Desire for Chaos
by Dark Mrowlidash
chapter one: unknown
Flashes of air and urban landscape spun wildly before the chained creature. The light blue air felt razor sharp as he sucked it into his lungs, gathering just enough energy to fling himself at the helicopter window. The combined impact of the metal bindings and his raging body shattered the glass, and he tumbled out, barely managing to catch the landing rails with his feet.
He flung the chains from around him, flipping upward to a more stable position on the rail. The air was heavily saturated then, with the shouts of the military officers who felt compelled to re-capture him. He heard their frantic yelling only as noise, however, as he dug his gloved fingers into the side of the helicopter.
Ripping a sheet of metal off the outside body of the aircraft, he positioned it beneath his feet. The military realized too late his intent, and their plans for how to knock him back into the helicopter from his supposedly stranded position on the rail dissolved, much as he did, into a blur.
The blue blur fell into the city, the sheet of metal becoming his transportation as he tore down the streets...
His eyes darted furiously, a sign sped by, then a pedestrian, then an incoming car came into his field of vision. He dodged it fluidly, his movements were perfect. An unnatural perfect.
"My body... it feels heavy. How can I run? I shouldn't be able to move like this.." the thoughts flickered across his mind, but afterward he was running faster, he was evading the various city vehicles so effortlessly that he was permitted to slip back completely into thought.
"I don't know where I'm going... I know this city. I need to keep going, it's like I'm being drawn. Why can't I slow down? I have to make it to... where?"
For a half-second, he tempted himself. The image of a new route sprang up in the back of his mind. He toyed with the possibility of defecting from his path to the unknown, favoring taking a more familiar street, of getting out of the city right now.
That was obviously a mistake. The barest outline of that plan in his mind sent a boiling feeling through his body. He audibly growled.
"I.. can't stop. I can't go anywhere else!"
The longer he ran, the more he tuned into his body. Realizing himself largely unaware of the recent past, he came to the rough conclusion that GUN, his former captors were involved in whatever was driving him onward.
His suspicions strengthened immensely as a GUN military truck materialized behind him. He faintly wondered how he was just noticing it, but it jolted into a sudden burst of speed and he was forced to run faster. He couldn't get run over by a truck, he had to get to his destination! Slightly worried that he hadn't chosen his physical safety over his arrival at the unknown point in the city, he blocked all thought as he worked his legs. There was a low overhang ahead, and the truck, which showed no sign of slowing, would not be able to chase him once he was past it.
Leaning forward, he forced himself into a desperate sprint. The overhang was so close, but it was the other side of the overhang that appealed to him. Whatever he was chasing, was there...
Thrown from his feet at the truck's groundbreaking collision with the overhang, he twisted in the air, and landed with a crunch on the pavement. He wasn't injured, but his body was burning. He'd become instantly hot, like fire was surrounding him, closing in and consuming him. He was almost convinced he could smell burnt, melting fur.
"This is GUN BIG-FOOT, proceeding with orders," came a mechanical voice in front of him.
It had to be GUN's doing! They had screwed with his body, after their outrageous claim that he'd robbed a bank, of a Chaos Emerald... those were the only memories he could drag forth. Whatever happened between his arrest and his escape from the helicopter was misty, obscure.
The mechanical voice said something else, he hadn't heard it, but then a barrage of bullets sprayed in his direction. He dodged them before he processed what they were, launching into battle as if he was born for that purpose alone.
His body began to ache relentlessly. Even as he engaged in attack after attack, he couldn't defeat the robot fast enough. It was well-armored, it was evading...
His eyes stretched wide as a lancing pang of pain flew down his spine. He gathered, with some newly acquired sixth sense that something.. something that could relieve him was close.
...It was taking too long! His concern about not harming the robot's pilot vanished. No longer did he have to aim, to pinpoint the location of his body's impact during homing attack. The robot, the pilot, and anything else that dared appear, were obstacles to be removed--to be destroyed.
"Aaarhhhhh!!!"
Jumping, he curled into a rolling blue sphere of energy, that instantly after forming, smashed into the side of the robot. The force caught it in mid-step, its bullets useless as it tipped and clanged against the paving.
He landed next to it, curling into that same energy ball on the ground, pulling power from the air, to his spines, to his skin and his muscles... letting it flow freely through him, and at its peak, with a light flash, he released all of it. The robot was pulverized by the weight and force, and it had been driven a small distance into the ground.. before it caught fire, and exploded violently, filling the air with the smell of metal and fire.
In this red, smoky haze, he turned toward the sky, eyes red, bulging. Something else was here.
Standing on top of a building, was another hedgehog like himself. His eyes weren't actually seeing it, he doubted his eyes were seeing anything, crammed full of smoke-agitated tears and dust, not to mention it was as black and red as the air around him.
Before he could start to use his mind, to perhaps create a partial identity for the strange hedgehog, and align him with his enemies or allies, the creature started speaking to him.
"So, you're the one they picked up... I should be thanking you, you're distracting them for me. But there's no need for me to thank you... when you're nothing compared to me... I guess now, I've lost all my faith in the military. How did they get us confused? Someone as great as me, and someone as weak as you? You're nothing more than a fake!"
"Who..."
He should have been insulted. He was... but not enough to even finish his demand for identity. He didn't care who the dark hedgehog was. He knew the only thing he needed to know about him. He had discovered it, and was rediscovering it with every step he took closer to the building he was perched on.
He made the pain, the unbearable scorching pain that felt like it would tear him apart from the inside... calm to a dull throb, a weak reminder, like a healing wound, not painful anymore, but still injured... The feeling was desirable. It was no cure, it was a treatment for his symptoms. Either way, he wanted to remedy the situation that had befallen his body, and he was in the air with speed he hadn't reached even when running from the truck.
The black hedgehog lost his balance, tripping backward in his attempt to get away. He must have been so shocked by his sudden advance, that he didn't prepare for any sort of movement.
The blue hedgehog's balance was lost as well, though purposefully. He flung himself forward, reaching, grabbing outward. He needed relief, and this dark, red, sinister looking creature was practically radiating it.
No.. he was radiating it.
His fingers were close, he could just feel the coarse black fur through them, he was going to seize a handful of the dark waves, he was going to pull the other hedgehog closer, and feed on his energy...
"Chaos Control!" the black animal shouted, meeting his gaze.
His red eyes were stretched open with an astonished fear. He looked for an instant, cornered, frightened, in need of escape.
Only an instant. After the last lingering sound of the word 'control' had slipped from his lips, he flashed brightly, and disappeared.
The flash caused the surging blue creature to shut his eyes tightly, but there were tangible waves of soothing relief rolling off the energy burst that the flash originated from. It briefly felt so good, and his legs buckled, he sunk to his knees as he allowed himself to absorb.
Over all too soon, he felt the last, dying waves lick against his skin... and upon opening his eyes, he was suddenly aware that there would be no more.
The black hedgehog was gone.
Instead of his presence, he now detected the arrival of more GUN soldiers. New helicopters hung low in the sky, and new robot walkers pounded up to the building. His body was aflame again. The only object he knew of capable of calming him, could be anywhere, and most likely, from he way he was feeling, far from his current location.
Armored GUN soldiers descended from the helicopters. He faced them with his teeth bared and his fur on end, but they rushed in regardless.
He executed a series of homing attacks, armor and skulls alike shattering, metal and bone and blood merging with the building's roof, but he could not escape. Eventually, he was without energy, and a few of the fresher soldiers grabbed his arms, dragging him off. He bit and kicked and snarled in the most primitive way he was able, in a way he had long forgotten.
It did nothing to help him. Despite his struggles, he was bound once more, and being shoved into the back of another, more heavily fortified helicopter. He tried to cling to the door, the outside air was electric, but the inside air was lifeless--it was death either way, or felt like it, but he had to be free! He had to run, he had to escape, back into that maze of a city...
He needed answers. He needed to know what had happened to him. His captors knew both of these and more, he suspected.
But at the moment, he didn't want either of those.
As the last glimpse of the outside world gave way, as he was shoved into the helicopter's hold, he released a roar from behind his teeth, his ferocity activated by his realization that there was only one thing he wanted. He needed...
Black and red flashed through the vision he had beneath his eyelids...
