Sonic screamed as he fell in the dark void, tumbling and tumbling down, a bottomless pit- he was gonna hit the ground so hard he'd surely die. He'd die and condemn everyone, everyone, to live and be taunted by the nightmarish Sonic-exe,- a fate he didn't even want to bestow to Dr. Eggman or Shadow or anyone. Being tampered with that that thing was unbearable, and if that monster had a creator-
Kris.
Kris! That guy! It was all his fault! All of it! Sonic felt his horror bubble into rage inside of him, as he clenched his fists. That stupid kid messed with my game and made that EVIL EXE! He made him kill animals and Tails and Knuckles-
That scumbag made me KILL AMY!
As Sonic hit the ground with a bounce, he realized the nasty thoughts he'd started to have as he fell weren't... they weren't...
Eheh-hehheheheheheh
"Man, you should have seen your face!" Sonic-exe chuckled. "Priceless! I wish I had a camera! Ahahaahahaha!"
"You... you leave my friends alone!"
"Our friends, mee," the voice corrected, in a lyrical tone. "We're the same fun-loving Sonic the Hedgehog!"
"You jerk YOUDON'TEVENDESERVETOBEMYCOPY!" the hedgehog roared. "You're nothing but a bloody sick HACK that's deluded yourself into thinking you're me! LET MY FRIENDS GO OR ELSE I'M GONNA COME AFTER YOU!"
Eheheheheheheheheh...
Sonic-exe appeared in front of the hedgehog propped up on his elbows, smiling at Sonic, who growled and felt saliva filling his mouth, spit that needed to be aimed at that thing.
"I don't deserve to be your copy?" Exe puffed. "Just listen to yourself, pal. You're so worked up you can't even come up with witty comebacks anymore."
Growling, a forced grin twisted on Sonic's face, and the hedgehog gurgled, "I can't believe it..." Nervously laughing, the hedgehog pulled himself to his feet. "I can't believe it... Hea-ha-ha... I'm getting lectured on my jokes by some maniac in a computer who's snatched up all my buddies and expects me to make a joke about it? Ha-ha-ha..."
Sonic threw a punch at himself, but his fist fell through static, like a hologram, and his doppelganger grinned, his head bobbing with laughter at the pathetic attempt.
"You need to loosen up, buddy," Sonic-exe said, eying the hedgehog still punching through his projection with shaking laughter, who eventually crumpled into a heap at the file's feet, sobbing. "Aw, what's the matter, me?"
"Why...wh-why..." True Blue wanted to sob to the creature. "Why would...why would you do this...at all?" The reddening green eyes met the glowing red-on-black eyes, and Sonic coughed a bit, but nothing came out.
"I...I...I just wanna go home..." he coughed out, sniffling. "Just-just wanna go home... Just want every-everyone-everyone to go home...I don't wanna be here anymore..." He broke out into stifled whimpering, shaking, clamping his eyes shut, ankles tapping together as if he'd wake up back in Kansas with everyone around him smiling and okay, and that this was all just a bad dream.
Sonic-exe gave the hog three pats on the head, and the crying hedgehog snapped his head up and his eyes open, seeing a faint smile on the hedgehog's lips.
"Now where have I heard that before?" he muttered, but then met eyes with himself and grinned. "Aw, don't feel bad, me. You've got my word I'll let you guys go when you get all back together again."
"Why-why'd you do that?!" Sonic sharply barked. "I had-had Eggman and Knuckles and Rouge and Charmy and-and-and Amy! I just needed the rest of my friends,-that was a dirty trick!"
Like a kid snickering in the principal's office after being told how teacher A had landed in such a humorously humiliating way, the executable file giggled. "Sorry. I couldn't help it. Heh-ha! I just didn't think it was fair how fast Egghead and the others found you. I mean, c'mon, didn't you think it was too fast?"
Sonic's quivering muzzle twisted into a smirk. "Of all the people I expect to hear that from..." he said, lowering his gaze, "I'm the last person on that list."
"But ya gotta admit it, there's no suspense in having them find ya without a challenge."
"You're right," Sonic realized as he got to his feet again. "There was no adrenaline in that, was there?"
"Sometimes ya just take things a bit slower," the bloody hog agreed. "Shad didn't get that." Sonic-exe tsk-tsked as he shook his head. "You can't jump to the end of a good movie, ya know. You gotta stick to it till the end, am I right?"
"Shadow... that's right..." Sonic sighed. "How'd he get caught by you?"
"Always second best," his double puffed. "He's not a team player, either. I bet as soon as he found his girlfriend he'd Chaos-Control his way out without so much as a care. I never thought he had a heart big enough to save the girl, but he obviously didn't have enough room to want to round up everybody else."
Sonic growled at the idea of the hedgehog condemning everybody else just to save that one hedgehog as fast as possible. It sounded so characteristic, so typical. After all, when they were in the Twilight Cage and that merchant made that strange remark confusing Sonic for somebody else, it was apparent that Shadow was moonlighting, having another agenda which he would gladly abandon the more current one for and leave the rest of the crew hanging. Sonic's fist clenched and his eyebrow twitched furiously. He'd have to pull a Knuckles on that angsty-faking jerk when he saw him last, whether or not they were still in the computer world.
But he'd have to thank him afterward for giving him a new motivation to find him. Punching Shadow in the face would be a bonus for finding everybody else. "All right me," Sonic said, grinning, suddenly empowered with a strong adrenaline surge, "I'm ready to find our friends again, and this time, you better play fair!"
"Fooled ya once," Exe-Sonic shrugged. "Not my fault if you fall for the same thing again. You'll just have to keep starting over until you give up or until I get sick of taking you back to square one."
"Trust me," Sonic puffed, feeling like he could blow the sun out as he brushed his nose with his thumb, "now that I know all your tricks, there's no way I'd be able to miss 'em. I just hope you have more of a challenge for me!"
"AHAhahahahahaha! Now we're talkin'!" Red eyes glowing with glee as his pointed smile stretched across his cheeks, the file snickered and faded into red static. "May the best Hedgehog win!"
"Oh, Sonic!" Amy whimpered as she weaved her way through the overgrown brambles, Piko Piko Hammer in hand. After Sonic was warped away into red static by that awful Sonic-computer-game thing, she'd clamped her eyes shut, afraid of the creature trapping her and everybody else. She was more worried about the real Sonic though; Being sent back to the start after nearly drowning and choking on toxic chemicals for his friends...
"I hope he's still strong enough to get us all out of here..." she mumbled as her tattered dress lost a bigger piece on a persistent thorn. "That bad Sonic better not get him killed!"
A scream split the air, definitely female, but Amy'd never heard it before. Sonic had said other people beside his friends had been trapped, too. Maybe that was one of the poor victims, and that other Sonic was toying with her, poor thing.
"Sonic'd said it was too late for them," the pink hedgehog murmured. "So no matter if I help them, there's no way they're getting out..."
"SHADOW!"
Amy spun on her heels and raced through the foliage, batting thick branches away with her hammer. She came to a small gray clearing, panting and spinning around. Another shriek sounded, and the pink girl hurdled over a fallen twisted tree, and the booming laugh of Sonic-Exe brought her to a screeching halt.
Heh-hehheheheheheheh
"Sorry, Amy," Sonic's voice said from above. "I can't let you save that one. I have something very special planned for her."
Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh
Amy gasped and approached the barren earth where the dead grass had imprints that resembled someone spinning around and then falling to their knees. The hand shape was tapery, and long, hands of pretty delicate fingers that couldn't defend themselves if they could.
The hand of a girl down the street.
"What's going on?" Tom wondered aloud as he noted how it had been internally about two sleepless restless days since he and Kyle had been subjected to the antics of their demonic captor.
"What do you mean?" his friend asked.
"He's been too quiet for too long... Something's not right." Kyle grumbled, as if Tom was jinxing them. The brunette mumbled about the game, but the blonde shook his head.
"Where's Kris?" he wondered. "Let's find him." And the young man began to set off in a direction; any direction, as long as they didn't go backwards, since going back provoked the horrific god of their domain. If you went far enough in a certain direction, you would crossover into another zone. Staying in a zone for too long would summon the beast.
"No, no no..." Kyle panted. "Kris is a nut case, man, you can't-"
"Are you coming or not?" Tom called afterwards, and hurried footsteps soon caught up to him.
Tails looked for four times before racing to the next cover. The computer-Sonic probably had known what'd happened to him last time, so the little fox stayed far away from any sort of abandoned lab-looking places. He'd have to make-do with the tools he had.
He noticed how real the stages felt and looked, and that they weren't as intangible as the being that created them. Why was that? Perhaps the Sonic he kept encountering was merely a projection that the game itself had made? Or was the Sonic just as elusive as he'd been with the Knuckles on stage two?
Whatever the reason, the Sonic's particles clearly were data; perhaps warped or glitched in such a way that they had an influence on the surrounding environment of the game. If this Sonic had originally been a Sonic sprite in a normal Sonic game, he would have different properties than an enemy or a stage. Had the Sonic been hacked as the genius had assumed when he encountered the title screen's split second change, then wherever the changes had been made, that would have created a distortion with his sprite. Similarly, if he was given different commands-
"Commands?" he heard a familiar voice whisper, then get a little louder, "That's it!"
Tails gasped as Tails-the one from the first level- popped out. He put his hand to his mouth and throat to make sure he still had his voice as the smiling one kept going.
"If Kris gave Sonic new commands, and he gave the game different properties, both Sonic's and the game's distortions would become so twisted that one would overlap into the other!"
For the real Tails, he perked up with a click. "That's... that's right!" he said in a hushed voice. "If whoever hacked the game changed both of them, then whatever Sonic touched would take in some of his distortion..!"
Standing up, the real Miles Prower exchanged a nervous smile with himself. "Hello, me," he said.
"Hiya, Tails," the other one said. "Nice to meet you."
