Chapter 2: A Silver Tongue

We now move to roughly 200 years after Sonic has rescued Elise from the Egg-Cerberus.

(Uh… I don't know what to say… Oh! Uh, the world ended! Well, kind of. It's still here. So I guess the world didn't technically end, since it's still here, but everyone's dead, there are monsters everywhere, and there's no more weather. So I guess it might as well have ended. Or something.)

A white hedgehog was hovering around the wreckage of a city. Fire tornadoes and lava pits were everywhere.

Name: Silver the Hedgehog

Rating: Not Awesome

(Whenever I ask about how this happened, nobody answers me directly. They just say 'I dunno' or 'I wasn't there' or 'Go away Silver, I'm trying to nap.')

A fire tornado sprang up in front of Silver. He used a power of some sort to suppress the tornado, but nothing happened.

"Aw man…"

He tried again and it worked. Silver smiled.

(Yeah! I hope Blaze saw that! Uh, anyway where was I? Internal monologues are hard when I'm also focusing on keeping myself afloat. Uh… Oh! These fires! The fires and their immortal master Iblis are probably the reason for this ruined world. I think. Probably a safe bet. I mean-)

"Hey Silver, over here!" a girl's voice called. It belonged to a lavender cat in a purple coat.

Name: Blaze the Cat

Lives Left: 6

But Silver was too busy narrating to himself to notice.

(We don't really know for sure if he's the cause, since most people alive now weren't alive back then. But it's a pretty safe bet.)

"Silver, it's important!"

(Come to think of it, how do we even know his name is Iblis? If I were a world-ending fire monster, I'd go for something cooler. Like… Biggasaur... Or Destructinator! Hmm.)

"Oh great, he's narrating to himself again." Blaze hung her head in annoyance, speaking under her breath. She looked back up and shouted. "Silver, we don't have time for this!"

(I wonder if I'd still have telekinesis, or just fire powers. I don't know how I could end the world with telekinesis. Fire powers would be better for ending the world. Oh, but Blaze wouldn't want to hear-)

A rock hit Silver in the back of the head.

"Ow!"

"Silver, snap out of it!" Blaze called. Silver looked over.

"Oh, hi Blaze! Did you see me show that tornado who's boss?"

Blaze was confused, but she did not show it. "Uh… yeah, yeah I did, good job. Listen Silver, I have something important to tell you. He's back!"

"What?" asked Silver. "… Wait, who?"

"… The only other person here."

"Oh, Iblis! I-I knew that! Let's go!"

Silver flew off in the direction of the main city wreckage. Blaze shook her head and sighed. She followed, jumping across other rooftops.


NOW LOADING…

"I wonder if Blaze ever gets tired of my internal narrating…"

"Silver, you're narrating out loud again."

"Ahh!" Silver freaked out.


Silver and Blaze began exploring the burning ruins of the city. A lizard made of stone and lava dropped down before the two.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAR!"

"Aaah!" Silver instinctively picked up a rock with his mind and slammed it into the lizard's head. Both the lizard and the rock crumbled.

Silver wiped sweat off his brow. "Man, I never really get used to the lizards." He received no answer. "Blaze?"

Silver looked over, Blaze was fighting off two firebirds with graceful air combos.

(… Now she's just showing off…)

Silver started climbing around until he found a green design on the ground before the lava chasm.

"I think that if I stand on this marker, I can create a path ahead!" the hedgehog announced to nobody in particular. "… So yeah."

He concentrated and caused a car, a billboard, and a piece of road to levitate over a lava chasm. Silver proceeded to hop along the platforms. After he was done, Blaze went to the edge and froze before making the first jump.

"Um… Can you go on ahead, Silver?"

"But… how is the car going to stay afloat?"

Blaze looked around nervously. "I'll… think of something."

"Wait, is this a 'heights' thing again?"

"No!" Blaze said, defensively. "I just… uh…"

"You jump from rooftops all the time, how are you scared of heights?"

"It's not the same! Those are big roofs, this is a small car! Besides, you're scared of the Iblis monsters!"

It was Silver's turn to get defensive. "Hey, only the lizards! The rest of them are fine! … Well, for fiery death-beasts anyway…"

Blaze was unconvinced. "Look, just go on without me. You're the only one able to suppress Iblis anyway, so-"

"IT'S NO USE!" Silver used his powers to pick up Blaze. With the power of his mind, he plucked Blaze from where she stood and slowly set her down on the ground next to him. "There."

"… Never do that again. But thank you."

"She seemed upset, but I could tell that deep down, she was grateful. But maybe I should make it up to her later."

"You're narrating out loud again."

"Dang it!"

Blaze chuckled, and tussled Silver's head. "What am I going to do with you?"

The two went on a little further and found themselves walking along what used to be the side of a building, but it has long been knocked over. More Iblis Lizards appeared.

"Aw no!" Silver whined. Blaze looked to her friend.

"You can get rid of them if you just pick them up with your mind and throw them."

"Yeah… but that's kind of like touching them. But with my mind. And they do the Thriller whenever I pick them up, it just looks wrong when they do that!"

Blaze briefly put a hand on Silver's shoulder and then ran ahead. She did a fiery slide kick on one lizard, shattering it. The cat ran over to the other lizard, grabbed it, and leapt into the air.

"Yes!" she shouted, as she gave the lizard a fiery headbutt, destroying it. She landed gracefully, holding her arms out, and bowed.

"Whoa, where'd you learn to show those moves?"

Blaze pointed to destroyed billboard nearby. "From him."

Silver looked over. The billboard showed a man with a red helmet. Next to him were the words 'SHOW YOUR MOVES'.

"Oh, that guy. He's real old, I can't believe he's still around in this world."

After a while, Silver and Blaze came across a boost ramp. They both ran off and flew into a different part of the city.


Blaze landed inside an old building, on her feet.

"Oof. Kinda hurt my legs. Wish cats didn't always land on their feet." Blaze received no response. "Silver?"

She looked around. Silver was not with her at the moment.

"Uh-oh. I'd better find him. When he's alone, he gets… anxious."

Blaze ran out of the skyscraper and flew through the air, her eyes closed tight.

"Don't look down, don't look down, don't look down…"

The cat eventually landed on a roof and found herself surrounded by Iblis monsters. With a fiery spin attack, she wiped them out and unlocked a spring.

"I'm really surprised at how these springs have survived the apocalypse."

Blaze hopped onto the spring and it launched her toward the window of a nearby building.

"… I hope there's no glass." Blaze said, near the last moment.

She went through the window- "OW, THERE WAS GLASS!"- and started ricocheting off the numerous springs in the skyscraper's hallway. But due to her distracted state, she hit the springs at bad angles. "WHY ARE THERE SO MANY SPRINGS IN THIS HALL?"

After a moment, she was launched back out of the skyscraper and landed on her stomach on a freeway.

"Oww… Guess that's what I get for complaining about the feet…" She stood up and tried shaking off the pain. "Never doing that again… Ow…"

As she dusted herself off, a large ball rolled past Blaze. "Hm?"

She looked down and noticed that the freeway was tilting based on where she was standing. Taking a moment to sort some things out, she went to one end of the road in order for it to tilt. This caused the ball to roll toward her. Blaze ran, jumped off the moving ball, and did a midair spin to make it to the rooftop past the freeway.

"Phew." She looked and saw Silver on a lower rooftop, throwing boxes at more lizards. When they were taken care of, she jumped down. "There you are, Silver!"

Silver's eyes lit up. "Blaze! It was awful, there were lizards everywhere! Also those weird worm-hand things, but mostly lizards! … Oh shoot, are you okay?"

Silver had noticed just how banged up Blaze looked after her venture through the window and springy hallway, as well as landing on that freeway. Overall, she looked a little torn up, and her fur was dirtier. Also Silver could have sworn there was a bit of glass sticking in her tail.

"It's fine, you won't get rid of me that easily, Silver." Blaze feigned confidence.

Silver looked over to the fiery tornado nearby, and Blaze took that opportunity to clutch her abdomen in pain. She quickly stopped when Silver looked back.

"I think I should take the lead, Iblis can't be much further."

"Good idea." the cat conceded. Silver turned to face the tornado, and Blaze pulled the shard from her tail.

"Myow!"

Silver turned around. "What was that?"

"Nothing."

With that, Silver looked back to the tornado and began narrating.

(Here we go. Iblis is up ahead. And I'm going to defeat him! I know I say that every time, but this time, I really will defeat him!)

"Today, Silver."

"Oh, right." Silver snapped out of it. He ran forward, with a look of determination in his face and a song in his heart.

"Every night I will save your life-"

"Silver, I'm not in the mood right now."

"Aww. Whoa, that tornado!" Silver exclaimed.

Blaze tried to look up from slouching in pain. "What? What is it?"

"It's carrying a car!"

Blaze looked at her friend flatly. "… Silver, can we just go?"

At that point, the aforementioned car was thrown out of the tornado and slammed down onto the ground before the friends. They ducked as it bounced over their heads.

"Blaze, watch out for things flying out of the tornado! Like that car!"

Silver and Blaze hurried through the rest of the wreckage. The tornado kept spewing debris at our heroes, but they managed to dodge it. Whenever Blaze was hobbling too slowly, Silver was able to use his powers to catch the debris and throw it elsewhere.

"Blaze, I really don't think you'll be up for this fight. Maybe I should do it alone."

Blaze looked nervous. "Silver, are you sure? You remember what happened the last time you did that."

"I'll be fine, Blaze! Trust me! Besides, there probably aren't going to be any spiders this time."

Blaze closed her eyes and smiled. "Fine, you win."

"There's the end!" Silver cried as he saw the shining goal ring. "I just hope this tornado doesn't pick it up and put it somewhere else!"

Silver leapt down and made contact with the ring. Silver began to dance around and carried himself in the air. Guitar music began as the gods tallied his score.

C

"Nailed it!" Silver declared, obviously proud of his performance in the level.

Blaze slowly walked over and smiled at Silver.

"Sure did." the cat white lied.

"Okay, let's go get Iblis!"


A giant lava and rock monster, similar to the ones before, was bathing in a pit of lava, using a lava fall as its shower. It had four arms.

Name: Iblis

Favorite Food: Skyscrapers

Iblis was scrubbing his upper pair of armpits with a flaming car when Silver walked up.

"Okay Iblis, let's… What are you doing?"

Iblis ignored Silver and kept scrubbing himself. When he was done, he ate the car.

"Uh, Iblis? Hello? Fight time?"

The beast looked down at Silver. It rolled its eyes and did a strange roar that almost sounded like a sigh.

"Okay, let's go!" cried the hedgehog.

Iblis roared at Silver.

Boss: Iblis (Form 1)

Danger Quotient: 400%

"Silver!" Blaze called from a safe vantage point. "Remember to go for the head!"

"Okay, cool!"

Silver picked up a nearby rock with his mind and threw it at Iblis's head. The beast roared in mild annoyance.

"Had enough? Taaake this!"

Silver picked up a car and threw it at Iblis's head. Having had enough, Iblis picked up a large boulder and flung it at Silver.

"IT'S NO USE!" Silver declared as he caught the boulder with his mind. He threw it back at Iblis, finally dazing the beast and cracking the rock armor on his head. "I win!"

"Silver, don't be careless." warned Blaze.

"Yeah, don' wanna lose my head though!" Silver spoke in a horribly exaggerated British accent.

"Seriously, Silver. Don't."

Iblis furiously roared and began to breathe fire all over Silver's platform. The hedgehog quickly jumped up and used his powers to hold himself in place.

"C'mon Iblis, go back to throwing things!" Iblis used its hand to try and smack Silver, but the hedgehog dodged. "No, I said to throw things!"

The fires subsided and Silver landed on his feet again. Iblis eventually belched out the car from before.

"Gross…" Silver and Blaze said at the same time.

With his powers, Silver caught the car and threw it back at Iblis's head. With the car still under control, he bopped Iblis on the head with the car, over and over.

"Take this! And this! And this! And this!"

Silver kept this up for ten whole minutes. Finally, Blaze had had enough.

"Silver, think you could finish him off?"

"This will end it!" Silver picked up a nearby street sign with his powers and mentally threw it like a javelin through Iblis's head.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!" the monster roared in anguish and sunk into the lava bath.


Fifteen minutes had passed. Silver and Blaze were resting near the crater where Iblis was. Silver had brought Blaze a capsule with a 1-up inside. She took the item from inside and instantly felt better.

"Thank you, Silver."

"Yeah… Man I wish Iblis would die for good. He just keeps coming back! Like a cat or something!"

Blaze looked to her friend in confusion. Silver did not seem to notice what he just said, and kept speaking. "How can we get rid of him?"

"Perhaps it is not the present, but the past that concerns you." bellowed a deep, manly voice from above.

Silver and Blaze looked up to the source of the voice. It was a black and gray hedgehog with green eyes and no mouth standing atop a pile of wreckage.

"And you are?" Blaze asked, wary of this newcomer.

Name: Mephiles the Dark

Manliness: Dan Green/10

"I am Mephiles. Mephiles the Dark."

"That sounds like a name we can trust." Silver said, completely sincerely. Blaze once again looked at Silver flatly, but went unnoticed. "So we just need to focus on the past?"

"Oh yes!" the newcomer answered. "I can help you. Like all things, Iblis has an origin. You need to find that origin… and wipe it out, forever." he said, dramatically.

Silver raised an eyebrow. "How do we do that?"

"You simply DROWN HIM IN DARKNESS!" Mephiles struck a pose. He then looked down, holding the pose. "With my help, you can."

"That sounds reasonable." Silver stated, again without a hint of irony.

"Hold that thought." Blaze told Mephiles. She took Silver off to the side. Mephiles held his pose and his eyes stayed fixed on where Silver used to stand, not following the hedgehog's movement at all.

"Silver, don't you think this a little strange?"

"No, why?"

Blaze sighed. "Come on, Silver, think about this. Some stranger comes out of nowhere and suddenly has the answer to our problems? That seems too good to be true."

"Well what other choice is there, Blaze? Nothing else works!"

Blaze looked away wryly. "Well… You have a point."

Silver walked closer to the base of Mephiles's vantage point. "Okay dude, show us the way!"

"Oh yes! Follow me."


Mephiles did a pirouette into an old computer room. "Behold."

"Wow. That was a nice dance." Silver commented, as he and Blaze entered the room.

Mephiles spoke evenly. "Not me. The computer."

"Oh. So what are we going to be doing again?"

Mephiles made a grand gesture, but aimed his gaze at the ceiling, rather than Silver. "You will travel to the past and eliminate the one who unleashed Iblis. I have the power to travel through time. I can take you with me."

Blaze scratched her head, albeit facetiously. "Wow. It's almost as though you could have done this without our help, since you can control time. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was a trap."

Mephiles completely ignored Blaze, and began to pace dramatically. "The Day of Disaster. That was when the Iblis Trigger saw fit to burn this world."

"Iblis Trigger?" Silver did his best Solid Snake impression.

"Indeed. I have records of that day."

Mephiles paced over to the computer and casually slapped the back of his hand against the keyboard. A video came up.

"NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP, NEVER GONNA LET YOU DOWN, NEVER GONNA RUN AROUND AND DE-SERT YOU! NEVER GONNA MAKE YOU CRY-"

Mephiles sloppily pressed another key and replaced the video with online news articles.

"Apologies. Those were… private matters."

Silver and Blaze got a good look at the articles. They detailed an airship crashing some 200 years ago. A mad scientist and, more importantly, the regional monarch had been lost to the flames. Iblis was unleashed shortly after.

"So Iblis knocked down that airship?" Silver asked. Blaze hung her head and groaned, while Mephiles remained static.

"No. This was moments before his birth. The Iblis Trigger, the one responsible… was this person."

Mephiles made another grand gesture, as he pulled out a purple jewel. The jewel showed Silver and Blaze visions of a blue hedgehog. He looked similar to Silver in some ways.

Silver gasped. "So that person… is Iblis's mom?"

"As long as this person lives," Mephiles ignored the question, "the world will remain the same. Forever. I will take us to a time when he was still alive, shortly before the Day of Disaster."

Blaze was still skeptical. "I'm pretty sure that was Sonic the Hedgehog. He's not Iblis Trigger material."

"Oh yes! He is." countered Mephiles. "He is intimately tied with the brink of ruin."

Blaze was silent, but unamused. Mephiles held his hands out, and things started getting brighter.

"Wait, I have a question-" Silver started.

"TIME TRAVEL!" shouted the dark hedgehog. The room flashed white, and all three of them were gone.


(Owww… my head… I feel weird… What happened? Oh right, that guy time traveled me and Blaze to the past! I gotta wake up, Blaze can't worry about me!)

Silver woke up. He found himself in some grass. He was in a lush, verdant jungle. Then, he had a realization.

"Th-the sky! It looks… different! The ground is… soft?" Silver got a whiff of the air. "I don't smell any fires or smoke!" He got a look around. "No ruins or fire… I've never seen so much green in my life!"

Silver got up onto his feet and got another look around, though now with a huge smile.

"… The past rocks!" Silver started walking forward. "Man, Blaze, can you believe what we've been missing?" He received no answer. "Blaze?"

Silver stopped and looked around. The realization hit him like an anvil.

"Oh no! I'm all alone in the past! What do I do? I can't do this, what was I thinking?" Silver lied down and assumed fetal position.

"I'm all alone in a strange place, completely out of my element, and the creepy puppet-walking hedgehog is gone too, I don't even know where I'm supposed to go, I don't know anyone here, and I don't think I like the color green! SOMEBODY HELP ME!"

Put simply, Silver was having an emotional meltdown.

"Okay… deep breaths…" Silver tried to calm himself. "Maybe if I just follow these rings, I'll find something. It's a good thing rings exist in the past!"


NOW LOADING…


Silver was running through a jungle, avoiding robots shooting at him.

"WHAT KIND OF MADNESS IS THIS, WHY ARE MACHINES SUDDENLY WORKING AND WHY DO THEY HATE ME?"

The panic had returned. After a short time, he found himself on the back of a giant turtle.

"SAVE ME, GIANT MONSTER!"

The turtle remained stoic. It slowly swam through the river.


It was eventually nighttime by the time the turtle carried Silver to the opposite end of the jungle. He slowly walked through the forested area past the jungle and into the big city.

"Uh, are you authorized to pass through here?" asked a town guard.

"I… don't know?" Silver responded.

"What kind of answer is that?"

"Uhh… Hey, did a lavender cat go through here? Or a creepy black and gray hedgehog that looked like he didn't know how to walk, and rarely looked at people when he spoke to them? And didn't have a mouth?"

"No."

"Oh…"

Suddenly, there was a loud explosion. The guard ran into the town to investigate, and Silver followed suit.

Fire and robots were everywhere.

"Aw man, this is just like back home! Don't tell me I'm too late! I gotta at least know what a Wendy's looks like before they all get destroyed!"

Silver floated all the way to the top of a nearby building. He gasped.

"I've finally found it… so that's what Wendy's looks like."

Silver took a moment to revel in its apparent beauty. His gaze drifted downward as he saw a blue hedgehog yawning and walking into an inn.

"Oh hey, the Iblis Trigger! That was fast."

To be continued.


Author's Notes:

Here's an introduction to Silver the Hedgehog and his side of things. I had fun with this chapter. The idea with Silver and Blaze is that my version of Silver is a big dork. The kind of dork where you alternate between wanting to cheer him on and wanting to say "dude, stop". Blaze is presented as the straight-woman to Silver's antics. I wanted her to be annoyed with Silver, but I also wanted to show that despite that, they're still friends, she still actually likes the guy. It'd be too easy if Blaze just hated him for his blunders, and I like them being friendly with each other.

Mephiles is an interesting case. The canonical Mephiles is already one of my favorite Sonic characters, just for how cheesy he is (and Dan Green). So I didn't change him too much. Instead, I played up the weirder parts of him, like how strangely he moves. Also he says "Oh yes!" a lot more often. That's an idea I got from the Youtube series, Leet Fighters and The Frollo Show.

Crisis City went on a bit long, and I literally rushed through Tropical Jungle, because certain things need to happen in certain chapters. I had a quota of how much ground I needed Silver to cover, so this is the result. But I think I found a way to make it work. Last chapter, I had Sonic go through Wave Ocean without much incident until certain events, whereas I narrated almost all of Crisis City. This is because I wanted to demonstrate Silver and Blaze's dynamic, as well as show off Silver's powers.

Something else to note, Blaze is aware of Sonic the Hedgehog, and Sonic knows who Blaze is (especially with his fourth wall quirk). I'm not entirely sure at this point of how that'll work out, but don't worry.

By the way, Silver using a street sign as a javelin on Iblis is a reference to MadWorld. And yes, he tried to sound like Reyn from Xenoblade during the Iblis fight. And the chapter title is a reference to how Mephiles could easily talk Silver into his scheme.

Hope you enjoyed, see you next time.