Chp 1: Seven Skills of Ark

Dynamite Academy

The two warriors ran through the hallways of Bean's school. After a bit of a misunderstanding, Funk and Cream had teamed up to attack and destroy Dynamite academy. Meanwhile, in the headmaster's office, Bean was having trouble gripping what was happening. He sat in the corner, rolled up in the fetal position, with Bark trying to calm him down. "How can this be happening? I've trained some of the best bombers, terrorists, and kamikazes the world has ever seen. How can these two unknowns take out all five of my best warriors?"

"Don't worry Bean." Lock said, looking down the hallway. "The three of us should be able to take them out."

"No!!!" he yelled. "I won't let those two have a chance to escape from my Academy! I'll take them both out, even if it means sacrificing my own life!" the duck jumped to his feet and ran at his desk. He reached under his seat and pressed a small red button. Suddenly, the entire building blew up.

Station Square

The explosion sent a wall of fire high above the spot where Dynamite Academy had once stood. This drew the attention of Ark. "What's this?" he turned his gaze to Shine, who was still being held in his clawed hands. "I'll be right back." He effortlessly tossed the hedgehog away, sending him flying into the side of a building. Ark kicked off the ground and flew towards the explosion.

The five members of the Chaotix (Mighty, Espio, Vector, Lecko, and Charmy) ran to check on their friend. They found Shine in one piece, but blood was running from the claw marks. The croc pulled up his head to try to stop the bleeding and asked, "You okay, Shine?"

Shine's eyes flickered open as he got to his feet. He groaned, "Don't worry about me. Right now, we need to get out of sight before Ark gets back."

"We'll get back to HQ. Since Ark doesn't know who the rest of us are, he probably won't check us out immediately." Lecko glared at the silver hedgehog. "Then, you can tell us exactly who this Ark guy is." The six took to the back roads that led to the detective agency.

Chaotix Detective Agency

"So, that's the story." Shine said, having just finished the story he had told at the hospital a little while ago. His head was now bandaged, but by now it had been soaked through.

"Wow." Charmy said in awe. "And we thought you were dangerous. This Ark guy makes you sound like a grain of sand."

"You've told us who he is and how he was formed, but what are his techniques?" Mighty questioned of the silver project.

The hedgehog laughed. "That's like asking me to name every type of fish in the sea. Basically, he can use all of the Chaos Emerald skills that Shadow, Endigo, and I can, except he doesn't need to be in contact with them. He has seven skills that he uses most, or at least he did in the simulations I was put through. First, there's everybody's favorite, Chaos Control. Second, there's Chaos Eclipse, which is my move of choice. Next, there's Chaos Regeneration, a self explanatory attack. Fourth, Endigo's specialty, Reverse Chaos Control, except that it is a bit amplified. With it, he can rewind time, except that there's a copy of him that does what he did the first time around. His fifth attack is Chaos Assimilation. With it, he has the ability to fuse his host body to any type of weaponry. Sixth is Chaos Invincibility, which makes him resistant to attacks.

"Lastly, there's Chaos Virus. Before he takes over a host body, he's just a collection of microbes, so when he uses Virus, he splits himself into however many groupings he wants and takes over a host. Fortunately, Gerald figured that if he could take over living creatures, he may be a target, so Ark can only control dead bodies."

"So what you're saying is that we are going up against a juggernaut that can block all of our attacks, heal any damage we do inflict, can cause massive destruction in the blink of an eye, and can multiply in the style of the zombies from Dawn of the Dead?" Espio asked. "How can we possibly beat this thing?"

"You knew it would be hard from the beginning. I told you that there wasn't enough power in the world to start this guy before. The only way we can beat him is if we can collect all of the Chaos Emeralds that don't belong here and have two of Gerald's Projects fuse the two types of Chaos Control. This will create a vortex that can send Ark and the extra emeralds home. When he arrives, there won't be enough power for him to feed on, so he'll just stop working. We just have to send the original host, Blaze."

Vector sighed. "I miss the days when all we had to worry about was paying rent."

Next: Targets: Shadow, Endigo, Shine