(Chapter Twenty-five. Things have gotten worse, haven't they?
I find I'm still trying to keep my update schedule consistent, in spite of my summer job.)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:
My Decision Is Made
Knuckles crossed his arms bitterly as the taxi hobbled down the streets. Its rear left leg was a bit snarky, but there would be no time to fix it. It was being left behind on Möbius, along with practically every vehicle apart from the Fremeralds.
It came to a stop outside of 121 Chestnut Lane.
Elias's pad.
"Keep the change," Knuckles said shortly, handing a bill over to the cab driver, not knowing or caring if it was enough. "Not sure how long you'll have to spend it, though, so don't get too attached to it."
And without a backward glance at the puzzled and wondrous look on the cabby's face, Knuckles strode up the path to Elias's home, and saw the man of the house leaning on the railing of his porch, his wife and daughter sitting on a swing by the window. Marine was attempting to tickle Alexis's tummy.
"Yo."
Elias gave a small sort of smile, a bushy eyebrow raised. "So you finally showed up, 'Uncle' Knuckles."
Knuckles shrugged, standing next to Elias and resting his arms on the railing as well.
"I gotta see her sometime before we leave Möbius," he said lowly.
"You make it sound like you won't get another chance," Meg said with a half-smile.
Knuckles ignored this.
"So... how is she?" he asked.
"She's healthy," Meg smiled broadly. "I thought she would suck me dry when she nursed."
"And when she cries..." Marine put her fists in the air. "Cover your ears!"
Knuckles chuckled, facing Elias.
"So, I heard you submitted your resignation."
Elias nodded.
"Word travels fast. Sorry to bail on you guys, but I really want to be with Meg and Allie before all this happens."
"You guys really should get to the Blue Typhoon soon!" Knuckles said sharply, cutting to the chase. "There ain't gonna be room on that thing forever, and it's less than a week before the Moon's supposed to hit!"
"We were just about to head out, actually, Knuckles," said Elias, slightly crossly. "We were just taking one last look over Sonic City before we get in the car."
"Oh." Knuckles scratched the back of his head. "Sorry 'bout that."
"Don't sweat it."
Knuckles sniffed loudly. "Y'know, maybe Sonic picked the right time to die."
"Sorry, Knuckles," Elias looked back at his small family, "But a baby girl means more to me right now than a dead man."
Knuckles bowed his head. "Right. Guess I can't blame you."
The two men - as close as brothers-in-law - looked up at the sky.
The Moon now covered the sky almost completely, creating nighttime conditions between the hours of nine in the morning and three in the afternoon, leaving only six hours of daytime in the city below. With very little sunlight able to strike the Moon's near side at its current proximity to Möbius, it was much dimmer in the night sky, but during the daytime-night hours, the sky surrounding the Moon was surrounded by a faint halo-like corona, forever telling of the large black ceiling that now hung over Sonic City.
"Looks like there's a ceiling in the sky now, doesn't it?" Elias wondered.
Knuckles chuckled a little, "Yeah, it does, doesn't it?"
Less than a week until lunar impact...
Knuckles faced Elias. "Hey, Elias?"
"Hmm?" Elias glanced back at his family.
Knuckles was going to tell him about the true devastation that would be wrought on Möbius by the Moon's impact...
Then he shook his head.
"Nah, it's nothing. We better get into the car soon. That's just about all we can do, what with Silver pretty much being the New Government right now." Knuckles gave a bitter 'ha' as he looked up at the Moon again. "We're so useless right now."
And dark blotches appeared about the Moon's surface.
No.
Not on the Moon.
In the space between Möbius and the Moon.
Specifically, the airspace over Sonic City.
And hundreds of Zoah descended onto the Möbian capital.
Every alarm in Sonic City went off at once.
Knuckles, Elias, Meg, and Marine's hearts began to hammer.
Alexis began to cry.
The Zoah rounded on the Parliament Complex as one.
The dark sky turned bright blue.
And the Parliament Complex vanished in a column of black smoke.
"WHAT THE FUCK?" Knuckles bellowed.
"The Zoah?" Elias asked.
どうだ！俺のトランペットは凄いだろう！！
The Blue Typhoon rocked violently below Sonic City, the lights flickering from the tremors above.
"What in the world was that?" Silver asked as soon as power steadied itself.
"A massive amount of Zoah have appeared overhead and unleashed a concentrated beam attack!" Helen said from her station. "The Parliament Complex has suffered massive damage!" Looking back at her display, she paled. "A second wave, incoming!"
The lights flickered and the room shook again.
"Parliament Complex, destroyed!" Helen's voice shrieked over the din.
"The attacks are concentrated underneath the Parliament Complex!" Ash called from his terminal.
"I don't believe it... Have they detected the presence of the Blue Typhoon?" Silver breathed, clenching his station with tight fists.
Rotor's image appeared on the Blue Typhoon's main monitor.
"It's entirely possible," he said. "They must have picked up a powerful Spiral Power source, and that must be why they're attacking."
"Is there nothing we can do?" Silver addressed Ash. "Run a search in the Darkoak Head! I don't care if it works for a tenth of a second, find some way to negate the Anti-Spiral energy attacks!"
Ash typed away at his terminal, and a few moments later, a computer-generated model of the Blue Typhoon appeared on the main monitor in a split screen with Rotor's face. A spiraling orb appeared around the Blue Typhoon.
"What's this?" Silver asked.
"Looks like some sort of energy shield," Rotor commented.
"It is a Spiral Power Shield, powered by the Spiral Power of Spiral lifeforms," said the Darkoak Head. "This is a Spiral battleship. Naturally, it would be equipped with a defensive shield."
オドネル
Pandemonium reigned in the streets of Sonic City as the Zoah, having destroyed the governmental center of Möbius in just two blasts, turned their energy towards Sonic City itself. People of every persuasion hastened towards the nearest Blue Typhoon elevator, sometimes knocking down other people and inadvertently trampling them to death.
Overhead, the Fremerald Squadrons, equipped with newly constructed Spiral Shield Rifles, fired on the Zoah. The Spiral Shield Rifle discharged a destructive blast towards the Zoah, erecting a spiraling shield instantly around the Zoah in place of the digital robots' AT Fields, containing its explosive energy until it dissipated.
However, the Fremeralds were vastly outnumbered.
"It's nice to be able to take them out in one shot, but there's tons of them!" shouted Charmy in his Fremerald, Buzz Buzz.
"Suck it up!" shouted back Frances, a freckled human girl from her Fremerald. "We gotta hold them back as long as possible!"
Down below, other Fremeralds were attempting to maintain some semblance of order.
"Please, proceed calmly and swiftly to the nearest Blue Typhoon entrance," said Cream's Fremerald, Cheese, in her gentle but firm voice.
"It's safe in the Blue Typhoon!" called out Molly's, Cascade. "Please hurry to the underground tunnels!"
Back at 121 Chestnut Lane...
Knuckles slammed the car door shut as soon as Marine sat in the back seat.
"Get outta here, Elias," Knuckles said.
Then a Zoah descended through the smoke overhead.
"PEDAL TO THE METAL, ELIAS!" Knuckles roared.
"What about you?" Elias asked.
"You still got your rifle in the house?"
"From my Freedom Fighter days? Why?"
Knuckles pulled aside part of his New Government jacket, revealing...
"These are Spiral shells!" he said, indicating the red bullets with helical grooves on his ammo belt, and, without waiting for an answer, bolted into Elias's house, returning moments later with Elias's rifle. "This oughta slow that bastard down!"
"Bro!" Marine yelled, rolling down the window and reaching for Knuckles, but the echidna, loading Spiral shells - one of the earliest developments of the Spiral Power Research Institute - into the rifle, did not notice.
"I'm not about to let you people die, least of all my cute little niece," he growled. Granted, Alexis was not his biological niece, but the Wandering Orphans's fraternity was all but blood. "Go on without me, Elias! Meg... look after Blaze for me."
Knuckles cocked the rifle and fired.
The Zoah very noticeably drifted back a few feet.
"HAUL YOUR ASS! IT'S GONNA OPEN FIRE ANY SECOND!" Knuckles bellowed.
A moment of hesitation, and Elias floored the pedal, and the car galloped away down the street.
Knuckles fired at the Zoah three more times.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The Zoah opened fire.
Knuckles disappeared in stream of blue light.
"KNUCKLES!"
Suddenly, a large shape split the blue light.
A large, helmet-shaped shape.
Lobo's Gizoid, O'Donnell!
"Get back, Knuckles!" Lobo called out from within.
"Lobo?" Knuckles called out, stepping further back into O'Donnell's shadow.
"Sorry I'm late," Lobo quipped. "Took a while to find a sitter for the kids."
Knuckles let loose a loud, sharp laugh. "That tells me a lot about what your family life is like!"
O'Donnell's blade swung wide, deflecting the Zoah's energy bolt, and a pair of missile launchers concealed in its shoulders fired at the Zoah, which spiraled up into the air, detonating and showering the inside of a Spiral Shield with explosive charges.
"Nice toys you brought to the party," Knuckles grinned.
"Spiral Shield Missiles we made as a government subcontract," Lobo returned the grin. "We held on to some spares just in case."
Back in Elias's family car, Marine, her hands still pressed against the rear window, had borne witness to this latest development.
"Bro's alright!" she cried out.
Meg let out a deep sigh.
Elias narrowed his eyes.
That eighteen-legger... It took up the entire two lanes going the opposite direction.
Away from the Blue Typhoon loading tunnels.
He caught a glimpse of a gray wolf woman giving him the thumbs-up from the driver's seat.
In his rear-view mirror, in the split-second he allowed himself to divert his eyes from the road, he saw King Knuckles and Eliastriker, and the shadows of the remaining Great Freedom Fighters' Gizoid brigade.
The eighteen-legger truck rumbled to a stop just in front of Knuckles and O'Donnell, spinning ninety degrees on the spot so that the driver - Lupe - could see Knuckles and at the same time make it easier for the echidna to...
"Hop on board, Knuckles!" called out Lupe.
"I... I thought these were destroyed!" Looking closer, Knuckles saw that King Knuckles's right hand had been replaced with a red Spiral Cannon.
"Some government officials," explained Lupe, "Took these to our place and told us to scrap them. So I took them in... And kept them in peak condition!"
Knuckles gave a thumbs-up. "That's Lupe for you! I owe you one!"
And within moments, the Great Freedom Fighters' Gizoid pilots were called on their phones by Knuckles and Marine, and within ten minutes, the Great Freedom Fighters' Gizoid brigade was reborn.
(Eliastriker was temporarily piloted by Ari.)
Knuckles, who had not been inside his King Knuckles in a very long time, felt all the knowledge of how to pilot a Gizoid flooding back into his fingertips.
He looked up at the dark cratered mass overhead which now took up half of the Sonic City sky.
A ceiling, huh? he thought. I guess it is. All that's left to do... is punch through it!
And with that, the Gizoid brigade took off in one specific direction.
Now, they just needed their leader.
The Digger.
And he needed his Drill.
The Blue monday e"r"ectrical parade
Large swathes of Sonic City districts now long confirmed to be empty rotated aside, exposing the Blue Typhoon as it fired its thrusters, incinerating every level below Level EE (including Black Doom, who had remained undiscovered for seven years), as the Star Gizoid emerged over the city, a large shadow under the Moon's greater shadow.
It extended out small escalators to accept last-minute Möbian refugees.
Zoah opened fire.
A spiraling green shield absorbed the blasts.
Silver smiled. "Alright! Now bring aboard as many refugees as you can while the shield is up!"
"Commander! Look at this!" said Helen, clicking on her keyboard.
The main monitor lit up with unexpected images.
King Knuckles performing a Titanium Head Driver through a Zoah, then plowing straight off camera.
Eliastriker blasting straight through a Zoah's AT Field.
Vector Prime sending sound waves at a Zoah, causing it to destabilize and explode.
Mighty Fists picking off Zoah with its twin pistols.
Espionaj weaving in and out of Zoah, picking them off one by one.
Double Bruiser punching straight through Zoah after Zoah.
"Impossible!" Ash gasped. "What are Gizoids doing out there?"
"Attacks from antiquated Gizoids are effective against them?" Silver said in disbelief.
"Gizoids were once weapons designed to fight the Anti-Spiral," said the Darkoak Head. "It is only natural that their attacks would be effective."
Silver knitted his brow. "Forget about them. Activating the Blue Typhoon is top priority." He addressed the whole bridge, simultaneously activating a channel to all Fremerald units. "Attention, all units! The Blue Typhoon will leave the stratosphere in thirty minutes! Bring on board as many evacuees as you can in that time!"
"Thirty minutes?" Ash breathed.
"In order to leave the stratosphere," the Darkoak Head said, "Thirty minutes is the maximum amount of time we may divert energy to the Spiral Shield."
Blaze went pale, not wanting to imagine the answer to the question she asked:
"And... what of the people... who can't make it?"
Silver cast a horrified look at Blaze, sweat teaming down his face. Thoughts ran through his head of remaining in place to take on board all the people of Sonic City, but... that would endanger everything that Silver had done to save everyone that had made it aboard the Blue Typhoon.
He resolved that they would survive by any means necessary.
Even if it meant crawling back to prosperity over the backs of their murdered friends and family.
His face was suddenly set with determination.
"We leave in thirty minutes. That's it. My decision is made."
"Oh, now I get it," said a gruff voice from the bridge door.
Knuckles.
"So that's your hard decision, huh? Save as many lives as you can." Knuckles strode up to Silver and got up in his face. "Nothing can shake your resolve."
"What are you getting at?"
Knuckles grinned in spite of the situation, and the grin infuriated Silver for some reason, "That a pretty leaderly thing for the leader of the New Government to do. Pretty good for someone as young as you. But, if that's the way things'll be, why don't you just give that to me?"
Knuckles held out a large hand.
Both he and the former Galahad villager knew what he was talking about.
"Me and the boys never fit in with this whole 'New Government' thing," Knuckles continued, "We're just the Freedom Fighters. But, you know, the Freedom Fighters have their own way of doing things."
And Silver realized why Knuckles's grin made him so angry: it was Sonic's grin he was wearing. The grin of a senseless man who just charged into battle recklessly and did what he wanted, no matter what effect it would have on the battle, and yet somehow would wind up victorious.
But, Silver knew, that could only take you so far. And it didn't help Sonic on that day.
"Don't you understand?" Silver said hotly. "It's impossible!"
"That's what I was getting to! We kick common sense out and go beyond the impossible!" Knuckles stuck his hand out further. "C'mon, give it here. It's the soul of the Great Freedom Fighters... of Tails."
Blaze stood up to come to Silver's aid...
And Elias & Meg strode in, Meg carrying Alexis. Blaze faltered.
Elias gave Blaze a shake of the head. Let them handle this, it said.
Meg was not looking at Blaze, but was giving the Zoah circling the Spiral Shield a hard, blazing glare.
After a long moment, Silver reached around his neck and unfastened a clasp, pulling out a bit of gritty brown string made from the fur of Knothole Village pig-moles, attached to a small drill made from emerald.
Tails's Core Drill.
He placed it in Knuckles's hand, "Once upon a time, I entrusted the future to this, too."
Knuckles clenched his fist, "Well, I'm gonna wager tomorrow on this baby."
Knuckles looked at Blaze.
Blaze looked at Knuckles.
"Knuckles..." she began.
"Please don't die," he said shortly, turning away.
"Sorry," Elias said softly to Knuckles.
Knuckles just grinned. "Leave this to me!"
He left.
Silver returned to his station, a certain élan about him lost now. "All hands, prepare for liftoff. We don't have much time!"
放棄
"GET OUTTA MY WAY!" King Knuckles shouted in its pilot's voice as it plowed straight through a Zoah.
And then Eliastriker flew by below.
No.
Wait.
Eliastriker wasn't purple.
Far below, the last of the Fremeralds had docked with the Blue Typhoon, carrying as many people as they could between their arms.
The Blue Typhoon's escalators retracted, leaving thousands stranded in Sonic City.
Cries rang out, all filled with the same tone of black panic:
"NO!"
"Don't leave!"
"LET US ON!"
"MOMMY!"
Within the bridge, Silver stood as steadily as he could at his station, but he could not hide the tears that he now shed for those he had to leave behind.
Nor could Blaze, who could hardly see what she was typing as she coordinated the coordinates for Blue Typhoon's star trek.
サリーを返します
Far below, in Marble Prison, Shadow looked up from his hunched position in solitary, at the fox boy across from him.
"Looks like we were left behind," he said.
"Yeah," he didn't even look up at Shadow, staring at his hands in their wooden shackles, identical to those around Shadow's wrists. He seemed oblivious to the distant rumble of the Blue Typhoon taking off.
"To think that this is how I'm going to watch you die," Shadow sneered at Tails.
"You don't have to. Escape from here, Shadow," said the fox boy, unclenching his fist. "You're strong enough to break out, I know it."
"Still, I find it remarkable that they left behind you, of all people," Shadow said, looking down at Tails's open hand.
He gasped.
A drill...?
Of green light...?
Just like...
Just like the Helix King, on the day he made Shadow immortal!
"That light...!" Shadow exclaimed.
But the fox boy clenched his fist and unclenched it, and only particles of green light were left.
Tails smiled.
"I don't need to do anything anymore," he said, looking up at Shadow and meeting him eye-to-eye. "It's all up to Silver now."
Tails and Shadow blinked at the exact same moment.
And Cosmo was standing there, facing Tails.
"Are you so sure about that?" she said in her lifeless robotic voice.
Because of her jet-black appearance as a Messenger, all Tails could see of Cosmo were the data lines running down her body, hair, and flowers, and the cold blue light of her apathetic eyes.
"C-Cosmo..." Tails gasped.
"Silver has turned his back on all Möbiankind," she said, raising her left hand, her engagement ring glinting in the faint light. A round screen appeared over her hand, showing a computer-generated sphere covered with a blue grid, being orbited by a smaller sphere with a white grid across it. The smaller sphere orbited for a few moments, then spiraled in and smashed the blue grid off the larger sphere, leaving one that was burning-yellow.
"When the Moon strikes, they shall be swallowed, shelters and all, into Möbius's crust and mantle, and they shall all die. And the same fate awaits them in space. Escaping into space is a futile effort. Silver's plans were well within our assumptions. It is impossible for Möbiankind to evade destruction."
"What?" Shadow growled, his hands against his bars.
"The only concept which awaits Spiral life above the surface is absolute despair," Cosmo continued as her pupils, invisible against the blue glow of her eyes, gleamed red as blood. An orb of blood-red energy appeared in her right hand. "Only that awaits them."
Tails looked at the orb in Cosmo's hand without fear. "So, you're gonna kill me, Cosmo? After all we've done together?"
"My past self is gone, Miles. Your pleas fall on the unsympathetic ears of a mere program," Cosmo said, the orb glowing still more brightly, her pupils like red stars now. "Your death shall mark the conclusion of the Möbiankind Annihilation System."
She fired.
There was a sound of tearing metal, and a scream of pain.
"Shadow!" Tails yelled.
Shadow had torn his bars open and taken the blast for Tails. Tails could see through the ashen hole in Shadow's chest. It took much longer to heal than when his throat was slit by that Black Arms bird girl.
"Don't worry about me," Shadow hissed through gritted teeth. "My immortal body from the Helix King won't—"
Cosmo heartlessly blasted him twice more.
"Don't underestimate me!" Shadow growled even before the scorched bones of his lower jaw had been covered up again by muscle and skin. "Compared to the beatings General Redpine dealt me, this is nothing!" Shadow charged her, but Cosmo backhanded him with her ball of red energy, searing through skin and bone and flipping him into the bars behind her.
"Stop, Cosmo!" Tails snapped. "Your target is me!"
Cosmo faced him again, mechanically returning to her original position of targeting Tails.
Tails gave Cosmo a determined glare, his right hand glowing with emerald light, as though every cell in his right hand had turned into a green star, "I have to thank you, Cosmo. I was scared. When they tore down Sonic's statue, the rage inside me broke loose. I almost killed innocent people. Just like I was before I met you, just after Sonic died. I felt an unknown power rising up inside me. Just like with your father, Lucus Darkoak! But, I managed to restrain that power, and if I have to die so that Möbiankind can live, that's fine.
"Or so I thought. But, you said it yourself, Cosmo. You told me that there are some things I still have to do! Some things only I can do! So, attack me, Cosmo! But I won't die! As long as Möbiankind needs to be saved, I will never die!"
"You fool," Cosmo said, the orb of light in her hand reaching the critical point, the pinpricks of bloody light in her pupils like laser pointers, centered on Tails's heart.
Bang. A flash of blue light near the ceiling.
The orb of light in Cosmo's hand burst apart like glass, dissipating like mist.
And then, with a great shake that made Tails's teeth rattle, the ceiling broke.
And something fell into Marble Prison's solitary confinement sector. Fortunately, no one was about, apart from Tails, Shadow, and the Anti-Spiral Messenger Cosmo.
With a crash, and the kicking up of clouds of loose dirt, the Something landed.
When it cleared - which took a minute or so - it revealed something that made Tails and Shadow gape.
It was a purple Gizoid, resembling an engine with a face, with stumpy arms and legs...and a cannon on its head, which was pointed at Cosmo.
Its mouth opened.
A lithe shape carrying a large rifle leapt down, landing twenty feet from Cosmo, pointing her weapon at the Anti-Spiral Messenger.
It was a woman, of mixed chipmunk and squirrel heritage, judging from her looks. She had her red hair tied into a ponytail. She was wearing a blue vest over a flame-decal bra, in addition to black short-shorts and blue boots.
"I don't see you for a while, and you go and turn into a cold, boring bitch..." A smirk crossed Sally's face. "Cosmo."
つづく
To be continued...
次回予告
Next Episode Preview
What that man loved was a future beneath a bright blue sky.
And when that sky begins to fall, she rises up.
And then their intertwined fates merge and become one.
Next time on Tengen Toppa Freedom Emerl: "You Are Someone Who Ought To Survive".