Sonic Origins

by Ri2

How did Sonic get his super speed? What made Amy fall in love with him? How did the Chaotix become detectives? Why is Rouge both a secret agent and a gem thief? How did Cream and Big meet their pets? Silver the Hedgehog needs to know the answers to these questions, and far more, for the future might depend on it...

8. Blaze's Legend, pt 1

Merry Christmas, everyone! Enjoy your present, another chapter, from me to you!

If there's two things stories written by me are best distinguished by, it's the absurd chapter length, and the exasperating time it takes for me to crank out new ones. And for that, I apologize.

In any event, this chapter is one that has been a long time coming, and one I've been looking forward to writing more than any of the others. Hopefully, it's worth all the hype, and will meet both your expectations and my own. Enjoy.

Also, it takes a lot from another series I'm quite fond of. Let's see if you can figure out what.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me

…

"How I won my kingdom…now there is quite a tale," Blaze mused. "And a long one too, longer than I think there is time for me to tell in its entirety, though I suppose if I only tell the relevant parts that should suffice. A more complete retelling of my story can be done at a later date, if any of you are still interested."

"How long could it be?" asked a confused Knuckles. "Weren't you born to the position or something? That's how it usually works, right?"

"It was for me," Rouge agreed.

"You told me that you were born into the royal family, and had the power to generate and control flames from birth, marking you as future Guardian of the Sol Emeralds, but also led you to be ostracized and teased by the other children," Cream recalled.

Blaze winced. "I…did say that, yes."

"It's not true?" Cream asked, hurt.

"It is!...from…a certain point of view," the cat said lamely.

"In other words, it's a big fat lie," Vector translated.

"Not entirely…" Blaze muttered, looking embarrassed.

"You lied to me?" Cream asked, looking hurt.

Blaze sighed. "Cream, when I told you that, I only knew you for a short while. I'd just met you, I wasn't fully sure I could trust you…and what's more, weren't sure you were mature enough to know the real story, which is a sight more grisly and brutal than what I told you, which is why I still didn't tell you the whole story once I was certain I could consider you a friend."

"But you clearly told Sonic and Tails!" Cream argued.

"Because I felt they were mature enough to handle it, and wasn't sure you could. I…did not want to destroy your innocence, or for you to think less of me," Blaze said uncomfortably.

Cream stamped her foot angrily. "There sure seems to be a lot of 'not wanting to destroy my innocence' going around lately. I'm going to grow up eventually, you know. You all can't keep coddling me forever."

"That's true," Blaze admitted. "But there is also no reason to rush it. Childhood is fleeting, and only comes once. You are, however, more responsible and mature than we sometimes like to admit, and given how well you have—for the most part—handled the stories told so far, I believe you are at last ready to hear mine. Afterwards, you can judge for yourself whether or not I was right to withhold it from you for so long. Know this, however: I did not lie to you with intent to harm, and I was afraid of how you would react if you understood what I really am. I may be the magical ruler of an enchanted kingdom, but the tale of how I got to that point is a lot more bloodied and sordid than most of your fairy tales."

Cream swallowed nervously, recalling how very dark – – Shade's, in particular – – some of the stories she'd heard so far had gotten. "I understand, and I think I get why you wanted to protect me from the truth for as long as you could. I don't like it, but I understand. But… If you're willing to tell me the real story now, then I'm ready to hear it."

Blaze nodded. "Very well. Then I shall begin my tale… Oh, and Amy? I did not start on the streets, selling my body. Just wanted to get that out there."

Amy blushed as the others snickered. "I-I wasn't going to say anything!" She protested.

"I'm sure," Blaze said, sounding as if she was anything but. "It all begins, I suppose, with my first memory… A memory of darkness, and pain…"

…

Darkness. Darkness before her and behind, above and below, stretching out in every direction. Darkness was all that surrounded her, and all that she'd ever known.

All but the pain. A seething, burning sensation, a fire raging within her, screaming to get out, desperate to escape, even if it meant incinerating her body to do so. And Blaze knew that, no matter what, she could not let that fire out. Not only because it would be the death of her, but because it would be the death of many more.

She did not know how long she had been struggling, fighting the fire within her. If there had been a time before this, a time before her eternal war, she could no longer remember it. All she had was the darkness, and the pain, and the inferno HUNGERING to break free from her.

…

"The amnesia angle? Really?" Espio groaned.

"Could you get any more clichéd?" Charmy complained.

"Yeah, bad enough we had to deal with that with Shadow, along with all the other clichés making him up," Vector grumbled.

"I am not cliché!" Shadow protested angrily. Nobody was willing to meet his eye. "I'm not!" He insisted.

"That's right, Shadow. You're totally original. Just like every other red and black angst-ridden superpowerful being with a tragic backstory that can be found on the Internet," Sonic joked.

"Go back to deviantART!" Charmy shouted.

"Fuck all of you," Shadow snapped.

"You really don't remember anything before that, Blaze?" Cream asked, alarmed.

Blaze grimaced. "I…recalled a few more things later, but… few of them were very pleasant…I warned you, this wasn't going to necessarily be a nice story…"

"That's so sad…" the rabbit whispered.

"Don't worry, Cream, it gets better," Sonic assured her. He hesitated. "…Eventually." Cream whimpered, not particularly reassured.

"So… What's that fire thing? Sounds kind of scary," Mighty commented.

"A case of extreme heartburn?" Vector joked.

Blaze glared at him. "No, something far worse than that. I'll explain in time. Anyway…"

…

She would not let it break free. She COULD not let it break free. My soul is alit with flames! She thought fiercely. No fire shall burn me! I shall master it, not the other way around! I will not lose! I CANNOT lose!

She lost. The flame, without warning, suddenly surged outwards, taking her by surprise and smashing through the defenses she had erected around it over the ages, immolating them within moments thanks to her weakened will. She cried out, the pain that had been her constant companion for as long as she could remember replaced by an unbearable agony, every cell in her body burning with unthinkable, incomprehensible destructive power, making it feel as if she were being taken apart piece by piece on a quantum level, every quark and atom and strand of DNA being consumed by an unquenchable, uncontrollable fire.

Cracks formed all over her body, shafts of baleful light and gouts of flame blazing forth from each crevice and fissure as she desperately struggled to keep her body from disintegrating completely. She opened her mouth to scream, jets of fire bursting forth from her eyes and mouth…

And suddenly, she exploded. Or felt like she did, rather, and the dark void that had been all she had ever known shattered with her, to be replaced by something else… But she didn't get much of a chance to marvel at what being surrounded by something other than blackness was like because she promptly exploded again, and the world shattered to be replaced by something else, and she exploded again, and the world shattered once more, and on and on and on, blasting through world after world after world, her torment increasing with every subsequent explosion, constantly topping and overturning the limits of what she thought she could take. World after world after world flickered past her eyes, and just when she was about to give in, relinquish her last shred of self-control and allow herself to be utterly extinguished…

The flame flared up, ready to explode again… And abruptly sputtered, flickered, and died down to smoldering embers. It had burned too bright too quickly, and was now all but spent. It took several seconds for Blaze to realize this, the shock of suddenly not hurting, of not being torn apart by the flame that had been burning inside her for as long as she could remember, so incredible that she could scarcely believe it. The void shook her, and for a fleeting moment she wanted the pain back, because at least it had been familiar, an old friend as compared to this strange absence.

That emptiness was soon filled by something else: soul-crushing, bone-deep exhaustion which turned her legs to jelly and caused her to fall to her knees, head swimming and vision fading in and out as the effort of keeping the flame in check and being ravaged by it for so long finally caught up to her. Is this it, then? She thought weakly, blood roaring in her ears. After all that, I'm just going to die?

Struggling to hold off the darkness swimming at the corners of her vision, she managed, with incredible effort that nearly caused her to simply black out then and there, to raise her head, hoping that she could at least see where she was, to have one last sight other than darkness before the void claimed her once again, possibly for good. Forcing her eyes to focus, she could see that she was at the bottom of a large crater, possibly formed by her arrival into… Wherever she was, and above her were…were…

Stars, something whispered to her. She did not know how she knew it, how she knew that those beautiful glittering white points in a pitch black sky were stars given that, as long as she could remember, an infinite darkness had been all she had ever known. Ultimately, she didn't care. They were stars, and they were the most wonderful things she had ever seen: miniscule points of light, surrounded by an endless abyss so very much like the one that had been her home for all she could remember, but instead of giving into the night and allowing themselves to be swallowed up by nothingness, they shined brightly, as if in defiance, a proud message not to give in to despair and to continue to strive, even if the entire universe were arrayed against her. A sense of awe and joy unlike anything she had ever before experienced—quite literally—swelled within her heart, and her vision blurred as tears began to fall, as much from her newfound feeling of wonder as her exhaustion. If she were to die now, she thought, it would be with no regrets, for at least she had been granted a glimpse of beauty before she went.

As her eyes closed for what, as far as she knew, might be the last time, she noticed that a group of hooded figures had appeared around the rim of the crater. I wonder who those might be, she thought to herself as she drifted off into the first slumber she'd had in a very, very long time. I hope they're nice.

Unfortunately for Blaze, they weren't.

…

Everyone stared at Blaze in disbelief for several moments. "Holy crap," Charmy said finally.

"That was… Intense," Rouge said uneasily.

"I'm starting to understand why you weren't sure I was ready to hear this for so long," Cream whimpered timidly.

"Trust me, we're just getting started," Sonic said grimly.

"Blaze, those…those worlds you passed through…when you said they shattered, you didn't…you didn't…" Amy said nervously.

"DESTROY-THEM?" Omega asked eagerly.

Cream gasped. "That's horrible! Blaze would never do that! Right, Blaze?" Blaze did not answer. "B-Blaze?"

Blaze grimaced. "To be honest, Cream… I have no idea."

"There's a very high probability that the 'Shattering' was merely her mind's way of interpreting the rather violent way she was traveling between dimensions," Tails spoke up quickly.

"How high a probability?" Shadow asked seriously.

The Fox hesitated. "… About 50%, give or take," he admitted reluctantly. There was a sharp inhale of breath from just about everyone at that.

"B-but… No! That's not possible!" Amy said desperately. "I mean, yeah, Blaze is…pretty strong," she admitted reluctantly. "But not… Not strong enough to destroy worlds!"

"There is more to me yet than you understand," Blaze said solemnly. "And a reason that one of my titles—of which I've many— is 'Destroyer of Worlds.'"

"I'M-LISTENING," Omega said gleefully.

"As am I," Cream said anxiously.

"I'll get to it. In any event, I'm glad I was able to see that perfect slice of night sky, even if it were for only a few moments," Blaze said wistfully. "The memory would sustain me in the future, because it was the first—and last—nice thing I had to cling to for a very, very long time…"

…

When next Blaze awoke, it was to the sound of chanting. Many voices banded together, speaking words in rising and falling cadence which made no sense to her…but at the same time struck a chord deep within her, filling her with a primal feeling of terror. The flame, which seemed to have regained a small portion of its strength—though not its desire to burn itself out of her—flickered uneasily in reaction to it, and while Blaze supposed that anything which made her internal adversary afraid should be a good thing…somehow it did not reassure her very much, either.

Her eyes opened slowly, head still swimming and groggy from her rather traumatic experience, whatever few hours of sleep she'd managed to glean not quite enough to make up for however long she had spent awake unceasingly doing battle with the flame within her. When she became aware of where she was, however, her eyes snapped open, instantly rising to full alertness, as she realized that being anything other than fully awake might not be a good thing right now.

She was in a cage. A cylindrical cell of bars covered in glowing blue and white runes, rising to a couple of feet over her head and about wide enough that she could sit or lie down in it, but not much else. Thick shackles marked with the same runes were locked around her wrists and ankles, iron chains binding them to the floor and ceiling, with a similar fetter wrapped around her neck. They were thankfully slack enough to grant her freedom of movement, but that didn't make them any less uncomfortable.

The exterior of the cage was no more inviting. She was in a very dark chamber, unable to see too far in the dim light cast by a handful of torches surrounding her. What she did see did not particularly reassure her, given that the ground surrounding her cage was covered in an incredibly complex latticework of lines, runes, glyphs, and sigils which made her head hurt, and standing just outside of that were a ring of cloaked figures, their faces obscured by their hoods, the source of the eerie, dread-inducing chanting. "Wh-what…where am I? What is going on?!" She cried, understandably panicking.

…

"Well, that's a fine wake-up call," Mighty murmured.

"Were you captured by some cult who intended to use you as part of some arcane ritual to destroy the world? You wouldn't believe how many times that's happened to me," Shadow interjected.

Everyone blinked and stared at the black hedgehog in surprise. "Wait, seriously?" asked a surprised Tails.

Shadow nodded. "Oh yeah, happens all the time. Just like there's tons of prophecies about Sonic saving the world, you wouldn't believe how many there are saying that I'm supposed to destroy it."

"AND-NONE-ABOUT-ME," Omega complained. "NOT-FAIR."

"Something like that happened to me once, actually" Vector recalled vaguely. "I woke up one morning with a killer headache and found myself being held captive by some nuts trying to use me to revive the great Egyptian deity Sobek or something…I'm not sure how it happened, but I think I drank too much the night before while chatting up a girl who may or may not have been working for them."

"Like that's new," Espio muttered, rolling his eyes.

"They didn't intend to use me to destroy the world," Blaze said. "Quite the opposite, actually…"

…

The ring of figures parted, and another one stepped forward, stopping at the edge of the complex markings. By the ornateness of his cloak and the quality of his jewelry and adornments, it was clear that he was the leader of this sinister cabal. "So, you are awake at last. I was not certain that you would wake before we were finished. It might have been better for you if you hadn't."

"Wh-what's going on? Where am I?! Let me out!" Blaze shouted, frantically pulling at her chains, something deep within her soul—the flame?—telling her that something very, very bad was going to happen if her captors finished whatever they were doing.

The figure shook his head. "For the sake of the world, we shall not."

"What do you mean?!" Blaze demanded, equal parts furious and frightened.

"Are you Blaze, Queen of Demons, Chiefest of Calamities, Archfiend of the Abyssal Planes, Flames of Disaster, Avatar of Iblis, and Destroyer of Worlds?" The figure asked.

Blaze started. "What? What are you talking about? My name is Blaze, yes-" Now how do I know that, when I recall nothing else? "But I'm not a-"

Gutted, broken towers rose from the boiling sea of fire, connected by jagged, shattered roads and highways. Dark clouds filled the skies, shielding the world from the sunlight. Terrible creatures of molten rock and fire roamed the ruined city, flying through the air and stalking along the rubble and devastated buildings. A great beast, larger than all the others, made of fire and stone and darkness, lorded over this hellish realm, reveling in the destruction and chaos it had caused…

And that beast was herself.

Blaze snapped back to the present, realizing, to her horror, that the figure was right. Partially, anyway. She was a demon, or at least had a demonic nature, and she had ruled that awful place—or at least, part of her did- and… And she really did have the power to destroy worlds, if she so chose. Was this why I was alone in the dark? She wondered, shocked. To keep myself away from everyone, so that I would harm nobody else?

…

Everyone stared at Blaze, shocked. "You're a demon?!" Asked a stunned Mighty.

"No way! I mean, I've been calling you a she-bitch and succubus behind your back for ages, but I never imagined that you actually were one!" Amy cried.

"Wait, what?" Sonic asked, glaring at the pink hedgehog.

"Nothing," she said quickly.

"Come to think of it, you do have a bit of a demonic air about you…" Rouge murmured, intrigued.

"Should we be more surprised by this?" Charmy wondered. "I mean, we just learned Tails is a result of a science experiment and Sonic's speed was an unexpected byproduct, Knuckles is the immortal descendent of a race of complete assholes, Rouge is a vampire and future secret ruler of the world, and Shadow's the ruler of an alien species."

"Don't forget Cream apparently being the immortal ruler of all Chao," Sonic added.

Charmy nodded in agreement. "Yeah, after all that, hearing that Blaze is a demon isn't too big a stretch in comparison."

"Kid's got a point," Vector agreed.

"Yeah, I was kind of expecting something like this by now," Espio agreed.

"And there's the whole fire thing. Makes sense," Shadow added.

"N-no! That can't be!" Cream cried in denial. "Demons are horrible, nasty, evil creatures! A-and you…you aren't, Blaze! You're…you're strong, and brave, and compassionate…"

Blaze smiled and ruffled Cream's hair affectionately. "I thank you for your faith in me, Cream. I assure you it isn't misplaced…however, that doesn't change the fact that I am a demon. Or part-demon, anyway."

"How's that work?" Asked Knuckles.

"Well, in my experience, when a demon and a mortal fall in love very much-" Rouge began, deciding not to mention that oftentimes such love was rather one-sided – or, even more often, no-sided – since Cream was listening.

"No, it's not like that," Blaze interrupted. "It's a little complicated. It will be explained eventually." She sighed. "I rather wish that the people that day had been more like Cream, open and willing to believe in others, and not…well…"

"But what was that about you having the power to destroy worlds? There's no way you can actually do that, can you?" Mighty asked.

Blaze pursed her lips. "I…can, actually," she admitted.

Everyone who did not already know this recoiled. "Whoa, seriously?!" Vector cried.

"No way! Show us!" Charmy dared her.

"YES, SHOW-US!" Omega agreed.

Everyone stared at them. "You…do realize if she destroyed the world right now, you'd die too, right?" Shadow said slowly.

"Oh. Right," the bee said in embarrassment.

"IT-WOULD-BE-WORTH-IT," Omega insisted.

"You can really destroy worlds?" Rouge asked, impressed. "Even when I get the Dark Heart and ascend to the throne, I won't be strong enough to do that. Well, not easily, anyway."

"It's not easy for me, either," Blaze said. "I can't just snap my fingers and blow up a planet. I need to make certain…preparations first. Preparations I will never make, because I have no intention of ever blowing up a planet."

"Well, that's a relief," Shadow said. "I'd rather you not destroy this world, most of my things are here. Well, what's not on the ARK, anyway."

"I'd be fine if you blew up the world. After all, Angel Island isn't on it!" Knuckles bragged.

Everyone stared at him like he was an idiot. "You…do realize the explosion would be big enough to destroy your island, right?" Sonic said slowly.

"And even if it didn't, you'd very quickly suffocate in space because your island doesn't have enough mass to attract an atmosphere," Tails added.

"I'd just use the Master Emerald to put a force field around the island to protect me!" Knuckles said, unconcerned.

"The same Master Emerald you accidentally break on an almost hourly basis?" Espio pointed out.

Knuckles hesitated at this. "… Ah."

"Are we really just going to gloss over this?! She's a demon who can destroy the world!" Amy shouted. "And totally unfit to date Sonic!" Everyone else groaned and rolled their eyes.

"Part demon. And just because I can destroy it doesn't mean I will," Blaze emphasized. She sighed wearily. "Something I wish they had been willing to believe…"

…

"It's not… It's not what you think," she said frantically, her words pathetic even to her own ears. "I…I think I am who you think I am, at least in part, but… I mean you no harm! I don't want to destroy your world, or any others! I just want to be free, and live in peace!"

"Which is exactly something an evil world ending demon would say to try and save herself from being banished from this plane," the figure sneered.

"I'm not lying!" Blaze cried desperately. "Please, let me go!"

"So that you might bring ruin to our world? I think not," the figure said haughtily. He gestured, and the torches around them flared up, sparks flying to ignite other sconces and torches around the chamber, illuminating the room and revealing…

Blaze. As the confused and frightened feline turned around and around as much as her chains would allow her in dismay and disbelief, her own face looked back at her again and again. Great statues of herself rose from the floor and towered to the ceiling, expressions of unimaginable cruelty and savagery on their faces as they callously stood or sat upon thrones and pedestals of skulls, bones, and wailing children, with a simply massive graven idol extending from the back wall, a look of utmost greed on her face as her massive claws stretched out to grab at whatever was before her. The walls were covered in images of her committing countless atrocities; burning cities to the ground, slaughtering armies by the millions, commanding legions of horrors similar to the ones Blaze had just seen in her vision, forcing a chained and despairing populace to kneel before her, and ripping entire worlds apart. The only thing that slightly marred the shocking tableau was a stuffed alligator dangling from the ceiling for some reason. "I-I don't understand…what…what is this?" She whispered in confusion and horror.

"We have made no mistake," the figure explained. "For hundreds, thousands of years we have known of your coming. Prophecies have warned us of you for untold ages, since before the dawn of civilization. Every culture, society, and species has legends and stories about you and the terror you will bring. Stories about how you will tear down the world as we know it, and leave something completely unrecognizable in its place. How you will utterly destroy all who stand against you. How you will bring death to untold billions, until the soil is turned red from the blood of your victims. Parents tell their children to behave, or else you'll come to kill them in the night, and desperately hope that they aren't accidentally telling the truth."

"No…" Blaze whispered in denial, struggling to comprehend, to find some way to refute, what she was seeing. "I would…I would never do that! Any of that!"

Or at least, not anymore, some part of her whispered.

"For countless millennia, my order has been tasked with watching for the signs of your arrival, so that when you finally entered our world, we would not be caught off-guard," the figure continued, as if she had not spoken. "The gods must have smiled on us, for we were fortunate enough to find you when you were at your weakest, no doubt worn out from the effort of traveling between realities, or perhaps from destroying the last world you visited!"

"I didn't destroy it!" Blaze said frantically. At least, I really really REALLY hope I didn't…

"It matters little, so long as we make sure you don't destroy this world," the figure said with a shrug. "Since I am uncertain we are capable of killing you permanently, and we do not know the coordinates of your plane of origin-"

"Wouldn't do you any good anyway, it's not there anymore," Blaze muttered, then blinked in surprise, wondering how she knew that. Did I destroy my homeworld?!

…

"Just to be clear, I didn't destroy it," Blaze said quickly, before anyone could say anything. "The reason it didn't exist anymore was…well, I'll get to it later."

…

"We cannot return you to where you came from. Not that we would anyway," the figure said with a hint of malice. "After all, if we did that, what would stop you from simply following your trail right back here? No, we shall send you somewhere else instead…a proper place for a fiend such as yourself, but one which I guarantee you will find far from…pleasant."

"No! You can't!" Blaze cried in horror. The flame, responding to her emotions, flared up, desperate to avoid being imprisoned again. She could feel its power flowing through her, and was frightened enough that she was willing to allow it, instead of fighting it this time…

And suddenly the runes on her chains and bars flashed, and she felt as if a wet, heavy blanket had been dropped onto her, soaking her from head to toe and snuffing out her fire before she could call upon its power. "Wh-what? What did you-"

"You didn't think we'd make it that easy, did you?" The figure sneered. "I told you, we've been waiting a long time, more than enough to prepare. Every bit of your cell is made from deepstone, a material that can only be found in the deepest reaches of the ocean, and so retains some of its watery properties, including the ability to suppress fire magic. The seams are mystically bonded to prevent any of the bars or links from being removed. The runes are spells of binding and suppression which work to constantly weaken and contain you while simultaneously reinforcing each other so they will never falter or weaken or fail. They are also spells of preservation, which means you will be kept in the same physical state you are now, so you can't escape by killing yourself and reincarnating outside…or simply wish to end it all and die. The only way to unlock the cage is with a single key, which we have already broken into a dozen pieces and randomly hurled into other worlds. Once we've finished banishing you, we shall kill ourselves, and since the spell we're using to get rid of you was never written down but memorized…once you're gone, nobody will ever be able to bring you back." He considered for a moment. "I suppose some might call it overkill to keep you imprisoned in a cage while you're banished to another dimension, but given how dangerous you are, I think it's an acceptable level of precaution."

…

Everyone stared at Blaze, horrified. "That's… That's insane!" Said an incredulous Mighty.

"Most of the sealed evils we fight aren't imprisoned so thoroughly," Espio noted.

"Or so cruelly," Cream said, shivering in revulsion. "I don't understand. How could they do that to you? You weren't a monster! You weren't evil! You didn't deserve any of that!"

"In their eyes, I did," Blaze pointed out. "All their lives, they'd been told that I was a horrible monster who deserved not even a shred of mercy and needed to be dealt with as harshly as possible to ensure the world would keep turning."

"Which doesn't even remotely excuse it," Shadow snarled, understanding such fear and prejudice from experience.

"No. No, it doesn't," Blaze agreed.

Knuckles frowned, struck by a troubling thought. "Do… Do you suppose that was the case with a lot of the other ancient evil things we've fought over the years? Like, maybe they actually weren't so bad back in the day, but everyone was scared of them and locked them up for no reason?"

Amy snorted. "No way! If that were the case, then why do all of them try to destroy the world almost the minute someone lets them out?"

"The same reason I did. Because they were so angry for their wrongful imprisonment, and so in pain for all the suffering and isolation they've endured over the years, they wanted to make the whole world pay for what was done to them," Shadow said bitterly.

There was an uncomfortable silence as everyone considered this. "That…is actually a pretty good summation of Chaos, too," Tails said, unnerved. "Could…could more of those guys have actually been decent once, but warped by their eons of imprisonment?"

"Even if they were mistreated by the peoples of ancient times, I don't see that as a good enough excuse for them to hurt the people in the present day," Sonic said firmly. "I don't care how big a sob story they've got, they try to hurt the people I care about, then I'll stop them, one way or another." He paused, then added, "if I can help them, I will. If I can't, or they refuse, then, well…" He shrugged. The others nodded, admitting he had a point.

"So how did you get out of that? I mean, you must've, or you wouldn't be here now, right?" Vector asked, getting them back on track.

"Oh! I know! If there was an order dedicated to sealing you away, then that means there must also be in order who worshipped you and wanted you to destroy the world! That's how it usually works, right?" Charmy asked.

Rouge nodded. "Yes, quite a lot of ancient world-ending horrors have groups dedicated to keeping them contained as well as ones trying to free them. Happens all the time."

"Then did one of those show up at the last minute to save you and spare you a horrible fate?" Cream asked hopefully.

Sonic and Tails winced. Blaze sighed wearily. "If only…"

…

"That's horrific!" Blaze gasped.

"It's no less than you deserve," the hooded figure said callously.

"What I deserve?! But I haven't done any of the things you attribute to me!" Blaze protested. Well, not in this world, anyway… "I haven't done any of the, the atrocities you seem so certain I'll commit, nor do I have any intention of committing them! I just want to live in peace, and go my own way!"

"Even if you haven't done them yet, you probably will eventually," the figure said with an indifferent shrug. "Better to nip it in the bud now, before it's too late."

"But that's…! You can't just condemn me for a crime I haven't even done yet!" Blaze protested desperately.

"I can, and I have," the figure said, turning away from her. "Farewell, Blaze. We won't meet again. I hope you find your new home unpleasant, we took great care in selecting it for you."

"No, please!" Blaze cried desperately as the figure walked away, his chanting brethren closing ranks behind him. "Please, I beg of you, don't do this!" she screamed as the chanting increased in volume and intensity until she had to yell to be heard over it. "I'll do anything you want? Please, let me out! Please! PLEA-"

There was a blinding flash of light from the spell pattern surrounding her cage. Blaze cried out in agony as the runes on her cell flared, magic searing through her body and causing the flame to writhe in torment. She clenched her eyes shut and ground her teeth, struggling to remain conscious, telling herself that it wasn't nearly as bad as the torture she had suffered while being burned alive from within during her involuntary jaunt across dimensions…

And then…

And then…

The pain stopped, and suddenly the temperature rose considerably. Blaze didn't have a problem with heat normally—having a natural affinity with flame helped considerably- but this was uncomfortably hot, even for her.

And were those… Screams she heard?

Cautiously, Blaze opened her eyes…and found she was no longer in that sinister temple. Which was a shame, because as ominous as that place had been, she'd have taken it—hell, she'd even have returned to the void!—to the place she was now in.

Her cage was perched atop a pillar of rock rising from a great sea of molten rock and fire extending as far as the eye could see, monstrous forms swimming and writhing about as millions of smaller figures twisted and cried out and burned. The sky above her was not a sky at all but a ceiling, with spires of rock lowering from the stony canopy to meet with equally large pillars jutting out of the lava, creating columns hundreds of miles tall, implying she was in some sort of gigantic cavern, but one so big she couldn't see where it began or ended. Perhaps it didn't.

Elegant spires that went on to infinity acted as filters for the endless billows of smoke spurting from the lava sea or vents on the sides of the giant columns, keeping the upper levels of the cavern clear of it. A windmill of the damned spun and spun, glowing in dazzling, albeit haunting, colors. Castles of stone that danced with the fire floated here and there amidst levitating landmasses and monstrous creatures vast enough to be continents, because they were every bit a demon as they were a structure, ergo alive.

Every second frail, shriveled, blackened figures materialized from thin air in the highest reaches and plummeted, screaming, into the sea, where they started screaming even louder as the flames burned at them…unless something else got to them first, snatching them out of the air before they even reached the fire, though that did not necessarily mean they were being spared, oh no, if anything burning in the sea of flame might have been far preferable for what these other denizens of the cavern had in store for them.

And what denizens they were! Creatures with bodies that were hunched over, worn out from their timeless duties, but still going strong. Some were humanoid, with pitchforks that shoveled souls—for that was, of course, what the wailing, falling figures were-like hay in the less alien parts of hell. Others were far stranger. There were giant tentacled thousand eyed starfish-like creatures that clung to the spires and dunked souls trying to escape the lava like clockwork or some demented game of whack-a-mole, where it always won. Fish-headed quadrupeds with bear claws prowled about the land masses and shores of the great towers, sniffing out any soul that escaped and dragging them back to their prisons in the castles, where the screaming never ended, not even for a second. A skinny watcher of the windmill that could barely stand from its sheer age stood at the base of the demonic structures, the blades—made of still-living skin, flayed from the souls and stitched together-sped up and slowed down from its ever-present grip on a lever.

Occasionally a soul would seem to vanish into thin air, but whether that meant they somehow escaped or simply disintegrated when the suffering finally became too much for them was unclear. The torturers didn't seem to care. There were always more souls to take their place.

Blaze slumped to her knees and stared out at this landscape of horrors in wordless despair, tears streaming down her cheeks and screams filling her ears as she realized she was in Hell, and one that made the horrendous realm that she had once called home seem a heaven in comparison.

...

Everyone stared Blaze in horrified disbelief. "Holy fuck," Charmy said finally.

"Did… Did they send you to hell?!" Asked a stunned Mighty.

"No," Blaze said softly, lost in reminiscence. "They sent me to a hell." Sonic quietly put a hand on her shoulder, and she shot him a grateful look.

"…There's more than one?!" Asked an incredulous Knuckles.

"Certainly. There's hundreds, thousands of dimensions, planes, universes, and realms out there that can be classified as 'hells,'" Rouge said. "Just as there are countless places that could be considered heavens, and even more worlds that count as neither. The multiverse is a big place, after all. More than enough room for any kind of reality under the sky. More than enough room for any kind of sky, at that." She frowned thoughtfully. "I'm not positive which hell Blaze landed in, though. From the sounds of it, it shares similarities with quite a few I know of. There are a lot that have that same aesthetic. You'd expect more variety…then again, you'd be surprised by how many demons out there lack any sort of creativity whatsoever. Good thing they've got mortals to learn it from, you guys are great at inventing new ways to do horrible things to each other."

"Gee, thanks," Mighty said.

"Humans and Mobians are the real monsters," Vector said philosophically. He paused for a moment. "Well, aside from the actual monsters. And other indescribable horrible things that want to destroy us. And…hmm. That made more sense in my head…"

"And just how many hells do you know of?" Espio asked.

"Quite a few. Like my mother said, it might come in handy to know how to get out of a place like that if I should ever find myself there… Because let's be honest, how likely is it that I'm going to get into heaven on my own merits?" Rouge asked.

"I don't think you're evil enough to wind up in a place like that, Rouge," Tails said.

Rouge chuckled. "That's sweet, kid, but we both know that doesn't necessarily mean I'm good enough to wind up in heaven, either. Well, until I break in, of course. Should make for a good challenge…anyway, Blaze, I don't suppose you happen to know the name or coordinates of the place you wound up in?"

"I do not," Blaze said harshly. "I spent far too long there. Why would I ever wish to know how to return?"

"Fair enough," Rouge conceded. "Thought I'd ask."

"I… I don't believe it…" Amy whispered, aghast. "They really… They really threw you to hell? I mean…I hate you, I mean, really hate you for stealing Sonic from me, but…I…even I don't think you deserved that…"

"How… How could they?" Cream whispered, tears in her eyes, clutching a similarly crying Cheese. "You… You didn't do anything to them. You didn't deserve that. You didn't deserve that at all! You're… You're GOOD, Blaze, no matter what you say about yourself! How… How could they do that?! How could that happen?!"

"The same way my home could be invaded, the people I love killed or imprisoned, and myself sealed away for 50 years while the man I considered my father went insane and made plans to use me to destroy the entire planet for revenge," Shadow said grimly. "Good things happen to bad people sometimes. Sometimes very, very bad things." Cream looked shellshocked at this revelation, her naïve worldview taking another heavy hit.

"What… What happened to you there?" Vector asked nervously.

Blaze tensed. Sonic grabbed her hand and gave her a searching look. She gave him a brief smile, but shook her head, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, "Nothing."

The others gave her confused looks. "NOTHING?" Omega asked.

Blaze shook her head. "Nothing. Remember, I'm demonic in nature. The other demons thought I was one of their own, so didn't lay a finger on me."

The others relaxed slightly. "Oh! Well… That's not good, but it's better than I feared," Amy said in relief.

"Not really," Blaze said bitterly. "When I said nothing happened, I mean nothing happened. At all. I sat there in that cage, all alone, surrounded by uncounted horrors and suffering, unable to do anything, ignored by everything outside, for a very, very long time. At least Shadow had the luxury of being able to sleep through pretty much the entirety of his sentence. I wasn't nearly as lucky."

"Oh," Amy said, looking uncomfortable. She wasn't the only one.

"Wait, what about the demons? While I imagine they weren't exactly the best company, couldn't you have asked them for help? Or at least for conversation?" Espio asked.

Blaze snorted. "That would've required them to be intelligent enough to string two words together. The demons of that place were not like the demons you're probably imagining. They weren't cunning, cruel, sinister creatures bent on inflicting pain and suffering for their own amusement, they were more like… Well, automata."

"Huh? What do cars have to do with anything?" Asked the confused Knuckles.

"Automata, not automobiles," Tails corrected the echidna. "She's saying they were more like robots than thinking creatures."

"I-AM-A-ROBOT-AS-WELL-AS-A-THINKING-CREATURE!" Omega said indignantly.

"A basic Eggman robot, not a sophisticated android like you," Tails said quickly.

"AH. PROCEED," Omega said.

"I don't understand. What do you mean, they were like robots?" Mighty asked. "What, were they robot demons or something? Is that a thing? Is there a robot hell out there?"

"I think so, but I don't believe that's what she means," Rouge said.

"ROBOT-HELL? IF-I-HAVE-A-SOUL, DOES-THAT-MEAN-I-WILL-GO-THERE-SOMEDAY?" Omega asked, disturbed.

"Quite likely, unless you decide to stop killing and destroying things for fun," Espio said.

"… BUT-I-LIKE-KILLING- AND-DESTROYING-THINGS-for-FUN," Omega complained.

"The place I was in… Imagine the universe was made of clockwork. The motion of planets, the burning of stars, the flow of souls from life to death and back again governed by machinery more fine, intricate, and complex than anything you could possibly imagine," Blaze explained. "The realm I was sent to could be considered a sort of… Soul recycling facility. A place where the spirits of the dead go to after death, so that the impurities and taint they picked up from the material world can be scrubbed away so that they could ascend, purified, to the next stage on the wheel of eternity. The demons were basically drones programmed to clean the souls, like the machinery in the carwashes of your world."

"I've never seen any carwash machinery that looked anything like that," Vector noted sardonically.

"I don't know, maybe for a car it would actually be super painful? I mean, I imagine it would hurt a lot of we were ran through it…" Amy said.

"Vector's got a point. If it's just a big fancy place to purify souls, why would it look so… Well, hellish?" Shadow asked.

"A couple of reasons. One is that not all souls go to the same place for cleansing. The place I was sent to could be considered a more heavy-duty facility where more intensive measures are required to remove the accumulated filth gained from a lifetime of sin and moral fallacy, hence the cleaners would need to be more…brutal in their methods to properly purify the souls. The other reason…" Blaze shrugged. "Such places are shaped by belief. Many people believe, on some level, that there is a horrible place out there where you go after you die if you've been very bad, and very awful things will happen to you there. And so the realm took on the appearance of such a place, because so many were convinced that was where they'd wind up."

Rouge nodded in understanding. "Collective belief can be a very powerful force in some planes. Is it any wonder so many entities we classify as 'divine' demand we believe in them to give them power?"

"Wait, are you saying that the only reason people go to hell is because they think they do and it's the same with heaven?" Asked a confused and alarmed Mighty.

The bat shook her head. "It's a bit more complicated than that. What you actually find wherever you go does depend to some extent on what you believe, though."

"How the heck did your family learn all this stuff, anyway? I mean, given how hard it is for any of you to even die," Vector complained.

"Oh, lots of us have died. That doesn't mean we've stayed that way," Rouge said. "For many of us, death is less of a final rest and more like a short nap."

"So, basically, the demons didn't help you because they weren't programmed to," Shadow said to Blaze, getting them back on track.

"WORTHLESS-CONSUMER-MODELS," Omega said scornfully.

"Pretty much, yeah. And even if they were smart enough, there wouldn't have been anything they could do anyway. My cage was unbreakable, remember? Only the key could open it, and the order that banished me certainly wasn't stupid enough to send a piece to the same realm I was in," Blaze said. "Which meant that, for the length of my imprisonment, it was just me and the flame inside me… And trust me when I say it wasn't the best conversationalist. Not until afterwards, anyway."

"What exactly is this flame thing, anyway?" Amy asked.

"I'll get to it later," Blaze said.

"How… How long were you there, all alone, with nothing but the screams of the damned for company?" Espio asked uneasily.

Blaze tensed. "Blaze, you don't have to-" Sonic said quickly.

"No, if they want to know, I'll tell them." She took a deep breath. "You are all aware, I'm sure, of places where time doesn't flow the same as everywhere else?"

"Oh, you mean the whole 'year outside, hour inside' thing?" Amy asked, relaxing slightly.

"Essentially, yes," Blaze said.

"So… It was a while, but it wasn't really that long, or at least didn't seem that way to you?" Cream asked hopefully.

Blaze shook her head. "Oh no, on the contrary. A long time passed on the outside world… And an even longer time passed for me in the place I was in."

There was a long silence. "How long, exactly?" Shadow asked cautiously.

"Approximately 500,000 years passed in the outside world. Where I was… Well, actually, it wasn't exactly easy to tell time, but I would estimate…Eight times ten-to-the-ten-to-the-fifty-six years, give or take a few billion," Blaze said quietly.

There was another, even longer, silence. "Um. How long is that, exactly?" Charmy asked uncomfortably.

"That's at least eight times older than the known universe," Tails said.

"… Jesus fuck," said a stunned Mighty.

"… Is that a lot?" Knuckles asked uncertainly. "That sounds like a lot."

"It is," Tails said.

"Like, how much?" Knuckles asked.

"Okay, take the longest span of time you can imagine…" Tails said.

"All right," Knuckles said, not wanting to admit anyone that he couldn't really imagine that long.

"Now forget that because the timespan we're talking here is so ridiculously long that even most of the beings we'd call 'immortal' wouldn't live to see even a fraction of it," Tails said.

"Oh," said Knuckles. He paused. "That is a very long time."

"Yes, it is," the Fox agreed.

"Holy… I can't… I can't even comprehend that," said a dazed Vector. "It's just too big. I can't picture it."

"Most people can't. The mind is only so finite, after all," Rouge said, mind reeling.

"EVEN-MY-SUPERIOR-ROBOT-BRAIN-IS-HAVING-DIFFICULTY-CALCULATING THAT," Omega said.

"Th-that's…I…I can't…" Cream stammered, horrified.

"You certainly don't LOOK that old," Espio said dubiously.

"My cage had preservation spells in it, remember? To keep me in the same state I was in when I was banished, so I couldn't do anything like kill myself or worry about dying from thirst or starvation or anything like that?" Blaze reminded him. She frowned. "That, or I'm just that immortal. I'm not entirely certain which it is."

"How the hell did you not go insane?!" An astonished Shadow demanded. "Isolated and completely alone, surrounded by horrors for that long…"

"Oh, I did go insane," Blaze said in a brittle tone of voice. "Several times. But I was there for so long that even insanity ran its course and I became sane again until the next wave of madness came on. I actually came to look forward to the moments of insanity, because then I could forget where I actually was." She started trembling. "More times than I can count, I hallucinated that somehow I was able to get free, or was rescued, and had a long and happy life with lots of adventures and friendship or romance in a bright and colorful world far removed from the pit I was in… Only to eventually wake up and find myself right back where I started, and for my heart to break and to experience even deeper levels of despair." She hesitated for moment, and when she spoke again, there was almost no trace of the strong, confident Queen they'd come to know, but a woman disillusioned and broken more times than she could count. "There are some days where I wake up, and for a moment I'm afraid that all this is just another hallucination, and that I'm right back in that cage again. That hell is all there ever has been or ever will be."

There was another long silence as everyone processed this, stunned. "Fuck," Charmy said, incredulous.

"Wow. That got dark all of a sudden," Vector commented.

"Welp, looks like someone's finally topped you for worst backstory," Mighty said weakly to Shadow.

"It's not a competition," the black hedgehog snarled half-heartedly.

"And the guys who did this to you thought YOU were evil?!" Asked an enraged Rouge.

Cream suddenly burst into tears and hugged Blaze, shouting, "No, Blaze, no! This isn't a hallucination! Th-this is real, we're real! You're free of that horrible place, and you're never going back there again!"

Blaze smiled gratefully and hugged the rabbit back. "Thank you for saying that, Cream. I know you're right, but… I was there for a very long time. Far longer than I've been out. Sometimes it feels like I'll never truly be free of it… But so long as I've got people to care about like you, I can bear it. I can bear anything."

"You aren't alone, Blaze. Whenever you feel lost, remember, we've got you," Sonic said gently, taking her hands.

"I know, beloved," Blaze said with a smile. "You always do." The two of them kissed, and even Amy found herself willing to let it go just this once.

"To say that was a terrible ordeal you had to go through would be an understatement. I'm sorry it happened, and I'm glad it's over," Espio said solemnly.

"The fact that you were able to survive all that with even a modicum of sanity… I have to say, Blaze, I'm not sure the rest of us could have come out of that experience as strong as you seem to have become," Shadow said. "Not even me."

"Trust me, I'm not quite as put together as I might seem. I'm just good at putting up a good front, though a few thousand years of routine therapy has helped quite a bit," Blaze said. She made a face. "Even so, I'm still a lot more vulnerable than I care to admit. A while back, there was this one psychic who was able to get into my head and convince me that the last few hundred years of my life had been nothing more than another hallucination, and that I was still in that hell, and had never escaped. I was…pretty messed up by it. It took me a while to recover. It was weeks before I could even leave my room again."

"That's… That's awful!" Amy cried, aghast. "What kind of sick bastard would do something like that?!"

"Nobody who's still alive. My daughter tortured him to death over the course of several years while I was in recovery. It sent a pretty clear message to my enemies that there are some lines they'd better damn well not cross," Blaze said.

"… A part of me feels like I should be horrified, but the rest feels like I should be congratulating her," Knuckles confessed.

"Yeah, I felt the same way when I first heard about it," Sonic confessed. "To be honest, I think if I'd been there when it happened, I… Might have broken my rule against killing things that aren't robots or monsters or the like. There are some lines you just don't cross. Ever." He paused for a moment, then admitted, "To be honest, I think I might have done the same if I ever ran into the guys who did this to Blaze to begin with. They may have claimed they were protecting their world, but that was just evil."

Blaze nodded. "Publicly, I reprimanded and punished her once I found out, of course… That sort of thing can't be tolerated by anyone in my kingdom, not even from the Royal family… But secretly, I was very proud of her, and she knew it, even if I didn't tell her in so many words."

"I approve. Honey sounds like a devoted daughter, to do something like that. I know I would do the same thing if someone did something that awful to my mother," Rouge said.

"But that's horrible!" Cream protested.

Rouge nodded. "Oh, most definitely. But Cream… If someone hurt your mother, and I mean really hurt them, don't you think you might be willing to do whatever was necessary to make it right, no matter how awful? Even if it went against everything you stood for?"

Cream faltered at that. "I… Well, I don't…" Her brow creased in uncertainty. Cheese squealed in concern and tugged on her ear, but she was so lost in thought she didn't notice. "I don't know…"

"Well, I pray you never have to find out," Blaze said. "To know the full extent of what you might be willing to do for a loved one, it…can sometimes be pretty soul-shocking. The depths to which I would go for the sake of my daughter, or the other people I care about, sometimes frighten me."

"You might even be willing to kill a whole world," Shadow said softly in reminiscence.

"Or worse," Rouge said.

"What could be worse than killing the whole world?" A confused Knuckles asked.

"You'd be surprised. You're probably better off not knowing," Rouge said.

"Given that you aren't currently trapped in that realm now, I assume you were somehow able to escape," Silver spoke up, the first time he'd said anything in quite a while. "How did you do it?"

"She didn't escape, someone freed her," Tails spoke up.

"And she'll always have my gratitude for it," Blaze said fondly.

"And mine," Sonic said.

"Who did it?" Cream asked, already feeling grateful to whoever saved her friend.

Sonic chuckles and clapped Tails on the shoulder. "My little pal's girlfriend!"

Tails flushed. "S-Sonic!"

Shadow frowned. "Wait a minute…Tails' girlfriend was alive back then?"

"Yes, she's one of my oldest friends," Blaze said. She paused for a moment, and then admitted, "Actually, she is my oldest friend."

"But… If she's been around for that long, I mean, like, hundreds if not thousands of years, isn't there a bit of an age discrepancy between her and Tails?" Mighty asked uneasily.

"A what?" Knuckles asked.

"He means that Tails' girlfriend is a lot older than him," Rouge clarified.

Knuckles blinked. "Oh. So what? I mean, I'm a lot older than you, right? Er, at least, I think I am… Pretty sure you were born a while after my civilization was erased from the face of the Earth…"

"I was," Rouge confirmed.

"Right, so why is it a big deal?" Knuckles asked. "I mean, Blaze is even older than that, what with the whole billions of years in another dimension thing, and even if you don't count that, she's still hundreds if not thousands of years older than Sonic, but nobody seems to think that's a problem."

"I do!" Amy cried. Everyone ignored her.

"Well, yes, but Sonic is a bit older than Tails, whereas Tails is still a child," Espio pointed out. "I suppose from the perspective of someone who measures their lifespan in millennia if not epochs, it might not seem like much of a distinction, but it's still there."

Tails sighed. "Look, I know Cosmo's a lot older than I am, but I'm very mature for my age, and we both agreed that we wouldn't do anything serious until I was a little older. I'm aware it's a bit…unorthodox, but she'd be robbing the cradle no matter when we started a relationship given how much older she is than me, so we decided to just be adults about it and not let it be a big deal unless we want it to be. I know it must seem a bit weird to you, but we're happy together so far, so…" He shrugged.

"He has a point," Rouge commented.

"Does he?" Shadow asked.

"Well, yeah. This sort of thing comes up all the times when immortals enter into relationships with mortals. From our perspective, everyone's a lot younger than us, so if we don't want to make a fuss about it, we…don't. Keeps things simpler, really," Rouge said. "After all, except under certain circumstances our paramours won't be around forever, so we might as well enjoy them for as long as we can, right?"

"I….Guess that's one way of looking at it," Vector said uncomfortably.

"I don't like it!" Amy declared.

"For Tails' sake, or because objecting to it is a way for you to object to Sonic and Blaze's relationship?" Charmy asked slyly. The pink hedgehog fidgeted but did not respond.

"Well, I don't see anything wrong with it," Cream said innocently. "If the two of you are happy, then what's the big deal?"

"Exactly!" Knuckles said.

"This is an issue we probably don't need to be talking about," Silver interrupted.

"NOR-IS-IT-ONE-I-PARTICULARLY-CARE-ABOUT," Omega said.

"Blaze, how did Cosmo rescue you?" Silver asked.

Blaze began again. "Well, one day, I was just sitting in my cage listlessly, waiting to go insane again so I'd have something to do other than be utterly bored and depressed, when suddenly…"

…

Blaze blinked as the runes on her chains and bars started glowing, and unfathomable agony shot through her body. The sensation was so novel that she didn't even scream, so surprised to be feeling… Well, anything really after being stuck in this cage for so long. That's odd, she thought dazedly as everything went white. I hadn't expected my next hallucination for a little longer…and it certainly feels different from any of the previous few.

It didn't occur to her to wonder if maybe this wasn't a hallucination. She'd gone down that road too many times, and been disappointed far too often to fall for that again. There was a nagging feeling deep within her trying to convince her that there was something different about this time, but she ignored it. After all, what did some stupid flame know about what was real and what wasn't?

When the light died down, she found herself in a familiar chamber, one she had revisited many times in her memories and hallucinations; the room where the order (she'd never gotten their name, had she?) Had banished her to the hell that had been her home for the last several billion years. She was mildly surprised to note that the place was in ruins; the statues and pillars reduced to crumbling piles of stone, huge chunks of the wall carvings fallen off, and big cracks zigzagging across the ceiling, with more than a few holes where parts of it had collapsed. Even the stuffed alligator was nothing but scraps of scaly hide dangling from the ceiling. The only thing that still remained completely intact was the floor design surrounding her cage, the spell that had banished her and—apparently—summoned her back. That's new, usually this place looks in much better shape. The idea thrilled her. At this point, any deviation from the unhappy norm, no matter how slight, was more than welcome.

Standing just outside the spell circle was a young woman with peach colored skin, wearing a green and gold-edged blouse with long sleeves ending in yellow cuffs, a large red jewel on her chest, and a long white scalloped dress with green edges somewhat resembling flower petals hanging down to her ankles, revealing her white and green boots. She had long shiny green hair falling past her waist, a pair of bangs framing her lovely face, and a pair of large pink flowers blooming from the sides of her head which Blaze didn't think were simply ornamentation. She had no nose, and a pair of big blue eyes staring at the feline in what looked like… Surprise? Hmm, that's also new.

…

"So that's your girlfriend, Tails?" Espio inquired.

Tails blushed. "Y-yeah, that's her."

Mighty whistled. "Good choice, little guy! She's quite the catch!"

"She's very pretty," Cream agreed.

"Yeah… But not as pretty as you, of course!" Charmy said quickly.

"What kind of Mobian is she? She didn't look like any animal I'm familiar with," Amy commented.

"She might not be a Mobian at all. She is from another dimension, remember," Rouge pointed out. "They might not have them there."

"No, they've got Mobians, but she isn't one of them," Sonic explained.

Blaze nodded. "Yes, she's a member of the Seedrian race, who has evolved from plants."

"That explains the flowers… And the coloration… And the style of dress…" Shadow murmured. "Pretty obvious in hindsight, really."

"Wait, so Tails is dating a plant?" Vector interjected.

"Yeah. What of it?" Tails asked defensively.

"Well, uh, it's just…relations between Mobians and humans are one thing, but she's not even in the same kingdom as you!" Vector pointed out awkwardly.

"So? He can always visit," Cream said.

"He's referring to the five kingdoms of life, not any particular nation," Shadow explained. "We belong to the animal kingdom, while as a plant creature, she would belong to the plant kingdom."

"AND-AS-A -ROBOT, I-BELONG-TO-NONE-OF-YOUR-PATHETIC-CATEGORIZATIONS, EXISTING-OUTSIDE-THEM-LIKE-THE-SUPERIOR-BEING-I-AM," Omega bragged.

"You know, we 'inferior creatures' are the ones who built you," Mighty pointed out. "Shouldn't you respect us more?"

"IT-IS-THE-PURPOSE-OF-ALL-CHILDREN-TO-SURPASS-THEIR-CREATORS," Omega said dismissively.

"Oh, I see," the rabbit said.

"What are the other two kingdoms?" asked a curious Amy.

"Fungus, bacteria, and unicellular protozoans and unicellular/multicellular algae with 9+2 cilia and flagella," Shadow said.

"Huh. Wouldn't have thought those'd have kingdoms," Mighty said.

"They don't fit in the other three, so they have to go somewhere," Tails pointed out.

"I don't even know what those last ones are!" Charmy commented.

"There's a lot more varieties of all of them than you might expect," Shadow said.

"It's not that big a deal. Her kind has evolved far enough that… Well, let's just say that that sort of thing isn't really an issue and leave it at that," Tails said.

Vector threw up his hands in acquiescence. "All right, just wanted to make sure you didn't have to worry about anything freaky like her planting seeds in you or your getting mutated by some sort of freaky spores or something like that."

"Your concern is appreciated, but trust me, it's not a problem," Tails insist. "I, ah, made sure to research the matter thoroughly before pressing my suit."

"Oho, I'll bet you did!" Mighty chortled, elbowing the Fox.

"I have no idea what any of you are talking about," Knuckles confessed.

"AND-I-DON'T-CARE," Omega said.

"Then let's continue, shall we?" Blaze suggested.

…

"Oh my…" The girl breathed, a look of wonder and confusion on her face. "It worked! It actually worked! Er… At least, I think it did… Are… Are you Blaze, the legendary hero?"

Blaze blinked, startled. That was definitely new. In her past hallucinations, pretty much everyone who'd summoned and freed her had either apologized for her wrongful imprisonment, or called her a demon… Which, to be fair, she was. None of them had said anything about her being a hero. "I am Blaze the Cat, yes," the feline muttered, feeling about as confused as her newest hallucination looked to be." Hero… Now, that's a new one."

"What you mean?" The girl asked, perplexed.

"Well, if I were a legendary hero, then why would I be in a cage bound by magical chains, and have spent the last several eons in a literal hell?" Blaze asked, deciding to humor the hallucination.

"Well… Because the evil sorcerers who captured you wanted you out of the way, of course," the girl said, looking even more confused.

"The evil-" Blaze had to struggle not to laugh. As much as she'd hated the order who'd banished her, at no point did she ever entertain the idea that they might be evil. Stupid, yes. Fearful, very much so. Bigoted, most definitely. But evil? Well, she supposed that depended on your definition of evil… After all, they'd certainly thought she was evil, and she was relatively certain she wasn't. "Well, I imagine if you asked them, they'd tell you that I was the evil one, and that they banished me to protect the world."

"What? Why would they do that?!" The girl asked, startled.

Blaze shrugged. "Because I'm the Queen of Demons, Chiefest of Calamities, Archfiend of the Abyssal Planes, Flames of Disaster, Avatar of Iblis, and Destroyer of Worlds."

The girl gasped. "You are?!"

"Well, that's what they said I am," Blaze said.

The girl blinked, confused all over again. "They said? Don't you know?"

"Well, there's a lot about myself I don't know," Blaze admitted. "I am a demon, though, and I can destroy worlds. I don't really want to, though."

"Why not?" The girl asked, bewildered.

Blaze blinked. "Well, why would I? If I destroyed the world, where would I live?" Granted, given she might be capable of interdimensional travel, she could probably find a new world, but that was beside the point.

"That… Actually makes a lot of sense," the girl said, baffled. "But… I don't understand… The old snake said that I would be able to find someone who could help me here, why would he point me in the direction of a world-destroying demon?"

Blaze frowned, intrigued. This, too, was unfamiliar territory. "Old snake?"

The girl nodded. "Yes, an old serpent told me that if I came here, I could find a legendary hero who would be able to help me. He then gave me the spell to summon you, and the key to free you from your bonds."

Well, now Blaze was convinced this was a hallucination. Some random snake just happened to have the key and spell that would free her? The key that had been shattered and scattered into multiple random dimensions, and the spell which had never been written down and all who knew it killed? Impossible.

"Where did he get them from? For that matter, how did he even know I was here?" Blaze asked suspiciously.

"He claimed to be a collector of stories and antiquities. He assured me that you would be able to help me," the girl said, looking lost.

"Help you with what?" Blaze asked, curious as to what sort of preposterous adventure her imagination was going to throw at her now. It seemed to be going at full cylinders, she hadn't had a hallucination this intriguing in quite some time. She ignored the nagging sensation that maybe this time it would be real. After all, it didn't make any sense. How could this snake have found the tools to free her? And if he had them, why would he give them to some random girl instead of doing it himself?

…

"You seemed awfully committed to convincing yourself this was all a hallucination," Espio commented.

Blaze shrugged. "At that point in time, I'd no reason to believe it wasn't just another hallucination. I'd had lots of similar experiences before, and all of them turned out to be fake in the end, so had no reason not to be certain that it would not turn out the same way. In retrospect, a lot of the signs that this was real were staring me right in the face, but… I'd been burned and my hopes dashed so many times in the past, I dared not hope again."

"That's so sad…" Cream whispered.

"Well, it's a good thing that you were wrong and this really was reality," Vector commented.

"Yeah eat, unless this is all just another hallucination and one day you'll wake up right back in that cage," Charmy said. Everyone glared at him. "Right right, not funny. Sorry."

"You did have a point, though," Shadow commented. "There's something shady about this snake guy. Who was he, and how did he get what was needed to free you? And why didn't he do it himself?"

"The answer to that wasn't something I'd learn until much later," Blaze said. "I had more immediate matters to concern myself with…"

…

The girl grimaced. "My kingdom is in grave peril, and I was seeking a hero who might be strong enough to save it."

Blaze instantly retracted some of the compliments she'd given to her imagination. This tired old storyline? Oh well, Beggars couldn't be choosers, and in her situation she couldn't really afford to turn down any source of entertainment, matter how fleeting or trite. "You are a Princess, then?"

The girl blinked in surprise. "How did you tell? Can… Can you read my mind?!"

"No, I'm just observant," Blaze said. "Given the style of your dress, looks, and hygiene, it's probably safe to assume you're a member of the nobility at the very least. Also, you said 'my kingdom' instead of 'my country' or 'my realm,' indicating a sense of possessiveness." Also, it was usually a princess. That's how this sort of story went, after all.

"Well… You are correct," the girl said, impressed. "I am Princess Cosmo Hyacinthia del Sol, next in line for the Blossoming Throne, future leader of the Seedrian race and all the peoples of the kingdom of Solana. My father, King Lucas, has been driven mad by his grand vizier, a newcomer to our court."

"Of course it's the grand vizier," Blaze muttered. Everyone knew viziers always turned evil. What was the point of even having that position anyway? Had there ever been a time when there'd been a vizier who DIDN'T inevitably try to overthrow or undermine his King?

"The vizier's whispers convinced my father that the other nations bordering us envied our prosperity and wealth and were plotting to destroy us and take it for themselves," Cosmo explained. "Which is actually true, incidentally—we're one of the most prosperous lands in all the world—but the vizier convinced my father that the only way to protect our kingdom was to destroy those other countries first, and so he broke open the Forbidden Vault where all the vilest and most dangerous artifacts in our kingdom are sealed away, removed the Seeds of Helheim, and implanted them in my mother, Queen Earthia, causing her to transform into a giant cursed tree which is draining the life from the land through the sacred Sol Emeralds to grow the fabled Golden Fruit of Helheim, which will give my father—who now calls himself Dark Oak-all the power he needs to dominate the world."

…

Cream gasped, horrified. "He did that to his own wife?! That's horrible!"

"And super messed-up!" Vector agreed.

"But who's the vizier who's clearly the real villain?" Mighty wondered.

"Jafar?" Charmy suggested fearfully.

Everyone stared at him. "Charmy, for the last time, Jafar isn't real," Espio said in exasperation.

"Not in our dimension! He might be in others!" the bee insisted.

"Well, yes, but…" the chameleon trailed off, uncertain how to respond to that.

"It wasn't Jafar," Blaze said, much to Charmy's relief. "But someone who, in my personal opinion, is far worse."

"…Eep!" the bee squeaked.

Rouge and Shadow also looked alarmed, but for a different reason. "Did…did you say the Golden Fruit of Helheim?! As in…the forest? THAT Helheim?!" the bat cried, horrified.

"Oh, you've heard of it, then," Blaze said, unsurprised. "More knowledge from your mother, I assume?"

"That, and we have a few files on it back at GUN," Rouge said in concern.

"The Professor came up with more than a few theories about that dreadful place as well," Shadow said in alarm.

Everyone else looked rather confused. "What are they talking about?" Asked the baffled Knuckles. "I mean, I'm not the only one who doesn't get it, right?"

"Yeah, what the heck is Helheim?" Mighty asked.

"Helheim is one of the names for the Norse Underworld, ruled by Hel, goddess of death," Vector said knowledgeably, recalling a documentary he'd once watched when he was bored.

"Really? I thought that was Valhalla," Espio said.

"Valhalla is the warrior's paradise where those who die in glorious battle go," Vector explained. "Helheim is where all the other unlucky stiffs go. It's not nearly as pleasant. I hear the beer's terrible, for one thing."

"Oh," the chameleon said.

"Is that where we get the word 'hell' from?" Cream wondered.

"It's one possibility, yes," Tails said.

"I don't get it. What does the Norse Underworld have to do with some magic fruit?" Amy asked.

"Maybe that's where the fruit is from?" Cream suggested.

"Close, but no. The Helheim in question isn't the Norse Underworld, but an extradimensional world-eating organism in the form of a forest," Shadow explained.

"There's more than one Helheim?" asked a surprised Knuckles.

"Well yeah, it's not like anyone copyrighted the name," Sonic quipped.

"How can a world-eating organism be a forest?" asked a puzzled Espio.

"Ever heard of an invasive species?" Shadow asked.

"What, like the Black Arms?" Charmy asked.

"No, not like…" Shadow paused. "Well, okay, yeah, they count, but that's not what I mean. Ever heard of cane toads?"

"No," Knuckles said.

"Several years ago, Downunda was having trouble with beetles eating their sugarcane, so got the bright idea to import cane toads from another continent to eat the beetles and save the crops," Tails explained. "This, as it turned out, was a terrible idea. Cane toads are what are known as 'explosive breeders,' and since they had no natural predators on Downunda to keep their population in check, their numbers rapidly skyrocketed out of control. The local animals had trouble eating them due to the cane toad's natural poison, and the toads started to wreck the ecosystem by eating most of the prey insects and smaller animals the region's predators feasted on, causing thousands of animals to die of starvation. Or get eaten by the toads themselves. Also, the beetle population was barely touched-the bugs all lived high up on the sugarcane and the toads weren't able to reach that high-so the whole thing was pretty much a huge waste, and now the people of Downunda routinely have to go out and try to keep the cane toad population down by killing as many as they can, which isn't working as well as they might've hoped."

"Oh my! Those poor animals," Cream said, aghast.

"The toads or the animals they're crowding out?" Sonic asked.

"I can't feel sorry for both?" Cream asked.

"Okay, I think I'm starting to get the picture, but how does that apply to a world-eating forest?" Amy asked.

"The principle isn't that different, really," Rouge said. "Basically, what happens is this: an interdimensional crack opens up, and some seeds fall through. Those seeds take root in a world's soil, and grow into alien plants, which sprout supernaturally enticing fruit. When anyone – – be it an animal or person – – is compelled to eat that food, they are turned into a monster called an 'Inves.' And before you ask, no, there isn't a cure. The beasts carry a virus within them, and when they attack people, they infect their victims, causing more plants to start sprouting from their wounds, eventually turning them into more Inves and causing more fruits to form. The Inves eat the fruits, which not only allow them to get stronger and take on more powerful forms, but once they eventually digest them, the seeds they leave behind grow into more plants, sprouting more fruits, leading to more Inves, and so on."

"And of course, while you might be able to contain initial outbreaks if you're quick enough, more and more cracks will start popping up and dumping more seeds which will grow into more plants as time goes on, until ultimately the whole world is just one big forest full of monsters," Shadow continued grimly.

"Geez," Mighty said, disturbed. "That's pretty fucking scary."

"Wait, couldn't you just… You know… NOT eat the fruit?" Asked a confused Amy.

"The fruits emit some sort of pheromones or psychic pollen which makes them irresistible," Rouge explained. "And of course, even if you have the willpower to resist eating them, that doesn't mean the average animal will."

"Well, couldn't you just… I don't know, fire nukes through the cracks or something? Blow up the forest before it can spread here?" Vector asked.

"THAT-WAS-MY-RECOMMENDATION," Omega spoke up.

"It wouldn't do much more than slow the invasion down. After all, remember that it's a forest extending over countless worlds in God knows how many parallel dimensions," Rouge said. "Even if we blow up or burned down parts of it, it can always open up new cracks in unaffected areas and dump more seeds on us. Sooner or later, we'd run out of nukes and napalm."

"NOT-IF-YOU-SENT-ME-IN! I'D-HAVE-THE-WHOLE-THING-TAKEN-CARE-OF-IN-A-MATTER-OF-DAYS!" Omega bragged.

"Let's save that is a measure of last resort," Shadow said in a conciliatory tone.

"Well, now I've got another couple of things to add to my list of things that give me nightmares: fruit and forests," Charmy said chipperly.

"I'm never going to be able to look at fruit salad the same way again," Cream lamented.

"Are we at risk of being invaded by this Helheim?" Espio asked in concern.

"Our analysts and specialists don't believe it's going to come here anytime soon… However, it has visited us several times in the past," Shadow explained.

This gave everyone a start. "Wait, really?" Sonic asked, surprised.

"Hmm, I suspected as much…" Tails murmured.

"Wait, but if that thing's come here before, then how come the whole planet isn't a giant forest full of monsters?" Asked a confused Knuckles.

"Because Helheim isn't simply a mindless organism, spreading across worlds merely to propagate itself," Blaze spoke up. "It's a genius loci."

"Loki? I thought he was another Norse God?" Said the confused Knuckles. "Or are there more than one of him out there, too?"

"Not that Loki. The genius loci is a place that has a mind," Tails explained.

Blaze nodded. "Helheim has an intelligence of its own, albeit one creatures like us would have a very hard time fathoming. After all, when is the last time you tried talking to a tree?"

Rouge nodded in agreement. "It doesn't attack worlds out of malice or hunger, but because… Well, whenever it comes in contact with an intelligent species, it feels driven to test it. Push them to evolve, to change, to see what they might become when faced with unthinkable adversity and the impending destruction of their world."

"Why?" Cream asked.

Shadow shrugged. "Curiosity? That's the best motivation if any we can ascribe to something like that."

"How can threatening to destroy a planet and wipe out or transform entire species into monsters help them evolve?!" Knuckles asked incredulously.

"When your back is at the wall and things seem at their darkest, that's often when you find out what sort of person you really are," Blaze said. "The hottest crucible can sometimes forge the strongest steel. Destruction is simply one of many tools that can be used to induce change, for after all, does not destroying something make way for something new? As a 'destroyer of worlds,' this is something I'm all too aware of."

"So… What, it threatens to destroy worlds to see how the people react and what they become when faced with an implacable, unstoppable force of destruction and change?" Mighty asked.

Rouge nodded. "Yes, but there's a bit more than that. And that's where the Golden Fruit comes in."

"Whenever Helheim devours a world, it grows a single Golden Fruit of absolute power," Shadow explained. "Whenever it begins to intrude upon an inhabited world, its avatars and emissaries spread rumors about it, to entice the strongest warriors, champions, and heroes to rise up and fight everything the forest, their own world, and each other can throw at them for the right to claim it. Whoever makes it to the end at the top of the heap may eat the Fruit, gaining godlike power and the ability to reshape the world and the people in it as they see fit, to match their ideals. Create an egalitarian utopia, a strict meritocracy, a Social Darwinist hell, a silent world without free will, a barren wasteland, whatever they wish. And there is evidence that this has happened to our world on more than one occasion."

"What? No way! Wouldn't somebody have noticed?" Amy asked in disbelief.

"Oh, but they did. Or have you forgotten the story of the Garden of Eden?" Rouge asked.

Amy stiffened. "Wait… Are you saying that…!"

Tail snapped his fingers. "I thought so! So you're implying that all the myths and legends about someone seeking out or finding a magic fruit which allows them to change their fates…"

"May be based off of an account of someone claiming the Golden Fruit at some point in the distant past, yes," Shadow said. "The Professor suspected that the Apple of Eden, along with the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, the Apples of Eris, and the Apples of Idunn might all be, if not separate accounts, reflections of what really happened in a prior encounter with Helheim, and the world in its present state is a result of whatever ad ancient hero chosen it to be after eating the fruit."

"I noticed that the fruit in all of those stories were apples," Espio commented.

"The Golden Fruit is an apple, yes, or something that looks like it," Blaze confirmed.

"You've seen it, then?" Shadow asked, intrigued.

Blaze nodded. "Yes, seeing as how it's what Dark Oak was trying to obtain. Many thousands of years ago- either before or after I was banished, I'm not sure which-Helheim encroached upon the Sol dimension, and the world's greatest champions fought to claim the Golden Fruit. It's not entirely clear what happened – – it happened a very long time ago, after all – – but Cosmo believes that either her eldest ancestor obtained the fruit and used it to create her people and ensure that their kingdom would be a prosperous, blessed place, the envy of the rest of the world, or that her entire race somehow evolved from leftover Inves and claimed the place that had been the most heavily affected by the invasion as their home. Regardless, what's clear is this: the Royal Family of Solana managed to save some seeds from the Golden Fruit and sealed them away, both afraid of what might happen if someone else got their hands on them and of what they might do if they got their hands on them."

"And since seeds can be used to grow the same kind of plant that produced them, Dark Oak was convinced by his vizier that he could grow a new Golden Fruit to fulfill his ambitions, because it wasn't like Helheim was going to come back and offer him a new one anytime soon," Sonic added.

"Of course, growing a new Golden Fruit is easier said than done. After all, Helheim is only able to produce a single fruit at a time by consuming an entire planet!" Blaze pointed out. "With the guidance of his vizier, Dark Oak believed that he could artificially induce the seeds to grow by implanting them in his wife, transforming her into a tree, and then causing immense suffering across the kingdom which he could then transform into negative energy using the sacred Sol Emeralds and feed into the tree, giving it the power it needed to grow another Fruit."

"… That's, like, super messed up," said an incredulous Charmy.

"But why use his wife? Why couldn't he just plant them in the ground or something?" A disgusted Cream asked.

"The same reason you can't just grow any plant anywhere you want," Tails said. "It's not enough to have sunlight and water, you also need to have the right soil to plant the seed in."

"And in this case, the soil was a person?!" Vector cried.

"Actually, there may be precedent for that," Rouge spoke up. "We're not entirely sure why, but from the accounts we've pieced together, it seems that the champion who claims the Fruit doesn't just pluck it from a tree or something. It's presented to him by a 'Woman of Beginnings,' who is most usually someone very close to the hero who has somehow been ascended into a godlike being as well. It's not entirely clear how this happens, but it seems to be an important part of the process."

"And Dark Oak forced his wife to be that Woman, to ensure the Fruit would grow," Tails said.

"… What kind of guy would do that to his own wife?!" Mighty asked, repulsed.

"More people then you'd think, unfortunately," Espio said cynically.

"Once Cosmo related all this to me, the inevitable question came," Blaze said. "Would I help her?"

"What did you say?" Knuckles asked.

Blaze smirked. "Well, I'm here, aren't I?"

…

Blaze listened, enraptured, as Cosmo wrapped up her tale of woe. Her imagination really had come up with something this time! It'd be a shame once this was all over, who could say when she'd have another fake adventure this good again? "When my father's minions, turned into Inves and came for us, my big sister Galaxina sacrificed herself to buy time for my retainers and I to escape," Cosmo said, face heavy with grief. "Since then, we've been searching the kingdom for someone, anyone, who might be strong enough to defeat my father… But everyone is either too busy struggling to survive in the hell he's turned Solana into, or too focused on their own problems to care all that much about the bigger picture. Just when I'd given up all hope, we ran into that strange snake, who told me about this place, about you, and how if I summoned the being there I might find the champion I needed to save my realm." Her shoulders sagged. "I was expecting a legendary hero. Instead, I get a world destroying demon. Now, all is lost…"

Despite the fact that the girl was probably nothing more than a figment of her imagination, Blaze was surprised to find that she was still capable feeling empathy for her. "The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, you know," she said.

Cosmo blinked. "What?"

"I see no reason why a demon cannot also be a hero of legend," Blaze continued. "After all, depending on who you ask, a hero can be no more than a criminal or terrorist. It's all a matter of perspective. And besides, as I said before… I don't want to destroy the world. I was banished by people who were convinced that I was evil. I rather think that saving the world would be the perfect way to show them they were wrong, don't you?"

Cosmo's eyes lit up with hope. "Then… Then you'd be willing to…!" She hesitated, a suspicious look crossing her face. "Wait a minute. It can't be that easy. You're a demon, after all! There's no way you would just agree to help me like that, no strings attached! There… There has to be some ulterior motive, or… Some price to pay. What is it you want? Do you want to kill everyone descended from those who banished you? All our riches? My soul or the souls of everyone in the kingdom? Do you wish to rule the world, or burn it to ashes? If I were to free you… What… What would you want in return?"

"Nothing," Blaze said.

Cosmo was taken aback. "Nothing?!"

"I've been gone for so long that there's no way I'd be able to find everyone descended from those who banished me, let alone find time to kill them all," Blaze pointed out. "Heck, I've been gone for so long, it wouldn't surprise me if at least half the population were indirectly descended from them. I have no use for money or weatlh. I don't want your soul, or anyone else's, what would I do with them? Similarly, I have no desire to rule or destroy the world. I hardly know what I do with it if I were in charge!"

…

Everyone gave Blaze skeptical looks. "Well, I didn't know I was going to conquer it then!" She insisted, blushing.

…

"But… Surely there must be something?" Cosmos in disbelief. "If you weren't stuck in that cage… What would you do? Is there nothing you want?"

Blaze hesitated, surprised by the question. The answer… The real answer… Rose unbidden to her lips. "I just want to be free," she said softly.

Cosmo blinked in surprise. "Huh?"

"I have been a prisoner for longer than you can possibly imagine. Longer than this country has existed, quite likely," Blaze said quietly. "I've suffered, alone, for eons. All I want… All I really want… Is to not be a prisoner. To be free to go anywhere I want, do whatever I choose. To not wake up every morning and find myself still in this cage, dying a little every day. At one point, I suppose I may have wanted more… But that was so long ago I can't even remember. All I want, Princess… Is freedom." Her vision blurred, and much to her surprise, the cat realized she was crying. Huh. She hadn't done that in a while…

She wasn't the only one. "Oh…" Cosmo sniffled. "That's… That's so sad! I…" She hesitated for moment, looking uncertain, but then steeled her resolve. "Ohhh… There's a chance I might regret this, but… I can't… I can't just leave you in there, not after hearing that." She took a deep breath, and then asked, "Blaze the Cat… If I let you out of there, do you promise you will help me stop my father and save my kingdom?"

Blaze blinked, and then smiled. "Princess," she said. "If you let me out of here, I would be more than happy to do anything you wished for the rest of your days."

"Don't you mean your days?" Cosmo asked.

"I'm a demon. I'm fairly sure I'll outlast you," Blaze joked.

Cosmo chuckled, and then got serious. "Very well, then. Blaze the Cat, Queen of Demons, Chiefest of Calamities, Archfiend of the Abyssal Planes, Flames of Disaster, Avatar of Iblis, and Destroyer of Worlds, I, Princess Cosmo Hyacinthia del Sol, next in line for the Blossoming Throne, future leader of the Seedrian race and all the peoples of the kingdom of Solana, grant you your freedom!" She withdrew a key from her blouse and inserted it into a small hole on the outside of the cage, turning it with a click.

Blaze blinked in surprise as the runes on her chains and the cage started glowing, feeling a strange and unfamiliar power welling up in them. That's odd… That's never happened before-

Without warning, every single rune went dead. A moment after that, everything – – her shackles, the chains, the bars that had enclosed her for untold millennia – – simply… Evaporated, dissipating into thin air, leaving nothing separating her from Cosmo, who timidly took a step back when she saw the stunned look on Blaze's face.

The feline blinked in confusion and looked at her hands, puzzled, and not sure why she was. After all, this had hardly been the first time she'd hallucinated being released from her cage, although all the other times, she had still been able to feel the weight of her chains, the wet blanket of the dampening spell suppressing her power, lingering in the back of her mind, subtly reminding her that none of this was real, and she was still as trapped as she had ever been. But this time… This time that weight was no longer there. That suffocating, cloying pressure which had been there for so long that she had almost forgotten it, was gone, and in its place she could feel the raging heat of the flame within her reigniting, joyously burning with freedom… Though not enough so to nearly tear her apart or send her blasting across dimensions again, it seemed to have learned its lesson from the last time. It wouldn't want to land both of them in another dimension with a group of people waiting to imprison her because she happened to match the description of some prophesized destroyer, after all! Blaze wasn't sure why, but she felt a sense of…acquiescence. It would no longer try to fight her or destroy her to escape, but would submit to her will and supply her with as much power as she needed for whatever she needed it for, no strings attached. She supposed she should have been wary, but something told her this was genuine…and besides, she had more important things to think about at that moment: namely, the fact that she was no longer a prisoner.

This… This can't be, she thought in denial. This is just another hallucination, one more realistic than most. It has to be. There's no way… No way that… That I could really, truly be… "Free," she whispered.

"I'm sorry?" Cosmo asked uncertainly.

Blaze looked up, tearing up again. In that moment, she realized the truth. This was not just another hallucination. This was real. It was all real. Which also meant… "Free," she whispered. "I'm… I'm free! I'm free! I'M FREE!"

Cosmo yelped and stumbled backwards as a tremendous blast of flame erupted around the demon cat, nearly singeing her. Streamers of flame and pillars of fire erupted all over the room, tearing the already crumbling chamber to even more pieces, embers and tongues of flame dancing in the air in wild and enthusiastic patterns, spirals and rings of fire spinning everywhere in elaborate formations, and in the center of it all was Blaze, laughing and crying hysterically… But not with the malevolence of an ancient evil freed at long last to get its revenge, but the joy of an innocent soul tormented and imprisoned for so long that she had forgotten what the world outside her cage was like finally being released. Blaze was free, and exulting in it, and so, Cosmo realized, was she.

Eventually, the fires died down. Blaze strode over, picked Cosmo up off the ground, and hugged her so tightly the Seedrian thought that her spine was going to break. "Thank you," the cat whispered, hot tears rolling down her cheeks and landing on Cosmo's shoulders, letting up bursts of steam as they made contact. "Thank you so much. You have no comprehension of the depths of my gratitude for you. I swear to you on this day, that for the great kindness you have performed for me, not only will I save your kingdom, but ensure that it will prosper and remain safe from all who might harm it for as long as you, your children, and your children's children draw breath. You and your people shall regard me as a friend until the end of days, and my power shall ever be yours to call upon when it is needed most."

Wordlessly, Cosmo hugged her back, and though the stone around them creaked and groaned and the world outside grew ever closer to destruction, that was something they could put aside for the moment. Right now, this was all that mattered.

…

Very few of Blaze's listeners had a dry eye after hearing that. Even Amy was having trouble suppressing a sniffle or two. "I would like to meet this Cosmo," Cream said softly. "I want to give her a hug as big as that to thank her for saving you, Blaze."

"Me too!" Charmy added.

"The next time I see her, I'll pass it on," Blaze promised.

"You kept that promise to her, didn't you?" Shadow realized suddenly.

Blaze nodded. "I did, though trust me when I say I did not, at the time, think that the best way to protect her kingdom would be to rule it myself and conquer everything else."

"So you didn't, uh…" Mighty asked.

"Steal it from her because I somehow interpreted it as the best way to keep my promise? No, she gave it to me of her own volition," Blaze said. "As for why she did that, well… We'll get there soon enough."

"What happened next?" Silver asked.

"Next? Well, I had my first encounter with the enemy… As well as meet the second person who would be one of the most important people in my life," Blaze fondly recalled.

…

Once Blaze regained control over her emotions, Cosmo led her out of the chamber. As they picked their way through the ruins, the Princess explained that they were in a complex buried deep beneath a small village in the countryside. "As far as I can tell, nobody knew this place was down here," Cosmo explained to Blaze as they squeezed their way past some rubble almost completely clogging a doorway. "There aren't even any stories or legends about this place or what happened here."

"The order who banished me must've been extremely thorough in hiding their secrets, then," Blaze mused as they climbed over a fallen pillar. "They really must not have wanted anyone to find a way to bring me back, let alone know that I had ever been here."

"I still can't believe they did that to you," Cosmo confessed as they crossed a very decrepit bridge over a deep chasm. "I mean, I guess I can understand why they did it, or why they thought they had to, but… You don't seem even remotely evil, let alone someone who merits such horrific treatment."

"I'm not evil now, but I can't be entirely positive I never was," Blaze admitted while sidling a long a ledge. "I feel as if I destroyed at least one world at some point in the distant past, but I can't really remember it very well. There is much about myself I do not know…"

"Well, maybe that's a good thing," Cosmo said optimistically, ducking to keep from hitting her head on a low ceiling. "That means you have a chance to start fresh, forge a new identity for yourself. Become known as a hero of legend instead of a destroyer of worlds."

"I would like that," Blaze agreed as they climbed a ladder. "Speaking of which, I don't suppose you have any ideas on how to go about defeating your father and saving the land? I can feel myself growing stronger by the minute now that that suppression spell is gone, but I don't believe I'll be at full strength for quite some time, and I'm not sure how powerful I'll need to be to beat him."

"Well, my father's fortress-which is built into the Doom Tree my mother has become and incorporates what's left of the Royal Palace-is guarded by a great army as well as a force field being generated by runoff from all the negative energy he's absorbing to fuel the genesis of the new Golden Fruit," Cosmo explained as the two of them tried to lever a stubborn door open. "That energy is being collected through the seven Sol Emeralds, which have been placed in strongholds at the ends of each of the great tree's seven roots, scattered across the land. If we could retrieve the Emeralds, we should be able to break the energy flow and not only lower the barrier but also hopefully prevent him from gathering the power he needs to grow the Fruit."

"And of course, we'll need to get all seven instead of removing just one and hoping it'll be enough," Blaze intuited as they casually waltzed past long-defunct booby traps.

"Correct," Cosmo said as Blaze used her flames in lieu of torches so they could navigate a very dark passage. "How did you guess?"

"That tends to be how these sorts of things go," Blaze said vaguely as they tried to figure out which of three pathways to go down next. "So, exactly what are these Sol Emeralds? Standard mysterious mystical objects of ultimate power, sacred to your people's history, terrible if used in the wrong hands, and so on?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Cosmo said, squinting in the firelight to see if a smudge on the wall was a marker she'd left on her way down to show the way back, or just a smudge. "According to legend, one of my ancestors made a pact with the sun goddess Solana to ensure endless bounty and prosperity for my country. The terms of the pact are unclear, but we received the Emeralds in return for whatever promise we made to her, and have used their power to ensure our harvests and bounties are ever rich, and our magic strong and powerful, while many other nations struggled to make ends meet. Understandably, this doesn't exactly make us popular with some of our neighbors."

"Naturally," Blaze said as they nimbly hopped across several holes in the floor. "I suppose it makes since you would worship a sun goddess. Evolved from plants, and all that." She wasn't sure why, but something deep within her – – the flame, perhaps? – – Seemed to resonate at the idea of power born from a sun deity. Something about it felt… Familiar, somehow. Interesting.

"Yes, but I'm not 100% sure that's how it really happened," Cosmo confessed as they walked up a crumbling stair. "There've been stories and accounts of the Sol Emeralds existing for centuries, millennia even, long before our country existed, in other parts of the world. Whatever they are, they're very powerful, very dangerous, and we have to retrieve them from my father at all costs."

"Noted. So, any ideas on how we're going to do that?" Blaze asked as they walked down a long corridor. "I'm guessing these strongholds are going to be heavily guarded, and while I suppose I might be strong enough to take them down single-handedly by the time we get there, I doubt it'll be easy."

"All the strongholds are near populated areas, so the Emeralds will be able to draw a greater amount of negative energy from the people there to feed to the tree," Cosmo explained while warily watching the ceiling to see if any loose stones were going to fall on her head. "I was thinking maybe we could try and convince them to help us? After all, this is their land too, and if my father succeeds, they will all suffer."

"Except it won't be as simple as just asking them for help, we'll probably have to help each of them deal with whatever short-term crisis they're dealing with at the moment before they'll agree to assist us," Blaze speculated as they hopped from pillar to pillar rising from a great chasm.

Cosmo blinked in surprise as they passed through a long gallery full of broken statues of Blaze, only more monstrous than she actually was. "Quite likely. Are you sure you've never done this before?"

"I've just got a good instinct for this sort of thing, is all," Blaze said evasively as she scowled at some of the broken statues, deciding not to tell Cosmo that after the hundreds of thousands of hallucinatory adventures she'd embarked on during her imprisonment, she'd gotten a good sense of the way most of these epic quests were structured. It would only make her upset. "Regardless, it's a good idea, or at least a good place to start. I don't suppose there any other local heroes we might be able to team up with?"

The Princess shook her head sadly as they walked across a broken mural of a demonic Blaze being banished to Hell, carefully not looking down at it. "Most of them are already dead. My father took care of them right away to ensure they wouldn't pose a threat to him. Pretty much everyone else left is too busy dealing with their own problems, which is why I was desperate enough to believe that old snake when he told me about you, because at that point I didn't know who else to turn to."

Blaze frowned at that as they walked through a hallway lined with what might have been paintings of important members of the order that had captured her, except they were so old that there was nothing left but faded scraps of canvas. "Yes…that snake…something about that still doesn't seem right. The key to my prison was broken and scattered across several dimensions, and the spell used to banish me was lost when the order who captured me killed themselves. How could he have possibly gotten his hands on that, as well as the place where you would need to summon me?"

"Well, maybe one or more of the members of the order chickened out and didn't kill themselves with the rest? Maybe someone wrote down the summoning process after all because they were having trouble memorizing it?" Cosmo suggested. "As for the key… Well, it has been a very long time since you were banished. Maybe, through a series of seemingly random and unrelated events, all the pieces found their way back here from whichever planes they were sent to? That sort of thing happens sometimes, doesn't it?"

"It does," Blaze agreed. "Usually because someone or something wanted them to be. I have a strong suspicion this snake wasn't all that he appeared to be."

"Yeah, I kind of got that vibe too," Cosmo admitted. "He could've been a God in disguise, trying to help us indirectly. That also happens sometimes, right?"

"Yes, but he could just as easily have been a sorcerer, or another demon, or something even worse," Blaze pointed out. "Whoever he was, he must have wanted you to free me for some ulterior reason, meaning my agreeing to help you save the land from your father must factor into some larger scheme of which we do not yet comprehend."

"That's possible," Cosmo admitted. "However, right now I don't see that we have any other option but to keep going. I can't not let my kingdom fall into ruin, after all."

"True," Blaze admitted. She frowned, a thought occurring to her. "Earlier, you said you were traveling with some retainers… But you're the only person who was there to greet me. Where are they?"

"I left them on the surface to guard the entrance," Cosmo explained. "Also, I thought it might have been better for you if the first face you saw after your lengthy imprisonment was a friendly one, not a group of soldiers bristling with weapons and armor."

"Very considerate of you," Blaze complimented the Princess. "I'm not sure if it would've made that much of a difference, in the end, but I appreciate the thought nonetheless." She narrowed her eyes, noticing that the tunnel they were following terminated up ahead in a brick wall that looked like something had recently smashed through it. "Is that our exit?"

Cosmo nodded. "Yes, that leads to a basement in one of the houses in the village that was built over this place. The owner discovered the opening after the seismic activity caused by my father turning my mother into a giant tree that drove roots into the ground all over the kingdom settled down. The quake must've exposed it, otherwise, I don't know how I would ever have found you!"

"I suppose that's one thing to be thankful to your father for," Blaze commented as they climbed through the hole in the wall and found themselves in what would've looked like an average, everyday dug-out cellar in a primitive feudal-era house… Except for the fact that there were numerous very large roots jutting out of the walls, bursting down through the ceiling, and snaking across the floor, somewhat unsettling foliage spreading out from the roots like some kind of kudzu, with strange reddish-purple fruits with looping stems that caused them to somewhat resemble padlocks sprouting all over the place. Something about the fruits drew her attention, and a rumbling in her stomach reminded her that she hadn't had anything to eat in… In… Well, it had been so long since she'd last eaten she couldn't even remember when it had been, but some instinct—provided by the flame, perhaps?- Warned her that eating any of those fruits would be a very, very bad idea. "My, those roots really must have come far if they're all the way out here," Blaze commented, before abruptly realizing she didn't actually know just how far from the great tree this village was, and anxiously hoped she hadn't made some sort of faux pas. She wouldn't want to look like an idiot in front of Cosmo, after all.

The blood (Or was it chlorophyll? Xylem? She was a plant person, what exactly did she have running through her veins, assuming she had any?) Drained from Cosmo's face as she stared at the alien plants. "These weren't here before."

Blaze shot her friend a look. "And I'm guessing their sudden appearance is not a good thing."

Instead of answering, Cosmo rushed up the nearby set of stairs, leaping over the roots splintering the wooden steps. "Aizel! Hogard! Garan! Damil!" She shouted as she vanished through the ceiling.

Blaze swore and chased after her, yelling, "Running blindly into situations like this while yelling at the top of your lungs is probably not the best of ideas, Princess!" She dashed up the stairs, entering the house proper, and saw-

My, that's a lot of roots, she thought vaguely, staring at the grotesquerie before her. Amazing that they can still be alive, given how many are shoved into-

…

"I, uh, don't think we need that much detail," Amy interjected.

Blaze paused, noticing the pale looks on the others' faces, and Cream shivering. "…Perhaps not," she conceded.

…

Blaze quickly looked away and rushed past what… What was left of the house's former occupants, quickly catching up to Cosmo just before she could run through the front door, broken open by more roots coming in from outside, yanking her back and covering her mouth with a hand. "Be quiet," she hissed to the Princess, the Seedrian's blue eyes wide with fear and horror. "Do you want to get yourself killed?!"

She pressed herself against the wall and moved the both of them away from the door, ducking beneath a window which had more plant matter coming in from outside. After she had assured herself that Cosmo wasn't going to do anything foolish, she cautiously peeked her head over the windowsill to see what was going on outside.

It wasn't much prettier out there, either. What must have at one time been a bucolic feudal-era farming village was now overgrown with alien plants like the kind in the cellar. Roots and moss and vines covered in eerie leaves with more of that strange fruit sprouting from it snaked across the ground and grew up the sides of the buildings, smashing through doors and walls and windows and roofs to get into the interior. Bizarre and twisted trees rose up here and there, and faces could be seen through holes in the bark, faces of still-living people in horrible agony as the plants grew around and inside of them, the trees seeming to grow in vitality with every anguished moan and sob from the poor souls trapped inside. Vaguely humanoid monsters about Blaze's height scurried here and there, their bodies covered in what at first glance looked like brown and silver armor, but Blaze quickly realized was their skin, some kind of exoskeleton, but one with a consistency more like the shell of a nut or seed than that of an insect's carapace, ovular purple eyes staring out from the sides of their long, flat heads as they hissed and clicked and chittered to each other, long sharp claws twitching and stained with blood. Could those be the 'Inves' Cosmo mentioned? I suppose if Dark Oak's trying to draw on Helheim's power, they'd make for good soldiers.

Due to the darkness outside, Blaze initially assumed that it was night, but a closer look revealed to her that the night sky was not, in fact, the night sky, but the leafy canopy of a gargantuan tree, the little bright specks that she'd initially mistaken for stars actually spots where light from outside managed to make its way through the dense foliage. She felt a pang of sadness at this, for she'd hoped to see the night sky again, having been trapped in hell for so long she could only barely remember the beauty of the stars she had briefly glimpsed on that night so very long ago. Off in the distance, she could see the trunk of this tree, a titanic column of wood stretching up into the heavens, jagged thorns and branches jutting from its sides. She couldn't see Dark Oak's castle or the seven great roots Cosmo had told her about from this angle, but she could just imagine them, zigzagging their way across the landscape, digging into the earth and leaching energy from it to feed its wicked botanist's desires. Incredible. And to think, most mythical trees of great power are seen as sacred!

She glanced down at Cosmo, and then put a finger to her lips. After moment, the plant girl nodded, and Blaze removed her hand from her mouth. Cosmo cautiously peered over the windowsill, and barely managed to stifle a gasp before ducking back undercover. "No… All those people…" She whispered.

"Is there any way we can help them?" Blaze asked.

"Yes. Only one way," Cosmo said softly. Blaze did not need to press any further to know what it was. She had, in truth, suspected this all along.

…

"And by one way, you mean…" Vector asked uneasily.

Blaze started to open her mouth, and then hesitated, glancing at Cream, an uncertain look on her face. "You had to kill them, didn't you?" The rabbit asked softly. There was nothing judgmental or shocked or outraged by the question. Just a simple query of fact. Blaze found herself thinking that she might've preferred it if there had been.

"Yes," Blaze admitted. "The only way to save them was to kill them."

The others stirred uncomfortably at this. "How could you?!" Amy demanded. "How could you do something so awful?!"

"What would you have had me do, then? Leave them alive, but suffering without end?" Blaze asked sharply.

"Surely there must've been another way!" The pink hedgehog insisted.

"If I hadn't killed them, they would've died anyway, after I destroyed the great tree," Blaze insisted. "So it was either kill them now, or kill them later. I saw no reason to let them be in pain for a moment longer than they had to be. Death was the only kindness I could offer them. There was no other way." She glanced at Cream, trying to read the expression on her young friend's face. There was nothing there. Somehow, that unsettled her more than shock or anger would have.

"Sometimes, killing someone can be an act of mercy," Shadow mused.

"Something you know from experience?" Espio inquired. The black hedgehog did not reply.

"That was pretty messed up…is that sort of thing really what happens whenever Helheim invades a world?" asked a disturbed Knuckles.

"No, usually there's more sunlight," Rouge said.

"…I'm not sure if that makes things better or not," Knuckles said.

…

"I don't understand, how could they have found us so quickly?" Cosmo wondered. "There's no way they could have-"

Blaze shushed her again, noticing activity outside. The clanking of metal footsteps preceded the arrival of a stocky figure at least twice as tall as Blaze, covered from head to toe in crimson armor with a cape a brighter shade of red than the rest of his body. He had curving spikes on his shoulders, a large orange orb embedded in his chest with the emblem of a pineapple embossed inside, and a boxy helmet with a pair of horns, a small orange orb on top, and a larger one taking up the face like some sort of giant eye. "Who's that?"

Cosmo grimaced. "That's Red Pine, one of the Four Heavenly Generals who serve my father, dispensing justice across the land."

Blaze gave the princess an incredulous look. "You call this justice?!"

"They've always had a rather loose definition of the word," Cosmo admitted sheepishly.

There was a rustling sound, and suddenly another figure appeared…but this one was not moving of his own volition, but suspended in the air by barbed vines wrapped around his wrists, ankles, waist, and neck. By the greenish hair and lack of a nose, Blaze intuited it must be of Cosmo's species, though from the darker hues of hair and skin, larger and bulkier body, and the branches growing from the side of his head in place of flowers, it was probably a male. He was wearing armor and livery, but it was a bit hard to make much of it out given that most of it had been torn to shreds, exposing his bare flesh, which was oozing some sort of liquid (Blood? Sap? Xylem? Something else?) from numerous wounds and lacerations. More of that fluid was dripping from his mouth, and one of his eyes was swollen shut. "No…Damil!" Cosmo gasped.

"One of your retainers?" Blaze guessed.

"Yes, but…oh, what has Red Pine done to him?! We have to-" Cosmo moaned.

Blaze shushed her as Red Pine began to talk. "Well, Damil, it looks like you're the last one," the general said conversationally. "I must say, you lasted a lot longer than I expected you to. Your companions all died so much quicker than you. I'm not even sure I can say I'm honestly enjoying this anymore."

"That's…two of us, then…" the knight rasped hoarsely.

"Tell you what. I'm feeling rather generous, so I'll make you an offer," Red Pine said affably. "Tell me where the princess is and what she's doing in this worthless shithole of a village, and I…well, I'll still kill you, not going to lie about that, but I'll kill you before I claim the princess, so you don't have to see the look on her face when she realizes you sold her out. What do you say? I think that's very reasonable, isn't it?"

Damil responded by spitting in the general's face. Red Pine calmly wiped away the saliva, said, "Yeah, I pretty much figured that's what you'd do," then backhanded Damil so hard he was nearly ripped from the vines, his head snapping back. He gasped in pain, spitting up liquid. "Figured you wouldn't crack. You're too stupidly loyal, just like the others. But…does that loyalty go both ways?"

Damil groaned. "What…what are you-"

"PRINCESS!" Red Pine bellowed. "IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, I SUGGEST YOU LISTEN VERY CAREFULLY! I HAVE SLAUGHTERED EVERYONE IN THIS VILLAGE, AND ALL OF YOUR RETAINERS SAVE ONE IS DEAD! PRESENT YOURSELF IMMEDIATELY AND SURRENDER OR ELSE HE, TOO, SHALL DIE!"

Damil gasped. "N-no! Princess, please, don't-"

Red Pine casually backhanded him again. Damil cried out in pain and vomited fluids and a few teeth. "YOU HAVE UNTIL THE COUNT OF TEN! ONE!"

Cosmo started to get up. Blaze grabbed her and pulled her back down. "What are you doing?!"

"TWO!"

"I have to save him, I can't just sit here and let him die!" Cosmo hissed.

"THREE!"

"If you go out there, he'll kill Damil anyway. And then he'll have you!" Blaze pointed out.

"FOUR!"

"Well…y-you can stop him, can't you? You're a super-powerful world-ending demon!" Cosmo said anxiously.

"FIVE!"

"I told you, I'm not at full power," Blaze said. "I haven't fought anything in a very long time. I'm not positive I can beat him, let alone his entire army, in my current state."

"SIX!"

"But…but we can't do nothing!" Cosmo protested.

"SEVEN!"

"Sometimes you have to pick your battles. I may not be able to stop him now, but I will be able to later," Blaze promised. "But if we go out there now, I can't guarantee what will happen…and if I fail now, then all hope for your land is lost, and all this—the deaths of this village, and your comrades, and your sister—will have been for naught. Is that truly a risk you want to take?"

…

"…That wasn't very nice," Charmy complained.

"It was pragmatic, but not particularly heroic," Espio agreed.

"About what I'd expect, really," Amy sneered. Everyone ignored her.

"I was new to the hero thing then," Blaze said defensively. "And besides, I changed my mind quickly enough."

"Oh, that's good," Cream said in relief.

"What changed your mind?" Rouge asked.

Blaze smiled. "My daughter."

…

"EIGHT!"

Cosmo hesitated. "I-I…I don't-"

"NI-eh? What was that?" Red Pine sharply turned his head to the side. "That sounded like…" He gestured, and several vines lashed out, gripping the crumbling wall of a nearby house and tearing it apart, revealing a grisly tableau similar to the one inside the home where Blaze and Cosmo were hiding, a family that had been…consumed by Helheim plants…

And, crouched at the base of…what was left of what were presumably her parents, a little girl. She was a humanoid cat with close-lying orange-yellow fur, a peach muzzle, and long black hair kept in two voluminous ponytails. She also had two triangular and perked ears with peach inner ears, a small black nose, large sharp black eyes, thin arms and legs, and a slim tail. She wore a red hairband and elaborate white and laced cloth-like hair barrettes around her ponytails, along with a red dress with poofy shoulders, black straps on the cuffs, a black collar, a pair of white wings growing from her back, and white laces on the lower rim. Her dress also had black outlines around the waist and shoulders, and a black area on her front skirt with white fasteners. Additionally, she wore white gloves with red backs and laced cuffs, black arm wrappers around her wrists and pointy black and red high-heeled boots.

But as the girl recoiled, crying out in terror from the sight of Red Pine and the Inves as they advanced towards her, Blaze stiffened, seeing…someone different. Another kitten, but lavender in fur with a violet coat, huddled in fear next to a pair of smoldering corpses as a group of slavering monsters made of lava stalked towards her, molten rock dripping from their jaws. There was a horrific, world-rending roar, and the monsters paused as a huge shadow fell over them, and they and the kitten both looked up to see the nightmarish visage of…of…

Blaze blinked and shook herself back to reality. Was…was that me? But…I'm a demon queen or archfiend of some kind, the most powerful being in…wherever I'm from, how could I have been so…so small and helpless? Well…I suppose even the strongest have to start somewhere…maybe I was a very low-ranking demon, but clawed my way to the top? Something about that feels…partially right, but… She snarled and regained focus. What am I doing, thinking about this now?! There are more important things to deal with! Whatever that memory was, it can wait until later!

Cosmo gasped. "No! What…what is he doing?!"

Red Pine gestured, and more vines shot out, grabbing the kitten and pulling her out into the open. She screamed and sobbed in terror as the general dangled her over one of the Inves. "Change of plans, Princess! Clearly you don't care what happens to your guard…but a soft-hearted fool like yourself couldn't possibly stand by and watch a little girl get hurt, could you? Come out here now…" The Inves' head suddenly split apart, revealing it was actually nothing more than a huge mouth, filled with gnashing teeth the length of Blaze's forearm. "Or the girl becomes this beast's lunch!"

The kitten's screams of terror echoed through Blaze's ears, and once more she saw the lavender child from her memory overlaid on top of her. "B-Blaze, what-" Cosmo started.

"We're going," Blaze said with a calmness that did not match the roiling inferno within her, her fury stoking the flame within, her power increasing exponentially with every breath.

Cosmo blinked. "What?"

"Change of plans. We're going out there, and we're going to save Damil and that child," Blaze said, flames dancing in her golden eyes.

"What changed your mind?" Cosmo asked, surprised and delighted by this turn of events.

"I'm supposed to be a hero now, right? And a true hero would never turn their back on a crying child," Blaze said, flashing a fierce grin. She glanced at Cosmo. "When we go out there, let me take the lead. I'll take care of everything."

Cosmo nodded. "Okay. I knew you'd come around!"

Outside, Red Pine glanced around in annoyance. "Really? Threatening a helpless child didn't do it? I really thought that would work… Oh well, guess I'll just have to-"

"Stop!" Cosmo commanded as she and Blaze stepped out of the ruined home they had been sheltering in. "That's enough, Red Pine! I'm here!"

Damil gasped. "Princess, no-urk!" He gasped as the vines tightened, thorns digging deeper into his skin.

"Ah, Princess!" Red Pine sneered. "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist a lure like that! Your soft heart has always been your biggest weakness… Well, other than your lack of any combat ability, I suppose." He paused, noticing Blaze. "And I see you managed to somehow find a survivor! Whoever you are, I commend you for somehow evading my plants and my Inves! I don't suppose this child is yours? I see a bit of a resemblance… Then again, all you disgusting mammals look alike to me." He shrugged. "No matter. Here's what's going to happen, Princess. You and your friend there are going to hand yourselves over to me, and all of us are going to go see your father. He's been very worried about you."

"I'll bet he has," Cosmo growled. "And what about your hostages?"

"Oh, they're coming with us," Red Pine said casually. "For insurance, to make sure you behave yourself. And who knows? I might just let them go once I don't need them anymore… Then again, I might not…" He chuckled cruelly.

Cosmo growled and clenched her fists. She opened her mouth, but Blaze held an arm out and stepped forward. Cosmo nodded and took a step back, deferring to her. "Allow me to make a counter offer," she said calmly.

Red Pine burst into surprised laughter. "A counter offer?! Well, by all means! This should be entertaining…"

"You're going to put down the girl and the soldier, and you and your army are going to leave this village and never return," Blaze said with an iciness that did not match the flames burning inside her. "In return, I will not hunt you down and make you pay a billionfold for every single life you have taken this day and every cruelty you have inflicted upon these poor people. Make no mistake, I will destroy you eventually, but it need not be this instant. I think that a fair trade, don't you?"

Red Pine laughed in disbelief. "The audacity on this one! Where did you manage to find this wretch, Princess? Clearly she doesn't know who she's dealing with!"

"You're right, I don't," Blaze said casually. "Why should I bother remembering the name of someone I'm going to destroy?"

Red Pine stopped laughing and regarded Blaze curiously. "… You really mean that, don't you? You actually think you can defeat me?"

"I don't think it, I know it," Blaze said coolly.

"Then clearly you are the most delusional individual I have ever encountered," Red Pine sneered. "And I've fought cultists who worship chaos gods!"

"I take that to mean you're rejecting my generous offer?" Blaze asked, raising an eyebrow.

"If by generous offer you mean batshit insane proposal, then yes, I do," Red Pine said.

Blaze shrugged. "Very well then. In that case, I only have one more thing to say."

"And that would be?" Red Pine asked.

Blaze grinned, and her fangs somehow seemed to sharpen and grow longer and more numerous. "Please grit your teeth, because I'm going to punch them out."

Red Pine hesitated in confusion. "Eh? What do you-"

Blaze did not teleport. While she had many powers and abilities, teleportation was not one of them. The fact that one instant she was standing before Cosmo and the next she had her fist planted in Red Pine's face with no appearance of any transitional state could be attributed to nothing more than her phenomenal speed. The orange orb making up the front of his helmet shattered, and his head was snapped back so far it was astonishing that his neck didn't break, the general crying out in as much surprise as agony as he was flung backwards, smashing through the crumbling façade of a nearby building and causing it to collapse on top of him. As Blaze backflipped from the recoil of her blow, her claws flashed out several times, and the vines holding Damil and the girl were shredded pieces. They didn't have far to fall, however, before Blaze's arms snapped out, grabbing them before they could hit the ground (or in the girl's case, fall into the mouth of a waiting monster), and the next thing they knew, they found themselves being gently lowered to the ground in front of an astonished Cosmo.

"How… How did you-" the astounded Princess asked.

"I'm very fast. Did I forget to mention that?" Blaze asked offhandedly. "Please wait here," she directed to the wounded and incredulous soldier and the awestruck girl. "Things are going to get a little messy in a moment."

This statement was proven accurate when the pile of rubble that had once been a house shattered, and an enraged Red Pine rose to his feet. With the which orb on his helmet gone, his face was visible, revealing the visage of a male Seedrian not too dissimilar from Damil, save for his eyes being rather more bloodshot and unhealthy-looking veins snaking across his skin. "You… You DARE?!" He screamed, voice breaking from his fury, the Inves, who had up to that moment been too stunned by Blaze seemingly one-shotting their leader to react, shrieking and hissing for effect. "You warm-blooded cunt, you just laid a hand on one of the Four Heavenly Generals in service of His Majesty, Dark Oak! I was originally going to let you live as a plaything, but now your life and the lives of all you hold dear are forfeit! Who the hell do you think you are, you filthy vermin?!"

Blaze grinned again, and this time there was something… Darker in her expression. For a moment, her eyes flickered green, her pupils becoming slitted. "Who am I, you ask? Have you not heard the stories? Have you not seen the signs?"

Red Pine blinked in confusion. "What? What do you-"

Blaze threw her head back and chuckled long and low, something sinister in her tone. "You really don't know, do you?" She began walking forward, and even though her steps were light and casual, somehow the ground not only cratered but burst into flame with every foot fall. "Prophecies have warned you of me for untold ages, since before the dawn of civilization." She held out her hands, and balls of flame appeared in them, causing the Inves to hiss and recoil in alarm. "Every culture, society, and species has legends and stories about me and the terror I will bring. Stories about how I will tear down the world as you know it, and leave something completely unrecognizable in its place." The balls of flame rose up in the air, twirled around her head, and suddenly expanded outwards into ghoulish demonic visages of flame, laughing madly and causing the monsters to shriek in panic and scramble away. Even Red Pine flinched, though he tried not to show it. "How I will utterly destroy all who stand against me. How I will bring death to untold billions, until the soil is turned red from the blood of my victims. Parents tell their children to behave, or else I'll come to kill them in the night, and desperately hope that they aren't accidentally telling the truth." The flame spirits shot out from her, swooping low over the heads of the Inves, setting more than a few ablaze. They howled in agony and screamed wildly about as they were engulfed in fire, their comrades drawing back from them in fear as the flames consumed them utterly, not even leaving ashes behind.

"D-don't just stand there, you fools! Get her!" Red Pine yelled frightfully.

Heeding their master's cry, the Inves surged forwards towards the cat, even though every instinct in their primitive minds was screaming at them to run far, far away. Blaze's grin grew wider, wider than it should have been physically possible. "You ask me who I am?" She cried as a corona of flames burst into life around her, the ground she was standing on cratering beneath her. An Inves lunged at her, claws out, swiping at her head. She easily ducked the blow and retaliated with a punch right to the gut that blasted a hole clear through its abdomen and out the other side, causing the beast to disintegrate into embers around her fist. "I am Blaze!"

More Inves charged at her. Flames swirled around her feet, and she suddenly blasted off like a comet, twirling around and around like a fiery tornado and ripping through everything in her path as she zigzagged across the ground with her Burst Dash. "Queen of Demons!"

She formed more fireballs in her hands and started flinging them rapidly in every direction, enveloping every creature they touched in demonic flames which nothing, not even water, could put out. "Chiefest of Calamities!"

She jumped into the air, curled into a ball, wreathed herself in flames, then shot back down, the impact shattering the ground and releasing a fiery wave which disintegrated everything for a few meters around her. "Archfiend of the Abyssal Planes!"

Without warning, several vines suddenly shot out and wrapped themselves around her wrists and ankles, pulling her spread eagle and holding her in place as a group of Inves charged at her, claws out, ready to gut her. Blaze grinned fiercely, eyes flashing, and fire surged out from her, racing along the length of the vines and igniting them as well as the Inves holding them. Instead of an immediate immolation, this was more of a slow burn, allowing Blaze to grip the burning vines and yank on them, pulling them and the screaming, burning monsters towards her, whipping them about and flinging them at the beasts rushing towards her like some sort of ghoulish flail, bowling the Inves over and setting them ablaze. "Flames of Disaster!"

Several Inves sprouted insectoid wings and took to the air, opening their massive jaws and spitting seeds at her. Blaze nimbly dodged the projectiles, jumped into the air, and launched herself towards the nearest creature, spinning horizontally with her right arm before her, striking the Inves with her Fire Claw, causing it to explode in flames and allow her to rebound through the air towards the next one, destroying that as well and allowing her to chain attack all the other airborne beasts, landing stylishly on the ground as all of the monsters exploded in a great conflagration behind her. "Avatar of Iblis!"

"Get her!" Red Pine screamed desperately. "Get her! Get her get her get her GET HER!"

All over the place, the air seemed to unzip (Quite literally. Blaze could even see the zippers!), leaving behind rifts, cracks between dimensions through which a strange, alien forest could be seen, full of plants nearly identical to the ones encroaching upon the village. Dozens and dozens of Inves swarmed out of the cracks, surging towards Blaze in an endless, shrieking tide of claws and teeth. Cosmo gasped, and the wounded Damil struggled to get to his feet for a futile last stand while the little girl just stared, but Blaze…

Blaze just grinned, her fanged smile looking borderline psychotic. "And of course, most importantly… The DESTROYER OF WORLDS!"

Her eyes flashed, and the air surrounding her combusted in a spectacular explosion, expanding outwards in a pyroclastic sphere of destruction which vaporized the 50 or so Inves that had been about to reach her, the shockwave from the blast knocking back or ripping to pieces those who were outside the reach of the flame. The ground split, fissures zigzagging out from Blaze's burning form, gouts of flame bursting out from them and incinerating any nearby monster that hadn't fallen in when the cracks opened. Pillars of fire erupted from the ground all over the place, and several homes and trees were set ablaze, the tortured screams of the lost souls trapped within as they were mercifully burned to death serving as the perfect accompaniment to Blaze's maniacal laughter and an ideal backdrop for the setting… As well as what was about to come next.

…

Everyone stared at Blaze, dumbstruck. "… Okay, that is so fucking metal," said an awed Vector.

"I – AM – IN – LOVE. MARRY – ME!" A besotted Omega cried.

"Sorry pal, she's taken," Sonic said in amusement.

Blaze nodded, taking his hand. "I am at that." Amy fumed.

"I thought that you were in love with Fang," Mighty said.

"I – CAN – BE – IN – LOVE – WITH – ANYONE – I – WANT!" Omega said belligerently. "MONOGAMY – IS – A – FLAWED – ORGANIC – INSTITUTION – THAT – A – SUPERIOR – MACHINE – SUCH – AS – MYSELF – NEED – NOT – ADHERE – TO!"

"But aren't both of the people you're in love with organic?" Rouge asked.

"SHUT – UP," Omega growled.

"That was a pretty good entrance, I suppose," Shadow grunted grudgingly.

"In other words, you're insanely jealous," Rouge said in amusement.

"Am not!" The black hedgehog denied indignantly.

"Blaze, while I'm happy that you rescued that poor little girl and showed that Red Pine meanie who's boss, did… um, did you really need to burn all those people in the trees to death?" Cream asked.

Blaze sighed. "Unfortunately, there was nothing else I could do for them, Cream. There was no way to save them from those trees, so death was the only kindness I could give them. The fact that it only served to make me look even more impressive and intimidating was a useful side effect."

"A likely story," Amy grumbled.

"The maniacal laughter was a nice touch, too," Espio observed. "You really sounded as if you were enjoying yourself."

Blaze flushed. "Well, it was the first time I'd been able to let loose in billions of years. Is it any wonder I went a little over the top?"

…

"Princess… What have you done?" Damil whispered, staring at the cackling, flaming cat in horror as more and more of the village was consumed in fire. "You said you came here to free some legendary warrior… But it looks to me as if you have summoned a demon of old, an ancient evil even worse than what your father has unleashed! She will destroy us all in fire! Which, need I remind you, is not exactly the favored element of our race?"

"She shall do no such thing," Cosmo said sharply. "And I would ask you never to say such things again. A demon she may be, but evil she is not. Would a monster such as the one you envision her have bothered to intercede to save a little girl, let alone yourself? Whatever she is, wherever she is from, she has agreed to help us in exchange for nothing at all… And aside from that, sometimes it takes a monster to fight a monster."

"My apologies, Princess," Damil said, chastened. "I shall not speak out of turn regarding your friend again."

"See that you don't," Cosmo huffed.

"She's… Incredible…" The little kitten whispered, wings twitching as she stared at the adult cat in awe as she incinerated the fiends responsible for the destruction of her village and the death of her family with ease.

"You aren't the only one who can call up some friends, Red Pine!" Blaze taunted, seeing the horrified and dismayed look on Red Pine's face. "Let me introduce you to a few of mine!"

With a marginal effort, she reached out, calling across the gulfs of space and time…

And her call was answered. In bursts of flame, they appeared. Hideous creatures, diabolical in appearance, their forms made of lava and stone given life, glowing with red or purple light emanating from the demonic fires fueling their life force. Lizard-like Biters and Stalkers snarled and howled and snapped at the air. Gigantic vaguely humanoid Golems and Titans loomed over all, smashing their fists together and stomping the earth. Worms burst out of the ground, shrieking from their three – mandibled mouths. Birdlike Takers formed in the air, flapping and screeching at the winged Inves for daring to share the same skies as them.

"What – what is this?!" Red Pine stammered in disbelief.

"Oh, just a few friends," Blaze said, stroking the head of a Stalker and causing it to sit down, painting and wagging its tail in delight. "Aren't they lovely? And a sight more appealing than those nasty Inves of yours, in my own opinion."

The kitten gasped. "Whoa!"

"Err, Princess, not to countermand your earlier order, but… Are you sure about her? Heroes usually don't summon demonic minions," Damil said uncomfortably.

"I'm… Sure it's fine," Cosmo said, looking slightly uncertain. "Er, Blaze? You never mentioned that you could summon demonic minions before now."

"Oh, didn't I?" Blaze said casually. "Well, it must have… Slipped…" She paused, blinking in confusion. "Wait a minute… I didn't actually know I could do that either… How did…"

Inside her, the flame flickered helpfully, providing an unspoken answer to her question. Blaze frowned. Well, that was interesting… Had she always had minions, but forgotten how to summon them until now? Did the minions belong to the flame, and it had summoned them through her to help out? She'd been hosting this other… Essence for billions of years, and even though it was the source of her power, there was still very little she knew about it, or herself.

Well, that would be a mystery she'd have to solve later. Right now, she was in the middle of the fight, and had some monsters she could sense would loyally and obediently follow her commands would be of great use to her. She wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, the time for introspections and soul-searching could wait until after it was over.

…

Everyone stared at Shadow. "What?!" He snapped.

"Wait, wait, wait. You can summon demonic minions?!" Charmy demanded.

Blaze nodded. "I can indeed."

"… That is AWESOME," the bee gushed.

"And proof that she's evil! Evil! EVIL!" Amy screeched. Nobody paid attention to her.

"Wait, if you can do that, why haven't you before now?" Espio asked.

Blaze shrugged. "I haven't really needed to. I'm more of a hands-on fighter, and most of the adventures we've been on together haven't really necessitated a need for my minion summoning power, since most of the armies of foes we fight aren't big enough to justify calling forth an army of my own. Additionally, they aren't really as useful as you'd think."

"HOW – CAN – AN-ARMY-OF-DEMONIC-MINIONS-NOT-BE-PARTICULARLY-USEFUL?" An incredulous Omega asked.

"Tell me, how effective would you say the average army of robots or monsters or whatever foe we're encountering at the moment are against warriors of our caliber?" Blaze asked.

They considered this for a moment. "Not very," Espio admitted.

"Yeah, Eggman really needs to step up his game if he really thinks he's ever going to be able to beat us," Knuckles bragged.

Blaze spread her hands. "Well, there you go. While my demonic minions may look very fearsome and imposing, ultimately they are about as strong as your standard cannon fodder. Oh, to be fair, against your average person or soldier they would be almost impossible to defeat, but for people like us – or the people we fight against on a regular basis – they aren't really anything to write home about. Most of the beings I fight back home are strong enough to be able to easily dispatch my minions either through strength of arms or banishing spells – which, let me tell you, have become very widespread since just about everyone knows by now I have the ability to summon minions to do my bidding – so pretty much the only time I feel I can justify calling them forth are when I'm about to wage a battle against a massive army too large to take out on my own. Even then, they're basically there to sacrifice themselves to spare my less expendable troops, who can't simply be summoned back to this plane every time they are vanquished. These days, I only summon them to bolster my armies for especially large engagements, use them as disposable scouts or assailants, or put them to use doing the dirty or dangerous jobs too risky for my citizens to do themselves."

"… Huh. That actually makes a good deal of sense," Rouge admitted.

"Wow, who would've thought being able to summon army of demonic minions to do your bidding wasn't really all that practical?" Mighty quipped.

"They have their uses," Blaze said. "It's just that they're more bark than bite in the end."

"Can you show us one?" Silver asked.

"Certainly." Blaze gestured, and in a burst of flame a snarling Biter materialized. Everyone tensed up… But then Blaze reached out and scratched the monster behind its ears, causing it to sit on its hind legs and start panting, tail wagging happily, causing the fearsome hell beast to look more like a big monster dog.

"Puppy!" Cream squealed.

"Yes, it has about the same mentality as one," Blaze agreed as the Biter rolled over and she started rubbing its belly, causing it to growl in delight. "I wouldn't recommend you try petting this one, though, you might not get your hand back. You know, what with its skin being made of molten lava and all that."

"Awww," Cream said in disappointment, ears drooping.

Vector frowned. "Wait a minute… Something about that looks… Familiar…" He gasped and snapped his fingers. "Wait a sec! There were things like that in that weird Crisis City place we found back during the whole Time Eater thing! You know, the place that none of us recognized?"

"… Hey, yeah, that's right," Rouge realized. "What were they doing there?"

"Maybe Crisis City is their plane of origin?" Shadow suggested.

"But if that's the case, then why was it there? It had nothing to do with any adventures Sonic's ever been on," said the confused Mighty. "Unless it was there because of his relationship to Blaze, but even that seems kind of tenuous."

"There's a good explanation for that, one which… Well, I haven't gotten to yet," Blaze said apologetically.

"NATURALLY," Omega grumbled.

"So… Exactly how were you able to summon those things anyway? From what you said, it sounded like you were just as surprised by this ability as everyone else, like it was something that… Flame of yours just made happen?" Espio inquired.

"Something like that," Blaze said, stroking the Biter on the chin.

"And that didn't strike you as it all suspicious?" The chameleon asked.

"A little," Blaze admitted as Sonic handed her a Chili Dog and she fed it to her eager monster. "But I didn't really have time to worry about that right then, and in any event… Well, I felt like I could trust it. I know that might sound weird, but it's true. And as it later turned out, I was right to do so… But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's what happened next…"

…

With a mental command, the demonic beasts surged outwards from their mistress, smashing into the startled horde of Inves. Biters and Stalkers lunged at the beasts, tearing them apart with their fangs and claws or setting them ablaze with their fire or laser breath. Golems and Titans waded into the masses of monsters, smashing them with their feet and fists and occasionally hurling huge molten boulders to crush and incinerate anything in their path. Takers swooped around, engaging the winged Inves with claws and fireballs, occasionally raining destruction down on the unguarded groundlings whenever they got a chance. Worms submerged and burst out of the ground without warning, the eruption from their entrances blasting away any nearby Inves and stunning the rest long enough for them to spew fireballs at them or smashed them with their great segmented heads. More and more Inves rushed out of dimensional cracks to fight the new interlopers, and more and more demons materialized in bursts of flame to counter them, quickly turning the ravaged town into a battleground, homes and buildings and cursed trees set ablaze by the ferocity of the fight.

Not a single monster approached Red Pine. All of them knew that he was their mistress's prey.

"How… How is this possible?!" Red Pine asked in disbelief, staring around him as his army was being ripped to pieces and set on fire by the demonic invaders, the monstrous plants he'd unleashed on this poor town being reduced to ashes by the hellfire being casually tossed all about. "Dark Oak assured us that none would be strong enough to stand against our new power!"

"Dark Oak was wrong," Blaze said as she calmly approached the general, backhanding an Inves that lunged at her from behind without even looking at it. "Or he lied. I'm open to either possibility."

"You dare to disrespect my liege?!" Red Pine snarled.

"A king who would employ a butcher like yourself, or unleash such horrors upon his own people, is not a monarch worthy of the name," Blaze said coldly, forming a fireball in her paws. "After I take you out for what you've done to the people here, I'm going to send him to join you in hell."

She hurled her projectile, but Red Pine vanished in a swirl of leaves before the projectile could hit him, reappearing on top of a nearby building. "You'll have to catch me first!" He laughed, teleporting away again and reappearing on a more distant roof.

Snarling, Blaze summoned a Taker, jumping up as it swooped down and allowing it to grab her by the shoulders in its talons, carrying her into the air and giving her a bird's eye view of the town. Fires were burning everywhere as her minions waged war with the denizens of Helheim, but she only had eyes for her target. She quickly spotted Red Pine teleporting from rooftop to rooftop, and commanded her winged servant to descend, hurling fireball after fireball at the general.

Red Pine evaded her blasts, chaotically warping all over the place in bursts of leaves, making it difficult to predict where he would appear next. Deciding to get ahead of the game, she formed a pair of much larger fireballs in her hands, and the next time the general appeared, threw them not at him, but at the buildings on either side of him. The fiery bursts struck true, exploding and setting the buildings ablaze, as well as those adjacent to them, leaving the Crimson warrior with only one avenue of escape that wouldn't be onto a burning structure – a large square, with several small twisted trees jutting out of the ground, the moans of the poor souls trapped inside drowned out by the chaotic violence engulfing the village. With a grunt, Red Pine teleported down to the middle of the square, and Blaze commanded the Taker to release her, falling from its talons towards the ground below. Flames burst from her feet to slow her descent, and she landed in the square in a shower of embers, facing Red Pine. "No more running!"

"I quite agree," the general said with a snicker as massive roots erupted from the ground around the periphery of the square, growing across every building's doors and windows and blocking the streets, sealing all the exits. "You've fallen right into my trap!"

Blaze raised an eyebrow. "Oh? And what makes you so sure you haven't fallen into mine?" She snapped her fingers, and the plant barriers enclosing the square suddenly burst into flames, creating walls of fire which would serve as no impediment to her… But the same could not be said for her opponent, who growled in frustration.

…

"Wait, did you just CREATE the requisite barrier for a boss arena?" Asked an amazed Mighty. "I thought that was something only the bad guys could do!"

"That's because she IS a bad guy!" Amy yelled. Nobody listened to her.

"I find that it often pays to make sure that when I am fighting a powerful opponent, I have as many advantages in my favor as I can create," Blaze explained. "Plus, not only does it look pretty impressive, it cuts down on the number of irritating recurring foes I have to fight."

The heroes nodded in understanding. "I hear that," Knuckles lamented.

"If more of us could do that, we'd probably have an easier time, and far fewer enemies," Shadow said wistfully.

"BORING," Omega said disinterestedly.

…

"No matter," Red Pine said, his cape billowing dramatically behind him. "You claim to be a destroyer of worlds, demon… But I am empowered by Helheim, a forest which has also consumed countless worlds! Why don't we see which is stronger?"

"Given the performance so far, I'd say the answer is obvious," Blaze said dismissively.

"Ah, but you've only been fighting the bottom of the heap! Let's see how you fare against a TRUE warrior!" Red Pine extended a hand into the air, the pineapple emblem on his chest glowing.

"PINEAPPLE! LOCK ON!" a disembodied voice shouted.

A circular dimensional crack unzipped over his head, and what appeared to be a giant pineapple made of metal descended from it, landing on top of his head and splitting apart in a shower of what Blaze really hoped was just pineapple juice, unfolding out and downwards to form yellowish spiky armor over his chest, back, and shoulders. His helmet had been repaired and turned yellowish and spiky as well, with tufts of green spikes growing from the tips of his shoulders and the top of his head. A flail with a large metal pineapple at the end instead of a ball dangled from his hands.

"SOIYA! PINEAPPLE ARMS: PULPERIZE & DESTROY!" the disembodied voice shouted.

"This is my stage now!" Red Pine declared.

Blaze blinked. "What."

…

"I'll second that," Knuckles said. The others nodded in agreement.

"The heck was that?" Mighty asked.

"It's a manifestation of the power of Helheim," Blaze explained.

"A manifestation of the power of the Eldritch world-eating forest is having giant fruits drop on your head and unfold into armor and weapons?" Charmy asked.

"Pretty much, yeah," Blaze said. "It's not really as silly as it sounds."

"It's not that much stranger than some of the things we run into regularly, when you think about it," Tails pointed out, which they grudgingly agreed was true.

"I don't like pineapples," Cream complained. "I much prefer grapes, or melons, or bananas."

Blaze grimaced. "It took me very long time to like ANY of those after this…"

…

"Behold my power!" Red Pine boomed, swinging his flail about and smashing it into the ground, cratering it and releasing a little splash of pineapple juice.

"Did… Did a giant pineapple just…" Blaze said, utterly bewildered.

Red Pine sighed. "Every damn time… Yes, that was a giant metal pineapple. Yes, that was supposed to happen. No, it's not ridiculous, I'm actually extremely powerful in this form and I expect you to respect it."

"And that voice… Where did that come from?" Blaze, still baffled, asked.

"We're not actually sure either, it's just… a thing that happens whenever we do that," Red Pine said awkwardly.

"Ah," Blaze said. She frowned at the weapon and new armor her opponent was wearing. "So…a pineapple?"

"Yes. What of it?" He asked defensively.

"Well, it's just… Your name is Red PINE, so…" Blaze said awkwardly.

"Yes, PINEapple. See? It fits!" Red Pine insisted a little too quickly.

"Oh. I… I assumed that you were named after the tree, not the fruit, is all," Blaze said, looking embarrassed.

Red Pine grimaced. "Well, actually… To be honest, I WAS, but… The pinecone-themed weapon was a yari, and I've never been very good with those-plus it seemed more like the weapon for a foot soldier than a general like myself-so I decided to choose the other fruit that sounded like my name when I found out that it would allow me to use a weapon I actually had some measure of proficiency with. I was actually a lot luckier compared to the others, they had a bit of a trickier time choosing a weapon and fruit motif since none of them had names similar to the available powers… Well, Zerkova didn't mind so much, I suppose, he's always liked walnuts and going at things with his fists…"

Blaze made a mental note of that. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me what the other two use?" She inquired.

"No, because you will never face them!" Red Pine declared. "For I, Red Pine, of His Majesty Dark Oak's Four Heavenly Generals, shall slay you before you become a threat to my master and his plans! Have at you!" With a laugh, he teleported away in a swirl of leaves.

Blaze tensed, her ears sticking straight up as she scanned the area for the faintest sign of her foe's reappearance. The instant she heard the sound of leaves, she whirled about and hurled a fireball right at Red Pine, but the general immediately teleported away before the projectile could hit, laughing as he warped all over the field, moving in no discernible pattern that Blaze could exploit to predict where he might appear next, whirling his flail over his head, the weapon moving faster and faster with each subsequent appearance. Finally, and without warning, he paused in his teleports and flung the great spiky pineapple at her. Her reflexes kicked in and she dodged out of the way of the flail before it could smash into her, hurling a fireball at Red Pine as he pulled the pineapple back towards him. Unfortunately, the general retracted his weapon faster than her projectile could reach him, and he teleported away just before the fireball could strike him.

He's pretty fast, she thought to herself in annoyance, eyes and ears sharp as Red Pine started teleporting all over again, building up momentum for his next flail attack. I'm not going to be able to hit him unless I can find some way to get him to stand still for more than a second- She paused her train of thought to dodge another blow from the flail, the pineapple shattering the ground where she'd just been standing. Okay, doesn't look like it's the kind of weapon that'll get stuck in the ground and allow me a free hit, she resumed thinking as Red Pine started teleporting again. Maybe it'll get stuck in something softer? Something like-

As she dodged another pineapple strike, her eyes caught upon one of the twisting, moaning trees. Ah. That will do, she thought, feeling a slight twinge of guilt and prematurely asking whatever tortured soul was trapped in the tree for forgiveness for what she was about to do.

She started rushing all over the battlefield in a seemingly random pattern, forcing Red Pine to teleport faster and further to try and catch up to her, zigzagging here and there to dodge his attacks. She kept an eye on him as she dashed about, noting the speed with which he twirled his flail faster and faster whenever he briefly reappeared, and then, right when she estimated he'd reached top speed, she stopped in place. Red Pine materialized out of thin air, flung his pineapple at her…

And she dodged it, causing the flail to instead smash into the tree she'd been standing in front of, its spikes digging into the warped wood of the plant and causing whatever villager was stuck inside to moan slightly louder, blood oozing from the tree like sap. "Huh? What are you-"

The general tugged on his flail, only to discover that it was stuck fast. Knowing she only had seconds to spare before he got over his surprise and did something, Blaze dashed forwards, leaping into the air and slamming into Red Pine with a mighty Fire Claw. Red Pine cried out in pain as he was flung backwards, the flail ripping out of the side of the tree and causing even more blood to ooze out of it. As Blaze was flung back from the recoil of her blow, she saw the large spiky ball of the pineapple flying past her towards its master. Getting an idea, she spun about in a flaming whirlwind kick, striking the pineapple and flinging it into Red Pine's chest, causing him to gasp in pain as the orb on his chest was cracked, and he was flung to the ground, bouncing and rolling over a few times before coming to a stop.

Blaze dashed over for another attack, but the general quickly teleported away. "That," he grunted when he reappeared some distance away. "Was actually pretty clever. Unfortunately, you won't be repeating a trick like that again."

He raised his flail to the air, started twirling it over his head… And much to Blaze's astonishment, the pineapple GREW, becoming bigger and bigger with every revolution. With a fierce cry, the red general hurled his flail outwards and swung it to the side, causing the much-enlarged pineapple to smash through every tree in its path, reducing them to bloody splinters in a great cacophony of shattering wood and screams of agony. Blaze barely managed to avoid being crushed by the giant pineapple by rolling under the cable connecting it to the general's hands as it passed over her, and when she got back to her feet, she was alarmed to see that the arena had become a much more level place; nothing left of the trees except for a few broken, bleeding stumps jutting out of the ground here and there.

Red Pine cackled as he pulled his flail back to him, the pineapple shrinking back to a much more manageable size. "Let's see how you fare without a trick like that, shall we?" He sneered before he teleported, resuming his attack.

…

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up!" Vector interrupted. "Did that guy just… Change the battlefield and adapt his tactics to prevent a weakness from being exploited again?!"

"So it would seem," said a disturbed Shadow.

"…They can DO that?!" Vector said incredulously.

"I thought bad guys weren't allowed to do something like that," Knuckles said. "Figured it was a rule or something."

"Does that mean Blaze was actually fighting a SMART opponent?" Amy wondered, bewildered. "I didn't think those actually existed!"

"Well, I guess they can't all be giant robots with predictable attack patterns, glaringly obvious weak spots, and cockpits which are exposed for no apparent reason," Rouge said.

…

Okay, new plan, Blaze thought as she ran around the battlefield, both to buy herself some time to think and make it trickier for Red Pine to hit her with his flail. I don't think there's anything else around here I can use to get his flail stuck on. He can still teleport away faster than I can attack him. If I can't make him hold still, how can I hit-

Her ears twitched, and she bent over backwards just before the flail could slam into her side, the spiked ball passing so close above her that her whiskers were brushed aside by its spikes. As the pineapple shot over her head, Red Pine yanked it back to retract it to him…

Oh. There's an idea. Her hand shot up, grabbing the cable as it passed over her. She was immediately yanked off her feet, and pulled bodily towards the startled Red Pine. "Wh-what-" he stammered just before she plowed feet first into his chest, releasing a blast of flames from her heels which flung both of them away from each other, further damaging the general's chest armor. As she flew backwards through the air, she again struck the airborne pineapple with a flaming kick, sending it hurtling towards Red Pine…

Who managed to regain his footing and caught the pineapple in his free hand before it could strike him. "Sorry, that's not going to work again either," he sneered as spikes sprouted from the lower half of the cable, ensuring that she wouldn't be able to grab it again to repeat this trick.

…

Everyone stared at Blaze in wordless awe. "This guy is GOOD," said an incredulous Mighty.

"Why can't more of our enemies be that smart?" Shadow complained.

"Because then it would be that much harder to defeat them?" Cream suggested.

"SOME-OF-US-RELISH-THE-CHALLENGE," Omega said.

…

Red Pine resumed his assault, teleporting all over the place before flinging his flail. Once more, Blaze found herself on the defensive, racing all over the place to dodge his attacks while trying to think of a good counter. Okay, so it looks at the same tricks aren't going to work twice on this guy, she thought as she barely managed to evade another flail smash. I can't trick him into getting his flail stuck on something, I can't use his weapon to get closer to him, he'll teleport away any time I try to attack him from a distance or close up… There's got to be something I can do, but what?

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a dogfight between several flying Inves and her Taker minions. Oh. That might work.

She stopped running, standing in place, body tense and senses extended to their maximum as Red Pine wildly teleported everywhere, waiting for him to make his move. Come on… Come on…

The general reappeared some distance away, arm swinging forward to hurl the flail at her. Now!

Her eyes flashed as she exerted a measure of her will…

And, without warning, a Worm suddenly erupted from the ground right beneath Red Pine, snatching him up in its tripartite jaws and ferociously thrashing him about. "AAAARGH WHAT IS THIS WHAT IS HAPPENING?!" He screamed.

…

"Wait, I thought you said you DIDN'T summon minions for your fights," Knuckles interrupted.

"I USUALLY don't," Blaze clarified. "However, keep in mind that this was my first real fight since being released, I wasn't yet at full power, and this guy was really, really annoying me." She shrugged. "Plus, I can afford to be pragmatic sometimes."

…

Knowing that she didn't have long before Red Pine would recover his senses and break free, Blaze leapt into action, jumping into the air and slamming into the general with a Fire Claw, knocking him free from the Worm and slamming him into the ground rather painfully. She nodded in thanks to her minion, and if gurgled before vanishing back into the ground. "You… You BITCH!" Red Pine snarled as he staggered to his feet. "You dare to bring an underling into a duel between warriors?! I should summon the full might of my army here to teach you a lesson for that, but fortunately for you, in spite of your flagrant cheating, I shall continue to abide by the terms of combat. After all, unlike a demon such as yourself, I still have my honor!"

Blaze stared at her opponent in incredulous disbelief for a moment, which quickly turned into outrage. "Honor? HONOR?! You attacked an innocent village, slaughtered everyone in it or fed them to your monstrous plants, and are helping your evil ruler oppress and torment the people you were sworn to protect! Where's the honor in that?!"

"I swore an oath of loyalty to serve my King in all things," Red Pine declared. "If he commands that I put his realm to the sword, then that is what I shall do!"

"A King who would command the destruction of his own nation is no king at all," Blaze said in disgust.

"And what would you, a self-proclaimed destroyer of worlds and archfiend, know of such things?" Red Pine sneered. "You condemn me for my actions, when you have no doubt ravaged far more nations and ended more lives than I? You hypocrite!"

That actually gave Blaze pause for a moment. After some consideration, she said, "That may be true, but at least it was my PURPOSE to destroy worlds, what I was created to do, and something I've turned away from. You, on the other hand, were a defender of the realm who has chosen to betray the people he was supposed to protect because his insane monarch told him to… And, I suppose, because he offered you a great deal of power as incentive. Which of us, then, is the greater monster?"

Red Pine snarled. "I will not be lectured to by a fiend like yourself! Take note, because this is where things get REALLY serious!"

The general quickly made good on his word. His teleports became even more frequent and chaotic, and the moments where he appeared lasted less and less. He threw and retracted his flail even quicker than before, and to make things even more complicated, he often feinted attacks to make it almost impossible to predict when or where he was actually going to strike. Even with her feline reflexes, his flail blows were getting closer and closer to hitting her. If Blaze didn't think of something soon, it was only a matter of time before she found herself in serious trouble.

Fortunately, she'd already anticipated something like this might happen, and half the reason she'd engaged Red Pine in debate earlier was so she could have time to formulate her next counterattack. And, after studying the general's movements over the last few minutes, she thought that it had a good chance of working. Before, he changed the terrain to his advantage, Blaze thought as she dodged another attack, gathering her power. I see no reason I cannot do the same.

Hands burning, she slammed her palms into the ground, channeling her fury and power into the earth. The ground glowed white-hot as incredible heat surged through it, causing it to melt and dissolve into lava. The molten rock had no effect on Blaze other than feeling pleasantly warm on her feet, but the instant Red Pine reappeared, he howled in agony as his feet burst into flames, promptly teleporting to the top of one of the buildings surrounding the battlefield. He danced about frantically, trying to put out the flames on his feet. "What… How did you… Why-"

Blaze smirked. "I've noticed that while you teleported everywhere, you don't actually seem to be capable of flight. As such, I predicted that altering the ground so that you would no longer be able to set foot on it might make things a bit easier for me."

"… Very clever indeed," Red Pine growled grudgingly. "You truly are a cut above most of the others I have fought since obtaining this power… However, if you think this makes things easier for you, you're dead wrong."

The pineapple emblem on his chest glowed, and suddenly several dozen dimensional crack unzipped all over the place, at varying elevations and placed all over the battlefield and the air above it. Blaze frowned in puzzlement. "I thought you said you weren't going to summon any Inves. That it would besmirch your 'honor.'"

"Oh, I'm not going to be summoning any Inves," Red Pine chuckled as he twirled his flail, building up momentum. He flung the pineapple into one of the cracks…

And Blaze's eyes widened in astonishment as it shot out of a different crack, flew right into another one, exited from a different crack, entered another one, and so on and so forth, zigzagging from crack to crack all across the battlefield, passing between dimensions with ease. Her eyes narrowed as she realized there were about half a dozen cracks ringing her, swiftly figuring out what was coming.

Sure enough, the pineapple eventually shot out of one of the cracks surrounding her. She dodged the blow, then rushed towards the crack as the flail was pulled back into it, hoping to follow it back to its master…

Only for it to zip shut in her face, along with all the other cracks. "You didn't think I'd make it that easy, did you?" Red Pine chuckled, opening several more cracks and hurling his flail into another one.

And yet you reopened all the cracks in the exact same place! Blaze noted. As the pineapple zigzagged from crack to crack, she leaped into the crack that the flail had struck from the last time. Things got… Rather disorienting as she rapidly passed through the alien greenery of Helheim too quickly to look around, exited through another crack back into the burning ruin of the town, fell back into Helheim, and continued shifting from dimension to dimension as she passed through each subsequent crack until…

She found herself exiting a crack and landing right back where she started. "What the-"

The flail shot out of a different crack, and she only barely managed to dodge it. Red Pine laughed as he pulled back the flail, the cracks closing and reopening again. "I told you I wasn't going to make it that easy! What, did you really think I'd be stupid enough to pair up each crack the same way every single time?"

…

"Okay, seriously, this guy is WAY too smart to be just a mid-boss," said a dumbfounded Rouge.

"If all the bad guys in Blaze's world are that smart, suddenly I find myself appreciating the morons we get that much more," Espio commented.

"Yeah, you'd never see Eggman pulling off something that clever," Charmy agreed.

…

Blaze's mind raced as Red Pine hurled his flail into another crack. Okay, she thought. There has to be a way out of this… But what?

Getting a flash of inspiration, she spread her hands, a small fireball appearing between each finger, each of them a different color. With a flick of her hands, each fireball shot into one of the cracks surrounding her. They flickered in and out of reality as they passed from crack to crack, traveling from this world to Helheim and back again. Come on, she thought anxiously as the flail shot through more and more cracks. Come on…

"I don't know what you think you're doing, but I assure you it's not going to-" Red Pine started, when suddenly one of the fireballs – a yellow one – shot out of one of the cracks surrounding him and burst harmlessly against his armor. "What was the point of-"

Blaze jumped through the crack she'd initially thrown the yellow fireball through. Behind his mask, Red Pine's eyes widened in horror as he realized what she was up to. "No… No no no no no!"

Frantically, he willed the cracks to start closing. One by one, they started zipping shut…

Too slow, far, far too slow, the purple feline zipping through each crack just before it could close, getting closer and closer to him by the second. Desperate, Red Pine turned around and hurled his flail at the crack Blaze was due to exit from…

Only for her to launch into a flaming whirlwind kick the instant she exited the crack, knocking the pineapple back into Red Pine's chest, causing him to lose his balance as well as damaging his armor, and ensuring that when Blaze slammed into him with her Fire Claw, he was knocked off his perch and sent tumbling towards the lava below. Fortunately for him, he managed to teleport just before he could hit the liquid flame, reappearing on top of another building across the way. He fell to one knee, panting and clutching his chest, the orb covered in a web of cracks, as he tried to catch his breath.

As Blaze jumped down to the pool of lava and started running towards him, he growled and staggered back to his feet. "That. Is. ENOUGH!" He shouted, armor glowing with yellowish orange light.

"PINEAPPLE SQUASH!" The disembodied voice shouted.

A crack opened over his head, and he threw his flail into it. Blaze stopped, narrowing her eyes, wondering what new wrinkle was about to be thrown into the fight.

She didn't have long to wonder. With a very loud unzipping noise, several dozen cracks opened in the air above the square, almost filling the entire sky save for one conspicuous spot near the edge of the square. Eyes widening in alarm as she realized what was coming, Blaze dashed across the lava field and positioned herself right beneath the patch of open sky just before a pineapple flail shot out of every single crack, smashing into the ground and splashing lava everywhere.

As Blaze shook the molten rock off of her, the cracks zipped shut then reopened again, but this time the empty spot was on the other end of the square. Blaze quickly rushed over to it, making it just as the flails smashed down from the cracks again, pulverizing the lava beneath them.

I have to stop this, she thought as the cracks then reopened for a third time. But how? Racking her mind for ideas, she quickly dashed for the clear spot in the center of the square just before the flails smashed down again. As the pineapples retracted, she looked up as the cracks zipped shut again, waiting for the next wave…

Except this time, only one crack opened. A big one. One wide enough to encompass everything just above the square. Blaze's eyes widened in horror as she realized what was about to happen. "Oh no."

The pineapple descended, a spiky mass big enough to make a house out of. There was nowhere to run. It came smashing down, splashing lava everywhere and crushing everything beneath it. From his perch, out of range of the waves of displaced lava, Red Pine laughed. "You've put up a good struggle, feline, but now, at last, I have-"

The pineapple started to tremble. The lava started rippling outwards, sloshing against the sides of the square. Red Pine froze. "No."

"Haaaaaahhhhhhh…" Blaze, wreathed in a swirling corona, stood up to her waist in the lava, teeth gritted and back bent as she tried with all her might to keep from being flattened beneath the pineapple, hands wedged between two of the spikes.

"No! No, no, NO! I won! I beat you!" Red Pine screamed in horror. "Why won't you stay dead?! How many lives do you have?!"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh…" Sweating, straining, Blaze started to straighten up, slowly, slowly lifting the pineapple on top of her.

"No! I will not allow this! You will die, NOW!" Red Pine shouted, glowing with more power.

"PINEAPPLE AU LAIT!" The voice shouted.

Blaze cried out as the pineapple suddenly doubled in size. Its weight too much for her, she started to sink back into the lava again, the pineapple pushing her down until the magma was up to her neck. Her corona started flickering as the red general laughed manically, and her eyes began to close…

You aren't going to let it end like that, are you? Crushed by a giant pineapple?

Blaze's eyes shot back open. She cried out, her corona flaring up again, and she dug deep, drawing upon more and more power. Slowly, gradually, the pineapple begin to rise again.

"No… No, no, no! Stop that! STOP! THAT!" Red Pine shrieked, exerting his power once more and causing the pineapple to increase in size again. Blaze started to sink once more…

When in a swirl of flame, over a dozen Golems and Titans surged out of the lava, grabbing the underside of the pineapple and pushing against it with all their might. Worms rose alongside their more muscular brethren to join them, straining against the pineapple with all the might in their segmented bodies. Takers materialized from thin air and grabbed onto spikes on the sides and top of the pineapple, flapping their wings as hard as they could to help raise the pineapple even the slightest bit to alleviate the pressure on their mistress.

"No! NO! NO!"Red Pine screamed in terror, pushing even more power into the pineapple…

And nothing happened. He was at his limit, having exerted so much energy already simply conjuring the giant pineapple to begin with, let alone boosting its size and weight twice. There was nothing he could do but watch in disbelief as, bit by bit, the pineapple rose, exposing Blaze, gradually straightening as the burden on her was lifted, until she was only standing up to her ankles, back straight, a look of pure determination on her face. With an ear piercing howl, her aura burst outwards, enveloping and powering up her minions. In unison, they all gave one great shove (or tug, in the case of the Takers) upwards…

And the pineapple was launched into the air, flying back through the giant crack. "No! That's not possible! THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE!" Red Pine screamed…

And then noticed a very large shadow fell upon him, one growing larger by the second. He looked up to see the gargantuan pineapple falling towards him through the crack over his head. It took several moments for him to realize what was happening. Moments he could've used to teleport, or close the crack, or banish his weapon. But he was so stunned and incredulous by the impossible feat he had just witnessed that by the time it occurred to him that he should be doing any of those things, it was far too late.

And so, when the pineapple descended on him, crushing him and flattening the building he'd been standing on to the ground, there was nothing he could do to stop it. The giant pineapple sat there for a moment, looking just as absurd as it would have if it had been sitting at the bottom of the sea next to a Moai head and a rock, before spontaneously exploding in a massive shower of pineapple juice, the yellowish liquid flooding outwards in every direction, surging down the streets of the town, extinguishing the flames burning all over the place and sweeping the combatants, Inves and demonic minions alike, away. Blaze might have been caught up in the tide as well had not her loyal minions immediately rushed forwards to form a huge wall with their bodies, taking the brunt of the juice with their rocky forms and allowing it to wash over and around them, throwing up massive blinding gouts of steam as it made contact with their molten bodies and the lava covering the ground. Blaze was forced to shield her eyes to keep from getting steam in her eyes, though she wasn't sure to what extent it could actually harm her vision.

When the steam finally cleared, Blaze saw that the lava had been cooled and hardened by the massive amounts of pineapple juice… As had her minions, their interlocking bodies now frozen in stone, a testament to their devotion to her that they were willing to surrender their physical existences just to protect her. The fact that they were not mortal creatures and so could be revived and summoned endlessly from their plane of origin didn't make a difference, it was still a touching gesture, and one Blaze was not unmoved by. "Thank you, my friends," she said softly, gently touching the hardened thigh of a Golem. "I shall not forget your aid this day."

…

"… That. Was. AWESOME!" Charmy squealed.

"And kind of anime," Vector said. "Not that that's a bad thing, or anything."

"That was incredible, Blaze!" Cream gushed. "But… Oh, those poor minions!"

"Not the sort of sentiment one would usually have towards demonic monsters from hell," Shadow noted.

"Don't worry, Cream, they were fine," Blaze reassured the rabbit. "They couldn't actually die because they weren't alive to begin with. They're infernal spirits from another plane given shape in our material reality. Destroying their physical forms merely sends them back to their home dimension, until such time as I need to summon them again."

"Oh! Well, okay then," Cream said in relief.

"DOES-THAT-MEAN-THAT-IF-I-SHOOT-YOUR-PET-THERE, IT-WON'T-ACTUALLY-DIE, JUST-GO-HOME-UNTIL-YOU-BRING-IT-BACK-SO-I-CAN-KILL-IT-AS-MANY-TIMES-AS-I-WANT?" Omega asked.

Cream gasped in horror. "No, please don't!"

"That is correct," Blaze confirmed. "However, I would ask you not to do that, please."

"OH, FINE," Omega grumbled.

"Don't worry buddy, we'll find something for you to kill later," Shadow assured his robot friend.

"WE'D-BETTER," the robot said petulantly.

"That was a pretty intense fight," Mighty commented. "That Red Pine sure took a beating."

"He had it coming," Amy said unsympathetically, a sentiment they could all agree with.

"At least that finally did him in, right?" Knuckles asked.

Blaze grimaced. "Actually…"

"… No way. Seriously?! Just how tough is this guy?!" Asked an incredulous Mighty.

"Seedrians are very resilient, even when not bolstered by the power of Helheim," Blaze said defensively. "I think it's the plant in them."

"IN-MY-EXPERIENCE, PLANTS-ARE-RIDICULOUSLY-EASY-TO-CRUSH, CUT, AND – MY-PERSONAL-FAVORITE – BURN," Omega spoke up.

Amy snorted. "Clearly you never tried gardening. You have any idea how hard is to permanently get rid of a weed?"

"HAVE-YOU-TRIED-BURNING-THEM?" Omega asked.

"How am I supposed to do that without burning down my entire garden?!" Amy demanded.

"I-FAIL-TO-SEE-THE-PROBLEM," Omega said.

Blaze shook her head in amusement. "Anyway…"

…

There was the sound of shifting rubble and splashing pineapple juice, and Blaze's head snapped around. In the crater the great pineapple had made when it descended to earth, still ankle-deep in juice, the flattened debris which was all that remained of the building it had crushed was moving. With a long, low moan and much cursing, Red Pine wrenched himself from the wreckage, not looking too different from the rubble he had just climbed out of. His augmented armor was gone, leaving only his original set of crimson armor, cracked and dented and pulverized all over, the orb on his chest shattered, one of his horns torn off, his cape in tatters, half the orb on his face missing, and from the slow, agonizing way he moved it was clear that he had broken at least one limb and several internal organs, or whatever it was Seedrians had inside of them. Despite herself, Blaze was impressed. In spite of all the punishment he'd taken, the general was still alive, albeit in no condition to fight any longer.

It was time she amended that. She rushed forwards, her footfalls splashing up droplets of pineapple juice as she went and drawing Red Pine's attention. His one visible eye widened in horror, realizing that death was about to claim him…

Until he noticed something. A wicked grin crossed his face, and calling upon the last of his power, he summoned a vine, which shot into one of the battered buildings nearby…

And drew out the little winged kitten from before, depositing her in the general's arms. "Well, well, what have we here?" He crooned as the girl struggled and yelled frantically, but even in his current weakened state, Red Pine's grip was far too strong for her to break free from. "It looks like we had a little spectator for our duel… It seems you have a fan, Miss Blaze! Isn't that just lovely?"

…

Everyone gasped. "No! Not her!" Cream cried as Cheese squealed.

"Okay, this is starting to get ridiculous. Not only will this guy not die, he just keeps getting worse and worse! What's he going to do next, kick a Chao or something?" Vector wondered. Cream gasped and hugged her companion close at that.

…

Blaze skidded to a halt, eyes wide in alarm. No… It's that girl! What's she doing here?!

"Blaze!"

Blaze whirled around. "Cosmo?"

The Princess approached, splashing up more pineapple juice with every step as she supported the wounded Damil, who was too injured to walk unaided. "Blaze, the girl, she…" She stopped, noticing the kitten in question was being held in Red Pine's grip. "Oh. I see you found out already."

"What is she doing here? I thought she was with you!" Blaze hissed.

"She ran off when we weren't looking," Cosmo said apologetically. "She said she wanted to watch you fight. I might've caught up to her sooner, but, well…"

"It's not exactly easy to move quickly when you're supporting someone else," Damil grunted. "Princess, I told you should've left me behind."

"And leave you in the middle of a war zone?! There was fire and monsters everywhere, not all them on our side!" Cosmo insisted. "I couldn't just leave you in the middle of that!"

"Princess, it is my duty to protect you, not the other way around," Damil groaned. "Granted, I'm not exactly in any condition to fulfill that duty at the moment…"

"Child, why did you follow me? Surely you must've realized how dangerous it would be!" Blaze demanded of the girl, heart racing.

The kitten trembled, sniffling, tearing up. "B-because… Because I… Because I wanted to…" She gulped, and suddenly there was a shockingly cold expression on her face, if only for a moment. "Because I wanted to see you rip the bastard who destroyed my home and killed everyone I love to pieces with my own eyes."

Blaze blinked in surprise. "… Okay, that's a bit more vicious than I was expecting for someone your age."

Red Pine chuckled, shaking the kitten and causing her to yelp. "Quite the bloodthirsty little runt, isn't she? But then again, it's to be expected of someone with Sphinx blood."

Damil gasped. "Of course… So that's why she has wings!" Cosmo cried.

Blaze had no idea what they were talking about. "I… Feel like I'm missing something here."

"The sphinxes were a legendary race of winged felines, renowned for their longevity, incredible magical power, boundless knowledge… And an unquenchable thirst for conquest," Damil explained. "They managed to carve out an empire which ruled over more than a third of the known world for tens of thousands of years until they are finally overthrown. Their species was hunted to almost extinction, but now and then one of their descendants will be born with identifiable Sphinx traits, depending on the strength of their bloodline."

"Such as wings, and a certain… Affinity for violence?" Blaze asked, regarding the kitten with new light.

"Among other things, yes," Damil said.

…

"Oh, so her having wings isn't just something that all cats have in your world?" Amy asked.

Blaze shook her head. "No, only those with some Sphinx blood in them."

"Can she fly with them?" Rouge asked, curious. "The sphinxes in my kingdom can, but they look… Well, decidedly different from her."

"They do," Blaze confirmed. "We had to work hard to get them functional, as well as teach her how to master her Sphinx magic and warrior instincts… But that's a story for another time."

"I don't understand… Why would they kill all the sphinxes just because some of them formed a big Empire?" Cream asked in confusion. "That's so mean!"

"Some people just don't know when to let go of a grudge," Shadow said. Everyone stared him. "What? I'm over most of mine!"

"Oh, killing them isn't the half of it…" Blaze said darkly.

…

Blaze frowned. "I'm guessing, then, that those who were part Sphinx are not exactly… Popular around these parts."

"Some prejudices take a very long time to die," Cosmo said uncomfortably.

Blaze stared at the kitten for long moment… And for a moment, saw not the yellow part-Sphinx child, but a small, terrified lavender kitten. "You poor thing… You haven't had an easy childhood, have you? The other children, they bullied you mercilessly, didn't they? And the adults turned a blind eye?"

The kitten blinked in surprise and looked at Blaze. "Y-yes. They s-said that my wings were far too pretty for a… A monster like me. And whenever I fought back, and…and really hurt them, that only made everyone angrier."

"Especially because nobody else was lifting a finger to help you, so were angry that you dared to do something as simple as defend yourself," Blaze intuited. "Which only made you angrier still at the blatant injustice and unfairness of it all, compounded by the fact that, deep down, you WEREN'T sorry for how much you hurt them, no matter how much everyone else pushed you to be, because THEY certainly weren't sorry for what they'd done to you, so why should you feel the least bit bad about making them hurt just as bad as they hurt you, if not worse?"

The girl stared at her with a shocked expression. "How did you-"

"I went through the same thing when I was your age. I recognize the signs," Blaze said, only to blink in surprise when she realized what she had just said. She'd been bullied? But she was… She was a demon, why would…

Well, I suppose the other demons might've picked on me for one reason or another, back before I became strong enough to destroy them all, Blaze rationalized. It wouldn't be the first time the victim of bullying becomes an even worse monster than their tormentors… And I bet that demonic bullies are far worse than regular mortal ones, and yet… Something feels… She shook her head. Irrelevant. Right now, I have to figure out how to save that girl!

…

"She was bullied? And… YOU were bullied?" Cream gasped, and then started tearing up. "That's so sad!"

"Wait, then… That means that bit you told Cream before about the other kids being mean to you was true?" Espio asked.

Blaze shrugged. "I didn't say it was ALL a lie."

"No, just most of it," Amy sneered. Blaze frowned at her.

"Bullying isn't cool," Sonic said firmly.

"It's not? Really? I never would've guessed," Shadow said dryly. "Can we continue before this turns into an anti-bullying afterschool special, please?"

"What's wrong with anti-bullying afterschool specials? They serve an important function," Rouge said.

"Oh, I'm not saying the message is wrong, it's just that they very rarely tell you anything HELPFUL about how to deal with bullying. Same with most 'Very Special Episodes,'" Shadow said snidely.

"…He makes a good point," Espio admitted after some thought. The others murmured in agreement.

"Yeah, they certainly never helped me," Charmy grumbled.

"With bullying?" Tails asked sympathetically.

"No, drugs," the bee said. Everyone stared at him in disbelief. "What? We live in a bad neighborhood, okay?"

…

"This is all very touching," Red Pine said in a tone which indicated he found it anything but. "But I think it's time the girl and I left this place."

He gestured with his free hand, the one not wrapped around the girl's neck, and a dimensional crack unzipped behind him. "No!" Blaze cried out, reaching forward-

"Ah-ah-ah!" Red Pine chided her, wagging a finger mockingly. "One more step, and the girl dies! And I wouldn't recommend any funny business like using some fancy fire trick or summoning any of your minions, or I'll snap her neck like a twig!"

Cosmo gasped. "No!"

"Curse you, Red Pine! If you have even a shred of honor like you, let the girl go!" Damil growled.

"Oh, I would… Except that according to Blaze here, I have no honor left. Funny thing, that," Red Pine sneered. "So, here's how it's going to go. The half-breed and I are going to go through that crack and go far, far away from here. You will not follow us."

"I don't suppose you're going to let her go once you're free from here?" Blaze asked, though she was sure she already knew the answer.

"Of course not, I need some measure of insurance to make sure you don't come after me later on!" Red Pine scoffed, as if it were obvious. "Don't worry, she won't be harmed… Much. But don't worry, she'll stay alive so long as I never have to see your face again… Although, if you continue resisting my Lord, I may just have to take out my frustrations on the most convenient punching bag, just so you know…" The kitten trembled all over, sobbing with terror.

"You monster!" Cosmo shouted, enraged.

"Honorless cur!" Damil snarled.

"Yes, yes, I've heard it all before," Red Pine said dismissively. "I suggest you say your goodbyes, Blaze, for you will never see this girl again."

Blaze clenched her fists as she stared at the kitten. Once again, a vision from what might've been her past stared back at her with wide, frightened eyes.

She made her decision. One that she'd already made long ago, she realized. "You realize, of course," Blaze said, a cool, steely calm breaking over her. "That if you were to kill her, there would be nothing left to protect you from me."

"Blaze, what are you-" a confused Cosmo started.

"Yes, but you aren't going to let me kill her, now are you?" Red Pine retorted.

Blaze raised a hand, a fireball beginning to form in it… But there was something different about this fireball. It seemed denser, hotter, darker somehow, less like a miniature sun and more like a burning hole in reality. "And what if I were to kill her myself? What then?"

A shocked silence descended upon the square, and then Red Pine burst into laughter. "Preposterous. You're bluffing, of course."

"Am I?" Blaze asked, raising an eyebrow. "Have you forgotten? I am a demon. A destroyer of worlds."

"And one who damn near broke my jaw just to save a little girl," Red Pine pointed out. "I rather doubt you'd go to all that effort, then just turn around and kill her."

"How do you know? Maybe I wanted to kill her myself. Maybe I could sense that she was descended from one of the charlatans who imprisoned me in the first place," Blaze suggested.

Cosmo gasped in horror. "Blaze!"

Red Pine laughed again, but there was something nervous to it. "I-I don't believe that for a second," Red Pine stammered uneasily. "Quit playing games and snuff out that fireball already, or I'll kill the girl!"

"No," Blaze said. "You won't."

Red Pine stiffened. "I'll do it! Don't you dare tempt me!"

Blaze snorted. "Please. If you were going to kill her, you would've done so by now… Because we both know the truth: the instant she dies, so do you. And for all your talk about being a brave and mighty warrior, you're terrified of dying, aren't you?"

"Th-that's-" Red Pine spluttered indignantly.

Blaze ignored him. There was nothing more he could say that had any relevance whatsoever. "Child," the cat asked, addressing the half-Sphinx. "What is your name?"

The girl locked eyes with Blaze. She stopped trembling, focusing solely on the face of the other feline, realizing, to her wonder, there was something familiar in it, almost like looking into a mirror. "Honey. My name is Honey."

Blaze nodded. "Honey. That is a fine name. Tell me, Honey, right now, what do you want more than anything in the world?"

Honey's face hardened. "For the bastard holding me to die a painful, horrible, agonizing death."

…

Vector whistled. "Geez. Kid's pretty hard-core."

"I like her immensely," Shadow said.

"LIKEWISE," Omega concurred.

"She seems a bit… Intense…" Cream said nervously.

"How much of her attitude was due to her unpleasant childhood, and how much due to her Sphinx blood?" Espio asked.

"A little of column A, a little of column B," Sonic said.

Tails nodded. "Nature and nurture are often a lot harder to pull apart than many people think."

…

"Th-the mouth on her! Kids say the darndest things, don't they?" Red Pine said uneasily.

"Honey, I have another question for you, and it is very important. Please think very carefully before answering," Blaze said.

"What are you-" Damil started, but Cosmo shushed him.

"What is it?" Honey asked.

"Do you see this orb in my hand?" Blaze asked, referring to the ball which was less a ball of flame than a swirling orb of negative energy. "This is no mere fireball. It is a sphere imbued with the pure power of Destruction, which is my dominion as a Destroyer of Worlds. Anything this touches will be completely destroyed, down to the quantum level, annihilated so thoroughly it will be as if they never existed."

…

"Wait, you can seriously do that?" Asked the startled Mighty.

"I can, yes," Blaze said.

"Then how come you haven't used it on Amy?" Charmy half joked.

"Hey!" the pink hedgehog cried.

Blaze sighed. "I've been tempted to more than once, but Beloved won't let me."

"No annihilating my friends, Blaze," Sonic said good humoredly.

"Yes, dear," Blaze grumbled, rolling her eyes.

"But how's that possible? I thought matter could neither be created nor destroyed," Espio spoke up.

"They can be if you're me," Blaze said smugly.

"PLEASE-MARRY-ME," Omega begged the cat, besotted.

"No," Blaze said.

…

"Now, knowing all that… If I were to tell you that I was about to throw this at you, would you believe me if I assured you that it would not hurt you?" Blaze asked.

"Wh-what?!" Red Pine, Cosmo, and Damil cried.

Honey met Blaze's eyes, unblinking. "Yes."

Blaze nodded. "Do you trust me, then? With your life? With your very soul?"

"Absolutely," Honey said, without the slightest hint of doubt.

Blaze smiled. "Thank you, Honey."

And then, without warning, she threw the orb.

Cosmo and Damil gasped, and Red Pine started and quickly thrust Honey in front of him to serve as a shield…

But an instant before the sphere could smash into the cat's face, it split into four, spreading out around her to encircle the startled Red Pine. "Wh-what?! What is-" he cried in alarm, but was cut off when the four orbs converged on him, impacting and causing him to be immediately consumed in black flames.

The noise he made could not be considered a scream. There were no words for the sound he made, a sound full of unimaginable agony and torment as quantum hellfire consumed him at the subatomic level, erasing him particle by particle from existence. Most physicists would say that matter could neither be created nor destroyed. If any physicist were present to watch what was happening to Red Pine, they would reluctantly have to admit that they were wrong.

The crimson general collapsed to the ground, a wailing mass of dark fire that rapidly collapsed upon itself, shrinking and diminishing by the second as it hungrily consumed itself, burning itself out of existence until eventually there was nothing left but a blackened scorch mark on the ground to indicate that there had ever been anything there.

And Honey?

She had been unharmed, just as Blaze had promised. When the flames consumed Red Pine, his anguished writhing had flung her away, but Blaze had been waiting to catch her, and the two of them watched in silence as the general died. A single ember, a spark of darkness, was cast-off from the roiling inferno as it burned down, alighting upon the cat's cheek and causing a black blaze to form… But she did not flinch, just as she had not flinched, or even blinked, when the orb of pure Destruction looked as if it had been about to strike her. Blaze found her heart swelling with admiration as she gazed upon the kitten, sensing a kindred spirit in the half-breed. She's going to do great things, she realized. But she's going to need some help to get there. I think I might be up for the task, though.

She smiled at the kitten in her arms, and Honey glanced up briefly and smiled back before returning her gaze to the flames.

…

There was a long silence. "Wow," Mighty said.

"SUPER hard-core," Vector said.

"And… Oddly sweet, for some reason," Cream admitted. "Normally I wouldn't feel that way about two people bonding over watching someone else burning to death, but I couldn't help feeling warm inside after seeing that." She frowned. "Is that weird?"

"No, I kind of felt that way too," Amy admitted.

"Reminds me of some of the fun times I had with my mom when I was younger," Rouge recalled fondly.

"Then again, I wouldn't exactly say that any of us are the most well-adjusted of individuals," Espio said, glancing at Shadow. Most of the others followed suit.

"… Why do you people keep looking at me like that?!" The black hedgehog snapped.

"And was that really, absolutely, definitely the last time you saw Red Pine after that?" Knuckles asked. "Like, he didn't come back later on as a ghost or something?"

"Well, I did have to fight a clone of him when I was fighting my way through Dark Oak's fortress to confront him for our final battle, but that's to be expected for boss rushes in the last dungeon," Blaze said. The others nodded in agreement.

"Was there something significant to Honey receiving a mark from that ember?" Rouge asked.

Blaze nodded. "Very shrewd of you, Rouge. Yes, there was some significance to that…"

…

Once the fire had burned itself out and there was nothing left of the fiend, Blaze turned away and walked back towards Cosmo and Damil. "… That was incredible," Cosmo said, looking like she'd been holding her breath for the last several minutes. "When you threw that ball, I… I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't have doubted you, but for a second, I actually thought-"

"It's fine," Blaze interrupted the Princess. "I can understand why you might have thought that. Even so, I'm surprised that you forgot my promise."

Cosmo blinked in surprise. "Promise?"

"Yes. Don't you remember? I assured you that you and your people could always count on me to protect you," Blaze reminded her friend. She looked down at Honey and smiled again. "I do not believe I could've harmed Honey even if I wanted to."

Cosmo's eyes lit up. "Oh. Oh! I see! That's right, because you're a demon, a vow like that would be binding, wouldn't it? But… Surely there are loopholes…"

"There are," Blaze agreed. "However, I have no intention of exploiting them… Well, unless I have to, anyway."

"Even knowing that, I'm reassured," Cosmo said.

"As am I," Damil spoke up. He closed his eyes and bowed his head. "Ms. Blaze, I owe you an apology. I misjudged you dearly. You may be a demon, and perhaps you did in fact destroy worlds… But I can see now that you have a good heart. You are indeed the hero that was promised to us." He frowned. "Although… Were all the theatrics and bluffing about killing Honey really necessary?"

"I needed time to charge up the attack," Blaze explained. "Also, I was talking to throw Red Pine off his game, make him nervous, doubt himself, make it less likely he'd just murder Honey to spite me."

"I see… A psychological tactic! Most clever," Damil said, impressed.

"It was indeed! Well done, a marvelous performance!" An unfamiliar voice spoke up, causing them all to jump.

"Who said that?!" Blaze demanded, holding Honey to her side with one hand and forming a fireball in the other.

"That voice… It sounds…" Cosmo murmured.

The sound of a slow clap echoed across the square, and a large green-scaled anthropomorphic snake slithered into view, his upper body clad in robes of white cloth and snakeskin and the lengthy tail that made up his lower body winding sinuously along the ground behind him, a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes. "Congratulations on your first victory, Blaze! Be warned, though, there are many more battles to come, and each will be more difficult than the last. I believe you'll handle them just fine, if you demonstrate the same level of excellence you showed here today!"

"Who are you?!" Blaze demanded, startled by the strange sensation that washed over her. Her hairs were standing on end, her heart was pounding, her breath was heavy, her palms were sweaty, and she found herself struggling not to tremble… What was this? What was this strange feeling?

Fear, she realized, much to her surprise. I am afraid.

And not simply run-of-the-mill, everyday fear, either. No, this was bone-deep, soul shaking terror unlike anything she'd ever experienced. Even when she had been cruelly banished to that hell, she had not felt this scared. Whoever, no, whatever this being was, it terrified not only her, but her flame, in ways she had not thought possible. She glanced down at Honey, and noticed the half-Sphinx looked frightened as well. Good, so it's not just me, she thought in relief. Neither Cosmo nor Damil looked frightened, just surprised, which meant whatever was wrong with this serpent was not just in her head, but something that only her and the girl could sense.

"Who, me? Oh, I'm just a humble snake," the serpent chuckled, which only made Blaze tense even more.

…

"Yeah, and if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you for a good price," Charmy snarked.

"Really? I could use a new bridge, the rope ones I keep making always fall apart every time Angel Island falls out of the sky," Knuckles said. "Or whenever they get too wet. Or when the wind blows too hard. Or when the knots unravel. Or whenever anything lighter than a feather lands on them, and even then, sometimes a feather will do it. I'm not very good at making bridges," he admitted. Charmy facepalmed.

"Gee, this guy isn't the least bit suspicious," Mighty said.

"Really? Because I think he's pretty shady," Knuckles said. Mighty facepalmed.

"Knuckles, please stop talking for a little bit. You're much more attractive with your mouth shut," Rouge said.

"Okay," Knuckles said cheerfully.

Shadow fumed.

…

"Blaze, that's… That's the snake I told you about before! The one who gave me the key, the one who told me about you and how to free you!" Cosmo explained.

Somehow, Blaze was not surprised. "The key to my cell was shattered and scattered across many dimensions, and the spell to access my prison was lost forever. How were you able to obtain them? Who… No, what are you?"

This snake grinned jovially, which only raised her hackles higher. "Good questions! As to how I was able to obtain the key fragments and spell… Well, let's just say I travel to many distant places and learn many things and leave it at that for the moment. As for who I am… Well, that depends on who is asking, or how I feel at the moment, but I suppose that if you must call me something, you might as well call me… Let's see… Sagara. It's not my actual name, of course, but I went by it for a period of my life I look back on fondly, so it's as good as anything else. And as for what I am…"

"Well, I'm not entirely sure I want to tell you that just yet," Sagara's voice said from behind them.

Startled, they whirled around to see that the snake was now standing behind them, only a few meters away. Confused, Cosmo glanced over her shoulder, only to see that Sagara had vanished from where he'd first appeared. "How did he-"

"I do not think we are dealing with an ordinary being, Princess," Damil said, narrowing his eye.

"Gee, what was your first guess?" Honey muttered.

"Don't do that again!" Blaze snapped. That little stunt hadn't done any wonders for her nerves.

Sagara raised his hands apologetically. "Okay, okay… Sorry, I can't help myself sometimes. Anyway, I suppose you could call me a 'watcher'… But I think we both know that would be a lie, because most people like that aren't into meddling… Or rather, they are, but they'll deny it even when caught, while I won't even bother lying. I'll tell you this, though: as far as I know, I'm the only thing like me there is. I'm not a God, and I'm not a demon, but something else entirely, a unique existence… So far as I know, anyway. It's a big multiverse, I suppose there might be others out there somewhere, but I've never run into them."

"And why, may I ask, did you set Cosmo on the path to freeing me?" Blaze asked, not lowering her fireball. "I rather doubt you did it out of the goodness of your heart. Creatures like you really do."

Sagara gave her an affronted look. "What makes you say that? How do you know I'm not an omni-benevolent cosmic do-gooder, traveling the cosmos and spreading love and happiness everywhere I go?" Blaze raised a skeptical eyebrow. After a moment, the snake burst into laughter. "Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't believe me either."

"Then why did you manipulate me into freeing Blaze? What stake do you have in what's happening here? How do you benefit from her fighting my father?" Cosmo demanded.

"How do I benefit? Simple, I don't," Sagara said, surprising them.

"What do you mean?" Blaze asked.

"I mean that what happens on this world has no bearing on me whatsoever. I do not stand to profit one way or the other, no matter who wins this little conflict. If you win, fine. If Dark Oak wins, that's also fine. It won't affect me in the slightest," Sagara said.

Cosmo's brow furrowed in confusion. "But… Then why?"

The snake shrugged. "I was curious."

Everyone stared at him in disbelief. "… What?" Blaze asked, dumbfounded.

Sagara chuckled. "I'm an almighty immortal being beyond your comprehension. Is it so hard to believe that I might set things into motion just because I want to see what happens?"

"Just to… Are you serious?!" Damil snapped. "What do you think this is, a game?! Lives are on the line! People are suffering and dying as we speak!"

"Of course they are. People are suffering and dying as we speak everywhere. People would suffer and die even if you weren't in the middle of a great battle between good and evil, backspace. People suffering and dying is universal," Sagara said with a carefree shrug. "And of course it's a game. All of life is, it's just that sometimes the stakes are higher than they are at others."

"I suppose you think yourself above good and evil, then?" Blaze snarled.

Sagara shrugged again. "I dunno. I've never really thought of myself as evil, though I'm sure there are many who would say I was given what I do on a regular basis. On the other hand, there are also plenty of people who are genuinely happy – if not a little wary – to see me whenever I stop by. I'm sure the same could be said of you, Blaze, depending on how this all turns out. After all, aren't good and evil ultimately a matter of perspective?

"Anyway, I didn't come here to debate morality or philosophy. I just wanted to stop by to check in, introduce myself, let you know I'd be watching, that sort of thing. You're probably not going to see me again for a long while, but trust me, I'll be seeing you."

The snake started to turn away, but Blaze asked, "If I were to turn this fireball into a sphere of Destruction, like the one I used on Red Pine, and through it at you, what would happen?"

Sagara considered this for a moment. "I'm not actually sure, to be honest. I'm fairly certain nothing will happen, since even if you were somehow able to destroy this body, well… Let's just say this isn't really me, or at least, not ALL of me. Might be interesting to find out, though. Want to try it?"

There was no malice or threat, overt or implied, in the statement. Only pure curiosity. The same curiosity, Blaze realized, that would lead to someone releasing a powerful world-ending demon to fight an evil overlord just to see what would happen. Be very careful, she thought to herself. Curiosity killed the cat, after all. "I'd rather not," she said, dissipating the fireball.

Sagara shrugged. "Okay. Maybe another time, then." He started to turn away again, only to pause once more. "Oh yeah, one other thing… You might want to keep an eye on that kid there. A small fraction of your power entered that kitten when she received that mark on her cheek. It won't hurt her any, but… Well, I'm sure I don't need to tell you how important it is to make sure a potential future destroyer of worlds learns to use her power responsibly, right?"

Startled, Blaze looked down at Honey, who reached up to touch the mark on her cheek in surprise. Blaze concentrated on the kitten in her arm, and sure enough, realized she could sense something from her… An echo, a power like her own, but weaker, though with the potential to become far greater. "I… Shall see what I can do. Thank you," Blaze said.

"Happy to help," Sagara said cheerfully. "Until next time."

Folding his arms behind his back, he slithered out of the square. Nobody made a move until they were sure he was gone. Blaze got the absolute certainty that, even though he had not visibly teleported, if she tried chasing after the snake, she would not find him.

…

"Well, that was creepy," Amy said with a shudder.

"Rouge, you seem very knowledgeable about mysterious supernatural beings. Any idea who this one is?" Espio asked the bat.

Rouge shook her head. "My mother might, but the name 'Sagara' doesn't ring a bell. About the only thing I'm certain of is that he isn't Nyarlathotep."

"How can you be sure?" Mighty asked.

"Because it's not one of his thousand names," Rouge said.

"Couldn't he have gotten another one?" Charmy asked.

Rouge shook her head. "It doesn't work that way."

"Why not? He can't just go to the cosmic equivalent of a back alley and pay some guy to forge him a passport or give him some plastic surgery or something?" Vector asked. He paused, then added, "Not like I'd have experience with that or anything."

"Nyarlathotep is a master manipulator, deceiver, and trickster… But he cannot assume a face or name outside of the thousand he possesses already. It's a limit on his power. It's not much of a limit, granted, because 1000 is still a pretty big amount, but it's a limit all the same, and one that cannot be altered," Rouge explained.

"And because of that, he can't be Sagara," Shadow intuited.

Rouge nodded. "Correct. Doesn't mean there aren't countless other Eldritch beings who could be using that name, though."

"I did eventually learn who Sagara really was, but that wasn't until much later," Blaze explained.

"Did you have to fight him?" Shadow asked.

Blaze shook her head. "No. I'm not certain I could have, to be honest… What he really was… Well, that will have to wait until later as well."

"What about Honey? Does she still have that piece of you inside of her?" Cream asked.

Blaze nodded. "Yes, and she's long since mastered it. She's not anywhere near as powerful as I am, but she's still strong enough to hold down the fort on her own whenever I'm not around, or even go off to have her own adventures when the need arises."

"She grew up to be very beautiful, too," Tails said. "Though I still think Cosmo's prettier, but, you know, that's just me. Er, no offence, Blaze."

"None taken," the cat said.

"Any chance we could meet her someday?" Vector asked.

"Perhaps if you came to visit someday," Blaze said. "I wouldn't mind showing you around my kingdom. After all, you've been gracious enough to show me your world plenty of times, it's only fair I return the favor."

"Does that invitation extend to me too?" Amy asked hesitantly.

"… That depends on how well you can control your tongue in my world," Blaze said after a moment. "My people are very devoted to me, and my daughter even more so, and take any perceived slight to me very seriously."

Amy gulped. "… I'll take that under advisement."

…

"Well, that was fairly disturbing," Cosmo said finally, once they were sure the serpent was really gone.

"Miss Blaze, is what he said about the girl true?" Damil asked the cat.

Blaze nodded. "Yes, I can sense it inside her… A piece of myself, very small, but it has the potential to grow."

"Does… Does that mean I might become like you, Miss Blaze?" Honey asked hopefully.

"Well, not just like me, but with some proper training, I think we might be able to make something out of you," Blaze said, a surprisingly warm smile finding its way onto her face.

"Are you sure we should? Can't you remove it from her?" Cosmo asked.

Blaze shook her head. "I don't believe there's any way I could without hurting her. She'll have to come with us, so I can keep an eye on her and make sure her power manifests properly."

"But… Surely you're not suggesting we take her with us on our quest! It's far too dangerous for a little girl!" Damil protested.

"And where would you suggest we leave her?" Blaze replied. "Nowhere is safe in this kingdom so long as Dark Oak lives. The safest place for her is with us… Especially because I am the only one who can make sure that she doesn't hurt herself or anyone else with her burgeoning new powers. She already had it bad enough growing up as half-Sphinx, can you imagine how difficult it will be for her to be part-demon too without someone to show her the way?"

"I don't want to leave you!" Honey cried, alarmed.

"You won't, I promise," Blaze assured the kitten, who hugged her in relief. A strange fluttering feeling rose in her chest, and she found herself blinking a few times, her eyes suddenly misty.

"I don't really like it either, but I'm not sure there's a better option," Cosmo said to Damil. "It's not like there are exactly many safe places we can leave her right now."

Damil sighed reluctantly. "Well, I suppose if we must-" He gasped in pain, staggering and nearly collapsing on Cosmo.

The Princess gasped. "Damil!"

"Red Pine wounded him pretty badly. What can we do?" Blaze asked in concern.

"We need to find some fresh soil and clean water to plant him in," Cosmo said, looking at her bodyguard, who seemed to have trouble breathing, in alarm. "It'll take a lot slower to heal than it would if we had sunlight, but it'll have to do."

Blaze blinked. "Plant him – right, you're plant people, I forgot. Where can we find some?"

"We'll have to leave the village. I don't think there's exactly going to be the kind of soil we need with all these Helheim plants growing around," Cosmo said, grimacing at some of the alien plants still growing on the buildings that had somehow managed to escape being burned away.

Blaze nodded. "Right, and after that, we need to plan our next move. It won't be long before Dark Oak finds out I killed one of his strongest warriors, and I doubt he'll be too happy about it. Where is the closest Sol Emerald?"

"In the Feywoods. They're several dozen miles to the southeast of here," Cosmo reported. "However, I'm not entirely certain how helpful the locals will be. While the Forest Fairies are relatively friendly and always happy to assist travelers, the Elves… Well…"

Blaze grimaced. "Elves. Of course. How bad are we talking, here?"

"Depends. The Wood Elves will sometimes help but be condescending about it, and other times will just shoot you," Cosmo said. "And the High Elves… Well, let's just say we don't want to run into the High Elves. They're the kind of people who would agree with Sagara that life is a game, and you aren't winning if there isn't a lot of bloodshed and screaming involved." She shrugged. "Still, at least they aren't as bad as the Drow, or Dark Elves… Who live underground… Which is where I believe one of the Emeralds is being kept…" She made a face. "And of course that's not even beginning to get into the Inves or other minions of my father that'll probably be everywhere around the fortress where the Emerald is…"

"We'll deal with it," Blaze said resolutely. "However, before we leave, there's one last important thing I need to do."

Cosmo blinked. "What?"

Blaze opened a hand, a fireball materializing in it.

Sometime later…

Blaze, Honey, and Cosmo watched the village burn from atop a hill on the outskirts of town. The screaming had ended a while ago, and now the only sound was the roaring of flames and the crackle of collapsing wood and buildings. "Was this truly necessary?" Cosmo asked softly.

"Aside from the fact that it gives a merciful end to whatever townsfolks still lived in torment, it sends a message to Dark Oak," Blaze said, not taking her eyes off the inferno. "It lets him know that a new power has risen, one that is not afraid of him, one which will burn him and all his ilk from the face of the world."

Cosmo nodded quietly. "I should go check on Damil," she said, turning to head back to where they had planted the knight. "Oh… And Blaze?"

"Yes, Cosmo?" The cat asked.

"While you're not the hero I was expecting, I think you're the one we needed," the Princess said, nodding before heading off into the dark, away from the fire.

Blaze glanced at Honey, who stared at the flames consuming her former home, the fire reflected in her eyes. "No tears?" She asked.

Honey shook her head. "I've already cried for the people who deserved it."

Blaze nodded in understanding, and said no more. After a moment, the kitten said, "While I hated most of them, there were still some people who were nice to me. People I loved. People who didn't deserve this." She glanced at Blaze. "Did you have anyone like that, growing up?"

Blaze began to open her mouth to say that no, of course she hadn't… And surprised herself by saying, "My parents, before they died. And there was… There was one other…" Her brow furrowed in puzzlement. There had been someone, she was certain of it, she just… Couldn't remember anything about him or her. No face, no name, no voice, no nothing. Just that she'd had a friend, and that friend wasn't around anymore.

"I didn't know demons could have parents, or friends," Honey said, intrigued. "Then again, lots of people say sphinxes were horrible monsters who didn't love anyone but themselves, but I'm part-Sphinx, and I'm fairly certain that's not true, since I loved other people, even if there weren't that many. Though I suppose it could be the part of me that's not Sphinx, but…"

"People say lots of things. That doesn't always make them true," Blaze said, recalling the cruel people who had banished her out of fear of what she might do, not what she had actually done.

Honey nodded in understanding. After a moment, she said, "I'm not sorry they're dead. But… I'm not happy, either. Does that make any sense?"

"I think so," Blaze said. "The fools who banished me have been dead for eons now, but I'm not particularly gratified by their deaths. Possibly because I had nothing to do with it. Or maybe because, ultimately, they just don't matter. I'm here, and they aren't. That's what counts, I think."

Honey nodded. After a moment, Blaze asked, "Do you want to watch a little longer?"

Honey shook her head. "No. I've seen enough."

Blaze nodded. "All right then. Let's go."

The two cats turned away from the fire and walked off into an uncertain future, hand-in-hand.

…

"And that, I think, is that, for now," Blaze finished.

"What?! That's it?!" Amy spluttered.

"You can't stop there! You haven't told the whole story!" Cried the aghast Silver. "I need to know everything for my r—I mean, to stop Eggman Nega!"

"There are so many questions you haven't answered yet! Like what the deal with the flame was or the answers to the holes in your memory and your mysterious past, or who the heck that Sagara guy really was, or all the other tantalizing stuff you've alluded to!" Mighty protested.

"Like the vizier, who I'm still not entirely certain wasn't Jafar," Charmy added.

Espio facepalmed. "Charmy…"

"What? I have to be sure!" The bee insisted.

"And you haven't told us how you got the Sol Emeralds, or defeated Dark Oak, or became ruler of Solana given that Cosmo was next in line!" Vector agreed.

"I want to know how you dealt with the issue of Helheim. It could prove useful knowledge for us in the future," Rouge added.

"I-WANT-TO-HEAR-ABOUT-MORE-OF-YOUR-BATTLES. THEY-WERE-AWESOME," Omega said.

"Yes. I especially liked the part where you hit that one guy a lot," Knuckles agreed.

"And I want to know more about Honey," Shadow said softly. "I know what it's like to grow up feeling like you're a monster…"

"Please don't stop, Blaze! We have to know the story ends!" Cream pleaded.

Blaze chuckled and ruffled the rabbit's head. "Calm down, everyone. I didn't say I was stopping the story, I just need a short break to catch my breath and rest my voice. That took a lot out of me, and took much longer to tell than I expected."

"Yeah, you have been at it a while, haven't you?" Knuckles realized.

"Feels like months, really," Tails agreed.

"Give me a little while to rest up and prepare myself, and I'll tell you the rest of the story," Blaze promised.

"And in the meantime, one of the others can tell their stories," Suggested Sonic. "Like an Interlude, or Intermission. That should be okay, right, Silver?"

The white hedgehog hemmed and hawed uncertainly. "Well… I… Guess it'd be okay…"

Sonic slapped his hands together. "Great! Blaze, take a seat and relax, I'll get you something to drink, you're probably pretty thirsty after all that storytelling."

"Thank you, beloved, that is much appreciated," Blaze said as she sat on one of the picnic benches, petting her Biter. "A chili dog would not be remiss, either."

"On it!" Sonic said cheerfully as he headed for the refreshments table.

"So, who's left?" Mighty asked.

"Well, I think there's Cream, and… Big," Rouge said. "And… That's it, really. Huh. I thought there'd be more, somehow."

They glanced at Big, who was still fishing at the punch bowl, completely oblivious to everyone and everything that had been happening around him for the last few hours. A rather alarmingly large pile of fish skeletons was lying on the ground next to them.

"Right!" Shadow declared. "Cream it is!"

"Me?" Cream squeaked.

"Chao?" Cheese echoed.

"Well, it's sure to be more interesting that anything the fat guy's got to say," Charmy said bluntly.

"Charmy! That's not nice!" Cream scolded.

"S-sorry, Cream," Charmy apologized quickly, not wanting to get in the rabbit's bad books. Granted, he wasn't sure the kind and loving bunny had any, but he certainly didn't want to be the first!

"Well, if everyone wants to hear my story, I suppose I can oblige," Cream said.

"It'll also probably be a nice palate cleanser after some of the darker things we just heard," Espio agreed.

"Okay then!" Cream said, clapping her hands together. "Mr. Silver, ask away! What you want to know?"

"Nothing much," Silver said. "All I want to know is… Cream, how did you get Cheese the Chao?"

…

And that's a wrap!

Wow. I know I say this all the time, but I REALLY did not expect this chapter to be as long or take as long as it did. If it was too much for most of you readers, I apologize, and tentatively promise that future chapters shouldn't be as long as this. I hope.

Anyway, yes, it looks like we are splitting Blaze's chapter in two. I kind of have to, really, if I were to write up the whole thing in one chapter not only would the time between updates be even LONGER, but this thing would be a ridiculously long chapter (more so than it already is), and I'm trying not to let this turn into another Brave New World. Some of the later chapters just got ridiculous…

Anyway, next chapter we deal into Cream's origin, and don't let Silver's question fool you, we're going to learn a lot more than just how she got Cheese. After that, we'll resume Blaze's origin. Voting for the origin after that will come at the end of next chapter.

Sorry for the wait, and I hope you can wait a bit longer for the whole story! Cream's shouldn't take NEARLY this long…I hope…

Oh, and if any of you can recognize what Blaze's origin is crossing over with, I'll be very delighted.