Author notes: [because I can't seem to find an option for it elsewhere] Firstly, I'm sorry for the very delayed updates. I have no excuse besides a complete lack of interest. However, I came back to the story recently and finished it off within a couple days just to be done with it, as I don't like leaving projects incomplete.
However, I also did some heavy editing around Chapter 11/12 and therefore need to re-upload them completely before I can post the new chapters. So if you're noticing a few chapters pop up that you've already read, that's why. I'll be reuploading the 3 chapters I edited as well a new chapter today and then the next few chapters will be posting every couple of days until it's complete.
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy.
The world was fire.
The flames had erupted and destroyed, setting ablaze everything in its path, reaching out further and further and scorching all life until nothing was left but fire and ashes. Buildings collapsed under the heat, civilization followed soon after, and few survived. Iblis was free… and he was angry. With nothing but the urge for destruction and no one to stand in his way, he roamed and covered the world in fire. The crisis may have started in one city… but it wasn't long before everything else went with it.
There were those who remained, who still tried to defeat the monster with the powers of a God, but their every attempt met the same failure, over and over again. The tornadoes ravaged the remaining land, the hot, dry air smothered all potential life, and the molten lava ran in rivers where water once reigned. The world belonged to the flames and nothing soon would change that.
Amongst the destroyed planet and the few fighting survivors, hidden amongst the raging fires and guarded by the small black and purple creatures she had summoned was a small, hopeful young child. Beaten and burned by the 200 years of disaster, scorched and injured by a brutal world she had only just come into when it all started, she had been left to die over and over by those that swore to protect her, time and time again. But now, armed with the even smaller dog-like crystal creatures she had learned to summon, she was filled with a new determination that both the humans and the fellow Mobians had failed to give her. She not only had a mission with promises of a better life, but the one thing no one else could give her… an explanation. From her father.
He had found her just a few weeks prior, cornered by several of the many flame-induced monsters of Iblis' creation, trying to yell them down in hopes that they might leave her be if she could intimidate them. She had never been in such close proximity of them, always having someone or something else between her and them. Of course, she had no real hope of actually succeeding in this endeavor and had nearly consigned herself to death finally, cringing away from the hot breath on her ear… when the monsters seemed to back down and simply stare at her. When she finally opened her eyes again, having not been eaten alive, she saw him standing behind the creatures. They didn't seem to bother him at all. Not only that, but they left at his command, though she was sure this wasn't Iblis.
Of course, she was still scared witless and immediately went back onto the defensive, it was then that she managed to conjure her own small creatures to stand guard in front of her. They growled and he laughed. Itara had no idea what was so funny, where the small creatures came from, or what was going on, but it didn't take long for her to get an answer in the form of a much large black and purple crystallized monster. It was almost the exact same as hers, but far larger and far more intimidating. She had seen these larger monsters running around with the flame ones before and now she knew where they came from.
The black and grey mouthless hedgehog in front of her only motioned for her to follow and, despite everything reading badly about the situation, she felt the need to follow and did just that. He led her back to a lab, questioning her and her powers along the way, which she explained to the best of her abilities. She still didn't know their full extent and had only just discovered a couple of them recently, such as summoning the creatures, so she couldn't give him full answers. But he seemed to understand. He knew.
He wasted no time explaining all the things she never could before, even showing her a few more she hadn't known about… such as the time travel. She never would have imagined she was capable of something like that… and yet he knew somehow. Then he explained how. She explained the lab she had broken out of before the disaster, the robot that hunted her down until he just suddenly stopped, the fact that she could always tell how far away Iblis was for some reason, and then he explained the rest to her.
He hadn't explicitly used the words she picked up from his explanation, he didn't respond as she had expected him to when she suggested the idea of calling him 'father', but it was obvious enough to her. He was what she came from and now she had an answer for all the questions about her parents she had been asked over the years. She was a part of him, she was connected to Iblis, they were both family to her, and it explained so much. It alleviated so much for her, when Mephiles suggested her helping him she jumped at the chance. Well, she would have jumped, but her legs were far too torn up for that sort of movement. She had had trouble just keeping up on the way to the lab, but she managed.
Once they were done talking, Mephiles left her to recover in the base, one of the few safe places in the hellish future, and Itara wasted no time finding a place to lie down. She even managed to find an old, torn lab coat in another room to fold up into a small pillow. She didn't want to go far from the room they had been in, however, and crawled under the large computer console to lie down and rest. The hard tile was surprisingly comforting considering she mostly slept on heated rocks, curled up under fallen cement to stay hidden from the creatures. In comparison, the strangely cool tiles were soothing and comfortable and she was out cold in no time.
Over the next couple weeks Mephiles continued returning to explain more to the small child, explaining her powers and testing her ability to control them. He showed her the old lab that she had been created in, or at least, what remained of it, and even showed her the reason the now broken robot who had hunted her down had stopped. It seemed he had lasted much longer than most of the other mortal creatures, but a short in his system became unrepairable eventually and he shorted himself out. He was left, apparently, still hooked to a repair machine in an abandoned base that had collapsed in on itself over time.
Mephiles trained her powers often, explaining she would need them when the time came to assist him. Amongst many of those was the ability to tap into the timelines. He taught her how to read and access the timelines, as well as how to travel between them. It was slow progress, Itara more often than not ended up going 5 minutes in the wrong direction, but she was determined to get it right and kept trying. It was the first time she finally understood something, she finally had someone like her, who could teach her and help her, and she was absolutely determined to not let him down. Though, it all did tire her out very easily, and the days came to a close relatively quickly. Picking up on the little girl's low stamina, once she started falling asleep mid-sentence, Mephiles would call the training to a close.
This time was different, however, because when he would normally instruct her to sleep and that he would be back the next day, this time he called her back over to him. She did so rather clumsily, both due to general clumsiness and to her tiredness, but she made it over and stared dutifully, through half-closed eyes, up at him waiting patiently. Finally, he explained what exactly it was that he would need her to do tomorrow and made sure the barely awake child understood past her sleepiness before sending her off to bed again. Itara gave him a small, heavy eye-lidded smile and went wobbling back to her spot under the console to sleep. She knew what to do now, it made her happy.
When she awoke again it was to the sound of voices in the room. Groggy and confused, she shot up and bumped her head with a light thud on the console she had slept under, bringing the voices to a halt. After a moment of silence a face appeared in front of her, leaning down and peering at the strange girl under the computer, causing Itara to jump again and scoot further away with a yell, which, in turn, caused the face staring at her to jump and fall back, as well. Itara stared wide-eyed at the silver hedgehog in front of her until another, a cat this time, crouched down to see who had startled her friend so.
"Hello there, we're sorry to have startled you. Are you alright?"
Itara just continued staring wide-eyed at them both until she noticed that her dad was also in the room and crawled to the opposite wall to crawl out from under the console so she came out from behind Mephiles, who hadn't even glanced her way. The other two got back to their feet, watching Itara curiously, leaving the room in an awkward silence for a few more moments. It was Mephiles who finally broke it.
"Anyway, as I was saying… the one you're looking for is a blue hedgehog, the Iblis Trigger," he spoke out, turning towards the computer that had been turned on at some point, pulling up newspaper clippings from the past. Itara was just surprised to see the tech still working while the others studied the screen. "This blue hedgehog is the cause of all this, if you can find him and get rid of him, you can fix your future," he continued. Itara's eyebrows furrowed together at this, actually looking at the screen now and studying it, herself. Why did he want to stop this future? Why were they the ones to help her father with this previously unmentioned task? Who were these other people?
"How do we do this?" the cat questioned, having turned her attention back to their mouthless guide, who pulled out a bright green emerald.
"I shall take you to him, before Iblis was released, so you may stop all this."
"F-Father," there was that sideways glance again, "um, am I coming as well?" Itara leaned to the side ever so slightly to meet her father's glance, her eyes sparkling with curiosity and excitement at the chance to assist him. He had explained what and where her task was, but he hadn't mentioned that it might be in the past. Her gaze was locked so tightly on his that she completely missed the exchanged glances between the other two, who seemed almost shocked at the new information.
"No. You'll be staying here for now," Itara would deny it, but the two observers made particular note of the icy tone Mephiles took with the small girl, "Your job is here, you know this. Now go over there… and stay out of sight." Itara nodded and took a few steps back when Mephiles turned back around, creating the portal that would take himself, the silver hedgehog, and the purple cat back in time to take care of this 'Iblis Trigger'. Itara watched for a few moments after they left, then looked towards the screen again to look through the newspaper clippings, herself, out of curiosity. If this was something important to her dad she would do her best to research it so as not to fall behind. She still had some time before she had to leave for the job… though she was a bit disappointed that it didn't get to take place in the past.
.
Stepping outside the lab and looking up towards the sky that was covered in just as much fire and smoke as the ground, Itara nodded to herself and summoned the small creatures that would protect her on the way to the volcano. She was to follow Iblis' aura to the volcano and find her purpose there, but the trek was quite a ways and she would need to stay as out of sight as possible, so she would need the protection. There was a group from the past running around that she needed to avoid, specifically. She hadn't had a problem with the fire beasts since the day she met Mephiles, either because they knew her now or because Mephiles kept them at bay, she wasn't sure which, but there were plenty other dangers in her path.
Pulling the makeshift hood over her head and ears, she looked down at the small, alert creatures and nodded for them to follow her as she took off. She couldn't run and she needed to save as much energy as possible so teleportation was out of the question, but she could at least do a small hover to keep herself from tripping about.
She had grown used to most of the terrain since the disaster happened, luckily, she would have been a lot worse for wear if not, but she had always avoided the mountains. There was no shortage of lava throughout the land, but the closer to the volcano she got, the more lava there was, and she usually didn't want to be near that. Today would be the exception, as she was specifically going into the volcano and she didn't know that terrain almost at all. It was far more treacherous than she could have imagined and almost fell off plenty of edges on the way to the inner caves, suddenly finding herself very grateful for the small creatures she had conjured up that kept her safe.
Eventually, she found it. Well, she found the injured Iblis recovering from a recent fight. Just like the smaller creatures, this was the first time she had been this close to the molten giant and decided keeping her distance was the best course of action. She wasn't here for Iblis, after all, she was only supposed to follow his aura so she could find the right cave. But the longer she watched the giant worm-like creature lie half out of the lava, clearly trying to recover, the more she was drawn towards him and subconsciously started inching closer towards him.
"…You're… Iblis… right? Or, at least, part of him?" she questioned, continuing forward one tiny step at a time, watching with widened, cautious eyes, the purple in her eyes flaring out anxiously. Her entire body was stiff and the crystals were starting to tip up through her spines as she drew near, almost freezing in place when the worm seemed to turn towards her. "Um… I won't… I won't hurt you… or… rather… please don't hurt me, okay? I just…" She wasn't even sure why she was trying to talk to a giant lava worm, but she felt the need to communicate to the other part of her being somehow, now that she knew, "I've been able to sense you for a really long time now… and now I know why, I'm a piece of Mephiles… your other half. Um…" She was near the edge of the drop off into the lake of molten lava and the piece of Iblis had clearly moved nearer, as well, during this conversation, though Itara couldn't fully judge why, "anyway, I just… wanted to say thank you… for not attacking me… with your creatures that day. I've learned a lot since then and… I hope you heal well. I have to go help my daddy now, but if I stay in this timeline for longer I'll come back and visit, okay? Bye, Iblis."
She couldn't help the small smile that came out as she waved and turned to go find her dad like she was supposed to. She almost took off running, feeling strangely comforted by the giant lava worm's shiny green eye, but then realized quickly how much of a mistake it would be and calmed back down to walk. Even with the unbearable heat, even more so in this enclosed space, she felt far more comfortable around Iblis and Mephiles than she could have ever imagined. She wanted to help both of them however she could.