Chapter 17: The Brawl of Four Worlds Part 2
Riku glances around the battlefield as the two hedgehogs on his side glares at Silver and Blaze, their bodies frozen in place above the ground. The teenage Overlord raises an eyebrow towards Blaze in particular, recognizing the heat of her flames while he thinks "I should focus my efforts on her…It'd be hard for me to deal with Silver's telekinesis, even with my current speed."
The teenage Overlord nods his head and looks all at Blaze, saying to himself afterwards "Can't use my sword now. I'm not fighting robots…" The boy then decides to make the first move in the battle, putting a lot of stress off of Sonic and Shadow in the process. Riku runs along the ground towards Blaze, his movements barely noticed by his two mind-controlled opponents and his allies.
Silver swings his arms at Riku and uses his telekinesis to trap him in place just inches before he swings his fist at Blaze. The burning cat doesn't even flinch despite how close the boy was to her, but that was mostly a result of the mind-control. Blaze raises her right hand and prepares to burn Riku with her powered up flames while he was kept in place. Pushing through the power of the telekinesis, the teenage Overlord cracks a smile much to his opponent's puzzlement.
Sonic thrusts through the air, flying underneath Riku's body and ramming Blaze straight away from where she currently floats. Shadow then throws out a ton of Chaos Spears at Silver while the hedgehog was distracted, doing enough damage to throw him off-guard and break his telekinetic hold on Riku. The teenage Overlord wastes little time in landing on the ground, taking a deep breath in after being clasped by the telekinesis, and running after Sonic to help him out with Blaze.
When the smoke from the Chaos Spears falls, we find Silver holds his right hand out while using his powers to hold about five of the projectiles that failed to hit him. He turns to look at Shadow as the black hedgehog folds his arms in front of his chest and comments "Come on Silver, let's see what you got."
Shadow pulls his arms out beside him and charges them with Chaos Energy, and as Silver flings his Chaos Spears back at him the black hedgehog swings his right arm out in front of him to send out enough projectiles to counter them. He then tries to follow up with his left arm, only for Silver to use his powers to bind Shadow in place. Using said powers to apply pressure to the black hedgehog's body for a good five seconds, Silver follows up on this matter by thrusting his hands out and releasing a burst of psychic energy that launches Shadow far away from his body.
Even with the pressure to his muscles, Shadow didn't take enough damage to be sent flying far before he thrust his arms out beside himself and broke his flight. Silver follows up by flying straight at him, his speed being far less then that of the other two hedgehogs yet still enough for him to close the gap in two seconds. With his psychic powers, Silver throws his right fist out, creating a mental construct shaped like a golden fist to hit Shadow square in the body.
The black hedgehog folds his arms in front of his body to block the brunt of the attack, which creates a telekinetic shockwave that bends the edge of the arena right below them. When the construct vanishes Shadow quickly uses Chaos Control to appear in front of Silver in an instant, dropping down with his right elbow extended to slam the psychic hedgehog right in the head. The forehead blow deals a little damage, but not enough for Silver to be unable to retaliate.
Shadow realizes though and quickly uses Chaos Control again to warp behind Silver as the hedgehog raises his hands up and tries to grasp his opponent in his telekinetic hold. The black hedgehog appears behind Silver and kicks him straight in the head, but the strength of his attack doesn't send the psychic hedgehog flying. Instead when the attack connects Shadow finds his leg covered by a light-green field which quickly extends to the rest of his body.
It is revealed that Silver surrounded himself with a telekinetic field filled with odd runs in order to deal with Shadow's Chaos Control attempts, and as the black hedgehog is thrown away by a powerful psychic burst he finds himself incapable of recovering until he is a good twenty feet away from the battlefield. The black hedgehog flips himself around once he gets a grasp on his flight again, cursing the move his opponent has made for a brief moment before he notices Silver floating in place with his hands raised and his body covered with a psychic aura.
Shadow watches as Silver pulls multiple metal platforms and torn out turrets from down below, crunching them all together into a gigantic ball of debris that he quickly throws at the black hedgehog. The thrust of the psychic energy covered ball makes it travel swiftly through the air, but Shadow flies to the right to dodge the attack. While he is successful in that endeavor though, Silver fires a beam of psychic energy that is barely visibly amongst the raindrops in the sky.
The beam paralyzes Shadow in mid-air, capturing him in a tiny veil of light-green psychokinetic energy that forces his arms against the sides of his body. Silver then uses his powers to draw forth more debris to crunch together into a gigantic ball, which should certainly hit it's mark now that Shadow was unable to move. The ball is launched after it hovers a few seconds above Silver's head, and though Shadow tried to use Chaos Control with a thought the paralysis affected even his mind to the point of rendering him incapable of doing anything but scowl in concern.
With the ball only ten feet away from impact, it takes a timely interventions from Sonic to save Shadow from getting irreversibly damaged. In this case, however, it was by complete accident as during Riku and the blue hedgehog's battle against Blaze the burning cat is launched through the air like a molten bullet that pierces right through the center of the ball and destabilizes it rather quickly. The ball breaks apart and each piece of debris falls back towards the Final Fortress with Sonic making an appearance before the black hedgehog in the midst of his pursuit of Blaze.
Sonic turns towards Shadow and grins, saying "Hey, don't get too caught up there buddy, I'd prefer to NOT deal with Silver." Before he flies off to continue fighting Blaze. Riku, who was following close behind, notices that Shadow is paralyzed and quickly turns his head to look at Silver, where he then decides to perform a detour by zipping through the air in a curved streak of light and punching the psychic hedgehog straight across the face with a flyby strike that's strong enough to make Silver flinch and break his concentration on Shadow.
With the black hedgehog freed, Riku breaks his flight momentarily and spins around, taking all the excess light energy created from his trail to form a sphere of energy that he fires upon Silver before the hedgehog can recover and bind him again with his powers. The attack, covering Silver in a blinding flash, leaves him unable to defend himself as Shadow regains control of his body and uses Chaos Control to instantly warp in front of Silver's body, where he knees him straight in the gut to disorient him.
Shadow follows up on this by performing a few hard hitting punches across Silver's body, using all of his strength with each blow to ensure that the psychic hedgehog would not be able to fight back for a bit. For his final blow, the black hedgehog covers his fist with Chaos Energy and uppercuts Silver in his chin, flipping him quite a distance higher into the sky. The black hedgehog swings his arms beside his body and declares "Playtime is over, time to step it up!"
Back with Sonic and Riku, the two have managed to drive Blaze far away from the battlefield, close to the thickets of clouds covering the air. The burning cat recovers from the blow that launched her through Silver's debris and tightly clenches her fists, throwing her right fist out right as Sonic charges straight at her, hitting him hard in the skull and sending him flying away with a shockwave of violet flames that disappears with the rain in a second.
Blaze follows up on this attack by increasing the intensity of the flames around her body to such a point that when the rain touches down on her aura she rapidly produces a field of smoke around herself. The smoke grows to such a size that it covers both Riku and Sonic, who had recovered from the previous attack and rubbed the top of his head while letting out a nonchalant chuckle. "Huh, what's this now?" He says while pumping his fists into the air.
The smoke was so thick that not even Blaze's flames could be seen, but because Riku and Sonic were so close to each other they were able to see each other just fine. Sonic folds his arms in front of his chest and tries to look for any signs of the burning cat, only to see a light red glow heading straight for his head. He ducks down to dodge a bullet shaped projectile of violet flames, smirking and commenting "Hehehe, so, trying some hit n' run tactics there Blaze?"
Sonic lifts himself back up and swings his right hand out to bat away another, weaker projectile that headed his way not long after the last one. Riku comments "I can't pick Blaze up within this smoke…And it's going to be a while before this fades away."
The blue hedgehog exclaims excitedly "Then light this place up and I'll get to work! But watch your back too, ok?" Sonic then zips off after that remark, leaving Riku to nod his head confidently and extend both of his arms out beside his body, which is followed up by the teenage Overlord launching multiple spheres of light that are bright enough to pierce through the thick smoke and cast a shadow on Sonic's body for a couple moments.
With that bit of info telling Riku that what he's doing is correct, the teenage Overlord holds his hands together in front of his body to increase the power of his light based attacks, which he utilizes to launch a larger sphere of light off to the left in an attempt to find Blaze. The sphere causes a shadow to appear that is shaped like a cat, and Sonic quickly dashes off to the left after the figure. But Blaze fights back against Sonic by launching a violet flamed spear at him, leading to the blue blur taking that attack head on a mere second later.
The spear breaks apart and blows Sonic back, consuming him with a bullet shaped veil of fire for a few brief moments while Blaze zips off before Riku can use another sphere of light to keep her shadow in view. The teenage Overlord goes on guard at that point while Sonic recovers from the attack, and with a bit of heat flowing through the air in spite of the smoke Riku raises his left armguard and blocks a spinning flame kick from Blaze. "Shouldn't have tried that…" Riku thinks to himself in a calm manner the very moment he notices the surprise on the cat's face.
Utilizing a flash of light radiating brightly off of his armguard, Riku has assured that Sonic will come over to help with Blaze in a couple moments. The teenage Overlord follows up on this quickly thought move by pulling his left arm back and going for a punch with his right hand. But Blaze spins around rapidly, not letting the boy hit him by wrapping herself in a tornado of furious violet flames. Riku can't retract his hand in time, causing it to be singed upon making contact with the fire before he pulls it back and uses a flap of his wings to go back and dodge the multiple hits of the tornado.
Sonic sprints back into battle once Blaze stops using her tornado, charging straight into her with enough force to drag her along the sky as he moves until he pushes her out of the smoke and back into the raining atmosphere. The blue hedgehog swings his arm outward to knock the burning cat away, at which point Sonic does something he rarely does and uses Chaos Control to warp in front of Blaze's flight path and use a spinning upward kick to knock her higher up while simultaneously increasing her disorientation period.
Riku flies out of the smoke and notices Blaze high up into the air, and as Sonic catches the boy's presence he boosts up in front of the burning cat and exclaims "Heads up Riku!" The teenage Overlord then readies light energy and calmly focuses on Blaze to increase his power, leading to him attempting to clamp his hands together to hit her with a powerful shockwave attack. However, a bombardment of light-green shrouded energy spears come his way and impacts the front of his armor.
The armor is chipped by this attack, and he is unable to strike Blaze in time before she recovers and quickly performs a spinning burning kick with her right foot that strikes Riku straight in the face and makes him stumble back a couple feet through the air. Sonic is then struck in the back by Shadow's flung body, causing both figures to be stunned in mid-air long enough for Super Silver to fly beside them and swing his hands out to bind them with psychic energy.
Shadow and Sonic twitch as they are kept paralyzed in the air. Riku wanted to rescue them by attacking Silver directly, but Blaze currently floated in front of him in a graceful stance as her cuffs burned with dark violet flames. "Yeah, I know I'm not freeing them until I get past you…" Riku calmly states to the burning cat as he covers his armguards with hardened light.
Blaze makes the first move by launching herself at the boy and throwing a kick at his head. The teenage Overlord ducks to the left to avoid the blow and tries to follow by attacking the leg with his left armguard. The hesitation to use all of his power allows Blaze enough time to pull her leg back and flip away from the range of Riku's punch. Blaze follows up on this move by summoning flames in the palm of her hands and tossing two fireballs at the boy to force his guard up.
The teenage Overlord passively stands in mid-air and uses a shield of light around the front of his body to block the projectiles, in the process anticipating Blaze flipping over his body and attempting an attack from behind while his vision is obscured by black smoke. Riku collapses his wings and hardens them with light, but Blaze manages to outthink the boy by throwing a punch of heat into the middle of his wings. With his most vulnerable body part struck with the intensity of a sun's flames, the teenage Overlord grimaces in pain long enough for his calmness to break and the shield in front of his body to go along with it.
Blaze then twirls around in mid-air, getting in front of the boy's body and attempting to perform another kick into his face to deal further damage. However, the teenage Overlord quickly throws his right hand out and launches a barely visibly burst of light that strikes Blaze and blows her back through the air. The attack wasn't very strong because Riku fired that attack off in a moment of impatience, but it just enough for him to regain his offensive once the pain subsided from his back.
A bit of sweat drips off of Riku's face as he takes in a deep breath, and he charges forward and calmly throws a powerful punch to send the burning cat flying towards the tower at the end of the arena. Her body slams into it and creates an indent, keeping herself placed there for a few moments and allowing the teenage Overlord to deal with Silver.
The psychic hedgehog was crunching Sonic and Shadow's muscles and bones with his power, making certain that only a strong blow to his body would release his grip on them both. Silver notices Blaze's departure from the battlefield and looks down to try and find the boy before he can launch an attack straight at him, but the teenage Overlord instead opts to use his speed in order to get behind Silver and strike him with a mighty kick to the back of his head.
Silver's tenuous grip on Shadow and Silver vanishes, freeing them as the hedgehog is sent flying away from where he once floated. Riku then swings his left hand down to the handle of his katana and sprints forward in pursuit of the psychic hedgehog as the two other hedgehogs turn to look at him for a brief moment. They then look off to the right and see Blaze pulling herself out of the tower, at which point they push their focus more onto her in spite of being drained of energy by Silver's telekinetic attack.
Nodding their heads, Sonic and Shadow rush at Blaze to take care of her while Silver recovers from being attacked and throws out a burst of psychic energy that stabilizes him in a way that has him face the teenage Overlord. Riku draws his katana from his sheath mid-flight and fires off a crescent wave of light in an attempt to deal hefty damage to Silver. But the psychic hedgehog holds his right hand out and creates a tiny sword of psychic energy that he swings out to cut the light in half.
Riku grinds to a halt surprised by this move of Silver's, but he doesn't waste time lingering in mid-air so the hedgehog could use his psychic powers against him again. To keep Silver on the defensive with that sword of his, the teenage Overlord swings his katana out twice to fire two more waves of light, moving slowly forward with each passing second while Silver takes down his attacks.
Riku repeats this process a few more times until he is right in front of the hedgehog's body, at which point he makes sure that when he swings his weapon he is able to instantly sheath it and use the excess light energy to cover his armguard and swing it straight at Silver's body. Expectedly though, the psychic hedgehog dispels his sword and uses both of his hands to bind the boy's arm in place before the blow is struck.
Silver has to struggle quite a bit though to keep Riku from hitting him though, as the light energy built up was rather powerful thanks to how calmly the boy was handling the situation. While the psychic hedgehog worried about a physical attack so much that he didn't paralyze the rest of Riku's body, the teenage Overlord smirked and used but a thought to release all of the light energy built up in his armguard in one forward burst.
The burst of light was strong enough to send Silver flying upward, breaking his telekinetic grasp on Riku's arm and dealing hefty damage in the process. In fact, the attack was so powerful that it broke the psychic hedgehog out of his Super form, leaving him spiraling around in a semi-unconscious state as he descends towards the ground below. But being the nice guy he is, Riku flies up and grabs Silver before he falls into the water underneath the Egg Continent. He then throws the hedgehog over his right shoulder and says quietly to himself "Glad that worked out well…"
Back with Blaze, Shadow and Sonic are using their speed to their great advantage here. With their bodies zipping back and forth through the air, they keep the burning cat from being able to strike them even once with the onslaught of fireballs she launches from around her body as she rapidly spins around inside of her flaming tornado. With the way things were now, the burning cat had no choice but to try and deceive the two hedgehogs by heating her flames up to the point that she creates a thick area of smoke around her body.
This time though, Sonic wasn't about to let himself be fooled, and rapidly spun around in a single spot to the point that he creates a tornado of wind that sucks up the smoke and blows it all away. Shadow then flies at Blaze and fills his fist with Chaos Energy before hitting her square in the gut as she finishes her tornado attack. The blow to her gut is followed up by Blaze recoiling back a bit and raising her right hand up weakly, where she fires a close-range fireball that hits Shadow as he pulls his fist back.
With the black hedgehog having taken damage that dizzied him for a few moments, it was up to Sonic to finish the job, which he did by curling up into a ball and rapidly spinning around to gather energy into his body. Once he was fully charged, his golden form glowed brightly as he uncurled and thrust himself at Blaze in a light speed thrust of power that collides straight on with her back and after a momentary pause sends her flying straight down into the center of the arena, creating a large indent in the metal tiles where she lies on her back taken right out of her Sol Emerald powered form.
Shadow and Sonic fly down to the edge of the arena and notice that Blaze has also lost the Nega Hyper-go-on energy around her head, meaning that they had succeeded in freeing her from Eggman Nega's control. Sonic and Shadow then felt safe breaking out of their Super forms and landing on the ground, and the blue hedgehog gives his ally a quick thumbs-up and a smile while saying "Thanks for the help there Shadow, couldn't have done it without you!"
The black hedgehog lets out a light "Hmph" after being thanked by Sonic, trying to act cool about the whole thing as he crosses his arms in front of his chest but subtly giving the hedgehog a thumbs-up of his own during the process. Riku lands on the ground beside Sonic and gently lays Silver on the ground in front of him, turning back into his normal form as the rain starts to disappear from the atmosphere after what felt like an eternity of it's presence.
"So I guess you two took care of Blaze?" Riku asks the obvious of the two hedgehogs, and Sonic nods his head and puts on a semi-serious look as he and Shadow turn towards the tower with Eggman Nega's fuming face present on the monitor. Sonic then says "We aren't done here yet. We still need to crack one egg wide open!"
Eggman Nega pounds at his keyboard with both of his fists in a blind fury, screaming at the top of his lungs to the two hedgehogs and the mysterious boy especially "You interfering little pests! I will not allow you to have this victory today! We should have been victorious from the very start! You never should even gotten onto this outdated piece of junk let alone this far! I cannot let you escape here alive…It doesn't matter if I perish, for there will always be a future where I shall exist!"
The madman raises his finger up and presses down on a glowing red button in front of him, and Sonic quickly recalls the nuclear reactor built into the Egg Continent and reacts with a fearful proclamation of "No, stop!" But Shadow remains calm and actually smirks at Eggman Nega's attempt to take everyone here down with him.
Shadow's confidence in this smirk pays off, as not a single sound emerges from the Egg Continent below, causing Eggman Nega to repeatedly tap down on the button under the assumption that there was a fault in the connection, but when the nuclear reactor fails to detonate he lets out a very unnerved cackle and says "Hehehehe…It's alright…I STILL HAVE AN ORBITAL LASER SYSTEM THAT WILL WIPE THIS ENTIRE BATTLESHIP OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH!"
Eggman Nega switches to another button on his keyboard as Shadow's calm demeanor breaks and he turns to the monitor far too late to be able to use Chaos Control to stop Nega from performing his action. However, just like before, Nega is incapable of accomplishing his goal as intended, causing him to crack even further under the weight of disappointment at how everything was going. "GRAAAAAAH!" Nega raises his hands towards his mustache and starts tearing away at it as he swings his head around and babbles like a lunatic for a good few seconds.
"Hedgehogs…Hedgehogs and hedgehogs everywhere…Cats and failure, failure and cats! Interlopers, hedgehogs, cats and failure…Hahahahaha….HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…HAJHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAAHAH!" When the madness exclaimed by the insane Eggman Nega was at an end, he hung his head low and pulls his hands away from his face, which was battered rather well from the abuse he put on it just now. After a few seconds of silence, he raises his right hand and presses down on one last button in front of him.
In a matter of moments, the tower he was inside of began to transform, the segments spreading apart connected all by greased metal springs as the sides of the tower's body open up multiple compartments and summons forth multiple grungy looking arms that each wield a weapon of different description. The head of the tower distorts into a more fearsome shape, and Eggman Nega lifts his head up on the fading monitor in front of the machine he sprung to life as he declares "DIE, HEDGEHOGS!"
As Eggman Nega prepares to attack with the two hedgehogs and Riku, he suddenly hears a female voice call out to him "Hey, you live Sonic and Shadow alone!" Suddenly, a large pink and yellow is thrown straight into the head of the robot, the metal head hitting it hard enough to make Eggman Nega take pause from his attack in order to see who struck him.
Gathered on the slick metal elevator from the Final Fortress is all of Sonic and Shadow's allies. Amy, Cream and Cheese, the Chaotix, Rouge and Omega, and Tails and Knuckles were all there staring up at Eggman Nega ready for battle. Amy grabbed her Piko Piko Hammer as it came back to her, turned towards Sonic with a confident smile as the hedgehog looked at her and said "Looks like we got here just in time Sonic!"
The blue hedgehog, with a look of both surprise and joy on his face, says to Amy "Well, didn't expect to see you here Amy. Where have you been?"
Amy smiles and says "Oh, I was just busy doing what you and Shadow failed to do and dealt with both Eggman's nuclear reactor AND the communications tower that was connected to his orbital laser, thank you very much." She had a little bit of arrogance in her voice, but it sounded well-deserved from what she was saying.
Vector interjects after nudging Amy aside slightly, saying to both hedgehogs and Riku "Well, more like she nearly BLEW US ALL TO BITS by hammering at the console of the nuclear reactor, but hey if that's what you want to brag to Sonic about go right ahead."
Rouge then says "Amy did help us out with the communications tower though. Who knew that smashing the power box to bits would have been more effective than trying to hack the system?"
Sonic looks over at Tails after chuckling at Rouge and Vector's remarks, saying to his buddy with a relieved look in his eyes "Glad you made it back here safely Tails. You too Knuckles."
Tails says to his true blue friend with a humble tone of voice "Well let's be honest Sonic, it's not hard to get out of a pair of cuffs when you got a screwdriver and about a minute before you hit the ground. Then we managed to catch up with the others and after hacking the elevator we managed to get up here just as Eggman Nega summoned his robot."
With the yellow fox's explanation out of the way, Eggman Nega exclaims in utter disbelief "I don't care how many of you there are! Rodents, reptiles, insects and robots…No matter how many species you throw at me, you will all fall at the hands of the Egg Imperial Tower!"
"Hey, Eggman Nega!" Another bravely spoken voice calls out to the madman, in a matter of seconds an explosion covers the face of the Egg Imperial Tower as it is struck by a quickly bundled up ball of debris that was scattered across the arena. Sonic and Shadow turn to look at Silver, who was barely kneeling on the ground with his hands outstretched in front of him.
"Huh? You're back up already Silver?" Sonic says with a look of surprise on his face. The psychic hedgehog turns towards the blue hedgehog and says to him in response "No time for pleasantries Sonic…We'll handle Eggman Nega."
Blaze slowly walks up from the dent in the ground and looks at the Egg Imperial Tower, barely glancing over at the two hedgehogs while saying in a tough yet quiet feminine voice "You two need to hurry up and catch Eggman before he can find what he wants on Angel Island."
Sonic, amazed at Blaze and Silver's persistence to fight Eggman Nega's mech in spite of how badly hurt they appeared to be, smirked and said in a thankful tone of voice "Alright, we'll get right on that. All of you better stay alive now, ok?"
Blaze and Silver nod their heads, and the rest of Sonic's friends do so behind them while saying their own variations of "Ok!" Tails and Knuckles then run up beside the blue hedgehog, with Tails pointing out with a smile on his face "No way am I missing out on this one Sonic!"
And Knuckles makes it plain and clear that "I don't care what Eggman's after. I'm not going to allow him to set foot on Angel Island again, not on my watch!"
Riku looks out past the arena and sees the floating wonder that is Angel Island in the distance, and after turning to look at Shadow he comments "Hey Shadow, think you can use Chaos Control to get all of us to the island?"
The black hedgehog smirks and says confidently "We have all seven Chaos Emeralds…Shouldn't be a problem for me." After taking one last look at Sonic's friends, the group of five is sent away from the arena by Shadow's quick Chaos Control.
One of the arms of the Egg Imperial Tower tries it's hardest to prevent this effort, but misses just as the heroes blink away from sight. Eggman Nega then raises his mech up and looms over the remaining heroes as they stare up at him ready for battle. "Fine then, I'll just squash all of you little gnats and make sure that Sonic never sees you again!" Is the last thing he declares before the battle truly begins…
Next Time: The Unexpected Interloper