The vacuum of space pressed down around the two of them, threatening to grind them into dust, but the power flowing through them boiled over, dissipating into the void around their bodies. Rouge took in a breath, the energies of her new, superpowered form allowing her to exist in space as though it were one of the pressurized rooms aboard the ARK, or any of the many beautiful locations on earth, and she let go of Sonic's hand as they both stared down their opponent.
The biolizard roared, her own energies filtering through space like waves of light, and the noise hit their eardrums and resonated down to their bones, until their hearts vibrated along with it. Ivo hadn't been exaggerating when he had said that she had become a part of the ARK; her prototype had fused with the Eclipse Cannon, urging forward the colony's descent into the world below. Rouge's wings spread out wide behind her, bathing herself in a golden glow, and from her side, she saw a similar flash of golden light as Sonic prepared to strike.
Rouge's lips quirked. In all her years 一 6? 18? 56? 一 she had always trained alone, fought alone. She had been unparalleled, something untouchable and ferocious, both a weapon and a cure, the answer to the question of nigh invincibility and eternal life. She was made to protect, to attack, to turn back or refocus at the smallest order, always following the wishes of others as well as her own.
She had never had someone to fight alongside, before.
Beside her, Sonic glowed like a star, eager at the promise of a new battle and a new challenge. His eyes, red like rubies, a startling contrast to their usual green, burned with a fire that Rouge knew by sight, but never truly understood herself.
She had seen such fire in Maria, once, long ago, when the girl still looked down at the world with wonder and shared all her plans and determinations with her.
Rouge felt herself soften just a little more.
A crackling noise sounded in her left ear, and Rouge raised her arm to her head, realizing belatedly that she still had her headset on. She fiddled with the dials, trying not to wince when the interference reached an ear-shattering peak, but in seconds she heard Ivo's voice filtering out of the speaker, crystal clear.
"Rouge, Sonic, do you read me?"
"Yes, we do," she responded, making Sonic redirect his attention. The hedgehog floated around at breakneck speed to her other side, leaning in to listen as well.
"Excellent, now listen to me. She's very weak without her life support system. Aim for the red swelling areas to damage her! You're our last hope!"
Sonic whistled, too close to Rouge's ear for her comfort. "No pressure, then," he bantered as Rouge lowered the volume on her headset, focusing instead on her horrid other self, searching out for the swelling that the doctor had mentioned.
"Bingo!"
The triumphant cry resounded through space, and the very next second, Sonic had rushed out, aiming for the biolizard's hind leg. Sure enough, there was a large patch, angry and red and swollen, which he aimed at with all his might. Rouge was amazed that he had found it so quickly…
...or was it just more proof of what she already knew, deep down inside?
Sonic struck at her prototype, and the beast screamed, sending shivers down Rouge's spine as she tried to bite back the urge to scream with her. The energy around her only seemed to grow in intensity, encircling them all like a bubble.
"She's still so powerful," Rouge murmured in awe. "What kind of creature are you?"
Sonic floated back beside her, knocked back from the force of his blow, and Rouge brought out a hand to keep him from flying away. "How are you doing?" she asked, and in response, she got an easy grin and a thumbs-up.
"All yours!"
The bat nodded, focusing her energies and darting forward, zeroing in on a new swelling spot. She kicked out, giving the blow everything she had, even as the screech that tore out of the biolizard's throat threatened to make her shriek in empathy.
Those screams… those could so easily be her own screams…
"Rouge, how're you holding up?"
A hand rested between her wings, and suddenly Rouge was back with Sonic, having similarly been blasted backwards by her blow. She took in a deep breath and winced; her injuries from sparring with Sonic still hadn't fixed themselves, even with her accelerated healing abilities.
Could this be because of his own abilities to manipulate Chaos Energy? Or was it still just more proof that he was, in fact-
"Take a breather for a sec, and leave Big n' Ugly to me, okay?"
Without waiting for an answer, he was off, dodging the lasers her prototype blasted out to defend herself, searching for another swollen lump to pummel. Rouge shook her head and refocused her breathing, and by the time Sonic had been blasted back to her, she was ready to strike once more.
It continued on for a while, both of them switching in and out, tagging each other in as they kept beating away at this threat, a threat that so easily could have been Rouge herself, trying their hardest to save a planet that the bat had only recently come to accept as being worth saving. As their battle went on, Rouge felt less and less like a hero worthy of Maria's promise, and more and more like someone who was simply fixing their wrongs. It was hard to think otherwise, especially with Sonic fighting so fiercely for the planet, purely out of his own want to keep it safe.
Maria had begged Rouge to protect every last person on that planet, but something else was starting to become clear, a truth that was hard to face but was undeniable:
That hero that Maria wanted… that was never supposed to be Rouge.
The ARK kept hurtling toward the planet's atmosphere, and Rouge felt the weight of everyone's expectations on her, from up above, down below, and beyond the grave. Even as she struggled with the thoughts clouding her mind, she didn't let it stop her from fighting back against her grandfather's greatest mistake, and so she fought like someone with everything to prove, disregarding Sonic's warnings that her energy was starting to evaporate. The words rang in her ears, a final piece of proof that cemented her certainties about Sonic and herself.
She shouldn't be losing energy. She shouldn't be drained while Sonic was still going strong.
Yet she kept on target, delivering the final blow to the prototype, hearing her counterpart wail before feeling all the extra power around her fade into nothing. Rouge heaved out a breath.
They had defeated the Final Hazard!
A jubilant whoop reached her ear, and when she turned around, body aching from injury and overexertion, she felt her hand being clasped in another; Sonic's face floated before hers, grinning ear to ear, and in spite of herself, Rouge smiled back, squeezing his hand in hers. She couldn't help it; Sonic naturally possessed an air about him that made people want to smile back, but there was more to it than just that. It was in the way they shared a power that no one else held. It was in the way they had fought together, equals in every way.
Rouge was so used to thinking of most people as beneath her, in terms of strength and ability, and to meet someone who was her match…
She kind of wanted to pat him on the head, too. See if he liked it like Shadow had.
Are you my friend? she wanted to ask. Is this what friendship feels like? Is this what kinship feels like?
But she already knew the answer, so she said nothing as their hands came apart.
The sky around them seemed to light on fire, and sound reentered their eardrums, and the two sent each other a panicked look as they realized that they were a minute away from the point of no return; the ARK was still fast approaching the earth's atmosphere, and they needed to stop it. Now.
"No way that's getting through!" Sonic cried, reaching out a hand to the space colony's surface. The metal was quickly turning red, then orange, then white, burning up at the intense heat on re-entry. Rouge followed him, still gritting her teeth from pain and almost recoiling at the temperatures around her, while Sonic appeared to have neither of these problems. Rouge heaved an exhale, finally coming to terms with what she had suspected for a long time as they both tried to warp the ARK back into orbit, with no results.
"Sonic, I think I know now what the Ultimate Lifeform is…"
Because it was obvious, wasn't it? With the way Sonic carried his energy, with the way he had mastered it without training or rapid growth or serums, with the way he managed to stay put together while Rouge could only tear herself apart, with his ability to induce Chaos Control with a fake emerald...
The Ultimate Lifeform wasn't something that could be created in a lab. Rouge had been a remarkably successful attempt, and she would not deny that in the slightest, but she was held to the manmade constraints of sciences from decades back.
The Ultimate Lifeform couldn't be created; it had to be born, with Mother Nature at the helm, deciding when and how this being would come into the world.
"...I think it might be you."
The ARK gave another terrifying lurch as they were pushed to their limits, and Maria's final wish replayed itself in Rouge's mind as she played her trump card, her last resort. Her hands fell to her forearms, unlocking and removing the heavy rings that clamped around her wrists, and tossed them into the void. All around them, palpable like the sweat beading on their foreheads and lips, Rouge's unhindered energy suddnely surrounded them like that of the biolizard, and upon feeling it, Sonic's hands seemed to push with more intensity.
"ROUGE!" he bellowed out as her own hands met the searing hot metal. "NOW!"
Both sucked in a breath, twin cries of 'CHAOS CONTROL!' shook the mix of air and void around them, and Rouge felt all of her strength leave her body like toothpaste from a tube, shooting upward and surrounding the ARK, halting it in its trajectory before it warped away, safe and sound.
They had done it.
Somehow, they had done it.
Rouge let out a soft laugh, closing her eyes, feeling the embrace of oblivion pull at her. She didn't fight back. There was no point.
She vaguely heard a yell, Sonic's yell, but the very next second, the roar of air drowned it out as she fell into the planet's atmosphere. That was okay. This was all okay.
Rouge had done what she had sought out to do.
As she felt the fires of reentry eat at her ears and her head, she thought of Maria. Rouge knew that she had kept her promise, in one way or another. She had corrected her mistakes, and had seen the beautiful world that her sister had always dreamed of exploring. She would not be able to keep protecting it, but that was fine, too.
There was someone else already doing that, for the both of them. The true Ultimate Lifeform.
As Rouge felt her headset crumble and break, the fires spreading down her wings as the pressure around her built up even more, she thought of Sonic. Her counterpart, her equal, someone she never thought could exist. Rouge was so glad he existed, an even greater form of herself, the true hero that the world needed, chosen by nature instead of created by a man who held too much power and used it for all the wrong reasons.
Rouge knew she could entrust Maria's wish to him, the better version of herself, her twin in power and superior in spirit.
And as she felt the flames consume her entirely, she thought of everyone aboard the ARK. She thought of Amy, sweet and innocent, who had helped jog her memory. She thought of Knuckles, rough and serious, who had the ability to short out the power of the emeralds. She thought of Tails, so young and yet capable of going toe to toe in battle with a mechanical genius with years of experience.
She wondered what life would have been like if she had been allowed to know them better, to befriend them, but it was a little late for that, now.
She thought of Ivo, and wondered if he would ever be satisfied.
Finally, she thought of Shadow, and at that, her heart trembled with regret. Shadow, her surrogate brother of sorts, who she had hurt so badly… who had hurt her so badly… whose last conversation with her had been that awful, terrible argument, where they had torn at each other, where he had targeted her worst fears and insecurities, causing her mind to spiral into mayhem…
She hoped he knew, somehow, that she forgave him for that. That she could never manage to remove him from her heart, no matter how hard she had tried.
She hoped he could forgive her as well.
In her final moments, as she fell down, down, down, Rouge felt so many things; peace, confidence, regret, sorrow, happiness…
Acceptance.
Sayonara… everyone. Every last one of you.
Sonic the Hedgehog, for once in his life, was dragging his feet. The soft sound of his shoes hitting the metal ground echoed through the halls, and the weight of the rings he carried in both hands felt like a ton each.
What, exactly, was the weight of a life?
As he stopped in front of the door to the observation deck, he closed his eyes. He could still see it, the image of Rouge's super form giving out like a lightbulb spontaneously losing power and flickering out. He could still feel the urge to fly forward and rescue her, but the very next second, the pull of gravity had claimed her, and to go after her would have been suicide, with or without his super form holding up.
He had been too slow, just this once, and it killed him inside. He had never met anyone else in the world like himself before he had found Rouge, and to lose her so soon was… It felt like a piece of him had suddenly gone missing, like he had finally accessed a level of understanding with another person that he would never find or feel again, only to have it slip through his fingers.
The door slid open, and Sonic tried to knock himself out of his stupor, but he couldn't even find it in himself to plaster a fake smile on his face. All around him, he saw the delighted grins of his friends morph into looks of confusion and, as some of them put the pieces together, horror.
When Shadow stepped forward, his muzzle unusually pale, Sonic fought the urge to run away.
"Where's Rouge?" he asked in a whisper, and Sonic couldn't answer him. Instead, he silently took one of Shadow's hands, and placed one of the rings he was holding into it.
He had seen them, floating in the void of space, and recognized them instantly; Rouge's rings, which she had kept around her wrists.
He almost gave Shadow the second one, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Not even when he saw the other hedgehog's face twist in grief and his eyes fill with tears. Shadow bolted out of the room the very next second, racing down the hall, but the door had still yet to close before his screams of anguish flooded back into the room.
Eggman stared down at the world, still processing everything that had happened. A splash of yellow appeared in his periphery, and he started talking without a second thought.
"As a child, I always looked up to my grandfather and all the great things he accomplished in his life," he confessed, staring out into the stars instead of keeping his watch on the planet. "He was my hero, and I wanted to be a great scientist like him!"
Eggman recalled his childhood, learning about his incredible grandfather up in space, and his cool older cousin who was lucky enough to be up there with him. His own childlike naivete tasted bittersweet, especially now, when he had walked right into Gerald Robotnik's plans.
"But… did he really mean to destroy us?"
The doctor finally looked to his side; as he expected, Tails was standing there, his twin tails undulating as they always did, and the clever fox had a response, as he always had.
"I don't know, but what I do know is that we all saved the world together!"
And Eggman took a moment to really look at this child, whose own naivete mirrored his own when he was so young, and he couldn't find it in himself to argue or complain or… anything right then.
"You're right," he conceded, and with that, they descended into a comfortable silence.
When Shadow reappeared, he was wearing the ring Sonic had given him over his left wrist, and he marched past everyone, head bowed low with blue eyeliner markings smudged all over his face. He stood by the window, staring blankly down at the world, not even making a sign of acknowledgement as Sonic approached him.
For a while, the two stood there, unspeaking, watching the stars and the world pass them by.
"Do you really think…"
Sonic looked over to Shadow, who was tracing the ring he now wore around his wrist with his fingers. "The professor," Shadow clarified, "do you think he created her, just to get revenge on everyone?"
Shadow's voice was so weak, his question just barely holding back a flood of fear and pain, and Sonic grasped the second ring with both of his hands as he answered.
"She was who she was. A brave and heroic person, who gave everything to save this planet. She was Rouge the Bat."
Shadow remained silent for a moment before replying. "I guess you're right," he murmured, putting his hand against the window; Rouge's ring glinted on his wrist, reflected in the glass. Shadow stayed like that, even when Sonic left him to grieve and Knuckles took his place.
"So uh… what's next?" the echidna asked, and Shadow felt upset enough that he could have torn into him for hours.
Yet… it was a question he had an answer to. It was a thought he had been entertaining for a while, and, well… it was nice to still have someone to share it with.
"Don't worry about your emerald," he said, his voice sounding almost as hollow as he felt. "I'm not going to be after it for a long time." Shadow paused, taking in a breath, and to Knuckles' credit, he didn't interrupt or ask any stupid questions. He just stood there, ready to listen, and Shadow, needing that kind of support, took it without a second thought. "I'm going to look for her," he announced, screwing his eyes shut before they watered over for yet another time that day. "I'll look the whole world over until I find her, dead or alive, and when I do…"
His hand clasped at the ring around his wrist. Tears he thought he had finished crying out fell from his still-shut eyelids. "...I'll give this ring back to her, for her to keep."
His voice gave out as he choked on emotion, the sting of loss so raw and new that it made him dizzy, and Shadow doubled over, curling in on himself, thinking about his new mission. He knew he might never find the body. He knew that, undoubtedly, if he did find her, he would find a corpse, burnt and unrecognizable, but that didn't matter. He had to do it.
He had to do it for her, the one who had saved his life and made it brighter for one short, beautiful day.
"...I'm sure she'll appreciate it."
Shadow scoffed, raising his head with a small spark of his usual energy. "You would say that," he taunted, finally looking toward the echidna. "You're terrible at this sort of thing, you know. You and her had that in common. You guys would have gotten along great, she hated fun things, just like you."
Knuckles rolled his eyes. "Whatever you say, Shadow," he returned, and Shadow let himself be grateful, just this once, that Knuckles was letting him have his grief-filled tirade.
Maybe he wasn't so bad, after all.
Not many things could bother Sonic for very long, but he had a feeling that this one would stick by him for a while.
He knew, right towards the end, that Rouge had said something, too softly for him to make out, but he had heard his name, right at the beginning. He had strained to listen, he had heard the words 'Ultimate Lifeform', but the rest were lost to space and the roaring of the ARK as it continued on its collision course. Sonic struggled to remember, to recall the moment, to not let Rouge's final words be lost forever, but no matter how hard he tried, he still couldn't-
"What's the matter, Sonic?"
The blue hedgehog looked up, seeing Amy reflected in the glass behind him. Her eyes were wide with curiosity and concern, and Sonic considered telling her everything until he realized just how much time he had spent standing in that very spot, trying to recall something he hadn't even heard. An exercise in futility. Sonic wondered how long he would have stayed there, struggling, if Amy hadn't stopped him.
"Oh, it's nothing," he replied, quietly accepting the sad truth that Rouge's final words had died with her. He shook his head, finally able to put on a smile again, and turned to his friend. "Come on, let's go home, to a planet as cool and blue as me!"
It scared him a bit at just how cheerful he could make himself sound.
But it seemed to work. Amy perked up, ushering the rest of the group out the door, and Sonic took one last look back at the observation deck, and the view of the planet as the ARK orbited it. There was a sense of finality that came with every death, and as Sonic saw the planet below him, he felt something new. The weight of a promise, and one he had always, and always would, carry out.
That world, the planet… he would make sure that everyone on it could live safe and happy lives.
Absentmindedly, he took the remaining ring that rested in his grip and slid it over his right hand.
Huh, he marvelled. Perfect fit.
Right before the door behind him could close, Sonic whispered out a final goodbye, using words that came to him in the moment, words that weren't his own, but words that felt right, regardless.
"Sayonara… Big Sister Rouge."
The door closed behind him, and a few minutes later, the ARK shut down.
See you all in Heroes!
~Smash 50