(Chapter Twenty-eight. Man, work's really keeping me distracted from writing. But I'm sure you guys understand the necessity of real life. Enjoy!)


CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT:
This Is My Final Duty

Rotor examined the read-outs from the Darkoak Head. "From the size of the port in Hell Huenlonix's heart, it looks like it'll take a Giga Core Drill."

Tails smirked. "So, you want me to go out in Freedom Emerl, huh?" He hailed the Fremeralds Cheese and Buzz Buzz. "Charmy, Cream! You two take control of Typhoon Freedom Emerl! Push the Hell Huenlonix back!"

"Right!" Charmy gave a thumbs-up and Cream nodded deeply.

The white panels that made up the lower half of Typhoon Freedom Emerl's face slid apart, and Freedom Emerl flew out, Giga Drill Driver at the ready as it dove through the middle nostril on Hell Huenlonix's chest.

Typhoon Freedom Emerl's face slid back together, and Buzz Buzz and Cheese took the controls. Typhoon Freedom Emerl lifted its arms and rammed its fists into the Hell Huenlonix's prone form, firing off a tornado of Spiral Power from its engines.

"Tails is counting on us, Charmy!" Cream said.

"Hang in there, Buzz Buzz!" Charmy said, gritting his teeth. "Mass production models have their pride, too!"

But even with Typhoon Freedom Emerl putting its full force forward, the Hell Huenlonix's inconceivable mass began to drift towards Möbius.

"Three minutes until the Hell Huenlonix reactivates!" Helen called out.

Silver listlessly leaned down to Helen's microphone. "Did you hear that, Charmy, Cream? Try to force that thing back for two more minutes. And then... a minute before reactivation... Typhoon Freedom Emerl will disengage."

All eyes on the bridge were drawn to Silver, whose eyebrows were drawn together in determinance.

"I will protect the lives of the 530,000 people on this ship," he said steadily. "No matter how much scorn you heap on me... this is my final duty."

Charmy and Cream were stunned by Silver's resolve. They would have felt like fools to say anything other than what they did:

"Roger."

お前ら全員燃えてしまえっ!!!

Freedom Emerl flew down the seemingly endless service tunnel that led from to the core of the Hell Huenlonix. Tails had never even imagined mechanics at this scale. The Giga Drill Driver did not even scrape the edges of the tunnel, and Tails could not see the end of the tunnel.

"How long does this thing go?" he shouted.

As if on cue, the end of the tunnel came upon him. It was a steel wall that Tails could not know was actually a meter thick.

Its chances of hindering a man who wanted to save the planet he loved?

Zero percent.

A steel door slammed down behind Freedom Emerl as it entered the chamber beyond.

It was like being on the inside of a sphere. Typhoon Freedom Emerl would have had room for itself and two of its Typhoon Giga Drill Drivers quite comfortably. Spiraling lights led from the tunnel Tails had just left to the opposite end of the round chamber, where a drill-shaped port stuck from the wall. It was as though the Core Drill port inside Emerl had been blown up and stretched around the inside of a sphere three-hundred kilometers across.

"Is that the heart of this machine?" Tails said, clenching the controls still more tightly.

"We're almost out of time, fox boy! GO!" Shadow shouted.

"You don't need to tell me twice!" Tails bellowed, bringing back the Giga Drill Driver. "Just who the hell do you think I a—"

And Freedom Emerl froze less than a foot from the drill port, as though time had stopped around it. Tails's voice had cut off just as abruptly.

"What's wrong?" Shadow demanded.

Then he saw it.

There, floating exactly in the middle of the giga drill port, the tip of the Giga Drill Driver less than a millimeter from her throat, was the Anti-Spiral Messenger, Cosmo.

She looked exactly as Tails always thought the Messenger Cosmo looked: beautiful and terrible. Black skin like rubber and glowing data lines were all he could see.

"Cosmo..." Tails breathed, before yelling, "Get out of the way, Cosmo!"

"I am afraid I cannot do that," she replied coldly. "I am the Anti-Spiral's Messenger program. Eradicating you Spiral races is my sole directive."

"Don't give me that crap! Just move!"

"I will not, so you may as well crush me with your drill."

Shadow took Freedom's controls, "If that's the way you want it!"

Rotor appeared in Shadow's eye; he looked very harried, "Wait, Shadow! Lucus says that you shouldn't!"

"What? This is no time for familial sentimentality, Helix King!"

The Darkoak Head replaced Rotor.

"You misunderstand my motives, Shadow. The computer-generated body of an Anti-Spiral Messenger is constructed of the same volatile digital matter as the Zoah," it explained. "If you were to drive that drill into her, there would be a tremendous explosion, and the control system would be destroyed."

Shadow's grip weakened. "No... but... we're so close..."

"That is absolute despair," said the Messenger Cosmo. "The survival instinct is incredibly strong in you Spiral races. That is why we extinguish every ray of hope left to you, one by one. When there at first appears to be hope, but then you learn it is beyond your reach, that is when your despair is deepest."

From his vantage point on the bridge of Typhoon Freedom Emerl, Silver was paralyzed with fear.

The appearance of the Zoah... the falling of the Moon... the predicted destruction of the underground shelters... the ambush in outer space... is she saying that these were all calculated moves? How far does this all go?

"Yes..." Cosmo continued. "Fear and despair are the two greatest deterrents to the magnifying nature of Spiral Power."

According to the Messenger program's algorithms, that should have been sufficient to send Miles Prower's Spiral instinct to the nadir of hopelessness.

"Are you sure about that?"

The Messenger paused.

"Cosmo, the way I see it," Tails said, and his brows were furrowed, "I think you've actually been trying to toughen up Möbiankind."

The Messenger gasped, but her face remained as implacable as if it were set in stone.

Tails continued, "No matter how hard the challenge, we Möbians have always risen up to meet the challenge. The more dangerous the circumstances you put us in, the stronger we became. That's what brought me here, to this place. And that's what you hoped of me." He challenged her, "Tell me I'm wrong."

"You and I exist in different dimensions," said the Messenger. "My past was a fictional creation. Your words mean nothing to me."

"That's a lie!"

"That is the truth."

For some reason now, Tails was staring down at the Messenger's left hand. "If that's true... if that's really true, why are you wearing that ring?"

That affected the Messenger's expression like nothing else Tails could have said. Her mouth dropped open, a white gap into the emptiness inside the digital shell of her body. Her blue eyes flickered, revealing black pupils.

And those pupils were focused on that white, seed-shaped diamond set into the golden ring around her left ring finger.

"This is..." the Messenger said. And there was more emotion there than in all the times Tails had heard her speak before.

"That... is your desire to not let go of your past, Cosmo."

And the ring glinted.

And Tails knew.

"I get it now, Cosmo." And he smiled. "Why you appeared to me those times."

The Messenger's face returned to its stoic impassivity. "To afflict absolute despair upon you. I have just explained that."

As terrible as it was to see Cosmo's skin having gone from white and soft to so black and rubbery, and with all those glowing computer lines running through it, hers was the only face in the world for Tails in that moment.

"You're wrong," he said. "Maybe you didn't realize it yourself, but when you appeared to me, you were really screaming for help under that emotionless mask of yours."

And Tails's mind was filled with images of Cosmo foretelling the cataclysmic Spiral Nemesis while pleading Tails!, Cosmo reaching to take his face in that court room while imploring I'm right here..., Cosmo about to kill him with blasts of killing red energy while begging Please! Help me!...

"I'm sorry... that I didn't hear your screams until now," Tails smiled, tears spilling down his face.

The Messenger's cold blue eyes were flickering, her black pupils coming back into view. Crystal tears dripped from them, running down her cheeks, cutting skin-colored trails in the black skin and glowing data lines of the Anti-Spiral Messenger.

"Y-you're wrong..." even the electronic reverb behind her voice was wavering. "I was..."

But the Messenger hiccuped, and could not continue.

"When we took down your father Lucus, you said that you would head towards tomorrow," Tails continued, as steadily as he could. "And we built that tomorrow, along with the other people who came to the surface. Would you destroy that yourself?"

Tails pulled back the Giga Drill...

"I'm gonna grab hold of your tomorrow with my own two hands!"

...and rammed it forward!

"So, get out of the way! Please, COSMO!"

The drill made contact.

The space of a single heartbeat passed when Tails feared that he had been all wrong about Cosmo...

And the Spiral gauge around Freedom Emerl lit up.

Shadow smiled in spite of himself.

"Look, fox boy!"

制御下

"Seventy seconds to Hell Huenlonix reactivation!" Helen shouted shrilly.

"Charmy... Cream... prepare to disengage," Silver said.

"Wait! Look!" shouted Rotor and Cobar, pointing at the former Moon.

The blackened crust over the Hell Huenlonix's appearance chipped away, dissipating into nothingness, revealing a lustrous gold. Large segments of the Hell Huenlonix - undoubtedly, those created from the core pilot's Spiral power - reverted to red computer grids and winked out of existence. The entire Gizoid rotated around itself, its forearms becoming thrusters on either side of the quasi-face, the drills on its knees contracting into themselves and transforming into the turbines of engines ten times the size of the Blue Typhoon. Another set of engines on a stalk emerged from its underbelly.

The timer until the Anti-Spiral program could have taken control of the Hell Huenlonix again stood frozen at 00:01:01.

"The Hell Huenlonix... It's returning to battleship mode!" Helen said breathlessly.

The Lucus Darkoak Head gave a look as close to misty-eyed as it could manage. "Ahh, yes, my Hellship is returned to me..."

"I guess that means he took control of it," Rotor said brightly.

As if on cue, an almost infinite number of hatches opened up on the Hellship's underside, firing off a sea of Spiral flames.

"The Moon Gizoid battleship has fired its retro rockets!" Helen's relief was obvious. "It's returning to its original orbit!"

A sigh of great release swept the bridge of the Typhoon Freedom Emerl.

"Looks like he pulled another victory out of the hat," Rotor smiled.

Silver collapsed into a chair. His smile was not relieved, but weary. Blaze gave him a trepidatious look as he said, "I can't do it... I can't hold a candle to you. In the end, you overturned every plan set against you..."

Down in the hangar of the Typhoon Freedom Emerl, Knuckles and Sally had both folded their arms.

"Well, that's Tails for ya," Knuckles smirked.

"Yeah," Sally agreed. "He's really come far, hasn't he?"

アンチスパイラルの母星

The hatch of Emerl opened up, and Tails stood atop the Gizoid which had killed three of the four Helix Generals, had created a tomorrow for Spiral life on the surface of Möbius, and now had taken control of a Gizoid half the size of Möbius itself, and looked at the drill port at the back of the Hellship's heart.

Cosmo floated beside Freedom Emerl's arm. Her skin had returned to its original color, as had her hair and the rest of her body. Apart from the fact that she was floating, it was as though she had never been the Anti-Spiral Messenger.

That, and she was naked.

But Tails had seen Cosmo naked before. And she him.

He smiled at her. "Thank you, Cosmo."

She did not look up at him.

"But... this will not change your destiny."

"What?" Tails gasped. She still sounded like the Messenger! What was going on...?

"With the forced deactivation of the Möbiankind Annihilation System," Cosmo said, "The entire Anti-Spiral race will enter into a total war front. If they set their mind to it, not even you will be a match for them. The Anti-Spiral's main war fleet will arrive in this galaxy, and exterminate Möbiankind and its awakened Spiral Power."

Shadow, his arms folded, said lowly, "So... the war is only just beginning..."

"If we defeat them," Tails asked, "Will you go back to being your old self?"

"I will shortly be called back to the Anti-Spiral homeworld, so that my data on you Möbians can be collated and analyzed," Cosmo explained. "The likelihood of that is infinitely close to zero."

"Maybe, but it isn't zero," Tails pressed on, grinning at Cosmo, "Which means that, as far as I'm concerned, that makes it a hundred percent chance you'll come back!"

Cosmo looked up at Tails, and she was herself, and she looked lost and frightened.

For Tails couldn't know.

Already Cosmo could hear a voice growing in the back of her mind, calling from the great Anti-Spiral homeworld of Avalon.

it is time.

"Will you come and rescue me?" she said to Tails, trying to ignore the slipping reality around her.

it is time...

to end this.

"I promise. Who the hell do you think I am?" Tails smirked.

Despite the situation, Cosmo smiled back...

Just as her body began to dissolve, pixel by pixel, polygon by polygon. For she was still a digital lifeform; she only appeared to be a Seedrian anymore.

Tails gasped, going pale, as Cosmo's voice echoed to him as she vanished completely, "I am being recalled... to the Anti-Spiral homeworld... Avalon..."

Tails clenched his teeth, and Cosmo's entire naked form blasted into his mind at full force as he screamed...

"COSMO!"

Back on the Typhoon Freedom Emerl, images of Cosmo's ring flashed wildly across every computer screen on the bridge.

"QUACK! What it is this time?" squawked Bean in alarm, speaking for everyone.

The Darkoak Head then said something which shocked everyone present.

"Through my link-up to Freedom Emerl, I have pinpointed the dimensional coordinates of the Anti-Spiral homeworld."

Rotor gasped.

The Darkoak Head said in a commanding tone, "Transfer the bridge to the Hellship immediately. I will bring the Spiral Realm Perceptual Teleportation System online and input the dimensional coordinates."

In the core of the Hellship, Tails heard Rotor's voice as though through a long tunnel, even though the screen showing Rotor's face was right inside Emerl, less than five feet away from him.

"Tails! Lucus says that we can reach the enemy's stronghold!"

Tails stared at the spiraling ceiling overhead.

"Good," he growled. "Then let's go. Cosmo is there, too."

And when Tails glowered with determination, Kukku hovering at his shoulder, it was not a green glow in his eyes, but a golden gleam.

"This time, we're taking the fight to them!"

つづく
To be continued...


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Even twisted roads will straighten out if you kick common sense out and give them a whack! Spirit and love change the universe. That's how stubbornness shows itself!

Next time on Tengen Toppa Freedom Emerl: "Let's Go, This Is The Final Battle!"