Author's Note: Alright, chapter 3 is here folks!
Thank you all for the interest and support you have shown for this story.
hellbentstar06 - Absolutely, feel free to take whatever ideas or pointers you want for use in your own fic.
Mitha Sentro - Sorry to disappoint, but Blaze will not appear in this story. I wrestled a lot with whether or not to include her, but ultimately I decided against it for several reasons. I dont really have a lot of experience with Blaze, and I don't think I could do justice to her character here. I also don't know which of her backstories I would adapt for this. The biggest reason though, was that I already have a wide cast of characters here, and I feel that including Blaze would detract a lot from Silver's story and his interaction with the others.
King Needlemouse - Some major plot points from the game will stay the same, with little to no changes, but there will also be a lot of new twists and turns in periods that the game just kinda glossed over.
Libra-no-ninja9 - Yeah, this definitely isn't a fun period for Tails. And I promise, you'll see what Shadow is up to soon.
But anyway, without further ado...
Chapter 3 - Too Late?
A cool wind rolled over the darkened plains as a glowing portal opened above the grass, allowing a pale figure to drop through. As he landed in a crouch on the ground, Silver the Hedgehog shook off the mild disorientation caused by his passage through time, and took stock of his surroundings.
Wide open flatland stretched out all around him, with nothing on any horizon except the faint outline of distant a mountain range in the west, silhouetted against the last remnants of twilight. He glanced up at the unclouded sky above, filled with the twinkling of thousands upon thousands of stars, and could only stare up at it in wonder. His future home, ruined as it was by flame and pollution, rarely offered a view such as this. He trailed his hands through the tall green grass stretching up to his waist, as he slowly wandered through the new and unfamiliar environment. Comparing the simple beauty of this place with the desolated wasteland that was his home filled him with a strong determination to prevent that future from ever coming to pass.
That was much easier said than done, however. The chaos control he had induced to get here was rather unpredictable when used on such a scale, and he didn't know exactly where, or even when, he was. He could only hope he had traveled far enough back to prevent whatever defeat had been suffered by this Sonic character referred to in the document.
As he turned towards the distant mountains, setting off at a brisk run, Silver's thoughts turned to the ancient parchment tucked into his quills. It had been discovered only a few months before he was sent on this mission, under most unusual circumstances. The ruined condition of the planet had for centuries been causing the polar ice caps to melt away, and what little remained during Silver's time would not last for long. It was there, amid the ever receding arctic glaciers, that the scavengers had discovered the island.
It was a large rocky mass, strewn with the frozen remains of a tropical ecosystem, unexplainable by any natural phenomenon. Weeks of excavation revealed a number of ancient stone ruins, bearing inscriptions written in a language that had long since been lost to the world. The most significant of these ruins was a large stone shrine, obviously designed to hold something of great value. It was at the top of this empty shrine that the parchment had been found, sealed along with a single chaos emerald inside a wooden chest that had by some miraculous circumstance preserved it from the centuries of ice and damp.
Unlike the inscriptions elsewhere on the island, this document was written in plain language, and while not everything that it spoke of made sense, enough was gleaned from it to piece together an idea of just how the world had started down its path to ruin. And with the cause of ruin discovered, a desperate plan was hatched to prevent it.
Just before daybreak, Silver reached the top of the mountain range he had seen upon his arrival in this time. He stopped here, deciding that this was a good place to take a rest and catch his breath after running all through the night. Sitting tiredly on boulder at the top of one of the peaks, he looked back at the wide open plains he had come from, just being lit by the first rays of the rising sun. The absolute greenness of it was astounding to the hedgehog. Tearing his eyes away from the beautiful sight, he looked out to the west. It was still covered in the long shadows of the mountain range he sat atop, but a brightening sky revealed the high peaks steadily dissolving into small foothills, which gave way to a level plain that eventually dropped into the ocean near the horizon. Not a cloud was in sight, except for a distant grey pall that rose up over an area near the coast.
Wait a minute. Thought Silver. That's smoke! And a lot of it! Where there's smoke, there's fire, and if I'm to find this hero, a fire this big seems like a good place to start looking.
With all traces of exhaustion forgotten, the white hedgehog raced down to the west, eager to reach the source of the conflagration. Time passed he drew closer, and with the steadily climbing sun's rays behind him, he could make out the outlines of ruined and collapsed buildings under the smoke, along with a dark mass off to the south of the disaster scene.
Upon closer inspection, that mass was revealed to be a slowly traveling throng of what he presumed were evacuees. Leaving the burning city to its fate, he turned towards the crowd ran faster, hearing their sounds of mourning and weeping carry through the air. Women were weeping as they carried their wailing children across the landscape, and ashen faced men carried sacks of belongings and provisions, staring down at their feet as they treaded onward. The entire crowd was pale, covered in soot and ash, and some were bleeding from various injuries. The hopelessness and defeat radiating from the scene were palpable, and Silver was frozen on his feet for a few moments after he arrived on the scene, staring helplessly at the throng. It looked like a crowd of the dead, endlessly walking in the pale morning light without either destination or hope.
Finally getting his feet to move, Silver approached the nearest of the refugees, a female bird carrying a restless young girl in her arms. "What's going on here?" He asked. "What happened?"
She looked to him with a woeful expression. "It's over now. There's no hope for any of us after today." With a despairing shake of her head, she continued past him. The next several people he asked didn't even respond, a few managing a shake of their heads as they all stared hopelessly at the ground.
With a growing pit in his stomach, Silver approached a male dog, bleeding slightly from a cut on his head as he carried a large sack over his shoulder. "What's going on here? Please, I have to know what happened."
With a despairing huff, the dog pointed behind him at the rear of the group, saying with a resigned tone: "Ask him."
Silver looked where the dog was pointing, and saw a lone young fox, trailing far behind the rest of the crowd. His head was bowed down, and he walked with heavy steps, tears dripping from sky blue eyes as he aimlessly followed the retreating throng. Twin tails dragged along the ground behind him as Silver slowly approached him and, with the most gentle tone he could muster at the moment, asked: "What happened?"
The fox didn't even look up as he answered, his voice filled with despair and grief. "He's gone. My brother is gone. What am I supposed to do without Sonic?"
Silver's blood ran cold as the kit voiced his brother's name, the name of the hero spoken of in the document. It can't be. I can't be too late! He can't be gone already!
"Sonic... the hero?" He questioned weakly, almost fearing the answer.
The kit sniffed, and nodded once, too choked with tears to speak more.
Any other time, Silver would have tried to comfort the poor fox, but right now he was having a mild panic attack. No! How could I be too late?! Why? It can't end like this, it can't! Never give up Silver, Never!
He managed to put a comforting arm around the fox, before asking "How did it happen?"
"W-we were fighting Eggman, l-like we always do..." the young two-tail answered through his tears. "B-but Eggman... Sh-Shadow..." the words trailed off into muffled sobs. The kit took a deep breath, and in an emotional rush he cried: "He told me to run, and I did! I ran and I left him for dead with Eggman and his goons!" With that he collapsed onto the ground, curling his tails around himself as he sobbed uncontrollably.
Silver sat next to him, putting an arm around him and taking the time to analyze what had been said.
Eggman. That's another name from the document. The name of the first emperor. Gloved hands fisted and his mouth twisted in a grimace. He's the one to thank for the planet's ruin. But where do I go from here? Sonic is already gone, how can I prevent what I know has already started to happen?
Shaking his head, the hedgehog reached behind him to pull the ancient document from his quills. Perhaps reading through it again would give him an idea or two. He had almost forgotten about his company until a quiet voice from his side asked: "What is that?"
Freezing in surprise, Silver stared like a deer in the headlights at the sad young fox next to him, who had calmed down and stopped crying as Silver sat next to him. "Uhhhhhh... Nothing?" He said nervously, shoving the parchment back into his quills. He didn't think this kid would do anything bad with the document, but he wasn't sure that explaining his whole mission to somebody he just met was a good idea. The fox, however, wasn't going to give him a choice in the matter. "What do you mean nothing?" He said, managing a weak glare. "I saw Sonic's name on that paper! Who are you?"
Silver sighed as he pulled the document from his quills again. "It's... a long story." He handed the parchmemt to the fox, keeping careful eye on it as dirty gloved hands unrolled it and blue eyes quickly scanned it.
The kit's breathing grew shallow, and his face went even more pale than it already was. "W-where did you get this?" He asked in a trembling voice. Then something clicked in his mind, and he turned to the white hedgehog with a suspicious look. "When did you get this?"
Silver was amazed at the fox's keen intuition, even through his grief, and stared levelly at him as he answered: "My name is Silver the Hedgehog. I'm from over 400 years in the future, where the planet is ruined and life is only hanging on by a thread. That parchment was found in a chest in an ancient shrine on a frozen island in the arctic glaciers, and I'm here to prevent what it refers to, the defeat of the hero Sonic the Hedgehog. Only... it seems I'm too late..."
The fox stared at him, his grief taking a back seat as his mind worked feverishly, staring back and forth from the document to Silver, then back again. Then he stood up, staring at the future hedgehog with a determined look on his tear-stained face. "I'm Tails. Sonic was... is... my brother, and he wouldn't want me to give up like this. We need to take this document to Angel Island. There's somebody there who will be able to help us."
"Angel Island? Somebody to help us? What?"
"You said you found this on an island, in the arctic glaciers?"
Silver nodded.
"I know where this document came from, and I know who wrote it." Said Tails in an urgent voice. "Come on, we have to find a plane or something that can get us in the air!"
"How far away is this Angel Island? Couldn't we just use a boat to get to it instead?" Silver wondered out loud.
"No, Angel island floats through the sky." Tails answered, like it was a completely normal thing for islands to fly.
"Come again?"
"Just come on and help me find a plane!" The fox grumbled as he started walking back towards the ruined city. "I hope there's still one intact..."
"Actually..." Silver interrupted, aqua circles on his hands and bracelets glowing as he rose up into the air. "I can levitate us there, as long as it isn't extremely far."
Tails gaped at him for a moment, before responding. "Awesome! It's a few hundred miles off the coast right now, and about 30,000 feet up..."
The hedgehog smiled. "I can manage the two of us that far. Let's go!" Hands stretched out, a cyan glow surrounded them both as Silver levitated them from the ground.
Tails smiled in wonder at the future one's powers, and Silver was happy to see the young kit's face without grief, if only for now. With a burst of power, he impelled them both towards the coast, leaving a sonic boom in their wake
Within an hour, and with some guidance from Tails, they were within sight of Angel Island. Floating above the clouds, peacefully floating on nothing but air, the lush tropical paradise was unlike anything Silver had ever seen. An impossibly green mass, with several mountain peaks sticking up from its center, and streams of clear water flowing off the ledges. Landing on the island, some 30,000 feet in the air, Tails immediately headed off into the jungle. Silver however, never having seen a floating island before, couldn't resist peeking down over the edge to see the clouds and ocean below, before following the fox into the thick vegetation.
A narrow trail lead them through the verdure, winding its way deep through the jungle and into the heart of the island. There, nestled between the spurs of the mountains, was a large ancient stone shrine. Silver gasped in recognition. That's... the shrine where the document was found! Will be found? Has it even been written yet? Time travel is so confusing sometimes.
As the two reached the foot of the shrine, and were about to set foot on the steps leading to the altar above, they found their path suddenly blocked by a very red, very tough looking, and very angry echidna.
"Tails! Who have you dragged here now? My island is not a tourist attraction!"
Author's Note:
"Here I come, rougher than the rest of them,
the best of them, tougher than leather..."
I can't be the only one who wants character theme songs to come back.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter. Less action in this one, and more setting up the later story. Now we're embarking on the six month period after Sonic's defeat that the game story completely glossed over. I know there are probably more questions about the document that I keep referencing, but they'll all be answered in due time.
Even though this chapter focuses more on Silver, I hope I did alright with Tails, as he was the more challenging here. Starting off as a wreck because he just lost the most important person in his life, but then calming down and being distracted from his grief by a new purpose, so much that he's the one who helps Silver figure out what to do now.
As always, review/suggestions/opinions are welcome, and I'll be back with another chapter in a few days.