Mephiles: I apologize how long this update took and hope you enjoy the story. As always a review or two will be appreciated. Thank you
Karma Is…?
Silver leapt, propelling himself backwards from the spot he had previously occupied. He braced his landing with an outstretched hand, kneeling to better absorb the shock of the impact. As he raised his head he saw a streak of colour, as the gray blur of one of his assailants thrust a clawed hand into the space he had just left.
By the time Silver was standing erect again the second foe was already hastening its approach. Silver extended his hand, his body encircled in a telekinetic aura, as he took careful aim for the monster's one distinguishing feature.
WHAM! The bolt of psychic force leapt out from Silver's hand and straight into the creature's single malignant eye, it reeled backwards as Silver channeled shockwaves of force further into it. Rather than bursting to reveal a new set of pseudopods, as Silver's earlier foe had this one seemed to reel back, its body loosing constituency as it dissolved into a puddle of gray matter.
'Bull's eye!' Silver barely had time to complete the thought before he found himself lifted off the ground and slammed backwards into the scorched earth below him. The remaining creature issued a triumphant roar as it began to lash out with its claws.
Silver stumbled in his haste to get up, giving the creature an opportunity to strike out at him. Long black claws raked deep scars into his chest, burning marks, which seared in the hellish heat around him. Silver took the creature's next blow and allowed his body to roll with the momentum of the creature's force.
By the time he had gathered himself again, he rose into a crouch from his escape roll, relieved to see he had cleared some distance from his attacker. His joy was short lived as, to his horror, the gray ooze which had been the first attacker seemed to have molded itself back into a fairly anthromorphous gray form.
The two attackers now waited, patiently watching the albino Hedgehog, their single, large baleful red eyes fixed upon his form. 'What are they waiting for?' Silver thought to himself, his telekinetic powers vanishing momentarily as his mind drifted to his thoughts, rather than his focus.
With an alarming wail, the two creatures leapt at him, his momentary lapse of concentration was all the time they needed to ram bodily into him. Silver felt his world shatter for a brief second as existence swam around him and all the colours became blurs, before he fell with a sickening crunch. His body smashed down into the ground and he felt the back of his scalp tear as sharp fragments of tar and graphite splintered into his head.
His more immediate concern though was the sweltering heat, which suddenly wracked his body. He leapt to his feet, sweat tingling down his skin as the air around him warped, the superheated molecules moving so fast that the space before him seemed to ripple like water.
'Great' He thought to himself sarcastically as he took in his surroundings. The two creatures had bodily rammed him into a shallow crevice in the pavement. The crevice was singeing hot, and Silver could feel fresh pain shooting through his feet. 'Endure it, endure it' He ordered himself, using his psychokinetic power to erect a teal aura about himself, creating partial protection from the heat.
Entering the crevice from above, his foes levitated slowly down, circling like vultures around their prey. 'Stuff it!' He thought to himself irritably as he prepared to take a step forw…
Silver took a hasty step backwards, retreating several yards as the ground which had lay before him erupted, a jutting vent of infernal flames gushing out of a thin crack in the mortar. An ominous rumbling noise quickly alerted him to the presence of a similar vent behind and he managed to evade the vent just in time as a flame shot out of it.
A sharp wail brought his attention back to another immediate threat; the two creatures had calmly placed themselves within the crevice and seemed unaffected by the rushing flame pillars. 'Great, I've got two shapeless gray blobs after me, in a superheated crevice with systematic flames shooting out at random intervals from the ground, could it get any worse?' Silver thought to himself glumly.
One of the monsters issued a low cry, it's torso coming open to reveal vicious tentacles similar too the ones Silver had seen the first time he had fought the creatures back in the Ghost Town. Silver stared in shock. 'I was being sarcastic!' He thought to any benevolent cosmic force that was in tune with his thoughts. Sadly no help seemed forthcoming. The one devoid of tentacles flew towards him in another display of its blinding speed.
This time though, Silver was ready, he calmly extended his hand, his palm facing outwards towards the monster's form. The creature continued its onslaught regardless. Three, two, one…' Silver counted smugly in his head. Right on que, the vent before him expelled yet another blast of super hot flames. The stream moved briefly up, Silver closed his eyes, channeling his thoughts and mind into the flame as he willed it into a new shape.
A flash of teal light emanated forth from Silver's outstretched hand, mingling with the flame, the two combined, flaming forward. The unfortunate creature had no time to stop, and quickly found itself wrapped in the telekinetically controlled flames. It gave a brief cry of anguish, before vanishing in a puff of black smoke, slowly trailing up into the sky.
'One down…' Silver's train of thought was rudely interrupted, as the creature that his thoughts had been hoping to refer to, whacked him to the floor with one of it's writhing tentacles. Silver let loose a yell of pain as he only narrowly dodged a heat vent, the fire searing his back.
The monster on the other hand seemed unconcerned with his pain and as one its many tentacles slowly stretched forth to grasp Silver in their folds. Silver, unable to concentrate, as he spent his efforts busily leaping to avoid the flame traps all around, was unaware of the encroaching doom.
Silver spun around, a bright flash catching his eye, as he turned he saw the tentacled monster which had been creeping up to him burst, it's own body suddenly wracked with flames. Once the fires, and the monster, were gone he looked around, searching for the cause of his miraculous rescue.
"Look out!" Silver turned to face the voice, and suddenly discovered himself being hastily pushed out of the crevice. By the time he had been pushed over the edge his rescuer now stood panting above him, providing some much needed shade.
"You" He managed to say before his rescuer once more reached down, firmly grasping him and, to his immense surprise, bodily lifting him off the ground.
He stared dazed at the cat-girl's surprising demonstration of speed as she forced him into a side alleyway. "You saved me," He said, his mind still trying to get around her surprising display of strength and pyrokinetic power earlier.
"Quiet!" Was the cat girls only reply.
He turned his head to get a look at what she was so closely scrutinizing on the street. He wished he hadn't as two familiar gray blobs floated from out the crevice. What the! What do I have to do to kill these guys?' He thought to himself angrily. The two began to make their way slowly towards the alley. Silver tugged on his companion's arm, trying to get her attention. She merely shrugged him off and continued to stare at the creatures.
'Is she suicidal/' He thought to himself as she merely stood; apparently content to let the creatures find them. Closer and closer the figures came, their painstakingly slow advance causing Silvers nerves to frazzle seemingly endlessly. Almost, almost, in a few more moments they would be completely on them.
"I can't take it…" Whatever else Silver might of planned in his protest as he leapt out to face them quickly died in his throat. He let out a strangled gasp as he found himself forcibly grabbed by the neck and pulled back into the alleyway by his companion. He stared at her in disbelief. She matched his stare with her own, cold and calculating one.
"What are you?" His question would never get further though as his attention was once more directed towards the gray monsters. The first moment that Silver looked he could make out the blob's constant approach on their location and then… then there were no blobs?
Silver blinked…and blinked again. Where once had been two gray blobs, their was now a fiery foot print, which lead up to a fiery foot, which lead up to a fiery leg, which lead up to a fiery body, which all finally accumulated in a giant towering fiery monstrosity that Silver could quite easily identify as Iblis.
The creature issued one titanic roar, drowning out all noise in the vicinity, after stomping on the two monsters and then set off on its mindless course, trampling the city beneath its mighty feet.
It was a while after that Silver finally recovered from his shock long enough to speak. By this point he and Blaze had made their way up to a moderately scorching ruin, with a clear view of Iblis's colossal form slowly dwindling as it trudged on to an unknown location.
"How did you know Iblis was going to step on them?" was the first thing Silver said, as he directed his attention to Blaze. She turned to him with a thoughtful look, her dainty lips pursed and her brow furrowed deep in concentration. Silver silently groaned as he felt familiar awkward feelings growing inside of him again.
After a moment of this uncomfortable silence she finally turned to him with a wry smile. "It was Karma," She answered. Silver stared at her confused.
"What is Karma?" He inquired, intrigued by this completely foreign word. She lifted her head and gave a short laugh, which sent strange chills down Silver's spine.
"So many questions, first where and then when, now you want to know what Karma is? In what order do you want me to answer you?" She inquired in good humor. He allowed himself the liberty of a small smile and took a seat. "First I want to know where and when in detail." He told her firmly.
Blaze took a deep breath, preparing herself for a long explanation before ploughing ahead. "This is a alternate dimension, one which resembles the original state of the dimension you hailed from," She said calmly, motioning to the world around her with eloquent fingers.
"You say my dimension was like this, if so, why do I have no recollection of it?" Silver asked.
"Because in your dimension, a convoluted set of events eventually led to time itself being completely rearranged, resulting in your current state of being and dimension" She answered, slowly turning to him.
Silver stared at her curiously. "I suppose then that the strange memories I have are rather recollections of my previous state of being?" He guessed, the pieces having fallen together nicely inside of his mind.
"Correct, I believe that the unique nature of your psychic abilities granted your mind a semblance of dimensional omnipotence allowing your subconscious to record events which have technically never happened" She said, before standing to head towards an open plaza.
Silver followed suit, intrigued by the information this being seemed to hold on his…previous life? That was one way of looking at it he supposed. She paused once in the center and faced him directly, her eyes staring into his own as she seemed to contemplate every inch of his being. He felt a strange sense of comfort at her attention, but quickly dispelled it as a meaningless and pointless feeling.
She smiled. "Would you like to see the actions of your past self and your future selves, would you like to know why you can remember people from the past and know their names, would you like to see what actions have led you to become who you are and where your actions will lead you?" She inquired in her firm, calm, yet compassionate voice.
Silver frowned turning his eyes down, refusing to meet her piercing, yet strangely lovely gaze. 'Don't do it, remember your mission, Eggman Nega must be found!' His duty reminded him, harshly chastising him for his forgetfulness. 'What to do?' he agonized within his mind, all his thoughts clamoring for his attention trying to make their opinions heard.
In the background though a small feeling began to grow, not a loud and noisy thought, but a feeling. A state of mind that slowly spread throughout his entire body. Somehow he could feel he had to go, he couldn't explain why and he didn't plan to.
All his life he had allowed his control and thoughts to make his decisions for him, it was time to follow his feelings. Silver turned to face her again. "Show me?" he asked. She smiled, and waved her arm. Like magic the space before her collapsed, leaving a gaping black hole in the sky.
She walked to it and beckoned him to follow. As he approached he turned to her one last time and asked, "So…what is Karma?" She smiled back at him with hopeful eyes. "Karma is…you… and me… and everything else in the universe, it is knowing we are always and will always remain a part of each other, that no action or life no matter how insignificant is ever wasted" She said and stepped through the void.
Silver took one deep breath and for a moment his thoughts threatened to overturn his choices once again. He merely turned towards the calm and soothing feeling, and found his feet.
Silver stepped through and the void closed behind him. All throughout the world only fires burned. Testaments to Iblis' tenacity.
Mephiles: Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. Please leave a review if you can. Thank you