Teetering between life and death, Ixis Naugus saw a face. It was one he didn't recognize. Then the darkness returned, all encompassing and without remorse. How long he drifted in the thoughtless void, he couldn't say. Never before had he come so close to the final death that took all mortals, in time. Long ago, the birth fires of his creation had spelled the doom of his three former selves: the desperate last masters of the Order of Ixis. Those three had been fused together, alloyed, in his creation. Not since then had the specter of death loomed so close, no: not even when he had been so ignominiously defeated at the hands of chaos powered children.
How he hated them.
How he hated the world that they lived in. The last thoughts of those three doomed magi had been of greed, lust for power, and an unending desire for revenge. The Order was gone, made impotent and pointless by the march of technology. The Kingdom had remained a foul cancer, corrupting the hearts and minds of the people. All was twisted in Naugus' eyes. It needed to be reset, and the logical place to start was at the Source of All. He hated it all, and it had conspired to ruin him.
When his vision finally returned, he saw a star lit sky. Gone was the agony in his arms; gone was the pain up and down his body. The crystal crucifix was no more, and he now lay on his back, alive and in no apparent danger. Lifting his hand so it was in his field of view, he saw where he had been pierced, but the holes in the hands and wrist were gone. Only a faint outline remained. Rolling over onto his side, he tried to summon his power, to fade into the shadows.
But the power never came.
"Your powers are gone."
Naugus hissed, whirling to see the source of the condescending tone.
"Who dares?!" he snarled, jumping to his feet. Though alive, he felt weak. Weaker than he could ever remember. Turning around, searching frantically for the speaker amid the trees and forest, he heard it again.
"Hey now, don't blame me! I saved your life, after all."
He finally saw her, emerging from under the shade of an old oak tree. She was an echidna; a race he had never had any real interaction with before. Dusting off her thighs, it became apparent that she had been resting, carelessly, under the tree, waiting for him to wake up. She looked young, another child by his reckoning, but it was a youth tempered by confidence and power. There was no swagger to the way she stood and appraised him, only a casual knowledge that she had nothing to fear.
Unknown to him, Lara-Su had been beset by contradictory impulses for the better part of the night. She had saved him from the crystal cross, healed his wounds, and brought him back from the brink of death. She had not done this out of pity for him. In fact, she despised him. In her past, but in this timeline's future, he had tried to kill her (and likely worse). He had given himself to the corruption of one of the Super Emeralds, and she had neither forgiven nor forgotten what he tried to do to her when she was lost and confused.
It would have been so easy to just let him die.
It would also have gone against the plan. His attack on her helped Miles to find her, and bring her into the fold as his first Templar, imbued with the power of one of the Sol Emeralds. It wasn't fate – it was her choice. She would let him live, powerless, and he would fall to the Emerald's corruption. This was part of the future she knew, and so she let it come to pass. That… and one other thing… he had answers.
"You, girl? You did this?" Ixis held up his hand, but quickly lowered it. Unlike before, when Silver and Blaze broke him out of confinement, he was less sure of his ability to turn this to his advantage. Never once had he felt powerless before. Never had he felt so… empty.
"Yeah, well, don't gush all over me with thanks," Lara replied, waving the whole thing off dismissively. "I just wanted to ask you a few things."
The vile magician sneered. "I have no time to…"
Lara frowned, abruptly stomping one foot. The ground shook beneath them.
"I'm not really fond of you," she said, walking towards him. "Humor me, and we'll call this even. I won't mash you into paste or anything!"
Naugus cringed. They both knew he was powerless at the moment.
"What happened to me?" he demanded, expecting to at least get that much. "My magiks…"
"Well, I can't explain it exactly," Lara admitted. "But the crystal that impaled you – you remember that – also sealed your powers. It looks like you bit off more than you could chew back there."
"But how…?" Naugus cut short any more simpering. There was no point in it, but he swore that, in time, he would regain all he had lost and more. No matter the cost. Death was almost preferable to this powerless state.
"Very well," he finished. "What do you want with me, girl?"
"Simple!" Lara pointed at him. "You seemed to know something about that guy that almost killed you. I'm probably going to have to deal with him, so I want to know the score."
"The score?" Ixis was hardly familiar with 'slang' but he could guess what she meant. "You wish me to aid you…?"
"Just tell me what you know about this guy… come on, please?"
Ixis huffed; loathe doing anyone a favor he wouldn't be able to use against them later. Lara could see this as plain as day. He was notorious for being just that sort of cliché scumbag villain. Still, she waited for him to make up his mind. She knew his future, already, and there was nothing to be gained by goading him on or making him suffer.
"I shall share my knowledge…" Naugus eventually acquiesced. "If only to avenge myself on that cursed Mephiles. No one makes a fool of Ixis Naugus!"
Lara nodded, finding it hard to bite back a verbal jab that would blow the deal.
"So who is this guy?" she asked, proud of her discretion. "This Mephiles."
"I would not expect a child like yourself to know," Naugus commented, chuckling at the mild rebuke. "Are you aware of the existence of the Djinn?"
"Not really…" Lara feigned ignorance. She had heard a little, but this was a good chance to let her guest get into a talkative mood.
"I thought not," the wizard replied, tone haughty. "Let me enlighten you, then. Many thousands of years ago, a race of mythical creatures existed in the realms south of overland and north of Cat Country. These were the Djinn and the Ifrit. They warred frequently, and they were renowned as consummate masters of magic and chaos control."
That was in line with what some of what Lara knew. In her future, Miles kept extensive historical records (as he tried to better understand his own condition), and he had once spoken speculatively about the existence of the Djinn, or 'genies.' He was certain that they were extinct, but he also theorized that they had disappeared into various gene pools over the millennia. Ancient folklore often stated them to be partly incorporeal and capable of assuming different forms. In the present, it was possible that their stray genes were responsible for such things as certain mobians and humans having five fingers instead of the normal four.
"Among these two groups, three were renowned above the others: Erazor, a Djinn, his brother Mephiles, and Iblis, an Ifrit. They were contemporaries, and despite often fighting one another, they became quite close…" Ixis scowled at this part. "Ancient Ixian lore teaches us that Iblis was the youngest of them, but also the one with the greatest power. She…"
"She?" Lara couldn't help but ask, just for clarification.
"She," Naugus repeated. "In time, both Erazor and Mephiles became infatuated with her. But Iblis' power continued to grow. Her people believed she would soon transform into a being of pure fire and power. They called this being, Solaris. She was confined to keep her from Erazor and Mephiles while the transformation took place."
"Why?"
"You are an ignorant one, aren't you?" Naugus smirked cruelly, his mouth lined with sharp needle teeth. "Imagine our world as a coin, tossed in the air. Every thousand years or so, a being of incredible power arises, changing the world to suit its fancy. It is impossible to know who will manifest this power… but at some point, a transformation occurs."
"A transformation," Lara repeated, seeing a connection. It was just like Miles and The Devourer. Both had been beings of power, born in a time when others of great power also existed. In the former case, it was his many friends and enemies, and in the latter, it was the Seven Bright Kings of First City. Some perturbation in the Chaos Force caused an upwelling of power, focused on a single individual.
"Something went wrong," she guessed. "With Iblis."
"Yes…" Ixis savored the word, drawing out the 's.' "Cloistered away, she began to grow wild and mad. When she emerged, she did so as a monster of incalculable power. None could stand against her, and she set fire to the world!"
Lara got the feeling her guest lecturer was a bit jealous. But what he described was similar to what she knew of The Devourer. He had likewise gone quite mad (though she couldn't fathom why – maybe he was just naturally a monster), plunging the world into darkness and war, and projecting his sick sadism into all of reality. The Devourer had undergone a complete transformation despite his madness, giving birth to a new set of Chaos Emeralds.
Iblis couldn't have done the same… was she an incomplete transformation, then? Was it possible that, over the millennia, there had been many more like Merlin, like The Devourer, like Miles…? Had there been others that the Chaos Force had dwelled on, like a magnifying glass, burning away their sanity? Merlin had never explained why it had taken so long to create his replacement in Miles. A sick feeling washed over her. How many disasters had been caused by this insane cycle of destruction?
"What happened next?" Lara asked, though she could guess.
"The brothers, Erazor and Mephiles, decided something had to be done to seal her. But… they differed in their approach," Ixis snickered darkly, savoring the irony, vicariously though it was. "Erazor planned to seal her in an artifact, which he would then hide from the world. Mephiles wished to seal her within himself, using his mind to shore up her sanity. He planned to become the God of the Sun, Solaris."
"The two brothers fought to a standstill, until others came to Erazor's aid. They subdued Mephiles, and then went on to seal Iblis. The living inferno was locked within a sacred vessel, and the pieces scattered across the planet. Where they exist now, if they exist at all, even the Ixian scribes never knew. All this was revealed to us through the secrets of our Order."
"Mephiles…" Lara said, slowly. "He still plans to merge with Iblis, even now."
"But of course. Those with true ambition never truly die." Ixis turned away from her, but spoke over his shoulder. "I, too, shall regain my power. And more! And you, girl, shall regret the secrets you now know."
"Is that your way of saying 'thanks?'" Lara asked, unafraid. She knew where his vengeance and pettiness would lead.
"The Secrets of my Order shall be preserved…" Even without his magic, he slipped easily into the growing shadows and darkness of the forest. His words lingered a moment longer than his image.
"…I shall not forget your face."
"Likewise, ugly!" Lara yelled, sticking out her tongue and giving him a raspberry before disappearing in a flash. "Go stick your face in a cheese grater while you're at it!"
Reappearing at her loft back in Knothole, Lara entertained the thought of going back and teaching the formerly-magic using freak a lesson or two, but it came and went. She'd inherited a rather thick headed propensity for holding grudges from her father and a certain amount of hot headedness from her mother, but with them both came an overriding sense of responsibility. In their case, it had been to Angel Island and the Master Emerald. In Lara's case, it was to Miles and the world as a whole. Keeping the time stream recognizable fell into both categories, even if it caused her grief later on.
"At least I learned a lot…" Lara mumbled, uncovering the whiteboard and the 'time-plot' she had worked out on it and tried adhering to. Taking a marker, she added a few complications, while adding small notes to others.
IBLIS
MEPHILES
SOLARIS
The two unknowns – both were CHAOS USERS
Ixis Naugus she both added and put a line through.
Those were the new problems. A whole slew of old ones remained: HELIOS, which had yet to launch; SHADOW, who hadn't made his move yet; ROUGE, who Miles hadn't pursued in this timeline; then there were the questions surrounding MILES himself. He seemed to be fine… in fact, he seemed to be coping better than she'd expected with everything spinning around him. Would he still have the inclination to do what he did in the previous timeline?
And if he didn't, would she have to force him?
Tails' mood had rapidly soured since his dinner with Sally and Sonic.
Ixis Naugus had apparently escaped from custody, in the middle of Knothole no less, and then promptly disappeared. And no one knew how or why. In fact, no one even knew why he was being transferred in the first place. There was no reason for it. An official invoice had arranged it with Internal Security, and they had followed the order blindly, not bothering to ask who had put it into the system in the first place.
As much of a pain as Naugus could be, the kitsune was also troubled by the apparent presence of Vector in Knothole. The Chaotix were on the move, which meant that they were finally ready to fess up to losing the Super Emeralds. Tails didn't need to speak to any of them to figure out that they were on the mainland only because they had finished combing through Angel Island. The only information they could have that he did not was whether they had actually found any of the Emeralds themselves.
Sitting at his desk, Tails' mind raced with the possibilities.
He'd finished with his work, but even now, it seemed to overwhelm what little personal life he had. The throbbing heat of a mild headache made him wince, and he took a few seconds to try and sooth it before reaching across the desk and moving one of the chess pieces. He then turned his attention to the computer screen, currently split into four windows, three of which displayed other, different, chess boards. Touching the screen, he moved two different pieces on two different boards.
Sitting across from him, on the other side of his desk, Nicole reclined slightly in her holographic chair. She put on a good facsimile of looking intently at the board, even though he knew she had worked out her moves and counter moves to a degree that even his superlative mind couldn't quite match.
Sonic would have rolled his eyes if he knew how Tails preferred to spend his free time. It wasn't that he liked work; or that he liked being busy all the time. It was that he only really felt comfortable when he was thinking about something. If he wasn't thinking about something, and putting those thoughts in motion, then he felt like an idling car… like he was running, wasting energy, and not moving anywhere. So, between the four games, he also let his mind wander back to what he would have to do about Ixis and the Chaotix.
The former wasn't a huge problem. Ixis wasn't half as dangerous or cunning as Mammoth Mogul, and he always tried to do the same thing: he'd go after things that would amplify his magic, like the Sword and Crown of Acorns. Those were safe enough, and he'd already put plans into action to counter that threat. Sonic would probably be happy to race off and beat Naugus up again. The Chaotix were more troublesome.
"Checkmate in four moves," Nicole warned. She looked at him with a worried expression. "You're distracted."
"Four moves?" Tails took a moment to turn his full attention to the game. He also moves two other pieces on the digital games he was playing in parallel. "I see…"
"New game?"
"Please."
The board reset.
He made another move on one of the three computer boards, and the border flashed red. He'd won that one. He'd win the other two in the next five minutes, too. Those were games against other crew members. Nicole, however, had several supercomputers feeding her permutations. Beating her would be a real accomplishment.
"Tails," Nicole began, making the first move. "Have you ever played this game with Sally?"
He shook his head.
"No." He moved.
"Why?"
"It wouldn't be any fun."
The AI blinked. The comment had gone over her head, so to speak.
"Could you please clarify that statement?" she asked, moving another piece. They were playing quickly now, as he focused harder on the game.
"I wouldn't have enjoyed winning or losing the game if it had been against her."
"So you preferred to not play at all."
"Exactly."
Back and forth, they made their moves. Tails was purposefully restricting the time he had to think about each move to less than a minute.
"I don't think that's healthy."
This time, he blinked, giving her a surprised look.
"What?" he asked. "Not healthy?"
"From what I saw," Nicole explained. "The two of you are very important to each other. You should have been more honest with her. You could have either won, or lost, but you should have at least played."
"Now I have an SI (Synthetic Intelligence) giving me advice on women? Are you really programmed for that, Nicole?" The young kitsune shook his head again.
"I am a woman," she corrected him.
He raised an eyebrow in response.
"And my database has extensive files on how to form relationships," Nicole continued. "You and her… you should spend more time getting to know each other. She wants to be someone you, the real you I mean, can turn to for help. You should fix things before a misunderstanding causes real problems."
His hand wavered over his rook. "What brings this up, Nicole?"
"You are the link between the Armed Forces and the Freedom Fighters. The two sides do not share good will; if you and Sally end up fighting, it will split the war effort."
He made his move.
"Don't worry about that. Sally and I have worked things out. You were there."
"The Prime and I have noticed that you have problems developing intimate relationships with…" He glared at her. "With other mobians," Nicole concluded. "I… we have seen this in Sonic, as well."
He moved a pawn.
"I would prefer not to be psychoanalyzed by a machine."
Nicole-Typhoon flinched, wounded.
"I am not just a machine," she said, firmly. "Please do not refer to me as one."
Tails sighed, resting his forehead in his hand.
"Sorry," he apologized. He really hadn't meant to say that. It was just that… "This is just a touchy subject for me. I'd rather not talk about it."
"Why?"
"Because I don't understand it myself," he answered, and hastily made a move on the board. One of the chess matches on the computer ended with a win.
"I can drop the subject if you want, but…" Nicole hesitated out of tact. Naturally, she was never really at a loss for words given the speed at which she processed information. "But I wanted to bring it up before I told you about those files from before."
"Oh?" Tails quickly remembered. "The cryptography files? I assumed they were about my involvement with the Battlebirds back then."
"No," Nicole replied, moving her piece. "They are about one Amadeus and Mary Prower."
Tails' hand froze in mid-move.
"What did you say?" he asked, with unexpected calm. "Amadeus and Mary Prower?"
"Yes."
"What about them?" Tails finished the move. "They died. They died protecting me."
He could feel another headache coming on. They had only been getting worse since leaving Knothole and his meditations by the Ring Pool. Whatever process was rewiring his body didn't seem to have a lot of concern for his mind. It was no wonder the kitsune considered their abrupt maturation to be a time of trials.
"According to the files we have decrypted, they were registered with the Battlebird Armada. They were also mentioned in a recent resources transfer report…"
Nicole finally just said it.
"Tails… I calculate a 96 percent probability that they are alive."
The innards of Robotropolis were a maze of corridors and ducts. Snively seemed to know his way around well enough, and he led the procession - one overlander, one black hedgehog, and fourteen robotic bodyguards - deeper into the city. In a briefcase carried by the short human, the red Chaos Emerald pulsed with power. Shadow noticed as they descended that the corridors were becoming cleaner and newer looking, a far cry from the old sections of Robotropolis, encrusted with layers of soot and ash.
"The project should be almost complete," Shadow said. "We have five of the Seven Emeralds, and we know the mobians have the other two."
"Yes, that is true," Snively answered. "And while Helios is designed to be able to activate at three levels of power, we can not initialize the Eclipse Core with our current power supply."
Shadow frowned. "I'm not sure I understand…"
The tiny human scratched his nose. "Well, are you aware of the effect known as cyclotron resonance?"
Science had never been his strong point, so Snively nodded and explained.
"Well, to put it simply, the Eclipse Core is like a giant magnetic fusion chamber, but for Chaos Energy. When the vibration frequency of an oscillating magnetic field matches the resonance of charged particles in a field of plasma, it excites those particles, heating them. By mating a similar process to a series of linked superconducting Chaos Siphons, we are able to effectively supercharge the Chaos Emeralds in the Core."
"In other words… with this system, our five Emeralds will be able to generate more power than all the other Chaos Emeralds on Mobius put together. Unfortunately for us, activating the Core and the Emeralds within it requires a tremendous amount of energy, more than half a million kilowatts, which we first have to convert into Chaotic Cyclotron Energy."
"You could have explained that more succinctly," Shadow grumbled, disinterested in technical jargon and theory. "Simply saying, 'it takes energy to start a chain reaction' would have done it."
"Yes, well…" the little human shrugged.
Shadow waved his hand, brushing off the whole lengthy exposition. "More importantly, once the Core is fired up, it won't need external power, right?"
Snively nodded. "That's right. But we don't have the power generating capacity at the moment to get it started in the first place."
"You said that before. What is the problem, exactly?"
"You've been off chasing Emeralds, so you have no idea," Snively replied with more than a little condescension. "We've scaled back our conventional forces and gone on defensive footing, all to conserve energy. It isn't enough. We've been losing power plants, power lines, relays, charge centers… Helios itself is complete, but if this keeps up, we'll never have the power to get it working."
Shadow's frown deepened.
He had not known this. Of Project Helios, really, he had only limited knowledge - this, despite playing a central role in getting the whole thing underway. The project had come into being a little more than a year ago, when, after the disappearance of Station Square, Robotnick had discovered a black hedgehog kept in stasis. Finding some records during the incident, the Eggman had discovered and freed Shadow from the chamber and identified himself as the grandson of Gerald Kintobor. He was looking for information on The ARK, the overlander space station that had been designed to win for humanity the next Great Mobian War.
The ARK was destroyed.
It had burned up in orbit decades ago, Robotnick had explained. Shadow was all that remained. As the grandson of Gerald, he wanted his ancestor's notes. Shadow had seen, instantly, what Robotnick was and what his aims were. Such a thing suited the bitter hedgehog just fine, and with a photographic memory, Shadow was able to make rough blueprints and descriptions of Gerald's … greatest achievement: the Eclipse Cannon. Also, he had disclosed what he remembered of the doctor's research on Chaos Control and his study of the Chaos Emeralds.
Robotnick was intrigued.
Then, Shadow offered to help him.
And Robotnick had been skeptical.
Shadow had simply explained that he was created to serve humans and defeat mobian-kind. Then, he added that because Robotnick was the grandson of his creator, he also owed him his fealty. So easily, the tyrant had played into the black hedgehog's web of lies. So easily, he had come to trust and rely on him to retrieve the Chaos Emeralds.
Humans were fools, and Mobians… were nothing more than garbage…
They would all die.
Snively and Shadow walked for almost a minute in relative silence, save for the sound of their feet on the metal floor. They came to a large metal door, split down the middle, bearing the typical Eggman-face design that covered every other surface in the city. Shadow silently wondered if it was conceit that drove this madman to plaster his likeness on everything in sight. It could simply have been insanity.
"What has the Doctor decided to do?" Shadow then asked, for good measure, "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Actually…" A voice spoke up as the doors opened. Waiting for them, his hands behind his back, was the man himself. The Eggman chuckled darkly in what passed for a welcome. "As a matter of fact, there is much you can still do, Shadow. I have devised a solution to our problem."
"Really?" Snively sounded skeptical.
"Would you like to see it?" Robotnick asked, slyly, motioning over to his side. Shadow turned his head, but saw nothing of any real importance.
"What are we seeing?" the hedgehog asked.
The Eggman made a dramatic sigh, and made a production of walking over to one of the robians working nearby on a panel near the Eclipse Chamber. The Chamber, the Eclipse Core as Snively had called it, was an impressive piece of machinery: it was a vast sphere of black and gray metal, curving in the unlit darkness. A single walkway extended from the diagnostic antechamber into the middle of the Core, a distance of some forty meters or more. Compared to this, the robian who worked on the panel seemed completely beneath notice or interest.
"This," Robotnick said, patting the compliant former-mobian turned robot on the head. "This is the key. Not this one specifically, but all of them."
"Robians can't provide the power we need!" Snively huffed. "We've already consider that option and rejected it!"
"My boy, you always lacked imagination," The Eggman smiled widely, enjoying knowing what they did not. "When in doubt, sometimes you have to do something your enemy doesn't expect. Shadow!"
The ultimate lifeform stared up at the grinning madman.
"Doctor?" he asked, curious.
Suddenly and without warning, Robotick picked the robian off its feet with one arm and tossed it to the floor. The former organic let out a shocked cracking sound, and then the Eggman's foot flattened its head, crushing it like a tin can. It was actually an impressive display of strength from the Eggman's apparently thin arms and legs. The Doctor kept smiling, cheeks pulling back into his bristly mustache.
"Do either of you two realize what I just did?" he asked, euphemistically, and proceeded to tell them, "I just killed someone's friend. Someone's brother. Someone's father. Now do you see what I mean? This is the power we will harness."
Shadow's features darkened. "You can't mean…?"
"I'll be relying on you just as much as Snively," Robotnick said, cutting the hedgehog off and grinding his foot into the remains of the robian's skull. "You're going to be the smiling mobian face of our peace delegation. Let's see how much these animals want their loved ones back…"
--Notes Chapter 7--
With the Babylon Rogues Arc mostly wrapped up; things focus more on Blaze and Silver. I tried to take some special care in adapting those two for into the COA continuity and story, including elements of Sonic Rush (hence the Blaze and Cream scenes). They're being used by Mephiles, just like the Rogues were, and I finally got to bring him into the picture in physical form.
Hopefully, readers will enjoy how I'm adapting these varied and different game continuities into COA. I've taken more than a few liberties with things (and notably omitted the entire Princess Elise, 'OMGmytearsDoom' thing), streamlining more of the story and hopefully filling out our cast of antagonists. Ixis Naugus kind of got jobbed but it is a noble sacrifice (and a better end than he receives in New World Order) for the sake of the story.
This Chapter was action-bereft, but I think it hold up well relying almost solely on character interaction and development. It does all that I'd hoped in setting up the actions and scenarios that are to come in Chapters 8 and 9. The essential triad of Sonic-Tails-Sally, so critical to all their characters, is fairly well established, while Mephiles keeps Blaze and Silver cleverly under his thumb. Then there's the delayed but inevitable rise of Helios. I think things are set up nicely for what is to come.
Chapter 7 turned out just as I'd expected, but it was a bit short. Chapter 8 compensates by being a good deal longer than normal.