Author's Note: Ladies and gentlemen, you may be shocked, you may be amazed, for I have gone off my rocker and written... Chao Politics. Why, you ask? Well, I figured nobody else would be crazy enough to try. Also, you may notice that the main character has the same name as I do, which I am told is generally a bad idea. This has less to do with the fact that Giga is a reflection of myself (he's not, we share some traits, but he hates caves and I do not) and more to do with the fact that it is an awesome name and is actually in SA2. I kid you not. Due to the time period in which this story is set the cast will be virtually entirely composed of OCs. Tikal and Chaos are somewhat central to the story, but really won't appear much except in flashbacks. A certain megalomaniacal mammoth mastermind may make an appearance as well. Sadly, this was written long before Chronicles came out, so that story won't be incorporated. My apologies.
Gigazubyte lay on his back. watching the stars wheel by above his head. Tiny specks of light in inky black infinity. As always, their pure white light was captivatingly beautiful. He sighed and closed his eyes.
The crunch of many heavy footsteps reached his ears almost before the voices did. He opened his eyes and sat up, and saw the other chao looking at something behind him, a dozen blue heads staring in the same direction. He spun around. A tremor ran through his body as he saw the echidna troops assembled on the path leading to Chaos' Shrine. They didn't look like they were here to play. Instead they were scowling and brandishing menacing looking pointed sticks. Trying to ignore the intense uneasiness that seized him, he moved closer, curious to see what this was about. The echidnas have never hurt them before, and some were even quite friendly. The entire scene had an eerie quality. The echidnas were bathed in weird orange light, as though by flames, and their voices reached him as through water, distorted but somehow clearly understandable. All other sound had faded away.
"Please, father, don't do this!" He identified the speaker as Tikal. Of all the echidnas, she was the kindest Giga had met. He identified the large male she was pleading with as her father, the leader of the echidnas… Pachamac was his name, Giga thought. Unlike most echidnas in the tribe, who were red or pinkish, he was nearly brown, and his daughter was orange. In contrast to the massive, booming, Pachamac, Tikal was short and slight and soft-spoken. Giga really liked her, but now the fear and pleading in her voice frightened him.
"Get out of our way, Tikal. We need these emeralds to win the war. Do you want to see our people subjugated by those filthy, ungrateful cats?"
"No, but…"
"Then get out of the way!"
"This will only bring pain and suffering. I beg of you, don't do this!" Giga's vague unease turned to outright dread. He didn't know what was going on, but he knew it wasn't good. He felt like this had happened before, but he couldn't remember how it ended, just that it was bad.
"We NEED those emeralds, and we will take them, now stand aside!"
"They don't belong to us! Those emeralds are Chaos'. Please don't bring him and the chao into this war! They're peaceful creatures at heart, they don't deserve this!" Giga turned around to look at the emeralds resting on the pillars around Chaos' shrine. He knew they were powerful and important, but he really had no idea what they were good for besides looking pretty. Why did Pachamac want them so badly?
"Those emeralds belong to us! Move! These blue fluff balls have no use for them, and that so called guardian of theirs is nothing more than the figment of a superstitious imagination!"
"I won't let you do this!" Tikal shouted, placing herself firmly between Pachamac and Giga and spreading her arms wide, as though she could hold back his entire group with her slight frame. Pachamac sighed at looked the echidnas standing in front of the group, just behind him and to his right.
"Restrain her." The two foremost rushed forward and grabbed her by the arms. Tikal screamed. Giga ran forward to help her, not at all sure what he was going to do.
"Now go, and take the emeralds! Don't let these pathetic, tubby little blobs of fur stand in your way!"
One of the echidnas swung his stick and hit Giga squarely between the eyes. A starburst bloomed in his vision and a buzz filled his ears monetarily. When he regained his senses, he heard the other chao being flung aside, screaming shrilly as they tried to get away from the charging echidnas, who didn't seem to care that the chao weren't offering any sort of resistance.
"Don't hurt her! That's an order! She's still my daughter!" Pachamac bellowed, as Tikal broke free of the echidnas pinning her arms and ran toward the chao. One of them tripped her, and she fell hard of the stony ground. Giga regained his feet just in time to be kicked by another charging echidna, and he went sprawling off the path.
He wound up face down in the dirt. He could still hear the screaming, but it sounded like he was hearing it from a great distance and it was being distorted by wind. It seemed to have changed, though. It didn't sound like Chao anymore. Now it seemed the echidnas were the ones screaming. He didn't even realize he had gotten to his feet until his vision cleared.
The sight that met his eyes stopped him cold with horror. A massive monster made of water towered over the shrine. As Giga watched it scooped up several screaming echidnas and sucked them into its body, where they were lost within the swirling vortex. It let out a roar that nearly knocked Giga over, and shot a jet of water that demolished a chunk of the echidna city in the valley below. Could that monster be Chaos? It was composed of water, but it was so much larger and more terrible. This wasn't the Chaos Giga knew, if it was Chaos at all.
He looked around, and saw Tikal had scrambled to her feet and run to the shrine. Above the din he heard her shout, "The servers are the seven Chaos…" Then the great monster that seemed to be Chaos roared again, as though it were in pain, and Giga's head trauma caught up to him. He blacked out.
When he came to, everything was still, and deadly quiet. The only noise was the wind as it rustled the tree leaves. Nothing else stirred. The moon shone over the eerie scene. In its light Giga could make out a number of cocoons, and several lumps that were probably bodies. He didn't want to know for sure what they were. The shrine was partly demolished. Tikal might have been there still, but he couldn't tell in the dark at this distance. There was no sign of Chaos, or the Emeralds. No sign, until the a cloud shadow blocked the light of the moon and allowed him to see a faint green glow a short distance away. Was it an emerald? He stumbled over to find a gemstone. It was the same shape as an emerald, but far smaller than he remembered. It glowed with the same internal radiance, though. It called to him, as though he were meant to take it, shining with a light that didn't come from the moon. He picked it up. The world went white.
Giga awoke again, this time to a red gold sun piercing his eyelids. He stirred faintly. Had it all just been a dream? He sat up slowly and looked around. The hillside he was on was quite bare of any life besides himself, and looked nothing like Chaos' Shrine, or any of the nearby area. Morning mist hung heavy in the valley below him, but the sunrise was quickly melting it away. A moderate breeze was blowing. He shook his head and blinked quickly, both to clear the sleep haze from his mind and to adjust to the early morning glare. As the fog in his mind vanished so did any hope that it had just been a dream. It hadn't been a dream at all. It was a memory, had all happened a scant month ago, and now he remembered what had transpired in the interval. They had left the ruined shrine to find a new home. Tikal had survived, but Pachamac and Chaos, as well as the warriors that had attacked them, were gone. The Chao were left to wander, leaderless. Tears welled at the corners of his eyes. He would have given anything just to go back to sleep and wake up again to find he was just dreaming after all.
He remembered how he had awoken and stepped out of his cocoon, how Chaolon and Rusty had immediately bowed to him, how they had seemed so much smaller, and the shock he had felt when he looked down at his own body. He glanced down at his hands, watched the sun reflected in the green crystal that covered them, like it did the rest of his body. He looked like a freak, but somehow they thought that this, along with his newfound size and power, made him Chaos' chosen one.
The memories were still so recent as to be raw and painful so he tried thinking about the here and now instead, without much success. He wondered vaguely and irrelevantly when he had fallen asleep the night before and how long he had been unconscious, but decided almost immediately he didn't know and didn't care and went back to brooding over the events of the last three weeks. Fortunately this useless and circular train of thought didn't get very far before he was snapped back to the present by his best friend's voice.
"Hey, Giga, what are you doing up here?" yelled Spike, trudging up the hillside and flopping down beside him. Giga looked at him, and wished, not for the first time, that he could be more like Spike, could be a normal blue chao again instead of a giant green freak. He wished everything could be normal again, but he knew how vain a wish that was.
"I'm just watching the sun rise."
"When I left you were watching the stars. Have you been up here all night?"
"Yeah."
"What were you doing?"
"Thinking, mostly, and enjoying the view. The higher you go the better it gets."
"Thinking about what?"
"The same things you've been thinking about, the same things everyone has. Chaos, the echidnas… They attacked us for no reason! They destroyed our home! And did… who knows what to Chaos, and now he's gone. I was in a cocoon for a week and came out covered in green crystal to find I just missed getting given up for dead and left behind, and suddenly people are bowing to me because I'm green! They think I'm Chaos' chosen replacement! And here we are, without Chaos, without a home, and I don't know why and, and … how can you not think about it?"
""Because I don't have time to think about it. I'm too busy just surviving. Did you spend the whole night just thinking up here?"
"Not all of it, I fell asleep at some point."
"You go to sleep after I do and get up earlier. You barely seem to sleep at all anymore. It isn't normal."
"Neither am I! I was in a cocoon for a week, an entire week, after I touched Chaos' last emerald, and I think it's a part of me now. I've seen my reflection, Spike. I look like a monster, all covered in green crystal, with yellow eyes and these weird horns sprouting out of my head, not to mention the fact that suddenly I'm a head taller than everybody else. And because of it the others think I should be the leader."
"Yeah, I've been meaning to talk to you about that. I think you should."
"What? Are you crazy? That's part of why I spend so much time away from everyone else. I'm tired of being bowed to and addressed like I'm some kind of stranger. I'm tired of being looked at like I'm supposed to do something and make everything right. I can't deal with that, I can't even fix myself. I'm not a leader, I'm just another chao who happens to look like a freak. I don't care what they say, this isn't some special plan Chaos had for me. It was just an accident."
"How can you be sure of that? Ever since you came out of that cocoon you've been different. It's not just because you're bigger and covered in green crystal."
"I know, I know. I barely sleep, I barely eat, and somehow I'm never tired. So what if I'm suddenly a lot faster and stronger? That doesn't mean I can lead. I'm not any smarter than I was before. I don't understand what's happening or why any better than anyone else."
"That's not what the others…"
"I know what they think, Spike. I want to know what you think."
"I think you're still Giga, my best friend. You're still you, even if you don't look like you anymore. But I also think that doesn't matter."
"Doesn't matter?"
"We need something to believe in, someone to follow. We're so used to having Chaos and now he's gone. We need a leader."
"I'm not…"
"It doesn't matter whether you think you're fit for the job or not, as long as everyone else believes you are. We need something to inspire us and give us hope, and I think you can do that much. Even if you don't think you can lead, you can still be… I don't know, a protector. For their sake, you should do it."
"It sounds like you've given this some thought. But every one knows I'm just doing it to make them feel better, what good is it going to do?"
"I'll know, and maybe a few others will. But if they have any sense they'll keep their mouths shut and let you do your job."
"Spike, I can't do this, I'm not Chaos. I can't pretend like I am. How can anybody believe in me when I don't even believe in myself?"
"You can lie."
"No, I can't."
"So what are you going to do, keep running away and hiding out on hilltops?"
"I'm not running from anything, Spike, I'm just going to tell them the truth."
Spike sighed, and then smiled slightly. "You realize that the ones who think you're some kind of savior aren't going to listen, and the ones like me who know you're still the fool you've always been aren't going to learn anything new?"
"Yeah, thanks for telling me that. Come on; let's get back to the others. Which way are we going today?" He got up and started walking down the hill. Spike followed.
"Where do you think we should go?"
"It isn't up to me to decide."
"But if it were?"
"I'd head towards the sunrise."
"Giga, if we did that we'd wind up on the coast."
"See? This is why I can't lead. I'm no good at making decisions."
"Well, you'd better start paying attention and figure it out, because someday you might be asked to. Someday you might not have a choice."
"Spike…"
"Look, nobody is going to make you take charge today, but I really think you ought to think about it. And that means opening your eyes and paying attention to what goes on around you. You can't keep living in your own head. For everybody else, you've got to quit daydreaming and focus on your surroundings."
"Spike, if you've got it all figured out, why don't you take charge?"
"Because I can't inspire them. I'll do everything I can to help you make the right decisions, but they need someone to look up to, and that's got to be you. I'm only meant to be your advisor, to fill you in on the important details. Here, I'll start with where we're going since you seem to have missed the meeting. We're heading the only direction that's really left to us. South, towards the mountains."
"Thanks. I'll think about what you said."
"Do more than think. Act on it. But while we're waiting for that to happen, I'm going to take my own advice and act on finding something to eat. You hungry?"