Chapter 7: The Fruition of Nega's Revenge
Blaze hurried down her corridor; her heart pounding at the thought of what was waiting for her. To her dismay she ran into a dead end. She yelled out loud at the thought of having wasted this precious time. Before she turned around she noticed a keypad on the wall that was painted white like the corridor. Had she acted hastily, she would've missed it completely.
"It's a good thing I didn't get too hot headed" she thought.
The idea of even trying to find the code was foreign to her. She held her hand up and burned through the pad with her fire, overloading the circuits in the door and causing a minor explosion. The secret door sat cockeyed on its hinges from the eruption and Blaze broke through it with ease. She ran into the dark corridor before her and followed it down a flight of stairs into a laboratory. It was completely dark aside from a few capsules with lights beneath them. She tried not to look in the pods directly out of fear that she may see something horrific.
Just then a lamp turned on above a table across the room. There were various papers and tools lining it with a familiar scientist sitting at the other end of it. He was turned away, lost in thought.
"Oh, it's you Blaze" Nega broke the silence "I was wondering which one of you three would get here first."
"Enough games" she spat "Where is Sonic and what are you doing in this dimension?"
"Patience little kitty, patience"
She growled at the sound of those words.
"Sonic is just fine, but first let's talk business. I'll tell you why I've come here."
Blaze eased her anxiety a bit and folded her arms, watching him closely for any suspicious moves.
"For starters, Eggman and I have been keeping in touch since the first time I came to this world. We were planning a follow up attack on you and all your little friends but we never got the chance."
"How so?" Blaze inquired.
"About a year ago Eggman was telling me all about this new invention he had created. It had something to do with the chaos emeralds but he didn't reveal much more than that. I figure he wanted to wait until he gave them a field test before he got too excited. After that I heard nothing from him for months. It was then that I decided I needed to visit him personally. Stealing the Sol emeralds from you was just as easy as it was before; you really need to consider an insurance policy."
"Get on with it!"
"When I arrived I found his base was in shambles and he was nowhere to be found. I searched the rubble for some time when I discovered a few tattered papers about his final work. He had invented a set of chaos emeralds that were evil. Instead of having a positive and negative energy, they contained a double negative energy which he used to fuel his intentions. With that kind of power, how could be stopped?"
He breathed a sigh and stood up, still facing the other direction.
"I researched this for days but unable to turn up any leads. I had to face the fact that Eggman was gone. Someone as intelligent as him would be able to quickly rebuild his forces, provided he was alive. Something had to have killed him and I wouldn't rest until I learned who it was. A met a new friend, so to speak, when I returned to his ruined home and he filled in the rest."
There was an eerie pause between his words.
"The one responsible for ending Eggman's life…was your friend Sonic the Hedgehog."
"What? That's ridiculous, Sonic would never…"
She felt two gloved hands wrap around her throat and limit the air she could intake. The attacker lifted her from her feet and dangled her before Nega, writhing and kicking in panic. Eggman Nega turned around and walked up to Blaze beneath the dim light above the table.
"I made him a makeshift grave but it did not fill the void in my chest. I vowed my revenge on Sonic and would make him pay dearly for what he has done. But it's not through death I would avenge my friend; no, there are far worse things than your own death in this world."
He reached up and clicked off the light, darkening the room to nothing but the light from the door above the stairs. Nega walked over to it, his words echoing behind him as he locked Blaze in the laboratory with her assailant.
"The Sol emeralds will be put to good use, so don't you worry."
The room was so dark that it was impossible to see anything. The figure's grip tightened and she could see stars crying out to her in the blackness. She squirmed within his arms until finally swinging an elbow into his gut. The attacker broke his hold and Blaze took a second to suck in all the air she could. She clasped her throat and tried to ease her anxiety as she felt her arm is grabbed. She blasted the assassin with a fireball and watched him dance away in pain.
In the temporary light she wasn't able to see his face and worried about what he looked like. Enemies were always scarier in the dark; it reminded her of when she was a little girl again. It was part of the reason she yearned to learn to control fire so badly, to control the darkness around her.
She set fire to several things around her: tables, chairs, and even one of the capsules. The flames gave the room some light but not enough to find her attacker. She looked about frantically until she looked up, watching him stand on a piping fixture on the ceiling. He dropped down with a kick and the speed of a hawk in the night but missed as Blaze tumbled out of the way. He managed to break a small hole in the floor as he fell into the light of the flames.
As he stood up, his figure was made whole again. Blaze shrieked as she looked upon the face of her friend Sonic.
