Chapter 5: A familiar face

"There are no heroes; Sonic is dead," rang through Sonic's skull. The comment would not leave him, despite his futile attempts to focus on the matter at hand. He was moved at the sheer flattery, and distressed at the loss in faith of any possible existing savior. This world truly was a catastrophe with death at every turn, and its remaining inhabitants were stripped of their hope. All that lingered in the air was a feeling of failure. Worse, Sonic's disappearance was the sole cause of this. Now, this girl was about to die thinking that her savior, Sonic, would not come. "Listen Dice, I need to tell you something," Sonic began, but was quickly stopped.

"There is no t-time. Y-you got t-to give this to Sh-sha-shadow!" Dice coughed some more blood. Sonic was dumbfounded by her ignorance. Only a complete idiot in denial would think that someone with wounds of that magnitude could possibly survive. Yet, she brushed it off, fixated on her mission. The wind gently blew in Sonic's face, as he gaped at the rock which Dice was apparently protecting. He hesitated not knowing what to say. How could this piece of dirt possibly be worth dying over? "I know w-what you w-were th-thinking, but I n-never said that I w-was the one who de-destroyed S-station Ssss-square."

"Are you saying you didn't!?" Sonic yelled, grabbing Dice's shoulders, but Dice said nothing and blinked her eyes closed. As the breeze shifted her gory clothes, Sonic saw her shallow raspy breaths for air. When he let her go, his gloves were stained with blood.

"I'll be waiting for you at Angel Island." Sonic declared and snatched the rock from her palm. Looking into the sky, he saw the sun rise steadily upwards. "That way is east," he thought and ran at full speed in that direction, leaving Dice in the dust.

She grudgingly opened her eyes and weakly smiled. "At last that hedgehog left. I hope Shadow won't mind my problem with punctuality," she coughed.

Sonic sped as fast as he could, but the valley of weeds was never ending. The rain finally ceased, revealing a scorched sky. It was a sickening shade of red and orange with splotches of black. Could those dark specks be where the warrior ripped through space? However, that would mean the inverted chaos control, which was unleashed at Station Square, stretched for miles. How could anyone fight against a power which extended for such an immense distance? Although Sonic wanted to slow down and investigate the landscape, he had to hurry to Angel Island. Dust shot up behind him as Sonic ran harder. His muscles were on fire, and he was obviously going mach 4 or 5 but the valley refused to end.

More dead roses. More piles of wreckage. And an endless, ominous sky.

Clutching the rock in his hands, Sonic inspected it with his thumb and forefinger. It was no larger than his palm and was a distinguished red with specs of black, reminding Sonic of the sky. Despite the dry feel of it, the rock did not crumble in his fist. He looked at it carefully and was confused as to why anyone would desire to protect it. "Something is going on here. I must speak to Shadow," Sonic resolved. Nothing would stand in his way from meeting his friend. The ground rose up in smoke as Sonic sped the fastest he possibly could. The sun was setting already.

Dice was unconscious for several hours, until a drop of water fell onto her fatigued eyes. She blinked them half-open to see the tiny clouds high in the heavens. It was becoming dark. "At last," she sputtered. Blood dribbled from her mouth onto her neck. Her body was broken, and internal organ injuries were apparent. Every time Dice inhaled, a surging pain enveloped her chest. Her limp body throbbed in pain. Wishing that her muscles were numb did nothing to stop the insurmountable sting of her limbs. She edged towards the handle of her oily blade, but her fingertips were unable to feel its leather handle due to the immense loss of blood. Without any feeling, she accidentally hit it off her body and onto the ground, out of her reach.

Angered, she desperately patted the dust in search of the blade. A groan of exhaustion overcame her when she was unable to find it and futilely attempted to turn her head to see the sword. However, even if she could manage to turn her skull to the side, her eyes were too tired and bloodshot to see it. "Th-this is bad," she coughed.

Stars sparkled in the sky when Sonic finally reached the rocky beach. He did not bother looking at the sea and ploughed himself along the sand. "Why is this taking so long?" Sonic impatiently thought. Everything was a blur to his eyes and he saw only the immediate rocks in front of him, making the trip dangerous. Sand sprayed upwards into his face, sticking to his eyes. Sonic absolutely had to stop to clean them. His feet polished the sand as he slid to a stop. The rubber on his SOAP-brand shoes began to melt and peeled off. His eyes burned uncontrollably as he rubbed them with his dirty gloves. Sonic groaned and moaned. In the time he spent wasting, Dice could be dying and Shadow might grow impatient and leave Angel Island. His impatience caused his heart to pound and it pushed on his ribs, as if trying to force Sonic into running again. However, he knew that without sight he might become lost and not be able to find the island at all. Tears streamed out of his face, washing away the sand. At last his bloodshot eyes were clear, and Sonic immediately began to sprint again.

While Sonic wasted his precious time at the last stop, his fatigued legs had time to heal. However, after a taste of rest, they demanded more and then ached at Sonic to stop. He, despite his exhausted body, refused to surrender. Sonic was fixated on being reunited with his friend. No ache or pain in the universe would impede him from seeing a familiar face in this hellish dystopia.

The moon became clear in the center of the cloudless starry sky. All the smoke from the annihilated wreckage ceased and the remaining smog rose, wisped away by a cool wind. Dice could feel herself slip towards death. For the first time, an inexpressible feeling of fear consumed her. The sword was out of her reach and the night was halfway through. The pulse of her heart was fading. A sensation of failure swept over her like a blanket. The blood, caked over her body, began to dry, sealing away her ability to move. As Dice knew her death was nigh, the incantation from before whispered in her ears. "The servers serve the controller that unifies the chaos: a chaos of power, enriched by the heart. You serve the controller. You will not die until commanded. Now stand up!" The whisper caressed Dice's doubt and transformed it into raw determination. She shut her eyes, inhaled a deep excruciatingly painful breath, held it, and lunged her arm to where she thought the blade might have fallen. Failure.

Dice tried to pull her limp arm back to try again but the tip of her glove was caught on something. Her eyelids flew open in surprise and suppressed relief. At last the voices vanished. She shifted her weight onto her opposing shoulder, pulling her arm, and then her sword, towards her. The leather of the handle became bloody as Dice's stubby fingers wrapped around it. She pushed all of her remaining energy into her arm and tilted the blade.

A ray of moonlight deflected off of the sword and shone onto Dice chest. A sizzling noise came from her sore body. The dried blood began to evaporate. Her ribs cracked back into place. More unnatural noises ensued. The internal bleeding from before died away and the evaporated blood seeped through Dice's skin, replenishing her. Breathing gradually became easier and Dice could know make long deep breaths. Instead, she trapped the air in her lungs, trying to relieve the pain of her broken bones that were now snapping into place. The searing cracking and snapping noises stopped. Now with sufficient energy, Dice tilted the blade again towards her other arm. The ripped tendons sewed themselves back together and more evaporated blood filled her lifeless arm. She grabbed the sword with her healthy limb and then methodically showered the rest of her body with moonlight.

At last, Dice sat up and then retracted the blade into her sheath. However, even with her fixed body, she was too weak to head towards the island. She stumbled to her feet and headed south, towards a pond not far from her current location. Every step was a chore, for she constantly tripped and tried to rebalance.

A forced chuckle came, "I...thought I wasn't gonna make it back there."

Dawn broke as Sonic quickly approached the island. He stopped at the break between sea and sand, clutching the rock in his fist. "Finally, there it is." A sigh of relief overcame him. Grabbing a plank of rotted wood, he flung it across the sea and pounced on top of it. The extreme force propelled Sonic forward to Angel Island. When the initial movement ended, Sonic acted as a rudder, kicking away at the salty water.

The island lay tilted in the sea. Waves lapped up to the rocky edge of the island. Sonic finally set foot onto the holy ground. After the tedious journey, his impatience released its hold on Sonic. He rushed into the island's heart but halted as he caught a glimpse of its condition. Although it must have been several years since he last saw Angel Island, it was completely rotted away in comparison to Sonic's memory. All the trees were dead and uprooted out of the ground. The earth was pale and dried out. Upheavals of rock littered the cracked earth. The one word Sonic thought to describe the land was 'disfigured.' Despite his earlier obsession to quickly find Shadow, Sonic slowly edged through the dead forest in denial. His heart was frozen in utter disbelief.

He came across ancient ruins on the horizon. The alter was even worse than he remembered. The pillars once holding the chaos emeralds were slanted and twisted. Gray vines crawled across the white stones that once held a water moat. As he eyed the center of it, where the master emerald used to rest, he saw a shady figure crouching under the collapsed roof of the shrine.

"Shadow!" Sonic yelled, running towards the figure. The individual was crouched over with his head at his knees, looking at his lap, and did not respond. "Shadow! I need to speak with you! It's me Soni- ...Knu-knuckles? ...Knuckles!"

Slightly disappointed not to find Shadow, Sonic soon became ecstatic and ran up to his friend. Knuckles' fist was covering his eyes.

"Don't listen to him, Knuckles. That is only your mind playing tricks on you." The huddled echidna rubbed his forehead and gave a long, deep sigh.

"Uhhh, Knuckles? Are you ok?" The echidna sighed again and glanced up, submitting to his imagination.

"S-so-soni-?!" Knuckles stuttered unable to finish the name in disbelief. He fell back as if seeing a ghost. "I-impo-impossi-ble!" His eyes shook violently, and his mouth dropped. The surprise was too much for the little echidna to handle, as he gawked at Sonic's unmistakable face.

The pond glistened a pale blue as Dice drank from it. The water was cold and trickled down her parched throat. The rate at which she slurped it made her body contract from shock. It must have been days since she ate or drank, and the nutrients were hard for her body to accept. She huddled on a slab of stone with her feet dangling in the water. It was icy cold. Her boots and sword lay on a nearby rock.

She took off her bloody tank top, revealing a blue midriff, and dumped it into the water. Blood oozed out of the shirt. Leaning over was difficult for the weak creature, so she slid into the water. Her hands rubbed the grime off of it, peeling the flakes of dried oil and tar. When she pulled the drenched shirt out of the water, it was a revolting shade of pink. In disgust, Dice casually tossed it over her shoulder and then dunked herself underwater.

She swam down far into the pool of water, knowing that no fish lived in it. All sea life was extinct. The iced water peeled away at the oil stuck between the hairs on her quills. Dried black blood from earlier enemies cracked off Dice's limbs. Drifting into the abyss, her thoughts fell on the nameless blue hedgehog. His peculiar personality seemed familiar, like a long lost memory. However, the pieces refused to fall into place. All she remembered from an imaginary childhood was the tedious incantation, and somehow, the hedgehog recognized its words. She did not see the stranger as a new love or a knight out of a fairytale, but as an older brother. Someone, who would protect anyone at any cost from any type of evil... a hero of sorts.

A hero? Under the glistening water, time fell silently still, allowing the thought to ring perpetually. Despite wanting to erase the word from her thoughts, a part of her mind desired the concept. At that moment, she was released from a heavy weight which plagued her since the dawn of her life. Her hope.

The sense of hope torchered her with thoughts of complete impossibilities. Hope was a carrot dangling in front of a rabbit's nose. The rabbit and the carrot know he will not be able to reach it. So why? Why torcher oneself? Knowing that one cannot have a dream makes it even more desirable and thus more painful when the dream is unfulfilled. Of course, a truly hopefull person actually believes their desires will be recognized. But not Dice. Her faulty hope was more of a reason to fuel her misery than anything else. One could not even call it hope, really. However, at that moment, frozen and hidden from her fears under the water, she no longer needed a pathetic hope; she knew that this blue hedgehog was someone special, she knew he could and would surely rescue what is left from this dystopia... and for that matter, salvage what remains of her soul.

However, the moment she ascended to the surface for air, those thoughts quickly vanished and were permanently forgotten.

When she lifted her head out of the water, all her fur and clothes were clean. She swam back to the rocky shore. Dice ripped the edges of her cargo pants off. The ends were too caked with tar and gore to clean. Her bare black-skinned ankles ached in the moonlight. Not all of her energy returned yet. Dice methodically put her boots back on. Sitting with one leg extended and the other bent upwards, Dice rested her sword across her knee. She grabbed a stone with her right-hand and began scraping the blade. Sparks sprayed up as she tediously sharpened it.

"It's good to see you too," Sonic laughed. He extended his arm to help the fallen echidna up. To Sonic's surprise, Knuckles sprung at him and embraced the blue hedgehog. "Knu-knuckles, you're crushing your buddy." He choked out, but remembered that Sonic was 'dead' and acknowledged Knuckles burst of ecstasy. Sonic patted his friend's shoulder. Several moments passed before Knuckles finally let him go.

"Are you real?" Knuckles stammered.

"Of course I am, silly echidna." Sonic tugged on his own ears as proof. "See?" Knuckles just gazed with a huge smile on his face. He paced around the hedgehog to inspect every hair, recalling Sonic's figure.

"You haven't aged a day." Knuckles placed his fist on Sonic's ear and pulled as a final test of Sonic's authenticity. The hedgehog winced and gave a weak smile. "Where in hell have you been?"

"Well one minute I am fighting Eggman and shot with a laser gun, and the next, I appear in a parallel universe or something."

"Sonic, this is no parallel universe; that was sixteen years ago."

"E-excuse me?" Sonic gaped at yet another unwanted surprise.

"Well, you see..."

"Stop right there. I have already been filled in on the current situation. I saw Station Square. Dice explained it to me." Knuckles, a little amused, said nothing. He could not keep his eyes off the blue hedgehog.

When Knuckles finally accepted that the real Sonic the hedgehog was standing in front of him, he said, "This world has turned for the worst with your disappearance Sonic." Knuckles rubbed his eyes and changed the subject. Growing serious he asked, "You saw Dice? Who else, may I inquire?"

Sonic laughed remembering the hut from earlier. "Well I encountered this extremely buff fox and a pink hedgehog who..."

"So you saw Amy and Tails." Knuckles sighed in disappointment, thinking of his former companions with regret.

"Well, yes." Sonic replied, sensing his friend's misery. "Look there is something I want you to answer though ...about Dice." Sonic shifted his weight back and forth nervously.

"Hmm?"

"Is...is she the one who did this? You know, to Station Square?"

There was an extensive silence. "Well, it's slightly more complicated than that." Knuckles explained without answering the question. "The sword she wields ...is in fact the chaos blade," Knuckles looked at the ground, "but ..."

Sonic grew inpatient with this response, "Is she or is she not the enemy?"

"No," Knuckles declared firmly, "No, she is not the enemy."

Clamping his eyes shot, Sonic slapped himself in the face in frustration. "Then what is she?!"

Knuckles sighed. "I am sorry." Sonic flung open his eyes in confusion.

"Huh? What are you talking about?"

The echidna turned away from Sonic, "I 't stop Robotnik. Everyone is dead. It is my fault; I was ...supposed to be the leader, and failed miserably." Sonic gazed in pity. Knuckles must have spent the last year on this island in isolation, kicking himself due to his immense guilt. As he looked at Knuckles, Sonic was surprised that he did not notice Knuckles' body earlier. The echidna was covered in scars from head to toe. A sword created those deep black wounds; Sonic was certain of it.

Ignoring Knuckles' guilt trip, Sonic asked, "And is she responsible?"

"Look Sonic, it is a lot more complicated than that."

"Then explain it to me."

"Dice ...uhh...her sole purpose... the very meaning of her existence and creation for that matter, is to serve the master emerald."

"Like your duty is to protect it?"

"I suppose so, yes. I guess that's why I can relate. If Eggman controls the emerald, he controls Dice. You see, for fifteen years, she has been an empty shell, blindly heeding Eggman's desires. Dice ...can't help it." Sonic sympathetically understood. "She's a..."

"A slave?"

Dice continued meticulously sharpening the blade. The sun was rising higher, creating a shadow over her. Sparks sprayed from the blade, until Dice felt a twinge of emotion. An intangible sensation overcame her. The rock fell out of her hands and rolled away. She rested her head on her knees and quietly began to sob.

A/N: Hey everybody! Thanks for reading Chapter 5. You all know the drill; if you have any comments, compliments, suggestions, or constructive criticism please review! (Also, just to prevent any confusion: I decided it would make more sense to find Knuckles at Angel Island instead of Shadow, but I promise the dark hedgehog will show up. Just wait a little longer)

Oh, and for all you readers who saw this story before it was deleted, I added several new parts to this chapter. So, if you were too lazy to read it, you may as well read the new paragraphs. (The part when Dice is in the water.....)