Chapter 18: The Final Distractions

Shadow's Chaos Control warps Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, Riku and himself to Angel Island in an instant. They find themselves at the northern edge of the island close to the Master Emerald shrine, where the grand emerald jewel remains untouched at the top of the shrine much to the echidna's surprise as he turns his head towards it the moment he recognizes the landscape.

"What? Eggman had plenty of time to go after the Master Emerald, so why didn't he?" Knuckles asks in a puzzled tone of voice as he walks a few steps towards the shrine.

"Weren't you listen Knuckles? He wasn't planning to go after any of the Emeralds from the start. He is searching for something else on Angel Island." Tails points out as he gestures towards his dim-witted friend.

Knuckles turns around and points at Tails with a scowl on his face, saying as he grits his teeth slightly "I heard everything just fine Tails, but if he's looking for negative Chaos Energy then the Master Emerald would be the best place to look…Right?"

Sonic comments "Knuckles, the Master Emerald HAS no negative Chaos Energy. That's why it's able to keep the Chaos Emeralds in check. Sheesh, for a guardian you really can't keep your information straight regarding the things you're supposed to be guarding."

After the blue hedgehog shrugs his shoulders towards the red echidna, Knuckles comments in a none-too-amused tone "I don't have a good memory, alright?!"

Shadow, ignoring the comments of Team Sonic's group, focuses on ahead and notices a large hole in the side of one of the mountains past the bridge connecting the shrine to the rest of the island. Glancing at it with familiarity, he says to grab everyone else's attention "Say, doesn't that hole look familiar to anyone else?"

Knuckles looks at the hole that Shadow is pointing towards and immediately slams his fists together, commenting to the black hedgehog "I may not have a good memory, but I won't forget that hole anytime soon. I remember how that lunatic kid emerged from there and nearly blew up the planet before you and Sonic sent him packing."

Riku flinches momentarily as he hears this and turns to look at Sonic, asking him in a puzzled tone "You guys fought someone here on Angel Island recently?"

The blue hedgehog glances back at the boy and smirks, saying in a nonchalant tone "Yeah. He kind of had an aura of darkness around him and was probably around your age. He was a really serious guy too, didn't crack a joke or nothing while we fought…But eh, he's history by now."

The teenage Overlord then goes on to comment in his head "That's odd…There's nothing in my memories of a game where Sonic and Shadow fought a boy of darkness on Angel Island. Come to think about it, there's nothing like what happened when I was helping Samus or Kirby either in my memories either…"

Riku's thoughts are mixed with a guttural growl from the black dragon Takashi in the distance, and the boy comments towards the dragon as Sonic and Shadow discuss something quietly "What's up Takashi?"

"This boy of darkness that hedgehog spoke of…I think I have an idea just who that is. It was likely-" Before Takashi could reveal the name of the person to Riku, Eggman suddenly descends down in front of the heroes inside of his Egg Capsule vehicle, saying to the group gathered before him "Well well, it took you long enough to get here!"

Sonic immediately runs in front of Shadow and looks up at Eggman, brandishing a finger and proclaiming to him directly "You got some nerve showing your face around here after all you've done Eggman! What, controlling my friends wasn't enough, now you got to ruin Angel Island again?!"

The doctor swings his right arm out in front of his body in a bombastic manner as he leans over the front of his pod, saying to the blue blur swiftly "Oh please Sonic, I have no intention of turning this island inside and out to try and find what I need, especially when the way has already been opened for me!"

Shadow speaks up and notes "You're referring to the hole in the mountain, aren't you?" To which the doctor cracks a wide grin in response to.

"Very perceptive Shadow. You see, the secret to the last part of my plan resides deep within Angel Island's caves, far beyond anything all of you have ever witnessed before!" Eggman slams his hands against the edge of his pod at the end of his sentence and the leans back, relaxing his body in such a way that an air of arrogance could be seen around him.

Knuckles swings his left arm out and proclaims "That's crazy! I've been through this island many times and I've seen everything there is!"

Eggman rebuttals by pointing out to the puzzled echidna "Do you really believe that? Tell me Knuckles, did you ever bother to investigate the hole in the mountain after that boy of darkness created it?"

Sonic flinches in surprise, mentioning to the doctor as he gestures in front of his body "What? You were watching us at the time?"

"Of course I did. After all, a being from another world coming to Angel Island and causing my energy radar to go haywire definitely deserves some form of investigation. It's a tragedy that you got rid of him though Sonic, I would have LOVED to capture him and utilize his powers against you. But alas, for one loss you handed me I was given another discovery." Eggman states.

"In the aftermath of your battle, I used one of my tiny surveillance cameras to infiltrate the hole in the mountain and explore the caves. The caves are surprisingly spacious, so I had to wander around for quite a while before I found the ultimate treasure." Eggman's delay of the truth caused Sonic to swing his arm out and exclaim "Quit stalling and spill it Eggman! What did you find?!"

Eggman grins and leans back in his pod, folding his arms behind his head as he casually mentioned to the heroes "Haven't you always wondered where the Chaos Emeralds originated from? Deep inside Angel Island's caverns is a single chamber with walls filled with gems that look similar in texture and color to the seven Chaos Emeralds. And to my surprise there were parts of the walls cut out…Seven spots, to be exact."

Knuckles mutters out a surprised "W-What?" Before Eggman continues on to mention "But that's not all. You see, the gemstone walls were filled with a specific energy. Negative Chaos Energy, to be exact. Nothing pure was in them."

Tails waves his arms in front of him and says "That can't be right. Chaos Emeralds have pure and negative Chaos Energy inside of them. After all, that's how Sonic was able to transform even after Chaos drained them of their power."

Eggman says to the yellow fox in response "I myself though that was rather odd as well…Until I sat down and thought about what I knew about the Master Emerald and the Chaos Emeralds. My theory on the matter is that long ago, the Echidnas created the Chaos Emeralds out of the gemstone walls, and then used the Master Emerald to balance out the Chaos Energy within them for their own purposes. They likely couldn't fully purify the Emeralds without breaking them entirely, so they settled for a balance between the two energies. But this is all speculation…All that's important for me is that there is a mine filled with more negative Chaos Energy waiting to be harvested for my ultimate weapon."

As Eggman finishes his explanation, the Master Emerald on the shrine starts to react oddly to the events unfolding outside. Riku senses the sudden shift in power coming from the Emerald and looks towards it, notices a liquid manifesting from it rather slowly on the top. But before he comments on this matter, Sonic says to the doctor with fists pumped in front of his body "Sorry Eggman, but we're crushing your plans right now!"

Eggman smiles and looks over at the heroes, saying in an unconcerned tone of voice "No Sonic, I'm afraid you are your comrades won't be touching me today."

Shadow swings his body to the side and glares up at Eggman, saying to him in a barely calm tone "After everything you and your grandkid has done, you shouldn't be acting so confident about that!" The black hedgehog then leaps at the doctor, who lets out a barely-visible grin as the blob of liquid on the Master Emerald leaps forward and intercepts Shadow, blocking his attempt to swing a karate chop down upon the doctor and throwing out a solid fist from his blob-like form to knock the hedgehog away.

The blob then lands on the ground in front of the pod as Shadow crashes on his back. In a matter of seconds the blob begins to form into a bipedal creature with two-toed feet, three-fingered hands, and two large pointed extensions coming from the back of his head. The creature was made of pure water and had a tiny membrane in his head that allowed him to operate. His eyes were aglow with light-green energy, but there was something rather odd about how his brain looked. It seemed darker in color than usual, which immediately got Tails thinking as everyone else focused on the creature.

"Chaos?! What are you doing out of the Master Emerald?!" Sonic blurts out in disbelief, especially after seeing the liquid creature defend Eggman from Shadow's attack.

Knuckles comments "I know Chaos is supposed to come out before a great crisis happens…But the first thing he does is save Eggman? Don't tell me he's gone rogue on us again."

Tails is the one who points out the truth to his friends as he accusingly says to Eggman "You used some of your Hyper-go-on energy to control Chaos, didn't you?"

The doctor smiles and says "Very perceptive my young foxy nemesis. Knuckles' assumption is correct though. Chaos was atop the Master Emerald before I arrived on the island. After a quick scuffle between the two of us I decided I would put him under my control and use him against you as one last distraction."

"Like we won't defeat Chaos in no-time at all!" Sonic boasts. But his bragging attitude is met by Eggman lifting his right hand up and snapping his fingers, which causes Chaos to whip his right arm forward and grab Sonic around his body before he can get out of the way.

The doctor then turns around and starts to fly off, saying to the heroes merrily "Have fun!" Riku tries to leap over the heroes in an attempt to chase after Eggman, but Chaos quickly uses his other arm to grab onto the boy and slam him against the ground while using his other arm to reach into Sonic's body and drain the negative energy from the Chaos Emeralds.

Chaos then lets go of Sonic and Riku and leaps back through the air in an instant, flying right off Angel Island and into the water far below. The blue hedgehog lands on his feet and tries to get a hold of his oxygen for a few seconds, commenting after the process was done "Ah great…This had to happen now? We really don't need another distraction…"

After a few more moments of waiting as Eggman enters the mountain caverns, the entirety of Angel Island rumbles below the feet of the heroes. A massive pillar of water rises up off to the left of the island, causing the heroes to turn their attention towards it as it forms into a mighty creature. The liquid monstrosity had a rather reptilian outer shell of pure dark blue water that covered it's pure liquid body, with eyes of piercing dark emerald and six watery tentacles rising up around it's body. Considering how high up Angel Island was from the water, this manifestation known as Perfect Chaos was one of the tallest creatures any of the heroes had ever encountered.

With the mass of pure water rocking Angel Island just due to it looming very close to the edge, Sonic and his friends had to work hard to keep their ground as Perfect Chaos opened it's fanged mouth and let out a roar powerful enough to brush away all the clouds in the sky within a hundred-mile radius. The blue hedgehog looks up at Chaos and says "Well, I didn't want to have to fight Chaos at first…But it's not every day you get to topple a titan as big as this guy!"

Sonic summons forth the Chaos Emeralds with a clench of his fist and him and Shadow quickly burst into their Super Forms to take care of Perfect Chaos while Tails and Knuckles do everything in their power to ensure that they don't fall off. The echidna blurts out to Sonic as he flies off "Yeah, you break him free from Eggman's control! I'll get to the Master Emerald and try and purge Chaos of the negative Chaos Energy!"

Knuckles starts to climb along Angel Island towards the shrine, while Tails looks around and comments in a puzzled tone of voice "Ummm…Where did Riku head off to?" Sure enough, the teenage Overlord had vanished from the field of battle…

For secretly, he had flown off and gone into the cave to chase after Eggman. Inside of the cave barely lit by a couple torches spread periodically across the walls, Riku runs through the tunnels in pursuit of the madman. A lack of diverging pathways made it easy to keep going, but even at the speed Riku was going it was taking him quite a while to see any signs of Eggman. He kept winding further and further down into the depths of Angel Island, but with another issue pressing on his mind he thinks to the black dragon Takashi "Alright, what were you about to tell me?"

"…Right, sorry for dropping that conversation. If what the hedgehog said about age is correct, then the boy of darkness he fought off was more than likely the Dark King." As the dragon explains himself to the teenage Overlord, Riku twitches in fear for a brief moment.

"Why does that name sound familiar?" The boy comments in a partially frightened tone of voice. "…You don't know who that is?" Takashi then asks hesitantly.

When Riku shakes his head, Takashi goes on to mention "That's interesting. Even as a clone of a clone of the original Elemental Overlord you should know who the Dark King is. After all, he is your antithesis. Whereas you are supposed to help worlds that need assistance, the Dark King is supposed to cause trouble on worlds that indulge too much in peace. Like the original Elemental Overlord, the Dark King was tied to a prophecy of rebirth."

"So someone around my age inherited his powers?" Riku asks. "That is correct." Takashi responds, as he goes on to then mention "It happened a few years ago around the same time as the return of the Elemental Overlord. But from what we observed, the Dark King perished by his hands when they fought."

"If this journey has taught me anything, it's that it's really hard to keep a villain dead. Well, the Dark King isn't my concern at the moment…Especially since Sonic seems to have dealt with him already. I need to stop Eggman from getting to the Chaos Energy mines now." The teenage Overlord says to end off his conversation with the black dragon.

But Takashi takes a moment to note to his friend "Just be cautious…This doctor has proven to be more intelligent and nefarious than I could have possibly anticipated."

Riku nods his head and starts to notice an increase in brightness in the atmosphere. A bright orange light, to be exact. With one last descent through the tunnels under Angel Island, Riku runs out onto a patch of hardened black and red lava rock leading towards a gigantic cavernous domain filled with bright orange-red lava and both stalagmites and stalactites. Flying through the air protected by a light shield of air is Eggman in his signature pod.

The teenage Overlord draws his sword out and stamps his right foot against the ground as he positions himself towards the doctor and exclaims "Eggman! Turn and face me!"

Hearing the confident proclamation of the interloping boy, the doctor turns around and looks down at him, standing upright and folding his arms behind his back as he smirks and says "Well well, to think that YOU would be the one who would split away from the rest of the group to try and stop me."

Riku comments "What, you were expecting Sonic?" To which Eggman responds with a swiftly timed "To be honest, yes I was. Shadow would be more than enough to handle Perfect Chaos, so Sonic would have split off from the group and come after me alone. But naturally, the plan didn't go as I expected it would, which has become something of a common, annoying thread ever since you showed up."

The teenage Overlord responds in turn with "Yeah, I kind of been noticing that on each planet I visit. Wherever I go, plans that would have otherwise succeeded have failed because I was there to defeat the villains when they were at their absolute strongest…Save for one instance where my presence left the world in ruins."

Eggman then asks "And how do you know that your presence here won't make things worse for Sonic and the others?"

Riku lowers his eyebrows and glares at Eggman while responding to his question with "I won't allow myself to fail again. Even if I have to sacrifice my life to accomplish this goal, I will not back down when a threat arises that a planet's heroes cannot yet handle. That is why I had to chase after you Eggman. I will not allow you to finish powering up your ultimate weapon!"

The doctor pauses for a few moments before cracking a grin in the face of Riku's boast, saying to him in turn "Is that so? You REALLY think you are capable of stopping me?"

The teenage Overlord comments "You don't know just WHAT I'm capable of Eggman." While tightening his grip around where the handle of his sword should be.

Eggman replies to this by pulling his arms out in front of his body and saying "You take me for a fool?! I've been paying close enough attention to your antics on the Egg Continent since you showed up. You displayed quite a few abilities during your time here, but all of them shared a common thread…They were all connected to elemental attributes. Fire, Electricity, and even Light itself bent to your whim. Connecting the dots, it's not hard to imagine that Water, Nature, Ice, Wind, Earth and even the very forces of Darkness itself are at your command!"

Riku breaks his calm demeanor for a moment as Eggman quickly puts everything together from what he saw, saying as he glances suspiciously as the doctor "Hmph…I guess you do know what I'm capable of."

Eggman then comments "If what you showed against Mecha-Dark Gaia is the best of your capabilities, then I do not fear you in the slightest. I will deal with you quickly and have plenty of energy left to finish off Sonic and anyone else!"

The doctor presses a single button on the console of his pod, folding his arms behind his back and walking towards the center of the pod as a glass dome protects him. His vehicle rises up into the air as a massive black, purple and white portal in the fabric of space and time opens up, surprising Riku entirely as a mechanical creation begins to emerge from within it. It was the titanic, dark red and black body of the second version of the Egg Dragoon, which was perfectly rebuilt from the ground up with all of it's spiky protrusions and glowing lights, along with the drill and artillery cannon arms. What was missing from the body were the wings, but soon enough other objects emerged from the portal to replace these parts and add onto the body as Eggman locked his pod into the top of the machine.

The first things to appear were two wings of silver and red with four large extensions at the end of where the membranes would be. These were the wings of the Egg Wyvern, which attached themselves firmly to the back of the Egg Dragoon's body. Next was a flying, snake-like machine with two large spiked discs attached to both sides of the main body. This was the Egg Viper, which slowly floated through the air and attached itself to the midsection of the Egg Dragoon, creating a secondary tail for the machine.

This was then followed up by two big metallic arms with four reddish fingers and buff looking muscles coming out from the portal and attaching themselves to the sides of the discs on the Egg Viper. These were the arms of Eggman's Big Arm robot from long ago, and after a matter of seconds the golden shield and lance of the Egg Emperor emerged from the rift and found themselves grasped by these gigantic hands.

The final part to emerge from the rift was a large monstrous mechanical purple creature with two long tentacles that had head-shaped claws and a few tubes filled with Nega Hyper-go-on energy on it's back. The Nega-Wisp Armor flips around so the mouth is pointed upward, and it attached itself perfectly onto the free space remaining on the back of the Egg Dragoon while flipping it's tentacles to the point that they were brandished at the teenage Overlord. The moment the Nega-Wisp Armor connects, the time rift disappears and a pulse of Nega Hyper-go-on energy surges through the body of this mechanical mash-up, covering it in a dark-violet aura.

Eggman, through the speakers of his machine, proclaims to the teenage Overlord "Now it's time to put this to the test! Egg Chimera, blow this child away!" The doctor slams his butt down on the seat of his pod and takes control of his mighty machine, activating the artillery cannon on the Egg Dragoon to aim it straight at the boy.

Riku readies himself for whatever was coming, but feels a surge of power far beyond his current power coming from the cannon just a moment before it fires and immediately thinks "Eggman is capable of creating this type of power?!"

A foggy blast of purple-energy is launched from the combined force of all four cannon barrels that speeds through the air and collides with Riku's body, creating a blast of corrosive Nega Hyper-go-on energy that covers the boy's body for a few moments, leaving Eggman to arrogantly proclaim in triumph "Ha! That was easier than I expected it to be!"

In a matter of seconds, the smoke lingering around Riku's body fades away, showing him on one of his knees with his sword planted into the ground behind him and his body looking severely damaged by the attack. But without making a single remark, the teenage Overlord lifts himself up slowly and swing his sword in a crescent until he cross his arm in front of his body and holds his sword towards the ground, using a blade of hardened air to carve up the lava rock shelf around him in order to create a platform that starts to float along the lava towards the gargantuan Egg Chimera.

With arm crossed against his chest, Riku swiftly changes into his Light form and throws his arms back beside his body, punching the air with enough force that a barrier of light appears to cover the entrance to this part of the cavern. He then spreads his wings out wide and flips his katana around to point it at Eggman, saying calmly to the madman "Sorry to subvert your expectations Eggman, but now the real battle begins!" With Eggman left scowling at Riku's survival, the doctor activates the engines of his Egg Chimera and pushes himself back through the spacious caverns as he readies all of his weapons for battle…

Next Time: The Mighty Egg Chimera