I dropped to the ground and panicked.
How could I let this happen!?
Amy... killed me!?
I couldn't believe it. It was literally a psychobilly freakout.
Ok, don't lose your head. Maybe you're not dead at all. Maybe it's just a dream. The whole thing could be nothing more than a nine-hour nightmare that you can't wake up from. Would you like to find out now? Yeah, I thought not. I proceeded anyway.
The scenery I finally stumbled upon felt like a level 8, if such a level could exist. It was so... touching to my retina that two seconds ago, I flipped from having some extreme difficulty describing how inevitably boring it was. Real talk. If at any point in my life I wanted to escape any kind of madness, this was the worst by miles. Or, kilometers. Or whatever measuring system you use. Geez.
"Welcome," a mythical-like voice said, which literally echoed forever, or so it seemed. "So your time came rather early. I feel like the first time we met was just yesterday."
I had yet another panic attack as I frantically looked around for the owner of that familiar-sounding voice. Suddenly the poem/prayer/whatever had come back to me. My pockets were still intact. I creeped my right hand down the corresponding pouch in my pants and felt that ice-cold crystal structure. I still had the emerald with me...
A weird-looking figure appeared out of nowhere in front of me. My ability to describe its freakish form was incredibly hindered by my case of writer's block. Then the figure became all the clearer by the second, eventually taking the form of an orange-colored, female echidna. She was the same girl from the real midsummer night's dream from last night, but whatever her name was, I hadn't a clue. At that point, everything began to come back to me. Yes, everything. The poem/prayer/whatever made all the more sense. Exactly how it occurred to me was way beyond me, but that didn't seem to matter very long, for the dreamy feeling had still entranced me as if nothing else mattered.
The echidna spoke again in that mystic voice. "I didn't think you'd get here this fast. What brings you here, anyway?"
Even though her back was turned towards me, it was clear that this inquiry was directed at me. "I don't know, ok? I seriously hope that I'm dreaming right now. Last night this girl who looks a lot like you visited me in my dreams and said..."
"That was me," she snapped. I didn't move a muscle. "You seemed sort of tense back there, so I checked up on what was going on in your life. But then I stumbled upon the true source of your suffering."
I went berzerk, for I incorrectly felt that her remark didn't make sense. "Suffering? I wasn't suffering! What kind of suffering!?"
She sighed out of frustration. "What am I gonna do with you."
"I HAVE A VIDEO GAME TO FINISH!"
She rolled her eyes and sighed again. "This is totally impossible."
"What can I say? I love being impossible," I sniggered. I dug the jewel from my pocket and held it up in front of me. I concentrated long and hard on a random view of the un-hunger games scene in level 5.
"Chaos..."
She tried to get in my way. "Whoa whoa whoa! Don't you move a muscle! What is that? A Chaos Emerald?"
"No," I snapped. "It's a fake Chaos Emerald."
"Har-d-har. I can tell the difference any day. It's just like Shadow said — who knows what kind of trouble you could cause in this world."
Needless to say, she lost me with that statement. Nothing ever made sense, even in a world where suffering was said to be extinct. And now she wanted the gem. "Don't you hear anything from that Chaos Emerald?"
Those words echoed inside me so many times that I almost got dizzy. Don't you hear anything from that Chaos Emerald?
All was quiet. I held the blue thing in front of me and waited. And waited. And waited. Then it happened. A small, barely audible gunshot fired. I thought it came from way over there, where I couldn't see a thing past 5000 feet.
"Well?"
I had to tell the truth. "Yes... I did hear something..."
She folded her arms contently. "Good. Now hand me the emerald."
Gotcha! "But it didn't come from the emerald."
She groaned in agony. "Just gimme the stupid thing!" Whatever her name was, this was bound to be the only thing on my mind for the next two months.
"I'm sorry, but now I realize all the things in that world I left behind that went wrong, and in the words of 'the' blue hedgehog... NO COPYRIGHT LAW IN THE UNIVERSE IS GONNA STOP ME! Now if you'll excuse me, I have a world to fix. CHAOS..."
"Wait, stop! There really is something in that emerald!"
"...CONTROL!"
It was just a bad dream...?
Bad idea? Perchance. But it seemed to have paid off... for now.
Nothing but the sense of being familiar with where I stood could overpower me... except for the Mongols.
The number of other freaks in said arena was much lower than I'd last seen it. Bat Girl was still there, no surprise. The ebony hedgehog was now on the sideline. They looked to be having a nice conversation about who-knows-what. The real dilemma began to swarm in my head. Sooner or later I'm bound to get noticed. Do I walk up to them and let them know I'm here, or do I walk away and let them find out for themselves?
A much more feminine voice struck my ears. "You!" WHY DO THEY ALWAYS SEND THE POOR? "You nearly killed me! I can't believe you had the nerve to hit a girl! What have you got to say for yourself!?"
I knew exactly what I would say next. "Come get a piece of me." I struck a pose, put my hand up, and motioned my fingers in my direction so she'd get the idea. Then I realized that my red metal weapon was gone.
Amy was ready to strike as soon as she saw her cue, and I knew there was no turning back. (THUNDER!) She lunged towards me, her pink menace of a weapon positioned at an angle that would've killed me again!
If one random idea hadn't come to me at the last second, I may not have been able to cause the tables to turn. Right when it looked to be a foot away from my petite nose, I quickly ducked from the almost unavoidable rush. At the same time, I pulled up my hands, aiming them tirelessly at the cursed tool. Without time to pause, I clamped them together a split second later, at the right time... hopefully.
I toppled back to the tarmac in reverse. However, the relatively minor sensation of suffering that followed didn't last long in my mind, as I viewed the scene behind me, only to find a pink hedgehog, lying there, face first, looking all beat up. Wimpy. I looked down and saw the metal bar into which an Irishman was liable to walk, firmly attached to my left hand, having successfully eluded her grip.
Amy, unable to get up, noticing the weapon in my hand, gave me a look that begged for mercy. She faltered in her speech, "P-please don't k-k-kill me..."
Not satisfied at all with her quick submission, I took the liberty of killing some time first. "How many lives do you have?"
"Uh, four," she said.
"BULLSHIT!" I meant to yell. Only Team Dark had ever heard such a decoration to my vocabulary, but now that the secret was pretty much out, I could've cared less about what not to say. I took the weapon and used it to do something that I might possibly soon come to regret. I slammed the pink bar on the platform on which Amy lay, vulnerable to further attacks.
The floating tile disintegrated, sending the pink hedgehog falling infinitely to her "death". She eventually dissipated at a certain point in the bottomless pit. I sent the cursed tool down there as well.
A black hole-esque portal opened up from thin air. Not bothering to look back at the destruction that lingered behind me from the un-hunger games, I took three steps towards the hole in the imaginary wall until a certain voice struck my ears. "What was that all about?"
Something about that remark made me stop in my tracks. I don't know if it was the scolding tone, or from whence it came, or rather from whom it came. I turned my head to face the madness that spread... and noticed Rouge the Bat, her arms folded, her foot tapping impatiently, her expression not so pleasant. "Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"
Taken aback by her apparent change of heart, I said quite blankly, "I don't get it. I thought you wanted me to destroy..."
"No no no," she interrupted. "How did you get back here after you lost your last life?"
"Oh." And that was all I could say for seven seconds, as I hesitated to tell her what had transpired in the last fifteen minutes. "I never lost my last life..."
"Really. Were you like, floating in mid-air without a body or something?"
"You wouldn't understand," I said, trying to cut this conversation short. "I gotta go. Duty calls, you know."
"Wait a minute, what was up with that random outburst before you... KILLED... Amy?"
"ROUGE! Can we not talk about it? I'm really stressed out now that I got loads more stuff to worry about. Geez."
"Yeah? Like what?" she interrogated.
I listed all the ideas that came to me in five seconds. "I'm gonna be in trouble with the afterlife, Amy's gonna kill me for the rest of my life when I leave the game, and I really wanna beat the game. Goodbye." But I still couldn't reach the exit portal when a sudden force yanked my dark shirt and pulled me in reverse.
"Do you really think I wanna deal with this the hard way? Because I think you're suggesting you wanna go there."
She was getting on my nerves so much that one of my muscles had a sudden spasm. I gripped her hand to the point of almost breaking it and yanked it to the ground, flipping her as a result of my beastly action. Wherever Shadow was, I wasn't about to hear from him anytime soon.
"The answer is NO! Have a nice day, good night, goodbye, good luck!"
I stormed off the scene, through the portal, and most importantly, away from two-thirds of Team Dark. My next goal was not to run into them anymore.
Level 6
I realized two minutes into the lava-filled pit of demolition that was the sixth level that I didn't really mean what I'd said back there, and that the Animal I Have Become had overpowered me like a boss. This was not the way to get my life back. In response to the girl who asked, "Where's the wrecking guy?" Yeah, that's me, the guy who wrecks people's swag. Not entirely because the word itself is annoying. There's still #YOLO.
I was stopped by a much taller hedgehog of red by six or so inches. He was wearing a green shirt with a mushroom on it. A small text reading "get a life" was situated under the shroom. He stuck out his hand, ready to make a firm grip. "Hi. I'm Zero."
"Hi," I replied rather nervously. "I'm Zenith. So I see you're stuck on this level too. I have a feeling we're gonna be stuck here for a while..."
"So how'd you end up here? Did you enter that brawl tournament from the last level?"
"YES!" I said ecstatically. The ecstatic part faded away almost immediately. "But something weird happened, and now I don't know how many lives I have."
"Really. You don't look like the kind of guy who'd make it out of there in one piece."
"That's what everyone says! Geez." I still fail at life.
"What, do you expect anyone to believe you when they see how short you are?"
"Of course I do!"
He folded his arms as if I was missing something blatantly obvious. "Whatever. Let's try to beat this stupid level."
"Way ahead of you, man. Or... hedgehog." I almost dropped my head in shame. When will this over 9000 end?!
"You know, you crack me up. But anyway. Let's go, bro!"
We stopped at a tattered bridge that looked to be in a bad sitch. Nine of the steps were either broken or missing. The passageway we took extended at the end of the floating crosswalk.
"Hi there!" A female hedgehog, once again of red, snapped us (or maybe just me) away from the entrancing walkway that led to more ground to cover. "Nice to meet you. I'm Zenon. With a Z, btw."
"With a Z, eh?" I inquired. "Can't be no coincidence..."
"Maybe it is," hypothesized the larger of the two hedgehog guys. "I'm Zero. That's Zenith. It's all the Z's."
"I know, right?" No she didn't. "What do you say we go look for some more Z's?"
"NO!" I shouted. "I just wanna beat the stupid level, ok!?" Strike one.
I'd only realized the dumb mistake I'd made when the other red hedgehogs gave me weird looks.
"Never mind..." I moaned. "I don't talk much. And when I do, I tend to get way ahead of myself. I've been like this all my life, and I'm just sick of it! You don't know what it's like. You don't understand what I have to deal with every day! Go on without me and never talk to me again!" I turned my back on them; strike two.
I'd expected them to leave me as I'd ordered and not risk a strike three the moment I sat to punish myself. But after about two minutes, I could still hear noises coming from two freaks in particular, who could only be described as "not me". All that time I was sure I'd be left here, abandoned as I'd asked, looking for an answer to my problems, not giving a damn how ridiculously hard it was to find, you get the point. The fact that I didn't know how to meditate wasn't helping, neither.
A new voice overpowered the silence. "Hi, I'm Zeppo." Oh God. "What is he doing here?"
It was evident that he was talking about me. He had to be a red hedgehog like the rest of us. But that's not important right now.
"Are we like, related in any way shape or form?" Zero's voice dethroned the sound of boring.
"I sure hope not," replied Zenon blankly.
The two minutes that followed were practically a nightmare. As I stared into the open, barren world, I felt like I was being watched. A voice began to shout in my head. That was your worst move evar! I can't believe you'd try to escape when it was your time. Young man, don't you know the kind of trouble you're getting yourself into? "No I don't. How would I know if you don't?" I questioned my conscious self. Because I'm your conscious self! You promised to fix the things that went wrong, but now you're only making them worse! "But I didn't promise anything..." SILENCE! This has gone quite far enough. I want you to get out of the game, leave all your friends behind — yes, all of them — and return to Hades from whence you came, you stupid glitch!
I suddenly lost it.
"Dude, what the hell happened!? Are you alright?!"
It took me a while to get my cool back. I noticed a black hedgehog kneeled in front of me. What?!
"Shadow?! How did you get here that quickly?!"
He just stared at me for the longest time. I didn't know whether to feel bothered by his sudden appearance or paranoid over the possibility of his killing me once and for all.
"What is going on, anyway?" I wondered out loud, recounting the events that had transpired just now. "Am I dead?"
"No dice, kid. I don't know what the hell got into you, but you have another level to finish. Zero, how long has he been like this, do you think?"
"The water works leaked what, ten minutes ago? I don't know." I still couldn't believe that much time had passed already.
"Any particular reason at all?"
"No..." I lied. But the worst thought had just overtaken me at that moment: Was Shadow dead too? I came up near him and stuck my right arm around his shoulders, kind of in a best friend manner, but more like we were... brothers... than anything. He wasn't backing away... or even trying to kill me. His dark fur pricked mine gently, the same feeling that struck me from our last "man hug"... whenever that was. "Shadow, is that really you?" I couldn't help but question. I only needed a confirmation.
He patted my shoulder in return. "Yeah. You're gonna be fine. Just don't lose hope in yourself, or the level, or anything, really." His look was surprisingly serious. "And I'm sorry about the way Rouge treated you back there. I feel like I should've done something, but..."
"No, it's fine." No, it was not fine. I thought he would've lectured me about flipping her to the ground. "I'm trying to put all that behind me anyway." I sniffled a bit, still trying to recover from my emotional breakdown. "I'm sorry... I should like, try to get some rest for now..."
"No." I knew he'd say that. "I'm not gonna let you do that. You still wanna beat the game, right?"
"Must've been hard," Zero said, as if finishing a sentence that no one had even started.
Shadow gave him a nasty look. "That's what she said."
"I was talking about the last level! Geez."
I could feel his stare once again after that remark. "So, you feeling any better, kid?"
I wiped off another drop of eyeball sweat, unable to think of the last time someone had actually tried to comfort me. I was at the verge of getting emotional again, for Shadow had done so much for me at a time like this that I didn't even know how to thank him properly.
I finally got back on my feet after a considerable amount of serious thinking. "Yeah... game on!" At this point I tried to act like nothing even happened, but of course four Z's and a Shadow were all there to witness it already.
"Good," Shadow said contently. "Now where do we go from here?"
Zenon looked to her right. Where one would think was solely a lava pit stretched further throughout the level, she must've seen something no one else did. "Who's up from some lava surfing?"
"Can't touch the lava," Zero pointed out, "or it's game over."
Shadow looked as if something was seriously wrong with that statement. "But I have four lives left."
"Doesn't matter. You fall in, you lose." Insert random generalization about lava in video games here. Yet somehow I knew that there were a few games that didn't have lava in them.
"Everyone got their racing goggles?" Zeppo announced. The other freaks reached their hands somewhere rather unlikely when it came to storage of small items, and pulled out pairs of goggles. I didn't know how they even got the goggles, as I seemed to be the only one here who didn't know what in the name of everything stupid Zeppo was talking about.
"Check your pockets," Zero hinted at me. Both of them? I thought to dig through my left pocket first. Not expecting to find anything significant, my expression after pulling from the storage pouch a pair of shades became clear.
Evidently Zenon was ready to start the show. "That works. Ok, it's settled. Last one to the end of the trail is a dink!" She dropped from the arena and was out of sight. I didn't know you could surf on lava. But then I was ambushed off the cliff by a dark figure. "Jump quickly and grab something to surf on!" Faaaaaaaaaaaaaalling...
With a stroke of luck, I stomped on a large crack of hot rock hard enough that it broke off and became my surfboard. Exactly where Zenon got the idea of lava surfing was way beyond me.
The impact of the landing made me nearly lose my balance. I was so ridiculously close to toppling into the lava, it wasn't even funny. But as the path smoothed out nicely, so did my stability. Eventually I gained full control of the false surfboard.
I continuously trailed everyone else, as certainly someone other than me had a map of the whole game, or at least this level. There was a problem with that theory, however: I thought cheating was against the rules — Zenon probably would've gotten a game over by now. As the level progressed, I couldn't tell what in the name of Ra the others were saying. I passed a wooden sign that read "shortcut ahead". How far ahead? I jerked away from the sudden appearance of the half-wall of rock when someone shouted, "...take the shortcut, Z!" It sounded like the ebony freak was continuing a sentence, and I must've not heard one or two words. So while the four hedgehogs ahead of me continued down the main path, I strayed towards the tight-fitting test of gullible. Check that, considerably tight.
I was just barely short enough to squeeze my freakish body through the hole that supposedly led to a faster route to wherever the made-up lava path ended. Even as I tried to crouch into a ball, like you may have seen Sonic doing multiple times, I could feel my tail grinding against the boulder-ish wall, as if on fire. No, the sense of flaming had already surged throughout my body. The tight tunnel-like passage seemed to stretch an eternity.
I don't know when the burning feeling ceased, but when it did, the force of gravity had shrunk to a barely noticable pull. I was... flying through the air with the fake surfboard, without any sense of falling. Somehow, I noticed a dark figure below me, as well as three others with my color of red. I quickly waved at the apparent shocks of hair in hopes of getting their attention... but then I hit a wall.
I'm not dead again, am I? I sure hope not. Anywho, get ready for a twist within the next four weeks! :D