AN: Another chapter from yours truly!
Disclaimer: I own nothing that isn't mine, and vice versa.
Unknown location
Unknown Date
Unknown Time
In the dark of night, two figures spoke. One was a celestial being with a thousand tails and the other was a Kyubi kitsune. The Kyubi approached the Lady with caution and uncertainty.
"Lady, I have to ask…" The Kyubi spoke, drawing the attention of the Lady.
"What is it, my son?"
The Kyubi remained silent for a moment, looking somewhat nervous. "Am I… am I really all that you say I am?"
The Lady nodded. "Of course. Would I ever deceive you?"
The Kyubi sighed and massaged his temple while he paced the room. "I really am a spirit… aren't I?"
The lady shrugged. "Yes… and no."
The Kyubi raised his eyebrow to the cryptic answer. "What do you mean?"
"You are a kitsune spirit." She explained. "You have the disadvantage of being trapped and bound to a mortal body, however."
He inhaled deeply once more and exhaled after. "I can't possibly have the power to save the world, though."
"And that's where you're wrong." She assured him. The Kyubi seemed confused for a moment. "You have more power than the average kitsune, and even the average kitsune has great powers."
The Kyubi nodded as the Lady continued. "Your kitsune training is complete for the most part. From here on out, it's gained from experience."
There was a whir heard from behind the Kyubi. He turned and was met with a swirling pool of color and energy. A sense of foreboding seemed to be emanating from portal.
"It appears that you will be reunited with them quicker than I expected… and in a time of need, if I sense correctly." The Lady mussed as the Kyubi continued to stare at it.
He smirked and said, "Give my regards to Setusa," before jumping into the wormhole, without a second guess.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\|\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
…Syaoron the Fox Presents…
…The Third in the Series…
The Mobius Code
Tribulations
Chapter 9
Instability
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\|\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
The Kinetic Orbital Cannon Space Station
February-19-3457
12:07 Mobius Time
They had come. She sighed as she watched the security feeds of the space station. Their worst enemy had finally invaded them on their home front.
A sense of loathing washed over Karen at the sight of them. When she searched the group however, she didn't find the nine-tailed fox that was normally side-by-side with the Seedrian. There was a pit in her stomach as she thought about his death a month ago. What was this feeling?
Was it regret? Of course it is, she thought. I regret that I wasn't the one to send that nuisance to Hell.
It was regret… wasn't it? She thought hard on it for a while before realizing what it was. "It's pointlessness." She revealed to herself as she continued to look at the team. She wondered what they fought for and came upon an answer.
She always knew that they had something she would never have. They had freedom. The freedom to decision, whereas she was governed by orders. They had something worth fighting for.
She paced her room more, thinking about her position in all of this. "What is my purpose?" She spoke, though no one could listen. Eggman always promised something to her. Was it power? Money?
That's all pointless as well. This dream she had was very much becoming a fear. What do I have now? She had lost her only friendship, with Heather. Her black fox tail flicked about in anger. Her only other companions were a crazy old man who wanted world domination and a demonic bat who wanted nothing more than to cause other people suffering.
Was it his fault? She was certainly suffering now. The pleasure she once had with this job was lost. She tried finding something good to hang onto, but she had run out of footholds. There was nothing anymore. She looked out the window of her room and saw the ravaged grounds of Mobius.
What kind of bitter end am I causing? She asked in her head. When she looked at the certainty of the situation, she found nothing. She was helping to amount to nothing.
What would world domination bring? Just more suffering, to people like her. Is this what it feels like to have a hero complex?
Something snapped inside her. Something just didn't seem right to her any more, like she was out of place. "Maybe I'm not cut out for this." She muttered. "It's about time I found a place to belong."
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\|\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Meanwhile, in a corridor of the huge station, two Abstergo insurrectionist cats walked through the halls. One of them heard a noise, or so he thought. "Hey, man, did you hear that?" He questioned of his timid partner.
The other cat shook his head. "Nah, man." He was already scared of the alarm that had been set off, let alone that the intruders were the most deadly and thorough forces of the entire Mobian forces.
At the end of the hall, a hole was torn in the wall and a group of eight Mobians came rushing through it. The first cat drew his sidearm and rushed toward them. "What about that? Did you hear that?"
"Yeah, okay, I heard it!"
They suddenly stopped in their tracks. One of the intruders was staring right at them, with a piercing glare. The pink hedgehog in a black suit reached for her back and pulled out a weapon of some sorts.
"Hey, I think we're going to need some backup, here!" One of the cats shouted before getting a good look at the weapon. It had a lengthy barrel with a handle atop it, for use of both hands. Underneath it, however, was a blade that curved around to the butt of the weapon.
"Uh, what is that?" the cat asked, terrified. "Is that a rifle? A knife? A knifle?"
The pink hedgehog loaded a couple of large, rounded canisters into it and pulled the trigger of the Type-25 Grenade Launcher twice, releasing two grenades that blew their limbs off and left them in a bloody mess. A blue hedgehog came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.
"Wow, Amy. That was unlike you." Sonic commented, concerned for his wife. Never had she committed such a cold hearted kill on two scared people, enemy or no.
Amy shook her head. "We've all been unlike ourselves as of late."
They said no further words as they ventured down the hallway, taking caution to check corners before rushing out. There was a group of stragglers every now and then that needed to be taken care of, but the infiltration was uneventful for the most part.
They stopped behind a wall for a moment, leaving them with a bit of down time. Rouge walked up to Shadow, a look of concern on her face. "Shadow, what are the means of exfiltration going to be?"
The back hedgehog pondered this for a moment before smirking. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
Moving along, they passed through corridor after corridor of the space station, seeming to come to no end. When did Eggman ever find the time to build this? Alexa mused while keeping up with the group.
When they finally had made some progress, it was in a direction they didn't want to take.
In front of them was a battalion's worth of troops sitting in a cafeteria, having their lunch. One soldier actually so much as dropped their sandwich at the sight of them. Shane sweat dropped and chuckled nervously. "Whoops! I think we took a wrong turn." He muttered as the soldiers armed themselves and began firing on them.
Thinking fast, they rushed over to table and overturned it while bullets whizzed by. Alexa smacked Shane on the back of the head. "You and your nonchalant comments. You're not Sonic!" She scolded him while he shrunk in response.
Shadow sighed. If he could roll his eyes any further, he'd be rolling his head. "Okay, you two. We didn't come to see who could imitate Sonic the best."
While the remark was snarky, it kept them on track of what they needed to do. That was getting rid of the attacking enemy.
Shane pulled out a UMP .45 submachine gun and turned a knob near the trigger guard. Alexa took notice, and was about question before he pulled his body up from behind cover and fired a couple rounds.
The bullets flew straight and true, hitting two lions in their path. Where the bullets hit, the wounds and surrounding tissue immediately froze, leaving them in a state of panic and restricted movement.
What would we do without Tails? Shane mused while checking his weapon.
Sonic pulled out his own weapon, an FN P90, and loaded the elongated magazine through the top. Peering over cover, he sprayed the entire fifty round magazine of 5.7x28mm death dealing projectiles into the enemy, letting soldiers fall and take dirt naps.
Rouge steadied her XM25 air burst grenade launcher and took a couple shots, decimating the front lines with shot after shot of the 25mm grenades.
It was only a matter of time before the soldiers were either dead or had fled the fight.
They noticed the locked door behind them was being cut open, slowly. Tightening their formation, they aimed down at the door.
It was finally cut to the bottom and the door pieces were flown passed them, giving them time to fire at the smoky area behind the door. The insurrectionists fell, leaving only one other left.
He was wearing extremely bulky armor and had a large vat of gasoline on his back. In his two hands was a large flame thrower and the visor on his helmet was painted with a sharks mouth design.
He strode in, ever so slowly, and the barrel of the flamethrower lit up. Knuckles looked from Sonic to the enemy and back to Sonic. "What the heck's up with this guy?"
The said insurrectionist almost immediately started spraying a continuous stream of flames, forcing them to dodge to either side. They hid behind the steel table and tried firing at him, but his armor was just too thick. Alexa could feel the wave of heat as she escaped the stream of flames. "Oh, that's hot!" She exclaimed as she had a matrix moment with the flames, flipping in the air and narrowly dodging the burning gasoline.
Amy was about to fire when she noticed a red oval shaped weapon discharge beneath her, blowing her back to her surprise. The weapon flipped out into the middle of the field and Knuckles took it upon himself to take it.
He dived out into the open, picked up the weapon and quickly fired at the enemy. It released a blue orb of glowing matter at him. The insurrectionist just dodged the incoming projectile as it bounced off the floor.
Knuckles looked baffled as he starred at the weapon. "It bounces? Who designs a gun that bounces? This is the worst gun, ever, of all ti-"
Sonic came just in time to push Knuckles out of the path of his flames. "Stay low." He ordered while rushing back out into the open at supersonic speeds. He got behind the suited Mobian and fired at his gasoline tank.
He could barely let out a gasp as the tank exploded, utterly destroying him.
They turned from the utterly abolished soldier and continued onward. In the eventuality, they reached a door with a see-through disk spinning in front of it. Bits of information flew across it as it floated in front of the door. Cosmo widened her eyes at the mere sight of it. She cocked her head to the side, just to see if it was real. "Wow, is that a holo-lock?"
Shadow gazed at it, particularly interested in it. "That's some pretty advanced technology. You think you can crack it, Rouge?" He requested of the bat girl.
The treasure hunting bat looked at the lock and shrugged. "Should take about a minute." She assured them as she typed away at the holographic screen. "You can give me fifteen seconds."
Out of nowhere, Sonic pulled out a watch and clicked a button, starting the time. As Rouge tacked away at the screen, it slowly turned red. In no time at all, it dissipated, slowly opening the door.
"That was sixteen seconds." Sonic said, smirking while Rouge appeared nonchalant.
"It's faster than you could've done."
When the door opened entirely, it showed an entire army's worth of troops. They knelt behind sand bags and the like, their weapons poised at the door.
"Uh-oh…" Shadow muttered as they took aim.
Shots suddenly rang out and a light appeared. They covered their faces, thinking it was the end. When Sonic opened his eyes to find that he wasn't dead, nor injured for that fact, he looked in front of him to find a dark yellow kitsune wearing a black cloak with the roman numerals IX emblazoned on it in a fiery red.
The most distinctive feature was the fox's nine tails.
Bullets suddenly fell to the floor as the kitsune dropped his arms to his side. He turned his head slightly and smirked. "Did ya' miss me?"
Cosmo had a look of ecstasy on her face as she beamed at the kitsune. "TAILS!" She bellowed at him while diving at him in a crushing hug.
They had their fluffy moment while the army of troops widened their eyes and backed away in fear. One soldier was scared enough to drop his weapon and run from the room.
The clatter of the weapon brought Tails back to reality. He let go of Cosmo and glared at the soldiers, who were pretty much horrified by then.
Tails brought his hands together as if praying, and a ball of swirling yellow, white, and red energy appeared over his head. He then raised one arm up and it lit on fire. He did the same with the other arm, only it charged with electricity instead. All his tails were surrounded by a disturbance, signifying his wind abilities.
He bared his fangs and said, "Say your prayers."
With that, he rushed forward at Mach one. He punched one soldier with his electric arm and the soldier had a violent spasm before collapsing, dead. He then punched another soldier with his flaming arm and the soldier emitted a cry of pain as he began burning.
Tails then smirked. "That was just the warm up, too." He bragged as the soldiers began to regain their composure. They decided that if they were going out, they were going out with a bang.
They began firing in Tails direction, at which he cursed. He tried dodging, but one of the bullets caught his shin, tripping him up. The soldiers began firing at his fallen body, hoping to kill him, and quick. After they had emptied their magazines, they looked at the fox, only to find that he had created a shield out of wind energy.
He stood up and flicked his tails about, throwing blasts of wind at the scurrying insurrectionists. Some of the soldiers that didn't make it were slice open by then deadly blasts of wind, leaving them to bleed to death.
In their feeble attempts to attack, they failed to realize what had become of Tails.
He had gone Jet Stream, opening six of the eight gates and turning his fur blue.
As the soldiers tried to reload under pressure, Tails brought his hands up. Now, instead of doing what a smart person would do and firing on him, they looked at him in curiosity.
Wind energy flowed from his tails as fire and electricity joined the conjunction, soon forming a mass of the different energies.
The soldiers had thought they'd seen enough, but they were already too late. Tails looked at them and smirked. "PARTICULARUM TEMPESTAS!*" He bellowed, releasing a massive wave of the combined energy. In face of its magnitude, the soldiers were burned, electrified, or diced up; leading to a rather painful death any way you slice it. After the storm, he turn his inner inhibiters back on and reverted back to his original state, albeit with a little muscle tearing, but he ignored that.
Of the few soldiers that lived through the massacre, they were running away or curled into a ball, traumatized by the bloodshed that had just occurred. Tails found a soldier that had survived, merely due the Mark V armor. The soldier looked around wearily for his XK-8 rifle, he found it next to him, and began crawling toward it, but Tails stood over him.
The armored soldier glared at him through his visor. "You should be dead." He muttered.
Tails only chuckled and glared at him. "Don't sound so disappointed; you'll make me cry." He remarked sarcastically. "Where's your commanding officer?"
"You mean Karen? How should I know that?"
Tails raised his palm to the soldiers face and charged it with electricity. "Tsk, tsk; wrong answer."
Tails was about to electrocute the soldier before he was knocked to the side by another armored soldier; this time, wearing EOD armor. The helmet had a thin visor and a ninja appearance to it. Great; two of these enhanced metal heads. Tails thought disdainfully as he brought his hands up to his face and balled them into fists, preparing to fight.
Unlocking six gates had left too big a strain on his body, thus putting him in a rather disadvantages position. The soldier charged and tried to punch Tails in the face, only to have Tails dodge and elbow him in the back of the head. The EOD soldier tried for a combination of punches, but everything was blocked before Tails applied a side kick to the stomach, sending him flying.
The Mark V soldier had since then gotten up and charged, only to have Tails trip him and elbow his neck as well. They're just a bunch of amateurs. Tails thought as he regained his fighting stance. He looked at where they'd gone, but he realized that he could no longer see them.
Swishing his head about, he tried to pin-point their location, but failed to find them. Only when he heard a bang behind him and saw Cosmo holding a smoking .44 Magnum revolver against a mass of distortion that turned visible did he notice their invisibility capabilities. The Mark V soldier was bleeding through his open wound and was unconscious due to blood loss.
"I'll have you know that we can hold our own, too." Cosmo stated nonchalantly to him.
He smirked at his girlfriend and whistled. "Did I ever tell you how much I love you?"
"Only about a thousand times." She mused.
The EOD soldier was pissed; being that he was ignored, and rushed forward blindly, thinking he could catch Tails off guard from behind. How wrong he was. Tails merely flicked his tail out and sent an electric pulse through the armor, locking it and holding the soldier in place.
Sonic scanned Tails body up and down and smirked. "Look at you, and your all powerful self." He joked. "Where have you been, bro, and what's up with the new powers?"
Tails looked ever eager to tell his story. "Well, it all started about seven months ago, only month ago in Mobius time…
[FLASHBACK]
"Aroo, show some respect!" a six-tailed kitsune scolded a younger, five-tailed kitsune. The Gobi Kitsune shrunk in fear.
"Okay, Setusa! Give me a break!"
Two kitsune had taken me in after I fell out of the sky. I was surprised with how much respect they treated me with!
Tails was brought before a palace the next day. For what, he had no clue, but it must've been important if Setusa called it impromptu.
The inside of the castle was a marvelous sight to behold. Elaborate curves and engravings were carved into the walls while statues of different kitsune were place along the sides.
After several gates and receiving approval, Tails arrived before the ruler, one which he knew so well.
"Lady!" He shouted in surprise while taking a bow. Many other kitsunes were around; brushing the tail fur of the Lady's many tails. She shook her head again and chuckled.
"Miles, how many times have I told you that you, as all other kitsune are, my son?" She questioned him. "You may dispense with the formalities. We are all family, here in the Kitsune's Domain."
She told me that they lived in a rift of space and time that was completely separate from our reality. I was told that, to induct my full ability as a kitsune, I would be trained under Setusa…
[END FLASHBACK]
"… The rest is history, besides the fact that I'm a kitsune spirit."
Shane was puzzled by this, to say the least. "So, does that make me… half kitsune?"
Tails nodded. "Yes, but you won't grow extra tails. You have Cosmo's mortal half to thank for that."
Shane appeared to sigh in relief. Everyone else was skeptical, but said nothing of it besides that they were surprised that Tails was alive.
After Tails was debriefed, they made their way through the halls in search of the core reactor. Tails decided to make petty conversation along the way. "So, are you still wearing the training weights?"
Shadow paused for a moment and lowered a sock on his shoe, showing the forty kilogram weight. "Cosmo made us continue wearing them." He stated, though it sounded more like a complaint.
Tails looked closely at the weight and frowned. "I thought you would've moved onto the eighty kilogram weights, by now."
Knuckles, who was nearby, sweat dropped and shuddered.
"C'mon guys, we have to keep moving." Alexa reminded them. She tapped her foot in impatience as the caught up with her.
"Cosmo, check the directory and see if we're going in the right direction." Shadow ordered while peering around, making sure that no enemies appeared. Cosmo reached into her pocket, pulled out a small cylindrical object and pressed a button on it, causing the top to open up and show a holographic directory of the space station.
Tails raised an eyebrow in question. "You have a directory?"
"Yeah, we took it off of one of the troops earlier." Rouge affirmed while checking over the hologram. A small red dot blinked in the midst, showing their position.
After further analyzing, Cosmo new exactly where they were heading. "The core reactor should be on the other side of this wall." She notified them while they gathered around the wall.
Shadow pulled out a square shaped breaching charge and set it on the wall. The button was pressed and they went into the room.
All they saw was massive bloodshed.
All around the floor was a bloody mess. Soldiers were either dead or dying as pools of blood formed throughout the room.
Over at the end of the room was a black fox. She grinned eerily as she typed commands into the core reactor.
It wasn't long before the reactor showed signs of overloading and she turned around, meandering toward them.
Tails, not wishing to face Karen, pulled out chaos emerald. "CHAOS…" before he could finish, Karen put her hand into the group. With nowhere else to store his building chaos energy, Tails finished, "… CONTROL!"
They blipped out of the station, just as it exploded in a violent fiery ball.
They appeared on Green Hill and saw the space station explode. They marveled at the sight before turning their attention too Karen.
She chuckled to herself while she starred at them. "Why did you blow up your own station, Karen?" Shadow growled angrily at her as she continued to chuckle.
"To help you, of course." She reasoned. They were skeptical of this, but she continued. "And, now that I've found you, I want you to help me with something I should've done a long time ago…
"You're going to help me kill Eggman."
*Particularum Tempestas is Latin. It means elemental storm.