(OK, I hope I didn't keep you readers waiting for too long, but here it is. The next chapter to Two Sides of Me. I thank Nightmare the Dragon for letting me use his character in my story and for helping me with ideas for this chapter. With that out of the way, let's do this!)

Chapter 10: The Battle

Blade's POV

When we returned from the facility, we found the others running from Sonic, who was chasing them and breathing fire. Alexia, Claw and I quickly led them to a shelter and joined them inside. At first, we thought we lost Sonic, until he landed outside our shelter.

"I know you're in there..." He hissed.

He tried to burn down the shelter, but ended up smashing it. We all ran, but Mystic was frozen. She looked up at Sonic with a combination of fear, sorrow, pity and guilt. We called out to her, but nothing got her to move. As the dragon took a deep breath, Mystic closed her eyes and prepared for her unleashed a bolt of white fire that consumed the area where Mystic was. We thought she had been flash-fried, but when the smoke cleared, a dark figure was standing there, his arm around Mystic's waist and protecting them both with a sheild made from shadows. "Nice try," he said. He turned the shield ino a large ball of darkness and threw it at Sonic, which launched him back quite a distance. "We need to get to higher ground." He snapped his fingers and before we knew it, we were on the roof of a 20 story building. He put Mystic down, and she blushed slightly, although she tried to hide it.

As he looked over the ruins of the city, we were able to get a good look at him. He was a black hedgehog with three long quills on his head and two sets of three spines on his back, which made a total of six. He had a medium-large, single edged sword strapped to his back, and he had rune-like markings behind his dark red eyes. He turned to look at us, and it made even me and my brother start to shiver, those cold reptillian eyes of his.

"Are you quite finished?" He asked us. His voice made us jump, but we nodded in response to his question. "I thought so." He scoffed at us. Knuckles walked right up to him, putting on his usual tough-guy face.

"Tell me, who are you?" He said fearlessly. The hedgehog lifted a finger and pushed him on the forehead with enough stregnth to make the echidna stumble and fall on his rear. I couldn't help but stifle a laugh at that.

"Please don't get in my face again." He said unusually calmly. "Now, to answer your question. I am Nightmare. Nightmare the Dragon." We all jumped again when he said his full name.

"A dragon?" Mystic asked. "Were you changed by the Draconivors spell, too?" He laughed coldly at her question. "I was not made this way by a spell. I was born like this." "Are you the guy Alexia told us about?" Tails asked. Nightmare nodded and said "I am. Alexia came to my base and asked me to help, and now I am here to do so." Claw crossed his arms and gave him a stern look. "And exactly how are you planning to do that?" He asked. The hedgehog chuckled again and said, "It's really quite simple. I just put Sonic down long enough to bind him so you can use your original plan to change him back. It might get a bit hectic, though."

Right about then, Sonic flew in from the city and charged towards us. Nightmare grinned cunningly and shot another blast of dark energy at the blue dragon. "Now, let the games begin!" He said. He drew his sword, revealing a shiny black blade with a glowing red edge. He waved his hand over the blade, and a crackle of dark energy went from his hand into the blade. "Darkside..." He muttered, "...bring forth corruption!" The sword became a 3.5 foot long double edged sword with aincent markings along the center of the blade.

Sonic flew at us again, only to be greeted by a head-on attack from Nightmare. The two dragons crashed to the ground, and Nightmare emerged, unscathed. "Tch. Too easy." He said, walking away. But that's when the battle really started.

Nightmare's POV

As I began to walk away, I could feel the dragon's hot breath on my back, as if he were about to swallow me whole. When the jaws snapped shut, I teleported away just before I was caught. "Damn. I shoudn't get so cocky." I muttered to myself. I then teleported over the dragon's back and turned my sword into a pair of claws, equipped with three one-foot-long blades.

"Black Claw!" A concentrated blade of shadows, one from each claw, flew at Sonic and made a one inch gash in his back. He glared at me and breathed a stream of fire at me, only to be blocked by my dark sheild. "This one's damn stubborn." I thought. "This is gonna get interesting." I changed my claws into black, spike-covered gauntlents, with an iron knuckles look to them.

I landed in front of the dragon and stared him in the eye. "Oh, you're good. I haven't had a challenge like this in a very long time." I told him. "Nor likely to again!" He snarled at me. He swiped his tail at me a couple times, but I eventually tricked him into getting his tail stuck in a tree. "Oh, fuck!" He hissed. I smirked at the sight. "A little overconfident, aren't you?" "Hardly." He replied. I took advantage of the opening and gave him a powerful uppercut to the chin. His tail got unstuck and he landed on his back. He got back up again and he swiped is claws at me. I dodged and gave him a strong blow to the forehead.

I then flew up a good ways away and charged up a large sphere of dark energy. As I launched it, I yelled "This ends now!" It caused a big explosion when it hit the ground. "It's a good thing I turned the power down on that attack." I thought. "I was told you were needed alive." But as the smoke cleared, to my shock, the cobolt dragon was gone!

"Dammit!" I yelled. A powerful bolt of fire caught me off-guard. Sonic sneered when he thought he killed me, but his eyes went wide as I summoned a dark spire from his shadow that impaled him through the chest. I emerged from the shadows nearby and smirked evilly.

"Nice try, but it'll take much more than that to take me out." I then released the spire from his chest, and the dragon fell to the ground with a large thud.

Mystic's POV

We soon arrived at the scene, riding on Blade's back. She had taken the form of a large griffin so we could ride her down from the building. As soon as she landed and we all dismounted she changed back.

When I saw Sonic on the ground, with blood pouring out of that large wound in his chest, I was both in shock and in awe. But those two emotions quickly molded together into pure hatred. I glared at Nightmare and shouted "You bastard!" I used a spell to send a bunch of sharp ice shards at him, but he deflected the attack with a swipe of his arm. "You killed him!" I sent a miniature blizzard his way, but he just dodged it.

He kept dodging or deflecting my ice spells until my anger ran out and was replaced with sadness. I sank to my knees and started to cry. "He isn't dead." I heard Nightmare say. Everyone looked at him and he changed his weapon back to the single edged sword. "He's just unconcious. The dark spire just phased through his heart without cutting it, so it is still beating. Also, I injected a non-lethal toxin into his bloodstream that will keep him unconcious for the next 5 minutes, so before I forget..." He snapped his fingers and dark chains bound Sonic's legs, tail, body, neck and snout. "When he wakes up, that's when you may exicute your original plan."

Alexia's POV

Nightmare started to walk away from us until Amy said "Just tell me, what is it you want in return?" He chuckled and approached me. He then whispered in my ear "Are you willing to do as I have asked of you? Ifnot, I will be forced to kill your friends." If anyone else said that to me I would've killed them, but I don't stand a chance against this guy, so I just reluctantly nodded.

Nightmare grinned and backed away from us. As soon as he was far enough away, he called out to me, "Alexia! Zap them now!" I then used my powers to hit them with a spell that zoned them all out. Nightmare nodded and dissappeared in a flash of black flames.

Blade shook her head and looked around. "What just happened?" She asked. She saw Sonic, who was bound by the dark chains and still wounded. "How did he get like that?" "It doesn't matter how it happened, it just happened. Now let's hurry! Time's a-wastin'!" Mystic said. She ran up to Sonic and sat by his head. She held up her magic pan pipes and looked at me.

"Alexia, in order for this to work, you have to play the song while I sing." She said. I nodded and took the pipes from her. I already had the song committed to memory, so this was going to be easy.

"Ok, let's do this!" We said in unison.

(And that's where I'll leave it. Sorry, Nightmare the Dragon, I just wasn't really in the mood to put the epilogue idea in. But still, I liked your other ideas. Thanks for that!

Please read and review!)