Author's Notes:
-I'd like to give my thanks to SilverAce06 for reviewing, SilverAce06 and XxSilver LeaxX for favoriting, and SilverAce06, XxSilver LeaxX, meekyz, and oliviacat11 for following this story. Thanks, you guys!
-With the exception of today, I'll try and upload chapters every other Friday. Real life got in the way this time, and I found out the hard way Thursday's not a very smart day to plan for anything outside of schoolwork.
-Anyway, with that said and done, it's time for Chapter Two. (Warning: I had to sneak in one ludicrously corny joke. It's near the end, just for a heads up.) Hope you enjoy the chapter anyway, and I hope to see you all again for Chapter Three!
Chapter Two: Heroes Never Die
Sonic had barely even met Silver, but he already knew he was someone he'd respect.
Sure, he might not measure up to his friends in the long run. Maybe he wasn't as unshakeable as Shadow or as powerful as Knuckles or as dedicated as Amy. For all he knew, Silver could be a terrible person underneath the whole "saving-your-lives" veil. But that wasn't the point. Even if everything he'd said and done up until now was a complete farce, he'd still jumped into a group of powerful monsters to save someone he didn't even know.
No matter what Silver was like, that took guts.
However, it was going to take far more than guts to get them out of this one. Hopefully, Silver was used to unbalanced combat, because Sonic hardly remembered any fights he'd been in that were this stacked against him.
The Shadow knock-offs didn't talk, but they seemed to revel in the idea of having superior numbers. They even slowed down their advance to allow a few stragglers to join the cluster of enemies, swelling their ranks even more. The circle of enemies surrounding Sonic and Silver began to close tighter, tighter, tighter…
Then one of the clones, the one directly in front of Sonic, broke formation to charge.
And all hell broke loose.
These things didn't appear to like one-on-one combat, for they all surged at Sonic and Silver at once, giving them only a split second to react. Three crashed into Sonic, knocking him backward about six feet, even as he somehow remained upright. Five more followed the same routine with Silver, but unlike Sonic, he managed to land rather cleanly, hovering in the air just a second longer than Sonic thought was natural.
Sonic dropped into a Spin Dash to block the next couple of attacks, while Silver reprised his attack from earlier, sending almost a dozen of the monsters flying halfway down the block. Sonic dashed behind Silver, attempting to take out the four monsters that had attempted to approach him from behind, but Silver was faster, sending them almost as far as the last group in the opposite direction before adopting a fighting stance once more.
Sonic couldn't help but marvel at the skill Silver was displaying. "Is this normal?"
"Yes," Silver said, jabbing one arm backward to block a monster rushing at him from behind. "Except with worse odds. And all day long."
For once, Sonic had nothing to say to that. Thus, he decided the best course of action would be to shut up and go on the attack to give Silver a few more precious seconds of rest. Spin Dashing into the leader of a large group of the clones approaching them from the front, most of them wound up knocking each other sprawling. As for the few that didn't, they were easy enough to knock down with homing attacks.
Unfortunately for the duo, these things appeared to take way more than one hit to knock out. Even the monster Sonic had just bashed in the face of merely got back up, its face almost instantly changing from unrecognizable to merely deformed. The same appeared to be the case for all the ones Silver had flung earlier.
Once more, they formed a circle around Sonic and Silver to cut off any potential escape routes and began to slowly advance. And just like last time, a few more loners joined the circle, each one another chance that Sonic and Silver wouldn't live to see the sunset.
This time, the monsters charged in a more unified manner. While somewhere between eight and twelve monsters swarmed Silver, the rest converged on Sonic, knocking him to the ground before he had time to react. Reacting on blind instinct, Sonic attempted to swing his pinned limbs with all his might. For a time, it worked, knocking several of his adversaries off, but they grew wise to the tactic in seconds and simply dogpiled him.
With a raw, throat-tearing scream, Sonic channeled as much energy as he could into his elbows, shoving them against the pavement of the road beneath him. Sonic did accomplish what he intended this way, causing monsters to stumble and fly in all directions at once, but he'd miscalculated the amount of force he'd need. Instead of merely getting to his feet, he overshot the mark and nearly landed on his face, just barely managing to jab his hands in front of him to break his fall.
He'd barely hit the ground before he felt several pairs of hands grab him around the middle, forcing him to his knees with no mercy. One of the monsters holding him, with a disturbing, feral-sounding growl, closed his eyes, his body starting to glow a bloody red.
Sonic managed to give that monster an open-handed slap to the face, but he didn't even move. He might as well have hit a stone wall for all the reaction he'd gotten.
Silver, thankfully, was looking out for him. Before the monster could finish whatever it was trying to do, the red glow surrounding him disappeared, almost instantly being replaced by the shade of green Sonic had started to associate with Silver's attacks. A second later, both the creatures holding Sonic still had been sent reeling, although one of them managed to rip out a chunk of Sonic's fur in the process, sending a nasty jolt of pain through his side.
Whipping his head around to try and figure out his next move, Sonic noticed Silver surrounded by at least a dozen enemies, struggling to keep them away. Without wasting a second, Sonic launched a homing attack into the closest one to him, drawing the cluster's attention away from Silver, before Spin Dashing into about half of those that remained. Those he hit went flying, those that didn't pulled away from Silver to directly attack him.
Several bouts of screeching right afterward implied that Silver had managed to hurl the majority of the creatures attacking Sonic away from him, and a startled yell following that implied he hadn't kept them off of himself for long. Without an instant of hesitation, Sonic rushed to where Silver was, bowling over about half a dozen attackers in the process and causing the rest to scatter.
While none of the monsters were down for the count yet, the duo appeared to finally be making some progress, as the ones that Sonic had just hit were slow to get up and moved with noticeably less energy than before. That didn't stop them from fighting, mind you, but it caused them to lose enough steam that they were far more manageable to deal with than their uninjured buddies.
About a dozen uninjured ones honed in on Sonic, charging him all at once, but Sonic leapt out of the way, just clearing the nearest one by a few inches. This caused all of them to crash into each other instead, each staggering in a different direction before falling over. Some took a few seconds to get back up. Others didn't get back up at all.
"We're making progress," Sonic shouted to Silver, who was now dealing with a cluster of enemies of his own. "Keep hitting them, I think we've almost got them beat!"
"Don't jinx it," Silver yelled back before sending his assailants crashing into the remains of a destroyed building. Hopefully, no one had chosen to take shelter there.
Sonic wasn't sure whether the remaining monsters noticed that their numbers were getting smaller and smaller the longer they attacked, or if they made this decision by sheer coincidence. Either way, the monsters began to retreat, staggering off aimlessly in small groups. Sonic ran to follow them and finish the job, but suddenly, no matter how hard he tried to run, it felt like he was getting nowhere.
It didn't take long to see the cause. While he couldn't see Silver from the direction his head was stuck in, he could still hear what he had to say. "Don't. I know you want to keep them from returning, but I learned the hard way that wiping out a whole group is usually a bad idea."
"Really?" Now Sonic felt interested and confused at the same time. "You're just going to let them leave, heal up, and attack again sometime soon?"
"Better than the alternative," Silver said. "A while back, I'd say a few years ago but most of my memories are kind of fuzzy nowadays, I actually succeeded in taking out an entire group of those things at once. The others, and yes, we fought nowhere near all of those things, didn't seem to take that lightly. Now, you might be asking, how did I find that out?"
Sonic felt himself being spun around to face Silver, although he still couldn't move an inch.
"The next day, a huge force of them invaded town. And by huge, I mean hundreds, maybe even thousands. Just about anything that was standing before this all started got destroyed, and let's just say the body count was much higher than any attack like it before, even with me doing everything I could to help. I was fighting to clear them out for almost four days straight. I think I slept a grand total of three hours during that period and maybe had one meal. Every time I thought they were gone, another siren went off and I'd have to rush over to prevent another massacre."
Something was sloshing inside Sonic's stomach, and a wave of anxiety rushed over him, followed by relief. If Silver had been a few seconds slower, he might have unintentionally put everyone here in even more danger than they were before. "Oh… I'm sorry, I didn't know…"
"It didn't happen, so don't stress about it," said Silver. "If I stressed about every single thing that could have happened, I'd have died from a heart attack years ago."
"Understandable," Sonic said. Silver's grip around him faded, and he stuck the landing perfectly, just as he expected.
"Anyway, it was nice to meet you, Silver, and that fight did give me a nice rush, but I probably should get going…"
"Wait," Silver said, cutting off Sonic before he could finish. "Before you go, could you just tell me your name?"
Sonic weighed the pros and cons in his head for a few seconds. If Silver reacted anything like the last guy he'd told his name, Sonic was dead. However, Silver seemed like someone Sonic could trust to take it in stride, given how much crap he'd been put through just today, let alone his life if this was who the other guy had referred to when he talked about the "one good fighter."
In the end, Sonic decided to chance it. "My name's Sonic. Sonic the Hedgehog."
Silver did a double-take but fortunately didn't go on the attack. He stared at Sonic, mouth agape, not blinking, not moving. With even the lightest push from behind, he probably would have toppled over.
"No," Silver said. "No way. You're dead. You died decades ago."
"Wait, I'm supposed to be dead?" Now Sonic was confused. "Hold up, what year is it?"
Silver broke out of his trance just long enough to answer. "If I remember correctly, I think the year is 2106. Maybe I'm off by a little, but…"
Now it was Sonic's turn to stare blankly for a few seconds before working up the composure to answer. "What? No, that's not possible. It's 2006. And I'm alive and well. Is this some kind of prank? Knuckles, are you taking me for a ride again?"
"I swear on my life this isn't a prank," Silver said. "And I doubt it's him, he's supposed to be dead too. Wait, is he with you?"
"As far as I can tell, no," Sonic said. "I was alone when I woke up, and I've been alone since then."
"Okay," Silver said. "If I look hard enough, I can probably find a calendar that proves my point. However, I'm not quite sure if I believe you are who you say you are. Plenty have made that claim before, but they've all been proven false before. You mind if I ask you to do something quick?"
"Sure, no problem," Sonic said.
Silver took a deep breath, then said, "Perform a homing attack on me."
"Okay," Sonic replied. "Can't be that hard, I'll do it right now."
In a burst of speed, he attempted to do it, but Silver flung his arms out, stopping him about two feet short before sending him flying backward. "You're going to have to try harder than that!"
"No fair," Sonic thought before rushing in to try again, only for the same thing to happen: he got close, Silver blocked him and flung him away.
The same thing happened over and over and over, Sonic getting more and more frustrated each time. He waited a while before attacking to try and catch Silver off-guard. He attacked from different directions to try and hit him from behind. He even attempted to hurl rocks and loose objects at him as a distraction. Nothing worked. Silver just blocked his attack time after time after time.
After what felt like an eternity, Sonic's blood pressure felt ready to spike through the roof, he was exhausted, and he had made no progress on landing a hit on Silver. Yet, he tried again, only to be stopped once more.
"I think you've realized this by now," Silver said, a cocky grin on his face, "but it's no use."
That did it. Sonic had been holding back at least a little before because he didn't want to actually hurt Silver in the process, but at this point, he'd had enough. With a shriek of rage that would put a witch to shame, he barreled at Silver at top speed, seamlessly transitioning to a homing attack before he crashed into Silver, sending him flying backward at a frightening speed.
Sonic instantly regretted it, all that rage pouring out of him in an instant. He darted behind Silver to catch him before he fell, but that soon was proven unneeded, as Silver managed to slow his fall enough that even when he hit the ground, the landing probably did minimal damage.
Sonic's first instinct was to apologize. "Sorry about that, went a little overboard…"
"Don't apologize," Silver said, "that was incredible! When I made that test, the point was that if you were the real Sonic, you'd keep trying until you literally couldn't force your body to do it anymore, since Sonic was among the most determined people in the universe. I never expected you to be actually able to hit me!"
Some of the guilt disappeared, although he still wanted to make sure he hadn't hurt Silver. "Never mind, then. Either way, though, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, don't worry about it," Silver said. "It'll take a lot more than one hit like that to kill me. You're the real deal, I know that for sure. Now, I'd like you to come with me."
"Okay," Sonic said. "What for?"
Silver had started to walk down the empty street by then, but he still managed to shoot a response over his shoulder.
"If you're actually from when you say you are, I've got quite the history lesson for you."