Opening Note: Hi there, thanks for reading my story. I've had writer's block for probably over a year at this point (god it was awful), so this is the first fanfic I've written in awhile. Hope you enjoy it!
In the same amount of time it took to blink his eyes, Solaris went from being wiped out of existence to laying face down in the middle of a grassy forest. Only now, he wasn't Solaris, but now he was Mephiles again.
'What happened?' Mephiles thought to himself. 'Shouldn't I be completely eradicated?' The crystal hedgehog rose up to his feet and looked around. Suddenly, he could feel countless rifts in time, to the point that he questioned how the universe was still in one piece.
"Good lord," he remarked. "Whoever did this did almost as good a job as I did when I ripped apart time." Mephiles looked around, sensing for any traces of Chaos energy. He could feel the faint signal of an emerald a few miles away. "Well," he began, "I cannot feel Iblis at all." Since the two of them were separated, Mephiles had a subconscious link to his other half, letting him always be able to tell if Iblis still existed and at what time. Now, the bond was broken, and he couldn't feel so much as a flicker of Iblis' heat in any time. The crystal hedgehog was completely still for a moment, then laughed.
"No matter," he stated smugly. "I don't need Iblis to destroy these humans again. In fact, it makes my job easier. Now I don't have to waste time searching through time looking for that mindless brute!"
Mephiles looked in the direction that he felt the Chaos Emerald was and curled his muzzle into what looked like a smile. "Brace yourselves, humanity."
-break-
The crystal hedgehog stomped into the abandoned warehouse he'd turned into his hideout, angry over failing to get the white Chaos Emerald from Eggman's stupid creation, Metal Sonic. Quite frankly, he had no idea what went wrong; Mephiles thought over his tactic for defeating the robot a million times, looking for any kind of weakness and found none. This threw a monkey wrench into his entire plan to strike back against the world. Unfortunately, it must have been stronger than he anticipated, because the machine had no trouble making his muscles sore within only a few minutes.
Mephiles groaned as his arms and legs throbbed in pain, still horribly sore from the fight earlier. "Darn it," he said out loud, tightening the muscles in his limbs. "Stupid piece of junk did a number on me." He had to take a knee for a moment because his body ached horribly. With a grunt, he forced himself to his feet, clutching his chest in agony.
"Why would this hurt so badly?" he questioned out loud for no one to hear. "I remember getting beaten by Shadow never made me ache this much." Sighing, Mephiles realized he had no other option; this fight had left him fatigued, left his muscles aching worse than any pain he'd ever felt other than when those three hedgehogs killed him as Solaris. There was no getting out of this now; he walked at a staggering pace to a filthy cot he had found and set up to sleep in when he really needed to; otherwise, he avoided sleep as much as possible, dreading the thought of having more nightmares.
As he begrudgingly laid down on the cot with a growl, Mephiles picked up an old alarm clock off the ground to his right and checked to see if the time was right; 2:40 AM, that was about correct. Grunting, he turned the silver key on the back of the rusty old contraption until it reached 10:10 AM, seven and a half hours from that point.
"You can handle this," Mephiles assured himself, putting the clock on the ground underneath his "bed" and turned on his side. "Just... one... night..." Thanks to being fatigued from the fight, Mephiles went out in no time.
-break-
With a gasp, Mephiles awoke to the sound of an alarm clock ringing furiously. Frantically, he searched for it and found it underneath his cot and slammed on the top, quieting the thing down.
"Stupid nightmares," he said in between gasps. It was that same dream of being thrown back into the scepter that haunted him every time he slept, and last night was no different. As the hedgehog sat up in the cot, however, he realized that the nightmare was the least of his problems now when an agonizing pain shot through his spine, causing him to cry out in anguish. When he rose from the cot, he came close to falling straight down because his legs shook weakly. It became even worse when the pain set in his legs, which made him want to keel over and die.
"Oh god, my legs," he said as his bottom limbs failed to support him and he stumbled around, almost falling before luckily regaining his composure. This was bad, but Mephiles was already used to floating off the ground to move most of the time anyway. In a moment, relief went through his legs as he floated a few inches off the ground and let his legs rest. Unfortunately, it didn't soothe the pain that now emanated from his chest and arms; when he went to clutch his chest, he couldn't take the pain in his joint and had to let his left arm droop to the side.
"How strong was that robot?!" Mephiles shouted at the top of his lungs. This was far worse than any beating he'd ever experienced; even after suffering the worst beat down imaginable from Shadow in the desert temple, sure, he was sore afterwards, but not for this long. Now, it was clear that something was definitely wrong, but the crystal hedgehog had no clue what that was.
As he put his right hand on his head to think about what could be causing this pain, he felt a burning feeling in his hand and looked at it to see that it was even thinner and sick looking than it usually was. He would have commented on it, but he could suddenly sense a Chaos Emerald moving straight toward the warehouse at an extremely high-speed.
"Metal Sonic," Mephiles rasped to himself. "Looks like I can catch him by surprise if I move now." The hedgehog picked up his purple Chaos Emerald and flew out the door into the open. "I don't care how much my body aches," he snarled. "That robot is going down." Mephiles stared down at his hands for a moment before deciding he'd worry about them later.
He hovered through the air for about twenty seconds before realizing that Metal Sonic was in range once the hedgehog got to a grassy clearing. Charging up a ball of dark plasma, Mephiles threw his arms forward and the orb collided right with its target at breakneck speed, causing the robot to fly before skidding on the grass and regaining his footing.
"We meet again," Mephiles told Metal Sonic as he caught up with the android. "In case you don't remember, you have something I want." Mephiles formed a rage-filled look on his face as Metal Sonic held its hands up in a battle stance. "We're doing this bit again?" Mephiles laughed. "Fine. But, this time I won't go so easy on you."
Mephiles rushed the robot with a fistful of Chaos energy and tried to punch his opponent, but Metal ducked just in time and unleashed an uppercut on the crystal hedgehog, sending him reeling back in pain. The machine followed up with a laser blast from his eyes, but the beams only barely grazed Mephiles' side since he sidestepped to the right, and the hedgehog countered Metal's advance by kicking him in the chest. Despite that it hurt Mephiles' foot and leg a lot to do that, it was worth it since he could now see the robot's power source, the white Chaos Emerald.
The crystal hedgehog chuckled at his successful attack, provoking Metal to charge in with a punch to the stomach; Mephiles managed to block it, but that left him open to Metal's next attack, a sharp chop in the side of the neck continued with a backhand. Mephiles' face was in pain from the attacks and he narrowed his eyes in anger.
"Darn you!" Mephiles exclaimed, head-butting the robot as hard as he could muster, leaving a dent in the blue android's forehead. Although AI couldn't feel emotions like living things could, in that moment Metal Sonic's eyes were filled with the closest thing to rage he could manifest. He expressed this feeling by elbowing Mephiles square in the chest, followed by striking him in the face and pulling off a leg-sweep that threw off his enemy's balance. Metal would have smiled if Eggman installed a mouth into him as he watched Mephiles fall to the ground. The onslaught continued as the robot sent him flying up into the air with a kick, then wrapped things up by dashing forward just as Mephiles was on level with his arm and assaulted the hedgehog with a clothesline, flinging him forward about ten feet. Mephiles stopped when he hit the ground and rose to his feet, legs shaking violently and his whole body in agonizing pain. The crystal hedgehog fought through the pain, though, and pulled out his emerald.
"That's it," Mephiles said, full of hatred. "I'm done playing games with you." Holding the purple emerald firmly in his hand, Mephiles charged up a Dark Chaos Lance with as much energy as he could gather from the jewel. Meanwhile, Metal Sonic ran a scan of how much Chaos energy the hedgehog was going to use, to see if he'd have anything to worry about. The robot found that Mephiles' Chaos energy levels were through the roof; no living thing should have been able to stay alive using that much energy. In a flash, Metal formulated a plan.
Confusing Mephiles more than he thought was possible, the robot reached into its chest compartment and ripped out the white Chaos Emerald, then tossed it to him. Mephiles was at a loss for words as he caught the emerald, but he didn't care, he now had not one, but two Chaos Emeralds.
"Idiotic robot," Mephiles laughed heartily. "That headbutt must have done more than just dent you!" The crystal hedgehog looked down at the two emeralds in his hands and curled his blank muzzle into what looked like a smile. "You've really made this too easy for me." Mephiles charged up for a more powerful attack, but started to tremble and throb from intense pain that suddenly coursed through his body.
"What's happening?" he asked himself, when his entire body felt an exploding pain, forcing him on his knees. The hedgehog cried out in pain as his chest, arms, legs... everything, convulsed in agony. This was far beyond anything he'd suffered beforehand; even when the Soleannan scientists experimented on him, it didn't compare to this.
Metal Sonic looked on at the hedgehog's pain, laughing in a mechanical voice at the success of his plan to overload Mephiles with energy. Metal actually doubted for a moment that it would work, but now he was glad at the decision. Ready to steal his emerald and finish off Mephiles for good, Metal started approaching the hedgehog's form, but, in the blink of an eye, Mephiles ripped the robot to shreds with the Dark Chaos Lance he was charging. There were no magnificent explosions or flashes; Mephiles just let his beam loose and it scattered mechanical parts everywhere.
"Good riddance, you piece of junk!" Mephiles rasped, triumphant over his victory. Yet he had no time to celebrate, as the crystal hedgehog was still in horrible pain. When he felt his right elbow joint throb, he had to let out a scream because it hurt so much. Desperate, Mephiles floated off the ground with the Chaos Emeralds in tow and flew into a different direction, leading him to a forest. He tried to continue flying, but his Chaos power waned suddenly, and now he was face down in the middle of the woods next to a shallow river.
Feeling the pain rush to his head, everything started going dark in Mephiles' vision, sending him into unconsciousness.
Author's Note: Man does it feel good to finally escape my block. I hope that I can actually take this story far and not fall into the dreaded year long writer's block again. Now, taking inspiration from the DBZ fanfics Bringer of Death and Break Through the Limit, if someone asks me a question in their review, I might put it in the author's note so I (hopefully) don't have to answer it more than once. Be sure to review and tell me what you thought and what all I could change and shoot the story a favorite if you really liked what you saw. See you next chapter.