In the darkness of the Dharkon Void, the arm that was chained up before was connected to Sonic the Hedgehog… or his Fighter Spirit anyway. The transparent blue speedster with the rainbow aura groaned as he shook his head, feeling that he cannot move. He was confined in an "X" position, with his arms and legs held in place by black chains tightly wrapped around his wrists and ankles. He wasn't sporting the violet scar on his right eye, meaning it still had the emerald green as always. However, the scar covering the left side of his eye changes the iris color of the left eye entirely, turning it into the golden light of Galeem.

"Finally," Dharkon's voice spoke, echoing throughout the darkness. "How nice of you to finally wake up…" The deep booming noise emerged when Dharkon opened his eyes, his tentacles slithering around the chained-up Spirit of the hedgehog.

"Dharkon!" Sonic groaned, struggling to break free. "You're the one responsible for Galeem's capture!"

"That lifeless husk of a Lord of Light? Please…" Dharkon responded. "I had been waiting in my prison for five years and have now escaped from it, bringing my world along with me…" Sonic's real body appeared next to the Seraph of Chaos in the form of Dharkon's Primary. As Sonic noticed his own body moving freely, he saw Silver the Hedgehog was the Spirit possessing his body.

"Thank goodness, Silver," Sonic sighed with relief. "You're here to save me. Quick. Use your telekinesis to remove these-"

"I'm sorry, Sonic," Silver answered. "We have no choice but to submit ourselves…"

"That is my answer," Dharkon responded, looking at the Sonic Primary. "Head to the Sacred Land. Prevent any intruders from breaking in."

"Yes, O Master of Darkness," the Sonic Primary responded, walking into the shadows and leaving Dharkon with Sonic's Fighter Spirit.

"You are rather unique from your friends," Dharkon noted, looming in closer at the confined hedgehog. "You were not kidding when you told the pink alien child to reawaken the Ragnarokk and save everyone, including yourself, through a made-up prophecy."

"There was nowhere to go," Sonic responded. "I would have rather died than sacrifice Kirby for my own memories…"

"Oh, yes. Your memories. I see how you managed to survive all these years," Dharkon sinisterly growled. The Lord of Darkness then noticed the scar on Sonic's left eye, inheriting the blue hedgehog a golden iris behind that scar.

"I see that my brother has left his mark on you," Dharkon chuckled, his shadowy black hand reaching out from the Lord of Darkness's eye. "Let us fix that…" Sonic gasped in pain as Dharkon traced another scratch on his face, this time on the right eye. The blue hedgehog gritted his teeth as he felt his swollen eye bleed with a glowing violet. He wanted to clasp his hands over his face and stop the intense suffering, but he was chained up nonetheless. The bleeding quickly stopped, and Sonic opened up his right eye. What remained of his emerald green orbs now remains the violet of Dharkon's raw power. All that Sonic had in his eyes were mismatching colors of darkness and light, side by side.

"Perfectly symmetrical," Dharkon growled, his black humanoid structure reaching out from his blue eye. The Seraph of Chaos placed his hand underneath the hedgehog's chin, looking at the new face of Sonic.

"I suppose I would kill you now, but where would that leave me without the ultimate lifeform? A perfect super soldier? My greatest creation?" Dharkon gazed at the captured hedgehog, his tendrils grinding in a strange friction against each other.

"If you really want be set free, accept that I am your lord, and kill those who dare stand a threat to us…" Dharkon told Sonic. The Fighter Spirit simply spat in the Seraph of Chaos's eye, refusing to take orders from a monster like Dharkon. The Lord of Darkness backed away from the confined speedster, blinking rapidly as to get the saliva out of him. Once things seemed to calm down for him, Dharkon levitated towards the poor hedgehog.

"Cocky and stubborn as usual, always running headfirst into conflict," Dharkon laughed inwardly. "Suppose you can save yourself from the experiment."

"Experiment…?" Sonic asked. Whatever the Lord of Darkness was going to do to the blue hedgehog, none of those words sounded good. Arriving behind Dharkon were the Mewtwo, Incineroar, and Ganondorf Primaries, each one of them carrying strange vessels. The Mewtwo Primary was carrying a capsule with glitching particles, the Incineroar Primary carefully held a bowl of a mercury, and the Ganondorf Primary held the most important ingredient of all: the bones of the first Arcusian dragon ground up into powder.

"According to legend, the skeleton of a dragon born in Arcus unlocks all the hidden potential to become a Dragosmo, the highest form of a mortal closest to the Almighty Father in their tongue," Dharkon explained while the three Primaries opened the capsules and poured the ground-up bone powder and the glitch with the mercury. "With seven Rainbolements, they can harness the abilities of fire, earth, thunder, life, air, water, and magic all at the same time. Before they had discovered stones that gave them these elementals, they feasted on the bones of their ancestors, believing them to be sources of this kind of power. However, they would not devour the first of their entire species for fear of becoming too greedy in its destructive and violent nature. They feared that whoever controls one who feasts on the bones controls the universe and many other universes out there. Now… I see you as the one to control…"

"Wait-wait-wait!" Sonic objected, trying to break free from his black chains. "I'm the fastest thing alive! You can't do this to me! I'm not ready to be your soulless servant!" Shifting the mixture in the pan of mercury, the Incineroar Primary offered it to Dharkon, who grabbed the metal pan with his tentacles. Carefully applying one quarter of the entire batch to each of the tips, Sonic's transformed eyes widened in fear as he looks at the shinier mixture.

"Oh no, it's the Metal Virus!" Sonic gasped, feeling signs of trauma from a familiar sort of liquid. "I had to deal with an epidemic of Zombots on my home planet before a cure had been found! You're not gonna change me again!"

"It is not the virus you feared before," Dharkon responded in his usually calm voice. "It is something… much, much worse…"

"It's not gonna work on me this time, Dharkon!" Sonic snarled, growling underneath his breath and biting at the Lord of Darkness. "You won't change me!" The four coated tentacles shot deep into the hedgehog's wrists and ankles, injecting him with the mercury mixture.

"The ground bones to inherit the most destructive nature of the Rainbolements, the glitch to boost you to your strongest form, and the mercury to help spread both of these key ingredients throughout your body quite easily," Dharkon responded. Shots of pain began spiraling out from the hedgehog's limbs to the rest of his body, changing him in ways you cannot imagine. Sonic wailed from the intense torture from the mixture mixed within his flesh, with his clothed hands and feet stained in blood from where Dharkon injected the poison. This was rather strange since Spirits are not intended to bleed. Regardless, the mercury, glitch, and bone powder started to mess with Sonic's mind.

Sonic tried to escape from the brutal infliction the poison was doing to him, attempting to claw his way out of the black chains. He began to cry and scream from the fate of nightmares that will traumatize him for life. He jerked his head back and forth while Dharkon and his only few Primaries simply watched. The pupils on the blue hedgehog's eyes shrunk as he was feeling the tormenting horror of being transformed into a monster course through his popping veins. Sonic's screams were drowned out by the coughing of blood, a few streams flowing down his stomach and dripping all the way down the bottomless abyss below him.

"You can run multiple times faster than the strongest ships built by man, and yet you cannot escape fate," Zavok's voice spoke from the Incineroar Primary. Sonic's Fighter Spirit was seeing things the more the mercury mixture spiraled into his brain, with the glitch reaching out to the hedgehog's skin and warping it in its twisted power. From what he saw, the Incineroar Primary twisted his body until he became the splitting image of the buff, red Zeti.

"A thousand times worse than what you went through on the Death Egg Prison, isn't it?" Infinite's voice echoed from the Mewtwo Primary, who slowly transformed into the masked jackal. Sonic slowly moved his eyes to the captured fighter, his wrists and ankles still stained with the tainted blood. He nailed his jawbone to his upper teeth, trying to hold in his cries for help. As the glitch was slithering around his hands and feet, blinking in and out of existence, the blue hedgehog began to cough up more blood, his heart beating faster and pumping up more blood to his brain and making him feel as though he was going to spontaneously combust. He was breathing rapidly as he could only look at the Ganondorf Primary, whose body simply dropped to the ground. Unlike the other two hallucinations, the Mephiles Spirit emerging from the Gerudo King's body was real.

"You cannot hold it back, can you?" Mephiles asked, his crystalline face close to the suffering hedgehog Spirit. "What Dharkon can do is beyond anything you can imagine. Go ahead and release all your agony. Cry for salvation. Because there is none here. All your friends have abandoned you. There is no light within the darkness. Nothing but despair remains, and you are going to suffer like the poor souls that did on this ancient planet!" Sonic roared in pain, his cries of anguish and defeat bubbling higher to the surface of blood pooling in his mouth until his throat got sore. His scars began to glow brighter as a new kind of warmth was overtaking him. His blue quills straightened upright when one last pulse of mercury blasted through his internal organs, weakening the poor hedgehog to the point that he can no longer control keeping his eyelids open for much longer.

"…Dharkon… when I break free from my prison, I swear I will get you for this!" Sonic growled, his body starting to glitch more like crazy as the poison flowed through his arteries.

"Do not even bother," Dharkon chuckled, floating away from the confined blue hedgehog. "Five years from now, the transformation will be complete, and you will be hanging there until then. Within a fortnight, the glitch will remove whatever love and compassion you shared with the Super Smash Brothers during these years. For the time being, enjoy what little you have left, for you will be forced to rot here until you forget everything… even your own name…" As the poison melded itself into Sonic's mind, the blue hedgehog started to see nothing but multiple colors of the Rainbolements, frightened by the glitch overlapping his memory. With one more flash of the mercury mixture buzzing through his skull, Sonic the Hedgehog quickly woke up, gasping as he tossed off bedsheets.

The blue speedster was panting like crazy, sweat dripping off every pore from his furry body. His heart was pounding in his chest, his breathing hard and fast. He placed his left hand on his face, rubbing it across his face. He knew what he saw in that nightmare. The torture, the pain, the agony, the bloody screams from his own lungs, and those eyes. Those violet pairs of eyes accompanied by a larger, blue eye with a golden slit iris. That all never happened… right?

"Trouble sleeping?" Fox asked. Sonic quickly turned his neck towards the Star Fox leader, who was sitting on another bed next to him. Ever since the blue blur had passed out, Fox took it under his responsibility to look after the fighter they had just rescued. Sonic himself, however, did not take that lightly.

"I warned you to stay away from me!" Sonic growled, his gloved hands coated with electricity. He fired charged blasts at the Star Fox leader, but he quickly managed to duck in time just to see Sonic tumble out of the bed. The blue hedgehog then felt the glitch spaz out through his body, stunning him again. Fox McCloud quickly jumped over the bed Sonic was resting in just to see his friend crawl and cower into a corner.

The blue hedgehog curled up into a ball, trembling in fear. He held his hands over his face, streams of tears dripping from his scarred eyes. Sonic hated tears before, and he never wanted to see anyone cry. Sometimes, the blue hedgehog often cried when he wanted to act tough like his mother said so, but now Fox saw the truth. The speedy devil reduced to this state was exposed at his weakest. His hidden emotions that were hidden before finally appeared just from the hedgehog's expressions, and he could not understand why.

"I don't know who I am," Sonic whispered, gasping in his sobs as he glitched again. "I can't remember a thing about myself…" Sonic then looked at the anthropomorphic mercenary, his seven elemental powers flickering between his gloved fingers.

"Your name is Ogilvie Maurice Needlemouse, son of Queen Aleena of Christmas Island on the planet Mobius and brother of Sonia and Manic," Fox McCloud answered. "You were always busy rescuing the planet from the evil scientist Dr. Eggman and his robot armies with the help of your animal friends, calling yourself Sonic the Hedgehog. You may not know me for the time being, but my name is Fox McCloud, leader of Star Fox and defender of the Lylat System." Sonic simply looked away, still crouching in fear. The hedgehog's tears dripped onto the wooden floor, and Fox noticed it very well.

"Please tell me what I saw wasn't real," Sonic whispered, slowly looking back on his peculiar fox friend. For some reason, he was starting to feel comfortable with the mercenary even though they had just met… almost as if he had known this adult before. The speedster slowly uncurled himself and kept his balance, finding it rather difficult to do so as he glitched again.

"I dunno what you went through for Dharkon to give you the Rainbolements and your amnesia, but it sure felt that way," Fox responded. "The rest of our buddies are off at the Lost Woods, trying to complete the Triforce in this sub-area."

"…Lost Woods?" Sonic asked, his triangle ears perking up in curiosity. "Triforce? Where am I?"

"We're in Kakariko Village just at the southwest of the Sacred Land found in Draxia, the World of Darkness," Fox responded. "You were out cold for ten years along with the rest of our friends, dreaming to be rescued. We didn't get the chance to save you in time. But it's alright. We won't make the same mistake again…" The amnesiac hedgehog slowly walked up to the Star Fox mercenary, flinching a bit from the glitch infecting his body. Wiping the tears from his eyes, Sonic sat down next to the older anthropomorphic fighter of the two, trying to make contact.

"What do we do now…?" Sonic asked, trying to decrease the flames on his fingertips. "Simply telling me my past isn't going to click in me. I need to find evidence of what I did years ago. If what you say is true about the nightmare I had, well… I guess we need to go after this Dharkon person right away."

"Atta boy," Fox McCloud cheerfully responded, rubbing the blue hedgehog's head and making it rather frizzy. "We can take a look around the town, see what we can find. Follow me." The mercenary got up from the bed, with the new and improved Sonic following after him. Once the two fighters walked outside of the house, they traveled through the village for a while.

"Fox… Was I someone else before I got these… powers?" Sonic asked, glitching as he turned his head towards the Star Fox mercenary.

"Oh yeah," Fox answered honestly. "You were the best out of all of us. You escaped the clutches of the Hands when we could not… Now I understand why Dharkon thinks you're special, therefore changing you into what you are now." Sonic sighed, touching the scar on the right side of his face and feeling how deep it cut. When Fox looked at the blue hedgehog fondling with his wounds, it reminded the mercenary of Wolf O' Donnell in a way. As things seemed to have calmed down, Sonic noticed an unlit quartz torch right next to him. Then, there was another torch, then another, and another, until he noticed two circles of unlit torches in the center of the town: twelve torches circling the outside and twelve more tightly packed together inside.

"Were those torches always there before?" Sonic asked. Fox noticed the circles of torches too, curious of what they were doing here.

"I have no idea," Fox answered. "I think it would be insane to light them at this point..." As Fox stepped back, he pressed his wrist on an Owl Statue right behind him, triggering some sort of effect.

Light the torches, they tell the time

With the hour of midnight and the minute worth a dime

Fox heard the Owl Statue speak in a riddle and rhyme, confused by what this strange being said. Sonic had no idea either, even if he wasn't diagnosed with amnesia.

"What did that thing say again?" Sonic asked. Fox slowly approached the Owl Statue again, tapping its base. Then, it spoke the riddle again.

Light the torches, they tell the time

With the hour of midnight and the minute worth a dime

"…The hell does that mean!?" Fox asked. "Minute worth a dime? How does this make sense?"

"Well, that petrified bird said to light the torches," Sonic responded. The blue hedgehog decided to test a little something. Using a little control of his powers, the glitching speedster ignited his hands with the Fire Rainbolement, trying to throw a simple fireball into one of the torches. It managed to land, and the torch the fireball landed in ignited in a blue flame. Sonic threw another fireball in a different torch in the same circle and igniting it. The fire in the previous torch went out as a result. While Fox was befuddled by this riddle, he noticed the blue hedgehog throwing fireballs into different torches, with the outer circle in blue flames and the inner circle in red.

"Maybe lighting the torches in different patterns might give us an answer?" Sonic asked, turning towards Fox. "There are 144 ways for me to uncover more about my past and maybe even rescue your- I mean… our friends in the process." Fox liked the little attitude coming back to the glitching hedgehog, and the Star Fox mercenary held out his fist.

"It's a fist bump," Fox told the blue hedgehog. "You do this all the time with us." Sonic slowly raised his curled-up fist, his gloved knuckles touching Fox's. The Star Fox mercenary then ran towards the torches, igniting his body in flames.

Sonic watched as Fox began lighting up the torches, trying to see what the Owl Statue meant by the riddle. Eventually, the Star Fox mercenary felt the ground shaking as soon as he landed, meaning he could have done something to trigger the torches. Emerging from the ground right at Sonic's feet was a small stairway. At the very top, looking down upon the two anthropomorphic fighters, was the Mii Brawler Primary. The captured fighter jumped off the stairway before it vanishes into the ground, doing flips in midair.

"Who is that?" Sonic asked.

"It's a Mii Fighter," Fox explained, pointing his blaster at the Mii Brawler Primary. "There are three classes in which Miis can be divided into: Brawler, Swordfighter, and Gunner. Each class has an Ultimate – a kind of chief – that leads and commands them, and sometimes they can add nicknames like the Wise to identify them from their heritage. Here we've found the Mii Brawler Ultimate Reborn."

"But why are you being so hostile towards him?" Sonic asked, unaware of what was going on as of what happened to him.

"Because he's a Primary," Fox responded. "In this world, Spirits are cast as Normal and Masters and are split into Novice, Advanced, Ace, and Legendary. Normals interact with physical objects at will and Masters are more powerful but require a vessel. The most powerful Spirits are Master Legendries, and they are the only one that can possess a fighter. Through a special Lock, the fighter can be cloned into Supporters."

"Shove it with that excuse of an information dump!" the Mii Brawler Primary growled, lightning generating from the captured fighter's fists. A partisan appeared in the Primary's hands, flashing with electricity.

"Never double-cross with the brave warrior of Zan Partizanne!" the Mii Brawler Primary yelled in a different voice, that which belonged to the Master Legendary Spirit of a Mage Sister that had straightened, yellow hair with square bangs and amber eyes that sparkled with electricity.

"Hey! We were just minding our own business!" Fox growled. "You better choose your next words carefully because I've got a badass-looking space gun here." The Mii Brawler Primary looked over at Sonic the Hedgehog, who was utterly confused by what was going on.

"So you are the glitch that escaped," the captured fighter responded. "Dharkon found it best to neutralize you and take you back to his little void." In Sonic's mind, he began to see the images from his nightmare, scattered throughout different points by the glitch infecting his body. The blue hedgehog cleared his mind, not having enough time to react as the Mii Brawler Primary began to thrust her weapon at him. Fox managed to grab Sonic and leap out of the lightning strike, pointing his blaster aimed straight for the Primary's face.

"What is going on right now!?" Sonic asked, glitching like crazy.

"I have no idea," Fox answered, ready to fire. "Whatever they want, it probably involves you." The Mii Brawler Primary twirled the partisan in his hands, ready to unleash a thundercloud above the two anthropomorphic fighters. Suddenly, just as she was about to release it, something wet and slimy hit her from behind. Because the mucus provided a good circuit for electricity, the captured fighter was stunned. Once the Mii Brawler Primary rubbed the back of her head, he pulled it out to see egg yolk mixed in with the clear whites and blue shell pieces. Before the captured fighter knew what happened next, he was sent flying after a massive impact on his back into Kakariko Village. Both Fox and Sonic noticed the figure that hit the Mii Brawler Primary… or two figures, to be precise.

There was a tall, bipedal bear with blue eyes and a large nose, walking around barefoot with yellow pants held by a black belt. He wore a necklace with a shark's tooth and a blue backpack, one that he put back the second companion with him for he had just swung her by the legs against the Primary's back. Now resting in the blue backpack of the bear was an orange bird with yellow feathers at her wings, sporting a triangular yellow beak and green eyes.

"Thought you two critters could use some help," the bear spoke with a cheerful and confident voice.

"Not really," the bird responded with a cocky but friendly tone, fluffing her feathers. "My friend here heard you two fighting with a Primary and thought it would be a great idea to charge in without a plan-" Before the bird was about to finish, lightning struck from the village, but the bear quickly moved away in time.

"You two could quit arguing and help, y'know," Fox responded, both he and Sonic running towards the Mii Brawler Primary that had emerged from some of the destroyed houses, his weapon fully charged. The bear quickly ran after the captured fighter too, with the bird inside the backpack pulling out her legs, twisting her body until the bear was lying on her back, and speeding off while coughing up the blue eggs.

Fox began glowing blue and launched the Mii Brawler Primary upward, slapping the captured fighter with his bushy tail. The Primary warped himself into the air, sending out small thunderclouds after the blue hedgehog. Sonic gasped as he dashed out of the way, unleashing bursts of water, as he knew liquids will stun the Primary, at the captured fighter. The possessed Mii Fighter dropped his weapon and fell to the ground, dazed out as Fox rapidly kicked the Primary's face. The captured fighter began punching and blocking the Fox's rapid attacks, and he quickly zapped Fox and stunned the mercenary. The bear and the bird caught up in time, and the bird quickly laid an egg-shaped grenade from the bottom of the blue backpack she settled in, exploding in the Mii Brawler Primary's face. As the captured fighter rubbed his glowing-violet eyes, the bear quickly grabbed his bird pal by her legs and slammed her right on the Mii Fighter, knocking out the captured fighter and winning the battle.

The tentacles of the Dharkon Lock had shattered into the red mist with the Zan Partizanne Spirit flying free and the foggy crimson lingering for a while. The red mist swirled around the glitching blue hedgehog, and the Star Fox mercenary and the bear-bird duo could only watch. Sonic's violet and golden eyes gleamed all the colors of the rainbow, and it was as though his memory was returning to him. The speedster started remembering his homeworld, his pals Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Rouge, Shadow, Silver, and all the crazy adventures they went through while mainly fighting against Dr. Eggman's robots and his stereotypical plans to take over the world through his own empire. All of those memories went through his mind, at least bringing who Sonic was back. The red mist then floated away with the Spirit, and Sonic's eyes stopped glowing. Fox ran up to the blue hedgehog, concerned about what the speedy devil saw.

"I know who I am and where I came from," Sonic sighed with relief. "I may not remember you guys yet, but I at least recall the wild journeys I went through to save my home planet on numerous occasions…" Fox hugged the blue hedgehog, relieved that he was back to his senses.

"Uh, we don't want to interrupt your alone time, but I got the feeling you're forgetting us," the bird cawed.

"They are?" the bear asked, looking above to see his friend's face. The bird simply pecked the bear in the forehead with her beak, shaking her head.

"Oh yeah," the bear spoke with sudden realization. "I'm Banjo, and this is my best pal Kazooie, a Breegull. She usually gives me advice on survival."

"That's what friends are for," Kazooie cooed, resting her wings on Banjo's head. "You can refer to us as Banjo-Kazooie. We don't mind."

"…Alright then," Fox replied. "I'm Fox McCloud. This is Sonic the Hedgehog." Banjo & Kazooie became rather surprised when they suddenly looked past the scars and recognized the blue rodent as though they had met before.

"THE Sonic?" Banjo asked, excited, running up to Sonic and shaking the hedgehog's hand. "Oh. My. Goodness. We've been hanging out in the racing days ever since you arrived in my homeworld! Good to see you, buddy!"

"Do… Do I know you two?" Sonic asked. Because the blue hedgehog could still not remember anything past his life on Mobius, this troubled Banjo & Kazooie greatly as the bear let go of the hedgehog's hand.

"I forgot to tell you… Sonic has amnesia, so he doesn't know any of that happening on your planet," Fox responded. The Star Fox leader and the blue speedster then noticed something off-putting about the bear and Breegull they could see.

"How long were you free from Galeem and Dharkon?" Fox asked.

"Oh, about ten years," Banjo answered.

"We've survived both the Movement of the Light and the Movement of the Darkness," Kazooie responded. "Two of our buddies went traveling around Draxia just recently, and I take it you've already found three of our companions…?" Fox McCloud's brain went completely numb, unable to believe that the bird and the bear survived. After five years of inactivity, they had just found another survivor.

"Piranha Plant, Joker, and the Hero. Of course!" Fox responded. "Yeah, we've found your buddies, and they're off traveling through the Lost Woods. They would probably lose their sense of direction, because… what else can you expect from a name like Lost Woods? According to Hylian legend, children who get lost there become children of the darkness. Skull Kids, to be precise."

"Geez, that's terrible," Banjo replied, rubbing behind his ears. "Let's hope we don't lose our friends there."

"Uh, guys?" Sonic and Kazooie asked in unison, pointing at the Mii Brawler slowly waking up. The three fighters (Banjo & Kazooie are classified as one) walked up to the ex-Ultimate Reborn pull himself together and slowly stand up. The red aura and purple eyes were gone, meaning the Mii Brawler was free from Dharkon's control.

"Where… Where am I?" the Mii Brawler asked, rubbing the side of his face.

"You're in the Sacred Realm, a place located in Draxia, the World of Darkness," Fox answered. The Mii Fighter then became rather confused by Sonic's scars and different eyes colors as well as the bear-bird duo with them.

"…Sonic? Who are those two?" the Mii Brawler asked.

"They're Banjo & Kazooie… I think," Sonic answered. Fox held out his hand for the ex-Brawler Ultimate Reborn to grab onto, pulling the Smasher on his feet.

"We're here to solve a riddle," Fox told the Mii. "If you know any secrets about these torches in Kakariko Village, that would be super."

"…Well, all I know is that the torches are laid out into some sort of clock," the Mii Brawler answered. "All we need to do is figure out the correct time to unlock whatever it is you guys are looking for and we're all set."

"We can help too!" Banjo called out. "What riddle… is it?"


Within the darkness of the Dharkon Void, the Seraph of Chaos watched the small band of Smashers through a magical mirror. The glaring eye noticed the scar-faced hedgehog communicate with one of the surviving fighters. Galeem, still chained up and trapped in his cage, chuckled at his brother's misstep.

"I'm betting your one mistake was letting the blue rat escape from his torture cell," Galeem maliciously growled, struggling to move as the chains binding his legs and impaling his wings held him down. "Now he's getting his memories back and starting to control his powers."

"Sonic will not live up to the point where he uncovers his entire past and controls the Rainbolements within him, for the Sacred Land is littered with dangerous traps and enemies," Dharkon answered, taking a good look at Banjo and his birdy friend Kazooie. "Plus, the more challengers there are, the merrier."

"I would not count your lucky stars yet because more friends means more combined strength to drag you down," Galeem objected. "Soon, you'll be left to burn in my light, and all will follow my rules of perfection." Tabuu, stilled confined with the Chains of Darkness and attached to the cage bars, backed away as best as he could when Dharkon floated near his brother.

"Not if they kill you first," Dharkon growled. "Once I let them have their way with you, I will be left to enslave them all. There is no way you can resist. Their time… is running out…"