Episode 14: The Super-Emeralds
Of the very few people Knuckles would tolerate on Angel Island, Volt was probably a little less welcome than the others. He had a natural tendency to feel the need to touch anything he did not understand, which was most of the ancient structures that had belonged to the Echidna people.
Currently, Volt had found an old book, a logbook if he was right, and was carefully studying the hieroglyphs while munching on an apple.
Obviously he could not read the language, he could barley read English. Still, the pictures were fun to look at, and he turned each page with as gentle a touch as he could.
Such was the scene when Knuckles walked up behind him, standing seven or so feet above, as Volt was taking Shade in the rock Knuckles was perched on.
A smile tugged at the edges of Knuckles mouth, the little porcupine reminded him of himself at that age, obsessively curious as to anything that had to do with his people.
After a long while of watching, Knuckles was about to speak when someone put their hand on his shoulder.
"No, let him be." Nazo stood behind Knuckles. Knuckles turned to face him, and almost gasped in surprise.
The flames that were constantly emanating from Nazo as a testament to his power had subsided, revealing that his fur was gray. His eyes were reddened, as if he had not slept for a week. Nazo needed no sleep of course, but it looked like when a normal person was awake in excess of 80 hours.
Dark circles were drawn under his eyes, further adding to his depleted appearance.
What was most stunning though, was that orbiting Nazo were what looked to be seven new Chaos emeralds, but half again the size of the Chaos emeralds, and the light shining from them was far more intense.
Nazo directed Knuckles away from the oblivious Volt, and back to the Shrine.
"What are those things!" Knuckles asked, his eyes wide with both awe and alarm.
Nazo reached out and touched the white one as it floated by his face.
"I will refer to them as Super Emeralds." Memory flooded into Knuckles head. He had encountered 'super emeralds' before, but so long ago now.
It had been when he first had met Eggman, Sonic, Tails, or any of them.
Back when the Death Egg had crashed on Angel Island.
"Super Emeralds? They certainly don't look like the Super Emeralds I know of."
Nazo stared through Knuckles, searching for the words to explain.
"The super emeralds you know of were a special action the Emeralds take to protect themselves and their world. Sonic and Shadow use the power of the Chaos Emeralds to attain a super-form; the emeralds called out to the Master Emerald and attained a super-form themselves."
Knuckles took a minute to process that. The emeralds using their own power at their own consent? Knuckles had never considered that the Chaos Emeralds were more than just extremities of the Master Emerald.
"But what's wrong with you? You look half-dead." Nazo smiled at him, but his smile brought no feeling of comfort with it as it normally did.
Nazo seemed to be, indeed, mortal.
"I used my own power to create these new Emeralds. I will recover, but it will take awhile."
Knuckles reached out and took the gold emerald and looked into it, but saw nothing.
"How could you make more emeralds without another Master Emerald?"
Nazo closed his eyes and sighed.
"That's just it. They have no Master. They contain a set amount of energy. When it is gone, they will simply be large jewels."
Knuckles let go of the emerald and it took its place amongst its brothers. "What will you do with them?" Knuckles asked. Nazo sat on the ground, cross-legged, and the emeralds fanned out in front of him.
"I will give one to each of the seven whom I deem worthy to carry this power. I have already decided on Sonic and his brother, Shadow, Miles Prowler, and the human, Jesse O'Crean. I believe the latter will prove to be far more than he is."
Knuckles hadn't a clue who the last mentioned was, but he didn't really care, either. It was his business to ensure the safety of the Master Emerald, not worry about who got shiny gifts from Nazo.
Volt came plodding along just then, still looking at the old book.
"Hey Mr. Knuckles, look what I found. Do you know what it is?" Volt finally looked up to see Knuckles, a depleted Nazo, and seven big, shiny things.
His eyes went directly to the blue gem, and he lost all concept of the existence of all else.
Knuckles looked at Volt with concern as the book slid out of his small hand, but Volt didn't seem to notice. Knuckles waved his hand in front of Volt's eyes, but Volt just kept staring at the blue Super Emerald.
Nazo did not look concerned, but rather confused. Knuckles became frustrated as nothing he tried seemed to shake Volt's gaze. Nazo snapped his fingers and the Super Emeralds became invisible, or disappeared.
Volt twitched, blinked, and looked around.
"What just happened?" he whispered, tears brimming his eyes.
"What was all that I just saw? Was I dreaming?" Volt was fully into crying mode now, tears rolling freely down his cheeks, sniffling, and the occasional hiccup.
"What did you see?" Nazo asked, his unnaturally calmative voice back in place.
Already Nazo's fire was regenerating, his fur was lightened to the shade of timber wolf, and small tongues of white flame carousing along his form.
Volt sat down and hugged himself.
"I think I saw you." He said, looking at Nazo.
"Everything you see. I saw that…that dark guy, with the palace…it was so scary…what happened, Nazo?" Knuckles looked from Volt to Nazo with a face that matched the question: What happened?
Nazo sighed and lowered his head.
"I had taken notice that the violet Master Emerald had vanished from my senses, and I strode through my realm and back into this one, but at the lost Emerald. The entire planet was coated in a thick darkness, I couldn't even see stars in the night sky. There was another there, he called himself Mephiles, and I told him I was taking the emerald back. We fought, and he won. He had a tremendous amount of power in his own right, but the added power of a Master Emerald and all its Chaos Emeralds…" Nazo shook his head.
"I tried to free them, but Mephiles threw me back through my own portal."
Knuckles had taken volt to sit on the stairs of the shrine, still only a few feet from Nazo, but a more comfortable place to sit.
Knuckles always knew what kind of power the Master Emerald wielded, and now some alien being had control of one.
The name Mephiles kept ringing in his ears, though he didn't know why.
He knew for absolutes that he had never heard the name before Nazo had spoken of him when he first brought Metal Sonic to Angel Island, but for some reason he knew he had heard that name before. If he could only remember where…
Fatal awoke with a start. The last thing he remembered was being fried by a backfiring chaos-blast. He was on the ARK, and Shadow was here, too.
Fatal sprang to his feet, expecting the black hedgehog to jump out of nowhere at him.
Fatal could hear the faint sounds of fighting coming from way down another corridor and decided that was where Shadow would be.
He was supposed to eliminate the G.U.N. forces on the ARK, so that they did not get their hands on the Eclipse Cannon. Keeping the possibility of Shadow doing his work for him, Fatal slowly walked down the hall that the noises were coming from.
Fatal entered a room that was dimly lit, and might have been so for only a matter of minutes. There were several corpses here, some simple workers, and some full-on soldiers. Shadow was as merciless as the memories of Shadow in Fatal's head pictured him as.
Fatal continued on, following the carnage on a sure trail of Shadow.
Fatal finally came to a large storage room where the sounds of fighting were taking place. There were no G.U.N. soldiers or engineers to be seen, but Shadow was fighting what looked like a ghost.
The shade's insubstantial form vaguely resembled Shadow, but there was a stark contrast that Fatal could only think to word as malevolence.
The shade kept laughing periodically, aggravating the Ultimate Life Form.
Small black creatures would appear around the shade and harass Shadow. They looked like birds, phoenixes actually, but were alight with dark flames.
Something triggered in the Sonic side of Fatal, telling him to jump in and fight the shade also, no matter how unwelcome he was to Shadow. The Shadow half of him recognized the shade, but was perplexed as to just what or who it was.
Eventually the Sonic half won out, and Fatal leaped away from the doorway and curled into a spin-dash.
The ghost turned away from Shadow at the last moment, and Fatal plowed right through it, tearing it asunder.
The navy hedgehog landed a short distance from his black counterpart.
"Well, that didn't seem too hard." He jeered at Shadow. The black hedgehog glared at him unflinchingly.
"Come back for another beating? Your skull must be thicker than I thought."
Just as Fatal was about to jump at Shadow, purple smoke arose from the ethers in between them, taking the shape of the ghost Shadow had been fighting.
One key difference was that now the thing had seeable eyes.
"My my, if it isn't our little navy look-alike. How interesting to see you here, my weak-minded friend." Fatal began to sweat. That voice… he thought to himself.
"Who are you?" he whimpered. The answer came in form of a laugh. A howling, sinister noise that made Fatal tremble and curl into a ball.
I am Mephiles! Mephiles the Dark! The other continued his terrible mirth. Fatal was bombarded with a freezing wind that seemed to only affect him. Chilled to the core, Fatal cried out for mercy.
"I'm only a child!" he squealed.
Fatal shuddered. Shadow, on the other side of the spectral being, began to snarl as he crouched down.
"I feel as if I know who you are, but I can't seem to place it." The shade's body, the basic shape of a hedgehog, was glazed over as a form wrapped itself around the shade, giving it a body.
The hedgehog still looked vaguely like Shadow, but the highlights in his fur was a dull periwinkle, his fur was seemingly all one piece, as if it was not fur at all, and the eyes were based in red-orange where a normal eye had white, the irises were a goldenrod yellow, the pupils seemingly non-existent.
Something that was strikingly peculiar though, was that this being had no visible mouth.
The being between the two hedgehogs struck them with a sense of awe and fear, itself radiating power and malice.
Golden lightning began to dance in between Shadow's fingers as he crouched.
"Just what are you?" he hissed.
The unidentified hedgehog turned completely away from the shaken Fatal to face the unwavering Shadow.
"I am a god. Serve me if you wish your future well." Fatal stood back up, relieved by the absence of the supposed god's attention.
Shadow's hand was brightly aglow with Chaos, his now closed fist held behind him, poised to strike.
"I have fought many who claim to be a god, and have yet to find one who can back it up." Fatal began collecting Chaos into his hand too, Orange lightning coming to life between his fingers.
"But have you fought a being that can change whatever about reality he wishes? Have you battled one who is outside the confines of time? Have you tried to stand against one who can see into your very soul and see your every flaw, every weakness within?"
By now Fatal's charge had caught up with Shadow's, lighting the room with Chaos Power.
Shadow's lips parted into a grin.
"If you really were a god, you would have known how to convince me of it." Shadow thrust his hand forward, as did Fatal, and two oversized, overcharged Chaos Spears were slung at the dark 'god'.
Both spears passed through the space the hedgehog had just occupied, each other, and finally landed in the opposing hedgehog's stomach.
Though the body of the being was gone, the Ultimate life forms could still hear him as he left;
"Know the name of you god, Shadow: Mephiles The Dark!"