Warning: this last chapter is actually this story's last two chapters merged into one, and isn't "complete". It's not unfinished nor does it have an open ending like Neon Genesis Evangelion does, but this is more of a rough draft and there are many things I should have completed and improved upon, such as dialogues and fight scenes. This is because I could no longer continue to write as well as I used to, my ideas, time, and motivation had run out, and this chapter's draft stayed like this since then.
Now, those who are still following my work have surely noticed I published a summary of the events prior to "Origins", my first fanfic, as part of a project where I'm also planning to remaster those fanfics already published (mainly "Origins" and "Diplomatic Mission", and maybe also "Season 2") and show my ideas for later stories. This draft of the Finale of "Season 2" is part of that bunch of ideas for sequels of my fanfics.
Well... Here we go.
Alternative Freedom Fighters:
Season Two.
Chapter 12: At the back of the North Wind, Part 2.
[Soundtrack: Metamorfosis – Metal Slug 2/X/3 OST]
"So you've confronted my army and travelled all the way here..." Finitevus meditates. "For... What? To arrest me and bring me to Justice? To eliminate me once and for all? It's not like that would make any difference: my and my colleague's plans are already too advanced."
"Well... I guess you managed to hide your plans very well." Amadeus admits. "I don't even fully understand what's happening right here and right now. Why are you showing yourself that way? Judging from what was told to me about you, you're crazy enough to let you be killed if you see something good in it. But what you've recently done doesn't seem to be your style, it's the kind of things Eggman would do. You're no longer being very smart, it must be said. I bet your madness now begins to affect your ability to make plans too. Or you've been lulled into complacency. Or both."
"So? One can afford such luxuries when having such an advantage." The echidna with genocidal tendencies takes in his hand one of the many golden rings he carries on his wrists and forearms as if they were bracelets, and then he apparently begins to play with that ring. "And you know it. That's why you didn't try to shoot me or throw yourself at me with a sabre in hand: you know I have a virtually infinite ability to summon Warp Rings, which makes... any attempt to subdue me... futile..."
Finitevus stares at nothing for a few seconds, and then slowly looks back at the hand in which he has the ring: something is wrong, he can feel it. The mobians of Amadeus's team, although not very uneasy, look at each other and look closely at the albino echidna.
Suddenly, Eclipse the Darkling himself falls from the sky and lands next to the Black Arm tank. Contrary to what would be expected from such a fall, the alien's landing is smooth and doesn't leave a crater on the ground. The commando group already knows what he looks like, thanks to the description Shadow had given them. At that time, there's a kind of crimson backpack made of a set of muscles and tendons, fused with his upper back and fastened to his trunk by harnesses also apparently made of organic tissue, four broad wings of the same colour stand out from it, looking each one like a mix of a bird's wing and a dragonfly's wing; anyway, shortly afterwards the four wings and the strange organ uniting them separate in the form of a crimson Dark Arm, and Eclipse returns to his normal form.
"Looks like you've already noticed it, Dear Doctor." Eclipse mentions as if it were something casual. "Don't worry: you being unable to store Chaos energy in those rings or turn them into portals ain't your fault. I am responsible for that... and also for this."
Eclipse snaps his fingers...
FWOSH! FWOSH!
And the two cyan Dark Arms escorting Finitevus kill the two Finitevic soldiers by shooting them in the back. The mad scientist gets scared, he doesn't know what's going on, he realizes something is definitely out of his control, but cleverly pretends to keep calm.
In turn, in outer space, not far from Mobius's surface, an alien mothership with the appearance of a large asteroid appears there, as if it were going through a curtain: it's the Black Comet II, and it has actually come from some distant corner of the galaxy crossing a portal of some kind (similar to the subspace vortexes of Star Trek: Enterprise, season 3). It's large enough that it already occupies a fairly large portion of the sky, being about three thousand kilometres high.
The two cyan Dark Arms get into the tank and point Finitevus with their laser cannons. The echidna, knowing his Chaos powers have been blocked by Eclipse but without understanding how such a thing was possible, doesn't resist and let the hybrids put a pair of handcuffs on him.
"You shall regret this betrayal."
"Urgh, now you're sounding like a generic villain..." Eclipse complains, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Get him outta here, already."
A beam of light descends in a straight line from the Black Comet II to Finitevus and the two Dark Arms escorting him, and the three disappear in the bright of that beam, which then retracts back towards the ship. Meanwhile, Eclipse turns to Amadeus's team.
"The old fox was right: Finitevus was no longer being as smart as usual. However... you guys don't seem surprised by what I just did."
"Shadow told us about you." Antoine replies, relatively calm. "And we guessed you were going to betray your colleague."
"So my brother told you everything he knew about me... Seems he's still as daydreaming as when we met... By the way, where's he?"
"We know you somehow control the Chaos Force." Rouge mentions. "Did you really think we would be bringing Shadow with us, knowing his powers would be useless and you could even make them turn against us?"
"We're smarter than that, Fake Shadow." Fiona adds, sounding cocky. "Not even your 'brother' was willing to throw everything overboard and come here just to solve a small family problem."
"Yes, it's a fairly wise decision on your part: to try to defeat me by using people and weapons who don't depend on the Chaos Force. I can also see you've easily dispatched several of my new soldiers..."
Eclipse's body begins to radiate water-green light and undergo some kind of transformation. His body increases in size and his muscles develop further; one or two additional thorns grow both on his tail's tip and on his forearms, where he already had some; the red "collar" around his neck, chest and upper back extends and becomes a breastplate that will evidently be more resistant than what was previously there, while the other red parts of his skin also become additional protections; a golden crest develops on his forehead, now looking like a set of two pairs of horns, and the three growths on the back of his head harden.
"But..." His voice sounds deeper, as he's in his "monster form". "Did you really think I have no other power besides the Chaos ones?"
[Soundtrack: MiniBoss 3 – Spark, the Electric Jester OST]
Amadeus and Rouge throw themselves upon Eclipse: she uses her "Screw Kick", flying towards the alien and turning on herself like a spinning top with her foot pointing at her enemy, while the fox tries to cut with his sabre. The attack isn't very successful, being both repelled by the red armour on Eclipse's forearms; however, before the evolved Black Arm can catch the two mobians and kill them, they escape and Whisper exploits the vulnerable position of the alien to quickly make a deep cut on one of his flanks with a circular saw made of pink Wisp energy. Eclipse swings his tail, now with thorns so long that they could go through an average mobian's body, but Whisper escapes instead of trying to hurt him more.
The mobians continue to make short and fast attacks, and there's almost never more than one striking at the same time. Eclipse is able to hit some of his enemies a few times, but this doesn't stop Amadeus's team from continuing to fight since there's always someone ready to immediately replace some fallen team member while they're recovering. Although the alien often manages to protect himself with the armoured parts of his body, the most vulnerable parts also receive a lot of damage, even though he can heal faster.
"Enough!"
At the same moment Rouge gives Eclipse another Screw Kick in his belly, he jumps from the back of the body of his "monster form", as if that evolved form struck by the bat woman were only a shell. When jumping, Shadow's "brother" almost falls on Nic and Lightning, who were about to attack his monster form but are forced to move away. Now that he's in his normal form, he's not only more agile and faster but also begins to fuse with several Dark Arms of the four races and then strikes back every mobian who tries to harm him. When fusing with a crimson Dark Arm, he takes flight and confronts Rouge in close combat, using mostly kicks; before the bat can screw-kick Eclipse again, he flies away and returns to the ground, gets rid of the crimson Dark Arm, then fuses with a magenta Dark Arm to turn one of his forearms into an ultrasonic cannon, and shoots Rouge a large ultrasonic wave the spy fails to dodge. The Black Arm also fuses with a cyan Dark Arm to turn his other forearm into a laser cannon, and starts shooting right and left with both arms turned into weapons; Whisper uses a magenta Wisp to fire ultrasound waves with his Wispon, trying to cancel all possible shots of Eclipse's ultrasonic cannon, and the alien prepares his laser cannon to shoot the wolf, who's making a great effort to resist while the Wisp inside her weapon is also about to deplete their energy. Procion throws himself at Eclipse from behind, doing a war cry and raising the double axe he had stolen from Kodos (although using both arms instead of just one, due to the weight of the weapon), but when the edge of the axe hits the top of Eclipse's head, the latter's skin is already effectively protected by a deep-blue armour thanks to his fusion with a blue Dark Arm, and the axe doesn't even scratch the armour. Eclipse fires at Procion with his laser cannon, and despite the raccoon has reflexes fast enough to protect himself with the axe's huge blade, the shot throws him several meters backwards. Then Fiona shoots the tasers of her wrists to the armoured body of the Black Arm, and the armour's organic matter transmits electricity easily to Eclipse's body itself; while the electrocuted alien is relatively still and vulnerable, Antoine sees a small portion of each elbow, near the beginning of his ultrasonic and laser cannons, isn't covered. The coyote makes a sign to Fiona, who continues to electrocute Eclipse, and after aiming very carefully, he fires two explosive arrows at the elbows of the Black Arm.
BOOM! BOOM!
Eclipse's body is smoking on the ground, the three Dark Arms fused with him are dead, and his arms are shattered...
[Soundtrack: Escape – Metal Slug 3 OST]
But Eclipse slowly rises from the ground, without looking affected in the least. At the same time, the Black Comet II slowly gets a little closer to the surface.
"It was a good fight..."
Whisper, as surprised and frustrated as enraged, uses all the energy given by a yellow Wisp to fire a giant energy drill with her Wispon, but the shot is repelled by a green light shield projected by the Black Arm, who's not only strangely calm but has also completely regenerated his arms.
"But I've not shown you everything."
When the others try to attack Eclipse from all sides, he releases an energy wave suspiciously similar to a "soft" variant of the Chaos Blast. The wave hits and pushes all the mobians away from him, leaving them hurt and stunned. Then he teleports in front of Whisper and lifts her by the neck. Procion sees this from afar, but cannot do anything: he has no powers of any kind, and although he'd be willing to give his life for his beloved "Guardian Angel", both his side and one of his thighs were pierced by metal bars out of the ferroconcrete of some rubble, and he's lucky to stay alive.
"Whisper... You formed a link with the Wisps..." Eclipse says while still holding the wolf by the neck. "That also had an effect on my Dark Arms, in case you didn't notice: for a brief moment, they doubted whether they should fight against you and your companions, but later they decided to do it anyway. It also seems your link with the Wisps is in both directions: you feel their pain too, and what I had to do with them to create my new people clearly didn't suit you very well... With those skills of yours with those creatures, it's truly a shame to have to get rid of you-"
KAPOW!
A surprisingly powerful punch makes Eclipse be thrown away while also losing his grip on Whisper, and she falls to the ground. When the wolf rises and looks up, she sees who actually attacked the alien...
"Shadow?"
The black-and-red hedgehog, elusive and low-key as usual, just looks at his side.
"But... You should not be here! Your Chaos powers would be nullified-"
"Just like Eclipse, I can do much more than use Chaos powers. Besides, I think I have an idea of how he does to nullify-"
KAPOW!
Another punch, this time from Eclipse, throws the "Ultimate Lifeform" toward a wall.
"The young wolf is right: it wasn't wise of you to come here." The pure-blooded Black Arm tells his "brother" while slowly walking towards him, as Shadow has fallen to the ground and is crouched. "Now, with that attitude of yours, still fighting regardless of the odds against you, I'm starting to think you're not even a hybrid Black Arm, but only a pathetic mobian just like everyone else here-"
KAPOW! KAPOW!
Shadow gives him another two powerful punches after suddenly getting up. The blows don't throw Eclipse away from his "brother" but they do manage to stun him and push him back.
"And yet, a pathetic mobian like me left your people on the brink of extinction." He replies.
Eclipse straightens again. "Woah... I felt that, actually. And you hadn't even used all your strength." The alien says while summoning a Chaos Spear in his hand. "But this doesn't change anything: now you don't have Chaos powers, and I do."
"Your powers don't change anything either: you don't have an expert jewel-thief and spy on your side, and we do."
Eclipse looks around, almost without moving, and notices something different.
Rouge is no longer there.
[Soundtrack: Hidden Palace (aka "Sound Test 10") – Sonic 2 OST]
On Angel Island, Knuckles is guarding the Master Emerald, leaning on an altar in the Hidden Palace: a luxurious complex built inside a vast cave made of volcanic rock, hidden far below the surface, in the heart of the floating island. The altar room is also spacious and outdoors, which allows beholding an underground landscape of immense caverns full of stalactites, stalagmites and columns as well as walls, a ceiling and a floor full of precious and semiprecious stones; on the contrary, the corridors and the other rooms are surrounded by marble walls and ceilings built by the island's echidnas themselves and are usually rather narrow.
In one of the rooms, there's a light-green platform shaped like a basin, with a relatively large magenta crystal sphere in its centre, and with a green circular roof of equal size supported by four thin metal pillars adorned with light green and magenta garlands: it's a teleporter, powered by the Master Emerald itself and with a control panel next to it. The lighting of the room comes from the outside of the cave, thanks to some clusters of optical fibre cables extending from the surface to each portion of the Hidden Palace; the ceiling and the walls are covered with sky-blue panels that reflect the light, although there are also light-green lines crossing them and decorating the place.
The control panel turns on and starts executing orders sent remotely from somewhere in the world; the sphere begins to glow suddenly, and a continuous beam of bluish-white laser light appears in the internal space of the teleporter, passing vertically exactly through the device's centre and the increasingly bright sphere at the base. The light beam then widens until its diameter coincides with that of the sphere. After a few seconds, the light beam becomes thinner again until being just a continuous laser beam of a tiny diameter, and finally fades away, while the natural light emanating from the ceiling through a cluster of optical fibre cables casts a shadow on the ground in the shape of a voluptuous mobian bat woman.
Half a minute later, in the altar room of the Master Emerald, its Guardian is surprised by the woman entering. He already knows her and it's clear for him she's looking for the Master Emerald, but he's surprised she looks serious, she doesn't try to seduce him, she's walking steadily...
"Hi there, Knux, I have to take your emerald for a while."
And she greets him much more coldly and distantly than usual.
"Hey, wait!" Knuckles walks away from the powerful giant precious gem and tries to retain the newcomer. "You can't take the Master Emerald just like that, Rouge. What's going on?"
Rouge already spoke with the Guardian before, when they weren't allies and she was trying to steal the Master Emerald. But now the world is at stake, and the former jewel thief, unfortunately, can't stay to play with "Knux": when he tries to get in the way, she shoots a spray of some kind directly into his eyes, leaving him temporarily blind and with an unbearable burning.
"ARGH! What the f*****?! Dammit, this burns like hell..."
While Knuckles gropes around the room, Rouge is still, with her eyes closed and with one hand resting on the Master Emerald. Finally, she opens her eyes, turns to the Guardian...
"Julie-Su sends you cheers. Remember to call her, will you?"
And the Master Emerald teleports on its own, taking the mobian bat with it.
Inside the Black Comet II, there's some kind of power generator, with a giant precious gem in its centre: it's the same as the Master Emerald, and is in fact the Chaos power source of the mothership, but it's bright blue like a sapphire.
Rouge and the Master Emerald appear suddenly on a platform next to that "Master Sapphire". An alarm is activated and resonates throughout the ship, the Dark Arms in it are directed towards the main generator room, and when they arrive, they hover over the intrusive mobian and that object that surprises them with their appearance and radiation so similar to those generated by their own Chaos energy source. Rouge prays for her plan to work, and is relieved when the Master Emerald itself generates an incredibly resistant deflector shield as if the gem had its own conscience.
"Just in time... Tikal."
In the Golden Massif, just below the Black Comet II, Shadow feels as if a part of himself he had lost now returns. Immediately remove both inhibitor rings...
"CHAOS BLAST!"
And he uses his most powerful and devastating attack on Eclipse. The latter realizes something has stopped working as it should, but he fails to react when an intense, decimating red beam of energy out of control crashes into him and throws him several tens of metres back.
The pure-blooded Black Arm tries to get up after a few seconds, but can barely move. Shadow walks towards him, preparing to give the coup de grâce, but is stopped by the same light beam that had taken Finitevus to the mothership and is now taking the weakened Eclipse. Without wasting time, the black-and-red hedgehog tries to communicate with Rouge, but her communicator's signal seems to be being interfered, so he proceeds to check the status of the other team members, starting with Procion, whose condition seems to be more serious.
"Lieutenant, are you all right?"
"OF COURSE I'M NOT, YOU JERKA- AAARGH!" Leonidas squirms because of the sudden return of pain caused by metal bars running through his body. "Now I'm just like a brochette, Whisper was almost killed, and unlike you, I DON'T HAVE YOUR F***ING WOLVERINE-LEVEL HEALING FACTOR!"
The hedgehog rolls his eyes, gently grabs Procion...
"Chaos Control."
And teleports with him a few steps away, then putting his hands on the raccoon's wounds and using his Chaos healing powers to repair the tissues. The process is taking a long time, and in the meantime, his other teammates recover from the fight and begin to get up from the ground.
"Ugh, did anyone see the license plate of that thing?" Nic asks, more to herself than to the others.
"Attention! I'm getting something..." Antoine says as he tries to adjust his communicator. "Allo? Who's calling?"
"I'm Amanda- *bzzzt* Amanda Tower, from GUN- *bzzzt*" The voice of the Leader of GUN's Air Branch sounds in the communicators of the entire team. "I sent fighter jets and air destroyers there- *bzzzt* They'll not take long-"
"NO! Order them to withdraw, right now! There's another Master Emerald in Eclipse's mothership, we're totally sure of that-"
"We also received a signal with a powerful Chaos energy signature, we assumed the 'Dark Arms' had got a similar device. But then the signal changed, as if something was weakening it."
"I guess that was Rouge using our Master Emerald to nullify the Chaos power of Eclipse." Shadow explains as he continues to cure Procion with Chaos energy, a process that has already advanced quite a bit.
"But she ain't an Adept to Chaos." Procion mentions.
"No, the plan was for Rouge to take the Master Emerald to inside the Black Comet II, near the place where Eclipse's Chaos energy source could be..." Julie-Su explains. "And to try to communicate with Tikal within the Emerald and tell her to use her power from within the gem without someone else being needed."
"Wait... Eclipse has just gone back to his ship." Whisper says. "Somebody has to go after him, secure the Master Emerald and take care of Rouge."
"I got this." Shadow answers.
"Are you sure?" Amadeus asks him.
"This is about Eclipse, it's my fight. Everyone else, stay here, join forces with the squadrons sent by Amanda, and keep the Dark Arms at bay if they try to start an invasion from here."
"It's always better to bring reinforcements, you know?" Whisper reminds him.
"I'm the only one with Chaos powers here, and with all due respect, reinforcements would be a hindrance in a fight against someone as powerful as Eclipse. Besides, Rouge is up there, on the same ship as him, but she's not a damsel in distress certainly. Everything will be fine."
"Yeah, and I can fight again." Procion adds. "The Chaos Healing is almost over."
"Okay, Shadow." Amadeus finally makes a decision. "Do what you have to do."
"You can bet it. Chaos Control!"
The hedgehog teleports to the Dark Arms' mothership, while his companions prepare their weapons and the forces sent by Amanda Tower also appear on the horizon. On the other hand, from several holes in the Black Comet II's surface that resemble craters of small meteorites, hundreds of creatures created by fusions of Dark Arms of different races emerge: each one is formed by a crimson one who provides the flight ability, a blue one providing armour, and a cyan or magenta one who has weapons.
Amadeus addresses his team.
"The time has come, comrades. Are you ready?"
In the main generator room of the Black Comet II, Eclipse meets with Rouge, tries to pass through the shield generated by the Master Emerald, but fails. He reveals the Master Sapphire was fundamental to his plans, since it'd have allowed his troops to teleport to any corner of the planet; he also tells that, although he offered Shadow a place in his new empire, he was also always angry with him for having removed all the Chaos Emeralds from the universe (including the blue Emeralds, which were in the Black Arm homeworld), and the Black Arms had been lucky to have discovered how to fuse 14 blue Chaos Emeralds into a giant gemstone (just as the mobians had created the Master Emerald), which they retained despite Shadow's actions. However, although the Master Emerald blocks the Master Sapphire's power, it doesn't block it totally...
Eclipse stands on the Master Sapphire and becomes his Super form: Total Eclipse. But Rouge is not afraid, and simply replies she'll let him fight someone of his size; then Shadow appears and shoots a Chaos Spear at Eclipse, almost as if he and Rouge were synchronized; he uses the Master Emerald to become his Super form, and leave the ship to fight Eclipse in the upper atmosphere of Mobius. What follows next is basically a generic final fight of Dragon Ball Z between Super Shadow and Total Eclipse.
[Soundtrack: Start from Mountain Village – Metal Slug 3D OST]
The battle on the surface is quite reminiscent of the final battle of Independence Day, especially since now the side of the Black Comet II that faces the surface has a huge laser cannon powered by the Master Sapphire itself. Rouge, still inside the ship, tries to sabotage it but the laser beam is fired directly from the gemstone, so the only way to do it would be by destroying it, and the gem also seems a bit unstable, so destroying the Master Sapphire... Well, it might not be nice to anyone within a quarter of a light-year radius.
Meanwhile, on the surface, Julie-Su is shooting at the aliens when she receives a call on the communicator: it's Knuckles.
"Julie, are you okay? Rouge took the Master Emerald, and I know she's on a mission with you. What's going on?"
"Cool it down, Knux. Yeah, we're on a mission and we needed your Emerald. But we'll take it back to the altar after this, everything is under control-"
BOOM!
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
"DIE, YOU F***ING SON OF A BLACK ARM!
"Julie, did you just say 'Black Arm'? Are they back?! Damn it, tell me what the hell is going on!"
"Huh... I have to cut, honey. Bye-bye!"
The battle is very even, and the damage done to the Dark Arms by the mobian commando group's Wispons ain't enough. Whisper tells them the only way to do significant damage to the aliens would be to use the entire Wisps' energy when shooting, and then let the Nega-Wisps absorb the super laser's energy and/or begin to "corrode" the mothership. But the Wisps communicate with Whisper, and then she tells the others the Wisps gave permission to do so in order to stop Eclipse's forces. They do it, and the Nega-Wisps go directly to the super-laser's light beam (an easy source of energy), stopping it.
Whisper starts using crimson Wisps to fly around the Black Comet II and fire Nega-Wisps in parts where they can do real damage. After one or two minutes, some systems begin to fail, although the ship as a whole remains outta danger; one of the systems that fail is that of the cell of Dr Finitevus, who seizes the opportunity to leave in an escape pod. Whisper is finally able to enter the ship and begins to study the Master Sapphire and think about the most appropriate way to destroy the ship from the inside, while Rouge also leaves, in search of Shadow.
In the upper atmosphere, Shadow and Eclipse are still fighting, until they fly even higher and end up inside the abandoned Space Colony ARK. Tired of using only his fists and Chaos Blasts, Eclipse carries out a sort of mind-meld with his "brother", bringing the fight to the latter's mind: now everything looks like a recreation of what the ARK was like fifty years ago, just before the military intervention; the Black Arm tries to use Shadow's own memories against him, but the hedgehog resists the attacks as he had already overcome his traumas, reconciled with his past and let that time behind.
When Eclipse is about to give a final blow that could kill the "Ultimate Lifeform", Rouge arrives into the ARK in the "real world", riding a hang-glider made of crimson Wisp energy and carrying a shield made of green Wisp energy that completely surrounds her and protects her from both the crash and the space void; then she attacks the Dark Arm, causing the link to break and saving Shadow. The Chaos Force is capable of turning thoughts into power, but both Shadow and Eclipse had weakened mentally, and that had made them leave their Super forms and return to normal when they were fighting in the hedgehog's mind. Both begin to fight in an old-fashioned way, but the bat woman is a trained agent, and she can also fly and has adapted her techniques to take advantage of that, while Eclipse hadn't cared about something as "vulgar" as training in close combat and he can no longer use Chaos powers or a monster form or Dark Arms, so...
Yeah, Rouge beats the s*** outta him. Until Eclipse slowly recovers the "mental strength" necessary to re-use some powers not requiring external Chaos energy sources, such as the Chaos Spear and some teleportations. Rouge knows some "countermeasures" (to prevent teleportation-based attacks from taking her by surprise, for example) thanks to the time she had spent with Shadow, but things are getting a little difficult. On the other hand, Shadow has recovered from the "mental battle" and can use his basic Chaos powers again too, so he starts helping Rouge.
Whisper decides to take the simple and direct route, shooting Nega-Wisps at the Master Sapphire, and also takes the Master Emerald with her. With the Nega-Wisps consuming the matter of the giant blue gemstone, it stops firing the super-laser and redirects the energy to try to defend itself; the other Nega-Wisps, which were stopping the laser beam until then, also begin to devour the crystal, and the sapphire's defence measures don't harm them but barely satisfy a negligible fraction of their appetite.
For about half a minute, Eclipse regains control over Shadow's Chaos powers and shoots a "Thunder Arrow" to both him and Rouge, leaving them paralyzed with pain. Then he feels he gradually loses that control over the Chaos Force again, due to the equally gradual destruction of the Master Sapphire (although he still doesn't know it's happening while he's in the ARK), but the evolved Black Arm doesn't care and gets ready to give the coup de grâce to his vulnerable enemies...
But then Whisper teleports on board the ARK by using the Master Emerald with Tikal's "permission", and she immediately fires a single Nega-Wisp at Eclipse. He starts firing Chaos Spears and Thunder Arrows, each and every one of which is stopped and absorbed by more Nega-Wisps fired by the "Guardian Angel of the Resistance". The constant use of his powers accelerates the rate at which the first Nega-Wisp consumes his body's energy, and the alien eventually becomes weak again and can only behold, terrified, how his body slowly and painfully "decays", is turned into energy and is devoured by those creatures unleashed by her.
Eclipse's whole body ends up fading away, consumed by the Nega-Wisps, who now have their appetite satisfied and are again the adorable and loyal little creatures Whisper knew. In turn, the Black Comet II implodes absorbed by those creatures, while the aliens who were fighting in the air have already been defeated by Amadeus's commando group and GUN's fighter jets. The battle was over, Mobius had been saved once more.
At the space station, Shadow and Whisper decide they're even, after each of them has saved the other. He also thanks Rouge for having appeared so timely and fought so well against Eclipse, and the three share a group hug.
On the surface, everyone is sitting on the floor, resting from the recent battle... with their heads peeking out of a mountain of sleeping Wisps who just returned to normal [a reference to that famous, hilarious scene from the original Star Trek episode "The trouble with tribbles"].
Nic Weasel: "These things... Did they just reproduce? In the middle of the battle? Right in front of all of us?!"
Leonidas Procion: "If the images of what happened here are gonna be broadcast on TV, they better be pixelated, or Whisper will be really, really upset."
[Soundtrack: Knuckles' theme – Sonic & Knuckles OST]
Knuckles bursts in there, punching and smashing a wall that was still standing, and anxiously asking if there's still anyone or anything to punch. The others can't care less about him, and Julie-Su just gets up and leaves with him to go take the Master Emerald back to its rightful place.
Dr Finitevus's escape pod is flying over the Arctic region. Eventually, he's able to summon Warp rings again, and a gold ring he had mounted on the pod's front end becomes a portal that takes the pod away from there.
Chapter 13: Epilogue.
A few days later, somewhere in Spagonia, in a secret ceremony, the ten members of Amadeus's team are rewarded and congratulated by representatives of both GUN and the Freedom Fighters, including Commander Tower and Sally Acorn in person; once the event is over, Amadeus goes to Soleanna to meet with Tails again. Meanwhile, Rouge tries to get Fiona to tell her once for all her reasons to break up with Tails; eventually, the bat reveals stealing jewellery and working as a secret agent weren't the only things she had done in the last years: she had also been studying Psychology, something that has always caught her attention almost as much as the jewels do; she was the one who taught Tails to interpret people's gestures and body language, and she also conveyed to him her suspicions that Fiona was manipulated and abused by Scourge.
[I find it hard to believe Rouge's only motivation is jewellery theft and nothing else; on the other hand, Psychology knowledge would also be useful for the kind of job she has; besides, Zouge (her counterpart in the Zone Cops) was a sort of therapist too, so it wouldn't be too crazy to assume all versions of Rouge throughout the multiverse share that vocation. As for Rouge helping Tails with his social skills, I think it'd be cute.]
In an apartment in Soleanna, Tails and his father are competing to see who has the greatest war wounds, just as they had promised each other when Amadeus was in Shamar. At some point, the young fox shows Amadeus a gunshot wound in his chest's right side: despite having fought in the war for so long, he had always been in situations and places with very little chance of being shot, or was invincible thanks to a Super form, or was wearing his Advanced Technology Armour (aka "ATA suit"), so that's his first and only true gunshot wound, received in an important body part, without him being armoured or invincible. Amadeus worries about Tails having received an injury like that while being as vulnerable as anyone else; he asks how that happened, and Tails starts telling his story...
It had been a few days since the Civil War ended. There were some people in the city who still didn't get along, and there was also the grudge against the Freedom Fighters, who had made that conflict happen in the first place. Tails and Fiona were walking along the sidewalk of a street next to a park, when a group of three mobians approached them to insult them; when things were about to get violent, Sonic appeared there to defend both Tails and Fiona; those people have supported the pro-monarchy side and respected Sonic, but when he refused to help them and insisted on preventing them from hurting his friends, they threw the courtesy overboard and attacked. To nobody's surprise, the hedgehog easily neutralized them without seriously hurting them. Meanwhile, the couple of foxes were moving away from there to avoid having more problems with some other passerby, but someone stood in front of them, pulled out a gun, shouted something about doing this for a relative of them who had died in the recent battle, and fired. The bullet went to Fiona, but Tails, with no Chaos powers or armour, protected her and was shot.
Going back to the present, in Soleanna, Fiona is telling that same story to Rouge. It turns out that was the reason she broke up with Tails: she couldn't bear to keep seeing how he seemed to be looking for any chance to die fighting. In that old battle against Mogul when he had returned, Tails had been still fighting despite being disadvantaged and not knowing Fiona was preparing her own plan to defeat the sorcerer; he had also got used to carrying out very risky plans, trying to avoid endangering others' lives but hardly caring about himself; he got into fights with Sonic more than once, and in the Civil War, they fought a colossal "Super vs Super" battle that gradually became even worse and threatened to destroy the whole Angel Island; to top it off, recently Fiona learned that, after she broke up with Tails, he participated in the Moebius campaign and fought against Hyper Scourge by using the Supreme Beryl (the Moebian counterpart of the Master Emerald) to become a kind of Hyper form powered by an unstable mix of Chaos and Anarchy energy, and that was what left those horrendous scars on his face, removed parts of his body that then had to be regenerated, and almost killed him.
After hearing this, Rouge convinces the vixen to go talk to Tails, try to repair their relationship and find out what's going on with him, since she suspects he's having serious problems.
Some hours later, when it's already 9:00 PM in Soleanna, Fiona appears in Tails's and his father's apartment. Once Amadeus leaves them alone, she starts telling Tails everything she had told Rouge before, she begs him to stop sacrificing himself that way during missions and to worry a little more about himself -at least, for her-. He just keeps quiet, behaving almost as if he wasn't there, and she quickly realizes what's happening actually, what Rouge suspected: the little fox is suffering from depression.
The two-tailed fox begins to tell how he, despite being 12, feels old and tired after having fought in a war and especially after the most recent missions and all the shit that had happened to him in the meantime. He also reveals to Fiona he didn't try to convince her to return to him because, in some way, he was already waiting for the day when Fiona would "inevitably" stop feeling happy in their relationship; the fact that she, shortly after the breakup, began an affair with Rouge had confirmed to him that's exactly what happened and what he had to do was just let her enjoy her new relationship with Rouge.
Fiona starts putting the pieces together, and sees Tails still has the same problems as when they became a couple: he had never managed to stop despising himself for not being there for her when Scourge abused her; he never overcame the war trauma in the least; he never managed to open up to her enough to tell her absolutely everything that was happening to him, since he hadn't left behind that idea that his own pain was nothing compared to hers; he kept bottling his feelings partly, and later he paid for that mistake by gradually losing his self-esteem, still being rather pessimistic and apathetic, sitting down and standing idly by as he watches how everything happens in front of him, waiting for the day when everything would be bad again, and almost trying to get him killed. That depression is also why he had those sudden mood swings, one day imagining the worst possible scenario and getting ready for it, and the next day being optimistic and even a bit bigheaded.
Fiona doesn't have much of an idea about what she should do with someone in such a situation. However, she hugs Tails and assures him she'd always be willing to help him with anything, she never stopped loving him no matter if she had broken up with him and had a romantic relationship with another person, she had already forgiven him a long time ago and he had proved himself a wonderful person, and together they'd do anything to get him out of depression, but he'd also have to make an effort to get up, open up to her and overcome his own problems once and for all. When she hugs him and tells him all that, he breaks into tears, telling her he loves her too and she may be the only reason he kept fighting and didn't throw his whole life overboard.
[Soundtrack: Save me – Queen]
In New Mobotropolis, Amadeus meets with Rosemary at home. He asks her to explain his actions on the Council and why she didn't help the Freedom Fighters, the team in which Tails himself was. She explains her reasons, omitting her grudge against Sally's family, and her husband seems convinced,
However, when Rosemary leaves home, he takes out something from his suitcase.
It's a divorce petition, albeit still unsigned.
