Chapter 27: Unforeseen
A scream filled the room, the sound carrying such an unspeakable pain that it made everyone's fur stand on end as they had never heard anyone make such a sound, the originator of this scream sinking to the ground just a moment later.
Strangely, it wasn't the Other Shadow who had let out this scream.
It was Sonic.
The blue hero was staring wide eyed at the smoking form of his dear friend, the dark body lying motionlessly on the ground and barely recognizable, burned heavily by Scourge's attack. Sonic's entire body was shaking like a leaf in the wind as his mind kept replying the horrible scene that had just taken place before his eyes.
No! You can't be dead! Sonic felt himself screaming internally, but in the outer world only sobs left his throat, which were soon accompanied by tears escaping his eyes. You can't...
The dark body just continued to lie at the same spot without any signs of life, diminishing the tiny flame of hope that had been left in Sonic's heart more and more with each passed second. Sonic knew that it was impossible for the dark hedgehog to be still alive. But his legs still refused to work and carry him to his comrade's body as a little voice from a far-away part of his mind kept insisting that as long as the other's death wasn't confirmed the Other Shadow still might—by a work of some miracle—be somehow alive and the reason for his stillness might be just an incapability to move caused by his severe injuries.
"Oops."
Sonic's eyes sharply turned to stare at the source of the noise—who happened to be none other than Scourge. The purple hedgehog's fingers were touching his lips, partly hiding them, a gesture of someone that was clearly aware that they had just done something they shouldn't have but which felt no shame or regret for doing it. "It seems I've killed him."
The little voice in the back of Sonic's mind fell silent upon hearing this comment, the hope that the Other Shadow might still be alive disappearing completely and instead being replaced with a feeling of intense rage caused by Scourge's amused tone.
The blue hero growled like a feral animal, the fury he felt giving him enough power to stand once more. The blue hero lunged forward, planning to make Scourge pay for what he had just done. But Sonic hadn't even had the chance to make two steps before he was forcefully tugged back by his wrist, the action sending him crashing back into the person behind him. The blue speedster sharply turned around to spat some cruel remark into the face of whoever dared to stop him.
However, he found himself unable to say anything, feeling as if someone had just punched him hard in the gut in that moment—as he was met with the face of the person whom he wished to avenge.
"Get a hold of yourself! He didn't sacrifice himself just for you to get killed a minute after!" Shadow snarled angrily, his tone clearly saying he wouldn't accept any protests. "Don't let it consume you! You need to be strong. For him. Do you understand?"
Sonic nodded his head meekly, turning his eyes to the ground as he found himself unable to look at Shadow; just seeing the dark agent's face was enough to make his eyes well up with tears again.
Shadow's eyes moved to take a look at Scourge, who was watching their little exchange with a curious expression, tapping his chin thoughtfully.
"Go help Knuckles," the dark hedgehog murmured to the blue hero as he made a step forward, in the process letting go of Sonic's wrist—which he had been holding all this time to ensure the blue hero wouldn't attempt to jump straight into the danger once again. The blue speedster seemed hesitant for a moment but then he turned around and went to help the trapped echidna.
Calm red eyes met blazing crimson ones as Shadow's voice echoed through the room. "What do you want?"
A lazy smile found its way to Scourge's face as he let himself drop to the ground and then started to approach the other hedgehog at a leisurely pace. "I want many things..."
"And what exactly do you want from him?" Shadow asked, gesturing to Sonic, who was now trying to get Knuckles from under a pile of rubble under which the guardian had been trapped for last five minutes.
Scourge smirked, an evil glint in his eyes. "I want to make him suffer."
The two were standing just mere feet away from each other, the proximity making Shadow able to finally sense how much power the other possessed. The amount of power rivaled to the amount one would acquire if they turned hyper, but it was slightly below it.
Though Scourge would definitely not have any problem to kill them all just with one swift move of hand if he wanted to.
"For what reason?" Shadow asked, stalling for time. If he kept Scourge busy long enough his transformation would run out and then they would finally have a chance to defeat him—because as long as Scourge was in a super state going against him would be a sure suicide—his doppelgänger being the unfortunate example.
"I just don't like his face." The glowing hedgehog shrugged his shoulders, acting as if wanting to beat up someone just because of what they looked like was something normal.
The dark agent suppressed the urge to reply with something along the lines 'Really? Then you have to hate looking in the mirror,' as in his opinion Scourge looked like a bad re-color of Sonic. But such comment would definitely anger Scourge and Shadow definitely didn't want to join his double's fate. And so Shadow said, "Well, you must be fun at parties."
"I am." the Destructix's leader chuckled, Shadow using the moment to sneak a look at the other two. Sonic was currently trying to wake up Knuckles as the echidna had been knocked out by the unexpected blast. However, he didn't seem to have much luck as Knuckles' eyes stayed tightly shut.
Crimson eyes turned back to stare at Scourge. "You said you were looking for Doctor. Shouldn't you go find him?"
The purple hedgehog looked a little surprised at the unexpected change of topic. "Oh, come on, Stripes! The party hasn't even started and you are already chasing me away?" Scourge raised his eye-ridge playfully. There was a warm smile on his face but his red eyes were shining with a promise of suffering; Shadow could feel his inner alarm going off at seeing this expression.
The dark agent took a quick glance at the blue and red duo behind him. Knuckles was finally awake and Sonic, who was still by his side, was helping him to stand up as the echidna seemed to be rather disorientated. The speedster's shoulders were still shaking slightly and he seemed to have trouble breathing—which was probably because of the sobs that he tried hard to prevent from leaving his chest as from his current position he had a clear view at the burnt body of his fallen comrade.
Shadow sharply turned back to Scourge, frowning as he realized that he had to find an non-violent way to get them all out of this situation—or at least obtain the duo some time to recover. Knuckles would need at least few more minutes to recover, but Sonic... he definitely wasn't going to calm down anytime soon and his unstable emotional state could very easily lead to their demise in a battle; and Scourge would definitely try to upset the blue hero even more. So Shadow decided he better stall for some more time. "Just thought you might want to try to catch Dr. Nega when you still have the chance. It's been some time since he left."
Scourge furrowed his eye-ridges in confusion. "Who the fuck is 'Nega'?"
Shadow mirrored his expression; neither of them was aware they had been both speaking about different people all this time.
"Dr. Nega— the one to whom this base belongs," the dark agent clarified, but the clarification just made the purple hedgehog frown even more.
"Has Eggman decided to change his name or something?"
The dark agent scowled. They way the other was speaking it was clear he wasn't aware that someone of name Dr. Nega even existed. So the only possible explanation could be that Scourge was actually talking about different Eggman than Dr. Eggman Nega as Dr. Nega always introduced himself to anyone by his full title.
Dark eye-ridges furrowed in a deep thought. He remembered Sonic mentioning something about their Dr. Eggman being dead, so that one was out of game. And the only other Dr. Eggman that he knew about was...
Crimson eyes widened in realization as he came to the same conclusion that his world's Tails. Dr. Nega had to be the one that had taken Dr. Eggman out of GUN's grasp—probably to get the Doctor help him with conquering their worlds as he put it.
But why his world? Shadow looked from the corner of his eyes at Sonic, who was now intently watching the two of them, one of Knuckles' arms thrown over his shoulders as he helped the red echidna to keep his balance.
"Hey! I asked you a que—!" Scourge growled as made a threatening step forward, planning to make Shadow pay attention to him once more—by force. But suddenly Scourge flickered like a broken TV, the real color of his fur becoming visible for a moment before changing back to bright purple once again.
Unfortunately for him, the others had noticed it too.
"Shit! My transformation is running out!" he shouted in alarm, not realizing he was speaking his thoughts aloud. He leapt back to the gaping hole in the floor and the jumped down to retrieve more Emeralds that would keep his super transformation active, the heroic trio immediately rushing to the edge of the hole to see why the super hedgehog had so suddenly decided to leave the scene.
All three pairs of eyes widened in surprise.
"Are those Chaos Emeralds?" Knuckles asked, still a little bit disorientated and thus unsure if he was having hallucinations or not, as seeing thousands of Chaos emeralds definitely wasn't an ordinary sight.
"It seems so." Shadow frowned as he finally realized that the strong chaos signal that he had felt had to be because of this. The sight was both astonishing and terrifying; astonishing that the Doctors had managed to get their hands on so many emeralds and terrifying that they had actually managed to do that as they were able to cause a lot of trouble even with one Emerald.
He was pretty sure that he really didn't want to know what they could do cause with thousands of them.
However, this was not the time to wonder about what kind of destruction could Doctors cause as there was currently more urgent problem—in a form of certain purple hedgehog that had just broken another container to get to the Emeralds inside it.
Shadow was about to jump down to stop Scourge, but he suddenly found himself acting the part of a support pillar for Knuckles as Sonic had made the echidna lean on the dark hedgehog's shoulder instead of his own at that moment.
"Hold him for a moment," the blue speedster said, his eye shining with an emotion that Shadow had never seen in the blue hero's eyes—which made the dark agent realized that Sonic definitely shouldn't be the one to go against Scourge.
But before Shadow could even voice his protest, Sonic had already jumped down.
~O~
"Are you prepared to pay?"
Scourge sharply turned around, his fur now back to its original color as his transformation had ended just seconds ago—which caused the previously used Emeralds to scatter around the room, dull and unusable; however, the green criminal had already a new set of Emeralds to transform himself in his hands.
There was a set of Emeralds circling around Sonic's body, just waiting for a moment to fuse with the blue hedgehog, who was currently glaring daggers at his dimensional double, the emeralds surrounding him slowly changing from their vibrant colors to bland gray as they synced with the negative emotions that were currently wracking their controller.
Scourge smirked, a thought that this might be a bad idea not even crossing his mind as he fully believed defeating his alter-ego would be a piece of cake for him. "Anytime."
"Alright then."
The two transformed and just a moment later the battle of Super Scourge against Dark Super Sonic started.
~O~
Shadow and Knuckles could only stare at the crazy battle that was happening on the lower ground. The two hedgehogs were moving at insane speed, jumping from one side of the room to the other in a split of second constantly, making it impossible for Shadow to jump down and join the battle—as he would get sliced into pieces before his feet could even touch the ground.
And so the dark agent just continued to watch the fighting duo, noting that Sonic actually seemed to be having the upper hand in this battle due to Scourge having trouble with keeping up with his pace; however, it was clear that the only reason why the blue hero had the upper hand was because of his emotional state—as the more the person was controlled by emotions, the more power the Emeralds provided to their controller.
But because of this, Sonic was using much bigger amount of power that he was supposed to—which could eventually lead to his transformation time getting shortened drastically. And if he didn't manage to defeat Scourge by that time...
It would all be over for them.
~O~
Scourge flung himself at the hero again, his fist colliding with the other's jaw with a horrible sound. However, Sonic didn't seem affected anyhow by the blow and instead drove his knee deep into the other's stomach, knocking the breath out of his opponent with the action; however, Scourge didn't even have the time to remember how to breath before another blow was delivered to his body—this time to his left temple, Sonic's left hook clicking like a puzzle piece into its hollow.
Gasping for breath, the Destructix's leader fell to the ground, his mind running thousand miles per hour as he tried tried to figure out why Sonic seemed so much stronger than him when both of them used the same amount of Emeralds.
He would get more—but Sonic was making sure he wouldn't get the chance.
However, this train of thoughts was cut short as he was hauled back to his feet by Sonic roughly seizing the hold of his jacket, the proximity allowing him to feel the rage and sorrow coming from Sonic in waves, the emotions almost overwhelming him with their intensity.
But Scourge didn't let himself get stunned by this; instead he head-butted his opponent, effectively making Sonic release him.
The purple hedgehog flew upwards back into the screen room with Sonic right at his tail, the red and dark duo immediately moving to the faraway corner of the room as it was clear things were to get crazy pretty soon.
"Let's spice things up a little bit!" Scourge screamed, the too familiar crackling purple energy starting to jump between Scourge's hands, slowly turning into a form of energy ball. Sonic immediately copied him, a ball of dark blue energy soon forming between his hands too.
A wicked smirk found it's way to Scourge's face as he prepared himself to throw the sphere. "Hasta la vista, baby!" he screamed, releasing the sphere from his hand—to which Sonic responded by doing the same right after.
The spheres collided midway, their energies immediately seeping into each other, forming a giant dark purple colored ball of crackling energy that seemed as if it were collapsing into itself; but then it began to expand, creating a giant shock-wave that sent both super hedgehogs crashing into a wall.
The two look-alikes both groaned as they stood up, their forms no longer glowing as they had both de-transformed mid-flight, neither of them sure what exactly had just happened.
And then they saw it.
An even thought both were thinking the same thing, Scourge was the only one to voice his thoughts, "Well... Shit."
~O~
We need to fix this. Fast! Sonic realized, his mind racing as it tried to find a solution to their current problem. Normally, it always took just winning a fight with some kind of monster to restore everything back to normal; however, there was no monster this time and because of this Sonic had no idea what he was supposed to do to fix the growing tear in the space-time continuum.
He looked to Scourge, who just shrugged his shoulders in 'Why do you expect me to know what to do?' way. And so Sonic looked to Shadow and Knuckles, hoping the duo would know a solution. However, their blank expressions convinced him of the opposite pretty fast.
But he still decided to ask—just in case he had read the two wrong. "Any of you has any idea how to fix this mess? We need to do something!"
"Chill down, blue! Leave it up to these guys to fix it!" Scourge responded, gesturing to the rip.
Sonic frowned in confusion at the strange remark, turning to look at the rip through which a group of people wearing red and gold over-all suits with metal helmets on their heads could be seen; all of them talking animatedly about something that Sonic couldn't hear.
Thought Sonic wasn't really interested in knowing what they were talking about—as the reason why on Mobius they all seemed to be standing at a ninety degree angle from the ground was definitely much more interesting question in his mind.
The strange people didn't seem to notice them—or maybe they just didn't care about them. But then a new one arrived at the scene and this one undoubtedly noticed them. The male—which Sonic presumed from his body shape as because of the helmet he couldn't really see the person's face—gestured to some of his colleagues and then pointed at them.
Sonic watched in astonishment as the male then made a somersault through the rip and then landed on the ground perfectly, his body's gravity field seemingly orientating itself to their world automatically, the male soon followed by another four people. But Sonic's staring in awe was cut short as he found himself at gunpoint along with Scourge, Shadow and Knuckles.
"Oh, come on, Zonic! You haven't been here even for five minutes and you are already pointing a gun at my face? What kind of greeting is that?" the green criminal asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
"This is your work, Scourge, isn't it?" the leader, obviously named Zonic, asked, gesturing with his head to the reality rip.
"Kinda. Bluie here has a hand in this too," Scourge responded, pointing at Sonic, who yet had to say anything in this conversation.
Sonic could feel how the male's eyes focused of him—despite the fact that he couldn't see the other's face through the visor. "Who are you? And how exactly are you all involved in this?" Zonic asked, stealing a fast glance at Shadow and Knuckles, who were just calmly standing at the other side of the room as they had decided that they won't try to fight unless shots were fired.
For some mysterious reason, Sonic had a feeling this people meant no harm even though they were holding all of them at a gunpoint; so he decided to follow his gut feeling and to tell the truth. "I am Sonic the Hedgehog and those," Sonic gestured to Shadow and Knuckles, "are my...ugh, well, I believe allies would be the best word. You see, our situation is pretty complicated. We were trying to stop certain megalomaniac from taking over the world, but then Scourge appeared. We got into a fight with him and during this fight we accidentally caused this." The blue hero gestured to the rip that finally seemed to stop its expansion.
"Why were you fighting?" Zonic asked, frowning when he noticed the way Sonic flinched at the question. "He...killed my friend." Sonic's eyes involuntarily moved to look at the area where the Other Shadow's body was still motionlessly lying.
All the uniformed people turned to stare at the burned body, some of them visibly flinching at the sight.
"...Murder. I didn't think you'd ever sink that low, Scourge," Zonic said, gesturing to one of his colleague's to take his place in keeping an eye—and gun—at Scourge as he went to examine the body, the green criminal shouting just one thing after him, "Sorry to break your expectations, Zonic!" his tone more mocking than apologetic as expected.
Zonic crouched down, getting a closer look at the damaged body, the stench of burnt flesh getting stronger due to the proximity. Most of the dark hedgehog's fur had been burnt away, only little patches remaining in some places. There were heavy burns covering the bigger portion of the body, making the male almost unrecognizable.
The head zone cop watched for any signs of life like a slow rise and fall of chest or twitch of a hand for next few seconds but he couldn't see any. It was no surprise; it would be a miracle if the male was still alive.
But it was his duty to confirm that the man was truly dead as he couldn't hold Scourge responsible for something that wasn't confirmed.
Zonic sighed as he took off one of his blue glove as the thickness of it made would make it unable for him to feel a person's pulse—though in this case it definitely wouldn't make much difference in his opinion.
Peach hand softly took one of the dark wrists, Zonic immediately pressing two of his fingers on the artery to check for the pulse.
He waited five seconds for a beat, but nothing was happening. After five more he was about to declare them man dead but then, without any warning—
BADUM.
Zonic's green eyes widened in shock as he couldn't believe what he was sensing. The blue zone cop anxiously waited for another beat to ensure he wasn't imagining things.
BADUM.
The head zone cop stared in shock at the dark hedgehog before him, his mind not able to comprehend how the male could still be alive despite being wounded so severely. Green eyes focused once more on upper body of the dark hedgehog, this time noticing the extremely slight movement of the other's chest.
Zonic sharply turned back to his squad. "Zespio!"
Zonic's commanding voice drew the attention of not just his chameleon subordinate but also the attention of the rest of the room. And every single one of them was rendered speechless by Zonic's next words.
"Immediately call the medics here! This man is still alive!"
