Within the storm of chaos
Is an eye of order
A point of calm
In a swirling maelstrom
Kir looked up as a small red bi-plane flew over, Sonic delivering the mail. He had decided that Kir should be kept up to date with what had been happening so he gave him issues of 'Station Standard', Station Square's newspaper, that had articles about the Chaos incident and 'Central Chronicle' dealing with the ARK incident, he had been air-dropping the mail for about a week now.
Kir strode to the centre of 'The Camp' and retrieved the drop case that Tails put the papers in, taking it back to his hut as the settlement's population began to gather around, they had been requesting papers and magazines in the airdrops so Kir now had the unofficial duty of handing out the mail.
When they had all been dished out he unfolded the 'Station Standard' and began to read. Apparently people had begun to go missing from the areas surrounding Mystic Ruins, some of the first disappearance had been found…chewed off, where the rest of the person had gone, no one knew but people were speculating about things from 'dumb' animals to a second Chaos monster. Kir looked at the area the pieces had been found, and frowned, he remembered his path from the tomb, the disappearances were around that area, had something else been awakened in the tomb? Had those idiot explorers returned and set loose some other monster he had missed?
Kir sat down with a sigh, what did it matter to him? He was guardian of the island, not the mainland, but it was the Tomb, he had probably been responsible for capturing whatever was prowling Mystic Ruins.
He picked an object off his desk; he had been creating it specially and had finished a prototype, now to find…
"Hey Kir, you gotta' see this, something exploded in Mushroom Hill" came Flare's voice just as a pulse of chaos energy registered on Kir's senses
"What the? Flare? What was that? Did you feel that?" Kir said, his fur standing on end from the chaos energy, "Hey Flare, I got something for you" he continued, holding up the object
"Yeah, I felt it" said Flare, his quills all standing up like spears, "What you got?" he asked
Flare looked, Kir was holding a chain with a large pendant on it, the pendant was roughly hexagonal, with two long sides, under the point that the chain attached to. In the middle of the hexagon was,
"A red chaos drive?" asked Flare, not understanding
Kir put the necklace on Flare, "It's a small chaos drive I acquired, usually used for smaller robots, news probes and such like, but I built this converter, you can use the energy in the chaos drive to boost your abilities, you could run faster, or burn hotter, or float higher, or something, but its small and using it drains it quite a lot, its only a prototype"
Flare stood, a confused look on his face as he took the information in, then he nodded, "I got it, so it's like your emerald shard then?" Kir nodded and indicated the on switch in the converter
"Yeah, so what about Mushroom Hill?" Kir asked, walking out of the hut behind Flare
Dunno, something happened, wanna go see?" flare said bracing himself for a run, turning the converter on, feeling the converter stick to his chest, and power seeping through.
Kir gave him the thumbs up and began to run.
Flare blasted off in a swirl of red energy, catching up and passing Kir in a few seconds, Kir speeding up to following the red, skating blur that was Flare on chaos energy. Kir had to tap into the emerald shard and let its power into him to continue to keep up with Flare, the chaos drive fuelling the energies that the experiments had placed in Flare's streamlined body.
By the time they reached the area in Mushroom hill the glow had died and the chaos drive was an empty glass cylinder with a shard of quartz in the centre.
"Well…" Panted Kir "I think…it works…then…"
"Yeah, look, there it is" said Flare, pointing to a bare patch of ground that looked like something had scoured everything from the area.
In the centre sat a red gem, half the size of a football, lying on one faceted side. It resembled the chaos emerald that sat on a small pedestal in Kir's hut, except it was red, and appeared to be lit from within by a raging inferno.
Kir concentrated on the emerald shard in the pendant on his chest, he felt himself slip into a calm, pale mistform, and a small ripple of chaos energy sparked across his being every now and again.
He stretched out with his mind as he had been trained to, feeling towards the red chaos emerald, his consciousness touched the crystal…and was caught in the violent tempest of energies that swirled around the inside of the gem. It was a chaos storm, so powerful that order seemed not to exist at all.
Kir screamed as his mind was smashed around in a tempest of chaos energies, his body becoming wracked with energy pulses, shifting between forms. Then he was flung from the emerald, passing over a pinprick-sized eye of order within the tornado of chaos that ruled the emerald.
When Kir finally snapped back to fully solid, Flare began to stride towards the emerald, reaching down to pick it up, gloved fingers stretching closer and closer…
"Flare, no! Don't touch it!" yelled Kir, too little, too late as Flare's fingers gripped the side of the emerald.
Flare screamed as the destructive power flooded his sensitive system, building and building, the power swelling, increasing. Flare fell to the ground, muscles frozen in place around the emerald, unable to let go as chaos fire played over his spines, scorching the ground he was knelt on,
"Kir…i…its going to explode…run, RUN!" He yelled, floating off the ground as his 'airspace' expanded with the influx of power. He saw that Kir had begun to run away, back to 'The Camp', and wrenched himself to his feet, skating away from 'The Camp' as fast as he could, his speed increasing as he ran, power pouring into him, speeding him up, increasing the size and heat of his 'airspace'. The air became almost solid, pushing at his body, trying to stop him…then he burst through it and was moving faster that he had ever gone in his life before, and his speed was still increasing. Had anyone been behind him they would have heard a sonic boom as the frantic, chaos charged hedgehog shattered the sound barrier.
Flare ran in as straight a line as he could, then, suddenly, found he was launching off a ramp at twice the speed of sound, sailing over Mushroom Hill, looking for somewhere to land.
He spread himself out, his 'airspace' acting like a parachute, slowing his decent as he spotted the desert of Sandopolis, he could do no damage there, so he pressed his legs together and flattened his arms to his side, the gem in his right hand digging into his leg, and shot towards the desert at terminal velocity.
As the ground approached he spread himself wide again, slowing down as his 'airspace' deployed, due to this he hit the ground much slower than he would have, but the impact still knocked him out, the state of unconsciousness breaking the fragile dam keeping the majority of chaos energy in the emerald, this was released as an explosion.
---
01149, 'Claws', was sensitive to the chaos energy around him, so when the white chaos emerald shimmered into existence before him he pounced on it, throwing away the grizzly remains he had been chewing on.
He clutched it in his hand and allowed the energy to flow into his body, unlike Kir, Flare, Sonic, Shadow and pretty much everyone else who had used the emeralds, he did not construct a barrier, stopping where he could control the chaos, Claws surrendered himself to the chaos, absorbing all the power and entrusting itself to the whims of chaos, wind howling around it as the emeralds power was unleashed. It didn't realise it was ding this though, it was just absorbing a huge amount of energy, absorbing the solid emerald itself as well, a large white crystal appearing on its forehead.
The amount of energy it had absorbed caused Claws to become chaos charged, its dreadlocks floating up, the static generating causing them to curve upwards instead of downwards, it also allowed his body to float above the ground.
A smile spread across the monster's fearsome visage as he bared its teeth and sped out to hunt some more, it was almost time.
---
Flare woke up on a cold, hard, surface, his 'airspace' was spread around him thinner than tissue paper. The unheated air was burning his lungs, despite the fact he was in a desert he began to shiver, not used to not having the warmth of his 'airspace' surrounding him.
The chaos emerald was still clutched in his hand; he opened it, the emerald stayed in his palm. He pulled it and it came away with his glove, the rest of the singed material disintegrating. Pain shot through his hand, and he saw it had been badly burned by the emerald's power, the scorched nerves screaming now they were exposed to the gritty air of Sandopolis.
Flare sat up and stared, for a kilometre in every direction was glass, the extreme heat put out by the destructive emerald had turned the sand to glass, this phenomenon probably extended for a kilometre downwards as well, he was sitting on a massive glass hemisphere.
Flare struggled to his feet and something bumped against his chest, he looked down at the chaos drive converter, the chaos drive had been shattered and the converter was bent and twisted, Kir wouldn't be happy about that. Speaking of Kir, which way was it to 'The Camp'? Flare looked at his imprint and began to walk, not skate or float; his 'airspace' was too thin for that and it was a strange experience, in the opposite direction to what his imprint was facing, walking away with the now calm chaos emerald held in his good hand.
Thinking of how fast he had been going, and how far he had gone, Flare's shoulders sagged, he sighed, this was going to be a long walk.