Author's Note: The last chapter, and this one, basically serve as an overload of plot twists and revelations to try to tie up the loose ends that I set into place earlier in the story. Not everything will be answered by the time this fic is over, but hopefully you won't feel like I've left you completely in the dark.
If you haven't already guessed, this is my take on the "Tails first meets Sonic" flashback from Sonic X. This is basically an extended retelling of it that throws in some game references (because who doesn't love those?). Besides being relevant to the next chapter, I included this flashback because I felt that the Sonic X version felt too rushed and simple.
Those of you who are big game continuity buffs, I know that the Sonic 2 manual (or whatever it is) said that Sonic found Tails on West Side island (where Sonic 2 takes place), rather than on South Island (where Sonic 1 takes place and where the Scrap Brain Zone is), but I felt that this is a more logical transition between the two games. I know that the Tornado plane is supposed to be red in Sonic 2, but in the Sonic X flashback Tails painted it blue so I'm just sticking to that.
The choice of having Mephiles take on Blaze's form wasn't so much a choice that I made just to have Blaze back, but rather I made it for two main reasons:
1. to ensure that this story has one less hedgehog (4 is enough, or 5 if you count Metal Sonic). Mephiles took on the form of Shadow's shadow in Sonic '06, so just imagine that he did something similar with Blaze (but he also took over her body).
2. For a sense of dramatic irony. Basically it's the ever-calculating Julian getting his comeuppance from the person he least expected. Not only is this one of the reasons why I went with this turn of events, it's also one of the reasons why Mephiles chose this form for this occasion.
Not to mention that this could make for an interesting plot point in the sequel. I promise I'll try not to make it into some clichéd story about trying to convert a loved one from the ways of darkness. I'll try to make it more complicated and original than that.
Only one more chapter left.
"So, I guess you're here to thank me like the others, right?"
"Huh?"
"You know, repay me for the job well done?"
"What job?"
"Do you live in a cave or something?"
"No…" apparently he took the question literally.
"I tore down that clockwork city. The people of this island sent for my help when inhabitants were being abducted by some strange bald person. Turns out that's where he was hiding."
"Bald?"
"No feathers, no scales and barely any hair. He's as plain as an egg's shell… come to think of it he was also shaped like one."
Oh no. He thought. If all of my inventions come from some weirdo kidnapper, then it's no wonder they hate technology, not to mention me.
"I'm sorry." He blurted out as he was staring at his knees.
"For what?" This was the last thing he was expecting to hear: his ego had already lead him to presume that the boy was providing these services out of gratitude. What could he possibly be sorry about?
"That egg person… I've been using his machines for my own purposes and I've been looking up to him. I should've known better than to have anything to do with him."
"So? You didn't know, and even if you did… it's not like I care."
"Huh?"
"It's not like the egg man's inventions were wrong, it was the fact that he was kidnapping people and trying to take control of the island. When people try to take control of others' lives, that's when I have a problem. As long as people are doing what they want without preventing others from doing the same, then everything's fine as far as I'm concerned."
"Ok." He didn't know what else to say.
"So then, why are you here? Was it just my plane or is there something else that you want?"
It always came to this. This is exactly the question that he was hoping wouldn't come up. Answering his question truthfully would require further elaboration: namely, on his past. It wasn't so much that he was unable to explain his history as it was that he didn't want to resort to that. Just for once he wanted a friend who didn't pity him. Isn't there someone out there who respects me? Someone who likes me for who I am?
There was only one solution: lie. "Oh no; like I said: when I see machines I can't help myself."
"Well, if you say so."
He had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, but all he had to do was make him stay on the island for a few days; that's all he'd need in order to prove his usefulness. Maybe he'd be allowed to go with him and escape this forsaken place. He couldn't just come right forward and ask to be his companion: such an attempt could only fail and expose him for the needy charity case that he was.
"I'm just gonna finish tuning up your ride before I show you how to do it, alright?"
Sonic nodded.
Tails turned his attention to the pilot's seat. After cleaning out all of the gunk from under the dashboard switches, he began to remove the hedgehog's belongings from the cockpit. He managed to yank a rather hefty bag from behind the seat. With that out of the way, there was plenty of space behind the pilot's chair. Perfect.
"Hey, be careful with that bag," Sonic said more as a half-threat, rather than a caution.
"Why, what's in it?"
Sonic rushed over and took the sack from the boy. "Something very valuable." He paused, but figured just that would only make the boy more curious. "While I've been working across the globe, I've run across these special stones. Chaos emeralds are what I think they're called."
"Sorry, I didn't know."
Sonic eased up a little. "That's alright. I was just a little edgy because everyone else who's seen them has told me how dangerous they are. Apparently there are a lot of tall tales about these emeralds. I haven't noticed anything strange about the six I've gathered, but just in case there's something to the hype I want to make sure they don't fall into the wrong hands."
"Anyways…" Tails got back to his previous line of thought, "I noticed that there's enough room behind this pilot seat for a passenger seat. I could put one in for you."
"No thanks; I can barely get all of the emeralds to fit in there now, let alone if there were another seat back there."
"W-well, wouldn't it come in handy in the future, on your later trips?"
"No, I travel alone and I work alone. Thanks for the offer, though."
Tails leaned against the side of the plane and slowly sank into a sitting position.
"Stay put for a minute, willya?" Sonic said off-handedly, "it'll be dark out soon and I want to get a fire setup, I'll be right back."
As soon as he was gone, Tails let out a long, tiring sigh. This seemingly-insignificant exchange between them confirmed the worst (but most likely) outcome: in a few days, after Sonic left, things would be back to normal.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Another dead end?"
"It would appear so," Omega agreed.
"But this is the fifth floor we've tried!" Eggman whined. "Are you sure you sense energy behind these walls?"
Shadow nodded.
"Well then, we'll just have to blast our way through," Ivo kept his determination.
"We?" Omega asked.
"It's not worth the time. The energy still feels greatly dampened; these walls must be several meters thick," Shadow concluded.
"My sensory recordings support this conclusion," Omega repeated in stereo to Shadow's also-droning voice.
"I'll have to use some more of the ship's energy to get us there," Shadow mentioned as he was already leaving the room.
"Wait a minute; if you use Chaos control, we could end up stuck inside a wall," Ivo sounded a tad panicked.
"Then stay here."
"Bah, in your dreams," Eggman scoffed as he tried to save face. "Something about this whole situation stinks, and who else but I should get to the bottom of it?" The doctor grew eager as the ebony hedgehog began pulling wires out of a nearby teleportation terminal.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was done. Robotnik, Julian had been the most profitable of viceroys. So many attempts to awaken Iblis through controlled tribulations, and of all people it was a human whose efforts bore fruit. The Mobian called Silver was still present. Being a son of Chaos, he should be handled, but now is not the time. The opportunity has presented itself to silence him, but there is a simple reason why it cannot happen now: nothing of the sort could be foreseen as happening at this moment.
In fact, Mephiles couldn't perceive any further events that were to happen in this location, which can only mean one thing: Chaos energy. Not even a deity can predict outcomes when the forces of Chaos are at work. This is partly why it took so many attempts to create the proper scenario for Iblis' proper awakening. The unperceivable being and its fleshly avatar were on the alert: Chaos seldom travels alone.
Right on schedule, just as Mephiles' "memories" of this event ran out, two mortals popped into place. Their entrance was like taking a shear to the universe's script: it was always so infuriating whenever something proved difficult to control or anticipate.
Robotnik, Ivo: father of Robotnik, Julian had arrived. With him was another son of Chaos: one that Mephiles itself had a hand in cultivating in a failed attempt to bring about the chosen child of Chaos who would liberate Iblis from the grasp of the seven tainted emeralds. Seeing the two of them together reminded him of Robotnik, Gerald: a less-successful viceroy. The metal golem accompanying them was not worthy of mention.
Mephiles had a fondness for genealogies: one could say an obsession. The idea of a mortal's essence and qualities being transmitted through time gave comforting proof of continuity and purpose in existence. The false notion of a fleeting and varying cosmos was too revolting for its mind to bear. Robotnik, Ivo is ignorant of his legacy. Even though Mephiles could not be certain of how this situation would turn out, it knew what a mortal such as Ivo was and was not capable of handling; it was time for a revelation.
"In an amount of time that you cannot grasp, Robotnik, Ivo, there shall live a woman who will know you," it declared in Blaze's tongue.
"Not much for greetings, are you?" Eggman shrugged the cryptic remark off.
"Blaze? No… no heat signature in the body… but there is still electrical activity in the cortex," Omega mumbled to himself.
It continued: "This woman of the time to come will be honored and adored by her people, but she will live a lonely and empty existence. As her star fades, she will hunger for attention and gratification: she will turn to you for it. A sample of your genetic material, put into preservation long ago when it became apparent that you would never live to see your family line continued, will fall into her possession. Her name will be Thorndyke, and she will use this material to fashion a son named Julian. She will give him your kin's name."
"A nice story," Eggman dismissed the account, "but completely baseless. It's all a tactic to distract me and stall for time, am I right?"
"Feel free to pilfer the corpse," Mephiles directed to Eggman as Blaze stood aside to reveal Julian's remains. "There you will find the proof."
Not willing to let himself show any concern for his fallen partner, he merely directed his energy toward anger.
Even though the creator didn't say anything, this display was all the consent that Omega needed to act. He fired several high-power rounds at the possessed feline, who merely darted out of the way. Once the E-series robot determined that the target had moved far enough away so that an explosive's blast radius would not harm the creator or the former custodian, Omega readied a grenade in the palm of his metallic claw. An infinitesimally brief flash of light preceded the grenade detonating inside of Omega's hand, irreparably damaging internal mechanisms and rendering the limb useless.
Not even a machine could have guessed what had just happened. A near-instantaneous reaction on Mephiles' part caused Blaze to 'snipe' the grenade with a stream of plasma in the form of a lightning bolt. The ionized material provided a magnetic collision with the grenade; the force feedback 'tricked' the grenade into thinking that it had come into contact with a solid surface, causing it to detonate. During her absence from the mortal realm, Blaze's abilities had transcended manipulating mere chemical reactions.
She closed in on the one-armed robot. Shadow hurled a Chaos spear at her feet, but she leapt into the air and bypassed the hedgehog entirely. Landing directly behind the lumbering titan, she swatted aside his attempt to impale her with his remaining claw and began to pummel his midsection repeatedly. Her superheated hands caused his metal carapace to bend and distort. Shadow came at her again at point-blank, forcing her to break off her assault against Omega.
She jumped out of the way of a sweeping kick, only to be tossed higher into the air by a Chaos spear that detonated on the bit of ground that she had intended to land on. While she was being flung through the air by the blast, she managed to line up a shot: the energy of the bolt made contact with its target, but it was scattered across Shadow's body, collecting in the power rings on his wrists and ankles; for Shadow, manipulating garden-variety energies was child's play compared to harnessing the power of chaos energy. Unflinching, the hedgehog merely redirected the bolt's energy back at her: galvanizing her current trajectory and sending her flying across the room, denting an advanced alloy wall at the far end of the chamber.
It was time for Mephiles to take its foes seriously. It seems that this act of judgment would have to be swift and efficient, rather than something to be savored. The transformation that had overcome Blaze's arm when she carried out the sentence on Julian now affected her whole body.
Her skin became dark and reflective like onyx, her extremities and hair glowed white-hot. A bright aura surrounded her. The joints on her arms, legs and fingers became more pronounced as crystalline growths began to emerge from them. The blood vessels in her eyes burst, reddening her once-white sclera: a contrast to her nocturnal green Irises. The tails of her jacket fell from her form in clumps of ash.
This had gotten out of hand. While the others were watching this transformation in horror, Omega had managed to stealthily retrieve the custodian's personal artificial emerald energy driver. The next order of business was to retrieve Silver: an easy task now that he had the driver. Before Shadow or Mephiles could react, Omega jumped around the room with a series of pinpoint teleportations, gathering everyone in a single spot. Omega pulled the device's trigger one last time before Shadow could break away from him.
The sparkling and grotesque divinity was left alone with the body of its former associate. This confrontation had been anticlimactic uneventful, but not entirely unexpected. Mephiles' power was still growing, and even in this decaying body it was already more powerful than the two children of Chaos it encountered so far. There was nothing of value left in this location now, so the spirit plowed through the roof of the complex. Human soldiers were stupefied by the stream of light.
"What in the world was that?!" a panicked young recruit shouted mere feet from the hole that had been punched through the hull of the ship. A party of paratroopers had landed atop the station in order to bore into its crust and provide flanking support for any of the ground-level troops who ran into trouble.
"Maybe we'll find out once we sweep the inside of this place," a gruff drill operator replied nonchalantly as he focused on his work.
The recruit turned his back to the members of his squad. It had already taken an hour to make it this far and it looked like the team wasn't making any progress with the infiltration, so why not investigate? He tied his zip line around the frame of his carbine: it was equipped with an LCD display and camera for seeing around corners. With the slack in his line, he eased the weapon into the freshly-plowed hole (it was barely wide enough to fit a guy like him, and he didn't want to do anything too stupid).
He leaned over and swiped the drill operator's carbine off of his back. Their squad members didn't say anything because they were either bored and not paying attention, or they were anxious to see if the recruit could actually get the gun without the operator noticing. Using the link-up feature, the recruit scrutinized the feed coming from the descending camera. A slip of his grip caused the camera to come crashing down on the bottom of the pit. The LCD flickered for a moment and the recruit was aghast at what he found.
"What is it this time?" The operator asked.
"I-it's him! It's that Robotnik guy!"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ivo really was out of shape. Even a one-armed, 1.5 ton robot was able to best him at keep-away.
"I'm ordering you to give that to me!" he snarled at the stoic machine.
"I was programmed to keep you safe from harm. That creature was far too dangerous; you aren't thinking rationally," Omega replied simply.
"I'm the one who programmed you, idiot! Without me you wouldn't have…" he trailed off. "What's the use?" he sighed, "it's too late anyway. Still… I do want to go back there at some point, to find out the truth, and make sure that GUN doesn't steal Julian's ideas like they stole mine."
"It is true," Omega declared
"What?"
"The custodian, the one you call Julian Robotnik, is your son."
"And how do you know that?" he had already reverted to his incredulous fury.
"Because he told me."
"And why didn't you tell me this?"
"It didn't seem pertinent until now."
Ivo became flustered in his rage, but decided it was best to back off before making himself look like a fool. "So why didn't he tell me, then? Didn't he realize that maybe I would have stayed with him if I knew that?"
"I do not know. But, if I had to guess, I would say that it was because he only would have wanted you to join if you shared his goal, rather than because you felt obligated to."
"So, that's it then…" Ivo sank to the ground. He tried to laugh it off with little success; "I suppose that gives me and Sonic some common ground tonight." It didn't last, and he immediately became sullen again, "Of course, Julian and I never got along quite as well as Sonic and his… forget it." His voice became confident once more: "listen up, men." Omega and Shadow gave him the reception of statues, and Silver was still unconscious. "I'm putting my feud with Sonic on hold indefinitely. Tonight I understand at least a fraction of what he's going through, but more importantly: we have a new enemy now."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
People have always been self-serving: too obsessed with their own peace of mind to humble themselves and accept the commands laid out for them. Even the most trusted of viceroys fell short at one point or another. So far she's been different: the little one. It's true that she's nowhere near worthy of the title of viceroy, but she knows her place, and the base nature of her species allows her to endure a variety of circumstances. She's weak of body and mind, but this only makes it easier for her to accept her faults and admit her own dependency. The gem on her person, the gem of everlasting youth, is the capstone of interwoven factors that ensure her potential as an eternal servant.
Now is not her hour, however. She will be permitted to go about her business… for a time. Escaping the sacking of her people, surviving a planet's implosion and living off of the land while under My tutelage were only the beginning of her trials; the real challenge is the choice she will soon face: who does she value more: her companions or her god?
Until that hour, I will withdraw from Earthly affairs. I will observe this nation's actions and judge it accordingly. I've been merciful enough to give them the chance to amend their impious laws, now that today's actions have so forcefully called them to assembly.
There's something comforting about returning to the old: to the tried and true status quo. When the flawed world's fluctuations and transformations cease, I feel something resembling joy. This is precisely how I feel now that I'm returning to my long-held course of action: waiting and watching. For too long this world's events have been lead astray by Chaos, and it will not go unchallenged for much longer. Its old enemy is gathering strength; I've already won the peoples' minds and bodies: their souls can't be too far behind.
The era of Chaos Control is coming to an end: 'Control Chaos' will soon replace it as the mantra of power. That foul and deceptive king of devils, presumptuous enough to cleave me into two halves many eons ago, is survived by three conceited sons. Tremble, children of Chaos, for who will come to your salvation when the reign of Order has arrived?
