Chapter 26: Fate

"What the heck is she doing here?!" Vector roared, gesturing towards the bat sitting right across him. "She's with the enemy, remember?!"

"Vector, please, calm down. I'm sure Commander has a good reason for inviting Rouge here," Espio said, his golden eyes never leaving the bat who he had helped to prove guilty of treason just a few days ago.

Rouge sent Espio a thankful look, now feeling little bit less tense than a moment ago, though still very very nervous.

"All will be explained when the rest arrives," the Commander stated while giving the crocodile a hard look—a warning sign that he wouldn't tolerate any more exclamations of this kind.

Rouge looked over the people present. Vector was openly glaring at her. Espio was just looking at her, his expression emotionless. There were also Charmy with an armadillo that Rouge didn't recognize but from Knuckles' stories knew his name was Mighty. These two previously mentioned were watching her with curiosity, the bee a little bit more blatantly than the armadillo.

And the last one, which was sitting right next to Chaotix, was Amy who seemed to be as worried as her.

Rouge gulped heavily as her guts twisted in worry, making her wonder if not bringing Knuckles with her was a good idea; she had sneaked away without saying a word when the guardian was busy collecting some more herbs for his medicines. She had only left note saying she would be back soon but nothing else.

The door leading to the meeting room, in which their little group was sitting, suddenly opened revealing the Babylon Rogues. The bird squad entered the room and then sat down onto the nearest seats, Jet looking pretty displeased. "This better be important! I was in the middle of an awesome race when you called!"

The Commander sighed in exasperation. "It is. But we still have to wait for a few more people before we start."

In the next two minutes the 'few more' arrived. To Rouge's surprise it were Tails and Cream with Cheese. Rouge's eyes immediately locked only on Tails, who looked like he hadn't slept in days and had a thick bandage around his head. It took all Rouge's self-control not jump over the table and go all worrying-older-sister on the poor fox. Luckily, Amy did that just a moment later for her.

The Commander cleared his throat to get everyone's attention, the action effectively silencing the few people that had stricken a conversation in order to pass the time until everyone arrived.

The Commander stood up, taking a brief look at everyone before speaking up. "The GUN had acquired a new evidence confirming the innocence of Sonic the Hedgehog and thus all charges against him have been dropped."

There were various screams along the ways of 'What?!', 'You are joking!' and 'I told you Sonic would never do anything bad!'

But Rouge only wordlessly stared in shock at the human officer as he hadn't shared this information even with her.

The Commander slammed his hand onto the table which effectively startled everyone into silence; he wanted to continue his speech, but one timidly raised arm, made him stop. "Yes, Mr. Prower?"

Tails, with eyes full of hope, asked the question that was now running through the mind most of the occupants of the meeting room. "Might I ask what was this evidence, sir?"

The Commander sighed. "It was confirmed that there are, indeed, two Sonic the Hedgehogs around. The imposter, who is working with Destructix, and the real one that agent Rouge and agent Shadow have been seen interacting with."

Everyone in the room immediately turned to look at Rouge. However, the female bat could only focus only on Tails again as the young genius was staring at her with such hurt expression that made her heart break. The message was clear: Why haven't you told me?

"Because of this new finding, both agent Rouge and agent Shadow have been cleared of all accusations and are official members of the GUN again—"

Rouge could feel her body relax. The knowledge why had the Commander so suddenly called her—telling her their names have been cleared without explaining further—finally taking a little bit of emotional weight from her shoulders.

"Wait a moment there!" Jet suddenly spoke up, drawing attention of everyone to himself. "Why hasn't Sonic done anything about a double of him running around? It's already been four months since the other guy appeared!"

All eyes immediately moved to stare at Rouge again, all people present waiting for an explanation. The white bat gulped heavily; she really should have brought Knuckles, some moral support right now would have been nice.

She cleared her throat, giving himself a moment longer to compose herself with the action. "When Shadow found Sonic, which was about two months after the appearance of the imposter, Sonic was heavily injured and it took him two months to recover. However, we don't know what had happened those two previous months as Sonic himself couldn't remember what was happening at that time."

Jet snorted. "Pretty bad story if you ask me."

"But it is true!" none other than Cream had shouted this, slamming her hands on the table to emphasize her point. "I have seen both the real Mister Sonic and the evil Mister Sonic!"

The green hawk frowned, pointing at the rabbit with his thumb as he looked at the Commander. "What's this kid doing here?"

"I'm not a kid! I'm eight years old already!" Cream said, raising to her full length in her seat.

"Still a kid to me," Jet responded, which earned him an earful from the small bunny.

The Commander pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering why hadn't he retired years ago—he was honestly tired of having to deal with things like these—which, unfortunately, were happening a bit way too often lately. "Miss Rabbit, sit down. Mr. Hawk, please, refrain from making any comments of this kind."

Cream sat down but kept glaring at Jet, who was already ignoring her. "I'll try."

"Thank you." The Commander took a deep breath. "Agent Rouge, I believe you are in contact with agent Shadow and Sonic the Hedgehog?"

"Uh? Yeah, sure," Rouge answered, a little surprised by the unexpected question.

"I need you to contact them as soon as possible. We will need all the help we can get as we have never been faced with such a threat like this," the Commander announced, making a small gesture with his hand—at which the lights in the room dimmed and on one of the walls appeared a projection of the Dr. Eggman's attack that had taken place just a few days ago. Tails immediately looked away from what was happening on the screen as he had been there when it took place, softly touching the bandage around his head.

"We don't understand how but it appears that Doctor Eggman is alive."

There were various gasps from the occupants of the room as at that moment the mad scientist flew into view, shouting out commands at his robots.

"His robots seem to be more durable than they used to be. But we believe that your skills and experience will be enough to overcome this difficulty."

A green-feathered hand was raised now.

"Yes, Mr. Hawk?"

"I am pretty sure I didn't sign up for this," Jet said, clearly reluctant about risking his life.

"Who ever said this was matter of choice?" the Commander asked with a raised eyebrow, the response leaving the green hawk gaping like a gold-fish. "This is not about what you want, Mr. Hawk. This is about the fate of the planet itself."

~O~

Fiona groaned in pain as she slowly regained consciousness. Her entire body was in agony.

"I am so going to kill that bastard..." she hissed, propping herself on her healthy arm—which somehow managed to escape any kind of damage despite its owner getting assaulted twice in one day.

She sat up, her vision swimming for a moment before coming back to normal. She clutched her throbbing head, wincing in pain as her hand came in contact with an open wound. She drew her hand away from her head, looking at the white glove, which was now noticeably redder.

I'm bleeding... she realized, staring at the blood-stained cloth. Luckily, there wasn't much blood on the glove so it was safe to assume the wound wasn't too bad and could wait for a medical treatment for a couple of hours.

The imposter stood up, leaning on the slightly damaged control panel in order to steady herself, the memory of being roughly smashed into the thing flashing through her mind.

Along with Scourge's declaration...

Fiona wasn't sure how to feel about the declaration. Scourge had no reason to lie to her—he had no idea that underneath this blue-and-peach fur was Fiona Fox, after all. Scourge had no reason not to be honest with his presumed dimensional alter-ego. Which meant that what the green hedgehog had said was most likely a truth.

The criminal wanted to feel happy about, she really wanted to. She should feel happy that Scourge actually hadn't stopped caring about her and planned to save her.

But she didn't.

She would have much preferred the other alternative—that Scourge decided to abandon her because he stopped caring about her. It would be so much easier to hate Scourge that way and to take her revenge at the green hedgehog—which she really wasn't sure if she wanted to carry out anymore.

The only thing that Fiona was sure at the moment about was that she was livid. She was livid at Scourge for leaving her at non-existent mercy of Suppression Squad because even if the Mister-I-am-better-than-other-Sonics-thus-I-deserve-an-original-name planned on saving her—it was freaking eight months since that event! And Scourge expected her to rot in some filthy cell around for eight months until he deigned to save her?! No, such luck!

Fiona grunted as she began to walk; her entire body was aching and all she wanted was to lie down and forget about everything in the world, but there was still something she needed to do—give Scourge a giant piece of her mind.

And with this goal in mind, she walked out of the cell block and set off to find the infamous Destructix's leader.

~O~

Gems.

Everywhere.

Scourge stepped into the room that he had been looking for last twenty minutes, whistling loudly at the sight of all these devastatingly powerful stones in one place. At the very moment that he was fully standing in the room he could feel a wave of immense power wash over him, the sensation giving him pleasant shivers.

Oh, yes, this is how I like it...

The green hedgehog walked over to get a close look at the gems—which all seemed to be separated by kind into different containers. He could recognize various sets of Chaos Emeralds and his home-world's Anarchy Beryl. However, there were also different gems, different both in shape and size but he was pretty sure they all were just another zones' version of Chaos Emeralds.

He walked over to one of the containers, looking at a tag which was hanging from it. The tag read: G-04

Scourge frowned as he had no idea what was that combination supposed to mean. He looked over at different tags. But all of them just had different letters and numbers written on them.

Well, except one.

The green criminal walked over to the container which was holding the Anarchy Beryl and then read the tag.

Moebius

Scourge frowned as he looked over the containers again. Were all these tags supposed to be a place of the origin of these gems?

...Wait a minute, why the hell do I even care? he asked himself internally while eyeing the various containers, a wicked smirk slowly making its way to his muzzle. "It's time to have some fun!"

His fist broke the glass cover of the container at first try and just when he was about to take the gems out, all the lights in the room switched off, draping the room into a coat of darkness. However, it took only couple of heartbeats for the lights to come back to life. But now they were all flashing red and the unmistakable sound of alarm started to echo through the entire base.

Scourge collected the gems from the container into his arms with super-sonic speed and then immediately headed for the door—but he realized he had been too slow as his way was now blocked by horde of giant robots—which all seemed to be powered by Chaos Emeralds which were embedded in their chests, the robots now raising their cannons to target him.

It was at that moment Scourge realized he fucked up.

"Shit."

~O~

Screens. Thousands of screens.

Sonic stepped into the room, his eyes wide in surprise as his gaze jumped from one screen to another. He made a step forward, then another and another until he was standing in the middle of the room—where he then started to turn around wildly trying to take a good look at the thousands of screens that were covering all the walls in the room. The others were trailing right after him, their expressions just as surprised as Sonic's.

"What on Mobius is this?" Knuckles asked, frowning when he saw himself freaking out over some little note on one of the screens; he was pretty sure that had never happened.

It was a great question as all these screens were showing them and their friends—or more like various other-worldly versions of them as Sonic realized after spotting the knights of the round table and Shahra with Ali-Baba in the midst of all these screens.

"Some kind of parallel universe camera system...?" Sonic suggested, which earned him three confused looks. Therefore, the hero immediately began to explain, "I recognize two of these worlds. The world of Arabian Nights and the Arthurian Legends..." He pointed to the two mentioned worlds. "And I think I've spotted Blaze's world around here somewhere too..."

The other three had seemed lost until he had mentioned Blaze's world—which honestly surprised Sonic as he had expected his Shadow to know what he was speaking about as they surely had to speak about their separate adventures sometime in their relationship...

"So, what is this place then? Some kind of a freaky inter-dimensional base?" Knuckles asked, looking over the screens one more time.

"Almost on point. But next time use 'prodigious' instead of 'freaky', please," a new voice sounded from somewhere above them, all four heroes immediately looking up.

There was a dark silhouette of person staring at them from above, the lighting in the room making it hard to see any details. However, they could all pretty easily say the man was fat with a ridiculously big mustache.

"Eggman!" Knuckles roared, immediately shifting into a battle stance—a robot attack usually followed right after Doctor's sudden appearance.

Which, however, did not happen today.

The man chuckled, waving his finger. "Wrong answer! Try again."

"What?" Knuckles said, not understanding what was wrong what he had just said. In his opinion, the man couldn't be anyone else than Dr. Eggman.

But the dark agents immediately realized who it could only be if it wasn't Dr. Eggman. "Dr. Nega," both Shadows hissed at once, this time not shooting each other an annoyed look right after; it was dangerous to look away from the madman even for a second.

Right after the dark duo's exclamation, all the lights in the room switched on and thus making the man perfectly visible for all the people present. Dr. Nega smiled broadly from his high post, opening his arms widely. "The one—and only!"

~O~

Scourge gave a maniacal laugh as he ripped apart the last robot with his bare hands, the loud screeching of metal tearing being heavenly music to his ears. He let the remains of the robot drop to the ground, smiling in satisfaction.

It had taken just twenty seconds for him to destroy all seven robots.

Smiling, Scourge made a deep guttural sound as he savored the feeling of the immense the power that now coursed through his body, the power manifesting itself by keeping his usually green fur purple and his eyes red—a clear, warning sign to anyone he was in his super form. He had been forced to use the just stolen gems to turn himself super as the robots had proved impossible to be defeated with only his natural power.

However, once he was in his super form, the robots stood no chance.

The purple criminal extended his arm, the limb soon enveloped in a faint glow. The Emeralds hidden amongst the remains of the robots soon came floating out of the metal scraps and then rotated around Scourge's body for a minute before promptly disappearing into his body. Their energy immediately mixed with the energy that had already been flowing through Scourge's veins, the combined power making Scourge's body glow brighter as it literally started to radiate from his body.

Scourge knew he should use his newly-acquired power to teleport himself to Moebius and finally save Fiona; however, he also had some unsettled business with a certain Doctor. And Fiona surely wouldn't mind waiting for a few more minutes, right?

Scourge grinned as he let a small glowing sphere form in his palm and then without a moment of hesitation threw it into the ceiling, which then shattered into millions of pieces, the power of the explosion shaking the entire building violently.

Grinning, Scourge began to approach this the newly made opening. It was time to play hide and seek with a Doctor...

~O~

But the smile on the madman's face lasted only for few seconds, as it was soon replaced by an unreadable expression. "Now, tell me—What exactly are you doing in my base?"

"Spoiling whatever megalomaniac plan that you have at your mind at the moment," Sonic replied, shrugging his shoulders casually.

"Well, I'm sorry for having to tell you this but you are too late for that," Dr. Nega chuckled, clearly feeling no sorrow for having to tell them this.

Sonic frowned, an anxious feeling settling in his stomach. "And why is that so?"

"Because the conquering of your worlds has already started!" Dr. Nega smirked before clapping his hands for no apparent reason. "And now if you excuse me, I'll go see how marvelously it is going along."

"What?! Oh, no, you won't—!" Sonic shouted and then attempted to jump up at the platform at which the madman was standing; only to hit a red forcefield that seemed to appear out of nowhere. The blue hero fell back to the ground, hissing and grasping his hand as it stung from touching the energy barrier.

Dr. Nega sent him a triumphant smile before disappearing out of their view—most likely through a door that they couldn't see from the lower ground.

Sonic sharply turned around to look at the other three, who all were wearing a troubled expression on their face due. "We need to go after—!"

However, the rest of Sonic's sentence was left unheard as it was drowned in the various screams of surprise from the heroes as the ground under them exploded unexpectedly, sending all of them flying into various directions. Everything electrical in the room short-circuited just a second later, causing the entire room to fall into darkness as neither the screens nor the lights were illuminating the room anymore.

Which, however, wasn't the problem anymore. As just a moment later, Scourge came flying through the hole in the ground, the glow of his body enough to illuminate the room at least faintly, the purple hedgehog's red eyes immediately scanning the room for the Doctor he was searching for.

Sonic groaned in pain as he slowly got back to his feet, looking up to see what was the strange source of the light.

And green eyes locked with red eyes.

"Another Sonic? Is there some kind of reunion I wasn't invented to?"

It took Sonic a moment to realize who was the purple hedgehog before him as he had never seen the other's super form before, the only clue for him to guess who the flying hedgehog was being Scourge's attire. "Scourge," he breathed, feeling apprehension fill him.

A wicked smile found its way to Scourge's face as he teleported before the blue hedgehog, his glowing hand tightly curling around the other's throat. The blue hero immediately began gasping for breath, his hands coming up to force the hand, which was crushing his windpipe, away from his throat.

However, it proved to be an impossible feat with Scourge's force being unnaturally great due to his transformation.

"I planned to go searching for Eggman. But maybe we could enjoy some fun the two of us firstly—What do you say?" Scourge raised his free hand up, curling it into fist, planning to start the 'fun'—which, in his opinion, was smashing Sonic's face in.

"Chaos Lance!"

Scourge looked to his left in confusion, not aware there was anyone beside the two of them. However, this was a wrong move as it earned him a viciously red chaos bolt right to his face. The super-hog screamed in pain and surprise as he stumbled backwards, letting go of Sonic in the process—which Shadow immediately used to get the wheezing blue hero away from the super hedgehog, whose focus was now on the Other Shadow as he had been the one that threw the attack.

"You fucker!" Scourge growled in anger as he opened his stinging eyes, the pain of the attack still lingering there. That was one bad thing about super transformations—they might make your body invulnerable, but you still feel the pain.

The purple hedgehog raised both of his arms high into the air, a much bigger sphere than the one he used to blow up the ceiling before forming in his hands—just like the crazy smile on his face. "Take this, bastard!"

At the very moment Scourge moved his arms to throw the sphere, the Other Shadow took out the blue Chaos Emerald that Sonic had given him earlier. And so when the attack left Scourge's hands completely, the dark hedgehog had already screamed, "Chaos Control!"

The time slowed down abruptly—giving the Other Shadow enough time to get himself out of the harm's way. However, at the very moment he tried to take a first step something...went horribly wrong.

Without any warning, the time flow returned back to normal—leaving the Other Shadow only to stare in horror at the rapidly approaching sphere. There was no time to run. There was no time for him to try another Chaos Control.

There was only one thing he could do.

And so...he just closed his eyes, bracing himself for being erased from the existence.