Chapter 6: Where Angels Tread (Last Part)

Ernak had become Chieftain and leader of the Angel Echidna tribe for a reason, and it wasn't the fact that he could arm-wrestle anyone on the island into submission. Brute strength would only have gotten him through one-third of the Test of Leadership - no, Ernak's main forte was his brains. The only way to truly pass the Test was to outwit all the other candidates, and he'd done so with exceptional cunning.

That was the reason why Ernak had lied to the slimy raccoon about ordering his men to hunt down and kill the hedgehog and cat like the self-claimed GUN agent Pretorious had insisted. It didn't matter that Ernak's own son had confirmed that Pretorious knew all the correct agent ID codes that had been sent to the echidnas when that GUN emissary attempted to set up communications between the Angel Echidnas and the military a few years back. Ernak had a gut feeling about the raccoon, and it told him not to trust a word he said. The real order the Chieftain gave was for the hedgehog and the cat to be captured and brought to him unharmed. Ernak wanted answers.

And so Silver the Hedgehog found himself on his knees inside the central temple at the heart of the main citadel of Marble Garden. It hadn't really been his choice of pose, but when a pair of mighty spiked fist pushes you down, you stay down. Sitting in the obvious seat of power before him was an ecidna who, judging by the amount of gold jewely was probably the leader. For a moment Silver was sure he'd arrived thousands of years in the past, but then he noticed the only slightly outdated row of computer terminals off to the corner of the lavishly decorated chamber. Okay, so they weren't that far in the past after all.

"There is a reason why I should not have you put to death, hedgehog," said Chief Ernak. "Please tell me what that reason is."

From the guy's penetrating gaze, Silver got the idea that this wasn't someone he should try lying to. According to Blaze, Silver's eyes twitched a lot when he consciously lied. She was probably right about that. This was definitely not the time to find out.

"My name is Silver the Hedgehog. I work for GUE," said Silver. "Me and my, er, partner travelled here in pursuit of a criminal called Dr. Pretorious. We don't know why he's here or what he's after, but whatever it is, it can't be good. We really didn't mean to disturb you or your people in any way, your Higness. Um...could I ask just one quick question?"

"Go ahead," said the Chief, whose poker-face was one for the record books.

"What year is this?" Silver knew it was the wrong question to ask even as he said it, but he couldn't help himself.

Ernak looked to his advisor, who shrugged. "The year is twenty-one ten. Fourteenth of March. If I were the suspicious type, which I am, young hedgehog, I might believe you delivered a very crude insult towards our fair society. But look at you! Timid, afraid of what fate lies in store for you. You don't look the type for bravado, so the more likely reason for your question must be that you really don't know. How very strange."

"I'm sorry, your Highness," said Silver. Why did that date sound familiar? Familiar and ominous. Something happened today, didn't it? Something very bad.

"Throw him in a cell," Ernak commanded to the guards surrounding Silver. To his second-in-command and sole heir, he added "We can get to the bottom with this one later. I'd like to hear what the raccoon has to say about all of this right now."

"That sounds wise, father," said the obedient son while the white hedgehog was dragged away.

"You keep up to date. What is the meaning of this 'gee-you-ee' he mentioned?"

Ernak's son thought about it. "Well," he finally said, "I think that's the new acronym that the president of the Reunited Nations suggested for GUN if they ever manage to get the rest of the disagreeing countries to hand over their military forces to the united global army. 'Guardian Units of Earth' is what she suggested. With the Neo Soviet stance remaining what it is, I doubt it'll ever happen, father."

"How very strange. I have no doubt that our visitors are delusional madmen, but which one of them is telling the truth."

"We could just save time and throw them both in the volcano," the son suggested somewhat jokingly.

Ernak laughed.

-

Dr. Pretorious watched the children play in the courtyard outside the large stone building that served as the local daycare centre, before their matron appeared and ushered the little echidnas indoors.

Such a terrible tragedy. Most of them would certainly die during the first tremours, as the heavy stone buildings began to collapse, in about...(Pretorious checked his pocked watch again)...three minutes. A lesser man would probably have felt the knowledge as a terrible weight on his conscience, but Pretorious knew that he was merely witnessing history. Attempting to interfere would mean he was a sentimental fool with no respect for the greater matters at stake here.

A shadow blotted out the sun. Pretorious squinted to see a group of echina guards standing over where he lay. Impeccable timing.

"Come with us," said the apparent leader of the brutes. "Chief Ernak wants a word with you."

Dr. Pretorious smiled. "That may well be the case," he said, "but since he's about to have a great deal more to worry about, I don't see any need to distract him."

The ground vibrated...

"You're coming with us whether you...ow...what? Ah...ARGHH!!!"

The scientist grimaced slightly as every echidna around him started screaming out in pain, clutching their head in distress, and losing balance. "Tsk, tsk" he said under his breath, as he got up, stepped over the writhing echidna and headed towards the edge of town at a brisk pace. Those satellite photos in the history books really came in handy, especially for plotting out the safest route to the Master Emerald shrine now that the tremours were starting to really wreck the place.

-

The electromagnetic radiation caused by the solar flare had just reached the area of space where the red Chaos Emerald floated. Amplified and distorted by the power of the Emerald, the radiation penetrated the atmosphere, being forcibly channeled along the same wavelength that the Emeralds interacted through. When the particles of energy reached Angel Island, the Master Emerald responded by going haywire.

The force that kept the floating island situated high above the ocean was interrupted erratically, causing the entire mass to shift just enough to set off a series of damaging quakes. For the Angel Echidnas, each one attunted naturally to the emanations of the Master Emerald, it was as if a neverending explosion of painfully loud noise filled every inch of their bodies.

Scientists studying what would be known as the Chaos Anomaly would calculate that the odds of the event happening were inifinitely remote. If the Chaos Emerald in space had been only a few metres further away, the radiation would've missed Angel Island by miles and dissapated harmlessly.

-

Silver had a brief flashback to when he and Blaze were stuck inside Eggman Nega's collapsing pyramid. It was just like then. If he hadn't had his psycho-kinesis for protection, he would've been crushed to death when the massive stone ceiling of his cell came crumbling down.

Balancing the ceiling with one thought and bending the steel bars aside with the other, Silver made his escape from the dungeons beneath the central temple. Someone like Sonic the Hedgehog would probably have raced to the exit too fast to be touched by the falling rocks. In Silver's case, the only way was to make his escape upwards, by catching the falling rocks and positioning them beneath himself to climb to the top of the building as it fell down all around him. Eventually, the hedgehog turned gray with dust and rubble saw daylight.

Silver found himself near the top of what was left of the temple. From here he got a clear view of the devastation taking place all around Marble Garden. Those echidnas who could manage it ran for their lives, while the rest lay writhing on the ground where they'd fallen, screaming out in pain.

"The Chaos Anomaly," Silver said to himself, feeling numb.

Compared to exciting bits of history like when Shadow the Hedgehog defeated the Jet-Black Arms invaders, the story of the greatest natural disaster that'd ever taken place on Angel Island hadn't caught too much interest from Silver when he learned about in in school. Watching the horror unfold before his eyes, he wished he'd paid a lot more attention as a kid, and had given the tragedy the respect it deserved.

Silver leapt off the edge of the tall building and flew as fast as he could over the dying city. Now he knew why Dr. Pretorious had come here, and what the villain was after. Silver was determined to reach the Master Emerald shrine before him.

-

Dr. Pretorious tapped the side of his glasses, causing the glass to turn dark enough for him to be able to stand the excessively bright glow of the Master Emerald. Odd that this particular area was free of even the slightest vibration while the rest of the island was practically breaking apart. Certainly convenient. The doctor would hate to have to worry about those huge Stonehenge-eque pillars that made up the rebuilt shrine.

The apperance of those brutish thugs right before the Chaos Anomaly began suggested that the Chief hadn't trusted Pretorious's word after all. How disappointing. The father-daughter duo were almost certainly on their way here. Well, no point in stalling then. Time to do what he came here for.

Dr. Pretorious reached into his pocket and pulled out a small chunk of obsidian covered in what resembled raw diamond rock. Very cautiously, he held the stone close to the surface of the Master Emerald. It was nearly impossible to see against the bright light of the Emerald, but the stone was starting to glow in a suspiciously familiar manner. Once he was satisfied that it'd absorbed enough energy, Pretorious turned away from the Master Emerald and held his precious treasure up to his shielded eyes.

"Perfect," Pretorious said simply, before slipping the stone back into his pocket.

A big round rock wrapped in psycho-kinetic energy appeared out of nowhere and flew into Dr. Pretorious's stomach, knocking the raccoon against the nearest stone pillar.

"Ow!" the villain uttered once he managed to get his breath back. "Was that really necessary, Silver?" he added reproachfully as the hedgehog stepped into view.

"You're coming with me," said Silver, who would've looked more heroic if he didn't have to cover his eyes with one hand to avoid being blinded by the Master Emerald. He wouldn't admit it right now, but it'd been pure luck that he managed to hit Pretorious with that rock.

"I think not. In case you forgot, I've still got this nasty little gun here. You remember, the one I killed your double with? If time is truly linear, then it should be impossible for me to kill you now, but we both now that time is mutable, don't we, Silver? You changed history quite drastically when you defeated Metal Sonic. Ah, yes. Those files were de-classified shortly before you became the captain of the Temporal Protectorate. Wasn't much point in keeping it secret once that little hack-job poured half of the GUE archives into the public internet, aheeheehee!"

"If I tell you to shut up, will it do any good?" came Pia's voice from out of nowhere. "Before you get any bright ideas, let me remind you that a Jumpsuit CAN deflect pulse blasts."

"I'm sure it can," said Dr. Pretorious and shot Silver for the second time.

Or not. Pia had been expecting it, and had snuck in between the two while Dr. Pretorious kept yapping. The projectile deflected harmlessly against the cat's invisible body.

"Boy am I glad to see- Erm. Well, you know what I mean," said Silver.

Dr. Pretorious sighed happily, then dashed behind the Master Emerald with greater speed than they'd seen from the raccoon so far. Silver reacted faster, and grabbed a rock to hurl at Pretorious with his psycho-kinesis, but was stopped by Pia, who put her now-visible hand on his shoulder.

"If you hit the Master Emerald, we're going to see a lot worse consequences than from doctor nut-job powering up some stupid rock," she said sternly.

"Always a good idea to listen to experience," said Dr. Pretorious, who was alread messing with his wrist-watch-shaped time travel device. "Ta-ta!" he said, and vanished from this point in time.

"You let him get away!" Silver said resentfully. He was starting to share Pia's contempt for the villain by now. The information that his own death back at the apartment hadn't been just an illusion didn't help his frustration one bit.

Although Pia's Jumpsuit was finally fixed and working fine, it's default state was to remain invisible on the outside of the agent's normal red uniform. It was a precaution for the sake of avoiding any extra suspicion in the past that the Jumpsuit reset to total transparency status unless specifically programmed otherwise. Silver had no idea how Pia could tell where the specific buttons were on the suit, as she went to work.

"I didn't let him get away, alright?" she said. "We've got the exact time and place he left from, which is right here. That's more than enough to start a trace from this specific point. Twenty minutes and I'll know exactly where and when he went. Trust me."

"Fine," said Silver. "While you do that, I'm gonna head back down to the city to see what I can do to help."

Pia looked up with an expression that couldn't have been any more critical if he'd suggested juggling chainsaws on a tightrope over a vat of sulphuric acid. "No way! You're staying put here. All this has already happened. It's history."

"History? It's happening right now! There are kids down there, Pia! I'm not gonna go anywhere while there's people here who need my help!"

"God, are you a complete idiot!?" the cat shouted, now red in the face. "If you go, you'll just make everything even worse!"

"You don't know that!" Silver yelled back, and started running.

A shower of obscene remarks followed the white hedgehog. Pia didn't chase after him, however. She wasn't about to leave the precise point where Dr. Pretorious departed from, and risk losing the trace signature. She might not always agree with her father, but she couldn't believe he'd ever been such a complete and utter moron! Fine. Let him try. She knew only too well the consequences of trying to change history for her own sake. Let him learn it the hard way. She'd just have to clean up whatever mess Silver made once Pretorious was safely behind bars where he belonged.

The painfully bright glow of the Master Emerald started to lessen. The Chaos Anomaly would be over soon. Pia knew everything that was going to happen over the next few weeks. The strayed echidnas across the world would reunite for the restoration of Angel Island in the wake of the catastrophe. At the end of it all, the Independent Nation of Angel Island would be a fact. It was an important milestone in echidna history, and Silver was about to risk it all for a chance to save a few people. That idiot.

-

In the next chapter:
- Dr. Pretorious arrives in the present of a 15 year old Sonic the Hedgehog.
- Several familiar faces.
- Pia and Silver, currently on no-speaking terms, begin their next adventure in the past.