The 30 or so guards burst into the room after finally breaking the locks just in time to see Shadow Rouge and Gear jump out the window and Chaos Control out of there.
"Go ahead and run you 3-foot tall little freaks!" one of them screamed as they left.
"Somebody get a medic in here! Devarius has been shot!"
"I'm fine you idiots, it's not the first time I've been shot, I'll deal with this later. We have more important things to deal with." He said pointing to the still unconscious form of Flare on the ground.
"Hey, isn't that the"
"Yes, it is."
"But he's the"
"Yes I know!" Devarius cut him off "Just throw him in there with the others until he wakes up, then we'll deal with him. And somebody find me Mephi…Sorthyx I mean, he has some explaining to do."
Two of the guards went over and picked Flare up by his arms and dragged him to another building not that far away which held a few holding cells in it, they were not unlike what one would expect a solitary confinement cell to look like in a prison, it was, in a very literal sense, a steel box with a door. It was fairly large though. There was a light hanging from the ceiling flickering lightly as the door was opened and he was tossed rather harshly into the cell and the door closed behind him.
"Flare?" said a voice that if Flare had been conscious, would have been a very familiar voice to him.
:.:GUN Compound, several hours later:.:
Gear and Brockston had met back up with Shadow and Rouge, and they had explained their theory of whatever that happened to Flare years ago might actually be of some very important significance. Gear seemed to like the idea but Brockston was less enthusiastic.
"Do you REALLY think this has that much significance?" He asked
"It very well might." Shadow replied
"Okay but is there any other way to do this?"
"I don't think so, why does it matter so much, we can just come back to one second after we left, so it won't waste any time."
"It's not that I'm worried about, I just don't want to go screwing around with time again, from what you described to me about what happened last time all we got was an extremely confusing time paradox which erased itself and nobody should be able to remember what happened, in my book that means we got off easy, for all we know doing this all again could lead do the destruction of the universe, which reminds me to ask you, how do you remember what happened then?"
"Oh that, that was simple, you see we"
"We don't have time for this." Rouge cut him off "We can explain that later."
Brockston sighed "Fine, if you really think this is necessary you'd better do it quickly and get it over with. But just remember to not under any circumstances interfere with anything, he obviously survived whatever happened to him without help, if you try and help him it might alter the past and I don't want to go down THAT road again."
"You don't have to worry about us."
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I do."
Shadow took out an Emerald and raised it to the sky, after he said Chaos Control it began to flicker brightly and a large circular blue portal opened. Shadow, Rouge, and Gear jumped through.
:.: 8 years ago:.:
The three came out of the portal and landed on the beach at Avalon, it was night and the sky was clear and you could see all the stars out, the moon reflected an iridescent glow off of the water, the dark shadowy forms of several large rocks extending 20 feet high out of the ocean shown far off in the distance. They looked around and Shadow and Rouge noticed that this was the spot where his shack had been when they came here the first time, but here was nothing, and no paths leading back into the forest.
With no leads as to where to go they simply walked straight into the forest, at night it was dark and cold, yet at the same time serene. After wandering around the forest for about 15 minutes they started to see lights emanating from a clearing in the forest. They approached it and crouched down beneath some bushes so that they could see over the top. There were 4 large huts made out of some sort of adobe like material. In the center of the clearing there was a large fire going. To the right side of it there were several adult Echidnas, they were all eating or talking amongst each other, wearing traditional tribal Echidna clothing similar to what Tikal wore. On the other side there were several 6 or 7 children playing around. After looking at them for a few minutes they finally spotted Flare. He had the same fur patterns but he was only about half the height they knew him as. There was something else different about him but they couldn't tell just what, but after thinking it over for a second they realized that it was because there was no scar on his face.
After a few minutes he and a female Echidna who was light blue all over walked over to where the adults were. Just based on the fur patterns you could make a pretty good guess who were the parents of who. Flare's father was the same dark yellow color that Flare mostly was, he was tall as far as Echidnas go and had a gruff, unsympathetic look on his face while he was talking, his mother was a bright yellow color but like him had some patches of red throughout her fur, she seems much more happy and enthusiastic as she talked. Due to the fire and the other children they couldn't make out what was being said, but they could hear his voice, it was almost comical just how much lighter it was than what they were used to.
"Be back soon." Flares mother called out to him as he and the blue echidna went out into the forest, walking so close to where Shadow, Rouge, and Gear were that if he had looked over he probably would've seen them. Fortunately he didn't.
"Letting a boy and girl go out together, at night, alone. Not exactly the best parenting skills." Gear said.
"Gear, he's 9 right now, somehow I don't think that's what's on his mind." Shadow said.
They followed him closely and before long they were out on a grassy hill overlooking the shoreline. Flare and the other one sat down and looked out over the ocean and started talking, you could see the mainland and the coastal cities were lit up completely. They moved closer so they could hear what was being said.
"That world, it seems so beautiful from here, I wonder what its like." The female Echidna said.
"I don't know, but it sure looks neat." Flare said.
"Do you think we'll ever get to go there?"
"I hope so; I'd like to see what it's like there."
"I don't think they'll ever let us leave the island though, and even if we could how could we get there?"
"We could find a way, I want to see what life is like there at least once, this island is too small, I want to see the world."
"Maybe the world wants to see what it's like over here."
"Do you think the people there would like us?"
"I'm sure they would, I mean, why would they want to hurt us?"
A loud gunshot rang out coming from the area of the small village startling Flare and the other Echidna.
"What the heck was that?" Flare said.
"I don't know, it sounded like it came from the village though."
"Well then let's get back there and see what happened, something bad might have happened."
Shadow wondered why they were so puzzled about a gunshot, then he realized they probably had never encountered guns before, which meant that somebody else was here on the island! Flare and the Echidna started running back towards the village, Shadow Rouge and Gear following closely behind.
Flare and the Echidna kneeled down at the edge of the clearing like Shadow, Rouge, and Gear had been doing. They followed close behind but kneeled behind a different bush out of the sight range of Flare.
In the clearing there were several men, each holding a sub-machine gun, except for one who was in the center, he was a tall slim man, he had a black fedora on and wore a black suit very similar to the one Devarius wore, he only held a short .357 magnum revolver. All the other Echidnas were lined up at gunpoint facing the man with the magnum.
"There, now that I have your attention I can do what I was sent here to do."He said
"What do you want!?" one of the Echidnas shouted.
"I was getting to that, my name is Talec, and we are here because we want one of the children, a specific one, and he would have dark yellow fur with patches of red, now we know he lives here but I don't see him here. Tell us where he is." He said.
"Why do we want a kid Talec?" one of the other men said.
"We went over this already, Devarius's "advisor" says this one is going to discover his elemental powers soon, we capture him and use Eggman's machine to copy the powers into our armies, then tell the G.U.N. about him and sell him off. A few weeks later Eggman is going to send us his armies, then we attack and the G.U.N. stronghold, they'll be riding all their bets on their elemental, but even though he will still have his powers, he won't be able to fight off an army of elementals with his same powers, we'll overthrow the G.U.N. then the world."
"Devarius was behind this, that's what his plans are!?" Shadow thought
"How do we know the kid is going to be an Elemental, aren't they like one in a billion?"
"Rarer than that, but Devarius trusts the guy who says the kid is going to be one."
"I don't think the G.U.N. is going to like this whole thing were doing here though."
"They won't care at all how we get him; as long as they end up with him they'll be satisfied. But if you really think so we can make up some story about why we came here. Now, Back to what we were doing. One of you tell me where he is now or things are going to get very messy, very quickly."
"Even if we knew where he was right now we wouldn't tell you." Flares father said, a look of sheer defiance on his face.
The man walked up to him slowly and crouched down. "What's your name?" Talec asked
"Thorn."
"Well, Thorn, are you afraid of dying?"
"Not in the least."
"Good" he said getting up and turning around to his men "he dies first."
Several of the men advanced on him, their guns trained on his head. But before they could fire he jumped back and grabbed one of them by the arm, he swung him around and threw him into one of the other men, causing them both to drop their guns, one of them firing a burst of shots as it landed. The last one standing fired his gun at Thorn, who sidestepped the shots and picked up one of the guns off the ground and shot it at him, hitting him in the chest. Just as he turned around to Talec he shot his magnum at Thorn, hitting him in the leg, he fell over gripping at the spot where he had been hit, he accidentally dropped the sub-machine gun he had been holding while doing this. He reached over to pick it up off the ground but Talec ran over and kicked the gun away and fired the rest of his clip directly into Thorn rapidly. Thorn was dead before the man was finished reloading.
"Well he was surprisingly adept at shooting. Anyone else want to be a hero?" Talec said
Flare was unable to take it anymore, he got up and tried to jump out at the man but was held back by the other echidna.
"Flare what are you doing!?" she whispered to him
"Let me go Nasai, I'm going to kill that man, if it's the last thing I do."
"What makes you think youll be able to do any better than your dad?"
"I have to try, for god sakes he just killed my dad I have to do SOMETHING."
"Didn't you hear what he said, they are going to use you to take over the world, they're going to destroy the place we've always wanted to go if you let them get you, do you want your dad to have died in vain?"
Flare sat back down, still secretly wanting nothing more than to jump out and rip that man's head clean off his shoulders.
"Now I'm losing my patience!" Talec shouted "If one of you won't tell me where he is I'll just have to see if the sound of lots of guns going off brings him here."
Nobody said anything. He walked down the line of them waving his gun around slowly.
"Come on don't be shy. You" he said pointing at the one who looked like Flares mother" you look sort of like the one were after, I'm guessing you're his mother right?"
"Y- Yes." She barely stammered out, obviously still in shock over the death of her husband.
"Are you going to tell us where he is, or am I going to have to kill you too?"
"I…he…uh…you"
"We already told y" one of the Echidnas started to say
"I DIDN'T ASK YOU ONE DAMN THING!" He cut him off "Now, you were saying." Talec said turning back to her.
"We-We don't know… where he is."
Talec sighed "Well then in that case you're all of no use to me." He said, taking out a small metal case and opening it. He pulled out a cigarette and put the case back in his pocket, then pulled out a small lighter and lit up his cigarette, turning his back on them and walking away, before he put the lighter back he held it up as he walked past one of the houses, holding so that it caught the thatched roof of the house on fire. He signaled the others to do the same and within seconds all the houses were burning to the ground.
"If he's going to be a fire elemental, let's get him acquainted with fire." He said in reference to the burning buildings. "We have no use for these animals now, kill them."
"NO WAIT!" Flares mother screamed
Talec motioned for his men to do so and he listened.
"We do know where he is." She lied "He's already discovered his, uhhh fire powers, and he's out in the mountains training with them. If you kill us he'll get a terrible vengeance on you, I'm warning you." She continued, even though she had no idea what they meant by "fire powers".
"Oh, you really are a terrible liar. Well fine then, I'll play along, I won't kill you if you give me 5 good reasons why I shouldn't. Counting the whole "terrible vengeance" bull-shit I guess you're at one. 4 more."
"We didn't do anything."
"Ok ill accept that, 3 more, keep going."
"Killing us wouldn't help you."
"Ok I'll give you that one too. 2 more."
"Well we also…uhhmm, we, well we" she was cut off by Talec pulling out his gun and firing it, hitting one of the others square in the head, and falling over dead.
"You-you said" she started to say
"Oh I'm sorry, did I break your concentration? I truly apologize please, continue."
She was speechless at all that had happened.
"Oh, oh I understand, you were finished, well I'm sorry to tell you but that wasn't 5 reasons. Now YOU will see what happens, when I lay my vengeance upon you." He said raising his gun and shooting her as all his men raised theirs and opened fire on all the others, a few screams managed to be shouted out before they all died, they spared 2 of the children but the others were ruthlessly shot.
"Should we kill these kids?" one of them asked
"Nah, maybe we can use them as bait or something." Talec replied
Shadow looked over at Flare, his expression one of pure anger and rage, then it shifted, his eyes went blank and his head dropped down, he almost slumped over. He slowly raised his head back up and slowly opened his eyes. There was nothing but pure flame behind them, just like they had seen him at Eggmans base. He jumped out and grabbed one by the neck and rammed him to the ground, a blast of flame shooting out from his hand and searing straight through his skull, killing him instantly. The others noticed him there and fired at him, one of the bullets hitting him in leg.
"Don't shoot him you idiots, we need him alive!" Talec shouted
The shot to his leg didn't seem to hinder him at all, he jetted across the clearing and grabbed the one who had shot him by the throat and a long spear of flame shot through his head the way he had killed the other man, but this time he pulled the spear out and held it like a sword.
He dashed over using flame to propel him and sliced one of the men up the middle, he jumped back and saw there were 4 left, 3 men and Talec. He threw the sword at one of the men, hitting him in the chest and remaining there for a few seconds before dissipating, the man falling over dead, then he looked at Talec, even through the fire you could see the look of pure rage on his face.
"Well look who decided to show up." Talec said "You're a little late, but your just in time for the funerals."
"SHUT THE HELL UP YOU RAT-BASTARD." He screamed
While he was focused on Talec he didn't notice one of the men running back into the forest and taking the two other echidna children with him, holding them at gunpoint. That left just one man and Talec against Flare.
Flare flew across and sliced the man through the center diagonally with a blast of flame, Talec took advantage of Flare's distraction and took out a knife. As Flare turned around Talec threw himself at Flare, jamming the knife in the right side of his face. Flare let out a long, agonizing scream as Talec slowly pulled the knife down through his face, as he pulled the knife out it was covered in blood. Flare fell over backwards and clutched at his face, the wound was bleeding profusely and covering his gloves in blood.
Shadow saw Nasai watch in horror as he seemed to bleed to death; she didn't see the man who had run off sneak up behind her. She noticed a noise behind her and turned around to see him smash the butt of his gun across her face, knocking her out, he dragged her unconscious body off with still bringing the other 2 echidnas along at gunpoint he retreated back into the forest probably to a boat or whatever they had gotten onto the island with.
He opened his eyes and saw Talec lunge at him with the knife again, he rolled to the side and dodged the attack, he got up slowly swaying as he did, probably from blood loss or loss of energy after having used so much killing the men. Talec got up and situated himself to attack Flare again. Flare only had enough energy for one more attack, he raised his hand and tried to fire a blast but couldn't, he keep trying but he was too low on energy. Talec started running towards him again, in a seemingly last ditch effort he put his two fingers together and tried to blast him one last time, amazingly the tips of his fingers managed to be a good enough focal point to gather what little energy he had left. He fired one last blast with Talec no more than 5 feet away, the blast hit him square between the eyes, he fell over dead.
Flare fell over unconscious, the houses still burning to the ground in the background, and the area littered with bodies both echidna and human.
"Jesus Christ!" Shadow said, the first one to break the silence after seeing that all.
"Knowing that he was going to survive it all didn't make it any easier to watch. Well at least we know why he didn't want to talk about it, if I had gone through something like that I would never want to think about it again. His parents, his friends… how could they do that so senselessly?" Rouge said in a depressed tone.
"How the hell did he keep fighting after being sliced across the face like that?" Gear asked.
"Well he has proven to be resilient before." Shadow replied
"I'm being serious, there shouldn't be any way someone could take that kind of a hit and keep fighting, that's just unnatural. There's something really odd about him and I'm going to find out what it is."
"Well who knows, but remember what Talec said, he basically explained Devarius's entire plot, but it had nothing to do with an ancient legend, or anything to do with there being other people they were after, they only wanted Flare."
"Maybe the whole legend thing was a trick for Eggman."
"Yeah, did you see that guy who ran off, he came back and took that other echidna Flare had been with."
"Really?" Rouge asked "Well then maybe they made up the legend thing to get Eggman to send them the schematics for the machine, because remember they used the excuse that they had 3 of the 4, or maybe the three they have they are just holding for bait like Talec said."
"Well then for all we know, they might still have his friends there, they could still be alive in the future!" Shadow exclaimed
"Yes, but what do you think he meant by "sell him to the G.U.N." do you think they would really buy Flares entire life like that?"
"That must have been what Mephiles meant by saying that his entire life was up to the highest bidder."
"It's all starting to make sense now, but if Eggman's machine can actually do that, we need to get Flare the hell out of there before they can use it, having him on our side is a great asset, but an army of people with his powers against us would be catastrophic!"
"You're not supposed to be here." Said that same deep, twisted voice they recognized.
They looked over to see the dark crystalline form of Mephiles standing in the center of the clearing next to Flares unconscious body. He had no mouth to show it, but they could tell just by his eyes that there would have been a sick-twisted smile over his face.
"These events don't concern you." He said in a chillingly placid tone. "Why don't you leave to your own time?"
"Mehpiles, how did you get here?" Shadow shouted
"Don't you remember? I can control time, this was a truly fascinating spectacle of my work, I told Devarius to send these men at the precise date and time that they would arrive exactly when he would discover his powers, this little escapade bought me all the time I needed. What you saw was the first use of his powers, quite an interesting spectacle for a first try wouldn't you say?"
"You were the one that sent them here? This was YOU'RE fault?" Gear yelled
"Yes, isn't that what a just said?"
"You son of a bitch, this was low, even for YOU. You didn't have the guts to fight them yourself? You had to send people with guns to do it for you? You're weak; I can't believe we thought you were a threat if you needed help to pull off the most one-sided fight in the world!" Shadow said
"Why should I risk my own safety when I can trick stupid people into doing it for me?"
"I'm going to enjoy killing you." Shadow said
"By all means try, I enjoy a challenge, but I'm sure you'll find your efforts useless, my entire plan has been set in motion and not you nor anyone else could derail it, the only thing left is to get what I need from Flare."
"Why didn't you just take it here, why did you wait for almost a decade?"
"Oh believe me if I could have I would have, but it's not ready yet at this point in time. I won't be ready to take what I need until about, oh say, 8 years from now."
"But, that's"
"Exactly." Mephiles cut him off "That all being said I should go, now that hes in my grasp I have everything I need and it's exactly where I want it." And with that he formed a ball of purple energy and rose up into it, disappearing back to the future leaving the three there staring at the place where he had been.
"We need to get back and stop Mephiles now." Gear said
"Right, let's get going."
And with that they Chaos Controlled back to their own time, they dropped down next to Brockston.
"Well, did you find out anything?" he asked
"A lot of things, some of which I'd like to ask you about." Shadow said
"Huh, what?"
"While we were there they talked about you buying the rights to his life, which synced up very closely with something we heard Mephiles talking to him about, is it true?"
"Look, Shadow, in order to" Brockston began to say
"It's a yes or no answer, is it true?"
"Yes, but only because it was the easiest way to get him from them, they were offering him up, it was a chance to get him without having to fight, to have people die. We only did it because it to stop bloodshed."
"That isn't the point at all, did it ever occur to you that he had no idea any of this was going on, people are toying with his entire life without him even realizing it, what gives any of you the right to buy or sell somebody."
"We didn't force him into it, we weren't making him a slave."
"Yes, actually, you did, and basically you were making him a slave and you damn-well knew it."
"Look Shadow, we were trying to do it the best way possible."
"No, that would have been to go down and ask him."
"He would have said no."
"Well then that's the answer you should have accepted."
"I don't know why you're getting angry at me Shadow, I'm not the one who decided any of this. Look we can discuss this later, but there are more important things right now, did you find anything else out?"
"Yes, we found out that the machine, if what they were saying was right, can't actually take his powers away, but they would be able to copy them into their entire army, it would be like sending an entire army of him against us, even if we get him back here if they do that it won't matter anymore. And Mephiles is directly involved in this, there's something he needs from Flare, and now he has him right where he needs him." Shadow summarized
"Everything is falling apart; if we don't do something fast there might not be any way at all to stop this. And with Mephiles involved this whole thing is probably going to get a lot more complex."
Before they could continue a man came out of the G.U.N. building with and ran over.
"Colonel Brockston?" he asked
"Yes." Brockston answered
"We found something very important, you should come take a look at it."
They went inside and into a room that was filled with rows of people at computers, all analyzing the data they had retrieved from the compound. They went to an empty desk where the man had been sitting, the monitor showed the diagrams of the Locust bots that Shadow had found before they were captured.
"These are the Locust bots you mentioned. It appears they aren't just a new type of robotic infantry, it's a complete new war machine."
Brockston studied the diagram intently for a few minutes and then turned away.
"GOD DAMNIT" he shouted knocking over a pile of files in anger "if he has these… things, running around the battlefield backing his armies we won't stand a chance, we don't have anything to hurt it, but this damn thing has a gun to repel an attack from every angle imaginable. You" he said pointing at the analyst who had found the documents "study these until you find a weakness, anything you can, and report back to me the second you find something."
"Yes sir." He said nervously and returned back to his computer
Brockston looked back and saw that all the people who had been scanning through the data had stopped to listen to his tirade and were now staring at him.
"Don't you all have work to do!?" he shouted and they all snapped back into typing on their computers.
They all left the room and went back outside, they stopped and looked over the city, which was now at sunset casting a bright purple effect over the sky and giving the city a luminescent background glow to it.
An officer walked by talking to one of his inferiors through a cell phone.
"You, officer, tell me how the evacuation is going and you'd better have good news, im not in a good mood." Brockston ordered
The officer told the person he was speaking to to wait a few minutes and he would call him back and hung up.
"Luckily for you I have very good news, since the attack hasn't started yet there isn't any panic and the people have been very cooperative, were proceeding well ahead of schedule, we should have the city almost completely evacuated in 5 hours. Those areas that are already evacuated we are setting up defences." He replied proudly
"What kind of defenses?"
"In the downtown sector since it's all streets and high buildings there it funnels their armies down into rows of about 20 across, in the center of the streets we have barricades set up facing both ends with supply dumps behind the barriers and heavy machine guns set up. Were covering every angle of the street with machine guns and we have enough supplies to last the whole fight, we should be able to fight them off without taking too many losses, the whole center of the city is already finished and were spreading out setting up defenses everywhere as soon as they are evacuated."
"What do you have in the way of heavy arms, I just found out something, were going to need lots of them, deploy everything you can, artillery, rocket launchers, mortars, anything you have, were going to need a lot of heavy artillery."
"I'll inform the troops and get right on it."
"Good, what about hospitals."
"Were having everyone in the hospitals who isn't in any life-threatening danger evacuated, those who are in danger but not too serious are being air-lifted to another hospital, and those who are in the most critical condition are being left here, the entire hospital staff is also staying here, a fully running hospital is going to be very handy in the battle and we've managed to free up a very large amount of space in them."
"Good work, keep it up and make sure the hospitals are have staff ready to take in any injured soldiers."
"I will." And with that the officer took back out his cell phone and began talking to again, as he rounded a corner you could hear him shouting something about artillery.
"Rest up you three" Brockston said "as soon as the attack starts you're going to need to get out there."
"We need to go back and get Flare now, Mephiles told us himself that the only thing he needed was from Flare and he could get it now."
"You can't leave, we need you here, and you're our only hope of taking out the Locusts."
"If we don't then Mephiles will get what he needs, and knowing him that would probably lead to losing more than just the city, more than just the world, his goals are probably the same they were last time, to destroy everything."
"I realize your concerns and you can go help him as soon as you're done here but we need you here now."
"But don't you realize that"
"THAT'S AN ORDER SHADOW, I don't want to hear about any more of this, you're staying here, we need you here, and that's final."
"Yes sir." He said contemptuously through clenched teeth.
:.:Back at the Dead Angels Headquarters:.:
Flare awoke in a foggy state of mind; he didn't feel awake at all, more like as if he was awake but in a dream at the same time. He slowly started to remember all that had happened.
Devarius
…
Sorthyx
…
Project Phoenix
…
Mephiles
He remembered all these little parts but couldn't string them together for a few minutes. But then all at once it all hit him like a ton of bricks, the last thing that went through his mind before he had been knocked out was the place he had heard Mephiles's voice from before.
It was the voice he had heard in his nightmares.
"Don't you remember what the humans did to you?" he heard in that same, deep, twisted voice.
Instantly his eyes shot open, he looked around but saw nothing but darkness in every direction. He kept looking around but saw nothing, he looked back where he had been facing originally and saw the dark form of Mephiles standing in front of him.
"Mephiles!"
"Obviously you don't considering your working for them."
"What are you doing, where are we?"
"What happened? You used to be so… angry at them, at everything they took from you."
"…"
"You know Flare, you remind me a lot of somebody."
"Who?"
"You remind me a lot of Shadow."
"Shadow? I have almost nothing in common with him, and will you tell me what's going on here?"
"Really, you don't think you have anything in common with Shadow? Let's examine the similarities, you're both hot-headed, your both powerful, and what else…oh that's right, humans took everything from both of you when you were young, and now your both working for them."
"What do you mean "had everything taken from us"?"
"Oh surely you remember what I'm talking about with you."
"Of course I know what you're talking about, but what do you mean with Shadow?"
"Oh he didn't tell you? Hmmmm, not really all that surprising actually, considering how much he hates you."
"What!? He doesn't hate me, hell he let me move in with him, I've been living with him for weeks, we've been on missions with each other."
"All technicalities, he only tolerates you because he has to work with you, in truth none of them actually care for you at all."
"What makes you so sure?"
"Why do you think they left you behind?"
"They left me behind?"
"Yes, after you were knocked out they dashed out and left, leaving you here with us, they probably made up some story like they forgot you here or something so that if you ever got back they would have an excuse to tell you."
Flare wanted to say something to disprove this but he couldn't think of anything, maybe they actually didn't like him.
"But back to the topic of Shadow, you see when he was young… this would actually be easier to show you then to tell you."
As he said that the blackness all around faded out and slowly the hallways in the Space Colony A.R.K. appeared, there were bright red lights flashing and alarms blaring.
"Where are we?"
"This is Shadows memory of what happened here, this is where he was "born"."
Before Flare could ask any more he saw Shadow running down the hallway holding the hand of a small girl behind him, they were being chased by a group of G.U.N. soldiers who were gaining on them. They got into an observation deck but it was a dead end, they looked back to see the G.U.N. soldiers blocking the exit, one of them raised up a handgun, aimed, and fired.
"Maria!" Shadow screamed
Mephiles snapped his fingers and the entire thing froze then faded back to black.
"You see" Mephiles said "You aren't the only one with a troubled past Flare. Not only did Shadow have everything taken from him, but it was taken by the people he's now working for. You see you and Shadow really aren't all that different. What happened to you two? You should be taking your vengeance on the humans not doing their bidding."
"Well I can't blame all of them for what a few of them did."
"Why not, the truth is the humans are a stupid and violent race."
"I'm not going to kill all of them, I don't even want to, that sounds like something you want to do but you're just too scared to do it yourself."
"Maybe you need a little reminder of what they did to you. I can take you back to yours too."
"NO! I remember it fine enough, the last thing I need is to live it again. Look what are you here for what do you want from me."
"Did Shadow ever tell you my story?"
"Yes."
"Well then you know who Iblis is then right?"
"Yes."
"Well here's something you didn't know, just before Iblis was destroyed I used what chaos energy I had absorbed left to separate myself from him, I also managed to save a tiny bit of him and escape to another dimension with it."
"But Shadow told me that he was destroyed, before he was created or something, I don't know it was really confusing but he said that there was no way Iblis could have survived."
"Yes, logically there shouldn't be any way I could have saved him, but that's the problem, time paradoxes aren't logical, and when you add in other dimensions it only makes things worse, I'll be honest with you even I don't fully understand how he survived, but he did."
"So Iblis is still out there?"
"He's alive, but not out there."
"What?"
"When I came back to this dimension he was still alive but only barely, I need a place to incubate him until he was back to his full strength, no synthetic place would do. I needed someone like Blaze, she was able to seal him inside herself because she already had fire in herself, so I needed someone else with fire in them self to seal him this time."
"So…hes…"
"Inside you."
"N-No, there's no way, you have to be joking."
"I don't joke; didn't you ever wonder why you have more power and greater control of it? It's because he's been inside you, having him inside you augmented your powers. And that thing you've done a few times where you lose your mind temporarily and go crazy with power, that is like your version of "Super-Sonic", you're able to do that because there's Chaos energy inside you, it was an unforeseen consequence of fusing him to you, it left you with some Chaos Energy, only a small amount, which is why you can't hold your "Super" form for more than a few minutes and even that tires you out immensely."
"So you're saying my entire life I've been living with this thing inside me?"
"Precisely, but now I need him back, he's fully healed now so I can complete my plan now."
"How are you going to get him back?"
"Using Eggman's machine of course. It's one thing to fuse him to you, but getting you apart I can't do on my own. Don't worry, the machine isn't fully ready yet, there's still a few hours before we use it."
"HOURS!? That's almost nothing!"
"Oh yes that's right, sorry to get your hopes up like that."
"I hate you."
"Yes yes, now wake up, you have a big day ahead of you."
"What do you mean wake up? I'm already up."
"Are you?"
Flare's eyes flew open and he saw that he was in a prison cell; it was metal all over and only had one flickering light at the ceiling. Had that all been a dream?
"Flare?" Said a voice he hadn't heard in a long time
He looked over and saw the light blue echidna he hadn't seen in 8 years.
"Nasai?"
