Things Best Forgotten

Disclaimer: If I actually owned Sonic and co., don't you think you'd be at least paying to read this if not play it in a game? XD

OK, so hopefully before somebody shoots me for taking so long with this chapter, I apologize. I kinda fell back into my old ways of playing video games every spare moment for a couple weeks or so, and, thus, it took far longer then it should to get this finished. As you can tell, though, this story is nearing its end already, with the final chapter and big climax expected (hopefully) to come out on Halloween itself. (It just seemed fitting. XD) Now, please enjoy and review!

Chapter 10: You and What Army?

I almost wonder who's gonna to be crazier by the time this is all done with, Tails or me? Sonic pondered. His high velocity jog had taken him all around the unoccupied surrounding countryside while the stress relieving workout began to take its effects on the mellowing hedgehog. If only I knew what was really goin' on in his huge brain right now… I doubt that will ever happen, though. I can't even understand half the words he uses sometimes when he gets all technical, Sonic regretted, wondering if this was yet another reason he was unfit to be Tails' older brother and caretaker.

With a heavy sigh, the blue hedgehog came to a gentle stop in a large grassy field. I don't know why he's gotta go and make things this hard on himself, though. I mean, sure we both lost some real good friends just a couple days ago, but why would Tails of all people let it drive him insane? He's got the smartest mind of all of us that are left, but now all he talks about is a black hedgehog just like me and some doll that looks like him that goes around eating peoples' souls! Sure there really was that doll that looked like him, but…

Sonic's train of thought was quickly interrupted, however, by a distant scream for help. "Sooooooniiiiiiic!!" a panicked female voice yelled loud enough to be clearly audible even at what must have been several miles distant.

Sonic recognized the voice in a heartbeat as well. "Amy!" Sonic answered in surprise, but with nowhere near the same volume as his feet already began to propel the blue hedgehog towards the noise at blinding speed. He recognized after just a minute the location the pink hedgehog's cry for help had come from, Amy's own house. Determined to arrive in time to save her from whatever emergency had just occurred, Sonic broke the sound barrier and arrived almost immediately with a loud boom at Amy's doorstep.

"Amy! What's goin' on?!" Sonic shouted as he placed his hand on the door to enter the small home and investigate. Movement from behind him, however, caused Sonic to quickly spin around and view the unwanted guest that had to be somehow involved in the problem here. "Eggman! What did you do to her?!" Sonic shouted as he cocked his fists for a quick brawl that was sure to ensue.

The large Doctor was oddly silent for a moment, however, as he stared blankly towards Sonic from his seat in the hovering Eggpod. After an awkward second or two in which he'd normally gloat or laugh in his own annoying manner, Eggman finally spoke up. "I thought her screams might lead you here, so that's why I allowed her a few more seconds before she was… disposed of," Eggman spoke up, in a tone much more malicious than Sonic ever remembered.

"W-WHAT?!" Sonic shouted as Eggman's admission struck the hedgehog dumb. Amy is…? Murder? Eggman murdered her? No, this can't be right! Egghead can't be really killing everyone after all, can he? Sonic debated in his mind while the lack of proof left him swimming in a sea of doubts.

"I even got an extra few as well. It was so nice of you to leave that Chao here for me to finish off that I somehow forgot back at the Rabbit's house, and Rouge was far less of a challenge than I'd thought," Eggman's sadistic voice continued on, now having a sense of mirth with it as he recited all the recent killings and his part in conducting them.

Sonic still couldn't believe it. Eggman was claiming responsibility for all these murders, and he had just arrived too late to stop the latest ones as well? It couldn't be true. But, if not Eggman, then who else? Clenching his fists so hard that his body began shaking, Sonic glared up at Eggman in fury. For a moment, Sonic almost wished that Tails' theory about the soul-devouring doll had been true. At least then, Sonic wouldn't have to do what he needed to now. "Eggman… I am going to KILL YOU!!" Sonic yelled as the sadistic goading and reality of almost all his friends' murders sent the hedgehog's mental capacities over the edge faster than he'd even thought possible. It was one thing to stop Eggman's robots from destroying or taking over a city, but when he'd actually bragged to Sonic's face about murdering those close to him…

"So, the great Sonic the Hedgehog does have a sensitive side, then," the Eggman in the chair before him continued on, undaunted by the frenzied look in the blue hedgehog's eyes that threatened to tear him apart with only a single gaze. "Such controlled anger, now finally finding its release… This is simply intoxicating!"

Sonic completely ignored the strange way Eggman now spoke. In fact, he ignored to even reply altogether as the blue hedgehog dashed up onto Eggman's floating chair fast enough to seem like he'd teleported and managed to lift the obese Doctor out from his seat with one hand on his collar. "You've gone way too far this time, Eggman! And now I'm going show you the consequences!" Sonic growled through his barred teeth as his other fist came forward and pummeled the Doctor square in the jaw.

To his amazement, however, the jaw broke and hung loosely on Eggman's face, but the large human showed no signs whatsoever of any kind of pain. As a matter of fact, from this close to the Doctor's face now, Sonic noticed a great many strange things wrong, such as the fact that Eggman's eyes didn't move, he never took a breath, and his facial expression seemed stiffened and unchanged. It appeared that Eggman was dead already, but Sonic knew that his one blow couldn't possibly have done that. "What on Mobius is goin' on here?!" a still enraged Sonic shouted as he released Eggman's body, only to be taken by surprise a second later by a brutal punch to his gut that threw him clear of the Eggpod entirely.

He landed on his face some few feet away and took a good couple seconds to recover before Sonic managed to get back upright. What he saw when he did look back up, however, only shocked the hedgehog even more. "Knuckles?! But… But how?! You were dead! No, wait, you are dead! So… ARRGGHH!" Sonic shouted as the confusion in his mind now gave the hedgehog an unbearable migraine to go with the fist shaped bruise on his chest from Knuckles' sneak attack.

"Heeee heee hee heee! You should see yourself right now! Such cluelessness and anger! And yet, you still haven't understood the one thing you've known all along," a different voice called out as Sonic looked over in its direction.

To his amazement, Sonic witnessed the same small doll of Tails from before, now floating on its own power in front of the reanimated corpses of the remaining Mobians that it had ethereally murdered, Amy and Rouge now standing among them as a blank eyed Cheese also hovered near Cream and Vanilla. "No… No! You can't be…! This can't be real!" Sonic shouted as reality, the same one that Tails had been promising to Sonic was true and not just crazy, began sinking in.

"Hee hee heee! The only thing unreal here, Sonic the Hedgehog, is that you never believed poor innocent Tails when you had the chance. I still don't see why you didn't eventually, to tell the truth! If he'd never lied like this before, then why would he start now?" the Tails Doll chided Sonic for his disbelief as the creepy stitch-marked smile on its face almost seemed to grin wider. "I had fun tormenting my larger self, I must admit. First appearing all over the house so he would become unsettled, then taking control of his dreams… I was actually quite surprised by the capacity of that young fox's bladder, weren't you?" the doll continued on, its voice seeming almost to laugh as it unraveled the entirety of its own demented schemes.

"You were doing that all along?!" Sonic shouted in surprise mixed with a new sense of seething anger that was now starting to grow.

"No, of course not! I'd never be satisfied for just scaring him enough to change the bedsheets," the Tails Doll replied, only too happy to expound further on its accomplishments just these last few days. "After purposefully falling from Tails' arms where I knew that gullible red idiot, Knuckles, would walk by, I orchestrated that pain Tails had which brought me into lovely Vanilla's home and kept you from stumbling across my handiwork too early. Although, I must admit, the ensuing melodrama once we arrived was entirely your doing and most entertaining!" the doll laughed.

"OK, that's enough!" Sonic replied in a now clearly enraged voice. "I don't care what you are or what you've done, I'm going to put a stop to it now!"

The Tails Doll only hovered in place unchanged, only its voice able to denote the doll's intentions or mood. "You don't wish to hear about how I've used all your friend's bodies as my own puppets? How they can never be returned if I am destroyed? Not even my plans for using them when I come for your precious 'little brother' next?" the Tails Doll asked, seeming like a child disappointed that no one wanted to play with it anymore.

Sonic's rage now boiled over at the final threat. "You leave Tails alone!!" Sonic screamed, now determined to defeat this menace and save his brother so as to have a chance to apologize later.

"Oh no… I'm afraid that Tails is precisely the innocent kind of soul that I need before I regain my full powers and conquer this wretched planet once and for all!" the Tails Doll's voice added as the childish tone dissolved into a demonically low, ominous growl. "And you, Sonic the Hedgehog, will hand deliver me right into young Miles' hands."

"Not in a million years!" Sonic shouted as he dashed forward to spin dash the defenseless doll in half, only to be frozen in place by some strange force as the red gem dangling from the doll's forehead glowed brightly.

"Oh, I've waited longer than that before, hedgehog…" the demonic voice of the Tails Doll continued as it crept ever closer to the immobilized hero. "And now, it is your turn to answer the question all these others have failed. Sonic, can you feel the sunshine?"

"Go to… Aaagghhh!" Sonic began to reply as a strange force now felt like it was ripping through his body, tearing away his very existence as he was helpless to resist.

"Such a bad influence," the Tails Doll only cackled as it painfully and slowly removed the hedgehog's soul from the cobalt body it had once inhabited, replacing it instead with a bit of its own essence. Once completed, Sonic's body once more stirred before standing calmly and unresponsive before the gleeful doll.

"Ah, what a delicious soul! Love, loyalty, and yet a pleasantly quick temper… Much more enjoyable than any of these others so far, except perhaps the young rabbit and Chao. I do hope that my larger self proves better than even these," the Tails Doll now spoke in an anxious manner, much like a child who couldn't wait for Christmas morning and his presents after getting a small one early. "Come now, Sonic, let's not keep your 'little brother' waiting…" the juvenile sounding doll snided as it floated down into Sonic's open hands like a miniature throne.

Wordlessly, the blue hedgehog then turned and led the way to his and Tails' shared home not far away, the other also zombified Mobians following suit.

Tails hoped Sonic wouldn't mind when he came back that all the chili dogs, both his and Tails', were gone. The young fox had seriously underestimated his own hunger in his refusal and outburst before, and there was something to be said about the sense of peace one got from a full stomach as well. I just can't start eating like this all the time now, though, or I'll get too heavy to fly, Tails thought to himself as he knew it would be tempting to make gluttony a habit for coping with everything going on right now. Luckily, Tails didn't really think it would be an issue.

The sudden intruder bursting into his home via the front door at that moment seemed to reinforce the idea as well.

Jumping halfway to the roof in his surprise, Tails immediately fixated on who had entered the small home's living room with him. What he saw terminated any sense of temporary peace and sanity Tails' meal and quiet time alone had given him. "Y-y-you!" Tails shouted as the stranger locked the door quickly behind him and turned back to face the stunned fox.

"Forget my name so soon already? I should be ashamed," the intruder, a black hedgehog with red striped quills muttered. "The doll. Do you have it?" Shadow instantly asked.

Tails was bewildered by the request. "N-no. You came and took it away just earlier, remember?" Tails asked, wondering if this person had some mental problem concerning their memory or something.

"I know that!" Shadow simply shouted back in reply, his voice a bit agitated and frazzled. "What I need to know is if that doll is here now!"

"Of course not. I haven't seen it since you came and took it away," Tails, quivering, quickly answered, hoping a fast response would keep the edgy hedgehog from harming him.

Shadow seemed to calm down considerably at Tails' reassurance, although his ever stern expression remained unchanged on his face. "It was coming here; I was sure of it…" Shadow seemed to mutter to himself, probably deciding that he'd beaten the demented puppet here. "Listen up, fox-boy, you and I are the only ones that realize the true identity of that doll, so we have to find a way to stop it together," Shadow proposed.

"Hang on!" Tails interjected as he finally got the nerve to speak back to the imposing hedgehog. "Ever since you left here, everyone thinks I've gone completely insane! But now, if I show to Sonic that you're actually real, maybe he'll finally believe me and decide to help, too!" Tails suggested, finding the black hedgehog again now giving him hope to convince Sonic of his sanity after all.

Shadow crossed his arms in annoyance at the suggestion. "Is that really as important as stopping a soul-eating monster from devouring the entire planet?" the impatient hedgehog remarked.

"But, if Sonic could help us…" Tails began to debate.

"Forget it. We don't that faker's help anyway," Shadow replied.

"'Faker'?" Tails muttered in confusion at the term.

Shadow briefly explained. "Your friend, Sonic, he looks like me, runs like me, but he's not even close to my level. I'm the Ultimate Lifeform."

Tails was unsure whether to be angry or not at Shadow's unfavorable bias against his older brother. However, Tails knew nothing about Shadow's powers save that a race between him and Sonic would probably be something to see, so fighting over the senseless claim would just be a distraction to them both.

Thankfully, Shadow broke the awkwardness of the moment by getting back on subject. "It will be here soon. We must prepare," Shadow warned while peeking out the front window cautiously, even this so called 'Ultimate Lifeform' now showing signs of anxiety, although Tails valued his life more than enough not to verbally announce his observation.

"Wait! Why here?!" Tails demanded instead as Shadow's prediction gave him cold chills.

"Because you are here. I think it wants your soul more than mine or any of the others, not that I understand why," Shadow gruffly explained while he witnessed the fox's eyes grow in fright and his face turn pale.

"Th-then why shouldn't we just run?" Tails proposed, seeing no reason to fall for the enemy's trap if they knew it was coming.

Shadow only scoffed. "I thought Eggman said you were supposed to be a genius," the hedgehog mocked as the answer to that question Shadow knew was obvious. "You want to just run forever? Wait until you and I are the only ones left on this planet and then try to stop this thing?"

Tails was too frightened to say anything in response. The only ones left on the entire planet?! It can't be that strong! Surely Sonic or someone could… Tails began to console himself as he felt panic now tugging to overtake his rational thought.

Again, Shadow quickly continued the conversation with an air of urgency. "Look, I stole this back before that doll could get to me, too. It's our only chance. You just stand there and let this thing do whatever it wants to, and I'll sneak up and catch it," Shadow proposed the simple, yet hopefully effective plan to Tails as he produced in his hands the sinister chest from which the Tails Doll had now been freed twice.

"Wait, WHAT?!" Tails shrieked at the idea. Sure it sounded reasonable, at least as far as Shadow's role in it all went, but Tails very much disliked the role of playing bait to a demonic, soul-snatching doll that for some reason or another was coming for him next. "I mean, why shouldn't I be the one to catch it? I'm the one that let it out in the first place…"

"Because it's coming here for your soul, not mine. Remember?" Shadow answered with a snarl of impatience at having to constantly remind the fox of the simple fact. "Besides, I'm much faster and stronger. You don't really have a choice."

Tails gulped as he realized that Shadow probably spoke true. As much as he was loath to hand the protection of his very soul to some dark stranger he'd barely even met, Tails admitted there really was no choice. Unless…

"Hey, wait a second! Are you sure there's no other way to do this? One that preferably doesn't have me being the bait?" Tails asked, realizing that for some reason up until now he'd never questioned Shadow's authority on the matter despite the fox having no clue whether or not Shadow understood what was going on either.

"You got a better idea? I heard that thing say that this box is the only thing that can contain it," Shadow responded back in a condescending tone, likely wondering why the fox wouldn't just trust him when he obviously knew more than Tails did on the subject.

"Well, how about instead of just trapping it, we destroy it!" Tails proposed quickly.

"You must either be deaf or stupid," Shadow spat back, now a low tone in his voice betraying his almost peaking anger at the annoyances. "I told you the first time we met, the Tails Doll cannot be destroyed!"

"Sure it can!" Tails only shouted back. "We just have to find the right thing to destroy it with! It's secret weakness!"

"Like what? I'm all ears, fox boy," Shadow responded sarcastically. He was the only one to even get close enough and survive to tell about the hope this chest offered in catching the doll, but even Shadow was clueless as to a secret weakness of the floating patchwork menace.

"What about sunlight?" Tails suggested after a second.

Shadow only scoffed. "It's floating around in broad daylight right now, and you think the sun might hurt it?"

"Well, think about what it always says to people, 'Can you feel the sunshine?' Maybe that's a clue," Tails hypothesized.

Shadow's reaction was one of stunned silence for the first time now. "How… Who told you it said that?" Shadow remarked. He knew firsthand that the Tails Doll only said that once you were trapped, right before it ate your soul, or, at least in Shadow's case, attempted to do so. This begged the question of just how in the world Tails knew the saying if he was still alive, then.

"I had some… nightmares," Tails promptly answered, leaving out the details of that night to prevent embarrassing himself needlessly. "But what if I tried making a…?" Tails began to outline a backup plan for a concentrated sunlight weapon he could try to quickly assemble when there was a loud knock on the front door.

"Don't even think about it," Shadow warned in a grave tone as he saw Tails instinctively head to the door to see who the visitor was.

Taking the precautionary advice with a nod of acceptance, Tails instead discreetly glanced out a window to the person standing on his doorstep. Who he saw made him give a sigh of relief. "It's OK, it's only Sonic. I've got to let him in and explain all this," Tails spoke calmly as he reached for the lock on the door to let the blue hedgehog he'd been expecting for a few minutes now to enter.

"Do that, and we all die," Shadow repeated his warning, now sounding almost like a threat as he tried to scare Tails into obedience.

Tails just shook his head in disagreeance. "It's Sonic, and he's completely alone, too," Tails explained. "I don't care what you think about him, Sonic is my best friend. He'd never hurt me. If I just explain, I bet he'll even help us," Tails pleaded as he went ahead and unlatched the lock and began to open the door.

Immediately, Shadow dashed across the room faster than Tails could have imagined and slammed it back shut. "Last chance, fox. Either listen to me, or we both end up being food for that deranged puppet of yours!" Shadow called out, making no mistake in his voice that he was anything but dead serious.

"That doll wasn't fast enough to get you, right? Well, then that means it can't get Sonic either! I don't care what you think about him, either; I'm letting him in!" Tails responded loudly as he yanked the doorknob handle swiftly, catching the ebony hedgehog off guard on the sudden ferocity from the fox as he lost his restraining grip on the door and stumbled back.

As soon as the door finally opened, Sonic slowly walked in with a look of confusion. "Tails? What's goin' on in here?" the blue hedgehog asked as he instantly noticed the frazzled look of his vulpine brother and the other dark doppelganger of himself also in the living room.

Tails, quickly slamming shut the door behind Sonic, resisted the urge to rush the blue hedgehog for some much needed comfort. "It's a really long story, Sonic, and we may not have much time left, but…" Tails began to explain all the recent events and how he was right about the doll all along instead of being crazy. That is, until he noticed Sonic was holding his hands behind his back suspiciously. "Sonic? What's behind your back?" Tails asked, his tone already worried.

"Oh, just a little surprise I picked up on my run," Sonic replied with an unsettling grin as his hands moved forward slowly to reveal their terrifying contents…