Of course the portal deposited them right next to a bonfire. A crowded bonfire, at that. Pretzel grimaced, huddling in the shelter of Amy's shadow, away from the too loud strangers and too hot fire. Too loud, too bright, too everything. The crowd was unperturbed by the trio's sudden appearance, which should have been the first hint that something was very wrong here.
"Hello! Are you here for the festival?" a nearby dhole asked Amy conversationally.
"Oh, um… what did you say?" Amy stammered, her words strangely stilted.
The dhole grinned. "English better?"
Amy smiled apologetically. "Yes, sorry."
Ohhhh. They'd been speaking a different language. One quirk of being Gaias was that language barriers weren't really a thing with Pretzel and Whip. Everything just… made sense, and if Pretzel wasn't concentrating she often didn't notice language switches at all. It went both ways, apparently; Pretzel and Whip were always perfectly understood by anyone who heard them, which unfortunately meant Pretzel would never get to pull Sonic's trick of talking in a different language to keep a secret from someone (or to get people to leave him alone).
"Are you here for the festival?" the dhole asked again.
"What festival?"
"For the equinox, of course!" the dhole said brightly. He said everything brightly. It was making Pretzel uneasy. "It's in two days, but we thought hey, why not celebrate early?"
Amy blinked, looking around at the decorations. "But… it's the September equinox. The beginning of autumn. Why the, uh, summery motif?"
She had a point. The decorations the crowd were waving around were all suns and flowers and flame dragons and phoenixes, and all in bright, fiery colors. It was what she imagined a festival run by Whip would look like.
Wait.
Uh oh. Pretzel shot to her feet. "Amy, I think we should—"
The dhole's eyes locked on hers, and suddenly the friendly affability was gone. To her credit, Amy reacted as quickly as the dhole; he lunged, she swung, and the bonfire erupted into chaos. The previously cheerful festival goers suddenly turned violent, lunging at Pretzel with inhuman snarls. They weren't completely mindless, however; the first few to suffer Amy's hammer soon stumbled away in pain, and this seemed to give the rest of the crowd pause. Their hesitation, however brief, was all the opening Pretzel needed to grab the abundance of evening shadows nearby and throw them up in a protective shield. The brainwashed civilians launched themselves at the barrier in a frantic mass, yelling in wordless frustration. Silently, Pretzel thanked Midnight for the power boost. Where her previous shields would have disappeared in seconds under such an assault, the new construct barely flickered. Finally realizing the futility of their efforts, the festival goers backed off and started circling the shield, eyes locked on Pretzel.
"What's happening!?" Whip squeaked. "Why are they acting so mean?"
"A fragment is here," Pretzel explained. "Sometimes they can mess with people's minds." A Light Gaia fragment, she realized with a twinge of dread. The terror of thinking, even for a moment, that Whip would side with the fragment in Shamar against her was still fresh in her mind. Sure, that instance had turned out fine, but if Whip kept absorbing the Light Gaia fragments, how long until…?
Well. Worry about that when the fragment actually appeared. And who knew? Maybe there was a way to stop it without Whip absorbing it. Pretzel's terror began to settle as the shield continued to hold. They were backed into a wall, yes, but the more Pretzel paid attention to what was actually happening and not bad memories, the more she noticed the weakness in what had initially seemed a terrifying assault. This wasn't quite on the level of what Light Gaia had done; this group was small, hardly the whole city, and no reinforcements seemed to be coming. And though they were clearly possessed, it wasn't to the point of them being immune to pain, as demonstrated by how they had reacted to Amy's hammer before Pretzel put up her shield. Experimentally, Pretzel poked at one of the nearby minds. Yes, this was a far weaker hold than Light Gaia's overwhelming light. Maybe she could…
Unexpectedly, the possessed people stopped circling the shield. They continued to glare at Pretzel, but they were backing away now, leaving a wide open space in front of the bonfire. Had Pretzel done that? But she hadn't done anything except poke at one person's mind. Either whoever had been controlling them had an incredibly weak hold, or—
An eagle scream, a whoosh of heat, and suddenly the Phoenix was there. It only took a few seconds for the shield to collapse under the Phoenix's flames; even Midnight's shadows couldn't stand up to this, but they at least give Pretzel the chance to dodge—barely. Burning talons scraped against the wall where she'd been pressed a moment before. Amy rolled the other way and Whip shot up into the air. The Phoenix screeched in frustration.
"Pretzel!" Amy shouted.
Pretzel waited until the Phoenix swiped again, then dodged past it and slipped over to Amy.
"This isn't a fragment, right?" Amy asked.
"No, it's like the Moray. It was probably an eagle or something that got mutated by Light Gaia. So your hammer should work just fine."
Amy grinned. With the fire reflecting in her eyes, she looked wild, a far cry from the responsible young girl buying groceries and telling the Gaias to behave. Beneath that civilized exterior was a burning passion, and it was in moments like these that Pretzel understood why Amy and Sonic were friends.
"You and Whip get its attention," Amy instructed, summoning her hammer. "Keep it away from those people. I'll hit it from behind."
Pretzel nodded and dove to the side to avoid another attack from the Phoenix. It seemed intent on Pretzel specifically, which would work well for the plan. She found Whip and relayed Amy's instructions. Together they started harassing the Phoenix, goading it into pursuing them—away from the crowd of brainwashed civilians. Pretzel threw up a few constructs to draw its attention, and while the Phoenix was literally chasing shadows, Whip managed to land a punch that seemed to do actual damage (which meant he'd gotten a boost from Dust Devil the same way Pretzel had from Hurricane; something to worry about later, or never, since Pretzel thrived in denial). Boost or not, the Phoenix was still too quick for Whip's untrained swings to do much more than annoy it, and Pretzel's constructs only lasted a few moments under its flames, but that was fine. Stopping it had never been the point.
Focused on Pretzel and Whip as it was, the Phoenix was not prepared in the slightest for Amy to descend from the heavens like a meteor of justice, slamming her hammer at full force into the back of its head. The Phoenix screeched in pain. Amy hit it again. It wheeled, throwing her off its back, but it moved more slowly now, and kept shaking its head as if dazed. Its wings beat unsteadily. Whip moved to fly down and help, but Pretzel grabbed his arm, shaking her head at his questioning expression. Amy's eyes were alight with a fire of their own. She was enjoying this fight, and Pretzel had no doubt she'd win it easily. The Gaias would only be getting in her way.
Something grabbed Pretzel.
Pretzel screeched as she felt herself burn, white hot light tearing through her like it had when they'd faced the Dust Devil. Whip yelled and threw himself at her attacker. Pretzel stumbled free, gasping from the pain, and spun around.
This fragment was similar to Midnight in the same way the Dust Devil had been similar to Hurricane. It—she?—was small and childlike, like Midnight. Unlike him, however, she was more avian than reptilian, covered with molten gold feathers that flared in a flame shape around her head. White-blue tufts surrounded her wrists and ankles. Her eyes were summer sky blue and shone with… enthusiasm? Yes, this fragment was grinning ear-to-ear, dancing around them and giggling like a… well, like a child.
It didn't make her any less terrifying. If anything, it made Pretzel more frightened. The fragment lunged at Pretzel, and she jumped back, grabbing at the nearby shadows to throw up a shadow shield. The fragment tore through it even faster than the Phoenix, barely giving Pretzel a moment to scurry away. Frantically she threw up another shield. It was destroyed just as quickly. Stars, the thing was fast. The slightest slip-up and she'd be on Pretzel's throat, and then—
"Leave her alone!" Whip yelled, and tackled the fragment. Or he tried to; she was still bigger than him, and faster, and he ended up ineffectually tugging on her tail feathers.
The fragment made a tutting noise and, with blinding speed, grabbed Whip's wing and tossed him aside carelessly. Whip yelped as he slammed into the wall. Pretzel moved to help him, but the fragment blocked her advance, forcing her to back away and throw up yet another shield. The shadows were only getting weaker as the fragment drove Pretzel closer to the bonfire. And as the fragment got more fired up, she burned not just Pretzel's shadows but the area around them as well. A patch of flowers blackened beneath her feet, but she didn't notice, too focused on playing with Pretzel. And that was what this was, Pretzel realized with a sinking feeling as the fragment continued to dance around her. She was toying with them. To her, this was all just a game.
But no game could last forever. Soon the fragment grew bored with Pretzel's weak attempts to dodge past her and increased the intensity of her assault. And now she added a new power to the mix; rather than just slashing at Pretzel with her claws, she summoned spears of white light and threw them through the air. With her new toys, the fragment soon had Pretzel backed right against the bonfire. This close to the fire, Pretzel's already struggling shields were made even weaker. Whip, recovered from the earlier blow, lunged at the fragment again, and again she dodged him easily. Childish the fragment may be, but she was far, far more capable a fighter than either of the Gaias. Pretzel was suddenly glad Midnight had agreed to a simple game.
While Whip momentarily distracted the fragment, Pretzel glanced over to check on Amy's progress. She was still holding her own against the Phoenix, but she was distracted now, torn between her battle with the bird and her concern for Pretzel and Whip. Now the Phoenix was the one on the offensive, bolstered by the fragment's presence. And if the fragment thought to put the brainwashed people to use…
They didn't have a choice. Pretzel raised her voice. "Whip!"
Whip ducked away from the fragment and blinked at her. "What is it?"
Was this really the right thing to do? Maybe they could wait… delay this somehow… no. She couldn't run from this, and neither could Whip. Pretzel swallowed her fears and forced herself to speak. "You need to connect with her! Like you did in Shamar!"
Whip's ears flattened. "But—"
He didn't get a chance to finish the sentence. A spear of light burned through Pretzel's shield and stabbed right into Pretzel's chest, knocking her back into the fire. Everything burned. Pretzel didn't scream; she couldn't. Fire consumed her, bright and terrible, and everything went red.
Whip was alone.
The fragment turned from the fire and smiled at him. Her eyes were pure, bright blue, without any of the black of other people's eyes. Normally Whip liked blue, especially that blue, the color of a cloudless summer sky. But now… now it scared him. And angered him. The fragment had burned Pretzel. He could feel her, unmoving in the fire, hurting. Hurting because of this fragment. It made him upset. It made him angry. But anger wouldn't help now. Pretzel had said he needed to connect with the fragment. How was he supposed to do that?
"Why did you do that?" he blurted out. "Why did you hurt her?"
The fragment drew closer, and he felt something warm pressing against his mind, like how he sometimes felt Pretzel speak to him, and like how he'd felt the Dust Devil in Shamar. Whip didn't understand it, but Amy and Pretzel said it was just part of his powers. Besides, it had helped him stop Dust Devil. So he did his best to focus his thoughts and imagined speaking to the pressing thing in his mind.
Immediately he felt what the fragment felt. A desire to burn.
But why? he pleaded.
She showed him. He saw darkness, and shadows, and creeping things that moved in the night, and he felt the fear of it. He—she—they didn't like the darkness. Then he saw the Phoenix, its glowing wings casting away the shadows. And he saw a dozen lights, growing and growing, until finally the world was freed from the darkness and the night forever. That was what the fragment wanted. She wanted sunshine that would never go away.
"I understand," Whip said, because he did. The dark scared him sometimes. And you couldn't play in the dark. The sunshine was just so much better. He'd often wished the long summer days could last forever, that there was no need for the sun to set each night. But…
He thought of Pretzel. Pretzel didn't like the light. Several times he'd woken in the night to find her sitting outside, all the lights off, staring up at the stars. He'd asked before why she didn't turn the lights on, and she said she liked the dark better. It made her feel safe. Whip thought that was weird, but, well, that was Pretzel. If there was no dark anymore, how would she feel? Pretzel liked the night, as much as Whip liked the day. But even when Midnight had wanted to make everything dark forever, she'd insisted that wasn't right, though Whip knew—felt it in his mind, the way he did sometimes—she would have enjoyed a world like that. Felt safer in a world like that. Maybe even been happy.
But she'd told the fragment that wasn't right. What had she said to him? You can't have shadows without a light to cast them. Did it go the other way around, too? Everywhere there was light, there was shadow. Even the bonfire, bright as it was, still cast Whip's shadow deep and dark and long in front of him. He tried to imagine a bright world, without night or even shadows. It would be… boring, he realized. Flat and colorless. Without the dark, light became bland.
"I understand," Whip said again. "But… if there weren't shadows, how would we even know there was light at all?" He looked over at the people who'd been acting so weird when they first arrived. "And people need the night to rest."
He could feel the fragment's pout at the idea of rest, and he smiled. He understood that.
"You have to rest to play," he said. Amy had told him that many times. "And…" He frowned, distracted from his train of thought by the burnt flowers beneath the fragment's feet. "Hey, you hurt those."
The fragment looked down and blinked, as if noticing for the first time.
"You need to be careful," Whip chided, kneeling down to pick up one of the flowers. "It doesn't matter how bright you make everything if there's nothing good left."
The fragment knelt beside him, looking almost sad. She gently touched one of the burnt flowers, watching as it crumbled away.
I understand, she said in his mind. Thank you.
Whip gasped in surprise as she dissolved into white light, light that pooled into him and sent a rush of warmth through his body. It felt like sunshine.
He was in a strange house, watching over a strange child. It was dark. The child was curled up on their bed, trembling at every flickering shadow. They were afraid. Afraid of the dark. He could help! He could make it better! He reached out, brushing his light against the child's mind. He felt the child's fear spike, but he soothed it, soothed everything until the child's mind was bright, white calm. Yes, this was better, wasn't it?
Whip woke up from—whatever that had been to see Pretzel crawling from the bonfire, her fur and scales seeming to reform from the shadows. Was that a power she'd gotten from the fragments? Whatever it was, he was just happy to see she was okay.
"Pretzel!" he called, bounding over. "I did it!"
Pretzel eyed him. "You stopped her?"
"Yup!" Whip looked down at himself to see what had Pretzel looking at him so funny. Oh, he'd leveled up again! The tuft on the end of his tail had turned white-blue, and when he reached up to touch his ears, they felt more feathery.
"Your eyes are blue," Pretzel observed, surprised.
"Really?" Whip moved to touch his eyes, then realized that was a stupid idea and dropped his hands. "It must be part of my power up. I talked to the fragment, and…"
His enthusiasm faded as he remembered what the fragment had wanted, and what he'd seen in that—had it been a dream? A memory? For a moment, he'd wanted to burn the world, to destroy all the dark and the shadows and make it day forever… no matter who it hurt.
"Pretzel, what if…" he started, but the words seemed to catch in his throat as she looked at him expectantly. He swallowed.
What if she got scared of him if he told her the truth? He wasn't stupid; he'd seen her flinch away from him, back when they'd first moved in with Amy. And he'd seen her be scared of the Light Gaia fragments in the same way.
But no. This was Pretzel, his sister. She could be mean and rude and weird sometimes, but she'd never, ever run away from him, no matter how much she complained. And besides, Pretzel was brave, way braver than him. She fought sea monsters and tricked creepy cults and didn't run from things even when they frightened her. How scary could he be, compared to everything else?
"Pretzel, what if I become like— like them? When I talked to Dust Devil it was angry at humans and I was angry too, and Sunshine wanted to make everything day all the time and I think that sounds really nice but— Pretzel, I don't want to be a monster!"
Pretzel stared at him, and for a moment he was afraid she agreed, that she thought he was like the fragments. Scary and dangerous. But then she leaned forward and thwacked him with her wing. Whip yelped and rubbed at his head, frowning at her.
"Don't be ridiculous," Pretzel said, rolling her eyes. "You're no more monster than me, remember?"
"But what if—" Whip started to argue, but Pretzel was ignoring him, too busy poking through the burnt flowers. She made an "a-ha!" noise and plucked something from among them, offering it to him. An unburnt flower. Now that he was looking, he saw not all the flowers in the patch were burned; a ring around the edge retained their merry colors, untouched by fire.
"You're not becoming like the fragments, Whip," Pretzel said as he took the unburnt flower carefully in his hands. It was blue, like Sunshine's eyes. Like his own eyes, now. "If anything, it's the other way around."
Whip blinked. "The other way around?"
"Sure." Pretzel shrugged. "You convinced Dust Devil to stop attacking the town. You convinced this fragment—"
"Sunshine."
"Alright, you convinced Sunshine that she couldn't just burn whatever she wanted." Pretzel flicked her tail at the flowers. "Look there. What do you see?"
"Flowers?"
Pretzel sighed. "What about the flowers?"
"Some are burnt," Whip said, leaning closer to try and see what Pretzel was going on about. "And some have been pushed down, like somebody stepped on them. Oh! That must have been when Sunshine knelt down."
"Right. Sunshine knelt on the flowers, but didn't burn them. Because you showed her what she was doing, and that it was wrong. You get it? The fragments aren't making you like them; you're making them like you."
"…Really?" Whip asked hopefully.
"You're not a monster, Whip," Pretzel said with certainty. And Whip believed her.
Pretzel lied, sometimes, but not about something like this. If she'd thought he was mean or scary or bad, she'd have let him know. Or, more likely, she'd have simply left. But she was here, with him, comforting him. That was proof enough on its own.
Whip looked at the flower in his hand and then, careful not to damage it, tucked it into the tuft of fur on his head. He looked up at Pretzel, beaming. "Thanks, Pretzel!"
Pretzel just shrugged and turned away. "It's the truth, isn't it?"
But he knew she was smiling.
