He could see them.
His mother was huddled behind her sofa, poorly lit by candlelight. For all her inner strength, she was not physically formidable, and her ragged appearance didn't hide the tremble that ran through her body. Something outside shook with a muffled boom, and the ceiling rained down chips of dust and plaster. Her apartment was the same as he had always known it, but now in the dark it took on the appearance of a prison.
Another explosion, closer, and the walls shook.
His mother reached up, and took hold of a lamp, holding the length of metal to her chest. There was something outside, something turning the doorknob. His mother looked panicked, and cringed as the door was forced open. Something small by her side cried, and he could see a small face, like his own, swathed in a brown sweater.
The door flew off its hinges.
"Lara! Lara!" Julie-su, he recognized her with a pang of longing, stormed in. She had a piece of cloth wrapped around her left arm, and it seemed stained with blood. Her black and blue combat outfit was whole, but worn, and speckled with dull red. Tight in her right hand, she held her usual plasma pistol, at chin height. Most shocking were her eyes – they looked unfocused, distant, and desperate.
"Julie?" Lara slowly stood up, and dropped the lamp to the floor. She replaced it with her son, whose crying had quickly turned to repressed sniffling.
"Where's… um…" the younger echidna female seemed to search for the word.
"Wyn?" Lara asked. Julie nodded, quickly.
"He… He went outside." Lara offered. "He…"
"I'm sorry." Julie cut the older female off, and her tone of voice left the fate of Wynmacher, in her eyes, never in doubt. "Lara. We have to go!"
"Go? Where?" Lara shuddered, as the building shook from another distant blast. "There's nowhere to go! The ports are all destroyed! And the Kingdom…"
"The Dark Legion still has transports. They're going to try sneaking through the blockade. I… I'm going with them. You have to come with me! We have to hurry!"
"But…" Lara licked her dry lips, and looked down at her young son. "Oh Mace…"
Then she nodded, and the two left, leaving an old life behind. The shelling outside became louder as they raced down the stairs, and mixed with the punctuated sound of weapons fire. Some of it was automatic, most was characteristic of energy weapons – air bangs and hisses. Then, there was the distant sound of screams, the last moments of the dead and dying.
They emerged into the streets of Echidnapolis.
What he saw then, what greeted Julie-Su and Lara-Le, was a ruined and broken city, buildings smashed and pavement cratered. Fires burned untended behind the gaping faces of half collapsed skyscrapers, and the sky was black with smoke, as small explosions created short lived clouds high above the city. Julie seemed about to say something, when a loud screech cut her short. Her eyes went wide as saucers as something approached from above, fast and terrifyingly lethal.
"Save them!' A voice hissed, and Knuckles awoke with a gasp.
His mind returned to the present, though not with as much relief as he would have liked. He wiped the cold sweat from his brow, and leaned back against the wall. His back and neck hurt, and he could see that he'd accidentally knocked over a pile of papers by his side. In front of him, a small fire crackled in the blackened shell of a waste bin. His nose twitched, as he smelt what was cooking over it on metal spits.
Across from him, on the other side of the fire, a man sat crosslegged, pressing a knife to his cheek as he shaved. He looked up at Knuckles with one brown eye, and one pure black, encased in a rim of metal.
"Food's not quite ready yet," he said, and closed his eyes, a metal sheath making due for an eyelid in one case.
"Unh." Knuckles grunted in reply, and sighed.
"Same as always. I'm surprised you get any sleep at all." The overlander named Hunter spoke in a halfway amiable manner. Knuckles remembered it as the same tone of voice Hunter had used before he had announced his intentions to hunt the Guardian of Angel Island for sport and entertainment.
"I'm fine. Though seeing you sleep like a baby turns my stomach. 'No justice under heaven,' and all that." Knuckles crossed his arms and looked up at the ceiling. He wasn't sure how long he'd been stuck underground. There was no way to keep time, and he slept erratically.
"Some would say, 'Trouble Dreams, Troubled Soul.'" Hunter quoted, and grinned just a little.
"The only one with a 'troubled soul' here is you," Knuckles answered, but Hunter remained totally unapologetic. Knuckles had meet him for the first time over two years ago, when an old foe of his, Monk, had returned to Angel Island. Hunter had shown up around the same time, paralyzed the Guardian's sensor network on the Island, and explained to Knuckles his idea of recreation. He hunted the two enemies, and killed Monk. Knuckles had stopped him because of his former foe's sacrifice, and Hunter had spent the next two dozen months in stasis under the watchful eye of the Guardians.
Now he was free, and Monk was still dead.
Along with who-knew how many other of Hunter's victims.
"Anything happen while I was asleep?" Knuckles asked. Hunter was still the only company he'd had for… days, at least. It wasn't like he could ignore the overlander.
"It'd been quiet tonight. Only two of the little critters came to check on us. I took care of them both quietly," Hunter said, as he drew the knife up his left cheek, and around the metal that framed his cybernetic eye.
Knuckles eyed the black chunks of meat roasting over the fire. Ventilation underground was still working perfectly, so the smoke wasn't a problem. The smell, however, would linger. And cooked Chaos critters smelt almost as bad as they tasted. Even after being cooked to a crisp to destroy whatever plagues the little demons probably had in them.
Knuckles rubbed his eyes, and looked down at the papers piled around him. They were notes from the four labs that they had bee able to gain access to. A lot of it was old, or overly technical. Still, Knuckles had spent hours looking through it for some clue to what was happening, or what had happened, to Haven.
"Are you sure you didn't see anything, anyone, when you escaped?" Knuckles asked, though he knew the answer.
"I didn't see any of your compatriots, no. I only escaped because those little things were chewing up the stasis controls." Hunter cleaned off the knife's edge with a rag, and put it down. E ran his hand over his jaw, and frowned in dissatisfaction. He looked just as Knuckles remembered, with his moustache arching to reach his jaw line, and his hair short and curved back. The gray along the sides made him appear old, despite his excellent physical condition.
For a few minutes, the two sat in silence.
Both were out of ideas on how to escape. To a degree, Hunter seemed content to last as long as he could and then die when his time came. Knuckles, however, still held out hope. He had people to return to, a life to lead, even if Hunter didn't. He had to escape, and if possible, set things in Haven right again. While Knuckles thought to himself, Hunter carefully removed the metal spits, and let the meat on them cool.
They had done this before: go hours without saying a word to each other. Hunter didn't seem to mind, and maybe once Knuckles wouldn't have either. Both were loners. But Knuckles was also curious, and he had friends now. He was used to having someone to talk to at least, even if he usually wasn't in the mood for conversation. He needed something to distract his mind from his reoccurring nightmares, ad his current plight.
"Hunter." Knuckles said it, not so much as a question. "Is that your real name?"
The overlander didn't open his eyes from where he sat. "It is. Marcus Hunter is my name, Knuckles."
After a few more silent seconds, Knuckles pressed onto what he hoped was a more interesting topic. "Alright, Marcus. What happened to your eye?"
"You mean this one?" Hunter reached up and stroked the metal over the upper left side of his face, under his long eyebrows. "Well. If you must know: I lost it."
Knuckles waited for an explanation. And waited.
Hunter half sighed, half snorted. "It was during the war. Not the war with Robotnick… the war with the Kingdom. With the mobians."
"Lemme guess. Extermination Squad?" Knuckles inquired, with a scowl.
"Hardly." Hunter opened his eyes, but looked down at his hands. "I served at the home front. Internal Defense and Counter Insurgency."
"Counter Insurgency?"
Hunter nodded, just barely enough to see. "As you probably know, those mobians who surrendered or were otherwise captured were usually put to work. Those sent back to overland for this were neurologically tagged. This made them docile enough to use in large numbers without needing a large military presence to act as guards. However… the tagging procedure wasn't perfect. A small number of mobians, after three to nine months, went wild again."
"You mean they regained their free will?" Knuckles asked, disgust evident in his voice.
"You could say that. They ran away and started causing trouble. Sometimes, they managed to hook up with Mobian commandos that had snuck into Overland. They were too few, and too weak to target military facilities, so they tried to terrorize the civilian populace. Sometimes… they kidnapped children, from schools or backyards. We always found them in the end. Never alive. Not once."
Knuckles looked down at that. "So you hate Mobians? Is that why you hunt them?"
Hunter looked at Knuckles briefly, and shook his head. "A lot of my comrades lost it after a while. IDCI had the highest turnover rate of any arm of the military. I heard that a lot of them did request transfers to Black Squads. I suppose they wanted revenge… but… I didn't. I never hated mobians, even after I saw the depths of their cruelty and viciousness. A cornered animal tries to draw as much blood as it can before it dies. This is only natural."
"So I hunted them then, and I was good at it." Hunter continued. "Very good. It didn't matter to me what they had done or would do. I hunted them. Sometimes it was dull, and sometimes it was challenging. They gave me awards for it. They called me a hero. Still, I never thought of myself that way. I only did what was natural and normal. I never needed to justify it. One day, I was tracking a number of mobian commandos. They were holed up in an old warehouse… four of them. They rigged half the building with explosives, but kept a hostage alive to encourage some sort of rescue."
"Cowards." Knuckles growled.
"So we moved in, a whole squad of us. I wasn't used to working in such a large group. But the higher ups handed us a real demolitions expert. This guy could disarm any explosive. A real pro. We moved in quickly from the roof. Took the whole building in two minutes. Everything seemed to be going perfectly. We had just finished disarming the bomb around the girl – the hostage – when something went off on the first floor. I never saw what blinded me in my left eye. I blanked out, and next thing I knew we were back in the air. I learned later that the demo expert, a man named Thorndyke, pulled me out."
Knuckles stared at Hunter with a serious expression. "Thorndyke?"
"Nelson Thorndyke. Strange name if you ask me, but all the… pureblood humans have names like that." Hunter finally noticed the way Knuckles was looking at him. "What? Not the story you were expecting?"
Knuckles shook his head. "No. Was… was this Thorndyke married? Did he have a son named Christopher?"
"Yes. Yes he did. How did you know that?" Hunter asked, giving Knuckles his full attention.
"It was after our fight," Knuckles explained. "I had to go off island for almost a year. Robotnick found out about Station Square and…"
"He found Station Square?" Hunter interrupted. "How? How could he?"
"Way I hear it, Sonic and Tails found it when they were chasing someone called Naugus. I wasn't there at the time. After they found it, Station Square started sending out teams, taking covert action in the war on Mobius Major. So Eggman started combing through Overland to find the source of the problem, and found it. I can't say exactly how."
"I wouldn't have gotten involved then either, except for the Master Emerald. Someone named Rouge tried to steal it from me. I thought she was working for the Eggman, but in the end I found out she was working for Station Square. I left the Master here in Haven, and went to investigate the trouble in Overland. Sonic and Tails were already there fighting Robotnick once he made his move against the city."
Knuckles reached over and took one of the kabobs, which were now cool enough to handle. He continued: "There were a few of us. Amy had run off to impress Sonic, and sometimes there was this strange mobian named Big… but all of then mooched off the Thorndykes. They had this kid, named Chris, who had a real hard on for Sonic. The kid was everywhere, always getting involved. I wanted him to stay at home, but his parents were never around, and Sonic just didn't really care what happened. Tails stayed there for a while, too, before he left to work by himself in Mystic Ruins. He disappeared for a while, and did a lot of work with GUN. He started building things… No one knew where the money was coming from. But one day he added guns to that plane of his, and then missiles, and then some sort of beam cannon."
"Chris seemed happy once Tails was away doing his own thing. I didn't drop by too often, but I can tell you that the kid was annoying. And clingy. For a while Eggman seemed to be having fun playing around, feeling out the city defenses. Then GUN started to crack down, and things get serious. He didn't have the resources for an all out attack, I don't think, so he raised this creature named Chaos out of the Master Emerald. Supposedly, it was the same Chaos creature that had destroyed Dingo City centuries ago, and Robotnick unleashed it on Station Square."
Hunter listened with an intense look on his face. "It was destroyed, wasn't it?"
"That's the strange thing." Knuckles tentatively took a nibble at the very well done meat that would suffice for this day's meal. "The city was flooded and evacuated, but was still mostly intact when Sonic transformed and destroyed Perfect Chaos. Afterwards, Robotnick tried to nuke the city, but Tails stopped him. It was after that. There must've been some kind of accident. Everyone who could just left. Sonic and Amy went back to Knothole, and Tails followed soon after. I don't know what happened to the Thorndykes, but I believe Chris was killed. Probably when the city flooded."
"Chris…" Hunter said, and frowned. "I remember him as a baby. Nelson and Lindsay Fay's boy. I never figured a pureblood rich man's son like that would fall in with you furries."
"They weren't around much. They might not have survived either. I don't know. If they're anywhere, it'd probably be with that group under Mastermind."
"Who now?" Hunter asked, and also took his food. "It seems I've missed some interesting news topside."
"You don't know the half of it." Knuckles bit into the charred flesh, and winced with distaste. Then, remembering his dream from before, he wondered. 'And maybe… neither do I.'
Even through the thick walls of the nightclub, the pulsing music blared with a chorus of base beats and electronic chords. Lara-Su's world was a haze that had yet to lift, but the music was as loud and clear as ever. Her back to the cold wall, she could feel the drumbeat pass through the concrete and up her spine shaking her to the core. If anything, it seemed to become louder. Then the music stopped, for an instant, and a new track started up inside the club.
Lara blinked, and missed it.
In that heartbeat moment between darkness and light, it happened, and she missed it. Instead, Lara choked back a scream as a tidal wave of blood passed over her, sticky and red and hot. Like a canvas of new age art, it painted half the wall behind her in glistening crimson, the force of it all slamming the back of her head to the wall hard enough to make her see stars.
"Aurora preserve me…" she whispered, her entire body covered in the stuff. In that one instant, the dark alley had become a slaughterhouse. It wasn't just the blood; liberally sprinkled around were assorted limbs, some identifiable, others like alien tentacles. Those lay strewn and curled on the ground, like dead snakes. With a wet splatter, the remains of a torso hit the ground; all jagged broken bone and split entrails.
A second later, the smell hit her, and Lara felt the need to empty her stomach.
In the middle of it all, a dark shape, a body and two gently swaying bushy tails, stood, arm outstretched. In the lack of light, the creature's right eye glowed malevolently, highlighting contours of its body. The music picked up in tempo, but the creature stood deathly still. Then, it turned in her direction, and she could see the face of a fox – far from the demon she had expected, but far from friendly. No: the look on the fox's face was analytical, and then, slowly, viciously satisfied.
"No." The vulpine's arm lowered slightly. "That was too easy."
It had happened so fast – Lara opened her mouth to try and speak, but something cut her off. Near her feet, she saw the tongue – that monstrous creature that had taken her's tongue. It twitched. Then, impossibly, amid the horrific carnage, she heard a laugh. On the ground in a pool of blood, the disemboweled torso moved, the head pivoting on a split and broken neck, a growing smile on what had once been a handsome vulpine face.
"Striking with all your power and without hesitation… So full of righteous fury and the desire to kill swiftly. What a cruel boy you've grown up to be, Tails." The head asked with a mocking tone. "What would your precious Princess think of it, I wonder? Are you that eager to take life now, hmm?"
"You." The other fox, Miles, hissed back. "You should be dead."
"I can't much say I like this New Tails," the Head replied, still laughing, its severed tongue sticking out between sharp teeth. "So, I will now show you the true Lord of Masks!"
Flesh and skin slouched off the face, the skull and color restructuring and reforming. Wet sounds came from the other severed limbs, as they too began to change and grow. In seconds, the head grew the face of a female, a familiar one, with long red hair and crystal blue eyes – the visage of a certain Princess of Acorn. Swells on the butchered chest developed into breasts, and with an explosive splash of red and white, arms and legs popped out, fingers flexing and curling.
"What…?" Miles' face was one of pure disgust, as his eyes, one blue the other black, looking back and forth, as more misshapen forms pulled themselves up off the ground. The first among them, in the form of Princess Sally, got to its feet, and with a loud crack, the back and neck reset.
In seconds, she stood before him.
"Sally." Miles narrowed his eyes, his anger now easily evident. Without moving his head, his eyes searched to his left, and then his right. "Rotor. Bunnie. Antoine. Mina. Knuckles. Rouge. Sonic."
The fox slowly smiled, lips curving back to reveal sharp canines. "Is this some sort of joke? None of them could hope to have the power necessary to slay myself. I could easily just ignore them and focus on you, 'Princess.' And next time, I'll remove that Chaos Emerald of…"
"…of Mine?" Mulciber-Sally asked, a topaz glow emanating from her back, and from the backs of all the others puppet bodies.
"A fine trick." Miles sneered, and rolled his neck around, splaying out his hands. "But you'd have been better off with identical bodies. I won't play your game. All I want is for you to die."
Lara didn't blink this time, but even with her Chaos Enhanced senses, she barely saw him move. Miles rocketed forward, his feet and tails a blur. Twenty feet from where he started, he stopped, his hand outstretched, and the center of an expanding cloud of red mist. The Sally-body he struck twisted and bent, hitting the wall behind it and falling to bloody pieces. Miles' hand quivered from the power of the blow.
"oh my god…" Lara gasped, eyes wide and amazed.
"Agh…." Miles made a distasteful sound, and looked down at his arm. It was still shaking, and Lara saw to her shock that bits and pieces of it had begun to flake off, like dried up paint. A black brown liquid, more like bile than blood, oozed out from cracks in the 'skin.' Behind him, another of the puppets chuckled.
"So. The Master's suspicions were correct." Mulciber-Rouge's wings flapped behind her. "How does that old saying go? 'The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.'"
"How literal minded." Mulciber-Sonic smirked.
Miles looked from the annihilated remains of Mulciber-Sally to the other puppets, a clear look of surprise on his face. "How…?"
A new track stated in the club, and the ground began to vibrate just a fraction. No more words were exchanged in the alley, however, as the Mulciber puppets charged. Miles twisted his body, his hands raised. The fake Knuckles reached him first, trademark fists swinging through the air in fast jabs. Miles blocked the first one, the result being a small cloud of fur and false flesh exploding from the strain on his hand.
Without showing even an instant's surprise, he shifted tactics, and swatted the rest of the blows away. Only four more came before the puppet revealed an opening, and Miles took it, lunging with his palm flat. The tips of his fingers entered the fake Knuckles' throat and fanned out just after the instant of impact. With a spray of gore, Knuckles' head came clean off.
Pivoting to his side, before the puppet's body even hit the ground, Miles avoided a glowing blue electron whip, courtesy of a creature in the guise of Bunnie Rabbot. His attacker laughed as she lashed back and forth, a hit finally registering when Miles paused to catch the sword blade of the fake Antoine. A long gash opened up on Miles' back, just below the shoulderblade.
"Where's that sweet red blood, hun?" The Bunnie puppet pursed her lips into a pout. "Like the kind ya'll used ta have?"
Miles snarled, and twisted his hands. Between his palms, caught in the 'butterfly,' Antonie's sword bent, and with a snap of the wrists, Miles ripped it out of the coyote's hands. In one smooth motion, it was in the air, spinning head over heels. Bunnie's eyes widened just a millisecond before the blade lodged itself in her forehead, and pinned her to the wall. She made a high-pitched howl, kicking and screaming, as she tried to pull it out of her own head.
Meanwhile, Miles was dancing between Rouge's kicks, and a giant wrench Rotor wielded like a club. Nearby, Antoine's upper torso hit the ground, arms flailing wildly. Ignoring the bloody display, Miles backtracked up to a wall, and jumped. Rouge also went airborne, while Rotor over swung and hit the wall, his wrench catering and removing several large chunks of concrete. Miles' upward momentum, however, was suddenly cut short as his tails spun. Lara watched the incredible feat of aerial maneuver with disbelief. He had jumped up with his feet, and driven himself back down with his tails, the exact opposite of what she or anyone else had expected.
Rotor barely had the time to move his head, before Miles' feet crashed down with the force of a thunderbolt, tails spinning like helicopter blades. The fake Freedom Fighter barely made a gurgle before his face met the pavement, and splattered under the pressure. The ground cracked and split from the power of the attack, and Rouge, in the air and out maneuvered, could do little to avoid Miles reaching up and grabbing her left leg.
She screamed, and her wings flapped furiously, as Miles tried to pull her down. Amazingly, she just managed to get him off his feet, when she started kicking to free herself. At the same time, Sonic and Mina closed the distance, the latter wielding a long length of metal pipe. With his right leg, Miles kicked aside Sonic's super spin attack, deflecting it just before it could develop killing momentum. Sonic spun in the air; his balance lost, and hit the wall with a thud. Mina, meanwhile, swung once, twice, and finally connected with Miles' leg near the kneecap with a loud crack.
Fighting one battle with his right leg, trying to maintain his balance with his left and his tails, Miles struggled with Rouge in the air. She kicked like wild with her free leg, and hit Miles in the right shoulder and face, before he finally managed to get hold of her ankle. Visibly shifting his balance, he snarled with effort, and pulled back his arms before sapping them out wide.
Rouge's legs snapped like kindling.
Tucking in his legs, and spinning his tails as Rouge continued to flail in midair, Miles kicked off the wall nearby. Mina, on the ground, tried to avoid the spinning tails as they suddenly advanced on her, but she was a moment too slow, and she lost her left arm, and then her upper body. The mongoose girl's remaining lower torso spasmed and fell to the ground, apparently lifeless.
A second later, Rouge slammed into the ground. She desperately covered her face with her arms, but Miles' knee descended without mercy. Her arms broke under the single overpowering onslaught, and an instant later, so did her face. Miles, however, was too late to avoid the Sonic puppet's attack to his back, as a blue blur sped by. Now, Miles hissed and fell forward, a clean gouge all across the width of his upper back.
Another blue light flew through the air, and the kitsune rolled to avoid it. It was Bunnie, the sword still impaling her head, screeching and swinging her organic hand back and forth. The electron whip Miles had designed and installed in her glowed fiercely as it cut through the air, the bladed flechettes suspended in a magnetic field sectioning anything in their path. Miles pushed off the ground with just his hands, and was on his feet in a second, ducking his head and then turning to the right, as the whip curled and sliced through the air.
Nearby, the Sonic puppet chuckled, and clasped its hands together. An electric charge seemed to flow through him, and his quills stood on edge. With a flash, Sonic's color changed to a bright gold, and he became engulfed in an incredible aura. He stomped his foot, and the ground shook.
With a mechanical growl, Bunnie's electron whip retracted back into her organic arm's forearm band. She made an annoyed face, and shook her finger in apparent vexation.
"What's wrong, sugah? Not having fun?" She asked coyly, index finger to her lips.
"Now, now, Bunnie. Maybe he just didn't like his dance partners." Mulciber-Super Sonic grinned so widely his back teeth were visible. "You know, I've always been a big believer in process of elimination… so…"
Around Miles, move forms started to rise from the remains of the apparently defeated. Dark shapes and limbs, growing and stretching and spreading. In the middle of it all, Miles started to laugh, his blood-drenched body trembling. At his feet, pools of blood bubbles and boiled.
"That's it, Tails! That's it!" Mulciber-Super Sonic cheered, clapping his hands eagerly. "Let us see this power of yours!"
Then, a calm fell over the lone vulpine.
His arms lowered, and he let out a deep breath.
"No. No… I'm outnumbered enough already, thank you very much. I don't need any more of your Master's spineless slaves butting in on a one on one, man to man fight." Miles' wiped a bit of blood off his left eyelid.
"Slaves? Was that supposed to hurt my feelings, now?" Mucliber-Sonic asked. "We are all slaves… to our own weakness, even to our strengths, if not to any worldly master. You should know this, Tails. Before you became what you are now, you were a slave as well. A slave to that damn Princess, a slave to your so-called Freedom Fighters. A slave to the world in which you lived. That was why you had to end that war by your own hands. It freed you from one fate, and delivered you into the hands of another."
"Besides!" The fake Sonic continued with a smile. "With power like this, with immortality at my fingertips, servitude to another is a small burden."
"Heh." The fox once known as Tails smirked. "A slave with golden chains. You've fallen pretty far… but for someone with no face to call his own, I suppose this suits you."
"No face to…?" Mulciber-Sonic's grin faded slightly. "What do you know?"
"I didn't recognize it at first. It really does smell like I'm drenched in the blood of everyone I once cared for…" Miles smirk never faded. "That was a bit distracting, but still I wondered: how can I keep killing these bodies, but never severing your connection to your emerald? Sure, there are two of you left from the original batch, but I suspect that if I destroyed both of you now that it wouldn't get me anywhere."
"So you think you've figured me out?" Mucliber asked, apparently amused.
"I think I'm close," Miles said, and continued with an even tone. "The Emerald isn't in just one of you. Each and every one of these little puppets of yours has a bit of the Emerald in it. When I first realized that, though, it also confused me. It would mean that these were not simulacrums in the real sense, but extensions of your mind… tied as that is to the Devourer's Golden Chains – the Chaos Emerald he gave you. To control all these bodies as you do is an amazing and impressive feat, beyond the multitasking abilities of anyone I know…"
Mulciber seemed pleased by the praise. "Don't think you can flatter your way out of this, Tails."
Miles held up a finger. "Ah ah ah. You didn't let me finish. I should have said: almost… anyone I know. There is one individual, three once great minds made into one. Into a creature with no face of its own. You see: I can appreciate the irony with which the Devourer picks his servants. And I am impressed with what you have pulled off here… Ixus Naugus."
Bunnie cocked her head to the side. "So ya'll figured it out? Not bad, sugah."
"Now, use your full power, Tails!" Mulciber-Sonic's eyes flashed a bright white. "Die by this 'faceless' one's hands, or by those of the Master. The choice is yours!"
"You should never have left the Zone of Silence in which you were imprisoned, Naugus. How the Devourer tempted you into this fate… I don't know. I don't care, either. I don't find and joy in taking life, for me it is a means to an end, but I am a Sword, and a sword has no regrets. Those in my way… those who oppose the future I bring…to them, I will grant only swift and merciful death!"
Miles went down to one knee, and plunged his hand into the ground. Mulciber's puppets and Lara-Su all watched in surprise, as the ground around Miles' fist began to twist and change, faint crackles of Chaos Energy kicking up dust. Then, just seconds later, Miles stood, and in his right hand hung a gun – black and gray, like three bars of solid soot welded together. It was huge for a one handed weapon, fully as long as Miles' forearm from elbow to wrist.
Miles leaned back, and groaned, as his body changed. From his chest, black metal emerged, crossing from the right side of his waist to his left shoulder. On the other wise opposite his neck, his shoulder bone seemed to break the surface of his skin, before growing and turning to polished gunmetal. Metal plate erupted from his outer thighs, and his red and white shoes disintegrated as metal greaves took their place – greaves the sides of which flexed and un-flexed with folding-retracting rockets.
"Aaaahhh…" Miles licked his lips and faced Mulciber-Sonic and Bunnie. "Were the circumstances different, Ixus, I would finish you with my Chaos Judgment. But I'm afraid a more vulgar approach is in order…"
One last shiver went through Miles' body, and from each shoulder, two lumps grew until they took on the form of birds, perched on their master, red eyes staring, searching, hungry. The birds changed color from tan, the color of Miles' fur, to blue. Two squawked, and another flapped its wings experimentally.
"Flicky birds and a… gun?" Mulciber-Sonic's grin became impossibly wide, and he laughed loudly. "Is this the best you can come up with?"
Miles tilted his head slightly. "I know. I know. Last time we fought the little birds were enough, but I decided to play it safe this time."
Mulciber's smile became a deep sneer. "You… You aren't Turbo Tails… you don't have that hedgehog to save you, and I'm not in that weak body anymore! You stupid child! I'll cut through that fake body of yours all day… as long as it takes to find that sweet meaty center!"
As if on cue, another track started up, and the fight was on. To Mulciber's surprise, Miles charged head on. Bunnie's whip flashed out, as the disruptor cannon on her other arm popped out and locked in place. Miles stance lowered as he charged, and the flicky birds flew off his shoulders. The Bunnie puppet cackled with glee as she struck, aiming to take his head off, her electron whip a spiral of death. But at the last second Miles pulled in his left leg, and turned on his back, his tails spinning horizontal to the ground and just inches off it.
"Die!" Bunnie yelled between laughs. "Die DIE DIE DIE!"
So focused was her aim with her cannon, what may have been a killing blow, that she didn't see the fast blue shapes that fell on her. They came and left in all of a quarter second, and then the fake Bunnie saw only darkness.
"NO!" Mulciber-Sonic snarled, as he lunged for the birds, just a second too late, his two arms inadequate to fend off three much less four of the creatures. They flew by Bunnie's face, and her eyes were gone. She screamed, and fired her disruptor cannon. It went wide, blowing a deep cylindrical hole in the ground. Sonic shifted to intercept Miles before he could attack her, but he misjudged.
Miles slammed into the Super Sonic puppet with the same killing strike as before. Super Sonic was made of sterner stuff than the fake Sally had been, and simply fell back, every internal organ reduced to the consistency of wet pulp. Miles' left arm damn near exploded from the blowback of the attack, as whole strips of pseudo-flesh tore free and fell to the ground, but he paid it no heed. The other puppets were already closing.
Immediately, he ducked in close and came up behind the shrieking Bunnie duplicate, a sword still embedded in its head. He locked one arm under Bunnie's own, and wrapped the other to hold the other arm in place. Her whip started to retract, but before it could, Miles pointed the end of his new handgun to her armor plated head.
He fired, and a 20mm HEAT round splattered the puppet's head like a tomato.
"I need this," he said, simply, and wrenched the arm out of its socket. The electron whip was still half extended, and stuck that way, so Miles made full use of it against the charging horde. He decapitated an Amy puppet, and blew open the ribcage of a Vector duplicate. A Mighty copy punched the ground, to create a smoke screen, and succeeded just a second before he slid in half across the chest.
Miles silently cursed, and threw Bunnie's arm into the fray, where it lopped off one of King Acorn's arms. Then the kitsune fox was in the middle of it all, ducking under a chaos-empowered punch from his old mentor, Nail, and back flipping to avoid a flurry of bladed shuriken from Espio. Charmy zoomed in from above, and Miles twisted to avoid his stinger before nailing the smaller creature in the face with an elbow. Charmy hit the ground at an odd angle and with enough force to easily rip off his delicate wings.
Then Espio was in Miles' face, short bladed weapons flashing as he attacked. Miles avoided the first set of strikes, then batted one right into the other and taking both out of the way. He lifted his foot high, planted it in the chameleon's face, and brought it down with a resounding crunch. A spray of gunfire rained down, as a red and gold robot stepped forward, mini-gun arms spinning eagerly.
"You can do robots, too?" Miles asked, and groaned. "Great."
"You only delay the inevitable, boy! As the Lord of Masks, I am INVINCIBLE!" Mulciber-Omega opened up with his chainguns, the air filling with lead. Miles was already in the air, and then against the wall. To Lara's shock (as if she wasn't already), she saw him running her way. The Omega-puppet just kept firing, mowing down a Remington who couldn't get out of the way quickly enough. Before she could even say a word, Miles scooped her up in his arms, jumped down to the ground, and tossed her into the air.
The last thing she saw before the world devolved into a mad spin was Miles jumping off another wall and landing on top of the robot. Covered in drying blood, sickened by sights and smells, Lara flew through the air, completely disoriented. She tried to gain control of her momentum and summon the power to glide, but lately her Guardian-related powers had been erratic and on the fritz. Like before, trying to use the power granted to those of her line by the Master Emerald left her feeling sick (or in this case, sicker). Her quills straightened for only a moment, but not long enough to catch any air.
So she tumbled.
Only her internal sense of balance told her when she started to descend again, and she spread her arms to try and control her fall. It wasn't particularly helpful. Landing in the alley-turned-warzone was only a little worse than plowing into one of the nearby buildings. She adjusted herself to brace for impact, but twenty feet from the ground an orange blue intercepted her.
"Get down and don't move." Miles told her, and threw her aside after they hit the ground. He was rough, and she hit a wall, but they avoided a flurry of glinting steel that would have turned her into kibble and bits. Miles skidded to a stop nearby, his back to her. He wasn't breathing hard, but his body was turn in dozens of places, and visibly wounded in dozens of others.
In front of him, another kitsune fox twirled a long polearm with a silver blade at the end. He was Miles' color, or close to it, but had black tips on his tails and black chest fur. To Lara's surprise, he had two tails. Another kitsune! The blade sang through the air, crisscrossed in front of the black and tan kitsune, before cutting a half circle in the ground at his feet.
"Ah hahahaha!" Mulciber-Tempest laughed madly. "Are we having fun yet? Well? Are we!"
Behind the fox, an Eggman puppet emerged, at the helm of a Mini Egg Walker. Next to it, a pink colored echidna Lara recognized as her mother – Julie-Su – advanced, a plasma pistol spinning in her right hand. A somewhat damaged Metal Knuckles seemed to be getting to its feet, as a bloody Shadow cracked his knuckles. A Nack puppet in the background already had its rifle leveled at Miles, while a hulking dingo with a metal gauntlet on his right hand chuckled menacingly.
Miles looked over his opponents.
"What?" he asked, lightly. "No Snively? Now I'm really insulted."
"Stupid little foxboy." Mulciber-Eggman growled.
"I'll tear that smile off your face!" Mulciber-Shadow added.
Miles' eyes darted back in forth, and his four servitor flickies flew nearby. Two were almost entirely covered in blood, making them more red then blue.
"As if I'd let myself lose to a faceless, weak willed abomination like you…" Miles' voice was serious, now. Amazingly, despite all the carnage that had gone on, all that really remained were the bright splashes of blood on the walls and the (admittedly deep) pools on the floor.
"Shut up and DIE!" Mulciber-Tempest lunged, and Miles slid to the side. The polearm was fast, however, and so was its user. Before the blade even arrested its forward momentum, the bladehead, horizontal to the ground, flowed into a slash. Miles' lowered his handgun, and the black metal met the glinting sharpened steel, stopping it cold.
Mulciber-Tempest sneered in rage, and seamlessly moved to attack with the other end of the weapon, which while blunt, was weighted down to do extra damage. Miles avoided the blow by leaning back, and lowered his shoulder before a blast of laser fire could cut into it. Shadow and Metal Knuckles came in fast, and Miles avoided the latter while redirecting the former back at his copy of his kitsune mentor.
Metal came back from behind Miles, trying to slash him with metal claws before attacking with his forearm lasers. Miles spun, knocking aside Metal's arms with his Tails before they could get a bead on him, and knocked aside another of Shadow's chaos empowered fists. Shadow swung two times, and dropped back, replaced by Tempest.
The larger kitsune attacked again with his polearm, the deadly weapon slicing through the air as Miles dodged or blocked with his handgun. The young vulpine's eyes went back and forth, and his flickies tore through the air, swooping down on Nack, Julie-su, and Eggman, keeping them occupied. Miles jumped up and over Tempest, and barely avoided General Stryker's blunt attempt to punch his face off. Stryker's glowing gauntlet passed through the air, and Miles tripped the large dingo puppet and sent him sprawling.
Lara could see it while Miles fought.
He wasn't making the killing blows like before. Was he getting tired? It was a possibility, she supposed, given all the fighting he had undergone. Not only that, but he was facing several undeniably powerful opponents. Stryker, however, had left more than enough of an opening for a more aggressive sort of counter attack. Lara had undergone enough training to see that. What was he thinking…?
Miles was in the air again, his left arm smoking where a laser beam had finally connected. His new rocket assisted footwear kept him in the air while he maneuvered with his tails, sparring back and forth with Shadow and Metal Knuckles. He had his handgun tucked back in his belt, and was fending the two off hand to hand. Shadow spun, his quills tearing into Miles' right hand, and removing a pinkie finger.
Miles hit the ground and went right into a roll. During the motion, he reached behind him, and grasped his new weapon with a damaged four-fingered hand. Shadow and Metal Knuckles landed, one behind the other, in the same formation Miles had maneuvered them into with his fall. In the air, the four flickies swept back their wings, and went into a steep dive.
'All my energy, Ixus.' Miles thought as he took aim. 'You want it? ENJOY.'
Miles leveled his 20mm hand cannon at the off balance Shadow. The kitsune mentally selected a different sort of ammunition, and it self-assembled in the cannon, feeding off his chaos energy. Shadow started to raise his arms to protect himself. With a resounding boom, the gun fired, but what left it was no HEAT round.
A depleted uranium penetrator left the barrel, and a fraction of a second later, the hollow interior lined with rocket fuel ignited, forming a ramjet. It shot forward, creating a series of micro sonic booms, crackling with slowly accumulated chaos energy. It went clear through Shadow's right arm, cleanly severing his ulna. It emerged briefly back into the air before entering the puppet Ultimate Lifeform's skull. As it passed through layer after layer of brain matter, it sent out waves of heat and concussive force, liquefying everything nearby. Greenish lances of residual chaos energy finished the job, decoupling opposing chaos energy.
The penetrator exited the back of Shadow's skull, traveled several feet in a barely measurable instant of time, and encountered Metal Knuckles. Despite being made of sterner stuff than flesh and blood, Metal Knuckles' armor gave as the head of the round entered through a damaged section of his upper torso and passed through his secondary plasma regulator. The casing there was ceramic and it shattered like an egg shell. The bullet had a harder time exiting Metal Knuckles' body, as it left through an armored section of the back, and deformed slightly. Nonetheless, it punched through, and continued on source.
Twenty feet away, and another inconsequential amount of time later, it met another fleshy target. This was the lower jaw of Mulciber- Tempest. Despite the thick bone present, there was no obstacle for the bullet as it continued on a straight course, burning and blasting flesh into paste and bone into powder. It exited through the fake kitsune's body just to the left of his first vertebral disk.
From there, it encountered only a foot of concrete, which was easily penetrated, and several layers of dry wall. Moments later, the bullet was high over the ocean surrounding Angel Island, about a mile in the air. The ramjet had died down half way to that height, and it continued on a lazy arc, gradually slowing and falling to splashdown in the cold waters of the Tranquil Sea.
Long before that, however, the four flicky birds had finished their nose dove. Julie-Su had been the first target to be encountered. She had been firing at the bird for some time, but had no luck either hitting it or avoiding it. That particular flicky had little trouble lodging itself in her chest cavity, beak-first, and exploding. Once again, a mixture of heat, concussive force, and chaos energy had destroyed flesh and bone while nullifying chaos energy.
The Nack puppet had fared only slightly better, as he tried to block the flicky with his weapon. The bird exploded prematurely, but still with sufficiently deadly force. Nack was blown to pieces, regardless. Similarly, the fake General Stryker had tried to ward off the attack with his gauntlet, with identical results. His body had remained more intact than Nack's, but overall that was not saying much. Eggman had the best chance of survival, as the flicky had only partially penetrated the armored glass of his mini walker. The explosion, however, caused the robot to stumble and fall forwards, crushing the cockpit under several tones of burning metal.
Still crouching, Miles slowly lowered his smoking gun, a haggard and exhausted look finally on his face. With obvious effort, he stood, and looked around, waiting. Nearby, Lara held her breath. In front of her, Tempest's body slumped to the ground after wobbling back and forth for a few seconds. Shadow lay motionless in a pool of blood. Metal Knuckles was on his feet, the top half of his body sparking and on fire. There wasn't enough of Nack and Julie-Su left to full a baseball hat. General Stryker remains smoked slowly in the dark. Eggman's crumbled mini walker also slowly burned, the metal red-hot.
It occurred to her: in the fraction of time it had taken to kill all seven Mulciber entities, there had been no time to mentally formulate the rebuilding of a new body. Still, she waited, and watched. The alley already stunk of blood and entrails, but now it smelt like cooked meat. Surprisingly, her overused gag reflex seemed to have gone into shock. She slowly got to her feet.
Miles was still watching the bodies.
Finally, his eyes settled on something shiny, in a pool of blood near Shadow. Somehow, out of the shallow pool, rose a large topaz gemstone. Lara recognized it instantly.
"One of the… Angel Island Emeralds," she said, and approached it.
"Wait." Miles' voice was still commanding, but noticeably weaker. He walked towards the gem, and held out his hand as if to touch it. To Lara's confusion, his hand began to tremble as it got closer, until he pulled back with a pained hiss. She looked at him in surprise.
"What…?" she started to ask.
"It burns me..." Miles looked down at her. "I cannot carry it. And neither can you. Not yet."
Lara's eyes widened in fear. "What? Me?"
"That is why you are here," he said, his voice slowly gaining strength. "I had never imagined something like you would be my First, but it appears destiny has a sense of irony."
"I don't understand…" Lara tried to explain. "I don't…"
His eyes were unsympathetic. "I am sorry, but I must ask you something. I must ask you if you wish to return to your home, and to the world you knew. Only I can do this, but the choice must be yours."
"I… I…" Lara-Su took in the horrors still around her and straightened her back, resolving her will. "I have to get home. I have to. I'll do what has to be done."
"You should know: I hate time travelers. You arrived on a tide of my energy, and force my intervention." Miles looked down at her, and smiled. "Still. You are strong. You will do."
He raised his right hand, and formed a fist. "So it will be done."
And in one swift movement, he buried his hand into her chest. She gasped and squirmed, impaled on his arm. Tears in her eyes, her voice failing her, she tried to pry herself free, to no avail. Then, as quickly as it had happened, he withdrew, and she was free. Lara stumbled, falling to one knee. She took a ragged breath, and pulled back her overshirt. There, just above her white Guardian crest, imbedded and almost invisible against her red fur, was a tiny ruby red jewel.
"How disgusting that I must make use of my enemies' vile methods…" Miles' expression softened. "Are you alright? I didn't hurt you, did I?"
"It feels…" Lara felt a new power within her, similar to her old Guardian abilities, but purer. More energizing. "It feels incredible! A little itchy… but incredible! Is this…?"
"It is. The First of My Emeralds." Miles blinked, and his eyes took on a kinder shade. "Please. What is your name?"
"You… don't know?" The echidna girl asked, and then chided herself. Why would he ask if he did? "My name is Lara. Lara-Su."
"Lara… named after Knuckles' mother. I see. Well, Lara, I now swear to you that I will not abuse the trust you have given me. And… for what it is worth… I am sorry things turned out this way." Miles' eyes wandered, searching the shadows. "Now. Take the Emerald."
Lara gulped and felt the urge to argue be pushed back into the recessed of her mind. Like before, there was something about this kitsune's presence that did not simply overawe her – rather, it compelled her. It was almost as if he were a valued confidant or mentor, whose words were to be valued about all others. She reached down, and scooped up the topaz gem. It was warm in her hands, and thankfully the blood simply slouched off it without leaving so much as a hint of a stain.
She still cradled the Chaos Emerald in her hands. His eyes narrowed again, and she felt that one bright blue eye bore into the gemstone in her arms. If anything, the hatred he felt for it seemed to far surpass that he had displayed for Mulciber.
"Follow me. Quickly," he said, and started to walk. She fell in step next to him. In the alley they left behind, burning bodies and metal slowly melted and disintegrated. Soon, there was little left but black ooze and shadows. An hour later, out of one of those shadows, a large form materialized. Heavy set, and framed by twin tusks that arched majestically in the air, the figure in a large brown suit was unmistakable – the last of his kind in thousands of years.
"Tsk tsk tsk…" Mammoth Mogul tapped his walking stick in one of the puddles of decaying slime. "Who does my Former Apprentice think he is, naming these stray dogs after my Acolytes? It makes an old man question the state of the world, when someone like you, Ixus, can claim the mantle of Lord of Masks."
There was no response, and Mogul inspected the goo on the end of his cane.
"I suppose you got what was coming to you. It is distressing, however, that you were unable to drag that boy's full power to the surface. Now he managed to escape and slink back into hiding. With the future girl no less. Tsk tsk tsk. Very sloppy."
Mogul sighed, and dipped his cane back in the slime that was once Mulciber, God of Rogues, Lord of Masks, and the former Ixus Naugus – Magus Supreme and Chief Hierophant of the Kingdom of Acorn.
"Worse still, the boy made off with one of the Emeralds." At this, Mogul smiled. "No doubt the boy is using the future girl as a pack mule. You couldn't have at least killed her before you died?"
In Mammoth Mogul's chest, a gemstone glowed, reminding him who was Master and who was Slave. He traced it with his left hand, and raised his cane off the ground with the other. He stared at the viscera, and wondered.
"To live as a slave… no matter the circumstances. That is something all the exceptional individuals of the world rail against. Never in a life of mistakes have you or I made one worse than that which ensnares us now, in life or in death. Have you found release in death, Naugus, or is your soul still burning in the Devourer's maw? Maybe we'll find out, you and I?"
The tusked mobian stepped carefully over a blackening puddle of blood. Looking carefully, he spied something interesting, and bent down to pick it up. It appeared to be a small severed pinkie finger. Mogul stood and examined it.
"Tails. Miles. I can feel your lingering power here. Why did you leave this? As a message? For me?" Mogul looked down at his chest, and the Emerald that enslaved him. For almost a minute, he was silent, and said nothing. Then: "Are my thoughts my own?"
No answer was forthcoming.
Propping the cane up over his shoulder, Mammoth Mogul silently strolled back into the darkness from hence he came. In his wake, the alley burst into flame, bright and hot and climbing high into the sky. By the time the authorities arrived to put the mysterious fire out, there was nothing identifiable in that dark, bloody alley that had become Ixus Naugus' unmarked grave.
