Chapter 19

Unknown location

Sonic woke up sore, really sore, he opened his eyes, he looked around to find himself on the Sky patrol, the med bay as it happened "what happened?" he groaned, "bonjour Sonic" Antoine said on the medic bed next to him, Bunnie sitting next to it, Shade was on his other side Knuckles had fallen asleep in his chair, when he properly looked around he saw most of the freedom fighters had taken a bit more of a beating then they were us to.

Ken was in a chair still clutching his shoulder, his lower bit of his left robotic arm was missing and the join was hanging loosely down, Antoine had a bandage on his head, Shade suit was slowly repairing itself and she could now stand properly. The spikes on Knuckles gloves were broken on the right hand. Most of the others had bandages or plasters on the

"You okay Sonic" said his little brother Tails who appeared beside him, "Tails what the hell happened?" Sonic asked, "you were attacked, got ambushed while retrieving the emerald" said a new voice, Sonic looked and found Rotor the Walrus himself at the entrance of the med bay.

He was a Mobian purple walrus, he was larger than most of the members of the freedom fighters, and tusks coming down from his muzzle, he wore yellow goggles, boots and gloves and a green belt around his shoulder where he had quite a few tools. He was a mechanic and engineer and often worked with Tails when inventing stuff.

"Hey Rotor, how's everyone else?" Sonic asked, "you took a hell of a beating that's what happened" said G-merl, Sonic aslo saw Cosmo and Cream making sure that everyone had no other injuries then their current ones. "Where are the others?" Sonic asked, "the others are in the main control room" Tails replied, "we're heading back to green hills you were out for about half an hour" Ken said "What about the chaos emerald?" Sonic asked, "we lost it no thanks to you" Shadowhawk said with disdain in his voice walking in.

"What do you-" Sonic asked but then Shadowhawk lunged and punched Sonic all the way across the room, everyone was so shocked all they could do was gawk, or gave exclamations of, "what the hell?!" from Knuckles being woken up with a shock, "oh my" Cosmo exclaimed "holy Sugar!" From Bunnie and a "zuc le bleu" from Antoine.

"What was-?" Sonic began but in one movement Shadowhawk lunged forward and picked Sonic up by his quills, "we almost died because of you and your friends" Shadowhawk said accusingly, "what's going on in here" Sally asked running in with Amy and Jewels. "I'll tell you what's going on, you lot didn't do as i said and almost paid the price" Shadowhawk said.

An hour and a few minutes earlier

"I thought you were suppose to follow the arrows not the arrows follow you" Sonic exclaimed as arrows nearly impaled him and turning him into a pin cushion, well more of a pincushion, the others weren't doing so well, Sally had her calf nicked by one of those arrows, Shard had used his own body to prevent Knuckles, Ray and Silver from getting hit. Mighty used his shell to shield Honey from the arrows.

Nicole used her holo shields to deflect another bunch of them, her shields have a limited range and it wouldn't cover the whole area"I hope Angela and Shaodwhawk are having better luck then us" Blaze said as she incinerated arrows, "wait i have an idea" Sonic said, "Blaze use the Sol emeralds and create a wall of fire or something to block the arrows" Sonic called out.

Blaze gave him an uncomfortable look, "well i-" Blaze said not too sure what to say, "look out!" Silver exclaimed as he caught a volley of arrows with his psychokinesis, "Blaze what's wrong?" Amy asked, beginning to worry, "one of the Sol emeralds is destroyed" Blaze admitted, guiltily "What!?" The rest of the freedom fighters save for silver, exclaimed, it was only when an arrow bounced off of Bunnies leg that they returned to focus to stop arrows killing anyone.

"How did the Sol emerald get destroyed?" Shadow asked, "we'll explain later now just focus on not getting impaled" Silver said back.

Inside one of the buildings, Angela and shadowhawk were taking out Satanists, breaking bones, slashing limbs and causing trauma, Angela was the one doing most of the work due to her superhuman strength and speed, Shadowhawk just took care of the remainders that Angela had missed. The odd thing was that the satanist seemed to walk this off. Some even clicked their broken bones back into place with wincible cracks, "how the hell are these assholes doing this?" Angela asked, as she hit one in the face with the flat side of her dagger, "i don't know but we need to take them out before Sonic and his friends really get hurt" Shadowhawk replied, punching another, the same satanist tackled him.

He then extended his claws and slashed them across the man's face, badly damaging and tearing his mask off in the process, Shadowhawk got to his feet then realised the mask on his claws. The satanist had staggered from the attack, he turned around and Eddie finally got a good look at his real face. The face. it wasn't human. not exactly, it reminded Eddie of a thousand Owl ninja's he saw once when in gotham, he had been working with red hood at the time.

The face was pale white, the hair was grey, his lips and cheeks were missing so his jaw showed, Eddie wasn't too sure what to make of it, but he sure as hell knew what to do, "new plan Angela" he called out, Angela was breaking each of the satanists legs, she had already deduced that it wouldn't stop them but slow them down. "Will I like it?" Angela asked. At the same time the maskless satanist charged, Shadowhawk was ready however and wrapped his hands around the opposite side of the satanists head and snapped it's neck.

The satanist fell to the floor dead, Angela then got the idea and smiled at what he was implying, it had been a while since she had to kill anyone, and she was itching for the thrill of bloody conflict. She slashed at the Satanist making each strike a kill one, aiming for the heads and chests mainly but also cutting off an arm/leg or two.

Shadowhawk planted explosive boomerangs and activated a neural venom in his claws, it usually paralysed opponents, making them easier for Angela to kill, Shadowhawk drove his claws through one's face. Once they were done with the current building they were in the repeated the action in the next and the next all the way around till there were none left.

They sometimes did a team up where Shadowhawk would throw one at Angela and she would cut it in half with her sword or Angela would kick one across the room and Shadowhawk would catch him and plant an explosive on him while throwing him into another bunch of satanists.

"And that's the last of them" Shadowhawk said as he uppercutted a satanist with his claws out, they went straight through his jaw and skull, Shadowhakw felt sorry for the room service who would have to clean up the mess. "Right so now what?" Angela asked though she knew the answer.

Outside

The arrows gradually decreased until their were no arrows coming at all, the freedom fighters sighed in relief at that, Shadow grabbed the Chaos emerald, "damn that was a lot more intense then usual" Sonic said, "yeah think" Knuckles growled as he snapped an arrow he picked up, "well it's over now" Amy said.

Shard then collapsed to his knees with a clang, "Shard you okay?" Knuckles asked concerned, "I'm-ow-fine," he said, cracking a smile. He was that type of guy. Nicole looked over at him, and scanned him a little. "It looks like some of the arrow heads broke off inside you, we're gonna need to remove them," Nicole said.

"Don't worry G.U.Ns coming" Shadow said looking at the helicopters and air vehicles coming into the town, they also spotted the air patrol, "Tails are you onboard the air patrol?" Sonic asked through the coms, "yup, Cosmo, Gmerl, Cream , and Rotor are here as well" Tails replied, "good we have injured nothing major thankfully" Amy said, "in all honesty i think we got lucky" Bunnie admitted.

"Yeah i saw" Tails said gravely, they all had to admit that getting impaled by arrows was a lot more deadly than what they were used to, which was mainly beating up eggman's robots or some of his organic employees, which all things considered was not very dangerous in the 'gut/blood spilling' way but rather in the 'destroy your body to the last atom way', still the freedom fighters were familiar with broken bones and bleeding noses.

Shadowhawk jumped down from the window of the building Angela followed suit, "you guys okay?" Sally asked, "we saw quite a few blasts from the windows" Bunnie added, "were fine those explosives were me" Shadowhawk said, "wait what?" the freedom fighters said with anime-like surprised faces. "What did you do Eddie?" Silver asked, "those bastards were undead anyway," Angela said, holding up the head of an unmasked Satanist trying to help Eddie out to no avail.

Silver threw up at the sight of it, Shadow was more us to violence then any of them, he had killed before but that was going way to far, luckily it didn't faze him as much as the others, Amy started to feel dizzy and looked like she was about to faint, she had to lean on the handle of her hammer to keep herself standing, Sonic couldn't say anything, he was disgusted by what his friend had done, none of them had even noticed that the head had it's lower jaw skin missing and that what skin was their was pale.

"YOU KILLED THEM!?" Sally finally exploded, she may have been a tomboy and a kindheart princess, but she also had a short temper and this definitely made her lose it completely, "he was already dead, the rest of them are as well" Eddie explained, Sally breathed a little to calm down, Blaze patted Silver on the back to help him get whatever was left in his system out of it.

"They weren't alive to begin with" Shadowhawk repeated, now that calmed Sally down a little bit but she had to ask, through very gritted teeth "are you sure?" "does this thing look like it was ever alive too you" Angela asked, they had to admit it didn't, "okay sorry guess-" Sonic said, "Don't get to far ahead of yourself, i understand" Shadowhawk replied, "please tell me that pun was unintended" Shadow asked, "no it wasn't" Shadowhawk replied jokingly.

The rest breathed a slight sigh of relief, Sonic more so because he was relieved that his friend hadn't become a killer in the five years on his world, but what made Eddie do it, Eddie had been acting more serious than Sonic had remembered, he had been a high schooler when they had first met and was a joking kind of guy, he still was in a way but he was far more serious as well.

He was gonna ask but a voice came from the direction of the alley, one that wasn't any of their injured friends, "i hope you don't mind" said a voice that seemed to both be loud booming and low and quiet at the same time. However, that's possible.

"But I want that emerald," continued the voice, the source being the agent of Sin Pride himself, "Pride" Angela said, "you know him?" Sally asked, "he is a legend amongst celestial warriors, one of the agents of sin, possibly the physically strongest out of them". "Thanks for the compliment but no need to underestimate yourselves" Pride said. Behind him Ken's damaged arm had been broken off and a satanist soldier was holding a knife to his throat.

Rouge had a knife to her own throat, only she was on her knees, Omega was on the floor with a satanist soldier holding a drill to the top of his, one satanist had a gun to Shades own head as she was held in a headlock, Antoine was just being held by his arm with another Satanist soldier holding a gun to the back of his head.

"What do you want?" Shard asked, pointing his arm cannon, "give me the emeralds you have and your friends will be let go" Pride said, "and why the hell should we trust vermin like you" Bunnie demanded. Pride nodded to the soldier holding Antoine and the one holding Omega, both threw their captives, to the freedom fighters surprise at them, Bunnie caught her husband and Shadow caught Omega.

"Hand the Emerald over and you get the rest" Pride said, Shadow looked at the chaos emerald in his hand, "well" Pride asked, Shadow sighed and tossed the emerald to Pride, Pride's demon materialized and caught it, before nodding at the satanist soldiers behind him.

Without a word the satanists let go of their prisoners and gave them a small shove then turned around and walked out while the freedom fighter regrouped, Rouge decided to help Shade out due to her injuries "Shade you okay?" Knuckles asked concerned, "I've been better," Shade admitted, "Ken…" Sally began, "I'm fine, it takes more than a broken shoulder to get me down," Ken said.

"You had to be all stoic didn't you" Rouge said sarcastically to Shadow, she was touched and proud that he had done the trade without hesitation, "Pride gave them to us without hesitation, Why?" Shadowhawk asked Angela, "Pride has the most honor out of the 7 of the sins, let us say we were lucky it wasn't any of the others". Shadowhawk then saw Sonic getting into a racing position and getting ready for what Shadowhawk assumed to be a spin dash. "Sonic wait!" Eddie exclaimed, too late. Sonic rushed forward as a ball of spinning spikes, Pride must have had heightened senses because he turned around, swinging his hammer and bashed Sonic away.

Sonic collide with a shop and lay their unconscious, "i was hoping to get this over and done with peacefully" Pride admitted, "who's next" he asked readying his weapon, Knuckles charged at pride with a roar of rage, Pride positions himself and sent a pulse of primal magic out. Knuckles hesitated for a moment then he was sent flying by the hammer hitting him in the side, he tried to counter it by punching the hammer itself, only to get his knuckle spikes cracked.

The rest of the fighters prepared for battle Amy went to check on Sonic, "last chance to back down" Pride said pulling out his machete and holding his hammer in the other hand, Ken shot a little bit of electricity through his claws, but a shot from a roof blasted his lower arm off at the joint. The pain was enough to make him collapse to one knee. They all looked to find Envy on the roof, cocking the sniper, Sally tackled Ken to the ground before another shot ended up in his skull.

"Shit" Envy cursed, then teleported behind Bunnie and used his snipper as a club, knocking her to the ground and was about to smash her head but Shadowhawk used a shield to block it. "Wait, where did that shield come from?" they all thought. "Prepare for battle" Angela said, readying dual daggers and wrapping her fabric tendrils around her body as extra protection against the two sins and the satanist.

Present air patrol

"We almost died because you got reckless" Shadowhawk growled, then turned to the rest of the freedom fighters with not a single encouragement, "and because the rest of you can't muscle the stomach to break a human spin" the present members, (Tails, Cosmo, Cream , G-merl, Amy, Sally, Rotor, Jewels, Bunnie, Shade, Ken and Antoine) couldn't help but give very guilty looks.

"what happened to you Eddie?" Sonic asked, Shadowhawk calmed himself down but still gave Sonic the full laser blast that even superman couldn't copy with his powers, "w-what made you like this, you used to be a kind and joking kid", "i.got older" Shadowhawk replied, dropping Sonic then storming off, Rotor tried to stop him but Shadowhawk back handed him in the face and just walked off.

Meanwhile in a forest not far outside green hill

Al simmons couldn't believed his eyes if he had taken off his mask, their on the ground was a gravestone, labeled 'Albert Francis Simmons, Born May 22nd 1902-death october 3rd 1942' on the grave was a lantern of some kind or another, "it can't...be" Spawn said to no one in particular, "what is this!" he yelled to the heavens if there really was a heaven in this world. "This is your grave '' echoed a voice, it was an old man's voice, it was the old man's voice. And it was coming from the lantern. "Cagliostor, is that you?" Spawn asked, "yes and no," the lantern answered.

"I am a guide of sorts, based on the mind of the former hellspawn Cagliostro, I am to help guide hellspawn who may come to this world. This grave in front of you is an exact copy of your one, it's purpose is to catch your attention", "Now that's just a cruel trick, but it did catch my attention" Al thought, "still i'm gonna kill the real old man when i get back to my allies". "So can you tell me why my enemies wanted to come here" Spawn asked, "it's because of the corrupt necroplasm that radiates off this planet, Satan is gonna use it to take your place as the king of hell and then do what he's always wanted to do" the lantern Cagliostro said.

"And that is to replace God as ruler of heaven and finally get his revenge for being kicked out of Heaven", Spawn knew the story of Eden and it was understandable but still Satan considered himself the true ruler of hell. Spawn however was not impressed, "so i'll just stop him like always" he said, "still a damned fool" lamp caglistro said, "he has allies which mean you need allies to help you", "i'm doing just fine old man" Spawn retorted "plus i have enough allies in my group to suffice, when i find them".

Spawn began to turn around and walk away, "But what about the villains of this world hmmm?" Cagliostro asked, Spawn stopped in his tracks, "you haven't realised have you?how you've been acting" Cagliostro continued, "you are exactly the same as you were when you first became Spawn. Arrogant, Cruel, cold hearts, helping people one minute then spitting on them the next". Realisation hit spawn like a ten ton truck which he remembered being painful the first time about, as he realised he had a point, he had been acting cold heartedly except for the little girl he met, he remembered his response to Glacias story about her parents, "did i ask for your life story? Fuck me that was harsh" Al thought as he killed himself ten times over mentally, "and using it as a reason to kill those fuckers?" Spawn couldn't find any words for his harshness.

"So you do see," Cagliostro said. Spawn sat himself down on a nearby tree to think, he was thinking for a long time, he looked at his grave, he thought of his ex-wife, he thought of his best friend Terry, his step daughter Cyan. "Maybe I do need help after all those Mobians stood their ground well against Overt-kill," Spawn thought, "I'll do as you say old man," Spawn said eventually. "Good Shadowhawk and Angela have already made Allies with them, join them and be ready for war" Cagliostro warned.

Spawn picked up the lamp and stashed it in his cloak if he ever needed it, taking one last look at his grave he made to leave, but then something sharp went straight through his chest, and continued until it scratched the bark of a tree. Spawn turned his head around to see who it was. It was a man in a red cloak however from what little Spawn could see from the shadow's was that he was bold and had multiple glowing blue objects on his body and one glowing red in his chest.

He appeared to be at war with himself as one hand was clutching his head he retracted the long spike which had recently been the spike that had impaled Al and sent that clutching to his forehead as he appeared out of the shadows and fell to one knee, his face was hard to describe, his entire body appeared to be made of of ectoplasm of some kind, the cheeks were white but the rest of the face and head was covered in black. White patterns of random shapes covered his body and even blacker spirals swirled around the dark area's.

"All right jackass you've pissed me off" Spawn growled, summoning an axe in one hand and his rifle in the other, "see you in hell!" Spawn exclaimed as he charged but then the new character in this story looked up the patterns on his ectoplasm shifting and forming a black and white spiral on his torso, some of the ectoplasm of his face retracted from his cheeks and lower jaw.

Spawn stopped dead as he realized who it was, "Spawn help!" the figure cried, still clutching his head with pleading eyes, unable to believe it Spawn asked, "Haunt?"