2.
He wasn't pleased… He wasn't pleased at all.
He was fuming, to tell the truth… Upset and over all pissed off… And that was normal for him.
What was definetelly NOT normal was the totally messed up place he's ended up because of that blasted emerald.
Some kind of an immense, huge and apparently floating, piece of land… With giant mushrooms and deserts nearby frozen wastelands… Among other things.
A crazy zone that defied anything nearly logical and rational.
For some reason, he couldn't utilize Chaos Control again… Therefore he would have been forced to remain on that bewildering unknown place for Chaos knows how long.
"That's fan-fuckin-tastic!" He sarcastically muttered with his average pissed off-able tone.
Knuckles has been wandering around the place for a while now, inevitably losing the count of the hours… For some diabolical reason, the wrist com. he always wore could not function so he wouldn't be able to contact his companions.
A very inconvenient obstacle, don't you think?
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!"
Sorry, Knuckles…
Right now, the red echidna was sitting on one of those big funguses, hardly trying to calm himself down… Very hardly.
He started reflecting about the last things that happened to him… Especially the unforgettable reunion with her loving sister…
Perhaps, "loving" wasn't quite the rightful word to say…
"Definitely!"
And Knuckles started to speak alone… Madness was evident in his features.
"EHI! QUIT IT!"
Only if you'll stop breaking the Forth Wall… I already have my hands fold with Naugus trying to take my place as the original Author! I don't need an angry-as-Hell echidna screwing things around, too!
"Fine…"
As I was saying…
He was still thinking about her sister… Could he still call her in that way after what transpired between the two of them? After what they shared? After what he was forced to share?
It was ironic, though. He could heal any kind of physical wounds on other people… But not to himself… And not from immobilizing poisons, anyway.
Pretty darn inconvenient!
"Gee… I wonder why?"
KNUCKLES!!!
"Ok, ok, I'm sorry!"
He loved his sister! Both mentally and physically!
"… That was low."
"My, my… Aren't we a little distressed?"
"What!? Who the fuck is there!?" Said a surprised Knuckles.
"… Indeed." Replied the voice.
When the red echidna turned his head to see "who the fuck was there", as he put it, His already deformed gaze frowned even more…
"Hello, there… It's been a while, isn't it?" Was the casual reply of the all too familiar ghost of the once psychotic, toothy mercenary by the name of Fang…
Fang the Sniper!
After taking a good look over the phantomlike form of the former contract killer… Knuckles made a very important conclusion…
"Oh my Chaos… THE EMERALD KILLED ME AND I ENDED UP IN HELL BECAUSE I SLEPT WITH MY SISTER!!!" He cried out loud like a maniac.
Fang just sighed.
Tails just sighed.
It's what he's been doing since his return to the base.
"… And when he was gonna come back?" He asked, clearly annoyed.
"Uhm… When he felt like… That's what he said." Replied a happy-go-lucky Amy Rose.
Damn that Sonic! We have the blasted Chaos Emeralds to find and what he does? HE GOES FOR A FREAKING RUN!!! These hedgehogs… Speaking of which!
Something clicked inside the kit's mind… Something that Void told him about Shadow… And a certain pink someone he used to see…
He also noticed how Amy's behavior, from saddened and depressed, has suddenly turned into freakily happy and noisy.
Math was not an opinion, so he did 2 plus 2.
"Amy?" He asked, showing a more than serious expression on his face.
"Yeeeeeeeeees?" She abnormally sweetly asked back.
"Did you happen, by any chance, to see Shadow, lately… Around or inside the forest?"
And now, THE certain pink someone found herself frozen on the spot. Words weren't needed… It was all clearly written in her face…
"AMY!!!" He yelled, obviously scandalized.
"I LOVE HIM TAILS!!! THE BOTH OF THEM!!!" She yelled in response.
Now the kit was confused.
"Excuse me?"
In the next 45 minutes, Amy Rose tried to explain her impatient interlocutor the whole background story of Shadow… And his twin brother, Mephiles…
After the tale, Tails was left severely shocked and frightened… He just heard, from the squeaky voice of a girl in love, the whole terrible story behind Shadow's genesis… He now knew about Maria Robotnik and the Ark… The original purpose of Station Square… And the most gruesome detail of all: Amy was in love with both the personalities of the schizophrenic hedgehog!
"That's… Deeply disturbing… You know that?" He tried to collect the last comprehensible words he had left into a phrase.
"I don't care! Love is above everything, Tails! You, of all people, should understand that… Since you were in love with a PLANT!!!" She angrily responded… Only to realize that she said to much.
The vulpine's face turned from shocked to angry in just a short few seconds. His closed fists where shaking… He was trying to contain himself from doing a thing he would surely regret later.
"I-I'm sorry, Tails… I-I d-didn't mean…" She was practically begging him to forgive her.
Tails released his breath and relaxed… She was right about Love and all… And by looking into her eyes, he could see that she was deadly serious about it.
He smiled.
"Very well, Amy, it's your life and your decision… I have no rights to interfere." He reassuringly said.
That seemed to have the desired effect on the hedgehog lady, who started to smile her trademark sweet smile… Right before an evil smirk appeared.
"Say… Wanna know what me and Shadow have been doing lately?" She asked.
"NOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!! LALALALALALALALALALALALA!!!"
Tails covered his ears and darted out of the base while making a lot of noise in the process.
She chuckled at him.
Still a child… Deep down. She thought.
Boredom was the key word.
There wasn't really anything to do in that place… Just getting bored and waiting for Death…
Death… Over the past few weeks, it has been a constantly idea in his already damaged brain… The idea of simply ending all of his sorrows and physical pain… Not to mention the humiliation he has been forced to endure…
Since the day he was discovered… Or better, since the day he let himself to be discovered for the sake of his ideal… His life became even worse of what it used to be. Of course, he knew what to expect from them… He was mentally prepared to resist torture…
What he, however, was not ready for… Was the unexpected failure of the Project. It's inexplicable and utterly failure wasn't supposed to happen… It was an impossible eventuality… Logically speaking.
Then again, Logic wasn't everything in this world… This chaotic, senseless world, he was forced to live in… The world he hated so much… The world he wanted to change… Drastically and permanently!
That was his great ideal… To create a whole new Order from the ashes of the old Disorder. A global society in which Logic and Rationality would have been the keywords… The end of uncertainty, confusion, hypocrisy… And Chaos.
Instead… The plan failed… The perfect and definitive scheme couldn't "clean" this world from it's impurities…
All because of a little girl.
A little girl…
A KID!!!
During these past weeks, he had all the time he wanted to reflect about certain things… About his enemies, among other things.
He realized something that truly bothered him… The fact that the enemies he's been fighting against over the last 10 years… Were mainly children!
The founder of the infamous Freedom Fighters Militia was herself a child… All the members of the Militia were orphans of this war… A war that he had contributed to spread all over Mobius… Their parents' blood was on his hands…
It was a knowledge that couldn't let him sleep at night… He hadn't slept one single night in the past few years… Since the day he found out the true purpose of those ominous buildings… Buildings placed in the outskirts of Robotropolis and from which was almost impossible to escape from… Prisons that his leader built especially for Mobians… Slaughter houses of painful torture for his sadistic amusement…
The so-called… "Egg-Prisons". The places in which it's unlucky prisoners would have met their demise inside a functional Roboticizer machine… And became mindless slaves for the Eggman Empire.
He witnessed it… He personally witnessed the true strength behind the Empire's success… Along with the screams, the begs for mercy, the blood and… Worst of all… The silence that came after…
It was unbearable… Both to hear it and to see it… Until he couldn't get it anymore.
He still remembered that episode quite well… Because he paid a very big price for it.
He was supposed to supervision the robotization process… Of a little, young rabbit girl.
She had a broken ear and she was clearly traumatized… She almost continually asked about her mommy and daddy… They were probably already dead and / or robotizied.
The kid occasionally stared at him with her pleading, tearful eyes… While that monster of a machine was about to change her soft, innocent, furry body into cold, lifeless metal… She cried out loud when her right arm and two legs started to turn… Slowly and painfully.
That's when he had enough and broke the machine with the girl still in…
He couldn't quite remember all the details of that day… Everything was so confusing… But, as far as he could think back, he and the young unconscious rabbit managed to escape from that hellhole aboard of a STEALTH Bot… One of the flying mechanical saucers of the Empire.
He also remembered how she used to cuddle in his arms when she had nightmares… He would have usually caressed and consoled her, telling her that everything would have been alright… Then he looked at her robotizied appendages and utter guilt engulfed his soul… He knew he was lying to her… Her life was ruined, she would have been marked for the rest of her existence…
Luckily enough, he ended up captured by a group of homeless rebels guided by a green duck and a polar bear…
They excepted to take care of her for him… She was saved.
He, however, couldn't be saved… It was already too late for him… He was doomed since the very day of his birth.
He returned to Robotropolis to face the consequences of his actions…
He's been beaten.
He's been tortured.
He's been humiliated.
But not killed… His leader needed him… For the newly born Mobian Council…
Over the past few years… The sleepless years… His only goal became the fulfillment of his ideal… Nothing else mattered anymore… The dead… The robots… Nothing.
He became totally consumed by his grief and his own body followed the decay of the soul… He lost his hair and his physic became extremely slim and weak, ultimately, his skin turned into a dull, lifeless grey color… He was the specter of himself.
When even his great ideal miserably failed, he hadn't anything left to live for… And they demanded informations about his leader.
He's been beaten.
He's been tortured.
He's been humiliated.
But not killed… They needed him alive.
The pale ghost of a living being became a whole with the Nothingness inside of him… He didn't even feel the pain when they had inflicted it to him… It didn't matter anything anymore.
He told them his leader's real name because it was the only thing he knew about him…
And now, he was completely useless. His ideal was a folly… The war for ultimate order he fought, created even more chaos… Thousands, maybe even millions of people died because of him… Because of his hated uncle… Because of all this madness!
Once again… History repeated itself…
What was the greatest plague this world has ever had?
Humanity.
Humans had ruined this world so many times that he could not even count… They should have disappeared when that tremendous earthquake destroyed their civilization all those millenniums ago…
His species craves for power and domination… And always ended up fucking everything!
Especially, his own family, of which he was the latest member and, hopefully, the last.
It was time for other species to rule this planet… It was time for these courageous and strong willed anthropomorphic animals… No… Mobians, to claim the rightful ownership of this world, with their cultures and traditions, scientific and philosophical discoveries… Inevitable wars and mistakes…
This… Was their land! Mobius, was it's name.
The subterranean jail he's been secluded was creepily silent… It was perfect for his last goodbye… An anonymous and undisturbed goodbye, just like his entire life has been.
He took the belt from his pants, tied it one extremity to the ceiling fan (he was in a classy cell) and formed a knot with the other… He had a chair in his jail… That would have worked.
He was standing on the chair, the knot was around his little, fragile neck…
He thought at the irony… He would die with a knot, under a place known as Knothole…
He chuckled at the very brilliant pun…
Then he let himself to fall from the chair.
In the last minutes of his agonizing life… His mind wandered to the only one person he's been important for… The only one person he's been useful for…
The little, half-robotizied rabbit girl he saved all those years ago.
A single tear descended from his eye while her name, the name she told him during their escape, was quietly muttered from his already deformed mouth…
"Bunny Rabbot… An ironical name, indeed."
And the small Overlander once known as Snively Robotnik died in his cell without nobody noticing…
A silent departure… For a specter of a man.
How appropriate.
She woke up from her folding bed… She have had the same dream again.
The little human that saved her… She couldn't remember his face or even his name, for that matter.
She was sweating profusely in every ounce of her furry body… Except, of course, on her heavy, metallic appendages.
For Bunny Rabbot, Life has been particularly sadistic with her… She wasn't a Mobian and not even a Badnik… She was a Robian! Half-robot, half-Rabbot… How she hated that joke!
"That stupid Scourge an' his stupid jokes… I'll brek his bones one 'o' dis days!" The southern accented teenage rabbit muttered under her breath, before trying to sleep again.
Tomorrow morning, It was going to be an important day for her… As her mistress, Tikal, told her.
"What do ya need me ta do, Tikal-hun?" She joyfully asked to her leader… And friend.
"Bunny… I have a very important mission for you… I want you to do it because you're the person that I trust the most…" The orange echidna girl said.
"Anything for ya… Girly!"
"Go to Knothole and ask for Maximillian Acorn… There is a very important message I need you to give him…"
The Rabbot's face went serious as she nodded… She'd really do anything for her… They grew up together inside the homeless army… And when she was selected as their leader because of her mysterious abilities… Their relationship didn't change a bit.
She would have supported her anytime… Even after the terrible thing she did to her brother… Not only the forced incest… But all that deceiving plan as well…
Bunny dismissed the thought, those were personal business of Tikal and she had no rights to interfere nor to judge…
She had more important things to do… Like giving that message to good old Max-hun, as she loved to call him.
She was now asleep in her folding bed, inside her tent… And for the rest of the night, she dreamt about a blue charming prince that was in love with her… And, strangely enough, he had quills.