Chaos: (jaw drops) Ten reviews? Ten reviews for the last chapter! Unbelievable! Alright, alright, I'm a bit hard on my own writing. That's my way of improving, I guess. But really. I'm not at all satisfied with this story. It's character biased, OOC in places, and the description is quite lacking in several scenes.
But it's not too bad compared to some of my older ones I guess – the flow is good, the plot… exists, and it's not overly cliché. And so the updates continue (though should they be called updates when the actual story was finished almost a year ago?). One more bumper!chapter, and then I kick this story into the closet and stamp 'complete' all over it. (laughs)
I'm glad people are still enjoying it, though. Thank you for that. (grin)
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Knuckles leapt away smartly, half-expecting Sonic to go shooting into the sky. Sonic had sworn never to go Hyper again; the last time it had almost killed him...it required almost all the power of the Chaos Emeralds, and was too much energy; it ate at a person's soul and was incredibly difficult to control.
Knuckles had once said that you had to give part of yourself to neutralize it, to stop yourself going crazy. He had read hundreds of ancient echidnaen texts about it; no person had survived it more than once without becoming a power-crazy demon.
How long had Sonic been Hyper for? An hour? Two? He gulped nervously and backed out of the crater hurriedly. There was only one hope; if Sonic was unconscious then it might not affect his mind. He hoped. And how on earth had he managed to go Hyper with the Chaos Emeralds? They were on Angel Island, far above...
Knuckles didn't know how, but he wasn't sure he wanted to find out either. Sonic's snow-white fur rippled in waves of Chaos Energy, bursting out in small shockwaves whenever the charge built up enough.
Of course; the explosion was obvious now. When Sonic went Hyper forcibly, his body would have released a large shockwave at the sudden overload of energy as the Emeralds activated...demolishing anything nearby.
At any minute he could wake up and then...Knuckles shuddered. They had to get him normal, quickly. And the only way to do that was the Master Emerald.
Now, he could move Sonic, and risk him waking, or move the Emerald, and let the island fall. To sink into the sea, gone forever.
It was no choice.
He warily walked back into the crater, ready to leap back at any second. He motioned for Tails and Amy to back off, and extended a hand to touch Sonic's arm. In a milisecond the ripples of Chaos Energy shot up to his palm and through his glove.
With a yelp of pain, he yanked his hand away, shaking little bright sparks of Chaos Energy off of it. Tails sent him a concerned look as he angrily muttered, "Damned residual charge..."
He braced himself and grabbed Sonic's arm, tugging him out of the crater. The hedgehog was surprisingly light...light enough to fly in the air, Knuckles reminded himself. As he reached the edge Sonic bumped off a small rock and, sure enough, stayed hovering for a second before drifting down.
Then the echidna snatched his hand away, rubbing at it until the tingling subsided. "This will take a while." he said aloud, trying not to think about actually getting Sonic onto the Island.
When he touched Sonic again the shock was larger; in the time he had let go the charge had built up. He snapped his hand away and cursed, resisting the urge to kick Sonic; it was tempting, as it would not harm the hedgehog, but the shock would attack his foot instead.
Then somebody else touched Sonic's other arm. The shockwaves rolled up, but Shadow wasn't shocked. Rather, the charge was absorbed into him. Knuckles goggled at him, hardly believing it.
Shadow looked back, and said, "Healing myself...sorry." Sure enough, the marks were fading, fur regrowing where it had burned away. Knuckles' brain immediately burst into action.
"Of course...you can channel Chaos Energy." he muttered aloud, and Shadow nodded assent. Knuckles suddenly grinned, eyes narrowing dangerously. Tails and Amy recognised the look and backed away quickly. Shadow, not understanding, was looking at them in confusion when Knuckles spoke again.
"I have a plan."
A few minutes later Shadow had laid both hands on Sonic's white quills, channeling the energy. His quills suddenly turned lighter and brighter until- Super Shadow stood before them, hovering slightly.
The second he let go of Sonic, however, his quills faded and flickered. But this suited Knuckles just fine, and Super Shadow was soon grumbling under his breath as he lifted Hyper Sonic into the air, turning towards Angel Island.
He couldn't harm Hyper Sonic right now...but he would take him to the Emerald, if only so that he would be normal again...
...and vulnerable again.
It was at that second, as though the hedgehog was sensing his thoughts, that Sonic's eyes snapped open, bright green and pupil-less. Knuckles cried out in warning, and Shadow was just looking down when he was suddenly flying through the air in the opposite direction.
"Dammit!" he yelled as the ground rushed up at him, his fur turning yellow. With a bruising crack he met the ground, bouncing a few times; thankfully still invincible enough for it to not hurt.
Hyper Sonic spun round in the air, shooting away backwards to a safe distance, regarding them all quickly. Knuckles slowly took a step forward, and then another, hoping to get within speaking distance.
No such luck. Hyper Sonic backed away in the air, aura sending small sparkles of light, regarding the guardian warily. Knuckles took another step. It was a mistake. Hyper Sonic's hand shot up, almost too fast to follow, to point at Knuckles.
In a second the echidna was thrown back by a blast of white light. He crashed into a rock quite a distance away, and cursed violently, struggling up again. Hyper Sonic's gaze passed away from him and onto Amy, who hastily started moving away.
In a flash he had flown - or perhaps warped - up to her, purposefully drifting down to eye level, as she struggled not to look at his eyes; they sucked the life out of her, and she couldn't look away. He was scrutinising her carefully now, eyes narrowing.
Tails took Amy's wrist carefully, trying to pull her away lest Hyper Sonic decided to attack. Hyper Sonic did not break his gaze on the hedgehog, but swished a hand up and to the side. In a blast of light Tails, too, was thrown aside.
Amy gulped, lost in the green eyes. Finally Hyper Sonic said, "Amy." His voice echoed strangely, as though he were in a large empty room. Knuckles held his breath; he recognised Amy, it seemed. That was a good sign.
"Amy. The girl." Again his voice echoed oddly, as Tails blinked confusedly and realised that he was holding his breath. Slowly Hyper Sonic turned to look at him, and Tails found himself immobilised by the gaze.
"Tails. The sidekick." Then to Knuckles. "The Guardian." To Shadow. "The other Channeler." Even Shadow was looking confused by this point, as Hyper Sonic swooped back into the sky, folding his arms and crossing his legs – sitting in the air.
"Ha! This is what the Channeler does with his time. When he could have as much power as he wanted." He raised a hand and a small white flower burst out of it, just as quickly disintegrating into tiny sparkles.
Finally Knuckles began to realise. "You're not Sonic!" he accused, "You're…the Chaos Emeralds?" he said the last bit with indecision in his voice, squinting at the white shape in the sky.
Hyper Sonic laughed chillingly.
"Yes. The Guardian realises…the Guardian, too, has some power." He shot out a hand and suddenly Knuckles fell backwards with a cry, feeling his energy draining in a stream of red light, shooting into Hyper Sonic's hand.
"Stop this!" Tails cried suddenly as Hyper Sonic smiled. "Stop using Sonic as a puppet!" Hyper Sonic lowered his hand and the stream cut off, leaving Knuckles panting.
He turned to Tails, eyes flashing. "You care too much. You have no power!" He raised a hand, a black orb shining there, and even from a distance Amy felt a tug of pain from it…and then-
Tails! A voice, recognisably Sonic's, seemed to come from nowhere, Hyper Sonic's mouth not moving.
"What is this! Control the Channeler!" Hyper Sonic cried, the echo splitting somewhat into seven parts. For a second his hand jerked, enough to send the black orb shooting into the sky, away from Tails. Hyper Sonic glared round accusingly.
Then, as Knuckles looked down to avoid his gaze, he saw a tube, filled with a familiar green liquid, and had an idea.
Hyper Sonic frowned and said, "So…he is stronger than we thought…but nothing has more power than us!" His smile returned. He raised his hand again as Tails stood frozen by his eyes…
"Wait!" Knuckles cried. "I want to make a deal!" Hyper Sonic let the orb fade away and then turned slowly to face him.
"What could you possibly have that we would want, Guardian?" he asked, eyes piercing. Knuckles avoided his gaze and held up the tube.
"Power." he said simply, several more tubes lying in the rubble at his feet.
"What is this?" Hyper Sonic asked, half to the echoes that were the other Emeralds, as he clicked his fingers. In a millisecond the tube was floating in his hand, turning slowly. "The Channeler does not recognise it..."
"But no poison can hurt us!" he declared finally. Then the glass disappeared and the liquid inside was absorbed into his hand. A second later his aura increased a little and his eyes flashed triumphantly.
"Yes! This is power! You speak truth." he glared at Knuckles, and then continued hungrily, "We must have more." He shot out a hand and the liquid shot from all around the rubble, as though pulled by invisible threads, flowing into Hyper Sonic, whose aura increased until it was impossible to look at him.
His voice was deafening, the echoes triumphant. "Yes, this is-" then it suddenly broke off. Tails felt an oncoming sense of doom and dropped to the rubble, turning away with Amy at his side.
"W-What iss th-is?" Hyper Sonic's voice was jerking as the echoes overlapped each other, and from beneath them rose a new voice.
GetoutofmyheadGETOUTOFMYHEAD! Sonic's voice screamed angrily and the echoes were drowned out.
"Control him! Control him! CONTROL HIM!" the echoes cried to one another as they grew louder and the aura increased until it was like a small sun. Shadow shielded himself and Knuckles ducked as he waited for the full impact of the maddening drug to hit...
What came next was deafening.
"AAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" Both Sonic and the Chaos Emeralds, through his body, screamed in unison, and suddenly Hyper Sonic rocketed into the sky, a dark hurricane of Chaos Energy behind him. The world was lost with a roar as Tails and Amy covered their ears, clinging to the ground, Knuckles crossed an arm over his eyes as his dreadlocks whipped behind him, and Shadow was surrounded by Chaos Spears as he tried to rid himself of the extra energy that suckered onto him like a leech.
Amy managed to look up, squinting through the hail of debris that was flying through the black maelstrom, and shouted something, words swept away by the howling wind. Knuckles lost his balance and fell back, rolling head-over-tail in the hold of the storm, before Tails threw out a hand and managed to grab a handful of his dreadlocks. He was very nearly swept away along with the echidna, locking his arm around a bent pipe firmly imbedded into the churning rubble.
It was finally too much for Shadow.
"…aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAACHAOSCONTROL!" he shouted over the wind as it rose to a deafening shriek, and the world was suddenly engulfed in green light.
Then there was nothing.
Amy uncovered her eyes and looked up slowly. The whirling storm had condensed into a tight spiral of red light, breezing gently around them, swirling towards the centre. Several sparks shot out of the depths and her fur crackled with static.
Tails' fur was also on end and had a red tinge. He looked up at a small circle of dark blue-purple that showed the sky above, wondering. "What's going on?" Amy asked, almost terrified of how loud her voice was in the sudden quiet.
The Chaos winds were sucking away to the centre, and soon they could see the ground again, the darkening sky above broken only by a thick trail of glowing Chaos Smoke from Hyper Sonic. Tails felt oddly energised, as though he had just had a long rest.
He grinned inwardly, remembering the energy-giving effect of Chaos Energy in power rings.
The last of the winds disappeared through Shadow's black fur as he hovered slightly, a grin of disbelief on his face, shimmering slightly...but not in Super Form - not while Sonic was Hyper.
He laughed for the first time since Tails could remember, and then disappeared with the brief flash of Chaos Control. Even without an Emerald, the Chaos Energy carried him away.
Amy let out a long sigh at his side as the sky darkened into night. Tails almost couldn't believe that it had only been a day since this had begun.
"Can we go home now?"