Chapter 6: Attack of the Entity of Tar

On a hot sunny day, a flock of Pelliper were soaring high above the coastal waters of the Emerald Coast alongside a small flock of Wingulls. Down below the bird Pokemon, a large luxury ship streamed through the water at high speed. Several passengers stood aboard the ship: Sonic, Tails, Amy, Cream and Cheese, Brash, Latias, and Riptide. They were all headng to the center of the Emerald Coast to find a chaos emerald that was rumored to be in the water's depths. The shiny Buizel, Riptide, was standing at the nose of the ship, leaning forward to enjoy the wind brushing against her fur and the splashes of the ocean sprinkling against her body. To her, it was wonderful since she was a water Pokemon.

Meanwhile, inside the ship's deck, Latias and Cream were sitting at the edge of the mirror, peering into the underwater world through the glass.

Latias pointed to each Pokemon that were swimming into the mirror's view and named each Pokemong that appeared, "The dark blue shark with the yellow star there is a Sharpedo, the blue jellyfish with the red rubies on their heads are Tentacools, the large mantarays with circles on their wings are Mantines, the seahorses are Horseas and Seadras, and..." The Eon Pokemon looked around for other Pokemon she didn't identify, until she saw a pink eel-like creature, "And that's a Gorebyss."

"You sure know a lot about water Pokemon, Latias." Cream said happily, looking to Latias.

"Chao chao!" Cheese chimed in.

Latias nodded to Cream and Cheese with a smile, "Well yes, I've seen a lot of Pokemon from my world, most of them I grew along with."

"This is the spot, you guys. We're here." Tails announced aloud from above deck.

Perking up, Cream, Cheese, and Latias looked upwards before they looked at each other and quickly made their way to the stairway. Once outside, they saw Amy, Chris, Tails, Brash, and Sonic standing on the right side of the deck, looking down at the water.

"The chaos emerald is somewhere in the ocean below us." Tails said, looking over to the water before looking at the radar.

Riptide responded, "Then let's go already."

"But what about Sonic?" Chris questioned, "He can't swim in the water, not to mention, he'll sink like a rock."

Amy smirked, "I think I have a solution." She looked over at Riptide and her smile slowly stretched into a sly and devious grin...

Minutes later...

"You gotta be kidding me!" Riptide snarled aloud. She now had a harness around her chest that was connected to another harness that was around Sonic's chest.

Amy smiled, "It's a perfect idea. Since Sonic can't swim well in water, somebody has to help him guide him through it, someone swift and cunning that can navigate through water. And you fit the description."

"There is no way I'm gonna be stuck with him!" Riptide retorted viciously, "He'll slow me down!"

Amy glared venomously, "It's that, or you'll suffer the wrath of my Piko Hammer!"

Riptide snarled softly at Amy, then angrily crosses her arms and turned away from Sonic, who seemed a bit confused at the Buizel's reaction to guiding him through the water.

Tails looked to Brash and asked, "Don't you need an oxygen device, Brash?"

Brash shook his head, "No thanks, I'm a water Pokemon. I breathe underwater, so does Riptide and Latias."

"Good luck, guys." Chris smiled, "I'll wait for you guys here. It shouldn't take that long to look for that emerald."

"Hey, Riptide, why don't you ignore that you have the harness on you?" Latias asked curiously, hovering beside Riptide, "It might help."

Riptide perked up at Latias' idea, then slyly glanced at Sonic and then turned to the far edge of the boat. "All right." The shiny Buizel smirked mischievously, then she suddenly took off running on all fours across the deck of the boat in a burst of speed.

As Sonic looked at the line connecting to him and Riptide, he widened his eyes right before he was yanked and pulled swiftly across the deck of the boat by Riptide's suprisingly burst of strength. He yelled when he saw the shiny Buizel leap over the deck and splashed into the sea, also dragging Sonic towards the water as well. The blue hedgehog tried pulling Riptide back to slow her down, but it was no use. With a final yell of distress, Sonic plunged into the ocean and was pulled underneath the water's surface. Fortunately, before he was plunged into the sea, Sonic managed to put on his oxygen device in his mouth to breathe underwater. The blue hedgehog opened his eyes slowly and found himself being pulled through the water by Riptide, who was now swimming fluidly through the open water.

Shortly afterwards, Brash dove into the water from the edge of the boat and swam after Riptide and Sonic into the deep, followed by Tails, Amy, Cream, and Latias.

Once they reached the ocean bottom, Tails looked down at his radar again and spoke out, "The chaos emerald's nearby, you guys. It's probably somewhere in the ruins here."

"Then let's check it out already." Riptide urged, "The faster we get the emerald, the faster I can get out of this harness." She began swimming swiftly towards the ruins, nearly yanking a seemingly distressed Sonic along with her in the process.

Tails, Amy, and Cream glanced at each other before they followed Sonic and Riptide into the ruins alongside Brash and Latias.

Eventually, the group explored the remains and old structures in the ruins, which displayed the remains of an old temple that was seemingly submerged underwater for many years where it laid at the edge of the seafloor where a dark and wide, endless chasm laid.

Riptide suddenly stopped in her tracks, spotting something in front of her as her friends also stopped to see what the Buizel was looking at. Several feet away, a cluster of iridiscent lights glowed from the within the depths of the ruins, fading in and out in a rhythmical pattern.

"What are those lights?" Sonic asked.

Suddenly, the colorful lights hovered their way over to the group in a flash, however, their forms soon became that of a fish. After the group examined them, they realized that the light were actually a school of small fish Pokémon. The bottom half of their bodies were light-blue while the top half were black; a purple stripe ran across their horizontal length had small blue pectoral fins, two black oval-shaped dorsal fins complete with pretty purple eyes. Their most notable feature are the pair of caudal fins that resemble a pair of blue butterfly wings with purple spots, which was making the colorful glow on their bodies.

"Finneons." Riptide said, looking the beautiful fish, "A school of them."

Cream looked at the school of fish with wonder. "Their fins are glowing..." She muttered.

"The Beautifly of the Sea." Brash stated, "Because of their colorful fins."

"They're so pretty." Amy remarked.

Rapid beeping emitted from Tails' radar, as a chaos emerald was close by. The yellow kitsune looked down at his device and widened his eyes, "Hey! The radar's going crazy. A chaos emerald's nearby!" However, he tilted his head slightly when he noticed the signal, which was the chaos emerald, moving on its own, "That's weird...it's moving..."

Suddenly, the Finneon started whimpering and backed away from the group while looking around nervously at their surroundings. They then swiftly swam away as if they sensed something coming.

Cream looked at the fleeing Finneon and wondered aloud, "Why are they swimming away? Is something wrong?"

Suddenly, the sea floor began to shake violently, and the pillars of rock that were around the group suddenly snapped apart by the violent earthquake and fell towards the chasm below as if something was emerging from it. Frightened, Amy, Cream, Tails, Brash, and Latias quickly swam out of harm's way, away from the pillars.

Suddenly, a piece of a stone pillar snapped apart by the intense earthquake and began falling towards Sonic and Riptide. The two companions had looked up and noticed the rock plummeting towards them before they quickly leapt out of its way, but the large rock fragment landed on the harness line that kept Sonic and Riptide connected to each other, heavily pinning them to the ocean floor as the earthquake finally settled down.

"Oh great..." Riptide moaned, as she and Sonic saw the rock pressed down on top of the harness line. She tried swimming away, but couldn't and was only stopped in her tracks. Sonic tried to walk away, but couldn't move any further due to the line being pinned by the large rock fragment. As the two companions struggled to get themselves free, they stoppd dead in their tracks when they heard a distant roar coming from the chasm before them. Sonic slowly turned his head towards the edge of the chasm as Riptide did the same, stopping their attempts to get the rock off their harness line.

Suddenly, a large and black, clawed hand lifted itself from the dark chasm and gripped onto the edge of the sea floor; a boney hand was visible through the tar, contained a white, shiny glow gleamed in the center of it. As Sonic and Riptide braced themselves, a familiar large black creature emerged out of the chasm and uttered a gurgling roar of fury to the water surface above, before laying its emerald green eyes on the two companions. The tar entity of destruction, Chaos 1, has now grown massive, its once gooey body of tar having hardened due to the beast being underwater and it doesn't appear to affect him. The white chaos emerald was embedded in its boney hand that was visible through the tar of its right hand along with the line of bones traveling from its right shoulder, its glow gleaming brightly before it dimmed down. Half of its body was visible to Sonic and Riptide while the rest of it was gripping at the ledges of the chasm to prevent itself from slipping and falling back into it.

"It's Chaos!" Tails exclaimed in horror, looking up at the monster.

"B-But...how did he get so big??" Amy asked, gazing up at the tar entity.

Chaos 1 was now focused on Sonic and Riptide, who were pinned to the center of the platform by the boulder, preparing to attack.

Riptide then shouted to Sonic, "Sonic, help me break this rock! It's holding us down!" She took in a deep breath and exhaled a continuous stream of solid bubbles against the rock to make it burst into pieces of the Bubblebeam's attack pressure.

"Right!" Sonic replied, before he began striking at the large rock fragment with his Spin dash move.

As Chaos 1 examined Sonic and Riptide struggling to destroy the rock, it lifted its right hand and placed it onto a nearby platform, destroying large pieces of the structure and caused some of them to rain down around Amy, Tails, and Cream, who were quickly carried to safety by both Brash and Latias.

Chaos 1, still focused on Sonic and Riptide, narrowed its eyes and unleashed an earth-quaking bellow of angered fury at the two companions, causing the platform they were standing to shake violently from the roar's vibration.

Finally, as Sonic and Riptide continued to strike at the fragment with their attacks, the rock exploded into harmless pieces of stone, allowing the two companions to once again move about freely. Seeing this, Chaos 1 raised its right hand and curled it into a fist before slamming it close to the blue hedgehog, almost crushing him before setting its right hand back against the sea floor to rest it.

Quickly, Sonic started running on the seafloor to get a safe distance, but realized he was only running in place and started floating upwards due to the friction of his legs. Chaos 1 noticed this and raised its right hand, slamming it against the blue hedgehog with one mere swipe of its claws. Sonic was painfully flung backwards, pulling Riptide along with him by the harness line. As Sonic tried to recover, Chaos 1 raised its hand again and curled it into a fist before slamming it towards the blue hedgehog to crush him.

Suddenly, Sonic was pulled out of harm's way, almost getting struck by Chaos 1's massive fist as Riptide was swimming a distance around Chaos 1, pulling Sonic along with her. After seeing Chaos 1 place its right hand down, she noticed the white chaos emerald was glowing brightly before it dimmed down. The shiny Buizel's eyes gleamed when she noticed the chaos emerald, then she streaked her way towards the tar entity. Chaos 1 bellowed and raised its left hand, swiping its claws for Riptide, but the shiny Buizel evasively dodged the entity's massive swipe and resumed swimming her way towards its right hand, dragging Sonic along for the ride. Riptide's tail flashed and glowed white, hardening solid, before she slammed her glowing splitted tail against Chaos 1's right hand that had the white chaos emerald embedded on it, striking it with her Iron Tail attack.

Instantly, Chaos 1 lifted its right hand back and screeched in agony, tenderly coiling its claws on its hand before it looked at its right hand to see if it was broken or not. Seeing the white chaos emerald unharmed, the tar entity turned its head back to Sonic and Riptide, shaking its head furiously, before he curled its right hand into a fist and began slamming it against the sea floor around the two companions, trying to crush them. Fortunately for Chaos 1, it managed to slam its fist onto the line that Sonic and Riptide are linked together, forcefully pulling the two hard against the sea floor and painfully slamming them into the sand.

Both Sonic and Riptide quickly rose to their feet after recovering, but when they heard a roar coming from Chaos 1, Riptide quickly jumped to one side while Sonic leapt to the other just in time to avoid another ground-quaking impact of the tar entity's fist slamming in between them before Chaos 1 lifted its hand back up. However, this action caused the two companions to be yanked back by the harness line linked to one another.

As soon as Chaos 1 set its right hand on the sand again, Sonic took this chance to curl into a ball and spin dash towards hand at full speed, painfully yanking Riptide along with him and also slowing the blue hedgehog's speed almost half the speed he normally goes. Though Sonic had enough speed to pummel powerfully against Chaos 1's right hand, causing the tar entity to feel unbearable pain erupting from the damage the chaos emerald had just received. While Chaos 1 was trying to heal its right hand, Sonic and Riptide stood near its each other, frustrated and annoyed by the harnesses they are wearing.

"This harness is slowing us down." Sonic said, glancing down at the harness around his chest before he turned to Riptide, "We can't fight it this way. We'll have to swim at once, go towards the rocks."

Riptide growled to Sonic, "Why should I listen to you??"

"Uh oh!" Sonic suddenly exclaimed, as he turned back to Chaos 1 and Riptide looked up to the tar entity, "Look out!!" He suddenly tackled Riptide to the side as Chaos 1 slammed its fist down against the sand where the two were last floating on, only to see the dark entity screeching and roaring at Sonic and Riptide with aggravation and anger when it noticed it missed crushing them under its fist.

Riptide then finally said to Sonic, "Okay, good idea...the rocks then." She then began swimming away from Chaos 1 while pulling Sonic through the water, leading them both away. Seeing its prey escaping, Chaos 1 grabbed for Sonic and Riptide with its right hand, but the shiny Buizel veered out of the way, making both of her and Sonic narrowly being grabbed the tar entity as Chaos 1 roared loudly with fury when it missed snatching them out of open water.

From a far distance, Amy, Cream, Tails, Brash, and Latias watched the battle helplessly.

Amy suggested worriedly, "We got to do something!"

"Yeah, but what??" Tails asked desperately.

On the other side of the battlefield, a large and blue fish-like Pokémon with a pair of small blue fins was observing the fight from a distance. It had a yellow mask over its eyes and the end of the bottom of their oddly-shaped tail is also yellow. The creature had a lure on its head with two yellow, glowing orbs at the end of it, almost similar to a lure of an angler fish.

The large blue anglerfish growled at the sight of Chaos 1 attacking Sonic and Riptide, as electrical energy began charging up from its two glowing lures and a ray of electricity shot itself from both of them towards Chaos 1, separating itself from the water.

While Chaos 1 was focused mainly on Sonic and Riptide, the surging blast of electricity was streaking its way towards Chaos, and as the tar entity turned its head a little towards blast's direction, the surge of electricity struck the side of its face in a crackling devastating blow. The impact created a large gash on Chaos 1's right eye, making the tar entity screech and bellow in agony and confusion, gently holding the side of its face with its left hand in pain while gently closing its right eye. When it caught a glimpse of the blue anglerfish floating beside a large rock, Chaos 1 blindly punched the rock with its right hand, narrowly crushing the blue anglerfish as it quickly swam out of harm's way.

As Chaos 1 continue to screech in pain of its injured eye, the large rock it punched earlier suddenly fell down and collided brutally against the tar entity's right hand that contained the white chaos emerald, causing Chaos 1 to screech out in agony once more, before it finally slinked back into the water's depths in a blink of an eye, not wanting to receive another life-threatening injury.

Once the sand settled, Riptide lifted her head and shook away the dizziness that lingered in her mind as she was lying against the sea floor beside the fallen rock, before floating back to her feet again. Sonic had stepped forward to see who saved him and Riptide from Chaos 1, seeing the large blue anglerfish swimming its way towards them.

"Who is he?" Sonic wondered, looking at the blue anglerfish.

Brash replied, as he, Amy, Tails, Latias, and Cream swam towards Sonic and Riptide, "A Lanturn."

"Lanturn?" Amy repeated curiously, "You mean like a light?"

"No, no. L-A-N-T-U-R-N. Lanturn." Brash corrected, "He's an angler fish like Pokemon, also nicknamed the Deep-Sea Star in the underwater world of Pokemon."

"Hey." The Lanturn spoke in a voice that of an experienced teenage boy as he stopped and floated before the group, "You guys okay? Anything broken?"

Sonic nodded, "We're okay. Thanks to you."

The Lanturn then sighed with relief, "That's good. I was afraid I might've been too late. That monster was lurking about earlier, it looked like it was searching for something."

Riptide then spoke out, "Hey, this introduction and reunion is great and everything, but shouldn't we be going now? Unless you want to wait for that Chaos thing to come back up, I'd hate to think what it might do to little Cream here." The shiny Buizel glanced at the rabbit girl, who in response, looked at Riptide at what she just said.

"Good idea." Tails responded, "Chaos must be here for the chaos emerald too."

Amy said, "Then there's no time to loose. Let's hurry, and find that emerald before Chaos does."

Lanturn tilted his head curiously, "An emerald? You mean a green glowing diamond?"

"You saw it??" Sonic asked anxiously, "Where is it??"

The blue anglerfish answered quickly, "I know where it is. But..." He looked away a bit.

"But what?" Amy asked.

Lanturn looked back to the group and replied, "It's inside this old temple nearby. I can take you there."

"It is?" Tails echoed, then groaned softly, "We gotta check it out then. It's not gonna be easy though."

Sonic reassured with a smile, "I'm sure we'll find it, Tails. Just stay positive. Now let's go."

Nodding, the group began following Lanturn through the dark murky waters, his glowing lures was the only thing that provided the only source of light for the companions in their time of need to find the chaos emerald before the entity of tar, Chaos 1, does.