Warning, suicide attempt and other multiple suicides.

22 - Immortality

Shadow glared at the odd plate of food, and poked it with a silver fork. Once he did, his blue partner quickly reached out and grabbed his hand to stop him from doing it again. Sonic shook his head at him while wagging his finger. Feeling a bit patronized, he scoffed at him. The blue hedgehog put his hand down while chuckling. "Sorry, but you can't do that."

"Says who?"

"Says me." He rolled his eyes. "You're gonna piss off the cooks. It's disrespectful to poke at it like that, and you have to eat it in one bite." He advised. His explanation was lost on the biohog, and he even felt a bit infuriated by such instructions.

"One bite? I don't even know what the hell this is."

"It's sushi, you weirdo!"

"I know what it's called, but I don't know what this thing is."

"It's a maki roll, I told you already. Rice and raw vegetables, you know the deal." Seeing the disapproving look on Shadow's face, he sighed and held up a pair of chopsticks. He held up a piece of his own sushi and made his other hand caress underneath Shadow's muzzle. He dipped the raw food in a small bowl of soy sauce. Then, he gently tilted Shadow's chin back a bit, while holding up the sushi. "Here, just open up. I'll feed you." The feeling of his peach warm hand holding his cheek ever so softly made him feel, a bit embarrassed. He was going to feed him? Didn't mothers do that to their infant children? His thumb was starting to get closer to his lips, pressing onto the bottom of his mouth. Sonic lowered his eyes, slightly smirking as he pushed the small portion of sushi closer to his face.

He could tell from the look on his face that he wouldn't stop grinning like that until he took a bite. With a silent huff, he looked somewhere else and slightly opened his mouth. He could feel the moist sustenance hit the surface of his lips, making him open up a little more with a disgruntled expression. The tips of the chopsticks and the entire piece of sushi entered his mouth. Once fully in, Sonic took his chopsticks away and awaited Shadow's response to the food. The black and red striped hedgehog slowly chewed, quite disturbed by the sushi's texture. Letting the crunch of vegetables waft another wave of flavor onto his tongue, he realized that it wasn't that bad.

It was just, weird.

He swallowed, looking down at Sonic's small plate where the sushi originally came from. "It was, alright."

"Heheh. Yeah, it's weird at first. But your second try'll be better, I promise." He smiled as he held up the chopsticks that were just previously in Shadow's mouth, and placed it in his own mouth. Not expecting that, Shadow's ruby eyes widened. He could ever so slightly hear him suck against the tips of the sticks where soy sauce was. He continued to smile at him like he did nothing wrong while slipping them out from between his now pink tinted lips. He twirled them in his hand and winked at him. "Soy sauce makes it better though."

"...You are one dirty kid."

"Kid? I'm almost twenty one, thank you very much."

"Yeah whatever, you know exactly what you just did."

"Hm? What did I do?"

"You're testing me again."

The hero laughed. "Heheheh!"

It's been two days already, and this was their fourth date. They had one at noon, and one in the evening. It was nice spending time together like an actual couple, and not just crammed in a bedroom for hours at a time. Sonic loved spending time with the cynical biohog, and Shadow enjoyed wasting the day away with his optimistic hero. They just clicked well with anything they tried, and most of the time they had completely different views on something. For example, Shadow never tried sushi and obviously wasn't that big on raw food. Sonic loved sushi, but he also liked the experience they just had.

Shadow never got out and enjoyed activities before, and Sonic loved introducing him to new things. Even if Shadow didn't like it, the experience itself made everything worth while. And sometimes, Shadow would purposely play dumb about certain things, just to have Sonic show him how something worked out. Why? Because he loved seeing how much Sonic smiled when telling him about something. He just liked to see him happy.

It was a win-win for the both of them, and they couldn't wait to do more together.

He watched the couple walk out from the sushi bar, with Blue leaning against Stripes like some love-stricken Japanese school girl. God they made him sick. As he leaned against the wall of the bar with his hat tipped forward, he glared at them as they walked passed him. It's already been two days, and the day of reckoning was almost upon them. Yes, the day after tomorrow would be his time to start it all. A full scale war, a world war. Yes, that'd be a wonderful sight. Soon, everyone would get what was coming to them. Things would finally stop turning, and he could end it all. Even if he failed, and even if Sonic did kill him, it wouldn't matter. He'd make it so that Sonic wouldn't be able to live, either.

But for now, he needed to think about the next little prank he was about to pull. He was already snickering to himself, this was gonna be a riot!

So without a word or a sound, he got off of the wall and began walking in the same direction as them. He saw them stroll into a spa. Guess they wanted to relax for a bit. Too bad for them, he was about to ruin their day.

As the sunshine was blocked from his hat, his sneer was hidden from the shade of his fedora.

He couldn't wait to see the look on his face.

Just as he quietly slipped into a backstreet, something stopped him. "Halt!" He heard an authority figure say. He groaned, he hated cops. He rolled his eyes and held up his hands while turning around slowly. He cleared his throat, feeling his chaos power adjusting and changing his vocal cords.

"Is there a problem, officer?"

The zone cop, a short canary with that stupid black uniform. Then again, the upgrade was actually kinda cool. They looked a lot better than those old dorky uniforms. On his chest was a small medal. He must be a rookie or private. "I don't believe I've seen you around before. In fact, you're the only face that I don't recognize, and I don't remember you showing me an ID these past couple of days. May I please see some identification?"

"Erm," Scourge lowered his eyes. He could hypnotize him, but someone would easily realize there was something wrong with him. They'd report it to ol' Robocop back in HQ, and they'd be on the look out for Scourge. He couldn't let anyone be on high alert right now, not yet. "I'm afraid I left it at home, sir."

The officer began taking a pair of advanced looking handcuffs from behind his back on his belt. "Then I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to-"

"Oops! My bad officer, I must have misplaced it." Scourge smirked before reeling his leg backwards. "'Cause my ID was right here!" He exclaimed as he swung his foot right into the soldier's helmet. The force of the kick was so strong, the soldier's helmet fell right off. The helmet flew and slammed into the wall. The canary was going to cry out in pain, until Scourge swiftly moved behind the bird and shoved the palm of his hand onto his beak. He was grasped by the arms, pulled roughly against the wall. The anti in disguise chuckled darkly as he squeezed his fingers on his face, drawing blood. "Now lookie what we got here," He said as he held up a gun in one hand, while still holding the canary with the other. "A silencer? In my line of work, people who carry silencers are usually up to no good. Unless, you guys don't wanna cause a panic, should you have to shoot any interlopers on the days of your perfect little festival. So you carry the silencers to either neutralize or kill, keeping it all under the rug of your innocent and oblivious citizens." He tilted his head. "Right?"

The canary only glared at him, unable to move as his hand was still holding him still. His mouth was free, but he knew better than to yell for help.

"But ya know somethin'? It wouldn't matter even if you did shoot me." Scourge suddenly said, letting the canary go and shoving him onto the ground. He held up the gun to his head and smiled. "Take a gander, and watch for yourself." He then took the gun off of it's safety, and pressed his finger on the trigger.

A tiny bang hit the bird's ears, as no one else heard the gunshot. With wide eyes, he watched the criminal blow his own brains out, and drop to the ground.

But even as dark blood splattered on the wall, it began to dissolved. He slowly got up, standing tall as his head healed damaged vessels, bone, brains, tissue and veins. Scourge cracked his neck, and turned his head around a little to make sure everything was in good condition. He tossed the silencer somewhere and put his hands in his trench coat pockets. He stepped in front of the bird's face and knelt down. "That's right. I can't die. But I bet that if I did that to you with the bottom of my shoe, you wouldn't come back," He leaned in closer, his face darkening eerily. "Would ya?"

With trembling green eyes, the canary tried backing away on his hands into the wall. A shadow was looming over him, and he looked up with fear.

He tried to scream but, it was silenced with the crunch of a boot falling onto his head.

No one saw the person who put a force field over them. No one saw the person who shot them down, or the person who tried to help them. Tails thought it might have been Sonic but, Knuckles said that wasn't possible. Knuckles may not have been a chaos user like the other two hedgehogs, but he could easily recognize it's energy after studying and being around chaos emeralds for so long. He could distinctively tell the difference between Sonic's energy or Shadow's energy. That force field, was neither. Tails asked the guardian several times if he was sure, and Amy even asked with skepticism. But regardless, Knuckles assured them that this was the truth.

Neither Sonic or Shadow was here, and neither of them made that force field.

Tails suddenly felt something weigh heavily on his head.

...They weren't coming back. They would never come back. They might have already been killed, they might already be dead, rotting away. They failed, and soon everyone else would meet the same fate. All of this was for nothing. They were all going to die soon, and Scourge was torturing them. He knew they would all crumble like this, like his used up toys.

He decided to keep these thoughts to himself, for now.

With the plane destroyed and their spirits down, the group traveled on foot out of Twinkle Park. Knuckles took the liberty of carrying Cream on his back, while Vanilla aided Rouge in walking just in case she needed someone to lean on. She was still limping, and her head was spinning. Cheese was sitting atop Amy's head, looking around as she walked. Tails noticed that the adult bunny was barefoot. Before they started walking, Vanilla kicked her heels off. She said they would just get in the way and make her trip if she needed to run. Amy's eyes sparkled when she did that. Speaking of the pink hedgehog, she broke the silence and looked over at the kitsune.

"What are we gonna do now?"

"Plan still hasn't changed." Tails replied. "We get to GUN HQ, and I'll work on getting the network back up to stop his control."

"But Tails, that's miles away from here. I mean, we can make it on foot no problem but," She frowned worriedly. "If we run into another crowd, we might not make it."

"..." Tails didn't say anything back to that.

Knuckles said something instead with a scoff. "It won't get to that."

Amy sucked her teeth at his retort. "You don't know that!"

"It won't."

"How do you know for sure?"

"Because no one here is gonna let that happen. I'm gonna keep fighting until I die, and I'm not gonna give up just because there's a few groups of pissed off murderous Mobians running around." Knuckles make a stoic expression, shifting Cream's position behind him. "There's already enough pressure, and I'm sure everybody here is worried sick about what may or may not happen from here on out. But that's not gonna stop me from protecting everyone. No offense girl, but besides you, there's children here. That in itself is driving me to push forward no matter what."

Even though Amy wanted to say something back, she kept her mouth shut for now.

"We've got a mother and a daughter here." He stated strongly. He glanced at Vanilla and Rouge who were looking back at him. "I know more than anything that she'll fight tooth and nail for Cream, so there's no reason not to give it our all too." He glared at Amy and grunted. "Got it? Quit worrying about crap like that and just keep moving!"

The girl bit her tongue and looked away. He was right, but that still didn't change the fact that they could get ambushed at any second. They were vulnerable, and they had wounded people that took up a majority of their group. Of course, he wouldn't listen. But, would it even matter if he did? They still wouldn't be able to do something. If an ambush came, they'd be screwed whether he listened to her or not. So she just kept silent and did as he said: Keep moving.

"Way to ruin a girl's day, red." Rouge commented while rubbing her fingers on her temple.

"What?" Knuckles growled at her sarcasm. Now wasn't the time.

"Before you bite my head off, just shut up and listen for a sec." She growled right back. After she did so, she caught Vanilla chuckling at their banter. "Anyway Pinky, why don't you tell fox boy what we saw before that twerp kicked us off the roof?" She said while narrowing her eyes at Amy. She caught on to what she was trying to say, nodding before looking over at Tails.

"Tails! When Rouge and I were smashing the radios, we saw a piece make some red sparks. We think they're all powered by electrical chaos energy." She started to crack a smile while holding her fists up excitedly. "Rouge told me Shadow said that if something were to interfere with the chaos user and a chaotic connection, it could hurt the user! Meaning, that if you hack into network thingy and bring it down, you can really hurt him!" She cheered. However, her smile was flat lining quickly. "But, he warped away to another zone. So he's gone and, we don't know if it'll still effect him."

The fox just closed his eyes, and he stopped walking. Soon, the group stopped walking as well once they realized Tails didn't look too good. The orange fox's mouth shuddered as he walked over to a nearby destroyed building, and held up a hand on the wall. He gasped, sucking a breath in. He held a hand on his stomach, coughing. Amy ran to him as the others watched. Vanilla's motherly instincts were telling her to run over there, and lay him down with his head resting on her thigh. But she had to make sure Rouge was alright, and she trusted Amy to take care of the boy herself.

"T-Tails! Are you okay?" She figured he needed to puke after everything they've seen, so she patted his back. "It's okay, just let it out and-"

"I can't do it." He whispered.

"What..? No, Tails, you're gonna be fine. I was just being a worry-wort! Don't pay it any mind-"

"I can't..." He punched his fist into the wall. "What if he never comes back? What if he killed him?"

"No! Don't think like that! Sonic is fine! That bastard couldn't have killed him! He'd have to get through Shadow first, and you saw how that went down!"

The twelve year old instantly cut her off with cruel logic. "Shadow lost against him. If it wasn't for Sonic snapping out of his dark form, and if it wasn't for Scourge's power weakening his body, he would have killed all of us if he wanted."

Amy made a sound of disappointment. "Tails, listen to yourself! You don't even sound like your-"

"Sound like what?!" He snapped and turned himself around, just to yell right in her face. His sudden release of emotion, made his voice heavy with hidden rage and evident aggression. "Like Sonic? Like Knuckles? I-!" He sucked in a deep breath, looking down at the ground as tears poured from his face. He didn't sniffle, he didn't even blink. He didn't shudder or turn away. He wasn't even shameful of his outburst in front of anyone. He didn't care. He didn't care about anything. "I-I..." He held up his hand and gripped his own hair. "Look, I'm sorry." He said with a voice that was a little less hostile. "But I can't be that optimistic kid anymore." He looked Amy in the eyes, and he caught the others slowly coming closer to them. "We've all lost it by now. The will to go on with," He held up his hand to the side, gesturing to the piles of corpses just a few blocks away. "This. You all act like everything's fine, like everything's going to be okay, when it probably won't." He turned his back towards them, facing the wall once again while looking down at his shoes.

Knuckles grunted at this. "Guess Amy really did mess up your head. You shouldn't be acting like this now. You can't shut down like this! Not when we're this close to stopping him." His purple eyes held compassion, but it also held a sense of duty. He knew for sure Sonic would hate to see his kid acting like this, he had to say something to get him back on track.

"Tch," Tails scoffed. "So I take the network from his control and bring it back on our side. So what?" He hissed as his eyes flickered red. He tilted his head to the side, revealing one of his know red swirling eyes to Amy. The girl in red gasped at what she saw, seeing that evil vortex take over her friend. Tails exhaled and shook his head. "Let's say it does hurt him. Heck, let's say it'll kill him. Let's say I finally did the deed, and he'd never bother us again." He started to chuckle. "So what!?" He yelled. "Almost everyone in Station Square is dead. Everyone in Twinkle Park is dead. The Chaotix is probably dead, the Babylon Rouges are probably getting killed right now!" He started to laugh as he brought both of his hands up to his head, pulling at his fur with a wide grin. "It all doesn't matter! Don't you understand!? We're all going to die here!" He screamed. "Sonic is dead! Shadow is dead! Our hero is finally gone, so what are we to do?! Nothing! We can't fend for ourselves! We're nothing without him! So why fight it!? Hahaha!"

The pink hedgehog held her hand up to her mouth, now at a loss for words. Her deep green eyes was moist, but she couldn't cry anymore. She was so tired of crying, that she couldn't even shed any tears at the sight of her friend losing his mind. Rouge wanted to say something, but she couldn't muster the strength to try and fight back against this sudden feeling of despair. Knuckles' fists were clenched, agape at Tails' spiral into madness. He was losing him, they were losing him to Scourge's power.

"Heheheh," Tails smirked. "What, you thought we were the only ones immune to this stuff? Of course not. Only someone as stupid as you would think so, Amy." They could all see red aura engulfing his entire body. "We're all going to succumb to him. One way or another, sooner or later, you're all going to lose what little ounce of hope you have left." His baby blue eyes, his caring smile was erased permanently. "It's called facing reality."

After a few seconds of silence, Tails watched Amy draw her fist back and shove her knuckles right into his left cheek.

"I'm sorry, let me get this straight," Zonic sighed gruelingly as he stared at the four soldiers acting like fools behind the one way glass. They were in the interrogation room, which was completely white. Why white? Well, it was a mental tactic Counselor Zouge suggested. A 'white box' tactic, which was a psychological torture method the warden used to practice. He's the one who recommended it to her, actually. The one way glass was a factor in this, as any person for questioning who was on the other side wouldn't be able to see the people questioning them. Now this part in particular was only used on people who couldn't behave, which is why four of his formerly missing men were behind the glass, in a walled off portion of the room. "While on patrol, Colonel Zector spotted my missing men wandering around the docks of our navy ships, and escorted them to HQ. But then they started acting unruly, forcing him to place them in the interrogation room of the prison. Not only that, but for some reason everyone's transmitters are offline, and they're all acting worse." He turned to his right to face Zespio and Zector, who both bowed in respect along with the other soldiers who accompanied them.

"Yes, lieutenant general." They said simultaneously.

The soldiers behind the glass were slamming on the glass, acting as if they were popping invisible bubbles or rolled on the floor. They were acting like complete animals. No pun intended. Zonic was already down here days ago from Zespio's request, but then the doctors turned him away, saying they had to check them out first and see if something was causing them to act like this. Like a chemical or drug.

"Ugh, Chaos.." Zonic groaned while pinching his fingers on the bridge of his nose. "Someone fetch Counselor Zouge for me, please."

Zector stood up tall while saluting his boss. "I've already checked by her officer, sir, and she should be arriving shortly."

The sound of a woman's pair of heels clicking against the smooth floors of their halls, alerted everyone's attention. Seeing a well proportioned figure with fat in all the right places, heads already began to turn. A white ivory bat with light blue eye make up, and light pink lip gloss with gentle aquamarine irises, walked down the hall of the investigation ward in their direction. She wore a beige business suit, with black heels and a white tie. Her cleavage wasn't hidden from anyone, and was proudly shown to all. A white dress shirt underneath was unbuttoned, and her tie was tucked in between her breasts.

Zonic caught Zector mentally fighting himself not to look, as were other male soldiers. All Zonic could do was roll his eyes. He thought he told that woman she had to cover some of that up before coming into work. No wonder therapy with most of the inmates went so well. "Counselor Zouge, I told you-"

"Hm? Told me what?" She asked absentmindedly. The crocodile nearly had a heart attack from her oblivious nature.

"..Nevermind." The hedgehog began to growl with frustration. "I require your assistance." He crossed his arms below his chest and looked over to the one way glass. "The missing men that I previously sent on a search party along with commander Zhadow, are completely out of their minds. I need you to try and get them to calm down, before we resort to physical measures."

She looked over at the one way glass, and frowned. Zonic had a whole hot-mess of these guys, and she could tell they wouldn't listen. The only female of the group looked like she had it the worst, making howls at the ceiling like she was a woof. She wasn't even a wolf, she was ironically a sheep. So most of her howls sounded more like loud 'baah's. Zouge remembered that she was one of Zonic's best females officers, and one of Zhadow's favorite comrades. He'd always pick her before anyone else to join him on a mission. Besides him, she was tougher than anyone else in his team. And here she was, 'howling' to the walls like a maniac. But it wasn't just her. All of the soldiers in this room were excellent officers, and great assets to No Zone. They all had families and spouses to go to, so they couldn't leave them like this. They all still had their helmets on, as Zector had mentioned they refused to take off their uniforms.

They weren't drunk, and they weren't high. Zector said they were clean of any kind of illegal substances. This was just them, acting insane. Something else was at work here, and she needed to pull some information.

The bat took a deep breath and nodded to Zonic. That she was ready, and she wanted to get closer to talk with them. Zonic understood what that meant, and moved away to give her some space. Zector went to the wall near the one way glass, where a small button was installed. He pressed it, and saw a layer of the glass lift up into the ceiling. The one way glass was gone, and now there was only the surface of a normal two-way reflection. There were hidden cameras, microphones and speakers all throughout the room, so they would be able to hear her and they would be able to hear them. The commander stood by the rest of his men, while he allowed the counselor to work her magic.

"Talking normally to them won't do a thing. I have to use a more extreme method, if that's alright with you, sir." She said cautiously before pulling down her white undershirt, pushing aside her tie.

"Do whatever it takes." He ordered.

"Yes, sir." Zouge replied loyally as she pulled out two tiny metallic stress balls. They were smaller than her palm, even punier than normal meditation balls. Everyone in the room knew exactly what she was going to try to do. "All of you are acting really silly. Don't you realize you're all making yourselves look like idiots?" She asked loudly, making sure the sound of the stress balls grinding against each other was faint. "You're embarrassing yourselves in front of the lieutenant general. You all could lose your jobs, you understand?" She asked with the exact same tone as before, if not gentler. It was as if her voice was growing softer, and the sound of the grinding metallic balls were getting louder.

In minutes, the officers behind the glass stopped all of their movements. They all paused, and pointed their attention directly at her.

"Commander Zhadow would be ashamed of you four." She whispered, hitting an emotionally vital portion of their brains. "What would he say to this?" She wondered aloud. Now, they would remember anything of what happened before they all went missing, and before they were all separated from each other. Before tragedy went down. She was breaking down their walls, as her voice seemed to disappear, and the sound of meditation balls grew even louder than silence. "I wonder, what happened to him? What happened to all of you? Tell me." She pleaded in a delicate voice, gripping her fingers against the metal objects harder.

They were crumbling. Some of them were falling to their knees, and some were crying. Zonic saw them put their hands up to their head and take off their helmets. They were dropped or tossed on the floors, revealing their faces. A sheep, a lion, a mouse and a lynx. Zector and Zespio glanced at each other, before looking back at the one way glass. The sheep was crying, covering her face with one arm, while the others either cried along with her, or looked ashamed of themselves. They looked as if they had given up. Something awful happened to them.

Whatever the problem was, it was gone. They were back to their normal selves. Zonic held in a sigh of relief, as he didn't want to jinx the situation.

Zouge smiled as she looked over her work. It was working. "I taught myself a new method of hypnosis. It helps people fall out of madness, or trances. You all were under some kind of spell, but I broke you away. Are you able to talk now?" She asked nicely as she stopped swishing the balls in her hand. She placed them back in the bra of her chest, and held her hands behind her back.

Zonic then stepped in. "Are you all alright?" He asked with genuine concern. "Why don't we take you all to the Soft Room?"

"No." They heard one of them refuse. It was the sheep, Zhadow's captain. She slowly shook her head, her face stained with not just tears, but old blood and dirt. The others had similar stains on their faces, and a few faint blotches of unknown substances on their uniforms.

"We, can't go back." Another said. That was the lynx, this time. He was sitting next to the sheep, quietly crying next to her.

"..?" Zonic squinted his eyes. "Go back to what? None of you are making any sense. Please, let us help you." He walked a few steps closer. "You remember us, right? Me, Zonic?" He pointed to himself. "Remember, you used to pick on me when I was a little younger?" He said fondly as he remembered the times they all teased him for being the weakest in the force. Once they saw the same potential Zhadow saw in him, they gave him hope that he could be better. While Zhadow was the brunt of his reformation, they helped him along the way too. "You used to call me 'Over-Achiever', instead of Overseer because I was a workaholic. Only you four, and Zhadow were trusted with knowing who I really was."

The second he inched closer, the sheep screamed and backed away into the wall while kicking.

This made Zonic wince and rear his body backwards from the glass. "Chaos." He uttered. "Please, calm down-"

"No! You don't understand!" She cried, violently shaking her head back and forth. "We're all done for! We're all going to die, one way or another! W-We all have to face reality, commander!"

Zonic just, couldn't understand what that meant. He turned to Zouge for help, but she didn't understand any of this either.

The lion pulled over his own helmet, while the mouse took everyone else's and sat the four head garments together on the floor. As they all huddled by the circle of helmets, the mouse began pressing buttons into them. After shifting his mouth from side to side, the lion sadly looked up to his boss. "We weren't strong enough, sir. We're sorry, but we aren't strong enough to deal with this either. We have to do this." As the big cat said this, the sheep, lnyx and mouse all faced their commander one last time, a familiar red glinting in their irises. "It was fun, working for you and Zhadow. Watching you grow up. Goodbye, commander." They stood up together in unison, and placed their helmets back on with them constantly flickering and beeping. Their arms were hooked together like friendly strangers at a campfire. Despite the size, despite the gender and despite the species, they all joined together like the best of friends.

They held up their arms, and saluted them all.

The helmets, were starting to smoke and burn. They were turning red, just like Zonic's control gauntlet from the other day.

His eyes shrunk.

"Get that damn door open right now!" He hollered.

Everyone locked eyes with their commander in fear. Zector huffed and made the first move to rush to the door of the glass. He ran to the door that camouflaged itself with the rest of the glass, which stood by a control panel. Zector pressed the necessary code, and the door beeped. It began to push open automatically, and he mentally prayed to himself that he wasn't too late-

...

...Their heads exploded.

Blood and chunks of brains and tissue of muscle meat, flew alongside shards of glass.

Zonic, Zouge and Zector were thrown away by the force of the explosions. Blood splattered onto them, as one of the decapitated heads rolled across the floor. The helmet nearly blown into pieces, with almost nothing left of their face intact. It was at Zonic's foot, the remains of the head of the mouse. With eyes that were far too terrified to react, Zonic steadily sat up, and looked down below him.

That was one of my men.

That...used to be my...

Something...is dreadfully wrong...

He, couldn't react to this.

He couldn't scream, he couldn't cry or yell...he..

...

With a dark expression on his face, Zonic was escorted to his office.

The warden heard of the incident immediately and put the entire building on lockdown, but made sure to keep this away from the public. It'd put everyone in a panic, which would cause even more damage to everyone in No Zone. Zector and Counselor Zouge were taken to the medical ward, but Zonic refused to go. He just whispered that, he just wanted to be alone in his office. Zespio personally took him there, and even locked the door before leaving so no one would bother him.

Now in solitude, Zonic just sat there in his chair, looking at nothing.

He just, witnessed a mass suicide.

By his own men, no less. People who he knew, trusted and valued more than soldiers. They were his friends, too. Unlike Zhadow, they were actually dead now.

The fuck could he do about that? What was he supposed to do? The entire HQ was in a panic, and people were demanding how and why it even happened. But he couldn't even give those answers. He had no idea why they did that. Before they died, he saw their eyes glow red, which was Scourge's power but, was that the sole reason as to why they killed themselves? They sounded as if they were tormented, that they couldn't go on with living free from his control. It was like, they felt they had to die. That even if they broke control from him, more misfortune would happen.

That son of a bitch made it so that they couldn't go on with living an ultimatum. He made it so that they couldn't keep living for him, or against him.

What did he do? What did he make them see?

Why?

As a few emotionless tears dripped from his face, Zonic stood up and walked to the Room of Realities. He unlocked the door, and stepped inside. He closed the door behind him, and glanced up at the monitors full of static. He felt that he would get some kind of answer from them. He didn't know why but, he just needed some kind of distraction. Even if it's as dumb as staring at some broken TV's.

Then, it turned black.

"..!"

Every single monitor turned black, and words began appearing on the screens at the same time.

After blinking a few times, Zonic looked all around. All of the monitors were viewing the same thing.

I_WILL_AID_YOU_OVERSEER

Zonic clenched his teeth angrily. How the hell would some stranger know he was an Overseer? "Who are you?" He seethed. "Are you the anti-Sonic? Show yourself!"

I_WILL_REVEAL_MYSELF_ IN_DUE_TIME_UNTIL_THEN_YOU_MUST_COMPREHEND_EVERYTHING_I_SAY

With a snarl, he stayed quiet shut for now.

I_SEE_WHY_YOU_WOULD_IGNORANTLY_ASSUME_THAT_I_AM_THE_ANTI-_SONIC_BUT_I_ASSURE_YOU_THAT_ISN'T_THE_CASE

THE_ENCRYPTIONS_ON_YOUR_MONITORS_WERE_VERY_POWERFUL_BUT_LUCKILY_FOR_YOU_I_CAN_READ_CHAOTIC_CODE

"Why are you helping me?" He asked curtly.

THAT_INFORMATION_IS_NOT_OF_ANY_REVELVANCE_TO_YOU_FOR_NOW

NOW_PAY_ATTENTION

IN_EXACTLY_ONE_MINUTE_AND_THREE_SECONDS_AN_ANTI_MOBIAN_WILL_CALL_YOU_AND_PROVIDE_VITAL_INFORMATION_ON_THE_ANTI-_SONIC

NO_ONE_KNOWS_ OF_MY_EXISTENCE_AND_THEY_DON'T_EITHER_THEY_ARE_NOT_CONTACTING_YOU_ON_MY_BEHALF

SEE_TO_IT_THAT_YOU_LISTEN_WELL

GOODBYE_FOR_NOW_OVERSEER_AND_GOOD_LUCK

And with that, peaceful images appeared on the previously broken monitors, while the rest went back to their original feed. As Zonic racked his brain to try and figure out who that was who messaged him, he only came up short with nothing. Who the hell was that, and why were they helping him?

Then, another video showed up on Mobius Prime's monitors.

And how the hell were people hacking in on his universal satellite feeds?

The person who was on camera, looked strikingly similar to Miles Prime. With that odd red and gray uniform and that grey hair, that only meant one thing. This was the anti Mobian the mysterious messenger told him about. It's been exactly a minute, and three seconds. Speechless, Zonic just allowed the fox on the other side to speak.

"Finally, I'm online. Lieutenant General Zonic? I need a word with you."

END - 22

That's right.

Scourge is..."immortal", Tails succumbed to madness, and Zonic's missing men committed a gore-filled suicide.

At the very end, someone contacted him. Two people, in fact. The first person said they weren't Scourge, and mentioned that no one else knows who they are or that they even exist. How interesting.

Hope you enjoyed, I'm sorry for making you wait. My depression is killing me and is making everything I do very difficult and slow. Please forgive me for the bullshit sob-story excuses, but that's the only reason why I haven't updated. I wanted to update it, but I just didn't find any motivation to do anything. It's hurting me to even write this author's note, because I just want to stay in bed and sleep for days and days.

I'm working as hard as I can on the next chapter, please be patient if I once again fail to update next week.

Here's the bonus, but it's only one.

1. Scourge is "immortal" and can't die. Sonic, well...Isn't, and can die almost just as easily as anyone else.

Please review, once again, they mean the world to me. Makes me a little happy even if it's just one.

Be safe, have a good day or night.