Chapter 34
"Okay, so how do we get me to cry tears of joy? And what will happen when Iblis comes out of me and becomes dormant?" Elise asked Blaze. "Iblis will become docile, and his flames will retreat onto this pedestal I have here. But it will be yellow and orange instead of white, which Solaris is supposed to be. Once we have Mephiles, they will form into the white, eternal flame of Solaris once more," Blaze explained as she showed a silver platter she had on her person. "Will Mephiles try to merge with the purified Iblis at all?" I asked. "Most likely, and that's why we need to keep Iblis under constant surveillance. I shall hold his form on my person by temporarily absorbing his flames if we ever come across Mephiles. And since Iblis will be purified, I can take him in and out of my body at will with no repercussions. After all, I am one of the royal family of the Sol Emeralds," Blaze explained.
"Okay, now for something to make you cry tears of joy... I think that I can play a song to make you cry tears of joy," I smiled at her. "And what song do you have in mind, Penny?" Tikal asked with a smile. "It's a very heartwarming song from my world that I have saved on my phone," I smiled as I pushed play on one of my favorite non-Sonic songs, "You're the Inspiration" by Chicago.
Once the intro played, Elise looked invested, but when the voices kicked in, she immediately smiled as her eyes started to blubber up.
"You know our love was meant to beeeee...
The kind of love that lasts... foreverrrr...
And I want you here with meeee...
From tonight until the end of time.
Yoooouuuu should knoww!
Everywhere I go!
Always on my mind... in my heart... in my soul, baby!" the song sung as Elise already started to emit a few tears.
"So beautiful..." she smiled at that as Iblis's flames exited her body and looked to be incredibly calm afterwards. "You did it, Penny! Iblis is calm now!" Blaze smiled at me as she held out the pedestal and Iblis immediately joined with it, Blaze smiling afterwards. "I know, Iblis... I missed you too," Blaze smiled at the fiery being on the pedestal as she put it back in her hammer space. "Well, now that that's settled, now we need to find out where the 7 Chaos Emeralds are as well as take care of Mephiles," I said. "Easier said than done, considering that we don't know where the Emeralds could be," Tikal said. "Or, I have another theory. We can just use my Sol Emeralds as well as the Super Emerald around Elise's neck. After all, they are what we would normally use against Mephiles in our universe," Blaze said.
"Do you have the Sol Emeralds on you?" Chaos asked. "Yes I do," Blaze smirked as she presented the 7 Emeralds to us, all of them being rectangular in shape again. "Okay, so then all we need to do is figure out where Charmy Bee is... Tikal? Can you sense him nearby?" I smiled at her. "Hmm..." she hummed as she tried to sense for the hyperactive child and smiled after she found him. "Got it! He's apparently in a nearby train station accessible from the northern part of the city. We can get there quickly by flying to his position," Tikal smiled.
Our group then left the castle and headed out to find Charmy, heading out towards the northern part of the city in order to find him... but who should we run across on our way towards the station other than a certain psychokinetic hedgehog from the future who, upon seeing Tikal, immediately tried to send a blast of psychic energy at her, which made her lose focus of her flight and drop all of us and herself to the ground by him. "I've been looking for you. You're the Iblis Trigger. You're actions will condemn us all, female echidna!" Silver said to Tikal.
"Listen, bub. Mephiles isn't the good guy. I don't care what he told you, but Tikal isn't the Iblis Trigger. In fact, we already handled Iblis," I said to him, Silver looking shocked by my words. "What do you mean?... And why do you look a lot like Blaze?" Silver asked in confusion. "We mean that we have pacified Iblis and the reason I look like Blaze would result in me explaining a whole lot of crap that we don't have time for. We need to stop Mephiles before he tries anything funny against us," I said... until I remembered something shocking that I completely forgot about. But I had to sense for the duo first, wondering if they were even in this timeline. Luckily, I did sense them, and they were currently in the southern area of Soleanna. At least they weren't trapped in the future. (I'm talking about Shadow and Rouge specifically).
"You... pacified Iblis? How so?" Silver gawked. Blaze simply showed the flames of the pacified creature held on her pedestal, which Silver gawked at. "Solaris is a deity from my dimension, who was somehow stolen by the Duke of Soleanna in this world and experimented on... the resultant disaster that happened not only killed nearly everyone involved, but also split Solaris into two parts. The conscious mind of Mephiles and the eternal flame of Iblis... and since I am of the royal family of the Sol Emeralds, I know how to pacify and rejoin them correctly to prevent incident. For Iblis, it's as simple as the host of it crying tears of joy. But Mephiles is a whole other story, especially now that he has taken the form of someone's shadow," Blaze said.
"No way... so what do we do now? I'm not disappearing, so I guess that means that my future is unable to be changed... so how do we go after Mephiles? I can help in any way I can," Silver said. "Very well. We need to find a certain candidate to seal Mephiles inside. The trick is to get the person to laugh legitimately, even though Mephiles's mere presence in their bodies will give them tons of pain. So we need to find a certain person that we know for a fact is fearless and almost always happy and hyper. He's at the train station," I said as I sensed he was actually on his way into Soleanna from the train itself. And afterwards, the bee himself came flying out of the train station along with his two cohorts in Vector and Espio.
"Whoa! It's nice to see you guys again! What'cha doing?" Charmy asked the moment he saw us, his smile and hyperactivity present as always. "See? Told ya," I smiled at Silver. "Told him what?" Charmy asked as Espio simply stood on guard and Vector smiled at us as well. "Hey, Team Chaotix? We'd like it if we could ask Charmy to come with us on a mission to stop an evil creature from destroying the world," Chaos smiled at the trio. "An evil creature? Destroying the world? Oh heck yeah, my first solo mission! Yahoo!" Charmy exclaimed as he zipped all through the air like a bee would. "What kind of creature are you talking about?" Vector asked. "Mephiles the Dark. He's a creature that is made of pure darkness and the only way to stop him is to seal his essence within Charmy and for Charmy to laugh after having Mephiles inside of him... only catch is that it will be painful on his part," Elise said with a sad frown. "Pain? Why didn't you say that in the first place?! Give me the job! PLEASE!" Charmy exclaimed after she said that, which confused us a lot.
"Um... question mark?" I asked, Espio putting a finger to his temple afterwards. "Charmy is a masochist of sorts... he loves it when he experiences pain, sometimes laughing because of it. If you need someone to laugh because of pain, this is your go-to person for the job," Espio said with a serious frown. "Really? Heh. Well that makes it a whole lot easier, then! Now the only tricky part we face now... where do we find Mephiles?" I asked. "I have an idea on how to do that," Silver said. "Mephiles is expecting me to meet up with him in the forested area of Soleanna for an update of the mission and to find out where the 'Iblis Trigger' may be at. If I meet up with him, we can get the jump on him before he can escape," Silver said.
"Hmm..." I frowned as I tried to sense Mephiles at all, trying to figure out what his essence would be like. But when I finally sensed him in the forest, I was shocked at just how dark and brooding his life force was... but I did manage to find out one thing before I got a serious migraine from the shock. "Agh... Mephiles is unable to sense life forces... lucky us... ugh, that hurt," I groaned as I rubbed my temples for a change, wishing that my claws wouldn't come out when I did so, but them coming out anyways. "Then it's settled. The plan of attack is set. Now it's all up to us to stop Mephiles and properly fix Solaris up," Chaos smiled. "Okay. Silver, you go to the forest and talk to Mephiles. Blaze and our gang will be hiding in the canopy waiting for the strike," I said as Elise gave her Super Emerald to Blaze for safekeeping. "Okay, let's do this," Blaze said with a smile.