Author's Note: I live! This is something I thought up in my spare time (what little of it I have!). Based after STCOnline's SA2 arch. Suggested reading to better understand this.
Disclaimer: Sonic belongs to Sega, adaptation from which this story derives is based on Fleetway Sonic and the unofficial online version of it.
You know, I've never been one to put much stock on the supernatural.
When Kintobor first introduced me with the concept of things beyond normal existence in one of his many lessons, I could never quite get my head around it. Heck, I hardly qualified as existence myself, so telling me about a world beyond was like telling a person what a lake looked like when had never even seen so much as a drop of water in his life.
Now though, I was now quite convince that some higher powers were at work and that they, for some reason, hated me. For some reason I could not quite place my finger on, I found it quite easy to imagine Vichama laughing his ass off at my current predicament.
Mentally, I promised myself that if I ever saw him again I would wring his neck. How, considering the fact that I couldn't do so much as pick up a pencil, I'll work out in due time.
No, fate would never be so kind as to deliver me unto oblivion, instead I was cursed to roam this world as nothing more than a wisp of energy.
It was still very easy to remember how this happened. A fight between me and a being of uncontrollable chaos. Fire and destruction everywhere. A Chaos Control using the last vestiges of my power to save a man who was once a friend, and finally paying my debt to him, a chance at life for a chance at life. Not coming out the other side with any physical being, but rather as a specter of my former energy, bound to the chaos energy of this planet.
Had I a mouth to do so, I would have smiled at the irony of it. The same catalyst that I meant to use to destroy this world was now the barrier that prevented my voyage into welcomed nothingness. A grand cosmic joke if there ever was one.
Now, all I had was time. Something that most begged more for was instead my tormentor. For, I had nothing to hold on to, all my good memories having been tainted, stained in black by the knowledge that even the best of things never last. I could now fully appreciate the maxim 'Ignorance is bliss'.
But, they were all I had, in this figurative purgatory, so I clung to them, for no other reason that if I didn't I would surely no longer be sane. I remember seeing Kintobor for the first time, fussing over to canister my being was contained in even though it could have been no more than an ancient refrigerator for all he knew. I could see the outside world and I could hear the outside world, but I had no way of interacting with it. In a way, it was much like my current predicament, except that I have freedom of movement. A benefit I suppose, except that I had no desire to see anything. Anyway, I remember how he had fixed up the externals for the unit, allowing me the freedom to speak.
Again, had I been able, I would have furrowed my brow in thought.
The external systems had already been there when Kintobor had found my container, so did that mean I had spoken before he had found me?
As If that thought were a key, a suddenly rush of images assaulted my mind and I found myself back in time to a memory I had so long forgotten.
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She was here again and, despite not having one, I felt as if my heart skipped a beat in excitement.
The little girl with blonde hair and blue eyes was back. The one who always sat by my container and told stories of knights and dragons and princesses. The only one who knew I was here, was back!
She brought with her the old man with the gray mustache. He was here more often than the little girl and would sometimes talk, but more about me than at me.
The girl was talking again, but instead of talking to me she was talking to the old man.
"I'm telling you grandfather, he's alive! You have to make something to make him talk!" she exclaimed with the exuberance and conviction that one associated with children her age.
The old man looked a bit weary, as if he had been having this argument with her for a while. "Maria, it's simply not possible. The energy matrix is still much too unstable for a coherent thought process to have developed, that could still be years off."
Of course the majority of this probably sailed right over the child, but…
"Well, if you're going to build a thingy anyway so he can talk, why not do it now?"
A sigh escaped from the old man's lips. "Because, a vocal reader would have to be specifically tuned to be able to……"
That was as far as the old man got when the little girl, Maria, decided to use the most powerful weapon in her arsenal. A subtle change in disposition, a little moisture around the eyes, and a slight pouting of the lower lip. And, to seal the deal, "Please, Grampa?" Hook, line, and sinker.
The girl left after giving the old man a kiss on the cheek and as well as screen to my container, promising to be back soon. The old man waited for a minute longer, turning to look me at directly, and saying under his breathe, "I wonder……" Before turning to leave as well, leaving me in darkness once more.
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As a specter, I had no reason to breath, yet I felt as if I were gasping for breath. Yes, I had known that I had existed before Kintobor had found me, but I had never imagined………
Once, I had told Sonic that I didn't care about anything anymore. That nothing mattered to me. I suddenly found myself confronted with something that mattered more to me than I had ever known possible. The truth.
I would find out who those people were, who this Maria was. My current predicament be damned! Nothing on this world or the next would stop me!