Notes: Here's a chapter a little bit early this time around! Just in time for Christmas :) This one is a bit shorter compared to the other ones, but I hope you enjoy it!
'Ugh... What just happened? Oh, my head…' Sonic thought, his head pounding. He felt like someone was drilling into his skull, the pain was that sharp. What was going on? He remembered being handed the Chaos Emeralds, and then… he couldn't remember past that. He opened his eyes, only to find himself surrounded by darkness. Brilliant. He couldn't hear anything either, besides his breathing and a sharp ringing in his ear. Where were the others? Even if they were all unconscious, he should at least be able to hear something. He tried to sit up before he realized that he had a small pile of rocks and debris on top of him. He got to his knees, knocking the rocks off, and from there sat down. 'Alright, two arms, two legs, head. Check. Well, I'm all in one piece. But what about everyone else?' he wondered. Where were his friends? He cleared his throat and found himself coughing. His lungs must have been filled with a healthy dose of dust and dirt from the cave-in (at least, he assumed it was a cave-in, from the rocks that were on top of him).
"Guys? Are you okay?" he asked hoarsely, slowly climbing to his feet. His question received no answer, and that worried him. "Guys?" he asked again. "Hello, anybody home?" He looked around, his one darkened eye not showing him anyone nearby. In fact, it looked like the whole ceiling had come down, blocking him off from the hallway they were just in, and by extension, his friends.
Sonic the Hedgehog was alone.
"Oh no," he gasped, walking towards the newly-formed wall. "Oh no… Tails! Lil' me, Lil' T! Zonic, Scourge, anybody! Can you hear me? Guys?!" He nearly collapsed onto the pile of rubble. He hurt all over. He was tired. And his friends could be dead, crushed under tens of tons of boulders.
"Maybe I can Chaos Control to the other side… Maybe I can see if any of them made it," he wheezed desperately. He went to pick up his Emerald, the yellow one, but as his fingers curled around it, he got a bad feeling. Hoping it was probably nothing, he focused his energy into the gem, which began to glow white hot. The Emerald was… burning him?! Sonic dropped it on the ground and clutched his hand. His glove was burnt, even crispy in a few places. "What the heck was that? The Emeralds have never done that before… It felt like it didn't like me for some reason, like it didn't want to share its power with me." He grunted and pulled his burnt glove off, pitching it at the wall with disgust. "Why can't I use the Emerald? Am I suddenly not good enough for it? I thought I had some sort of special connection to them! Why can't I use them?!" He kicked a fist-sized rock that was sitting on the ground, sending it shooting into the darkness. He sat down on the ground, frustrated.
"Just great… I can't run, I can't possibly dig my way through this wall to try and find the others, I can't use the Chaos Emeralds… I'm useless." He brought his knees to his chest and buried his face in his arms. He had never felt useless before. And he had to say, it was one of the worst things he'd ever felt. His friends could be hurt or dead, and there was nothing he could do. Sonic the Hedgehog was never useless. When Robotnik first attacked Green Hill when he was ten, he was able to stop him. When Chaos, the god that resided within the Master Emerald, nearly wiped Station Square off the map, he stopped him. When the Doc blew up half the moon and threatened to destroy the entire planet, he stopped him. But this time, one little scratch on the chest from a stupid monster prevented him from doing anything. He could barely move or keep his emotions in check. And now he couldn't tap into the power of the Emeralds. He wouldn't be able to rescue his friends. He wouldn't be able to defeat the Time Eater. He wouldn't be able to save Mobius, or any other world for that matter. He wouldn't be able to save anybody.
The realization hit him like a ton of bricks. He felt like throwing up. He felt like his chest was on fire. He felt like… no, wait, he really did feel like his chest was on fire. He looked down to see his midsection glowing a deep purple. He groaned, his ungloved fingers clawing into the dirt below him. The pain this time was intense, and getting sharper by the second. "Really?" he growled, his teeth clenched hard. "Really, now you gotta go and spread again?" The pain flared up in response, slowly spreading through his arms and legs. "Well then, come on! Get on with it, just do it! We've been building up to this for what, more than a week now? Come on! Just spread to the rest of me already! Do it!"
The pain flared again, as if the energy within the scar could actually hear and understand him. Heck, for all he knew, maybe it could. It didn't feel like honoring his wish, though. It would spread and consume the rest of him all right, but it was going to take its sweet time doing so.
The pain shot through his arms first. Sonic had never seen the scar spread before, and he sure as heck didn't want to see it now. He closed his eyes, but for some reason that didn't make him feel any better. The wave of dark energy steadily washed over each of his arms, burning like hellfire all the way. He couldn't help but let out a scream when the flames reached his already burnt hand, sending searing pain shooting up his already pained biceps and triceps. Once his arms and hands were as dark and scary-looking as his torso, it spread into his legs. Most of his right thigh was already taken over by the energy, but having the rest of that leg, as well as the other one, consumed at once was almost too much for the hedgehog. His legs were his life, his freedom, the things that made him him. And now they were being taken over by some stupid scar, the result of a bad mix of time and Chaos energies. He tried his hardest not to scream when the energy cloaked his legs, but he soon lost the battle. He was lying on the ground, face in the dirt, hands clutching anything they could so tight he thought they would break off. Hot tears were streaming down his muzzle and dripping onto the ground as his legs were overcome with pain. His arms were nothing compared to this. The flames seemed to move in slow motion this time, barely reaching past his knees. After an eternity and then some, the scar had spread all the way down to his calves, and was nearing on his ankles.
While almost being done with his lower-half, the dark energy was only getting started on his face. It had already taken half his muzzle and one of his eyes, and it was determined to take the rest. It spread up from his left eye, taking his ear next. Sonic heard an intense ringing, so high-pitched he slammed his ears down flat to his head to try and block out the sound. It didn't go away though, only dulling slightly as the pain moved forward. From there, it spread further back on his head, starting on his quills, as well as reaching to the other half of his muzzle. The simultaneous pain from both his head and his legs was almost too much for the hedgehog to bear, and he felt like he was going to pass out if it didn't stop soon. His vision began to darken at the edges- normally a sure sign of impending unconsciousness, but he was sure it was the scar spreading into his good eye. Soon, that eye's sclera would be as black as the other one, and his iris would be glowing an eerie lavender.
Finally, the pain in his legs had reached his feet, and eventually, his toes. He instinctively kicked his shoes off, his burning feet needing to be out in the open and not cocooned by the sneakers and socks. The scar was almost done with his head as well- his face was now entirely consumed by the dark energy, and his quills were just about at that point, too.
And then suddenly, it stopped. The pain was still there, obviously, and his whole body was extremely sore. But it stopped spreading. Was it done? Was that it, was there nothing left of the hedgehog to be taken? Sonic didn't want to open his eyes to find out. He was in too much pain. All he wanted to do was to lie there in the dirt and wait for someone to find him. He didn't want to move a single muscle. He couldn't take a deep breath with his chest refusing to expand that far, so he took rapid, short ones instead to get the oxygen in. He had to remind himself not to start seriously hyperventilating, or else he could be in even deeper trouble. He wasn't screaming anymore, which was good, but he was still crying, which was not so good in his book. He couldn't stop it, either. He had been in too much pain, and now the waterworks wouldn't turn off. He didn't care no one was around to see it, he hated crying. Whether it was himself or someone else, he hated tears. The fact that they were his only managed to add insult to injury.
After a long time, the pain finally started to dull a little bit. Sonic's eyes had dried by then, and he still hadn't moved or opened his eyes. He resolved to try and move his body one part at a time, to see if he even still had a body after all that. He started with his feet. He wiggled his toes around, one foot at a time, each one sending a burst of pain rocketing up his calf. 'Ow! Ughh… yep, toes still there. I think that covers both my legs, let's move on,' he groaned mentally. He was too tired to test every body part.
He went to test his fingers next, when he realized they were still balled up into fists, clenching for dear life. He loosened his grip, letting the blood flow back into his fingertips again. That, of course, only brought the pain back, tempting him to just clench his fists shut again. Once he was sure that his hands would be okay, he moved onto his arms, managing only to twitch them gently without cringing from the agony. 'When this is all done,' he thought, his body tense, 'I'm going to just curl up on the couch, drink a gallon of hot chocolate, and just marathon movies for a few days. I'm just going to not move. That will be my reward for getting out of here intact.'
He tried opening his eyes next. His entire field of vision was, unsurprisingly, dark and cloudy. He seemed to have some sort of night vision, with everything around him being outlined in a pale lavender color. He couldn't see many details, but he could see. Well, at least it was something. His eyes hurt though, along with the rest of his head, like he had brainfreeze all over the place, coupled with what he imagined a hangover felt like.
"You… You happy now?" he gasped, forcing the words out of his mouth. "You've successfully consumed my body. Congratu-freaking-lations… Great, now I'm talking to dark energy. This is even worse than the talking to dead robots thing," he smiled. Man, if Tails knew about this, he'd never let it go. Sonic felt his heart sink. "Tails… Buddy, you had better be okay," he breathed. He couldn't just sit here while his best friend could be under that pile of rocks. He needed to get up, no matter how much it was going to hurt.
He decided to treat it like a band-aid, and get it all over with at once. So, in one swift motion he got up to a kneeling position. If just twitching his toes around caused him pain, moving his whole body at once and actually putting pressure on his limbs made him feel like he was going to die. But he couldn't give up. He had to at least try. So he pushed himself further, using the wall to help pull himself up to his feet. He groaned as he did so, his legs shaking. Would the pain just go away already? He walked himself slowly over to the pile of boulders separating him from everyone else, and started to pull away at some of the smaller rocks. "Come on bud, you in there? Just say something! You gotta be alive in there bro, you can't just leave me hanging! Tails? Lil' T, Sonic, Z, Scourge! This isn't funny, just tell me you're okay!"
All of a sudden, he could feel energy pulsating around him, sending a shockwave up the walls of the cave. The ground rumbled, and more dust and small rocks came down from the ceiling. Sonic stepped away from the wall and held his breath. The rumbling didn't last long, thankfully, and everything died down again. "Did… did I do that?" Sonic gasped, looking up at the ceiling. There were cracks in it, like lightning, and they all converged on a point directly above him. He gulped. "O-okay, what the heck was that? I've never been able to do anything like that before. I just made a shockwave out of nothing."
He looked down at his chest and nervously put a hand over his heart. It was beating wildly, but it didn't feel warm, like it should have. It felt oddly cold. Sonic shuddered. "Maybe this is because of all the negative energy pent up inside me right now... That's why the ceiling caved in before, and that's what that shockwave was. Heck, it's probably why the Emerald doesn't want me to use it, either. It doesn't want anything to do with the dark energies..." He rubbed his arms with his hands, trying to get rid of the goosebumps that were forming. "But why? Why did I even make that shockwave? Is it something I just can't control, or...?" He shook his head and sunk back down to the ground. He knew he should try and get out of here, and follow the tunnel as far as he could. Maybe he'd find help, or his friends, or the last Emerald. But he just couldn't bring himself to move an inch. Not until he stopped hurting all over, and not until he knew what exactly the scar's energy would do to him now that his whole body was consumed by it.
"Maybe it has something to do with my emotions. Right before the cave-in when everyone was yelling and arguing, and then I sort of snapped at them... And just now, when I was freaking out about Tails and the guys..." He did his best to swallow the lump in his throat. His friends had to be okay, he told himself. They were all plenty strong, all stronger than him at the moment. No way some stupid falling rocks would do them in. That wouldn't be an ending deserving of any of them.
He took a deep breath. He needed to calm himself down. If his emotions really were why he kept accidentally unleashing all this power, he would have to focus on keeping them in check. He needed to concentrate. He needed to detach himself from the situation he was in and just focus on being calm. He inhaled and exhaled shakily. He sure didn't feel calm. He was in a lot of pain, and he was all alone, and nothing was certain anymore. In fact, the more he tried to calm down, the less calm he was starting to get. In the back of his head, he was scared. Scared for himself, scared for everyone else, scared for his home. He was trying to wear the same brave face he always wore, but he was scared.
He felt a tingling in his arms, somehow eclipsing the soreness. He opened his eyes and looked at the appendages, only for his eyes to shoot open. Strange, small tendrils of energy were coming out of his arms, almost like droplets of ink, only they were floating upwards. They slowly dripped towards the ceiling, detatching from his arms and fading in with the darkness. The more he looked at them, the larger the blobs of energy seemed to get. Sonic squeezed his eyes shut again and gripped his hands tighter around his biceps. What was happening to him?
Somehow he knew in the back of his head what was going on. 'Fear… I release bursts of energy when I'm panicked, and these creepy little things start coming out of me when I'm scared, is that it? Boy, this just gets more and more fun by the second.' Well, he was pretty thoroughly afraid, now that he had little droplets of energy coming out of his arms. He opened his eyes tentatively. The tendrils were skinny, and none reached higher than a couple of inches before they broke off, but it was still extremely unnerving. Watching the energyfloat and drip off his body, as if there was too much of it inside of him, as if he were leaking.... 'Trust me, I want you out of my body just as much as you do,' he thought. 'I'd much rather wake up suddenly years younger, or something like that. I never asked to become a walking reservoir of dark time energy, of… of paradox energy, I guess you could call it. Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Paradox energy. Whatever, the point is, I didn't want this to happen! Not any of it! When the younger me and Tails got stuck here, I figured they could hang out for a while, and we'd send them back home as soon as we could. I thought finding the Emeralds would be just as easy as it'd always been, and I sure as heck didn't expect that a silly little scrape I got while fighting a monster- the first monster! How lame is that- would cause me this much grief.' He sighed. He really messed up this time. Of course, the one time he got himself into a heap of trouble just had to be the time that everything was at stake. Not just him, not just his world, but everything.
The little tendrils seemed to like the direction his train of thought was going, and started growing a little taller and fatter. Sonic held one of his fingers out and reached towards one of the smaller tendrils. He gently poked it, the little thing curling up on itself, disliking his touch. He only felt the touch through his finger and not through his arm, which appeared to mean that the droplets weren't physically inside his arm, trying to burst out of his skin. That reassured him a little bit, and the tendrils shrunk a smidge in response. He touched another one, this one curling up as well. He poked its curled-up form, and it leaned away from his finger, not wanting to be anywhere near it. "Oh, don't tell me you're afraid of me," Sonic chuckled softly. He didn't dare laugh too hard, for fear of his chest aching even more. "I'm not going to hurt ya. Unless you're evil, of course, then I might probably hurt ya. But you don't seem particularly dangerous, just... creepy. Really, really creepy." The tendrils shrunk a little bit more. The hedgehog smiled. Maybe he could handle this, after all. He just had to keep his emotions in check, right? No small task given his current circumstances, but he might be able to manage.
Deciding to act while he wasn't drowning in self-loathing, slipped his socks and shoes back onto his feet (he had almost forgot that he kicked them off when the scar was spreading), and he got up, using the wall for help again. He knew that there would be no way back the way he came; not only was the path sealed up now, but blasting or digging through it would only cause another cave-in, he could feel it. Unless he wanted to put himself and possibly the others at greater risk, he was going to have to go the other way, down the corridor.
He looked as far as he could into the depths of the cave, which when the lights were out, wasn't very far. Even with his weird night vision, he couldn't see more than a few meters ahead of him. But there had to be something down there, right? He certainly hoped there was. Because if this tunnel turned out to be a dead end, he was stuck, and it was possible that there would be no help coming to bail him out. He gulped. "Well, I'm not going to get anywhere by just standing around and waiting here, am I?" he said psyching himself up. He picked up the Chaos Emerald that was lying on the floor. He might not be able to use it, but he could still pick it up, thankfully. Sonic stuffed the Emerald into his backpack and pulled out a flashlight. It blinked to life, illuminating the cave… kind of. The added light wasn't changing how his blackened eyes were seeing, but it did let him see a little bit further. Every little bit helped, he supposed. He let go of the wall and put one foot in front of the other, clumsily making his way down the tunnel and walking into the unknown darkness.
ooo
He struggled along on foot, making his way through what ended up being a catacomb of tunnels. His body screamed in pain with every step he took, but he forced himself to keep going. He had to keep going forward if he wanted any chance of finding the others. He pulled out the Emerald and looked into it as he walked, trying to get his mind off of how sore he felt and how lost he was. The gem was as bright and lively as always, but he couldn't feel anything when he held it. He had always been able to feel them thump in time with his heartbeat, but now the stone was still. It had always felt warm to the touch, but now it felt cold as any other old rock. It was almost like it was a different jewel all together- or if he was a different person.
'Will I ever be able to get this paradox energy out of me?' he wondered sadly, energy dripping off of him and floating up towards the ceiling. 'I mean, my entire body has been consumed by this stuff. Maybe it's too late, and I can't get it out now. What am I supposed to do about that?' he thought as he trudged along. He had already gone a week without really running, and he was miserable. There was no way he could deal with this for the rest of his life. Not only could he not run, he could barely walk. He leaned up against the wall of the cave to rest and catch his breath. He couldn't believe it. Sonic the Hedgehog, fastest thing alive, was out of breath just from walking. It was embarrassing. He was so slow, so in pain, and the moodswings... He was barely himself anymore. What he would give to be back with the others and to have the poisonous energy removed from his body.
'Where am I, anyway? Or is this just 'generic cave' all the way down?' he wondered, looking around at the walls. They definitely seemed familiar, but it was like something was missing. The ceiling was high up, so far he almost couldn't see it. The walls were almost as high, and in fact were slowly changing from cave walls into tall buildings as Sonic walked forward. 'An underground city...?' he realized as he continued pushing himself deeper into the caves. 'It feels like I've been here before...' As he went, the cavern morphed more and more into an urban area, seemingly ancient. Well, ancient in a different sense of the word. The buildings all looked relatively new, but they were built all with stone, with carvings and deep blue gems laid into them. There were swirling pathways and loop-de-loops everywhere, something the hedgehog wished sorely he could run through and appreciate more. Sonic didn't know where he was exactly, but he had a nasty sense of foreboding for some reason. Like something bad was going to happen here.
He traveled deeper into the heart of the silent city, his body craving rest but refusing to give it. He could see stark white figures in the distance, and he froze on the spot. What were they? They couldn't be the Time Eater's goons, those were dark purple and black. Sonic slowly got closer to the mysterious figures, trying to be stealthy as he did so. It was a bit difficult, seeing as he hissed in pain whenever he bumped into something or landed wrong on his foot, but the silhouettes didn't seem to notice him. In fact, the closer he got, it became clear to him that they were people. Just like the people on the surface who had essentially been turned into white, lifeless statues, only these people were walking around. All of them were echidnas, which struck Sonic as particularly strange.
'Okay, clearly this is a city that existed a long time ago,' he thought, peeking out from behind a building. 'But echidnas? I thought those guys only lived on Angel Island, and this doesn't look like any ancient echidna city I've ever seen.'
Feeling more curious now, Sonic emerged from his cover, walking up to the nearest group of echidnas, all seemingly discussing something while walking along with baskets of food and water. Or at least, they seemed like they were talking. No sound was coming out of their mouths, but they seemed to understand each other perfectly. 'Huh. Looks like this flashback doesn't come with sound,' Sonic tilted his head. He approached the small group, all ladies, and walked backwards in front of them. They showed no sign of seeing him, and when he stopped walking, they strolled right through him. It was like he wasn't even there.
'Huh. Like I'm a ghost... I don't think I can interact with anything here, even if I tried,' he realized as the echidna ladies passed straight through him as if he were air. 'This is definitely weird. Where am I? When am I?' He tried looking around some more for some landmarks, distinguishing features or buildings, but nothing in particular was standing out to him. He knew he recognized this place somehow, but he just couldn't put his finger on it.
He would have loved to explore some more, but he needed to find the exit. He highly doubted the others were here- wherever 'here' was- since he couldn't hear anything in the city. It was like the whole place was on mute. He could hear himself stumbling and dragging his way across town just fine, so his hearing hadn't gotten messed up. This place was just bizarre, and though very pretty, sticking around wouldn't help him find the others.
Sonic spent some time looking for an exit from the city so he could continue onward, desperately hoping that he hadn't come to a dead end. He was sitting on the curb, resting, watching the people walk by. They were all just going about their daily business. They had no idea that they had been ripped forward by the whacked up flow of time, and that the entire multiverse was in danger. They had no idea that one of the only people who could fix everything was sitting powerless on the side of the road. Sonic groaned, looking at the small droplets of energy coming off of his arm. "I hate you," he grumbled, glaring at the tiny black blobs. They swelled up in response, growing large enough that they easily broke off and flew up until they were far enough away that Sonic couldn't see them. He was overflowing with paradox energy at this point; the stuff coming off of him was just the excess.
His thoughts were interrupted by a crowd of blindingly white echidnas came running his way. He stood up with some difficulty, slowly pushing himself to his feet. 'What's going on?' he looked around, trying to see what was happening. There were too many people rushing towards him, and although they passed right through him, he couldn't see over all of their heads. He didn't have a way of getting to a higher vantage point that wouldn't kill him in the process, either. There was definitely some sort of commotion going on though, and it seemed big. So he pushed his way through the oncoming crowd of people, trying to get a sense for what they were all running away from. 'It's not like it can hurt me, whatever it is,' he shrugged. He flinched as a drop of water fell on his head. He reached up to wipe it off. 'Rain? But we're underground,' he thought, glaring down at the splotch of water on his hand. He blinked as more and more drops came down, surprising him further. He looked up and gasped loudly. The cave ceiling was filled with cracks like lightning, each one dripping water at a frightening pace.
Well, Sonic had figured out what everyone was running away from.
What happened in the next few minutes was like the skies opening up in a bad storm, only times a thousand. A tidal wave of water rushed from the ceiling, and Sonic wasted no time in following the thousands of escaping echidnas out of the city. He wasn't fast enough to escape, though, and was swept forward by the wall of water coming towards him. 'HydroCity,' he suddenly thought, fearing for his life. 'Guess it had to be dry at some point. Too bad I showed up on a bad day.' He closed his eyes, too tired to fight. He could barely move out of water. The added resistance, plus the whole not being able to breathe thing, and his inherent fear of the stuff made him feel helpless. There was no way he could fight against the current. He was being tumbled around and shaken up like he was a rag doll. He thought about Tails and the others as the last bit of air was slammed out of his lungs, and he slipped into unconsciousness.
Notes: Well, that was kind of a bummer, eh? He'll probably be okay. Maybe. I wonder what's going on with the rest of the gang? Guess you'll just have to wait til the next chapter! Thanks so much for reading and sticking with me this year guys, it's been a great year for me and for this story! Don't forget to leave a review if you liked this chapter. Happy holidays everyone!