What are your questions?"

Following his explosive falling out with his wife, a socialite in Echidnaopolis whose name escaped the Dark Legion spy, Locke made Haven his permanent residence. The fact that he always wore that ridiculous robe around the base was testament enough to that. Moving into Haven was not uncommon for Guardians that lived long enough to see their tethers to their old lives slowly wither and fade away, but Locke severed them all of his own volition. Even Moritori Rex had to leave the base now and then, to supervise the mechanauts he'd programmed to construct secret bases for a future invasion.

"We need to table the discussion of Enerjak for now," Locke said, brushing past the unspoken protests of his peers. "We already knew what to expect in the event of his return, a renewed crusade from the Dark Legion, or an all-out assault on the Floating Island by the newcomer Robotnik. But what do we know of this John Scarlet?"

With a tap of a keypad, one of the vidscreens surrounding their meeting room was occupied with the image of the overlander. Twice as tall as an echidna, their kind's average, with pale skin, brown hair, and piercing eyes of magenta. He wore a black tunic and trousers, covered by a cloak and crooked hat of burgundy. Set in a metal frame atop his left glove was a pink, hexagonal gemstone with rippling stripes of black.

That was John Scarlet. What the vidscreen could not convey was the aura of negative chaos energy that enveloped him like a poisonous haze.

To all members of the Brotherhood, including the one meant to be watching Eurish for newly-formed threats, the presence of an overlander magician on the Floating Island came completely out of left field. The island was hardly a stranger to occultists seeking refuge from the surface, or lowered scrutiny in which to pursue their dark arts, and the Brotherhood corralled them all into the badlands so that they could more easily be monitored. With Knuckles occupied by Archimedes' trials, the Brotherhood planned to do the same with the overlander, but the arrival of Enerjak threw any plans out the window. Forced to act quickly, the Brotherhood resorted to a slapdash Hail Aurora tactic that required the full cooperation of the Fire Ants for the slightest chance of success.

That chance was dashed when the mad demigod was reminded that the Fire Ants were the ones who defeated him the first time around. By prioritizing their neutralization, which also cut off the Brotherhood from using Archimedes as a telepathic fly on the wall with Knuckles, their last-ditch gambit fell through. Everyone expected Enerjak to wipe out Knuckles and his allies after a forlorn last stand, but the outlander managed to rally what little resources the young Guardian had at his disposal and nearly turned the tables.

When everyone in the Brotherhood sensed the emergence of a second hyper-energy organism matching the overlander's taint, their table in Haven was nearly flipped.

"Spectre, Mercia is under your jurisdiction," Thunderhawk reminded. "Any additional insights you can provide on this warlock that withstood Enerjak would be appreciated."

"Little more than what I have already gleaned from the Albionites," the dark echidna attested, his frustrations with the motherland's executive body left unvarnished. "He's an overlander with magical talent, allied with the Mercian rebels against Robotnik's forces."

"The High Councilor truly had nothing else to offer?" Tobor probed.

"Nothing that she was willing to part with. I sought to press her for where her intelligence came from, but Gala-Na insisted that it was a credible source."

The only echidnas that could claim to value their privacy more than the citizens of Echidnaopolis and its pocket zone were the ones that never left the fabled homeland. Albion, once a bastion of echidna science and cultural hegemony, had sealed its gates to the world a millennium prior. What remained of their wonders from the golden age were used to obscure the island from Mobius and maintain the status quo, allowing themselves to fade into myth and gradually stagnate by choice. Moritori Rex despised any interactions he was forced to suffer with their perfidious High Council, but they were refreshingly proactive with eliminating any threats to Albion's continued isolation and secrecy.

"Then we will stick to what we know," Locke said. "The warlock's spells suggest formidable prowess in the dark arts. We're dealing with an unknown, but not petty dabbler."

"Could he be a survivor of the Magitek purge?" Thunderhawk speculated.

"I was under the impression that the Overland executed all of them," Spectre stated.

"There is an overlander technomage that allied herself with one of the warlords in the Dragon Kingdom," explained Tobor.

"The one you referred to as the Iron Queen?" asked Locke.

Tobor nodded.

"The very same. If one Magitek user survived, I don't see why another couldn't."

The Dark Legion had cooperated with overlanders to attack the Floating Island once before, in Mennkier's time. Moritori Rex had put thought into striking a similar alliance with Robotnik, but he was too much of a loose cannon for the old Grandmaster's tastes. He'd also considered subverting the Iron Queen to his side, as the techno-witch could bend electrical impulses and machinery to her will, but her warlord faction's repeated losses against the Four Houses caused him to lose interest.

"For what purpose would an overlander side with the Mercians?" Sojourner asked.

The Brotherhood found the whole situation rather strange, but Albion was reliable when it came to protecting their own interests. They'd have no reason to lie about this.

"Mercia is an old land, with ancient mysteries that would draw an aspiring sorcerer towards it like a moth to a flame," mused Sabre.

"And it's hardly as though Robotnik has any love for his own kind," Spectre scoffed.

Out of the major cities that dotted the Overland, only MegaCentral, as the former capital, had the means to weather years of merciless bombing. New Megaopolis, Metropolis, and Gigapolis were less fortunate. In a matter of years, they were overrun or turned into irradiated rubble and ruins by Robotnik's hand. Penned in by badnik patrols, what little survivors remained had reverted to a primitive scavenger existence to survive.

If they were echidnas, Moritori Rex might've shed a tear at their plight. He respected everything else about the Overland's ambitious, domineering ways, but their inherent inferiority meant he didn't plan to lift a finger on their behalf. Not unless they made it worth his while, and the Overland had little left to give that he couldn't take.

"Let us not dwell on the sorrowful state of the Overland," Tobor said mournfully.

"So I will raise the next question," Locke continued. "Have any of us been able to discern how this complete unknown achieved a super transformation?"

"There are too many factors for us to begin answering that," Thunderhawk started.

"Then do we have any idea how he created the Master Emerald?" Locke queried, raising his voice to cut off anyone who was still trying to address his last question.

And wasn't that a surprise?

Each member of the Brotherhood, 'Tobor' included, had tethered their vital energies to the large chaos emerald that kept the Floating Island in the sky. What else could have extended their lifespans without mechanical augmentation? When that singular emerald was merged with all of the ones Enerjak was hoarding to sustain himself, the shock of it had caused all of them to fall unconscious for hours. Hawking still wasn't awake, assuming he ever would. It was far too soon to determine the side effects the new Master Emerald would have on them, but Moritori Rex had to admit that he appreciated their most powerful weapon bearing a more impressive title.

The others, however, were terrified, because nothing else had so thoroughly altered the Floating Island in their unnaturally extended lifetimes. Decades and centuries of incremental change, followed by a massive, spontaneous one that they were helpless to prevent. These high-and-mighty elders, once so certain of their positions in the grand designs of Mobius, were left scrambling in the dark.

"What is your point, Locke?!" Spectre demanded.

"My point is that we are the Brotherhood," Locke intoned. "We should have had the answers to these questions before this crisis came to a head, and we did not. We have erred heavily in failing to avoid unknown variables and their interference."

Moritori Rex could tell that the overlander blithely intervening in the fates of Knuckles and Archimedes before Locke could obliquely aid them himself had gotten under the younger Guardian's skin. Never mind that Enerjak likely would've roamed free without him. Locke spent years waiting for the opportunity to prove his devotion to his son from the shadows, only for that chance was taken away from him.

It would not be difficult to convince Locke that John Scarlet was a threat to Knuckles and the Brotherhood if he became a threat to Moritori Rex.

"Do you have a course of action in mind?" Sojourner asked.

"We must investigate everyone and everything related to this incident. You asked me to form an opinion on what we should do with Enerjak, when we still don't know anything about the overlander in Mercia, Robotnik's machines that still plague the island, and the technical problems that led to our blindness that Enerjak was coming in the first place!"

Moritori Rex did not like where this conversation was going. Dimitri didn't have the kind of time it would take to perform such an investigation, especially not if 'Tobor' was going to cover his tracks. He knew that he had to say something that would arrest Locke's momentum before he convinced the others to carry out a potentially disastrous inquiry.

"Is this about your visions?" Tobor asked sympathetically. "Did you have another one?"

"My vision has nothing to do with this!" Locke snarled, his fist slamming against the table with enough force that his knuckle spikes drove into the wood.

Ah yes, the vision.

Or, as Moritori Rex liked to call it, 'Locke the Echidna's schizophrenia-induced cry for help'. He did not voice that concern, content to let Locke inflict as much harm to his reputation and his own family as he saw fit, but the others were thinking it for him.

"Locke, you know Guardian Tobor meant no disrespect," Sabre said in a conciliatory tone.

At the time, the Brotherhood were shocked by Locke's declaration that he was granted a divine vision to experiment upon himself and bombard his unborn son with extreme doses of chaos radiation, which he believed would maximize his Knuckles' odds of success as a future Guardian. An absolutely farcical, insane notion… and one that most of the Brotherhood agreed to without any malfeasance on the part of the former Dark Legion Grandmaster. If Locke was going to speak of providence, then the fact that his son didn't perish in spite of the Guardian's attempts to 'protect' him met the criteria.

"…Of course," Locke reluctantly answered, once the fire had gone out of him. "My apologies, Tobor. My anger at you was unjustified."

"The past several days have been trying for all of us, my friend," Tobor affirmed peaceably. "You are forgiven, and let us return to the matter at hand."

"Are there any more questions before we move on to the vote?" Sojourner questioned.

Locke was humiliated by his outburst, but anyone who was expecting him to back down clearly had underestimated his unwavering resolve to do whatever he felt 'necessary'.

"How do you propose to stop Dimitri's rapid aging, Tobor?" Locke questioned. "Any plan to use Dimitri as a bargaining chip is predicated upon saving him from the consequences of his own actions, and exposing him to more chaos energy is out of the question."

In that, Moritori Rex actually agreed with the Guardians. Dimitri would be far too difficult to control as Enerjak. He wanted Dimitri alive, but he also needed him to cooperate.

"There is only one other method we know of to artificially extend a life…" Tobor suggested, trailing off because he needed to sound hesitant.

Spectre was the first one to catch Tobor's meaning, whirling upon him in a rage.

"We are not turning Enerjak into a Dark Legion cyborg!" he snarled.

Moritori Rex raised his hands in a placating manner. By riling up Locke and Spectre, he made it seem as though Tobor had been unfairly targeted with abuse this entire session.

"Spectre, be reasonable! We've learned so much about their technology over the years!"

"And who was their technology learned from?" Spectre roared.

The Brotherhood were well aware of the enmity between Spectre and 'Tobor'. While Spectre cited a distaste for his father's overly-conciliatory, politicking ways, Tobor was the last Brotherhood member to see Spectre the night he was kidnapped by the Dark Legion. The young Guardian was scarred and victimized by their failed attempt to turn him into a cybernetic puppet, barely escaping that traumatic experience with his life. It was 'evident' to all of them that Spectre still resented his father for not being there when he needed him most, even decades after the event. Overtures of reconciliation were made on Tobor's side, but Moritori Rex knew that bridge had been burned.

On some level, it seemed as though Spectre always suspected, but was never in the position to confirm, that his father had been replaced with an impostor who was never too far from tragedy when it struck. Moritori Rex knew that his failed attempt to break Spectre had not only risked spoiling decades of scheming, it also cost him attempts to subvert future descendents of the House of Edmund without his 'son' breathing down his neck. Spectre may have been on to him, and as such, the Dark Legion saboteur had seen fit to undermine his only skeptic by any means he could get away with.

My son.

Moritori Rex's thoughts wandered off to his true son, the late Grandmaster Luger. For all that he regretted not being there to see him come into his own as a Grandmaster and as a man, he could not deny that Luger grew up to become a disappointment. More a lover than a fighter, the passion that the House of Dimitri was known for skipped his generation. The conviction of Menniker. The aggression and ambition of his two children, whom Moritori Rex had all but adopted as his own while Luger mourned his first wife and moved on to wooing his second. Moritori Rex regretted not being present to turn his son around before someone saw fit to take his life, but he knew the Dark Legion was in better hands under the iron fist of his grandson Kragok than the soft glove of Luger.

"Have you nothing to say for yourself?" Spectre asked, still driven by anger.

Moritori Rex regathered his composure.

"I misjudged how strongly the topic would have affected you," Tobor said apologetically. "It was insensitive of me to speak of the applications for the technology we reverse-engineered from your plight, without even acknowledging how deeply you were affected by them."

In other words, Spectre's rampant emotionality was causing him to lose credibility.

"This isn't about my personal feelings," Spectre denied. "It's about your insistence that we disregard our guiding traditions in the pursuit of short-term pragmatism!"

"Tradition is meant to be a guide for our future actions, and not a fetter to restrict them," Sabre countered.

Being born outside of the normal network of Guardians and their children, Sabre's perspective was tinged by his formative years with the more rustic Lost Tribe. The nomadic echidnas were guided by faith, but tempered by the realities of living in a world that had otherwise left the echidnas in the past.

"To willingly use Dark Legion cybernetics would be a dangerous trespass on the technology ban over Echidnaopolis," warned Sojourner.

Where were Hawking's reservations about technology when it was used to save his poor Tobor? Or repairing the atomic wasteland that those damnable dingos made of our island? Shall I inform Kragok that your panoptic citadel of Haven will be dismantled in favor of stone forts connected by telegraph lines?

For Aurora's sake, Echidnaopolis still uses flying cars after their 'technology ban' outlawed everything my people need to survive!

"We would be using the technology to save a life and facilitate the end of a conflict that has waged on for over four hundred years," Tobor pleaded. "Is that not a just enough cause to make an exception?"

"That remains to be seen," Spectre growled.

"Honestly, Spectre, do you think I would be so foolish as to arm him with anything more dangerous than prosthetic limbs and painkillers--?"

"We shall not delay this any longer!" Sojourner declared, his patience having finally worn dry. "As much as I would prefer Dimitri be executed for his crimes, to allow him to age to dust while we argue is cruel and unusual. The time to determine his fate is now."

"I agree that we have deliberated on this for long enough," Tobor conceded.

"We shall do this by seniority," Thunderhawk explained. "Tobor."

"It should come as no surprise that I vote to spare him," the Dark Legion infiltrator said.

"Spectre."

"I vote to kill him," Spectre answered.

Thus far, completely unsurprising.

"One vote for life, and one vote for death. Sojourner."

"Make that two for death," Sojourner said simply.

"One to two. I, Thunderhawk, vote for him to live." Two to two. "Sabre?"

"This may be our only option to end our war with the Dark Legion without further bloodshed. We must keep him alive."

I have won.

It was three to two. Locke's vote would be to spare Dimitri's life, or continue to ensnare the Brotherhood in ceaseless debates.

"That's three to--"

Sabre's monocle blinked with a stream of tiny green lights; lines of text along the glass. Sabre interrupted Thunderhawk before he could move on to the last vote.

"Hawking wanted to weigh in," Sabre announced.

"What?" Moritori Rex said, not having to fake his shock in the slightest.

"He is awake?" Sojourner asked, stunned.

"Only briefly, but yes. His nurse explained that he awoke with a stir and ordered her to make his choice clear via his priority channel before returning to rest."

"And what did my father choose?" Tobor coxed.

"He said he wanted us to, and I quote, 'put him down like a rabid devil dog'."

The room was silent for several seconds as they realized the vote had shifted again, from most of them wanting Dimitri alive to it being a tie.

"That is one more vote towards euthanization," Thunderhawk said. "Three to three."

Even when Hawking had barely half a mind left, one foot in the grave, and was bound to a wheelchair, the aging Guardian continued to be a thorn in the Dark Legion's side. Once all of the others were dealt with, Moritori Rex knew he would take great pleasure in delivering Hawking to the Ancient Walkers from the top of a long, winding staircase. A fitting end for a senile old fool who invited the most insidious Legionnaire into his clan with open arms.

That was all for the future. At the moment, Dimitri's life would be decided by the tiebreaker. Moritoroi Rex had to ensure his survival, and that meant pulling out the big guns.

"A shame that this shall set a precedent," Moritori Rex said simply.

Spectre shot him a glare. Moritori Rex ignored it, because Locke had already heard the words.

Thunderhawk resumed the proceedings.

"Nevertheless. Locke."

Before his very eyes, Moritori Rex saw the rusted gears in Locke's head begin to turn.

A precedent for what? How we dealt with all super echidnas who were deemed uncontrollable, of course. Should he have allowed them prior warning, Moritori Rex could believe that the Brotherhood would have developed a weapon capable of harming, even killing Enerjak years in advance. Super overlanders and hedgehogs as well, technically speaking, but Locke spared no thought to killing them if it became an issue.

"Locke? We've had enough time to come to an informed decision."

"I'm thinking."

Locke was forced to consider how this precedent would interact with all of the 'enhancements' he forced upon his son. Should Knuckles ever achieve a vaunted super state of his own, then they may well hold a discussion on what to do with him next.

After everything he sacrificed to make Knuckles as strong as he could be before abandoning him in the Floating Island's wilderness, would Locke be willing to risk that his son's life may one day become forfeit by a simple majority vote?

"I vote to spare Dimitri," Locke answered.

No, Moritori Rex knew that he would make the 'right' decision.

"It is decided," Thunderhawk said with finality. "Dimitri lives. Tobor, as our most experienced medical specialist, and the Guardian who most strongly advocated for his continued existence, it will fall upon you to oversee the operation."

While his work took centuries to unfold, the rate at which kingdoms rose and fell, Moritori Rex had done more damage to the House of Edmund than any other. Through his myriad manipulations, Moritori had turned the bane of the Dark Legion into a toothless cabal of quarrelsome old men. Too embittered by the declining state of Mobius brought about by sheer inaction. Too encumbered by the weight of their own personal failings. Too impotent to see the shroud of deception that he had pulled over their eyes.

"I accept. After all, I've taken an oath to ensure his survival."

"An oath?" Spectre scrutinized.

"As a doctor, Spectre," Tobor clarified. "And I take my vow with great reverence."

Just hold on a little longer, Grandfather.

Together, you and I will watch these hypocrites burn.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

Did anyone really think I was killing off Dimitri? Come on, now! I was just getting started.

I had to rely on beta readers a bit more than usual, because the echidna lore is dense, occasionally contradictory, and almost completely superfluous to what anyone asked for in the first place. I wanted to keep things as streamlined as possible without losing anyone, which was no easy feat to pull off. I'll leave it to the comments to determine if I did so.

Pray I never have to pull out the Knuckles family tree.

♦ Want to support my work? ♦
PATREON | KO-FI
♦ Join the W2 Workshop Zone for previews and updates! ♦
W2 Workshop Zone Discord

This chapter has been brought to you by the following patrons and beta readers: C-Moon, Nystical, Storyteller222, and Teron!

Thank you all for the continuing support!

 

[weredrago2]

Wango Tangle
Non-Canon Bonus

"Auntie Tangle, could you tell me a bedtime story?"

I stopped at the door, pondering my predicament. I was only sticking my head in so that Rosie could have the night off for once. After all, how hard could it be to make sure all the kids were in bed at the right time before heading out?

That was tempting fate, so honestly? I couldn't say that I didn't have it coming.

"Are you sure?" I asked, entering the room. "I don't know if I have any good stories."

Tails sat up in his bed, the little fox aghast at the notion.

"What? But you tell the best stories! Like the ones in space! Or the ones about mysteries and adventures that Rosie doesn't know!"

It helped that I had a backlog before I found my way to Knothole. Admittedly, it took a few years of workshopping to find the best stories that Tails and the others close to his age wanted to hear to lighten their spirits.

"I think I've told you all of them at least once."

"You can always tell me an old story," Tails pleaded, doing that face. "Please?"

I was pretty sure he was getting a bit too old for this sort of thing, and I did have to head out soon… but I couldn't say no when he made that face.

I sat down in the chair next to the nightstand, causing Tails to smile.

"Okay, okay! But nothing too exciting, alright? We need you well-rested for tomorrow."

"What's happening tomorrow?" he asked excitedly.

"No idea!" I said with a playful shrug, one tongue stuck out. "But if anything does happen, I'll need my best tail buddy bright-eyed and bushy-tails'd for it!"

Tails nodded along with a laugh.

"Yes, auntie."

He liked the 'tail buddy' thing we had going on. Our unusual tails and our impromptu adventure in Downunda were something special that we could bond over.

Downunda…
Like a boomerang, my mind couldn't help but return to the Outback.

- - -

The Great Canyon was enormous, miraculously seeming much deeper on the inside than when gazing down at it from above. I used the stiffened hairs on my tail to dig onto the rim of the basin like a hand, my sneakers kicking up red dust as I rappelled us down the wall to the ground with my tail. I normally would've preferred to climb down at a more measured pace, but we didn't have that kind of time, and my hands were full anyways.

"Stay with me, Tails. We're almost there."

"Okay, auntie," he said weakly.

I searched around, stopping only to reapply the bandages around his head, which were from my tape. We were ambushed by Crocobot, and Tails was hurt by his flying dingo drones. Bad. Wallaby said there was a shaman down here that could help, and the only reason I was taking the risk that this whole thing was a trap was for Tails' sake.

"Anyone in here?" I shouted to the empty basin.

In the distance, I could hear a faint murmuring from one of the caves carved into the interior. I followed the source of the voice into a narrow tunnel.

"Hello?"

If the Great Canyon was anything like Uluru, then walking all over it was probably some flavor of sacrilege, but I didn't have time for theology, and neither did he.

I held on to that thought until I stepped out of the tunnel, turned the corner, and was suddenly face-to-mask with the gods of Mobius.

Three repitalian giants with three masks that obscured their faces. The rest of the details went as blurry as my vision and thoughts, because I didn't have the mental capacity to fully comprehend what I was looking at. Let alone what they were saying.

❝❞

Also present was a Rastafarian echidna rambling about a prophecy. I ignored him.

"Bwah?!"

I carefully set Tails down, and then fainted. In that order.

- - -

"Auntie?" Tails asked, concerned at why I'd gone quiet.

"Just mustering up the chutzpah to get into character," I deflected. "The voices are a must, because I don't do bedtime stories by half."

Thankfully, he bought my excuse. I extended my tail through the gap in the back of the chair. Tails' eyes followed the striped appendage as it looped around the room, stopping to pluck a book off the shelf with groupings of ultrafine hair that functioned as fingers. My tail had gotten gradually stronger over the years, but exercises to keep it limber meant I maintained roughly the same amount of dexterity as what I started with.

"But auntie, your stories aren't in any book!" Tails protested.

"Don't worry. The book's for dramatic effect."

If time allowed, and if we could scavenge a half-decent typewriter around here, I might be able to fix that. My handwriting was too atrocious for quill & ink, but anything more complex than that had better uses than to jot down the stories from my old life.

Maybe when the war's a thing of the past.

"Oh. Okay!"

"Get cozy, Tails, because this one's a classic."

I popped open the dictionary as he got cozy. Clearing my throat, I began the preamble to one of my safer stories. Solid characterization, good morals, and no robots.

"Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together and created harmony for all the land…"

He was out like a light before I could reach the second half of the pilot.

"G'night, kiddo," I whispered. "Sweet dreams."

With Tails put to bed, I stopped by the village pantry. It used to be rare when we had food to spare, but we were doing better than we had been. I tossed a variety of food into my rucksack, took a few more supplies and hit the road on my extreme gear.

My extreme gear, the sleek and elegant Type-T, was a cut above the metal slabs with outboard thrusters that the other Freedom Fighters had been (reluctantly) testing out for Rotor. Our top gearhead was interested in making a vehicle that could keep up with Sonic since I explained the concept to him, but he hadn't been able to execute on his vision until after I let him study my ace commission. Wave the Swallow was underappreciated by the Babylon Rogues and the Armada they deserted from, and so buttering her up by praising her contributions to aeronautics was supposed to net me a tidy discount.

That initial interaction went much better than expected. After that first exchange, we'd started sending on-and-off communications to each other on vulnerable sites her crew could plunder, engaged in sparring sessions with her crew, I talked Jet and Storm into appreciating their chief mechanic more like we did Rotor, and I'd even participated in a few raids with Wave when the other Rogues were unavailable.

I thought that we made a solid team, but I ended up talking to Bunnie about it, and she said she's pretty sure I've been dating Wave the Swallow for the better half of a year. I hadn't thought of it like that, but I guess we were dating? If nothing else, it led into an amusing conversation with Sally and NICOLE when they asked if 'he' knew we were an item.

Heh.

My northern commute was a long one, skirting around the coast so that I could avoid the security grid surrounding Robotropolis. Nowhere on the same continent of Robotnik's capital was free of badniks, but he had less Surveillance Orbs this far out. The journey would've taken much longer if I was running or driving; on the Type-T, I could make it there and back in hours. No one should've been able to see or catch up to me heading up to the Mobian Badlands, over the badnik patrols, and sailing way past the truncated 'Abandon All Hope' sign marking the way into the Forbidden Zone.

Far, far away from the lush environs of the Great Forest, my board glided over earth that had been scorched by Robotnik's firebombs, soil rendered sterile after years of acid rain. I felt a chill from the cold winds, but the cold didn't bother me as much as the silence did. My Geiger counter hadn't gone off yet, but I planned to steer clear from the ruined cities all the same. The former major population centers and fragments of the Overland's industrial base were where the occupying forces were the most concentrated.

Mobius isn't Earth. Not anymore, at least.

The Overland wasn't America. Different history. Different people. Which was for the best, if the country was as bad as the others said.

New Megaopolis isn't New York. It isn't.

The crumbling skyscrapers and blasted-out parks were still hard to look at, because I would've wanted to visit my family in Long Island for one last time before… all of this, but the opportunity's dead and gone. I still had people to live for in the present.

Thankfully, the people I was looking for had abandoned the cities before Robotnik started leveling them. The Overland had been stripped barren of trees by the logging companies long ago, but the shadowy cliffs and snow-covered hills provided a measure of coverage from hover units. Far from New Megaopolis, I came to a stop at a seemingly abandoned longhouse with a stark A-frame, its structure partially built into the hillside as a dugout.

Waiting outside the longhouse, feeling the ice creep into my fur, I didn't have to wait for long to be noticed. As I was unpacking my bag, a large, black wolfdog that stood well over a meter tall barreled out of the longhouse, knocking me off my feet!

"H-Hello, Varg!"

Varg barked and wagged his tail, refusing to let me go until I gave him affection.

"Who's a good dire wolf?" I cooed. "You are!"

The massive canine let out another bark in agreement. He was huge, looked scary, and could probably do some real damage to a SWATbot, but other than that? Very friendly.

"A shame he's not a better guard dog," the overlander at the entrance commented.

I gave Varg a gentle push with my tail, standing back up again after he gave me some room. He let out a yawn, massive jaws opened wide, and plopped down in the snow.

The overlander stepped out of the shelter. He was about as tall as I used to be as a human, but more muscled. One of his eyes had been replaced by a glassy optical lens; a bionic memento from the Great War. He wore a winter parka that was interwoven with intricate, circuit-esque patterns in yellow. Identifying me as a known variable, the bearded humanoid slowly approached with a light phaser holstered to his belt.

"Greetings to you, Jormun Stellwagen," I greeted.

"Greetings to you, Tangle the Lemur," Jormun grunted. "What have you brought to trade?"

In spite of his brusque exterior, I could say with confidence that Jormun was one of the friendliest overlanders I'd met. The other survivors out here began shooting at me on sight. Unlike them, Jormun made it clear that he wouldn't shoot until I started anything, and if I did start something, he wouldn't miss.

"Food and medical supplies," I answered.

"Hrm. Show them."

Not counting the trail mix I ate on the way here, the food I'd brought was dry biscuits, preserved fruits and vegetables, salt picky, and pemmican. I'd also taken bandages, alcohol swabs, over-the-counter drugs, and antibiotics. Opening his own sack, Jomon brought out hand tools, clucky wire, fishing lines, nets, water filters, and other manufactured goods that looked a bit too new to have been scavenged. I suspected that he had a 3D printer or other similar device that recycled scrap metal and raw plastics, but I wasn't going to ask. My goal was to get all of these survivors what they needed when Jormun traded with them, and I couldn't do that if he thought I was trying to steal his lifeline.

It was an open secret amongst the Freedom Fighters that I'd occasionally go on unsanctioned 'scouting trips' and return with goodies. Maybe it was the Tangle in me, intermingled with my own prior tendencies, but between field missions, I'd long become Knothole's informal procurement agent. If folks needed something, I'd get it. Whether that meant I'd 'forget' to inform people when I was leaving, cutting deals with dealers in Casino Night City, accidentally seducing a pretty bird that knew her way around a wrench, or borrowing a few things from the storehouse without asking first.

In this situation, we were getting quality supplies, but the truth of the matter was that this 'procurement' was an unsanctioned humanitarian mission. This exchange would have gone much faster if I was doing a simple dropoff, but our bad blood with the overlanders ran deep. I knew there were people in Knothole who would refuse to give them a loaf of bread, since the Overland was the aggressor during the Great War. For the same reason, the overlanders couldn't trust anything we offered freely because it might be poisoned or boobytrapped. As such, I had to partake in a song and dance of barter.

Negotiations concluded with Jormun taking most of what I had offered and vice versa. Having neglected to take a jacket with me this time because I was in a rush, I wanted to pack up the rest of my belongings before I caught a cold.

"That is all I seek from you," Jormun said.

"And I got what I needed," I replied.

The overlander nodded firmly.

"Then the trade has--"

"Wait!" I heard a small voice call out. Our heads turned to the door, where a white-haired overlander girl in a circuit tunic approached us with a bundle in her hands. "Want to trade!"

"Tilda!" a woman in black and red with white braids shouted at her. "Come back!"

Tilda wasn't listening, and kept walking towards me. She was definitely a child, somewhere between eight and ten years old, but still about a head taller than me. While Jormun said nothing, the overlander's hand slowly hovered toward his phaser in case it was needed.

"Hello there," I said gently. "Would you like something from my bag?"

Tilda shook her head, and then pointed to the colorful weave of paracord on my wrist.

"Want that," she explained simply.

"My bracelet?"

"Yes!"

I slid it off my wrist.

"Okay, Tilda. What would you like to trade for--?"

"Coat!" she exclaimed, unfurling a little parka. "Too small for me! Good size for you."

She had a point. The coat was just the right size, and I was starting to freeze out here.

"That sounds good to me."

I tossed her the bracelet, and Tilda did the same with the jacket.

"Thank you, Tilda," I said, sliding the rather cozy parka on.

"Now you are warm too!" she said in return.

Tilda extended one of her mittens for a handshake, but I surprised her by shaking with my tail instead. It caused her to break out into a giggle fit.

"Tilda, it's time for bed," her mother chided tiredly, hefting up and carrying Tilda away.

"Can we keep her?" Tilda asked, pointing towards me. "Pretty please?"

"We already have Varg," Mrs. Stellwagen answered, and the warg raised his head in confusion before returning to the warmth of the longhouse.

"Can I stay up longer?" Tilda pleaded.

Jormun took his hand away from the holster.

"It is late, little one, and the fu--" Jormun's wife gave him a look, and he cleared his throat. "The forest dweller must return to her den for the night."

"Okay…" Tilda said in defeat, and she was carried off to bed.

She waved, and I waved back. There was a trace of softness in Jormun's expression as he watched his family return to the safety of their dugout.

"Ask her to bring flour next time!" Jormun's wife shouted to him.

"Yes, Taika," Jormun said, before turning back to me. "Bring flour next time."

"Trade her two of your chaff grenades for flour!"

Jormun stopped and faced the house again.

"Two chaff grenades?"

"I can't bake a you-know-what-day cake with grenades!" Taika argued.

"I could get the good flour from Beanville?" I offered.

Taika stuck her head out of the longhouse.

"Beanville still stands!?" she asked incredulously.

"Surprisingly, yes!"

"If you can get us flour from Beanville, my husband will throw in a vibrosword!" Taika said.

"I will?" Jormun repeated, shocked.

"You hardly use that old thing!"

"But what if we need it?" he argued.

"We need the flour more than another blade!" she argued back.

Jormun let out a huff of resignation.

"Two chaff grenades and…" He hardened his resolve. "…my Gilius Arms M3202 black steel vibrosword for a single sack of Beanvillian flour."

"I'll bring more than one sack to reduce the sting."

"Deal."

With that, I bid the Stellwagens adieu, and scampered off for the outcropping where I stowed my gear. However, before I could take off for Knothole, an unexpected plus one had taken to hiding behind a large, petrified tree stump to wait until I had returned for it.

In other words, I had a tail.

"So, this is where you've been sneaking--" My tail snaked around the stump, false fingers balled into a fist, and struck the source of the disturbance. "OOF!"

The force was enough to send the skunk reeling into a snowbank. His usual ensemble of purple gloves, boots, and sash were complemented with a green puffer vest matching his neckerchief. He knew I often packed a jacket for the cold weather and came prepared.

"Geoffrey," I uttered darkly. "I warned you to stop sneaking up on me."

Geoffry St. John held up his right hand in mock surrender, as the other caressed his jaw.

"Relax, mate! We're on the same team, remember?"

I didn't escape my notice that his right hand held his wrist-mounted bow. If it made him feel better about his chances, then I wasn't going to burst his bubble. Yet.

"You're not my mate, St. John. You're a harassment suit waiting to be filed."

Geoffrey scoffed, performing an overdramatic flip to get back onto his feet as he did so.

"Enjoying that view from your high pasha, sheila? Stealing medicine from Knothole so you can sell it to the Overland is a lot worse than my possession of roguish charm."

My tail stiffened, coiling into a defensive shape around my body.

"I didn't sell anything."

"Are the semantics supposed to make you feel better about what you've been up to in the Forbidden Zone? 'Trader' and 'traitor' aren't as far from each as you think, luv."

Being in smelling range of this scumbag made my self-control waver, and not in the way he meant. The first time we met, he started making advances like I was an enemy line. I was going to let him down gently so that he'd stop hitting on me, but after the train heist on the Robotnik Express, Geoffrey swooped in for an unsolicited kiss and walked away with a well-deserved black eye. Sally and everyone else present was shocked at my 'overreaction', but I made it clear that St. John was going to behave himself around me or else.

Needless to say, we didn't get assigned to the same missions anymore. There I was, thinking he learned his lesson. Instead, he began going after different targets.

"Don't call me luv," I growled. "I'm only out here doing what any Freedom Fighter should."

"Helping our greatest enemies?" the skunk prodded, pointing at the parka I received from Tilda. "Wearing their symbols? Their livery!?"

"Do you still think they're our greatest enemies after Robotnik did this?" I shouted, gesturing to the urban wasteland in the distance.

He had the temerity to laugh.

"Who do you think made him, and then made him the rest of Mobius' problem? The Overland turned their own country into a landfill, and if they were ever back at full strength, they'd try to do the same thing all over again to us!"

"The Overland doesn't exist anymore! All that's left are broken cities and survivors being wiped out, the same as us! Can't you see that!?"

Geoffrey was undeterred.

"The overlanders dug their own graves trying to put us in the ground. Leaving nothing but widows and orphans in their wake. Why shouldn't we let them rot?"

My tail clenched.

"I don't know what you've been doing with the Rebel Underground, but Knothole helps anyone who needs it. If you've got a problem with that, then use those contacts of yours to assemble a crack team for a pity party."

Geoffey's expression twisted into a sneer, then shifted into one more pleased with itself.

"Suppose I stopped by Sally's chambers and asked her opinion on this little excursion of yours." I saw red. "What do you think she'd--?"

"You stay away from her!" I roared out, anchoring my tail to the ground and surging towards him with a full-bodied kick!

This time, Geoffrey saw me coming. He ducked away from my kick, using the extra space to shoot at me with his wrist bow. The bolt sailed past my body and bit into my tail, slowing the muscled appendage down before I could lash Geoffrey into the tree trunk.

"Struck a nerve, did I?" Geoffrey asked, using the trunk as cover while he got his verbal jabs in and loaded a fresh bolt.

I yanked the projectile out and tried to ignore the way it stained the snow.

"It's a flesh wound."

My tail scraped the petrified bark as its talons reached towards him from behind. Forced to whirl around and react to my feint, Geoffrey was totally blind to a sucker punch delivered to the back of his head. That left my tail free to grab the skunk by the right arm and yank him helplessly into the air.

"You fight dirtier than the rest," Geoffrey whinged.

With my tail pointing his arm up, he couldn't use his wrist bow. If I'd grabbed him by the hand, he could've discarded his glove to slip loose.

"I usually go up against worse than you," I countered. "The only reason Sonic hasn't given you this treatment was because he's a gentleman."

"Sonic's a child," St. John dismissed.

And Sally isn't?

"And we're adults. We need to go the extra mile for them."

If this body was in its teens when I was found by a much younger Sonic and Tails scurrying about the Great Forest, then I was definitely in my early twenties by now.

"So I was right," the skunk said, a smile creeping back onto his face. "Sally wouldn't approve of you entering the Forbidden Zone on your lonesome."

Never mind that he was out here without anyone's say-so either. Geoffrey was at the head of his own command structure, a leeway that he wielded judiciously.

"We've been here around these parts before."

"She doesn't have any idea you're here," he concluded.

The worst part was that he was right. Sally didn't 'object' because I didn't tell her or the SID what I was doing. Director Who had a way of knowing what everyone was doing, leaving me to interpret his lack of interference as approval or indifference. Sharing food we were going to have to toss out was one thing, and giving medical supplies to our former foes was another. I needed Doctor Quack's assistance to make this work, but the typically free-wheeling sawbones threatened to write me up until Mrs. Quack was able to calm her husband down. The doctor came around eventually, but it was a very close thing.

Thanks, Elizabeth. You're a saint.

"Fine, yes. I didn't tell her."

"I take it this is your way of getting back at her highness?"

"What?"

My grip on him slackened in surprise, but I made it stronger before he could get away.

"After she kept you in the dark on the auto automaton plot," he drawled. "You're so bitter that you're willing to sabotage us because you didn't make the short list of who she--?!"

My grip tightened, causing Geoffrey to let out a pained gasp.

"Trusted?" I finished. "Yeah, that hurt, but we talked it over and made up. If you think that's why I'm out here, then you don't have a clue."

I felt my heart break into a million pieces when it looked like Sally had been roboticized. My worst fear, that I'd somehow prevent the Freedom Fighters from overcoming Robotnik because of my very presence butterflying that vain hope away. I thought it was my fault the world was doomed, because I didn't object that the newcomer she trusted into our ranks, and he was the one that stabbed her in the back.

Then Sally was… fine. The one in the roboticizer was an impostor, and Sally revealed that she'd kept the rest of us out of the loop to make their gambit against Robotnik work. Once it was all said and done, it hurt even more to realize that the robot tricked me, too.

It was one of several things that made me rethink where my life was going.

"Then are you really just that much of a bleeding heart? By all means, enlighten me."

"I can break your arm," I warned.

"You wouldn't," he teased, his tone compromised by an undercurrent of uncertainty.

"You're right. That'd be needlessly cruel."

He smiled.

"Knew it--"

"I'd snap your spine like a twig and bury you in the toxic soil. If anyone went searching, why would anyone suspect you to be in the one place you hated the most?"

A moment of silence passed between us.

"You would," Geoffrey coughed out, having realized how poorly he misjudged the situation.

It was a bluff. Kinda. My utter loathing for Geoffrey wasn't enough for me to want to kill him alone, but I'd be willing to do that and more to protect Sally.

"I could," I replied, before dumping him back onto the snow. "But not today."

He looked up at me, confused, as I revealed three necklaces from under my shirt. A trined fork of gold, a taijitu medallion, and an onyx pendant carved in the shape of a chao.

"More souvenirs?" he fielded in annoyance.

"I picked up the first from an abandoned church in Downunda, the second from the ruins of a Linshao monastery in Leung West, and the third at a chao shrine by the coast."

"If you only spared me so you can yap about your collection, then by all means, exercise some mercy and choke the life out of me now."

I narrowed my eyes, stowing my keepsakes away.

"You're lucky that I remembered murder is against my religions."

"Was that a plural I detected?"

"Let's say that I'm trying to keep an open mind."

It was hard not to have your mind opened after meeting the Ancient Walkers and being told that they were happy to meet me for the first time again.

What the #%&$ did that even mean?

Never thought I'd end up becoming a theologist. Or a girl. Or a Freedom Fighter. The Walkers worked in mysterious ways, so I was hedging my bets. The llama I'd been learning the Way from was surprisingly cool with my shotgun approach to zen enlightenment, merely asking that if I met the Golden Lotus King on the road, I'd fight him.

"Well, if we're discussing you having an open mind--" I walked back to my board, looking back only to point Geoffry's wrist bow at him. "Hey, hey!"

"You dropped this." I fired a bolt between his legs, making the skunk grow paler than the snow. Then my tail gripped his toy and broke it. "We're through here."

St. John didn't have anything else to say after that. Which was good, because it was for the best that he kept his mouth shut. Hitting the boost on my ride, I left the Forbidden Zone and was on the fast track back to Knothole.

I need to talk to Sally in the morning. Come clean. I can't put this off anymore, because Sally needs to know… that she should really raise her standards in men.

I mean, she's a princess! I'd rather help Sonic shape up than let her settle for less!

Oh, and I should spill the beans on everything I'd been hiding. I wonder how she'd feel about a girl's night out to Beanville?

Yeah.

That sounds nice.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

Not a lot of notes for Wango Tangle. I wanted to write this because I had an idea for where it wanted to go, I outlined it in my head, I took a couple of months off from this fic because I got distracted with life, and then I did this.

Pretty simple, huh?

Since I got all of my "to do" chapters down, plus Chapter 32, I might work on another chapter of Clepsydra before returning to Ruby Haze. It depends on my availability. Which, based on the hurricane we might have to deal with as I'm writing this, will vary!

Thanks for reading!

♦ Want to support my work? ♦
PATREON | KO-FI
♦ Join the W2 Workshop Zone for previews and updates! ♦
W2 Workshop Zone Discord

This chapter has been brought to you by the following patrons and beta readers: C-Moon, Hellatrix, N'Oni, and Storyteller222!

Thank you all for the continuing support!

 

[weredrago2]

NOTE - Rather than a new chapter, the following is an extensive rewrite of the first chapter of the fic. My reasonings for this rewrite (and why I made it as a new threadmark instead of just replacing the first one already) are included at the end of this post.

The chapter notes also contain an update on a new Friend Insert I've been working on with over 10,000 words in the bank, so please take a look for that as well.

---

Ruby Haze
Chapter 1: In Mercia Res

♦ 100

For the first time in my life, it seemed as though I'd finally achieved some measure of greater perspective of my place in the universe. Not by deeply diving through my issues, reaching a significant breakthrough needed to better myself as a person. That would've been a long-term project. No, this was accomplished by gazing down at an alien planet, and being unable to reconcile how small I felt in comparison to it. That was before factoring in the dozens upon dozens of little moons that rotated around the sphere, each one a different size or shape moving along at its own pace. They may have been only dwarf moons, but I was left speechless at how they dwarfed me.

They called this sense of wonder the overview effect, and I had to admit: This was the most beautiful, terrifying photograph of the Earth from space that I had ever seen. Even if it got the finer points wrong. Europe was scrunched-up. Africa was set askew until it poked South America and India. Australia was a rough, circular patch of terra firma set in the Pacific. Most bafflingly, it seemed as though somebody missed the memo about Southeast Asia having many islands and haphazardly glued them to the Eurasian landmass.

It was an unusual circumstance, dreaming of an oxygen-starved void far beyond any atmosphere. Taking in all of the little, tiny details of a world that resembled my own in the same way that a chicken resembled a turkey. I hadn't been facing the right way to see what the New World looked like, but I imagined it would've been as screwy as the old one.

Regardless of whether air was abundant out here or not, I felt my chest rising and falling. The heart beating in my chest as fast as ever. Not really things associated with dreaming.

Am I dreaming?

I didn't dream often. Well, I figured I dreamt as much as your average person, and only sometimes remembered them. I didn't lucid dream very often, so much as I had the infrequent dream where I was aware enough to be helpless as the action unfolded in front of me. It was a good night when I was too exhausted to have any dreams, and a decent night when any nightmares wouldn't bother me any further than the rest of the morning.

The more I thought about the little things, the clouds and what few pinpricks of light I could make out on the night side of this Not-Quite-Earth, the more I couldn't ignore that what I was seeing was too consistent. There weren't any sudden fits or starts, no flights of fancy that would shift it into something new that would mark it as a dream. There was no way this could be real, but I was a bit too awake for this to be my imagination.

It couldn't be a dream, but it had to be.

Right?

♦ 99

I felt a sudden rush of heat and a heavy sense of dread, the weight of both focused on my left hand. Turning in that direction, I saw that my left had been pierced with a glass or crystal stud. It almost looked like an accessory attached to a black glove, but it felt like a piece of silicon wedged between sensitive nerves and tissues. Belatedly acknowledging the presence of the black glove, I then saw that the clothes I'd fallen asleep in the night before had been replaced by a black bodysuit with magenta highlights.

"What?"

It was the first thing I'd ever said in space. Hardly the most eloquent thing I could've said, but it got the idea across. My mind flooded with questions. Besides the obvious answer of being in orbit, where was I? How did I get here? Who took my glasses?

What was that crystal, and who put it there?

♦ 98

Deep in my bones, I felt it. Like a grain of sand falling down in an hourglass, or a timer ticking down. The crystal on my hand became almost imperceptibly cooler than it was seconds ago, and it was cooling off while I was floating around in space without a helmet.

Oh.

…

That isn't good.

I was working on very little information, but I could put two and two together. People weren't supposed to survive in space, so, assuming I wasn't having my first lucid dream, this crystal was the only thing keeping me alive.

My heart rate quickened, trying to figure out how I'd get out of this situation. If the gemstone was a battery, then what was it powered by? What was actively draining the charge? My life support, for one. It was also anchoring me in place. Radiation shielding?

I thought I felt the sun on my back. Without an atmosphere to filter out the sun's rays, I reckon I'm taking it full-blast.

Another mystery solved. What else?

♦ 97

This is too much.

I brought my hands to my head to massage my temples, inadvertently bringing the foreign object closer to my face than I strictly wanted it to be. My thoughts were, for reasons that should've been rather evident, in complete disarray.

"Is there somewhere I can land?" I said aloud, not caring how far my words carried. Or if they ever reached past my lips and ears at all. I just talked aloud sometimes to get my head back on straight. "Europe, I guess?"

It was a bit silly to quibble over landing zones, when anywhere with oxygen beat my current predicament. For some reason, my mind rationalized that I should prioritize an English-speaking nation, or one that was on decent terms with the United States. The human brain liked its routines, but those didn't always react well to stress.

In this case, the delay caused me to waste time I didn't have to lose. During my deliberations, a large shadow passed over my body.

"Huh?"

Shadows getting between me and the sun during the day were never a good sign. I thrust my arm around, to force my body to flip, when I realized that shouldn't work. Nevertheless, I had the thought of turning around, and my whole body swiveled to face the ceaseless expanse of the stars dancing across the blue planet's horizon.

It was breathtaking..

Then I kept turning, to face a massive hunk of rock threatening to bowl me over!

It couldn't be a meteor, because it looked way too big to burn up in the atmosphere. The khaki-colored, craggy sphere was too small to be Luna, and what were the odds that I'd be stranded out here at the same time as a solar eclipse?

Why not? Nothing makes sense anyways.

I hissed out a swear of alarm, and tried to 'swim' away from the oncoming planetoid, but it merely drifted away, making me realize that it was in a stable orbit. Not a threat to me at all, save that it was a reminder that I was completely out of my depth.

I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the reflective fragment of a solar panel whizzed past my nose like a bullet.

♦ 96

Taking a hurried glance to the left, I could see the rest of a broken satellite the size of a bus making its way towards me.

My mind jumped to a particular phrase that described what that satellite would do to me.

Kessler syndrome.

Ah, yes. It was about to Kessler me.

"No, no!"

Oh, come on! This isn't fair!

My mind awash with indignation, I extended my arms outwards to block the oncoming projectile. The gem on my left hand glowed with an intense magenta radiance, a colorful bolt of pink rocketing out of the extremity and shattering it on impact. In its wake, a harmless haze of glittering dust was all that remained.

I took a moment to examine my handiwork.

That was a laser. A genuine laser!

"Wow."

What else was I supposed to say?

♦ 91

That sense of wonder was brief, as I felt how much that attack took out of me. The running number in my head was an abstraction of some kind. An abstraction that was at a little over 90%. It sank in that, unless I found a way to recharge this thing, I didn't have a lot of power to burn. I didn't want to find out what happened when it went dry.

Once that thought had sunk it, it occurred to me that it wasn't the only thing sinking. Firing off that energy blast disrupted the careful balance of my own orbit, causing me to tumble downwards into the atmosphere.

♦ 90

"Ah! AH! Slow down, SLOW DOWN!"

I felt bile rise in my throat as I maintained a downward spiral towards the planet below. The sky was green, the grass was blue, and the malformed globe spun faster and faster; it was more accurate to say that I was the one that was spinning, but I was more concerned with the fact that I was on fire.

♦ 88

Friction. It was a killer. The only surprising part was that it hadn't killed me yet. My entire body was burning, surrounded by a bright corona of flame.

♦ 86

…Which, now that I had time to think about it, should have ended things then and there. Instead, I was still falling.

…

I had, years back, watched a video of a skydiver launching themselves off the stratosphere in a pressure suit. Some kind of promo for Red Bull. They got there in a helium balloon, and the jumper took a good ten minutes to land back to Earth. About five or six minutes of freefall, and the rest was done with the parachute.

♦ 84

At a guess? I was falling from a lot higher than that. As someone who wasn't a fan of heights, and neglected to bring a parachute with them into lower orbit, I was really hoping that this was a dream again. In spite of all evidence to the contrary.

Mostly because it felt like I was falling way faster than I should've been.

♦ 82

"Come on, come on! Fly! It isn't that hard!"

I was flailing around midair, trying to come up with something that would stop me from going splat. If this thing on my hand was supposed to let me fly, then I hadn't figured out how to do it yet. There wasn't a built-in instruction manual, either. Falling through the clouds and quickly reaching a terminal end point, the land below appeared to be rural woodland… when I had the chance to look down. I still hadn't stopped spinning, giving me the verdant view of an evergreen forest every other second.

♦ 80

"How about happy thoughts, eh?! Happy thoughts! Just think happy--!"

My head tilted down towards the ground again. Before I ever found the magic words to give myself wings, one side of my face made an earsplitting impact with a lake. The water might as well have been concrete, for all that the surface tension did to break my fall.

♦ 70

I felt my entire body reverberate. Bones snapping from the force of impact, and then unsnapping. The right side of my body was wracked with pain, and it felt like a jet of water sprayed up my nose to jab straight through my brainstem. I was somehow alive, but I wasn't going to go out on a limb and call it a miracle yet.

As if my morning couldn't possibly get any worse, I was starting to drown. Water was rapidly filling my lungs, and bright motes of light were flooding my vision.

♦ 80

I was far too deep in the water to grasp for the surface. My power might've let me breathe underwater if I was more composed, especially since I could breathe in a vacuum, but I was hardly in a state to do that.

Not… like… this!

Unable to reach for air or latch on to anything solid, the gemstone on my hand started glowing again, drawing in the light that had pooled at the bottom of the lake bed.

♦ 85

The stone illuminated the dark depths in a sea of red light, and I was launched straight through the top of the lake to freedom.

My flight plan was erratic. Less floating, and more flopping. There were multiple times where I risked hitting a tree or sheer cliff and breaking my neck. Focusing my jittery jumps into concentrated movement took effort, driven by desperation and adrenaline. Coming to a complete stop was even harder, but in that moment, I would have taken stable ground under my feet over bouncing around like a pinball.

♦ 84

Once I reoriented myself, regaining a sense of up and down, I dropped to the ground and vomited. I was utterly tapped out. Physically, mentally, and, for the record, existentially. Launched out of space, and nearly splattered. I needed time to unwind, decompress, and, ideally, wake up from this nightmare that I clearly wasn't going to wake up from.

At some point, I did lose consciousness before being dragged back to wakefulness. It could have been a rest for a few minutes. It could have been more. I wasn't keeping track, but I did know it was darker out when my eyes fluttered open a second time.

More than that, I could barely feel the texture of the dirt as my fingers dug into the soil, but that was because of the dark gloves that I'd been wearing since I'd awoken. What were they? Leather? Latex? I couldn't place the material.

"Stupid gloves," I muttered, between sputtering out copious amounts of fluid from my body.

When I spared the idle thought to wish them away, the gloves disappeared. I crawled back to the water's edge in an exhausted stupor, stumbling over gnarled greenery that nicked my exposed hands. It hurt a bit, but not enough to bleed. Besides, I didn't think I would be ready to stand for a while.

I was at the shore of a lake, in the clearing of a forest. A lake in a forest, in what might've been Europe, assuming that this might've been Earth. That was a tenuous leap in logic at best, but it was all I had to cling on to.

I carefully examined my reflection in the water. My eyes were dark, sunken pits, with red rings around black pinpricks for pupils. The light brown curls of my hair were a wet mop that crowned a gristly, disheveled expression. My nose was about the same as when I last checked it, but it was swollen with a bold streak of blood running down both nostrils.

Was that from using the gem, or the crash?

Does it matter?

Either way, I looked terrible. My body and the immediate area around it were bathed in an eerie, ethereal light. I washed my face in the clear lake, something to keep my hands busy while I thought over what the hell I was going to do next.

♦ 86

The awfully conspicuous icosahedron had cooled off somewhat from the dunking, though it still glowed faintly. I couldn't see all sides of the thing with it plugged into my hand, but I recognized a D20 anywhere. I tried to caress my left palm with my index finger, to feel the other end of the stone poking out; it felt like nothing was there. It was surreal, without the fabric covering where one end connected to the other.

"What the hell happened to me?"

"Stand and deliver, varlet!" a voice from behind me declared in the most jarringly Shakespearean English accent I could possibly imagine.

The sudden noise had me spooked, then strongly bewildered. Who was that? What were they saying? Was I going crazy? Crazier? Fingers through my hair, hands trembling as I addressed what might've been one part of a greater stress-induced episode.

"Hey. Hey. Shut up. I need a minute here."

My voice was hollow and shaky. I didn't even have the strength to turn around.

The hallucination, which spoke like a British teen LARPer, sounded flabbergasted at my irreverent response. He faltered slightly as he pressed onward.

"I shall grant ye no moment of respite, sirrah! As the guardian of Deerwood Forest and rightful steward of yon sacred waters, I command ye to make thine intentions known or face the consequences!"

Exasperated, I turned with a long swing of my arm.

"Alright, alright! What're you…?"

I turned around, and felt my heart plunge in shock.

Straight ahead of me, perched on a stump atop a short hill, was a rodent of unusual size. Standing at about a meter tall, I almost thought he was a child, but his head was way too big. Made up too much of his build and mass. The humanoid's Lincoln green head and body were concealed in a brown cowl and tunic, leaving big green eyes and a stern scowl peering back at me from the shadows.

"What are you?" I asked, dumbfounded by the odd being in front of me.

The creature--

I struck the line of thought, because he was very clearly talking to me. Calling the guy a creature was rude at best. If he was civilized enough to wear hiking boots, he was civilized enough for me not to call him a 'creature'.

The, erm, fellow was pointing a wooden bow at me, an arrow nocked in the direction of my heart. A recurve bow, by the shape of it? The bow stood as tall as he was, giving it a strong pull if he chose to fire. However, as someone who wasn't in a rush to be shot, even after all of that up in space, I was sobering up to the fact that I hadn't made the best first--

--The fact that his mouth started moving a few seconds ago.

Wait wait, what's he saying?

"…trespasser. For what being of Walkers' make could stand there and question mine own nature, whilst acting unperturbed by the sting of a broadhead's point?"

"A broadhead?"

Wasn't that an arrow shape?

I looked down, trying to focus on the narrow spike of an arrow nocked on his bow. Unexpectedly, looking down also caused me to notice the long shaft ending in colorful feather fletching that was already sticking out of my chest.

♦ 85

Then came the pain of being shot in the chest.

"You shot me!" I seethed in accusation. That was somehow the least extreme thing to happen to me thus far, but still. It hurt! "Why did you shoot me with an arrow?!"

The short mammal took a step back, looking only slightly less confused about the whole affair than I was. He took a step off the stump, nearly falling on his rear in the process, but his hardy bow was able to hold his weight and spring him back to his feet.

"Lackaday, spellbinder!" he exclaimed defensively. "That was merely meant to be a warning shot!"

"What was the warning? Wear armor?!"

My first instinct was to yank it out, but it hurt to pull at, and my attempt to jostle it loose only made it hurt more!

"I merely meant to query thee in order to determine thine alignment! Whether thou were friend or foe, when ye turned swiftly without nary a warning of intent!"

I pointed to the offending projectile with a gloved index finger. The wound didn't seem to be bleeding, but that might've just been my black suit covering it up.

"You know, I don't think friends do this to each other! I've had a real long day, and I don't see a great friendship foundation going on here!"

My eyes were, last I checked, awfully red. I hoped my anger got across loud and clear. If that didn't, then the renewed glow the gemstone on my left hand was making certainly did.

He put his bow back up, for whatever amount of good that'd do for him. I still had the gem, and I felt I could defend with it. Modulate the output and go for a non-lethal blow, if I could.

I… didn't appreciate being shot, but maybe I was the one in the wrong here?

"You descended from the sky as a fiery, baleful phantasm unto the bed of Never Lake! Am I not to assume you sought to violate and despoil its serene beauty to fuel your dark magicks, Overland warlock most foul and unseeming?"

He called me what now?

At that moment, my logical brain stopped proofreading the words coming out of my mouth.

"I don't even know what that means, but I'm not going to be talked down to by a funny animal that doesn't wear pants!"

The rodent drew closer, standing atop his bow so he could get up in my face. He could only get so close to me without poking the arrow he put there.

"Sheathe thine sharp tongue, you plague-marked mage of ill repute!"

If that was the game we were going to play, I knew just the way to escalate.

I bit my thumb at him.

His furious scowl widened.

"Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?" he asked angrily.

"I do bite my thumb, sir."

They called Shakespeare's works the classics for a reason, and the reason was applicability. I appreciated my psychotic episode for going along with the bit.

"Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?" he repeated, angrier still.

Gregory wasn't here, so we had to skip his lines.

"No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir--!"

"HALT!"

Neither of us were able to get another word in. The prior atmosphere was utterly disrupted by the arrival of three steel goliaths from out of the woodwork. They were all nearly twice my height and fairly uniform in construction, seeming right at home on the budget of a shoestring sci-fi production. Built with a minimum of moving parts, the giants were covered in heavy plates of armor that bowled over pine, stone, and shrub. Each was armed with thick bars of metal that functioned as crude clubs in their weighty hands.

A trio of blood red, cyclopean visors glared down at us, followed by a litany of the local equivalents of the Miranda Rights projected through cheap voice synthesizers. If they had accents like the shrew, then they were mangled by the modulator.

"ROB O' THE HEDGE AND UNIDENTIFIED COLLABORATOR. YOU ARE UNDER ARREST. DO NOT RESIST THE WILL OF THE HIGH SHERIFF. I REPEAT. DO NOT RESIST."

"Are those robots?" I squealed out in incredulous, barely-restrained indignation.

Not at all drones. Robots.

This whole day that had been panic, terror, screaming, and agony. One crisis after the other. Now? Even more confusion. All questions, no answers. I was so fed up with all of this, so lacking in context that I couldn't even begin to compartmentalize all of these mental stress fractures in my head. It was a dam about to burst, and I didn't know where the water was going next.

The teal humanoid -- Rob was what they called him -- lept away from me and stood in a combat position atop a tall stone. I couldn't tell which part of those things would be vulnerable to a humble arrow, at a glance. The eye, perhaps?

"Verily!" he replied, switching out the broadhead for one with a round, threaded head from his quiver. "These mechanical miscreants are the shock-troopers of the Sheriff! I know not your intentions, pilgrim, but surely you can recognize the need for--"

I growled, and the gemstone projected a conical ray of light. The ray coalesced into a large, translucent left hand, which wrapped itself around the body of the robot nearest to me. With a thought, I clenched the giant fist, crushing everything encased beneath it into scrap metal and glitter dust. The robot's head spun straight up into the air before landing on the refuse pile.

"…Cooperation."

♦ 82

The two that remained started blankly at their very destroyed comrade, before raising their metal clubs and slowly ambling towards me.

"UNIDENTIFIED MISCREANT IS ARMED AND DANGEROUS. ENGAGING WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE."

What did that guy call me? A warlock?

I didn't know if what I was doing was some kind of magic, or sufficiently advanced technology, but whatever it was, it was working. For my next trick, I focused on a rough circle around the two robots, and set it ablaze with iridescent flame. Pillars of fire rose above the robots, freezing in place and solidifying as a jagged crystal cage that surrounded them on all sides.

♦ 80

"Now that's what I'm talking about!"

The rest of this trouble, I could do without, but the power? No complaints thus far. Since he recognized them, I looked around for where Rob went, to see if he might be able to explain more about where these things came from. For better or worse, they may have been able to point me in the direction of civilization.

My celebration was short-lived. There was a loud clatter like shattering glass, and the two robots used their iron clubs to smash free from their sparkling prison. I'd clearly underestimated their speed, because they closed the gap into melee range in under two strides. Their sudden blitz threw me on the backfoot, but I had enough time to raise a barrier of pink light between me and the wrecking force of their blows.

♦ 78

Fragments of that interposing wall scattered over the ground, as I was tossed reeling into a sheer stone wall. It felt like they'd knocked something loose with that heavy blow, and it wasn't a stronger tolerance for pain.

"Would you cut that out?!" I called out to them, nearly breathless, but with enough air left to loudly complain.

There was a pause in their combat routine. A stall, as the two robots neared closer. If one blast worth five 'points' was enough to take out a satellite, then I should be able to beat them, but what if I wasted too much power doing it? On the other hand, could I afford to wait until they called for reinforcements from that Sheriff guy? Could I afford to risk being tagged by someone who might like enforcing high taxes with killer robots?

Eventually, the robots formulated a response.

"REQUEST DENIED."

They readied their blunt instruments, to pick up where they left off, when the path of the farthest one was intercepted by an arrow striking its foot from the trees. It was the round arrow from before. Instead of piercing armor, it exploded into a bundle of twine that got caught between the giant's lumbering limbs and caused it to tumble to the ground with a heavy clunk. Another arrow with a red tip flew out from the forest and detonated on impact, scattering the robot's head and shoulders across the clearing.

Well. I took back what I said about the arrows being ineffective.

With that robot down, I was forced into close combat with the last one. It swung its rebar beatstick left, then right, causing me to flinch and propel myself away with long, unbalanced jumps. Being yanked around on invisible wires was the closest thing I could do to flying while under duress.

I hadn't been in a fight in well over a decade. Not a real one. For that, I was grateful. Nevertheless, there were moments where you were glad that the human body was always ready to make cortisol. For moments where keeping your blood pumping was the priority, and common decency went out the window.

For what it was worth, I lost that fight. This time, I wouldn't.

Kicking off against a rocky spire, I rocketed off towards my next victim with a left hook that exploded into a shotgun blast of pressurized pink mist. The wave of vibrant energy bowled the machine over, a spiky layer of magenta crystal forming over the head and trunk in the shape of a frozen splash.

"Ha! Try breaking out of that, you tin-plated git!"

♦ 76

The robot's thick fingers dragged coarsely across the surface of the crystal shell, too stiff to hold on as it futilly attempted to scrape free. Not wanting to risk whether it could actually accomplish the deed, I conjured a broad cylinder of solid light and drove it straight down on the robot's head. The result was a total flattening and a satisfying crush where a mechanical brain might've been. Brain or not, the body stopped functioning when its head was squashed into a solid disk.

♦ 75

"Aha! I got 'em all!" I pumped a first out in the air, but once the deed was done, all that remained in the forest was an eerie silence. "Hello? Anyone still out there?"

With nothing else to fight, and everything seeming to calm down, the adrenaline started to bleed out of my body. The gemstone still had most of its power left to burn, but I sure as hell had run dry. I fell to my knees, exhaustion returning to wreck its vengeance once I'd run out of targets. Worried about falling on top of it, I yanked the broadhead out of my chest with all of the force I still had to muster.

It was a drastic act of delirium, which caused me to pass out from shock. The last thing I saw was the ruby-red glaze of the arrow, smeared across my hazy vision. After I collapsed, the last thing I heard was a distant voice murmuring poetic in my ear.

"At ease, overlander. Any foe of the Sheriff is a friend of mine."

---

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

I've been at this for a while, huh?

The first chapter of Ruby Haze was put online in 2020. Which, geez, was years back! I was much less seasoned as a writer, and it showed. It's kinda difficult for me to go back and read my old stuff… which is why I kept putting off the inevitable rewrites for later.

You see, due to me often being split between other obligations over the past couple years (mostly work, but also other writing projects that demanded my attention more than Ruby Haze did), my writing skill has greatly outpaced my ability to actually, well, write this. As such, the quality of the earlier chapters and those that came later can get pretty jarring. Talking to my friends about how rough the beginning was compared to my later output was enough to convince me that I'd put off doing rewrites for the earlier chapters for long enough. It was an uphill battle to read my old work and get this new Chapter 1 out, but I can easily say I'm proud of it as a refurbishment of Ruby Haze's opening.

I put this up as a new threadmark so people could judge the quality for themselves before I did a full-on replacement of the original first chapter. If there's approval, then I can do the switch-up and leave a link to the old one in the author notes.

My game plan is to do one rewrite for every new chapter of Ruby Haze, until the quality of the older chapters reaches parity with the rest. Which might take a couple for me to be satisfied, but the good news is that you get touched-up versions of the start.

Additionally, my friend and I started work on a collaborative Friend Insert in which he is inserted into Archie Sonic as a Metal Sonic. Please keep an eye out for Dead Metal in the future, because we'll start posting when the backlog is further along.

♦ Want to support my work? ♦
PATREON | KO-FI
♦ Join the W2 Workshop Zone for previews and updates! ♦
W2 Workshop Zone Discord​

This chapter has been brought to you by the following patrons and beta readers: CaptNameless, C-Moon, Dredloki, and N'Oni!

Thank you all for the continuing support!