A Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction by Black Mantle
This is a fanfiction, and as such, most of the characters in the story are not mine. Most characters are © Sega, and are not used with permission.
Preface
July 1, 2003
HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!!
I figured that the 136th anniversary of the country I call home would be a perfect time to start posting my latest fan-fiction. It's a bit unfortunate that I'm not finished it yet and probably won't for another week, but I thought you would at least like to see the first chapter, a teaser if you will to turn all of you readers into slobbering dogs.
"After the Darkness" is a sequel to my previous tale, "The Darkness of Chaos". Because the events in this story directly follow the previous, I am starting the count from Act VI (DoC ended at Act V) and I will also be including a quick summary of the original to refresh your memory.
Black Mantle
July 5, 2003
Here's the second chapter of Act VI, and I'm throwing in a summary of The Darkness of Chaos just in case you haven't read it or need a refresher of what happened. For those who remember the original, I posted it at a rate of one chapter a day, and one act a month; however, I will not be able to post at such a rate this time around. The problem is that I now have a full time job, and just can't spare the hours needed to write and edit a story to post at that speed. I figure I'll be posting one chapter on any day I have free, like weekends; so I'll have Chapter 3 tomorrow and Chapter 4 will be next Saturday, and so on… As for posting an act a month, I'm hoping to keep that up.
Also, I've noticed that has changed the way it formats HTML and I now have to fix the way my stories appear. Thankfully, the change doesn't affect old stories, just new ones that have been added. Also, they're altering their policies regarding PG-13 to NC-17 rated stories, and in order to view these stories, you have to log in first. In my opinion, this is much better than simply banning stories like did. I don't think they have it in place yet, but it should work great once they do.
Black Mantle
July 6, 2003
Here's Chapter 3. I'm glad that some of you have already reviewed it, even though you all basically said "more, more, more." I'm writing Chapter 4 now and I should have it finished by next weekend.
Black Mantle
July 13, 2003
I hope you enjoyed the last chapter. Anyway, when I was nearly finished the last chapter, I was horribly displeased with how it was turning out; so I cut out Omochao's monologue, and tossed in the odd "letters" bit to give you something amusing to read.
Here's Chapter 5, where we get back into the thick of the story. Expect Chapter 6 and 7 next weekend.
Black Mantle
July 20, 2003
I was hoping to have Chapter 6 up yesterday, but I've been sick, and it's rather difficult to use a computer when your eyes are watering. So here's Chapter 6, and I should have 7 up tomorrow. I have also figured out what's been going on at FanDomination and I hope to fix my stories soon. However, they're running out of donations and may be shutting down if they don't get some bread in the next couple weeks.
Black Mantle
July 29, 2003
A brief update.
That "real life" thing can be a major pain in the ass; and after getting hit with the flu and a major ramp up at work, I wasn't able to finish Act 6 when I had planned. I finished writing Chapter 8, but I still have to edit and spell check it, so it won't be posted until tomorrow at the earliest; and I hope that Chapter 9 will be done very soon and posted by week's end.
To the one person who wrote and complained, I would have preferred something that sounded nicer; anybody who uses more than one exclamation mark is clearly not trying to be nice. I should have made an earlier post to explain the situation; but if you're one of those people who were bitching at WPP about the slow release of their fansubs, prepare to get a good punch to the head.
Black Mantle
July 30, 2003
As I said, I finished Chapter 8 and am now posting it. Also, Chapter 9 is on it's way and should be done by the end of the week; I'm hoping for Friday, but it might be Saturday or Sunday.
Black Mantle
August 2, 2003
The first act of After the Darkness is complete, save for the disaster called Chapter 4 that I scrapped. I have no idea when Act 7 will come out due to my busy schedule, but I'm aiming for the end of August; there are no guarantees, so don't complain if I don't get it done by then.
Black Mantle
August 8, 2003
Whoops, forgot to post the rest of it on One of these days, I'm going to sit down and reformat all these chapters to display better on FD.
Black Mantle
August 25, 2003
Finally, here comes Act 7; and I plan to post a chapter a day, like I did back in the Darkness of Chaos days. I'm hoping that I can get into the old Act-a-month groove I had before the summer when I was in school, since I am heading back to my third year of university; but this guy I worked with said the 3rd year's the toughest, hopefully he's exaggerating.
Onto the business at hand; like the previous, this act is about cleaning up some of the loose ends left over from DoC. The story is pretty much written as a first draft and needs to be edited, but provided I can get a solid hour or so each night from now until the weekend, it should be finished and posted within a week.
On a side note, I think I've got the FanDomination encoding figured out; but just as I was about to post this, I found that the site is experiencing technical difficulties.
Black Mantle
August 29, 2003
Here's the last chapter of Act 7. I know it's only about a page long, I suppose I could've posted this yesterday with Chapter 4, but I almost didn't get that one done last night, so quit complaining.
Anyway, onto some happier news. My summer job is over, and although that means university starts in less than a week, I prefer school to work. I told this guy I work with it was like 4 months of torture and 8 months of vacation.
Also, in honor of being out of the old bump and grind, I picked up Soul Calibur II for my GameCube. I had the original for the DreamCast, and I can say this is the most fun I've had with a video game since Tekken Tag Tournament on the PS2. It's not surprising that all three games are from Namco, these guys made the legendary Pac-man after all. (Pac-man is hyphenated, but I'm not sure if the "m" is capitalized or not.)
Finally, this whole act was a bit different from the last 6, primarily because the intense action went from physical to emotional. The next act will be a bit like this one, and then I'll be getting to more destruction and mayhem in Act 9. Expect those sometime in September and October respectively.
Oh, and one last thing: Hey Magnus, Omochao's been looking for you.
Black Mantle
September 15, 2003
Just a brief update to keep everyone on track. September's half over, and Act 8 is half done; the major thing slowing me down isn't school, or getting caught up with my video game addiction, or this book I'm reading—Charles Dickens' "David Copperfield"—but I find myself writing parts of Act 9 at the same time.
I also want to thank those who've reviewed not only After the Darkness, but the Darkness of Chaos as well.
Just a few comments about the most recent twist in the Shadow/Rouge/Bunnie bit. First, I wouldn't characterize Bunnie the same way as Rouge, she's more like Amy; she isn't some "low bred hussy" who'd sleep with him on a moment's notice, but with Rouge as competition, she had to go for desperate measures to try and keep up. And as for Web Freak's comment: hands up everybody out there who thought about an S-R-B threesome; seriously now, who out there already thought of it?
Black Mantle
January 9, 2004
It's been awhile, but I finally finished Act 8. I had the first draft done a couple of days ago, but went back and rewrote some parts. Here's the first part, the rest will be posted over the weekend.
is undergoing some upgrades, and frankly it looks great, but some of the posting functions are disabled. Until they're finished I won't be posting this on that site, because part of what's now disabled is the multi-chapter option.
Anyway, on to some other things. In case you haven't heard, UbiSoft is having a fire sale; if you buy Prince of Persia (PS2, GCN, Xbox) you will get Splinter Cell for FREE. Not only that, but after abysmal sales they've slashed the price of their adventure title Beyond Good & Evil to $20. I've heard of some places selling it for as low as $10, but the only place I've seen it around here was selling at $35 CND, which by today's exchange rate is about $27 USD. I'll check the WalMart this weekend and see what they're going to charge me.
On a strange note, my PS2 has been getting quite a bit of play recently, and no it's not FFX-2 that's got me breaking that sucker out of the closet, it's .hack. With the low price of the first couple games, I've been playing through .hackInfection, and am now moving onto .hackMutation. This is an excellent game, and while the graphics and sound are nowhere near the spit and polish of Square-Enix's stuff, the gameplay wins hands down; therefore, Final Fantasy SUCKS!!!
I also heard that there's now a card game based on .hack. I personally am not into those, but maybe I'll pick up a deck as a lark.
Black Mantle
January 10, 2004
Here's Chapter 2, and you might notice something; it's BLOODY HUGE!
O.K. So maybe it's not HUGE, but it is the single biggest chapter in this entire story. I really had no initial plan as to where to place the chapters, so I wrote the story as one long block, and segmented after; usually I know exactly where I want the chapter breaks and what events happen in each before writing. As it turns out, the whole act is the same length as Act 7; but because of the larger chapters, it only has three, as opposed to five.
The rest of the story will be up tomorrow.
Black Mantle
January 11, 2004
And this is the end of the long delayed Act 8; I hope you enjoyed it. I've already started on Act 9, and I have no idea when it'll be ready; however, this recent experience has taught me a few things. First, I'm going to try to update regularly, even if it is nothing more than an update to the main page to tell how things are going and that I haven't stopped writing. Second, if you want to ask when the next act is or why I haven't updated, do not use the review system; my e-mail is given on my author page, so e-mail me directly and ask.
Black Mantle
March 20, 2004
I'm back! Here it is, Act 9 of After the Darkness, and its a doozy; this is going to be my longest Shadow the Hedgehog story yet.
Black Mantle
March 23, 2004
I'm just wondering, is there anybody other than VOID99 reading my fics, or are you all just waiting for the end before reviewing; that's fine, it's like reviewing a movie after only seeing half of it. Besides, the really good stuff is coming up later; this is just the setup.
3 chapters in 3 days, and the fourth is due later today. As with previous chapters, I'll be posting a chapter a day until it's done (around the end of the month). Mind you, because of my schedule, some chapters will be up early in the morning while others will appear in the late evening; so unless you check at the very end of the day, there's no guarantee that it'll be up yet.
Black Mantle
March 24, 2004
Chapter 5 is now up, and if you're waiting for some action, you won't have to wait too much longer; Chapter 6 is when things start to "heat" up, something that was phrased by Mortal Kombat's Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) quite well as "a taste of things to come". So I don't know who coined that phrase, but that was the only place where I could remember someone saying it.
As per VOID99's comment, Shadow never beat the Chronhorod, the best he could do was hold them at bay, so his lack of confidence in his skills is not unfounded. And it's nice to hear from Red Sonic again, a great writer; as for a possible last name for our dark hero, I was thinking of "Hefner". Yeah, it was a dumb joke.
Black Mantle
March 25, 2004
Here's Chapter 6, where the fun starts.
Firefly11 noted that I hadn't updated my site in a while; sadly this is true. The reason I stopped updating there was the site was under maintenance and some of the posting functions were disabled; it has since been fixed, so I have some catching up to do. I have just posted Act 8 and I should get Act 9 up this weekend.
Black Mantle
March 27, 2004
Here's Chapter 8. I do have something to say about these last two chapters, I spent almost an hour debating where to break them. My original intent was to break them where the dragons attack, which is the version that I posted; but I noticed that Chapter 7 was running a bit long and Chapter 8 was a bit short, so I considered cutting it between the time Shadow goes to sleep and when he wakes up the next morning. If anybody thinks I should have broken up the chapters in that place or if I should leave it as is, tell me; I'd like to know.
Black Mantle
March 31, 2004
Long story short, Chapter 12 is going to be late; whether it's late tonight or tomorrow, I'm not sure. All I'll say is that this is not some April Fool's joke. The reason for this delay is that I was reviewing Chapter 11 the night before last, and decided to rewrite a fair part of it and Chapter 12; thus delaying everything. The time I should have spent touching up Chapter 12 was used for rewriting Chapter 11, and Chapter 12 is being rewritten today. Fortunately, everything after Chapter 12 is done, and unlikely to change… much.
Black Mantle
April 1, 2004
I hope you didn't mind the wait too much, but here's Chapter 12, and Chapter 13 will be up later this evening.
I don't know if any of you were expecting an April Fool's joke—which I normally hate—but here's a good one for you: I'm not writing any more.
Good one, huh? But to be serious, I'm going to be focusing on other things like my finals and searching for a job, so for the month of April, I will not be writing anything. Until May rolls around, don't expect to hear anything from me; although I will still be reading e-mail if you have any questions, other than "when are you going to write some more?". If you e-mail me that, I will magically transport Omochao through the Internet right to your computer where he will kill you horribly, or talk to you until he drives you insane.
Black Mantle
September 1, 2004
I'm Back! It's been five months, but I'm finally back, and posting Act X of After the Darkness. No, this won't be an action-packed extravaganza like Act IX, but I hope you like it anyway. If this first part seems a bit short, it'll get bettet later on; this is more of an intro.
Black Mantle