Tales of Soleanna By K.M. Carroll
Story 7: Unscathed
"Man, I can't believe this is Soleanna," said Sonic. He swept both arms at the ruins around them. "I mean, look at it!"
"I'm looking at these canyons," said Tails.
They stood at the bottom of a canyon as wide as a freeway and twenty feet deep. Ruined buildings lined the canyon walls, rotted hulks of metal and stone. The ground was strewn with lumps of concrete and fine beach sand. Tails knelt and scooped up the sand, letting it trickle through his fingers. "I don't like this, Sonic. It's like the places floods all the time."
"Maybe it rains?" said Robo Knux, jerking his head at the sullen sky.
"Either way, let's get to higher ground," said Sonic as his spines bristled. He dashed at the canyon wall and ran straight up it, caught a broken girder that hung over the edge, and pulled himself up. Tails spun his tails and flew after him. Robo Knux pulsed his jets and followed.
"You sure there's a chaos emerald around here?" said Sonic.
"Positive," said Robo Knux. "I was trying to gather them all for a while and I still have the software. It's about half a mile away." He pointed toward the red glow in the distance. "That way."
They picked their way through mounds of concrete, crushed wallboard and jagged metal struts.
"So," said Tails, "what's on fire, anyway?"
"Fire," said Robo Knux. "My sensors white out over there. Probably an open volcano vent."
Sonic cast a look at the robot's downcast posture. "I thought you always wanted to watch the world burn."
"It's no fun if I'm not responsible." Robo Knux's green eyes flicked to Sonic's face, then away. "There's nobody around here to terrorize except you sissies. No fun at all." He halted and held up a hand. "Wait a minute. I'm picking up someone else."
Sonic and Tails waited, watching Robo Knux. "What if it's mutants?" whispered Tails. "You know, like in The Day Without Dawn, where everybody nuked everybody and there was all the atomic fallout?"
"That's just a dumb movie," Sonic whispered. "Real mutants would have chaos powers, too."
Tails gulped.
"Over here," said Robo Knux. He scrambled across a mound of rubble to a half-fallen building and heaved a cement slab aside. Beyond it stood a broken door. A hallway beyond it lead into darkness.
"Ruined building, very dangerous," said Sonic. "You go first."
Robo Knux rolled his eyes, but ducked into the hallway. Sonic and Tails followed.
The hallway ended in a flight of stairs. They plunged down three flights, dusty but intact. A greenish light shone up from below, as if electric lights still operated somewhere.
They reached the bottom floor, and followed Robo Knux down another passage. Sonic's fur prickled at the sight of Robo Knux walking slowly, cat-like, without a sound. He must have padded soles to move like that. What was scarier, Robo Knux hunting, or Robo Knux acting sane?
Definitely the latter.
Robo Knux reached a doorway, froze and beckoned with one hand. Sonic and Tails hurried up on tiptoe, and peered inside.
Inside was a room with three computer screens, like in Robotnik's base. Inside was a purple cat, the white hedgehog who had attacked Sonic, and a black hedgehog in a robe. The black and white hedgehogs were talking, while the purple cat stood back a pace, arms folded.
"I am Mephiles," said the black hedgehog. "Pay attention, Silver. The Flames were unleashed by the one known as the Iblis Trigger."
Silver squinted at the black hedgehog, then shifted his weight backward without actually backing away. "Uh, yeah, Iblis Trigger. Who was it?"
Mephiles held out the purple chaos emerald. "Gaze deep into the chaos emerald, Silver. See your enemy."
Sonic pointed at the emerald and raised an eyebrow at Robo Knux. The robot shook his head. He wasn't tracking that one.
Sonic frowned as Silver clutched the emerald and stared into it. Silver was using Chaos Sight without even knowing it. The emerald might show him anything. Besides, that black hedgehog gave off really weird vibes. He sort of looked like Shadow, except for the green eyes. Maybe he was some descendant of Shadow's.
"I see a blue hedgehog," said Silver.
Sonic's hands curled into fists. So this was why that white hedgehog had tried to kill him! The weird black hedgehog had set him up.
Silver turned to the purple cat and begged her to accompany him to the future. She sighed, turned her head and met Sonic's eyes.
Sonic backed out of sight with a jolt of panic. Tails and Robo Knux flattened themselves on either side of the doorway. Had Sonic just ruined the future?
But no. A blast of chaos energy laden with electricity rolled out of the room, exactly like the blast Robotnik had used to transport them.
"They're gone," said Robo Knux.
Sonic and Tails peeked inside. The room was empty. "The cat looked straight at me," said Sonic. "Did she say anything?"
"Nope," said Robo Knux. "She agreed to time travel and off they went. Say, since this is the future, do you think they're already in our time?"
Sonic stepped into the room. "Yep. Silver already tried to kill me once."
Robo Knux and Tails followed him. "He did?" said Robo Knux. "And I missed it? What happened?"
"I was there," said Tails through his teeth.
"You?" said Robo Knux, flashing Tails a scornful look. "What'd you do, distract him with your tails?"
Tails's eyes matched Robo Knux's scorn. "I'm a kitsune, dingbot. I made an illusion of a dinosaur and sent it after him. He ran for his life."
Sonic studied the computer screens. "Look at this, guys. This Flames of Disaster stuff. It happens, like, three days after the Festival of the Flame! A volcano erupted right under Soleanna's business district. Princess Elise died first." Sonic's voice dropped to nothing and his spines drooped. "Wow, this sucks. And I'm supposed to be the one who sets this off?"
"Dude, you totally need to find out how," said Robo Knux, punching buttons. "I want to be there! Except for the part about Elise. She can't die."
Sonic blinked at Robo Knux. "Wait, did you just say that there's one person on the planet you don't want to kill?"
Robo Knux looked at Sonic and his hands froze on the keys. They stood there, staring at each other without moving a muscle.
"What?" said Sonic.
"I love her," said Robo Knux.
Sonic shot Tails an incredulous look, and folded his arms. "RK, I hate to break it to you, but you're a robot. Robots can't love anybody."
Robo Knux stood still for a long moment without speaking. Finally he said, "I just tried to kill you and the shell kicked in. I'm leaving." He turned and stalked out of the room.
Tails watched him go. "Sonic, I think he's serious."
Sonic scratched his head. "You know ... I think so, too. I've never seen RK act like that in my life."
"Well, this thing's not going anywhere," said Shadow.
Shadow, Rouge and Nox stood beside a collapsed building. It had fallen in such a way that its walls formed three sides of a small sheltered courtyard, with almost no debris cluttering it. In this space lay a robot.
It had an egg-shaped body with a narrow pelvis. Its arms attached to the body in enormous shoulder joints that housed missile pods. Its legs were shorter than the typical Robotnik design, thick and strong. The letters "E-123 Omega" gleamed on its chest under a thick layer of dust. Its eyes glowed a dim red.
Shadow had picked up the robot's signal, and they'd detoured to investigate it. Shadow rapped his knuckles on the flat metal head. "I can't get through. He says he's in standby and will awaken on a timer."
"Am I in there?" said Nox. Once again in his lanky bird form, he gazed at the robot with misty eyes. "Omega was my robot."
Shadow leaned his head close to Omega's red eyes for a second. "Nope, no pilot registered. Good thing, because you'd be dead."
"How strange," said Rouge, brushing dust from the robot's chest. "How many Omegas were there?"
"At least two," said Shadow. "The last of the E-100s and extremely lethal. Who knows how this one got here?"
Rouge smiled and trailed a finger down Nox's back. "You remember dancing in the fire?"
"Trapped in this machine, yes," said Nox. "Ah, those were the days. Remember all the stuff I blew up?"
They left the courtyard and made their way down a fractured street toward the red light in the city's center. Rouge's spirits flagged. All this devastation, and not a living soul anywhere. What a dismal future. Was the rest of the world this way?
They turned a corner and heat scorched their faces. Rouge threw up both arms. "Goodness!"
A fissure lay across their path, slicing through the road and several buildings. Heat radiated out of it, making the air shimmer. Orange lava bubbled beneath a black crust.
Nox looked over the edge, unaffected by the heat. "Nobody fall in."
"You think?" said Shadow. "Come on, this way." He led the way along the fissure's edge toward the fire's heart.
"And why are we going toward the volcano?" said Rouge. Admittedly, the heat felt good after walking so long through the chill of the dead city.
"To see what's causing it," said Shadow. "If it's a volcano, fine. But it might be something else. Mephiles was awfully happy about sending us here."
Rouge watched her footing for a while. Many cracks snaked away from the fissure, and slabs of pavement shifted as Rouge set foot on them. This whole city was a death trap. She hadn't even seen any skeletons, but after two hundred years, there probably wasn't much left. It was amazing so many buildings were intact, really. Maybe it was the obscene amounts of chaos energy in the area.
The light increased suddenly, and Rouge looked up. A dozen yards ahead, the fissure joined the central caldera, which seethed with lava a few feet below the level of the road, bubbles bursting and throwing globs of burning rock five stories high.
Shadow stood on the edge, one arm raised to shield his face from the scorching heat. Nox stood beside him. Shadow backed away several steps, shaking his head. "Too hot."
"There's something alive in there," said Nox. He stretched his neck out over the edge, and flames licked at the edges of his feathers without catching.
"Should he do that?" said Rouge, heart skipping. It was all too easy to imagine the chao-bird slipping over the edge to burn to death in the lava.
"He's fireproof," said Shadow with a half-smile. "Lava would only slow him down a little."
Nox screamed. Shadow and Rouge jumped. Nox stood with wings upraised and tail fanned out, and screamed like a peacock. His cries echoed across the caldera.
"Shut him up!" said Rouge. A horrible sense struck her that they must not disturb the lava, or something might notice them.
Shadow ran to Nox, scooped him up in both arms and ran back with him. Nox shrieked again, and Shadow smacked his beak. "Shut up!"
The lava groaned. Rouge gasped as something rose out of the lava with glowing mud cascading off it. First a long blackened spike emerged, then a head with blinking green eyes, then a massive lava body covered in stone spikes like armor. It reared above them and roared loud enough to collapse three buildings. Rouge clapped her hands to her ears.
"Shadow," said Nox, head sinking to rest on Shadow's shoulder. "Shadow, where are you? I'm lost. I can't get back."
Shadow swore. He dug two fingers into Nox's mouth and forced out the chaos emerald. Nox shrank back into a chao, and Shadow shoved him into Rouge's arms. "Get him out of here."
"What about you?" said Rouge, watching Shadow shift the orange emerald from his living hand to his robot hand and back.
"I'm the distraction," said Shadow with a grin. Then he vanished.
Rouge fled the lava monster, fluttering her wings to clear the most treacherous spots. Nox lay in the crook of her arm, eyes wide. "Snap out of it, Nox," Rouge said.
Nox's mouth moved, but no sound came out.
Behind them, the monster moved and something crashed with a screech of metal. Oh, please let Shadow have escaped that.
She turned a corner and glimpsed Sonic running the other way. He smiled in recognition, then blew past in a gust of chilly wind. Rouge skidded to a stop. "No, Sonic!" But the blue hedgehog was already gone.
"Rouge?"
Tails and Robo Knux hurried up to her. "What's going on?" said Tails.
"A lava monster," said Rouge. "It hurt Nox somehow." She stroked Nox's head, but he continued to stare at nothing.
"Lava?" said Robo Knux. "This I gotta see." He ignited his jets and shot skyward.
Tails rubbed Nox's paws. "I bet Shadow's ticked off."
"He's fighting the monster, yes."
"Can I take Nox?"
Rouge passed the limp chao to Tails, who cradled and stroked him. "Poor Nox. You're with Tails and Rouge now. Can you hear us?"
Nox didn't respond.
The monster roared in the distance. Somewhere overhead, Robo Knux laughed.
Tails sat down on a chunk of asphalt and laid Nox on his knees. His ears flattened as he held his hands over Nox, and after a moment, blue light flickered out of his palms.
"What on Mobius are you doing?" said Rouge. She paced back and forth, expecting a wave of lava to crash through the ruins any second. Why hadn't she stayed to help Shadow and Sonic? But what could anybody do against an eight-story monster made of molten rock?
Tails didn't answer. He placed a hand over each of Nox's eyes, and light welled out from between his fingers.
Nox made a strange, shivering whine. Tails pulled his hands away, and the chao blinked up at him. "There," said Tails, beaming. "That brought you back, didn't it?"
Rouge knelt beside them. "Nox, are you all right?"
Nox sat up and looked around. "Hi Tails, hi Rouge. Where's Shadow?"
"He's fighting the monster."
Nox leaped off Tails's lap, hit the pavement, then realized he wasn't a bird anymore. "Where's my chaos emerald?"
"Shadow took it," Rouge said.
"No!" Nox cried. "I touched the monster's mind and it sucked me in. His name is Iblis. He's trapped and he hates everything. He'll kill Shadow!"
Rouge scooped up Nox again. "Sonic's helping him, don't worry."
Nox sat in her arms, staring toward the noises of battle, tiny ears pricked. Rouge looked at Tails. "How'd you heal him, anyway?"
"Oh," said Tails, looking down, "I didn't heal him. I just gave him some of my life force. Kitsunes can move their life force around, and I had the idea that he needed a little to bring him back."
Robo Knux's jets roared overhead, and he slammed to the ground a short distance away. "They're coming back now. Get ready to run."
Shadow and Sonic appeared in two sparkles of light, Shadow gripping the orange chaos emerald and Sonic the green. "No, I had it first," Sonic snapped, spines bristling.
"I'm the Ultimate Lifeform," snarled Shadow. "I should possess the ruling green."
"Boys," said Rouge, pointing as a glob of lava the size of a boxcar punched through a heap of rubble and set it on fire. "You need to do this elsewhere."
Sonic grabbed Tails and Robo Knux, and teleported. Shadow grabbed Rouge's shoulder and followed.
They reappeared on the ridge above the city near Robotnik's base. Shadow turned his back on Sonic and picked up Nox. "Are you okay?" Shadow whispered.
Nox nodded. "Tails helped me. Can we go home now?"
Rouge watched their exchange, but said nothing. For a second, she'd seen a tender look on Shadow's face as he stroked his chao's head. Shadow was capable of emotion. Rouge's heart warmed a few more degrees toward Shadow.
But the moment passed. Shadow turned to Sonic. "For this to work, we have to be synchronized. Form a chain."
"I was about to say that," said Sonic through his teeth. But everyone laid a hand on the nearest person's shoulder or back. Sonic and Shadow stood at the center, and locked hands as if about to arm wrestle. They glared at each other for a second. Then they nodded and said in unison, "Chaos control!"
The world froze around them. Shadow counted to three under his breath, then he and Sonic said, "Chaos shift!"
Reality shattered.
Rouge gasped. Shining fragments of the world floated past like broken glass, most showing views of the ruined city.
"Wait," said Shadow. "Nobody move."
The shards floated wider and wider apart, and new shards appeared. Jumbled scenes from their lives drifted by, past and future, spinning and shining.
"There," said Sonic. "There's some from the Festival of the Flame."
"Close enough," said Shadow.
Sonic, Tails and Robo Knux touched the shard and vanished into it. Rouge fluttered toward it, but hesitated. Shadow hovered beside a shard of the ruined future-city, gazing into it. "Shadow?"
He waved a hand at her. "Go on. I'll catch up."
Rouge touched the shard, fell through and barely saved herself from landing face-first on pavement.
The orange chaos emerald plinked to the ground beside her. Rouge picked it up, then climbed to her feet. "Shadow?"
She stood on a quiet street in Soleanna, surrounded by houses built of yellow stone. Sonic and the others must have landed elsewhere, because they were nowhere in sight. Neither was Shadow.
Rouge looked at the emerald, eyes widening. "He's stranded back there." She flared her wings and walked in a circle. How could she help someone two hundred years in the future, on the far side of a catastrophe? She'd have to hide the emerald somewhere Shadow could find it and get a message to him somehow. But how? She needed a time capsule or ...
A time capsule. Rouge stood still and grinned at nothing. Of course.
She touched the communicator in her ear. "Rouge the Bat here."
"Acknowledge," said her handler.
"What's the date?" said Rouge.
"June fourth, Sunday evening," said her handler.
Rouge nodded. She'd returned to the proper time. "Thanks. Now, what can you tell me about a robot called E-123 Omega?"
