Night Terrors

Silence hung heavily over the house in the Mystic Ruins. Insisting he was tired, Tails had gone to bed early. Of course, he wasn't able to sleep. Instead, he lay in his bed, listening and waiting for the numbers on his alarm clock to finally show a later time of day.

He hadn't heard much of 'Sonic', whatever his name really was. For a while he'd been in the workshop downstairs before he'd come up and Tails had heard him go into Sonic's room. The fox would have liked to know what the stranger had done in the workshop while he wasn't looking, but he'd been too scared to go check it out, in the dark and alone.

What did the guy want? Want from him? He'd stolen the Master Emerald, done whatever to the real Sonic… just to let Knuckles get away with the magic gemstone and follow Tails to his house and pretend he was Sonic. Why would someone do that? It made no sense to Tails at all, and it was making him even more afraid. Why him? What would that person do to him if he found out he knew he wasn't the real deal? Would he kill him?

Tails shuddered under his blankets. He didn't want to know. It was beginning to feel like a really bad dream to him and he wished he could just wake up and crawl into Sonic's bed like when he'd been small and sleep there with his big brother, safe and warm and protected.

But Sonic wasn't here… Instead, there was someone else that looked exactly like him. How was that possible? Sonic didn't have any family. At least, none that was known of… but that stranger could be his twin! Even to Tails, who could claim to know Sonic better than anyone else, they looked identical. At least… unless he focused on things other than the real appearance. Whoever he was, he talked different than Sonic. He moved in a different way. He just was different. And he'd burned that photo. Would he burn Tails, too? Had he burned Sonic?

Sitting up on his bed, Tails wrapped his namesakes around himself. He was scared, more scared than he had been in quite some time. He wasn't a stranger to fear, but in most fearsome situations, he was with friends by his side and they had a plan to work with. Now, he had neither friends nor a plan on how to deal with the situation.

Again he glimpsed at the alarm clock. Ten minutes to midnight. That fake Sonic should be asleep by now, shouldn't he? Careful not to make any noise, Tails slipped out of bed and pulled on his shoes. He tiptoed to the door and quietly opened it, just a slit. Then he stood frozen for a minute, afraid he'd possibly wakened the stranger up. But nothing moved and cautiously Tails fully opened the door, sneaking slowly across the corridor.

He used his spinning tails to avoid the stairs; he knew many of the wooden treads creaked when as much weight as a Flicky was put on them. He'd never considered it a problem before, but now he wished he would have fixed it, because the sound of spinning tails stirring the air seemed incredibly loud in the quite night.

Tails touched down aside of the Tornado, unsurely looking up at it. He'd thought it through hundreds of times already. By himself, he wasn't near fast enough to escape that Sonic imposter if he was just half as fast as they thought he was. And where should he go? The only person aside of Sonic he trusted enough and thought was able to protect and help him was Knuckles. He was probably also the only one who would believe his story… and there was no way he would get up to Angel Island by himself. It was simply too high up. He needed the Tornado.

Of course, taking the biplane brought along a major disadvantage. It would clearly wake the person he wanted to escape from up as soon as he started the engine. No matter how advanced his ring motor was, the airflow around the propeller alone was incredibly loud, especially in a quiet night like this one.

But it was the only way to escape. Tails didn't much like the idea of flying a completely cold plane, but the Tornado faced directly towards the hangar door, thus also at the runway. He considered it would take two or three seconds after the start-up until he could get the biplane rolling, ten until he could be airborne. Should be enough to get out of reach of someone who'd just been jolted out of his sleep, right?

Tails sure hoped it would be. Quietly he opened the large portal and hopped into the plane's cockpit. He prepared everything he could for the take-off without starting the engine, then reached for the keys.

They weren't there. But he always left them in the plane, just in case he had to go somewhere quickly. Like now, for example. Just where were the –

"I take it you are missing these, creature."

Tails whirled around at the sound of the suddenly mechanic voice. He could see only the spiked silhouette of the hedgehog in the dark hangar, standing at the middle of the stairs. He was holding something up that sparkled a little in the moonlight, then pulled his arm back, causing a tingling noise when the keys hit each other – and then he threw the bundle all across the room, through the open door where it kept sailing through the air like shot from a gun until it disappeared behind the cliffs.

Tails stared back at the hedgehog... person. "What… do you want from me?", he stammered.

"You will help me harness the seven powers of chaos." The reply came back in the tone of an almost everyday statement… if it wasn't for the underlying threat and the mechanical sound of the voice.

"Who are you?", Tails pressed out, in vain trying to keep the tremble from his voice.

Another, harder shudder ran through the young fox as in the stranger's face a pair of deep red eyes lit up, sending a piercing glow through the dark workshop. "You may have one guess, organic."


It was dark and silent. Knuckles could hardly hear his own footsteps on the ground or make out the outlines of shapes in the darkness. The air felt cool on his skin, the wet cold creeping through his fur.

The echidna walked slowly. He couldn't see too much after all. It was only when he stumbled against something on the floor that he looked down.

What he had almost fallen over was a near round lump on the floor. On second look Knuckles realized the sharp outlines of spikes pointing out of the ball form, then the feet at the other side of it. It was a person. A hedgehog curled up as tightly as he could.

It was still too dark to make out colors, so Knuckles leaned down to take a closer look. "Sonic?" The hedgehog didn't stir to the nudge of Knuckles' hand against his side. Instead something like a sharp blow of wind through a narrow place sounded from behind.

Knuckles stood and whirled around, squinting his eyes to see sharper through the thick curtain of darkness. But there was nothing behind him and he turned back to the hedgehog on the ground.

But when he looked, the hedgehog's dark shape began to flicker, slowly fading into transparency until he was gone as if he had never been there. Startled and panicked at the sight of his friend just vanishing before his eyes, Knuckles knelt and reached out where he had been, but his hand just sliced through an empty space.

Knuckles stared in disbelief at the blank ground… until a wicked giggle echoed from all around him, sharp and rasping. He shot to his feet and span around on the spot. For a moment he saw nothing, then a pair of deep red eyes flashed from the darkness.

The echidna woke up with a gasp and through wide open eyes stared into the room around him. It needed various seconds until he grew aware of his rapid breath, of the cold sweat covering his body from head to toes and of sitting upright in his bed. Moonlight filtered in through the small window hole in the wall above his head. Knuckles collapsed back onto the bed.

A nightmare? It had all felt so real… He could still hear that laughter in the back of his mind and the image of the curled up body vanishing before him had burned itself into his soul. And those eyes...

Groggily Knuckles ran a hand over his face. He knew if the moon had not yet set, it was still several hours until morning. Suddenly he realized that he was still shaking all over and that it was cold. He sat up and searched around for his blanket, finding it knotted into a lump on the floor. He reached to pick it up and wrapped it around his shoulders, shivering into it. It didn't help making him warmer. Not that he really thought there was a chance he'd go back to sleep anytime soon.

Slowly and with effort he dragged himself out of bed, the covers still around him and his body heavy and tired but still tingling with a totally irrational panic left behind by the nightmare.

Knuckles moved to relight his fireplace, fetched a mug and prepared a tea in the heat of the small fire. Then he held the mug with both hands, in exhaustion leaned against the wall next to the fire, sipping the hot tea, trying to warm up in the fire's light and gazing numbly into the flames.

He couldn't remember having many nightmares that had left him as scared as this one. Had he really dreamed about Sonic?

Well, actually the hedgehog was a rather common guest in Knuckles' dreams, so were Tails, Doctor Eggman, his robots, even Shadow. Dreams often showed you things from your memory and Knuckles didn't know many people for his mind to remember and include in a dream. Quite often though, Knuckles knew, dreams were random and meaningless. A product of the mind ordering itself during sleep maybe, and most of the time a dream was bizarre and made no sense. Knuckles remembered dreaming one time that Tails had build an hot air balloon and that Sonic had forced him to paint a chili dog on it. In the end, Doctor Eggman had been flying away with it, the balloon had mysteriously morphed into a cone of ice cream that Amy Rose had smashed with her hammer.

As far as Knuckles was concerned, most of his or anyone else's dreams were total and utter nonsense.

This one of a few minutes ago though… it had been terrifying no matter how little scary the events seemed now that he thought back to the dream. While he was in it, something about it had scared the crap out of him. It had nothing in common with the random chains of images most dreams consisted of.

Knuckles let his head drop against the wall in his back. Honestly he didn't want to know why he'd dreamed of what maybe had been Sonic in a dark place. He didn't want to know what had giggled after he disappeared. He just didn't want to ever dream of such burning dark eyes ever again.


Speedy's note: The next chapter will reveal where Sonic actually is. Please place your bets. I'd really love to know what you think, and if some of you figured out what Metal Sonic did to him and how it's all connected. :)