Ruby Haze [Archie Sonic SI]

[Abandoned Account]

Here, it just means that she should kick Monkey Khan's ass on sight. Keep him on his toes.

Click to shrink...

Which, considering what he was like before #201, he probably has coming.

 

[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.

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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!

 

[FKorus]

I like it, so go for the rewrites if you want

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 33: Chaolaxing

After spending less than a week on Angel Island, it actually felt good to return to Mercia. For all of the terrors I and everyone else had to endure there, the occupied land had become something of a known variable. I knew the snow-covered expanses of Deerwood Forest, and had been in Hideaway and Sylvania Castle long enough to call them my second set of homes. Places I could feel safe to let my guard down. The situation in Eurish wasn't perfect, by any stretch, but it was steadily changing for the better.

I tried to keep that slightly outdated thought in mind as Fiona landed the biplane down in the charred expanse of blackened stumps where Deerwood Forest once stood.

"Fiona, stay with the plane," I ordered, and she didn't argue. "Figment, with me."

My familiar flew out from an aperture in Null Space, scouting around what was left of the landscape. The air was sharp, hazy, and acrid, stinging my nose and his beak with faint embers. Wood smoke. Toxic runoff.

"No, no, no…!"

Roasted meat.

"This isn't happening."

I tried to open my awareness, searching outwards for signs of life, but all I could sense was the opposite. Searching for the cause of this devastation, even though it should've been fairly obvious, led to similarly dead ends.

"It was only a few days," I hissed out. "How did this happen?"

It didn't.

I whirred around to Fiona, who was mumbling something under her breath.

"What did you say?"

"I said I don't know!" she yelled, fear clear on her face. "The High Sheriff wasn't supposed to be able to mount this kind of assault for weeks! Maybe he called in extra help from Robotnik, or he had a secret weapon saved up, or--!"

This doesn't add up.

"It doesn't add up," I said, feeling the color drain from my face.

My voice was cold. My tone, rational. Almost clinical. I was trying to come to terms with everything, or stow it all away so that I could turn the knot of thoughts in my head into action. There was no use in denying what I was seeing, was there?

Everyone was dead. Or most of them were dead, following a raid that was initiated between my last contact with Hideaway and when we arrived to check on everyone. The celebrations from our victory against the High Sheriff were cut short with extreme prejudice, as anyone that hadn't fallen in the initial slash and burn was rounded up for the roboticizer. Plain and simple.

The Crazy Kritters were gone. The Maquis were gone. Clan Argyle were gone.

The Mercian Freedom Fighters were over, and I was left behind.

This, right here, John. This was why you didn't want to get attached to people.

It all felt too real. The distant, fading fires were even more distant, increasingly faded. How long had they burned for?

Fire is my element.

Fire was one of the four elements I'd been experimenting with. The one that came the most naturally, followed by water. Air and earth were the only fields I'd stalled in, to the extent that I'd considered dropping them entirely to focus on the other two.

Where was I, again? Oh, right.

Everyone was dead.

I extinguished the lingering flames with a wave of my hand. Less distractions in my visions as I picked through the ashes for anything that could tell me what I'd missed.

Honestly, there wasn't much left. Tattered huts. Shattered weapons, scattered across what remained of the battlefield.

I picked up a round, white shape that caught my eye. A stainless skull, and one that felt instinctively like it belonged to a friend. Like it belonged to Rob.

Is that my new power? Identifying skulls by touch?

Well, he's the only guy I know with the hedgehog head shape, it's a bit too small for--

I dropped the skull, letting it tumble to the ground.

"This isn't happening," I repeated. "The Sheriff wouldn't let a high-value target like the former king be burnt up with the rest of them."

I heard the loud cracking of glass, and saw that it was followed by a spider web of branching fractures over the smoggy sky above.

"This. Isn't. Happening."

My memories were becoming clearer. Fiona was parking the plane near Sylvania Castle when we returned from Angel Island, wasn't she? Why were we so close to Deerwood now?

Looking around, I really was alone. Where had Fiona and Figment gone? Were they ever here at all? Someone mentioned this not adding up before, and I had to agree.

This had to be a trick. An illusion. How? I should be able to see through those with the Phantom Ruby.

Was there something I was overlooking?

What if it was a--?

♦ !!

"--in there, sleepyhead?"

My magenta eyes flashed open, causing Amy to stumble back in surprise.

"Ah! There you are!"

I blinked.

"Hmm?"

I looked around, trying to reestablish my bearings. I was still in the power ring grotto beneath Sylvania Castle, where I'd taken Amy to meet Merna the Merhog. The day trip was to make up for the fact that I didn't take her along the first time I came here, back when it was a lot more dangerous. The merhog made a habit of passing through the underground rivers connecting the Sylvania Castle to the Central Sea when she could, and the two of them really hit it off without me. I saw no issues with closing my eyes to meditate for a few minutes while they chatted about old myths and stories.

When my vision was more clear, I saw that the pink hedgehog girl and the half-hedgehog, half-fish woman were looking at me. They were relaxing by the large pool of the grotto, watching for my response.

"Something wrong?" I asked.

"We were getting worried about you, Mister Wizard," Amy explained. "You kinda dozed off, but Merna didn't wanna wake you up."

The merhog merely nodded. While Amy sat next to the pool, Merna lounged in it. She could survive outside the water for brief periods of time, but doing so too long would cause her to dry out. Standard merperson fare, with the added feature that she could hop on her tail like it was a particularly stiff pogo stick.

"When Amy mentioned how busy you'd been with your arcane studies, I thought it better to let you rest."

"I was just meditating," I said, waving off her concern.

"Meditating for nearly an hour?" Merna teased, a knowing smile crossing her turquoise face.

That long?

"It was a deep meditation."

I didn't mean to fall asleep. The Phantom Ruby meant I could replace some of my body's typical needs with magic. It'd only been a couple weeks since I got back from Angel Island. After a well-earned rest, I made the executive decision to cut sleep back to a couple of hours per night. Mercia had been relatively quiet, like Fiona said it would, but time I spent sleeping was time being wasted. The High Sheriff would be using this time to prepare for another plot, or a renewed offensive, and I needed to use that time to continue unravelling the mysteries of the Ars Ixia. There were far more opportunities for me to experiment with my powers, now that I finally had an emerald shard to fuel them.

The more lore I absorb from this musty tome, the easier the Phantom Ruby will be to handle. Cut through the Old English, and that's more or less what the book says about 'crystalline magic'.

Did I need to read a specific passage on the subject to find out if mixing low sleep and chaos energy was a good idea? No, obviously not, but my time budget was running on margins that were razor-thin. Maybe the lack of sleep and my recent doubling-down on occult research were why I was dreaming about fire?

Fire, chemical fumes, and… a skull?

The details eluded me, and I didn't care to remember the rest. It wasn't like my dreams were ever pleasant.

"I hope your meditation was fruitful all the same," Merna acquiesced. "Are you ready to visit the chao garden?"

I got up and stretched, giving the horse-sized sea turtle I was leaning against a friendly pat on the shell. The snoozing aquatic reptile was one of Merna's friends that came along with her, after I made the flooded tunnels more stable. Now that we were in a better position to properly restore Sylvania Castle, the last thing we needed was a structural collapse beneath it.

"I'm good to go. Amy, do you have everything?"

Amy turned around so I could see her big rucksack. Gray. Military surplus. Waterproof. A bright splash of magenta sprayed over the Overland emblem on the back gave her Christmas present a personal touch.

"Yep!" Amy shouted. "Let's go see the chao!"

"See you soon!" Merna said, splashing into the water.

Amy held my hand, and I formed a hollow bubble of water around us. It held steady as I kicked the stone floor and bounced the bubble into the depths.

♦ 70

A water shield. It didn't just keep out excess water as Amy and I walked through the flooded catacombs. This sphere of water magic worked as an arcane set of gills, drawing in oxygen from the estuary and filtering out carbon dioxide. After I pulled off the fire shield against that super badnik, my frequent visits down here made the water shield a logical follow-up.

"It's so pretty down here," Amy beamed, using her flashlight to illuminate the castle ruins and the flourishing river life that claimed it.

A variety of colorful fish swam past us. Striped trout, yellow eels, salmon salmon, and even a green largemouth bass. I didn't think the last one was supposed to be swimming in a Europe-esque body of water, but the Central Sea was much smaller and closer-knit to the adjacent continents than the Atlantic Ocean. An argument could be made for draining these tunnels so they'd be put to more 'practical' use, but I wasn't going to make it.

"Yeah, it's nice. I wish I could explore places like these more often. Could solve another mystery or two from those books of yours."

"You think we can do that?"

"We met a merhog, so I don't see why we can't try for another."

Maybe, if my life went another way, I could've been an archaeologist. Or a historian. I liked learning about history and going to museums. Not so much when I was younger, but definitely later in life. After the child and student discounts expired, of course.

Needless to say, fate didn't seem to have much of either in my cards anymore. It was a shame that I wouldn't be seeing the Ringling again any time soon. Only went there a couple of times, even though I spent my whole life near the damn thing, and now…

Amy disrupted my darker ruminations with a non-sequitur.

"You know, when I have a bad dream, Cousin Rob says it's okay to talk about it," the hedgehog girl commented.

"That's solid advice, Amy. He knows what he's talking about."

"When I talk about my bad dreams, I feel better about them," she continued.

"Are you having any bad dreams you want to talk about?" I offered.

"Never mind," Amy said, sighing in apparent resignation.

I shrugged, stopping our bubble when I saw our exit. A lifting gesture with my hand took us upwards and back towards the surface, where I popped the elemental barrier with a thought. Diverting the path of the trickling waterfall, I revealed the path to the chao garden.

"Alright, we're here."

Amy gasped at the sight.

"Wow!"

The place hasn't changed much since my return from that perilous 'vacation' to Angel Island. It was enclosed in a broad, shallow cenote, surrounded by tall trees and patches of moss that clung to the cavern walls. Baby blue chao with green or yellow highlights frolicked around the garden, hovering around trees and swimming in the basin.

By the time we arrived, Merna was tending to a shrine she put together to bless the garden and protect it from danger: A short, boxy structure of blue and beige stones that the chao gathered around to sing cheery songs with her.

It was saccharine, but I wasn't gonna complain. I could use more saccharine right now.

"What do you think, Amy?" I asked.

"They look just like the fairies in my book! Which ones are yours, Mister Wizard?"

I searched around. Some of the chao got skittish when I approached, while others were more friendly, but otherwise paid me little heed. They were too busy enjoying their simple lives, without need or worry. The only ones that had gotten really attached to me were those two eggs I saw when Merna showed me this place. They hatched during one of my visits to spruce up the place, while I was in the process of adjusting their placement to reduce the risk that they might fall over. Both chao came out of their eggshells in my color and imprinted on sight, so that made them my responsibility.

I wasn't aggressively fishing for an excuse to keep them. Really.

…

I only spent, what? Hundreds of hours in the Chao Garden in SA2 over multiple save files? Not counting the one in SADX and the Tiny Chao Garden, of course.

"They have to be around--" I spotted a pair of crimson, two-tone chao getting into a wrestling match over the same orange fruit. In a garden that regularly produced more of them by magic. "Errol, Vivi!"

I flew over and broke up the feuding water babies, scooping them up into my hands. In my left hand was Errol, with his usual half-lidded eyes and dopey squiggle of a smile. To my right waited Vivi, whose eyes were wide, and her shark-like rictus grin was wider.

"Really, guys? There's enough to share!"

Errol cooed and wriggled in my hand because he wanted to cuddle, while Vivi went straight to biting, because her version of cuddles involved teeth.

Naturally, the two troublemakers were mine. Or in this case, my problem.

"Want me to hold them for you?" Amy suggested. I turned, and she got a better look at how Vivi had latched herself onto me like a lamprey. "How about just the left one?"

I handed her Errol, who proceeded to crawl out of Amy's hands and explore around her arms. She giggled.

"Errol's got a lot of energy, huh?"

I was very relieved that Vivi was disinterested in expressing her affection towards her fellow chao in the same way that she did towards me. Holding her steady in one hand, far away from my other one, I popped out a sharp, black talon from my index finger.

"You kids don't even know what scarcity is," I muttered, as I sliced the orange fruit in half for them. After hovering one chunk within range of Vivi, she became content with chewing on that instead. "You're welcome."

I passed the other half to Amy, who passed it along to Errol. With that, the yellow emotion balls bobbing atop their heads turned into hearts, and both my chao became much easier to manage. We set them back on the ground, and I was able to watch them eat in the grass with minimal intervention.

"Are they always like this?" Amy asked, sitting down on a cool stone next to me.

"Only when they're awake," I clarified.

With the unique way that chao absorbed traits from the creatures they were in contact with, I knew there were signs to watch for. Unlike the other chao in the garden, Errol and Vivi developed darker complexions and more prominent crescents on their soft bellies each time I visited. Merna insisted that the twins would be heartbroken if I never returned, but when I first saw them changing, I was worried that the negative energies of the Phantom Ruby made me a potential bad influence.

…No, wait, Figment was left unattended with them a couple times until I found a replacement chao sitter. I could pin some of my current predicament on them observing and hugging my avian familiar to absorb his bad habits. That'd explain the feathery tuft on Vivi's head, too, but not Errol's horns or whiskers--

I paused, noting the lack of said whiskered sitter.

"Vivi, Errol? Where's Brie?"

My chao knowingly laughed. They were both done with the fruit, so while I took out a cloth and cleaned off their messy faces, Amy opened her bag and handed out toys to any chao that wanted them. They were her old things that she hadn't played with in years. Stuffed plushies. A rattle. Crayons. Stuff like that.

She already donated most of them to the younger children in Mercia, but there was still a lot left over. Only so many kids her age or younger survived for us to distribute them to.

"Who's Brie?" Amy asked, as she rolled Errol and Vivi a striped ball they could chase around the garden.

"One of my new familiars."

Amy tilted her head.

"What happened to Figment?" she questioned, concerned about the safety of a feral bird that could rip the power cell out of a SWATbot by the beak.

"Figment's fine. He's been helping me scout the skies and pick off badnik patrols. Brie helps me out with other stuff."

Her expression brightened.

"Oh, okay!"

Namely, Brie helped me out by having an even temper and positive attitude. I wasn't exactly fluent in animal speech, but I didn't need fluency to tell me that Brie was much better with kids and at keeping a lower profile than Figment ever was. After I saved the poor girl from being caught by the neck in a Robotnik-branded mousetrap, she'd been eager to help me with stuff that Figment turned his beak at. Mostly reminding me of my daily errands via our telepathic link, but her paws meant she could hold things, too.

Inspecting the other side of the palm tree my chao liked to congregate around, I saw a footlong mobini rodent with dark magenta fur and glassy black eyes like a doll. Her head bore a pair of ruby spikes, which ran down her back and along her tail.

"Brie, you alright?"

The micky let out a squeak of defeat. My first Phantom Ruby-mutated familiar of the Rodentia order was tied to the base of the tree with colorful string. The skill behind the knotwork meant that Brie had only mostly chewed herself free, in spite of the fact he could now gnaw through metal. One claw swipe against the bark cut Brie the rest of the way loose.

"Take five, girl."

Brie promptly collapsed onto the soft grass for a nap.

I felt bad, because watching Errol and Vivi for me was supposed to be her light duty. Lighter than spying on troop movements or sabotaging the High Sheriff's foresters, which was what Figment was doing. The less mobini he could round up for Robotnik, the fewer badniks powered by animal batteries he'd receive from Robotropolis. After a few incidents, I imagined he might've gotten suspicious about the sudden attacks from mixed flocks of flying critters led by a demonic flicky cast in shades of red.

That was to say, he would've gotten suspicious if I couldn't turn them all invisible at a moment's notice. The only thing funnier than seeing badniks armed with nets get mobbed by a horde of animals was when they couldn't see them back.

Heh. Gotta get my kicks where I can.

It'd be an exaggeration to say I was eager to make more 'ruby mutants', but thanks to that emerald shard, I also had the juice I needed to perform more consistent animal testing. Find out if what I did to Figment wasn't a one-time thing.

A few dead mobini later, I got my answer. There were intangible factors at play besides how much mental focus or chaos energy I put behind the process that determined if the animals survived the mutation… or didn't. It almost felt crazy to ask for the consent of an animal or try to prioritize doing the spell on animals that were on death's door anyways, but some mobini were smart. If I could communicate, then why not try?

Besides, they had a closer tie to nature than mobians. Or me. Not one of them turned down the opportunity to survive after being given it, even when warned of the risks. To those scant few that made it, the deal was simple: In exchange for their power up and exemption from their usual obligations to the food chain, they worked for me while I wrote down any side effects that cropped up. Sloppier than how an actual scientist might do it, but until a legion of lab rats fell off the back of a truck, this was the best I could do.

Figment and Brie were two of the success stories.

I only wished more of them were.

The jumbo raccoon and the Cluckatrice, I'm still on the fence about.

Remaining stumped on where those knots came from, I checked my chaos' stumpy arms for fingers. As well as hidden weapons, while I was at it.

"Merna?" I called out.

The merhog turned her head away from the singing and dancing chao.

"Hm?"

"Are chao supposed to be able to tie knots on their own?"

She shook her head.

"The arts and crafts supplies you dropped off have made for great enrichment, so I taught them how to do basic knots. Why do you ask?"

Oh boy. I started to gesture with my hands.

"So, uh, how do they--?"

"Patience," Merna answered simply.

"Just checking."

I settled down on a blocky stone next to Amy, pulling out my spellbook to continue where I left off. Making sure that Errol and Vivi never strayed further than the corner of my eye. Having already acquired a stronger grasp of fire during my brief time as a dragon and the further practice afterwards, I cracked open the aged pages, removed my crystal bookmark, and returned to the ancient grimoire's section on the element of water.

If fire was sharp and subtle, then water was blunt and dense. I wasn't able to make much sense of those terms at first, when I let the Phantom Ruby do the heavy lifting for me. The gemstone was still on my left hand, holding the book secure, but I deliberately avoided calling upon its power for these exercises. My right arm was extended forward, a crystal chalice in hand as a focusing tool, to draw a sputtering stream from the central pool into a continuous fountain.

Like a waterfall flowing in reverse, the liquid cascaded upwards, and then collapsed gracelessly back into the pools. I struggled to keep the pressure consistent, because the molecules of water felt much more cumbersome than the embers of fire. Fire was far more reactive to my thoughts; it always hungered for something to burn, and being fed made it behave exactly how it was supposed to. Burning oxygen to make fireballs, a fire shield, heat beams, and so on. Forcing water to move where I wanted it to go, instead of where the tides and gravity pulled it, felt like trying to swim against the current. Both elements were described as being mobile, a commonality that kept me anchored.

Then there were the other two. Air had subtle aspects to it like fire, blunt aspects like water, and was a third mobile element, but air felt so intangible that I could barely grasp it. It was so ephemeral as to feel incomplete. The opposite held true for the element of earth, which was a solid wall I couldn't breach. It stubbornly held fast until I'd all but beaten my head against the stones to make them budge. I knew that I could get better with those elements if I kept using the Phantom Ruby as a crutch, but I'd already been spreading myself dangerously thin. Worst of all, I couldn't figure out how to make shields for them! With my time in high demand as it was, I'd seriously considered cutting my losses and focusing only on what the Ars Ixia prescribed for the elements I favored.

Huh. Deja vu.

Amy tore her eyes away from the fountain to stare back at me.

"I almost forgot! Congratulations, Mister Wizard!"

"Congratulations on what?" I asked in confusion.

"John, look out!" Merna cried, pointing back at my fountain.

Amy picked a less than ideal time to pull me away from my spellwork, because that was when Errol and Vivi's ball went floating into the fountain. Which had somehow reached a much higher pressure as my chao went zipping through it!

"No, stop!"

I dropped the book and expanded the fountain outwards, extending the scant gallons of water under my control into a frozen menagerie of icy chutes and slides!

♦ 66

They rode along the slides, until the final one sent the chao gently tumbling back into my arms, none the wiser to the danger.

"Please, let's not do that again?" I pleaded.

"Baa!" Errol answered gleefully.

"Woo," was Vivi's simple reply.

The chao yawned, and promptly crashed. My concentration wore out, causing the water construct to fizzle away into bubbles. All of the commotion caused Brie's ears to perk up. She awoke from her own nap and scurried to attention. Taking the chao out of my hands, one at a time, Brie found patches of grass for them to lay in and put them to bed.

"What were you congratulating me on again?" I whispered tiredly.

"Whatever that banquet Rob and I got invited to is about," Amy said quietly, so as not to wake them up again.

"Banquet?"

"The one being held in your name next week. They said you'd be the guest of honor?"

Brie shook her head, projecting sensory data into my via our psionic link. She was getting better at this. Magenta stripes, geometric patterns, odors of burnt hair gel, coffee beans, incense…

"You mean the Cult of the Ruby Flame?" I hazarded.

Amy nodded enthusiastically. She went rummaging through her bag and took out a gray, bezeled talisman carved in a hexagonal shape. Two striped feathers stuck out of one side.

"They're big fans of you, and Miss Benzina gave me this neat charm. I think I'll put it on my headband, but what do you think?"

Crap, did I forget about that again?

Brie brought a hand to her face.

What? I met with them and had a couple drinks with the hyenas when I got back, but I forgot to do the follow-up! I have a lot going on right now!

Brie threw in a rather creative image of me being tossed into a boiling pot with carrots. As if I needed the reminder as to why I was the 'guest of honor'.

Alright, alright! I'll talk to my cannibal cult now and get it over with.

"I think I need to go over there and sort out the finer details of my role at the banquet. Can you hold this for me?"

I passed Amy my spellbook and made a portal to my cult's compound, which grew out of the motorpool they made from stacked containers and welded scrap metal in the vicinity of Sylvania Castle.

♦ 63

"Huh?"

"I'll uh, be back in a few? Brie, you're with me."

Brie scampered up the tree and hopped onto my shoulder. We stepped through the portal to resolve what I hoped would be a simple theological difference.

Those things that have, historically speaking, always been simple and never caused horrific amounts of bloodshed.

Fingers crossed?

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

Chao time!

This is a chapter I've been looking forward to writing ever since I decided Sylvania Castle would have a chao garden. Then came the names and descriptions of Errol and Vivi, which took some time to finalize. I wanted to use the chao garden as a way to ease into how things would be going in Mercia after the major arc with Enerjak.

In short? Things are gonna be changing.

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This chapter has been brought to you by the following patrons and beta readers: Argidoll, CaptNameless, C-Moon, and Dredloki!

Thank you all for the continuing support!

 

[weredrago2]

Howdy! Based on some reader feedback I've received, I went back and made some significant revisions to Chapter 33!

CHAPTER 33 CHANGELOG:

• +450 words total.
• Flipped the italics on the opening sequence, providing a better clue on what's going on.
  • I started doing this for other stories years back, and will go back to do this to prior chapters with similar dream/flashback sequences to denote when they are occurring.
• The amount of time that had passed since the SI's return to Mercia has been made more clear, and more elaboration has been given to how that time had been spent.
• Added descriptions of fish to the Sylvania Castle depths, because I felt that more description would help there.
• Expanded on how the SI adopted his chao and why, with the "why" being "I love chao!"
• Added additional context on Brie and the other ruby mutants John Scarlet has made since we last saw him. Which is to say, while there are more than two, there aren't a whole army of 'em.

As an additional update, I will be working on Chapter 34 next. The Ruby Haze Origins update for Chapter 2 can be after that, but I already have some good ideas for how I'm doing 34. So why not strike while the iron's hot?

 

[weredrago2]

Here's a new picture of John Scarlet done by Adam Bryce Thomas!

Yes, THAT Adam Bryce Thomas! I saw him at Magfest and got a comm! Real cool guy!

 

[Delta/Soul]

Here's a new picture of John Scarlet done by Adam Bryce Thomas!

Yes, THAT Adam Bryce Thomas! I saw him at Magfest and got a comm! Real cool guy!

Click to shrink...

Does Adam have any other comics that he did or is working on right now?

 

[Billbo baggins]

Only one question since I don't see a SFW nor an NSFW. Smut or no. I feel like this is something that I would like to know before going further into this story

 

[weredrago2]

Does Adam have any other comics that he did or is working on right now?

Click to shrink...

Mostly Sonic, but he's doing the art on an indie science fantasy comic called Drogune and is slated to be the penciler on the upcoming DC/Sonic crossover.

Only one question since I don't see a SFW nor an NSFW. Smut or no. I feel like this is something that I would like to know before going further into this story

Click to shrink...

This fic remains SFW for the time being. The thread was made in the Creative Writing section and not the Creative Writing NSFW section, so I'd need to make a new thread there for that. Correct me if I'm wrong on how the process works.

 

[Billbo baggins]

Mostly Sonic, but he's doing the art on an indie science fantasy comic called Drogune and is slated to be the penciler on the upcoming DC/Sonic crossover.


This fic remains SFW for the time being. The thread was made in the Creative Writing section and not the Creative Writing NSFW section, so I'd need to make a new thread there for that. Correct me if I'm wrong on how the process works.

Click to shrink...

I can't really correct you on that since I don't know myself. The only thing I know is that NSFW is meant for serious violence or explicit smut. So unless you have plans on showing the MC mutilating someone or going into detail on him getting Fellatio you won't need to worry about making it NSFW.

As for changing or moving a story to NSFW I believe your best option is to ask a administrator to move it for you.