Null looked toward the horizon as his boat sped across the sea, the salty air stinging his lungs. He was headed into the unknown for an island that has not been charted and was largely uninhabited. Some may say this mission was impossible, that no man could ever track down an island the size of a small town that has no known coordinates, in a world mostly covered in water. Null was not some people.
For people who had forgotten, Null was not born in this world. In fact, Null was not born at all. Within their experiments, the Nazi's researched fusing two entities into one entity, calling it Versch, short for Verschmelzung which is fusion in German. Though much research went into this program, one problem arose: fusing the minds. Though the people appeared to be one, their minds were separate due to anything that differed between them. If one of them liked red and the other hated it, it caused a tear in the mind. Cognitive dissonance, but amplified a thousand fold. Soon after, this advanced technology was put into use by the military. Its use here was incredible as it could eliminate multiple targets into a single one and instantly drive them insane, though it was incredibly expensive and the technology was large and heavy.
Null was created when three people were combined: Shadow, a robot from the future in another timeline who called himself espio, Zero, a robot from the same future as shadow, but was shadow's rival, and shadow, a hedgehog with a gun and a motorcycle. When they were fused into one, something that had not been examined before was realised: if the people who were fused had little to no cognitive dissonance, they may be able to stay sane. The three people combined were all ruthless edgelords who shared ideals. This led to them becoming an entity that not only had all of their skills combined, but also their power amplified.
Null had the artillery and speed of shadow the hedgehog, the knowledge and sword that Zero possessed, and the ninja skills and concealed weaponry that came from Shadow (Espio). He also possessed the metal frame from zero and shadow who were robots, protecting him from virtually all harm. Added to this was his possession of all seven chaos emeralds. His powers were beyond the comprehension of the human mind.
Despite all of this, he had one issue: the three minds. Though they were all similar, each one had its own ideals and loyalties. While Zero may be loyal to the resistance movement of his time, shadow was opposed to it and loyal to his master, X, who was Zero's enemy. Shadow the hedgehog was loyal to himself, but followed orders from the president, who was not trusted by either zero or shadow. This could lead to problems as they continue as one, because if they begin to stray from their union, they will go insane and everything will be lost.
Null had been searching the pacific ocean for days, and had found nothing. He looked out at the ocean, feeling hopeless, but not showing it. Land could not be seen anywhere and he couldn't trace where he was in the ocean. He grunted and sat back. Suddenly he felt a force pulling away from him, as if someone was reaching inside of him and pulling something out. One of his chaos emeralds floated out of him and into the air in front of him, glowing. As soon as it started, it stopped and fell to the ground on the boat.
Null began to feel angry, and picked up the emerald, squeezing it as tight as he could. The emeralds were not breakable as they were made by a god, so don't worry about him cracking it. Null stared down and noticed something interesting. As he squeezed the emerald, the air around his hand began to distort. Null stopped squeezing and it instantly went away. He grabbed the emerald with both hands and squeezed as hard as he could.
The boat began to shake as Null started to lift off the ground. The air around him began to distort with a yellow glow. He could feel the power of chaos control in its purest form begin to rise inside of him. His hair floated behind him, seemingly defying the laws of gravity. He seemed to exist within another plane of existence, allowing him to ignore the laws of the universe.
Speaking of planes, guess who ran into Null at this time. Tails was flying along in his plane across the ocean, not paying any attention to anything around him. His plane rammed straight into Null at full speed, causing the edgelord to drop his emerald into the ocean. Tails landed his plane nearby and flew over to Null, who was still in shock.
"Sorry mister, I didn't see you there!"
Null shook his head, putting on the face of a furious man, "You IDIOT, do you know what your worthless life has burdened me now? The ocean here is 12,000 feet deep and now my emerald is floating down to the bottom of it."
"I'm sorry, I'll find you another one!"
"Shut up, degenerate. That was a chaos emerald, a damn chaos emerald. There isn't another one like it!"
"Oh, I've seen sonic use those before, he can get super powerful!"
"Shut the hell up you twat! I need that emerald to find the master emerald and it's protector! Now I'll have to face the fury of the president!"
"Wait! I know how you can get it back! The emeralds give you protection from most situations, so if you use another one to protect yourself from the ocean pressure, you can retrieve your other emerald!"
Null was dumbfounded, he perceived tails as an idiot but I guess he was kind of wrong. He pulled out another emerald, grunting from the pain it caused him. He held it to his head and began to feel more powerful. Looking down into the ocean, he realised that he would also need protection from the salt crystals that instantly grew onto anything within the ocean. He took out another emerald and spawned a forcefield around him. He then dove at an incredible speed down into the depths.
The water around him began getting darker and darker as the light was filtered out by the water. Using the chaos emeralds, Null was able to light up an area ahead of him, but he was only able to see a few feet ahead. He could feel the pressure of the ocean increase within his brain as he came closer and closer toward the center of the earth. Farther and farther he went down, still not seeing the emerald. It may be possible that the emeralds themselves ignore the laws of gravity, as in they fall down through water just as they fall through air, ignoring the higher density of atoms in liquids. That would explain how it was able to fall down so quickly.
Null felt himself nearing the bottom of the ocean when he saw it. The entire bottom of the ocean was covered in an extremely thick layer of salt. Within the salt he saw there were the crystalized remains of the fish in the ocean. Everything from whales to giant squids were preserved by the salt at the bottom of the ocean.
Suddenly, Null had a flashback. He was within what appeared to be an oil rig in the middle of the ocean. Looking down, he noticed he was Shadow the Hedgehog. He remembered now, he was on a mission for robotnik's uncle and Maria. They were both living within a space station, so Shadow was sent out for the missions they needed.
Today, they would need a special modifier circuit that could only be found in US oil rigs. Robotnik needed this for his space station in order to modify the oil used to fuel it and make it more fuel efficient. Shadow stealthily ran through the facility and grabbed the circuit. His mission was complete, but he sensed danger. There was screaming outside the oil rig. At this time, Shadow wasn't the edgelord he was now. In fact, he was actually sort of a nice guy. Feeling concerned, Shadow ran outside onto the oil rig platform and looked around for the source. It looked as if a man had fallen into the ocean. Shadow readied himself to jump in to save him, but he was abruptly stopped by a guard.
"What are you? Crazy? Don't jump into that water!"
"What? Why not?"
The guard pointed to the man who was now covered in salt crystals. The man let out one more blood curdling scream as his lungs were crystallized. Defeated, the man began to sink into the waters, never to be seen again.
"W-what happened?" Shadow asked.
"You haven't heard? North Korea used quantumly condensed salt and dropped it into the ocean. Since the salt was so dense, it caused the entire water body on earth to turn into toxic, crystallizing fluid. As punishment, the US government made all of the citizens from North Korea jump into the water their government had made. It seems like it only crystallizes on carbon though, so you're safe on boats and stuff."
The guard looked at Shadow, and the image began to fade away. Null reawoke, floating lifeless at the bottom of the ocean. He regained control and looked around. He needed to find that emerald. It was then that he saw the emerald, perched on top of a sunken ship. As he approached, a dark entity appeared before him. It was HIM.
"Buffoon hello you there!" Kim Jong Un, incarnated as a monster made entirely of salt, said, "die you ready?"
"Can it, fatty."
Kim began to cry, "Why insult me you, I kill you!" With that, he began to scream, the various salt covered creatures floating toward him and assembling into a giant humanoid monster, "bye good!"
Null flew backwards as the towering creature swiped it's arm across the seafloor, causing a wave of salt to fly up toward him. Null wasn't sure his shield would protect him from solid salt, and he didn't want to take any chances. Kim grabbed the chaos emerald and swallowed it, making him glow with power. Null shot energy blasts from his guns at the creature, but nothing seemed to dent him.
Kim threw one of his monster arms at Null, which was dodged. The arm flew right back at him as if it were a boomerang, leaving a trail of salt floating down toward the seafloor behind it. Null needed a strategy to take this guy out. He dodged another attack as he began throwing more and more crystallized bodies. He couldn't do a physical attack, since it would instantly kill him. He would need to use his guns and hit him at a weak point. It was then that he realised that the monster was using the chaos emerald to amplify his power exponentially. He kept sucking up more and more salt bodies in order to get bigger and bigger.
"To kill US, I make body of salt and throw myself into ocean in 2034 or somewhere near year. I not strong enough, though. But not I have crystal glowing inside me and I have the power I need to kill US!"
Null grunted and pulled out another gun, spraying him with bullets. What was a natural repellent of salt? Then he got it! If he could somehow trap the creature cryogenically within a solid, he would be able to imprison him forever. He could tap into the power of the earth in order to conceive liquid nitrogen in order to freeze the water around him. Wait, he wasn't this smart, where was this coming from?
Suddenly, tails voice appeared in his head, "I am feeding you thoughts through my remote neural signal interpreter. Just use the emeralds to change the properties of the nitrogen around you and cryogenically freeze the creature."
Null nodded and began concentrating on isolating the nitrogen in the water around him. He was able to make a layer of liquid nitrogen around the creature and it began to freeze him. Kim was not going to take this, though.
He began to punch at the ice, breaking the thin layer that had already formed, "You think you kill me? Don't force me laugh! My power infinite!"
"You have no idea what it takes to be infinite!" A red light appeared around Null and a brief vision of a distorted entity appeared in his place. The liquid nitrogen began to solidify and Kim screamed as he was frozen solid. As Null looked at the block of solid nitrogen, he noticed the salt was dissipating and the body of Kim Jong Un was the only thing that remained. Null called upon the emerald, and it pierced its way through Kim's chest and flew out to Null. He grasped the emerald, then closed his eyes and controlled all of the emeralds simultaneously. This caused him to fly up nearly instantly to the surface, right next to Tails.
"Ugh, thanks a lot, loser."
"Don't mention it, now let's go to Angel Island!"
"What do you mean 'we'? I work alone, kid."
"You need me, I know where the island is."
Null thought it over and grunted, giving in. He climbed into the back of the plane and they took off. Balance. He would need to have perfect balance if he wanted this mission to be a success. If he didn't have balance, he would likely go insane and the fate of the world would be lost.