Welcome, one and all, to my first new fanfiction in I-don't-know-how-long! (Though, admittedly, I've been working on this novel since 2009, so saying that is sort of a stretch.)
Anyway, I just finished posting Metarex Rule two weeks ago, which means it's time for its sequel. Yes, very important piece of information to communicate right away:
Darkened Chaos is a sequel to my fanfiction Metarex Rule.
HOWEVER!
Never fear, you should be able to jump right in with Darkened Chaos. Certainly, it helps to have read Metarex Rule, but when it is referenced, I will very often explain the reference, as any author would in writing a sequel. If there's anything you have questions about, please don't hesitate to reach out! I'm happy to answer any questions whether you're a long-time follower of Metarex Rule or jumping right in with Darkened Chaos.
In case it was not already clear, this is a continuation of Sonic X, jumping off where season 3 left off. Because I started writing my trilogy before all episodes of that season had aired, there are some differences that violate continuity, for example, the fact that Chris is present in this novel. But those continuity violations should be very few.
Otherwise, all you need to know is that this novel opens up three years after the conclusion of Metarex Rule.
Without further ado, please enjoy! And though it likely does not need saying:
Disclaimer: I do not own Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic X, or anything related to the franchise. This is merely a work of fanfiction.
Chapter One: Remembering the Undone
October 30th, 2009
Dear journal,
I can't believe it's been three years since I last wrote my thoughts in a journal. Well…not really three years. More like the first time ever. Time travel erasing nearly six years of your life makes the whole tracking of things in your past a lot more uncertain. Either way, I feel like writing again. It's a great way to get my thoughts down when something's bugging me. And right now, something is…off.
Quick intro: my name's Miles Prower, but my friends call me Tails, and I'm a twelve-year-old two-tailed fox. Well…sort of twelve. Also kind of eighteen. Thanks to time travel, like I said before.
Basically, three years ago, we—the whole galaxy, I guess—were sent back in time from February 2012 to May 2006. In that time period that was erased, we had fought a five-year war against the Metarex—the Changed War, as we call it now. A war where Sonic had been captured and tortured by the Metarex. A war where I learned I could use the Chaos Emeralds and did so to defeat the leader of the Metarex. But all of that never happened now, when we returned back to the end of the very first war against the Metarex.
Life has been different since time was changed. Cosmo's back, for one thing, faster than last time around. The Metarex aren't back is another thing. Our biggest problem right now is Eggman. And that's a huge relief. It's usually a cinch facing Eggman, compared to all we went through with the Metarex.
Actually, the thing that's bothering me is that Eggman hasn't attacked us for a while. Which is weird. It's normally like clockwork, Eggman showing up with a new robot something like every other Thursday. But he's been quiet. Which means he's probably up to something.
Though, like I said, compared to the Metarex, it's definitely nothing we can't handle.
..Miles "Tails" Prower
Tails put his notebook beside him in the grass before laying back himself on Cream's mother's lawn. The sun beamed down from above and warmed his fur. In the background, Cream, Cheese, and Cosmo's laughter echoed as they ran around playing tag.
Sonic was off somewhere exploring. Tails knew Knuckles and Chris were somewhere on Angel Island, though it had been some time since he had known specifically where. Amy's location was unknown to him but that wasn't unusual, since she split her time between her friends.
In the brief moment of almost quiet, Tails lingered. Sunlight, laying outside in full view of potential enemy fire, all of it still seemed impossible, given the war they had experienced against the Metarex. Even though that war, the Changed War, had technically never happened after going back in time by an unknown cause, it had done a toll on Tails. The pain hadn't disappeared just because the war never happened. The memories were still in Tails's head.
A shadow suddenly blocked Tails's light, and he opened his eyes. Amy stood there, tennis racquet in hand. She quirked her hip to one side and her white pleated skirt moved with her. The sun glinted off the gold heart clasp on her headband that matched the same clasp on her boots. She shoved her free hand in the kangaroo pocket of her red short-sleeved hoodie. "You up for a game?" she asked.
Tails just blinked at her.
"Sonic's not around, and I'm bored so c'mon! I need a challenge," Amy said, grabbing Tails's arm and beginning to drag him up.
"Hey! Calm down; I'll play," Tails said, snatching up his notebook before Amy hauled him to his feet.
Amy caught sight of Tails's possession and frowned. "You're writing again? I haven't seen you do that since the Changed War."
"Yeah," Tails replied. "Something's on my mind so I decided to start writing again."
"Like…what?" Amy said slowly, narrowing her eyes.
"It's not a big deal," Tails said quickly. "Eggman hasn't been attacking lately, and I just thought it was really weird."
Amy smiled and shook her head. "So what? Dr. Eggman is always stewing on something new. And it's not like we've ever lost to him before anyway."
She spun on the spot and started to drag Tails away. But then she added, "Besides, it's not like Eggman can throw anything at us that's worse than we've already faced."
-(-)-
Tails pounded the tennis ball with a grunt. The tennis ball twisted quickly on Amy's side, and she barely sliced it back in time. Tails drove it back. And this time, Amy couldn't reach it in time before it twisted out of bounds. "How do you curve your hits like that?" she snapped. "That's not even fair."
"Amy, this is deuce about fifteen times over. We're pretty evenly matched," Tails pointed out.
Not that it made much of a difference to Amy, Tails could see in her still fuming expression. Her competitive nature knew no bounds. He grinned weakly at her. Why did I agree to this? he thought.
And then Amy pulled out her Piko-piko hammer. Tails paled. "Uh…Amy…?"
"Just serve," Amy said, chucking the tennis ball over the net to Tails. He caught it on the bounce.
"Go, Tails!"
Tails turned at the sound of Cosmo's cheer. Cosmo, Cream, and Cheese stood outside the edge of the tennis court, though Tails had been too focused on Amy's…competitiveness to notice. Cosmo wore a white long-sleeved shirt covered with a green short-sleeved jacket that stopped above her stomach and a green skirt. She pressed her hands to her heart and smiled at him. At her side, Cream wore a bright orange dress tied with a red bow at the middle.
While Cosmo seemed to be rooting on Tails, Cream and Cheese cheered for both competitors. Tails turned back to the match at hand. He bounced the tennis ball against the ground, taking a moment to watch Amy. She looked furiously into the game, leaning forward with narrowed eyes and her hammer gripped with both hands in front of her. Tails hoped that when Amy hit the ball, it wouldn't be slammed in the direction of his head.
Tails tossed the tennis ball into the air and hit it hard over the net. Amy whacked it back with her hammer. The tennis ball rocketed toward him and he all but dived out of the way to avoid injury and allowed the ball out of bounds. "That's advantage you…again," Tails called.
"Then all I need is one good shot," Amy said, twirling the handle of her hammer in her hands.
Tails sighed and tilted his head back to look at the sky overhead. It was more pink than blue at this point as the sun grew closer to the horizon. "It's getting late," he said.
"No way are you getting away that easily," Amy said.
Tails raised an eyebrow. "This is tennis, not Eggman."
She shrugged, smirking at him. "That just means you're scared."
"Amy," Cream called out suddenly, "Sonic might be back by now. You wouldn't want to leave him waiting."
Amy's expression instantly changed. She straightened and allowed her hammer to vanish from her hands. "Then what are we waiting for?" She dashed forward, scrambling to scoop up her racket as she went.
Tails breathed a sigh of relief. He lifted his head to Cream who already watched him with a smile across his face. He mouthed, "Thank you."
She simply shrugged. The gesture looked strangely mature on her at not yet nine-years-old. But her mind was fifteen. Time travel had made this a strange world.
-(-)-
Darkness fell by the time that Tails, Cosmo, Cream, and Cheese got back to the part of the valley in which they resided. Only the faintest glimmer of sunlight peeked over the horizon so that the world because outlines suggesting objects rather than the objects themselves. If not for the fact that Tails had left his notebook behind at Amy's house, he would have headed straight home to his workshop to make use of the thin line of sunlight remaining. But as it was, Tails followed Amy through her front door and into her home where lamps already lit her small front living room.
To find Sonic the Hedgehog lounging across Amy's couch, remote in hand as she surfed through the channels of Amy's small television.
He turned his eyes their way as they walked in. "Where've you been all day?" Amy snapped, tossing her racket down in front of her coat closet.
"Exploring," Sonic said with a smirk and a shrug.
"I figured that much out," she replied, rolling her eyes. "But where?"
Sonic's smirk widened into a grin. "Everywhere."
Sonic turned incrementally to shift his gaze to Tails's face. "Hey there, bud. I would've expected you to be home by now. It's pretty dark out there."
Tails grinned. "I'm basically eighteen now, Sonic. I'm pretty sure I can walk myself home in the dark. I just needed to grab my journal."
He slipped around from behind Amy to step forward and pick his notebook off one of the end tables that bookended the couch, but as he turned back to head out the door, Amy stepped into his path. She braced her hands on her hips. "Sonic's right; you're not walking home now."
"Weren't you the one who wanted to play tennis until the moon came out?" Tails said, tilting his head to one side.
"That's beside the point!" Amy snapped, leaning forward so that only inches separated their faces. "It's dark out and I have a guest room. You're staying here."
Tails took a step back so that he could turn his gaze from Amy to Sonic and back again. "Guys, really, I'm fine," he insisted, laughing. "One second you believe in me enough to let me use the Chaos Emeralds to defeat the Metarex and the next you don't want me walking home in the dark."
"It's nothing to do with maturity," Amy said firmly, "and everything to do with hospitality."
Tails looked at Sonic. He pushed himself to his feet and stepped toward Tails. Once he was close enough, he leaned in close to Tails's ear. "Bullying guests into staying the night is kind of Amy's version of hospitality. Why do you think I'm here?"
Tails smiled as Sonic leaned away. Sonic shrugged. "Take the guest room. I prefer the couch anyway."
-(-)-
The X-Tornado, Hyper Tornado, Hurricane Alpha, and Hurricane-2 reached the Metarex attack in minutes.
Tails's heart froze at the sight of the damage. Metarex swarmed the rubble where a house once stood, where a family once lived. Tails's throat burned with unshed tears.
Tails shoved his controls forward and threw the X-Tornado into the fight. His missile crashed into the middle of a crowd of Metarex and they exploded in a dozen directions. But when he spun the ship around to realign his line of sight with the enemy, he felt how violently his hands shook on the controls. The vibration spread up his arms. He looked down at them, eyes wide.
Tails fired a laser, slicing through a line of Metarex. Their pieces erupted from where they once stood.
But still, Tails couldn't choke down the suffocating anxiety in his chest. His heart thundered loudly until it shook his body with every beat. Tails fired more and more at the Metarex. Light flashed, and Metarex fell apart until only a handful remained.
And then Tails couldn't catch his breath.
I don't think this fear is normal, he thought.
"Tails, watch out!" Cosmo screamed.
Her cry ripped Tails from his memories, and his vision faded back just in time to see a flash of light from a Metarex weapon destroy the nose of the X-Tornado. Tails gasped but actual words completely failed him.
He tried to steer, but the controls slid around without any response from his craft.
-(-)-
Tails woke with a start before the collision with the ground and bolted upright in bed. He gasped for oxygen as though none surrounded him. The thudding of his heart sent vibrations throughout his body. He stared straight ahead, his brain struggling to comprehend his nightmare.
But…that nightmare—that memory—hadn't even happened. The moment had been erased from reality when time had turned back.
The moment he'd failed.
The moment when fear overwhelmed him.
The moment when that fear was so much that he lost focus. That he got himself and Cosmo hurt.
That he should have got them killed.
Oxygen would not do any good in banishing the tears burning across the surface of his eyes.
-X-X-X-
Amy's View
Tails sprinted around the corner, following the Metarex, and Amy's feet paced her just behind him, though she couldn't recall giving herself the command to move. Her mind was occupied with panic, panic, and so her body went on in autopilot. She didn't think about if their footfalls were quiet enough. Didn't think about how little running looked like sneaking if you weren't Sonic and able to outpace the wind.
Vision cleared, quickly blurred, snapped into focus again. Breath easy, then laborious. Aware of her body and then distant, as if completely separate.
But there were no alerts, no sirens, no flashing red lights, nothing to warn of intruders. Amy forced her brain to consider the facts logically. Just because Shining Birch was on the ship didn't mean the Metarex was close enough to affect Sonic.
He was okay. He was always okay. Even after they had determined they'd finally found the one thing in the universe able to take the hedgehog from them, he came home.
Tails slid through a turn into the last hallway standing between them and the Blue Typhoon and skidded to a stop, once again throwing up his arm so Amy would halt beside him. They gasped for air, voices traveling in echoes a little louder than was comforting. Tails turned back to Amy and raised a single finger to his lips before pointing to light spilling into the hall from an open doorway.
Amy followed Tails to the door. He halted just before he stepped across the light and hung in limbo there for a split second. Then he took two leaping steps across to the other side. Amy pressed her hand against her mouth, and across the doorway, Tails did the same, both of them quieting their breath as much as possible.
Amy heard the screech of metal against metal in the room, but it didn't get any louder. So Amy allowed herself to count out three breaths before she forced herself to glance inside the room, then fall back.
But the moment she did, the image processed in her brain. Her eyes widened. Tails watched her, daring to mouth 'What?' at her.
Amy shook her head and pointed at the doorway. There was no way. There was no way what she saw in there was real. But now that she thought…she had to be sure.
She leaned into the doorway again and her heart turned to stone in her chest.
Her need to breathe evaporated.
She lost physical form and became nothing but fear and this moment.
Because at the center of the room, Sonic slumped inside a glass capsule, unmoving. Eyes open, unmoving.
She forgot about sneaking. She forgot about hiding. She forgot how to move. Amy's fingers just wrapped around the edge of the doorway and she hung on for dear life.
The Metarex they'd seen traveling down the hallway before stood around the edges of the room, along with several others. But it was Shining Birch that stood in front of Sonic, close enough that only the glass separated them. Otherwise, the Metarex could reach out and touch him.
The thought sent a wave of revulsion over Amy.
"You have betrayed the Metarex, Blue Seed," the Metarex intoned. Shining Birch sounded so unlike he had when Amy and Shadow first encountered him on Mobius—no longer calm, not above all of the ants beneath him, but growling, demeaning his soldier.
And Sonic said nothing. Amy's eyes burned. Amy's throat burned. Please say something. It didn't matter that there wasn't a point. But he needed to be Sonic now. Now more than ever. But Sonic remained nothing more than a damaged puppet sprawled across the ground.
Shining Birch stared steadily at Sonic. The Metarex stayed silent. Amy wished for a clue from his expression but all Amy could learn from was his voice. And then Shining Birch waved his hand, turning away.
A split second later, an electric bolt flooded the capsule. The light illuminated everything in the room, sending the space into violent contrast of bright and dark, but still managed to obscure Sonic from view. And it was silent.
Too silent.
Amy's hammer appeared in her hand without her summon, but she couldn't keep a grip on it. It slid from her limp fingers so that its head rested against the ground. Her chest tightened. She should be there. She should run in.
Should.
Couldn't.
Too present, so present she felt distant. Because this was a nightmare. This wasn't real. And all she could do was watch.
As quickly as it came, the light vanished away, leaving only thin trails of light in its wake before they too vanished.
Sonic still lay on the ground. His eyes remained open. Maybe his body had moved an inch, maybe it hadn't. Silence hung until a buzzing filled Amy's ears.
I missed you, Amy Rose. I don't want to miss you anymore.
Sonic's words when he saw her again for the first time whispered in her ear, like he was right beside her. But he wasn't.
He wasn't in front of her either.
One of the lesser Metarex turned away from its console to look at Shining Birch. "Blue Seed has been terminated."
-(-)-
"No!" Amy cried, bolting upright in bed.
Sheets twisted around her body. Moonlight flooded through the otherwise dark room. And still it took Amy a moment of gasping to recognize her room surrounding her. And still another moment to remember Sonic was not in fact dead.
Nor his Chaos Double.
It had only been a nightmare, a nightmare of a memory that had never happened. Amy fell back on her pillow with a sigh. She laid her arm across her forehead and stared up at the ceiling. Despair filled her heart as tears filled her eyes.
Her skin continued jumping with nerves as the minutes passed, until finally she struggled out of her twisted blankets and out of bed. She eased her bedroom door open, casting a glance in the direction of her closed guest room door behind which Tails slept. She walked down the first few steps of her stairs and leaned over the railing to her living room below. But Sonic wasn't there, dozing on her couch. She twisted toward her front door and saw the bolt unlocked.
Amy's shoulders slumped. "What a night for a midnight run," she muttered to herself before turning herself around and steering herself back toward her bed.
She fell back against her pillow face-first. Emotion rose in her chest and without Sonic there to ease it out, it overflowed in tears enough to soak her pillow.