Chapter 25
Once we got to the Rail Canyon, our two teams of Rose and Chao grinded on the rails of Rail Canyon into the start of the stage, where Big gave some exposition in a creepy way. "Hmm? I smell Froggy!" Big said after he sniffed the air. "Creepy," I said with a smile. Cheese then started to talk in his own language which Cream was able to understand. "Cheese says Chocola is close!" Cream smiled. "That reminds me, when we get to a certain point, we need to see what happens when you get a Chaos Emerald on your person," Tikal said to Cream. "Why me?" Cream asked as we continued to grind down the rails. "Because you can communicate with the Chao, that means you may have the power to control the Chaos like Tikal, myself, and Penny all have. It will allow you to gain amazing powers from each of the Chaos Emeralds, like water powers with the blue Emerald, healing powers with the turquoise, psychic powers with the white, and so on," Chaos explained.
"Control the Chaos? You mean the Chaos Emeralds?" Cream asked. "Exactly. So once we get to a resting point in this area, we're going to test that theory," Tikal said as we continued to grind the rails until we finally got to the end of it at the first rest place, that being the one with the first checkpoint. "Okay, now that we're on solid ground, let's test it," I said as Tikal fished out her Yellow Emerald out of her bra and handed it to Cheese, who placed it on her face due to her hands having gloves. And when she touched her face, we expected great things to happen... but nothing... or so we thought.
"I... don't feel anything different..." Cream said as we noted something happening with her. She was floating in the air and gaining altitude slowly but dangerously surely! "Whoa!" Tikal gawked as she grabbed hold of Cream and placed her back on planet Earth after taking the yellow Emerald from her. "What just happened?" Amy gawked as Big simply stared into dead space. "She gained a completely unique power that's different than ours... she didn't gain the power to manipulate gravity around her, she gained the power to float and defy gravity!" I said with a smile. "But I can't control it... can I?" Cream asked as Tikal let go of her again and Cream tried to concentrate, being able to simply levitate in the air above the ground with no issues afterwards. "Okay... I can control it somewhat," Cream sighed as she then let her feet touch the ground once again. "Let's see what happens when you have the power of wind and water in you, hmm?" Chaos smiled as I fished out the other two emeralds and gave them to Cream.
Upon her touching the blue Chaos Emerald to her face, she looked at her hand and saw that she had a water ball formed in it like in Spongebob Squarepants. She threw it at a nearby pillar and the result was the ball of water making the pillar explode in amazing fashion! "WHOA! Pressurized Water Balls! That's a great power," Chaos gawked as Cream then immediately took hold of the Emerald of Gust, the green one in color, and tried to think of how to use it... but all of a sudden, she spun around and formed a miniature tornado around herself, sucking us all into it and making all of us dizzy by the time she stopped doing so. "WOW! That was so cool!" Cream smiled widely. "Y-Yeah... really cool," Tikal said with a bit of dizziness. "Why are you all dizzy?" Cream asked innocently, not knowing what she had done accidentally.
"Nevermind that, we need to get back to chasing Metal Sonic," Chaos said as we rushed forward onto some more rails and then towards the area that held the next set of grind rails, switching laser rails not included. And after we continued on this set of rails specifically, we happened to see something in the distance that we knew we had to get to quickly. Why? Because it was the Egg Albatross! And it was fighting a team that we recognized fully minus the one member, that being the robot. Yep, Team Dark. "That's Metal Sonic fighting those guys! Let's get 'em!" I said as we rushed forward by means of flight instead of grind rails.
And when we reached the area the trio of Team Dark were fighting the Egg Albatross, we saw the thing explode in amazing fashion and for the whole apparatus to come crashing down because of Omega's rockets. We met up with the three and saw that they were looking at the remains of the ship and the fake Eggman thing. But we stayed out of sight while Shadow saw the strange android that looked like him. The Shadow android. "Who created this?... Let's go..." Shadow frowned as he then ran away with Rouge and Omega, the duo looking just as confused as everyone else. "That... that wasn't the real Shadow with them..." Tikal gulped as we witnessed Metal Sonic give up his disguise and form into his real form. "Ultimate Life Form data... successfully copied!" Metal Sonic said to himself with some seriousness.
But then, it looked like there was some croaking noises coming from Metal Sonic and something was trying to escape. "Bah! Stay in there, idiot creatures! I'm not finished copying the Chaos data within you!" Metal Sonic growled as I saw Froggy try to escape Metal Sonic through his torso and out through the metal, but not succeeding. "Froggy! Please let him go!" Big exclaimed as he rushed in and looked at Metal Sonic with angry eyes, something I never saw on him before. But Metal Sonic looked at Big with an angry look on his face. "No. I am not finished copying the Chaotic data within the frog and the Chao," Metal Sonic growled at us.
"So that's why you kidnapped Froggy and Chocola! Just absorbing Chaos's powers wasn't enough to add to your power, so you need more data from creatures that have some of Chaos's data as well! Froggy had Chaos's tail at one point and Chocola is a Chao like Chaos used to be!" Amy deduced, something I didn't expect her to be able to do. "Hmph. You've gotten much smarter since we last saw each other, pink hedgehog. But apologies, but I need to go off to my air fleet. Don't you dare follow me," Metal Sonic frowned as he jetted off with his super-speedy jet rockets off to behind a rock face and into a spare Egg Mobile, which he used to escape us quickly.
"He got away! We need to go after him and save Chocola and Froggy!" Cream said with angry eyes on her face, which I never saw on her either. "Don't worry, Cream. We'll chase after him right away," Tikal said as she flew up and Chaos and I latched onto her while Cream used her defy gravity skill to float with Big and Amy latching onto her and Cream using her ears more as a propulsion system instead of a flight path. But I smiled at how she was still finding a use for her powerful ears. "I sense him going towards a jungle area... let's head off there," I said as we rushed off to the air and we happened to see the jungle on the horizon. "Wonder what he's going to do... and what did he mean by Ultimate Life Form data?" Tikal asked.
"Most likely, he was talking about getting data from Shadow's body when they fought each other. But... that wasn't the real Shadow... I could sense similarities, but it was absolutely not the real deal," Chaos frowned. "But why would Shadow have a twin?" Amy asked. "Most likely, somebody created a copy of Shadow during or after the events of the Ark a few months ago," I said with a sigh. "I bet you anything that either the Ark or Eggman made that copy. But what was that robot they had with them, though? It looked like an advanced Eggman Robot..." Chaos said. "We'll just have to ask them if we come across them again," I said with a small smile.