The city had always been loud, but never this loud. Sirens wailed and people yelled, confusion and panic rising to a deafening crescendo. Whip dropped to the ground, clutching his ears and whining in pain, while Amy instinctively whipped out her hammer, looking for the threat. Pretzel flattened her ears and crouched next to Whip, spreading her wings over them both. She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate past the sharp jabs of fear-panic-pain-despair bombarding her. She tugged the shadows up in a blanket around her and Whip. The world went dim. For all her practicing, Pretzel's energy shields still weren't especially strong (a good blow from Amy's hammer was enough to break one), but it should at least be enough to keep them from getting trampled. It also had the benefit of muffling the noise.
Amy! Pretzel projected, since there was no chance of her voice getting heard over the cacophony. What's going on?
I think the sirens are a storm warning, Amy explained, agitated but not panicked (unlike certain other mortals). But there's no way a storm could have hit this quickly without warning. Something else is going on. Could you lower your shield?
Pretzel did, reluctantly. Whip squeaked at the renewed onslaught of noise, clutching his ears as Amy scooped him and Pretzel up into her arms and started shoving her way out of the crowd. The wind had kicked up, and Pretzel had to fold her wings against her back to keep from getting pulled out of Amy's arms. Whip buried his head in Amy's shoulder.
Amy managed to fight her way free of the stream of people and climbed up on a bench, squinting over the heads of the crowd. She huffed in frustration.
"What are—" Pretzel started, then yelped as without warning Amy shifted her from arm to shoulder. Pretzel clawed for balance while Amy—now with one arm free—vaulted over the bench, ducked around the crowd of bewildered people, and sprinted toward a nearby apartment. Without breaking stride she jumped on top of a dumpster set against the side of the store, grabbed the fire escape with her free arm, and pulled herself, Whip, and Pretzel up. She didn't stop there, scaling the metal stairs with speed that would make Sonic envious, until with a final grand leap Amy deposited Pretzel and Whip on the roof of the apartment building.
Well, it was quieter.
"Wow," Whip said, taking his hands off his ears and staring at Amy with wide eyes. "How did you do that?"
Amy smiled. "Practice." She walked to the edge of the roof, raising a hand to shade her eyes. "Oh," she said softly. "Oh, that looks bad."
Pretzel flew to join Amy, following her gaze towards the ocean. The sirens had stopped, and up here the noise of the crowd was muffled and distant. The quiet was almost eerie— especially when contrasted with the sight of the coast. A roiling mass of black clouds had appeared in the sky, while a matching black fog was rolling from the tempestuous sea onto the ill-prepared land. Thunder boomed, breaking the unnatural quiet. The wild winds and rain and the waves they had stirred up had already hit the coastal edge of the city; it was hard to see with the black fog, but Pretzel glimpsed several buildings with chunks missing, almost like something had taken a bite out of them. Her stomach twisted. Where had Amy's apartment been again…?
"That isn't natural," Amy said, watching the black fog spread along the coast, reaching into the city like grasping claws. "That's—that's definitely not a normal storm."
"We have to stop it!" Whip said, fur bristling with agitation.
"What?" Pretzel asked, alarmed. "Whip, we can't fight a storm."
Amy bit her lip. "There might still be people down there…"
Pretzel stared at her. "Why would anyone be there?" She looked the other way, where crowds of people were still streaming away from the coast. "Everyone is over there, leaving, like we should be."
Whip crossed his arms. "A hero wouldn't run from danger."
"And a sane person wouldn't run towards a hurricane," Pretzel shot back. Her heart was pounding. Something about that storm wasn't right, and she couldn't let Amy and Whip anywhere near it. She needed to make sure all her people were far, far away from that thing. She was— this was—
This fear wasn't all her own.
She'd missed it in the initial chaos, but suddenly Pretzel realized that the panic in her chest wasn't just hers. It was coming from someone else. Whip? No; he was radiating determination right now, not panic, and she'd gotten pretty good at filtering him out anyway with how intense his emotions tended to get. But for most other people she'd only feel what they felt if she was in physical contact with them or deliberately reached out to their mind, and Amy certainly wasn't the one, so who—
Pretzel jolted. Sonic.
Sonic! She projected urgently, his panic and hers rebounding off each other, amplifying like they were caught in an echo chamber. What's happening? What's wrong?
There was no coherent response, only a jumbled panic of pain and fear and stop stop stop please stop, and then—
Silence.
Deafening silence.
Pretzel cried out, pain stabbing through her chest as she felt a terrible wrenching sensation, like one of her very wings getting ripped from her shoulder. Dimly she could hear Whip yelping, feeling the loss as well, which just meant it wasn't in her head, Sonic was— no, he was fine, he had to be fine, he had to be. Desperately Pretzel reached out, searching for the familiar beacon of his mind, that mix of light and darkness and something that wasn't quite either. She reached, grasping for that familiar bond—
And met the storm instead.
Darkness. Overwhelming, pure darkness, washing over her, dousing her in the cold, primal anger of the sea itself. For just a moment she saw through its eyes, saw those unnatural protrusions stabbing the earth, tainting the sea, infesting her world, and felt fury. An animalistic urge to destroy, to cleanse, to purge, filled her, and her claws raised, poised to send another sweeping wave to wash away this filth, and—
Pretzel snapped back into herself, gasping like she'd just come up for air.
"It's alive," she choked out without thinking. "The storm, it's— it's alive."
"What do you mean?" Amy was kneeling beside her, looking at Pretzel with concern, which was ridiculous because the thing she should be concerned about was right over there, and it could kill them all as easily as squashing a bug, because to it they were bugs, an infestation, just pests to be exterminated, and Pretzel had been in its mind, and felt the desire to destroy, and what did that mean? What did that say about her, that she could step so easily into this monster's head?
"It's a creature," she managed to say through the overwhelming feeling of something vast and dark pressing down on her, the feeling of choking, the feeling of drowning. "It's— it's a monster, creating the storm."
"A monster…" Amy's expression darkened, and she looked toward the storm—the monster with a frown. Suddenly she gasped, jumping to her feet with wide-eyed panic. "That's our building! It's going towards our apartment!"
"We'll stop it!" Whip said with the naive certainty of a child (of a being that could burn the world to ashes).
Amy hesitated, then nodded, fear replaced by determination as she summoned her hammer into her hands. "You're right. If it's alive like Pretzel says, then it can be stopped. We won't let it hurt anyone else."
No. No, no, they couldn't fight it, it would kill them—
The words choked in her throat. Amy seemed to read the panic in Pretzel's eyes regardless. Her expression softened. "Maybe you two should get to safety. You're not used to your powers yet."
"No way!" Whip puffed up his chest. "I want to help!"
They all knew he was going to follow Amy no matter what, so Amy sighed. "Okay, but stay close and listen to me." She glanced at Pretzel. "Pretzel, you can head out of the city. Find Vanilla—"
"No!" Pretzel burst out, seized by a new panic. Sonic was gone, Sonic was gone, if she lost Amy and Whip too— No. She couldn't let them out of her sight. "I'll go with you," she said, trying to force some measure of calm into her voice.
"Alright," Amy said, looking at her uncertainly. "If you're sure."
Pretzel had never been less sure, but she couldn't let Amy and Whip face that beast alone. Not when they might be the last things she had left.
Amy led the way back to ground level and then towards the storm. They fought their way against the current of people. Pretzel flew closed to Whip, who was still cringing from the noise. As they left the crowd behind and the unnatural dark fog grew closer, Amy slowed, hefting her hammer. She glanced back to give them a reassuring smile and then stepped boldly into the darkness. Whip followed without hesitation. Pretzel hovered at the edge of the fog, cast one last glance over her shoulder towards blue skies and safety, and then, taking a breath she didn't need, she plunged into the fog.
Silence reigned.
If the quiet on top of the apartment building had seemed eerie, this was positively sinister. The fog was somehow more translucent now that they were actually in it, no longer as opaque as it had seemed from the outside, but it still cast the world in somber muted hues. And now Pretzel could see the destruction the creature had wrought. Chunks of broken cement, glass, and metal had cratered the ground like meteors. Crushed cars and ruined roads made a strange contrast to the palm trees lining the street, undamaged and unperturbed. And over it all loomed the creature.
For a moment Pretzel was hit with a horrible sense of deja vu. A massive creature, covered in dark scales, its long forelimbs and sharp claws illuminated by glowing tentacles and bioluminescent markings. The image of a similar creature, backlit by lava and baring countless teeth, briefly overlaid on Pretzel's mind, but she shook it away. This creature was far bulkier than the snake-like thing she had seen, with a sleek, flat head and two large, black eyes surrounded by glowing pink markings. It scales were smooth, more fish-like than reptillian, and colored dark blue, not greyish purple. Though the creature's mouth was wide and toothy, it was in the way of a shark, not the gruesome, unnatural shape of the other monster. And most importantly, there was no keen cruelty in this creature's eyes, no cold intelligence. Just a primal rage, like a wounded animal.
"Alright," Amy said, narrowing her eyes as she sized the creature up. "Whip, Pretzel, you fly up and draw its attention. Try to draw it away from the buildings, and make sure you keep out of reach. I'll come at it with my hammer while its guard is down."
"On it!" Whip's ever-present enthusiasm was undamped by the beast looming over him. He took off, a glowing speck against the vast dark sky.
Pretzel was considerably less enthused, but she grit her teeth and flew after him. Amy and Whip wouldn't back down, and she couldn't let them get themselves killed fighting this thing. Besides, the way it was headed it would destroy Amy's apartment, and Pretzel couldn't just stand by and let her safe place get crushed to pieces.
Better the apartment than you, some cynical part of her mind pointed out. Fair enough. But Pretzel had already reached the creature's head, and Whip was shouting challenges, and oh there went any hope Amy's plan wouldn't work and the thing would just ignore them. Its eyes locked on Whip, and it roared so loudly the sound seemed to vibrate in Pretzel's bones. She winced, wings faltering. Whip shrieked and covered his ears.
Pretzel saw the creature open its jaws, and in a burst of adrenaline she grabbed Whip—still discombobulated from the noise—and dragged them both out of the way just as the creature lunged. It was slow, thankfully; they'd have to be really off the ball for a single bite to land, but with the size of those teeth, one bite would be all it took. The creature hesitated, head twisting as it looked for the two Gaias. Pretzel dragged Whip after her, keeping them in the thing's blindspot. It could probably smell them, maybe sense them too, but being out of its eyesight would still give them an advantage, however slim. And it kept them out of reach of its jaws.
Whip shook out of his daze, pulling free of Pretzel's grasp. "It's so loud," he complained. He looked pleadingly at Pretzel. "Can we…?"
Pretzel sighed. "Fine."
It was harder to do in the air, since she couldn't do her usual shadow-stretching visualization, but fortunately this particular power was one that came naturally, not to mention one she had plenty of practice with. She focused on that bright hum at the back of her mind that indicated Whip's presence. It had always been there, ever since she woke up, though the brightness and cadence of it had changed when Light Gaia did. Normally Pretzel kept it in a little walled off corner of her mind so as not to constantly be overhearing Whip's nonsense thoughts, though even that didn't seem to keep everything out, as she still found random snippets of his inner monologue getting through her barriers, much to her irritation.
Right now, however, she needed that pathway open. Carefully, reluctantly, she peeled away just a bit of the barrier. Immediately she felt the rush of Whip's enthusiasm and adrenaline and all his other very bright very loud emotions. Pretzel filtered them out and focused on Whip's mind, imagining throwing a dampening blanket of darkness over the top of it. Most people—including Pretzel, before she'd learned better—would assume Pretzel and Whip's powers would cancel each other out. Sometimes they almost did, but most of the time—as had been discovered when Sonic volunteered to host their energies—they mixed rather than canceled. And as it turned out, when used together the two Gaia energies had a handy tendency to cover for each other's weaknesses.
"Thanks!" Whip said cheerfully, his sensitive hearing now dampened enough that another roar wouldn't cause him actual pain.
Pretzel just grunted. She received her own benefit—her eyes were now far less agonized by bright light—but that wasn't particularly helpful in this situation, what with the cloud cover and fog. And anyway, she was used to dealing with the sun stabbing her eyeballs on her own. Whip, whose introduction to the world had not been being dumped alone in the middle of an apocalypse geared to kill him, was less adept at dealing with his own weaknesses. He'd learn. Probably.
A squeaky yell drew Pretzel from her thoughts, and she glanced down to see Whip was already charging towards the beast again. It whipped its head toward him, baring its teeth. Whip dodged on his own this time. He was a better flier than Pretzel, his tiny, useless-looking bug wings belying a grace in the air her own, much more anatomically correct bat wings couldn't hope to match. Sometimes Whip seemed to move more like a cartoon character than an actual person. If the beast couldn't catch Pretzel, it didn't have a chance at getting its teeth on Whip. Its head kept snapping around, eyes struggling to follow his quick movements.
Well, they had its attention. What was the second part of the plan?
"HI-YAH!" Amy yelled, vaulting up the beast's body and slamming her hammer down on its head with full force.
The result was… anticlimactic. The beast grunted and shook its head, flinging Amy off. Pretzel dove to catch her, but Amy nimbly broke her fall with her hammer and came to a graceful landing on the pavement. Pretzel touched down beside her.
"It barely even noticed me," Amy pouted, putting a hand on her hip. "I know I hit it full force!"
Pretzel knew from experience just what "full force" meant with that hammer. She'd seen a single swing of it crater steel. Yet Amy was right: the creature hadn't taken any more notice of her than of a mosquito bite. It didn't bode well for actually beating the thing.
Above them Whip was trying to lure the creature toward the ocean, but his taunts were falling on deaf ears. The creature still snapped at Whip if he got too close, but it had stopped actively pursuing him, instead focusing on heading further inland. It attacked the buildings around it with the zeal of Whip tearing into a chocolate bar. Even when Whip tried attacking it directly, it only shook its head and halfheartedly swatted at him like he was an annoying fly.
"Come on," Amy said, hefting her hammer. "Let's try again."
Pretzel frowned, but followed her into the fray.
The results were much the same. The creature remained unbothered by the shockwave-inducing blows of Amy's hammer, or Whip's high speed aerial cannonballs (directly into its eye, which made Pretzel wince), or Pretzel's attempts to scratch through its scales and, failing that, even her attacks on its eyes. Nothing they did seemed to cause any damage; every injury healed in a moment, and all their attacks dissipated harmlessly, like ripples on a lake.
"This isn't doing anything," Pretzel said to Whip as they drew back from their latest assault. "None of our attacks are affecting it."
"We just have to keep trying!" Whip said, eyes glowing with naive determination.
"Amy," Pretzel tried, flying down to speak to her as she recovered from her latest futile assault. "This isn't working." She wasn't sure Amy even heard her; the hedgehog just shook out her quills, tightened her grip on her hammer, and launched forward to attack the beast again.
Pretzel hung back, watching the fight and trying to think of a new plan. Clearly they couldn't bring this thing down with physical attacks, and Pretzel shuddered at the idea of entering its mind again. Could they divert it instead? Whip's attempts at distraction hadn't worked; the beast was too intent on destruction to be lured back to the ocean.
Pretzel watched as the monster continued on its path of destruction. It couldn't be reasoned with; it attacked with animalistic fury, no pattern to its destruction. It swiped at another building, crushing cement and steel as easily as if it were Whip's dried out play-dough. Pretzel winced as the rubble fell, on path to crush a grove of trees. She had liked that park. But then the monster did something unusual: its tail swiped around, knocking the rubble to hit against another building.
Pretzel blinked, looking back over at the street. Yes, the trees were all still perfectly intact. She'd thought it odd but not particularly noteworthy before, but after seeing that display… She flew higher, studying the area hit by the creature so far. The pattern held; every manmade structure had been crushed to rubble, while the trees, grass, flowers, and even the sandy beaches were left largely rubble free. So maybe it wasn't completely mindless after all. She remembered what she'd seen in the creature's mind: rage. It was primal, yes, but it did have a clear target, not just wanton destruction as Pretzel had initially assumed. Unfortunately, that target happened to be the entirety of humanity. And…
Pretzel's stomach lurched. There it was. The building that housed Amy's apartment, Amy's home, sitting innocently right in the creature's path.
Below, Amy was yelling with desperate fury, attacking the creature's legs again and again, but her attacks did nothing, and the monster's next step sent her flying across the street. Whip was shrieking, flying at the monster's face with reckless abandon, but the beast flicked him away with a single claw as easily as if he was an insect.
Pretzel saw it all. She saw Amy climbing painfully to her feet, too far away to do anything. She saw Whip recovering in the air and zipping back toward the beast, futilely yelling for it to stop. She saw the monster reach the apartment building and raise its claws. Her own claws twitched, a voice in her head that sounded like Whip urging her to do something, but there was nothing she could do. No shield she could throw up would be big enough, and even if it was, it would crumble under a single blow. No dreamwalking or mindreading would mean anything against this primal beast. None of her attacks had phased it. There was nothing she could do.
Some part of her, the part that sounded like Whip, the part that had watched too many superhero movies and children's shows, thought this was the moment. This was the moment a hero would arrive at the last moment, repelling the beast, saving their home.
But there was no hero. Just an injured young hedgehog desperate to save her apartment, a naive Gaia who didn't know his own nature, and Pretzel. Useless, helpless Pretzel.
The creature's claws slammed down. The building was crushed to pieces. Pretzel thought she could make out the pink of Amy's walls, somewhere amid the plaster and cement. Was that the plush sofa she'd been perched on just an hour earlier? And there, was that Whip's superhero-themed dog bed?
It was all lost in the destruction. The creature finished its work, and for a moment Pretzel could have sworn it turned to look directly at her. Green eyes meeting green eyes. Was it mocking? Warning? She couldn't say. And then, as if to add insult to injury, instead of continuing its rampage the creature turned, picking its way around the ruins it had created before slipping into the ocean. The waters closed on its back like it had never been there. The unnatural fog and stormy sky followed. Dimly Pretzel noticed the sound of helicopters as GUN arrived on the scene far too late. All she could see were the crushed ruins of what had been their home. She landed in a daze. Amy stood beside her, hands empty, while Whip flew around the rubble, trying to find anything that had survived the destruction. Useless. Pretzel's claws dug helplessly into the cracked cement. Useless.
"Our home…" Amy breathed, putting a hand to her mouth. She looked like she might cry. Amy never cried. "It's…"
Pretzel leaned against her silently, Amy's grief and frustration and uncertainty washing against her like the stormy waves washing against the beach.
"Don't cry!" Whip zipped back over to Amy, reacting to sorrow the way he usually did: with panicked, almost aggressive attempts at cheering the person up. He pressed a ragged piece of cloth into her hands. "Look! I found this!"
Amy unfurled the thing in her hands, and tears welled in her eyes. It took a moment for Pretzel to recognize it as the "home sweet home" sign from the kitchen. With the tattered rose and torn letters, the once cheery knitting now seemed tragic.
"Whip—"
"See! It's okay!" Whip said earnestly, completely ignoring whatever Amy had been about to say. "We'll fix it and it'll all be okay, so you don't have to cry, Amy!"
It's not okay, Pretzel thought, frowning at him. Our home was just destroyed. Surely that deserves a few tears.
But Amy was already swallowing her grief, forcing a smile and straightening her shoulders like nothing was wrong. "You're right. We'll just— focus on the next step. We've rebuilt before, after Perfect Chaos, and we'll rebuild… again…" She frowned, her eyes drifting out to sea. "Perfect Chaos…" Her eyes widened and she scrambled to grab something from her purse; a phone, Pretzel recognized. "That's it! I know what we need to do!"
"What? What is it? What is it Amy?" Whip asked eagerly, fluttering up to peer over her shoulder because he had no concept of personal space.
Amy smiled at him. "A while ago our city was attacked by another creature—Chaos—that was a little like that one."
"You think they're connected?" Pretzel had heard a bit about Chaos just from being around Sonic and his friends, but they'd never shared the whole story.
"I don't know," Amy said, typing something into her phone. "But I do know someone who might." She looked up at them, eyes bright with new determination. "I think we're overdue for a world-saving adventure, don't you?"
"Yes!" Whip cheered, pumping his fist. "Save the world! Save the world!"
Amy grinned and turned to Pretzel. "Pretzel? You with us?"
Pretzel hesitated. World-saving adventures, in her experience, tended to be less fun and more incredibly terrifying. She'd found something almost like safety in Empire City. Even if she hadn't been adored and cooed over like Whip, she'd still at least been tolerated by Amy's neighbors. Leaving would mean… it would mean something new. It would mean people who might try to kill her, and places where she wouldn't have a hiding spot to retreat to. These past few months had been safe; leaving that was terrifying.
But, Pretzel reminded herself, glancing at the ruined apartment, her safe space was gone. Things had already changed, whether she liked it or not. The apartment was destroyed; Sonic had been cut off from her; all she had left now were Amy and Whip. She couldn't lose them too.
She looked up at Amy. "What did you have in mind?"
