Chapter 4: Confusion

The two of them continued walking down the hall. Sonic's pity overwhelmed his impatience and anger at Dice's response. Although his suspicions of Dice were strengthened by her actions, Sonic remained silent and decided to stick to this girl before she did something terrible. He looked at the ground and nudged a couple rocks, waiting for a remark to come to him, but all he could think to say was cruel and childish. All the answers he wanted to know earlier vanished from his thoughts as he questioned the humanity of the girl in front of him.

Dice, meanwhile, quickly regained her nonchalant composure and desperately tried to forget her earlier comment. "We should be there shortly," she lied, breaking the cold silence. She was anxious to escape Sonic and sensed the hedgehog's new distaste for her. Her original impression of him was an honest care-free hero who would see the goodness in everyone, even her, and she therefore, stupidly disclosed important information to him. However, she quickly regretted answering his questions, and realized that no one could possibly see any good in her.

"And besides, there are no such things as heroes," She convinced herself in thought.

Suddenly, a large thump came from above. The ceiling slowly began to crumble. It began to crack and the small lumps of falling dirt soon became chunks of slate. A large rock split from above several light bulbs and fell, hitting Sonic to the ground. Another almost striked Dice but she quickly dodged it, only to trip and fall next to her questionable alliance. Immediately, she clutched her sword, rolled onto her feet, and crouched on the ground. When Sonic looked up, rubbing his shoulder, he noticed Dice's peculiar eyes stalking every falling dirt clod.

They now burned red.

He was so busy gawking at her agility that he failed to dodge any rocks himself. More cracking noises came from above and another onslaught of stone came. Dice, realizing Sonic's slow reactions, ran at him and sliced the boulder above his head. "What are you doing?!" She exclaimed, "I can't save your butt and mine!" He just blinked and stared deep into her fiery eyes, which Sonic recalled to be blue. Another tremor came from above, much worse than the last. And then another. And another. Dust and mud seeped through the cracks in the ceiling. It was about to collapse.

"Let's get out of here!" Sonic argued. Dice focused on the fissures above, ignoring Sonic. She could hear her heart beat steady while Sonic's pulsated rapidly. He knew the ceiling was collapsing, but Dice was too fixated at the falling rocks at hand to notice. The ruptured ceiling, as one humongous chunk of slate, began to slowly cave in upon them. Sonic then became serious and dodged the boulders falling from the sides of the giant piece, as well as Dice. The lighting above them began short-circuiting and sparked all over the ground, making the muddy puddles of water, which were littering the dirt, electrically charged. Panic raged in Sonic's head. His body became tense and the butterflies in his stomach made his heart flutter. Meanwhile, Dice was calm as stone. Her hard face terrified Sonic more than the flying sparks.

The huge piece of the ceiling finally gave way about to crush Sonic. At the angle it fell, it was impossible to dodge. Dice grabbed his hand and then thrust him to the ground, making him tumble along the floor in time to escape the stone. "D-Dice!" he stammered as he fell out of the rock's way.

Now, a gargantuan opening existed on the hall's roof, allowing Sonic to see into the cloudy sky. The rain from earlier was lighter, and drizzled through the hole in the ceiling. Unlike the pounding from before, it gently brushed over Sonic's face, which was fixated on where Dice used to be.

He just sat on the ground blindly staring at the rock that pounded Dice into the earth a few moments earlier. Sonic was not really sure what to do. None of his strength could possibly lift anything of that size and even so, she was obviously an evil vigilante and had even admitted to being one.

He should leave her.

Then his conscience swiftly and angrily replied, "To die? Just leave her to die?" Growing infuriated with himself for considering such a possibility, Sonic rushed to the boulder. He tenderly felt the smooth slab, searching for any kind of weakness, with none to be found. "Dice!"

No answer.

"Are you there? Dice! ...Answer me!" He fell on his knees with his hands and head pushing on the slate. Again, he failed miserably in protecting someone. The icy stone hurt Sonic's skull, which he was now pounding on the rock.

A blade pierced the bottom of the rock, inches away from Sonic. "Huh?" Sonic, confused, blinked and then forced a glimmer of a smile. He ran over to it, and held it with both hands. They began to bleed at the sharpness of the blade. Despite the sting of the steel, Sonic pushed on it horizontally with all his strength in hopes of cutting the rock. To his surprise, the sword sliced through it like butter. He methodically hacked away at the slate until a large portion split into rubble and crumbled at his feet. The opening revealed Dice, on her stomach, gripping the blade's handle. She looked up with one eye, half open, and made Sonic jump back. "You're alive!" He stated with a mixture of surprise, relief, and disappointment.

"I," she began and tried to stand on her feet. Sonic came to help, but Dice pushed him away. "Don't die that easily." A flicker of an amused smile appeared on his face as she retracted the sword into her sheath.

"I guess it will be safer to travel above ground. I told you holes lead to trouble," Sonic remarked, teasingly shaking his finger. Disregarding his sarcasm, she nodded and leaped with ease out of the crack in the ceiling. Some sludge slipped into the hole from where she landed, almost making her slip back into the fissure. "You are pretty agile for someone who was just crushed by nearly 600 pounds of rock," he smugly added to himself with suspicion. Shaking off his distrust, he wiped the raindrops collecting on his muzzle, as he looked upwards. A dirty gloved hand appeared over the edge to help Sonic up, but he did not take it. Instead he jumped out of the fissure as if proving his agility to her.

The two of them, extremely fatigued, stood perched on a mound of weeds. Beams of light from the sun pierced through the wispy clouds, shining on dozens more hills of dead forestation, which now covered an endless valley. The light rain washed away some grime from the weeds and their exhausted faces. Dice quickly recognized her surroundings and headed east, towards the sun. "Hey, where are we now?" Sonic inquired, as he lifted his feet to catch up to her and made a crunching noise. When he curiously looked down, his shoe revealed a shriveled, colorless rose.

These tedious questions irritated Dice. She began to march in the direction of the sun. "It's already dawn. Damn it! We absolutely must start up again," She stated nervously, ignoring Sonic's repetitive question. "I have to meet up with someone, quickly. Also, whatever caused the ceiling to collapse cannot be far away." Recognizing that something was trailing them, Dice refused to run and give away her intended destination to their stalkers. This problem would greatly increase the time to find her aquaintance.

Sonic ran after her, carefully dodging the valley of withered vines. However, their pace was quickly halted by dozens of robots. A reflection of the dead roses shone on each machine, giving them all a menacing look. The duo was surrounded.

Once again, Dice drew out her sword and her red-eyed alter-ego consumed her. This time, Sonic, knowing this change occurred, made an extreme effort not to glance at her eyes. Every robot surrounding them appeared identical to the Eggman machine Sonic had faced earlier. Reminiscing of the previous battle, he remembered the mechanical arms that shot out of their sides. Before he could warn Dice, she pounced onto one of the remotely controlled cockpits. Half of them surrounded Dice while the others came after Sonic. All of the machines showered a rain of bullets on both of them. Sonic swiftly dodged the bullets and upheavals of dirt they created, leading the robots away from Dice. That way, both of them would have an easier time taking down fewer enemies.

Acknowledging Sonic's speed, the auto-piloted machines shot a laser beam in front of him with precise calculations and accuracy. A surge of mud flew upwards, making Sonic slide uncontrollably into a mound of dead flowers. His feet became entangled in the weeds and he tripped over the rose from earlier, falling face first. He rolled onto his back without time to stand up, escaping a stream of bullets by a hair. Vines and the rose came up in flames. The robots continued their barrage, with Sonic still on the ground. There was not enough time to leap to his feet and he thus continued rolling on his side, heading for cover underneath one of the floating robots. Sparks instantly shot out from the machine as it was bombarded with bullets. Sonic finally stood up and used the falling automaton as a stepping stone to reach a higher position. Metallic arms zipped past Sonic from all sides, but he jumped in time for the arms to become entwined. Then he rushed to the cockpit of each paralyzed robot and ripped out their circuits, shutting them off. They all plunged to the ground.

Sonic turned around to see Dice's progress. To his surprise, dozens more enemies had appeared around Dice while Sonic defeated his. Smoke rose from the annihilated machines up into the air battle that Dice was consumed in. She seemed to fly from robot to robot and then methodically dove her blade into them. Several arms came at her, but an arrow wrapped in wire pierced and bound them together. The wire was attached to a mechanism on Dice's glove that she then used to thrust herself through the air and around the metallic arms. She let go as her trajectory faced upwards. Propelled with heightened speed, she somersaulted so that her head was facing the unprepared robots. She fell back down, with her sword extended, and shot through several robots during her fall. Dice then emerged drenched in oil. She landed on a falling strip of metal and then used it to skydive, spinning towards another cluster of robots. She shook the oil off herself and onto every nearby robot. Scraping her blade across the metal created a spark and then burst the dozens of other machines into flames. Sonic gaped at Dice's incredible, well calculated, and perfectly executed attacks. Despite her excellent tactics, a robot, thought to be already destroyed by Dice, thrust its arm from behind and clutched her oily body, knocking the blade out of her hands.

Recognizing the similar situation from before with Tails, Sonic sped to the fallen blade, but it was wedged between all of the machine wreckage.

Meanwhile, Dice's now blood red eyes glared at the sky as air shot out of her mouth. She tried to gasp for breath but there was no room for her to expand her lungs. Dice, despite the excruciating pain and her involuntary twitching, remained mentally detached. Instead of dreaming of a means to escape, the same phrases revolved around her head. "The servers! ...Seven chaos...C-Chaos: power, enriched by the heart. Servers... serve the controller that unifies the," she blindly thought and coughed out loud with the remaining oxygen in her crushed lungs, "chaos!" Then she yelled in her mind, "I serve the controller; I am chaos; I am power! And I refuse to die here!" Suddenly, she screamed an ear-shattering outburst of pain.

At last, Sonic pulled the suppressed blade out, and the moment it was free, it flung out of his hands into the air. Miraculously hitting the arm clasping Dice, the blade short-circuited the robot, forcing it to release the warrior. Ignoring her pain, she blindly grabbed the sword and slashed away at the soft metal. She and it fell onto a pile of machine corpses. Sonic gawked at the girl perched on top of the smoldering artificial hill. Black smoke filtered through heaps of wreckage as she knelt on her knees, holding her blade into the eye of the machine with both hands. Dice slowly lifted her head as her burning hot chest rapidly rose and fell with her fluttering heart inside, rapidly pulsating air through her body.

Sonic saw deep into her red eyes, the eyes of a murderer.

Her eyes rapidly returned blue as she let go of the sword, collapsing on top of it and then tumbling down the hill. Landing on her back, she remained uncut by her blade, now resting between her right arm and left leg. Sonic cautiously approached her oily body. He paused after each step in fear of her probable demise and possible survival. This paradoxal anxiety consumed him, and when he peered over her, Dice half opened her blue eyes and coughed, "Sorry but, I'll live."

Sonic blinked briefly in surprise and relief, but then his face became hard, "What are you?"

"L-listen," Dice choked out, "Take this to ... to... Sh-sha-dow."

Looking at the item in her hands, Sonic replied, "But it's a rock. And I ...am not leaving you here to die."

"Appearances a-are de-deceiving," She stammered, coughing up blood. "Head east." Dice took a deep breath and let out, "Th-then when you come across, the s-sea, you want to f-ollow...the beach u-until..."

"Until what?"

"You f-find an island w-with a ch-chaos emerald a-alter."

"Angel Island?! Angel Island has fallen?!?" Sonic exclaimed and then noticed Dice's confusion at his knowledge of the island. "And I repeat, I am not leaving you here to die." The white of Dice's eyes were red, surrounding her blue pupils. Her eyes gazed into Sonic's. She grabbed his arm and pulled Sonic close to her.

"I a-already told you. I don't die ...that easily. I ...just n-need t-time to heal. I'll ...b-be there by sunset, but you n-need to give it to him."

"I don't care what you say; I ain't leavin' you! I am the hero here!"

"There are n-no heroes h-here buddy. Sonic is dead."

A/N:Thanx for reading this! I hope you enjoyed reading my story so far as much as I have writing it! If you read this comment, which I assume you are, then please review my work. I greatly appreciate it!