Chapter 19: Egg Chimera I: Hail the Emperor
With Riku in his Light Form and Eggman piloting his ultimate weapon, the combined mechanical creation known as the Egg Chimera, the two have engaged in combat in the spacious lava-filled caverns hidden far underneath Angel Island. The teenage Overlord leaps at the behemoth from the platform of lava rock he carved up and swings his katana at the highest cockpit of the Egg Dragoon's body, clashing with a barrier filled with hexagonal holograms that was around the glass dome.
The collision of the katana releases a shockwave of light that blocks Eggman's sly expression for a moment, and as Riku notices that he didn't even damage the barrier the doctor activates the laser blasters on the tips of the wings the very moment they flap. Curved lasers of pure orange energy surrounded by the pale-purple energies of the Nega Hyper-go-on material target the teenage Overlord, forcing him to pull himself away from the machine in one swift moment as all of the lasers collide in front of the glass dome.
Riku lands on the lava rock platform and after pulling his katana back he swings it forward with both hands and launches a wave of light energy at the center of the robot. The aura surrounding the Egg Chimera takes the light energy and dissipates it instantly. The teenage Overlord was surprised by this move, but didn't flinch for long and swung his sword back down after flipping the blade around with a single release on the handle to send another wave of light at the same spot.
The same thing happens, but Eggman doesn't comment on the matter save for a light chuckle as he swings the four-barrel artillery cannon towards the boy and proclaims "Fire!" Another sphere of foggy Hyper-go-on energy is fired at Riku, forcing the boy to sheath his katana for a moment and place his arm-guard forward to summon forth a shield of light around his entire body that takes the form of a prismatic dome.
When the projectile impacts the dome, Riku watches as a large series of cracks appears around it for a few seconds before it shatters apart into nothing. The teenage Overlord then draws out his sword again with the hand he used to summon the barrier as Eggman follows up on his last attack by rapid-firing more spheres from the spinning barrels of his artillery cannon. Using the edge of the blade with rapid swings in the air, Riku cuts down each and every sphere that comes his way, but this leaves him distracted long enough for Eggman to swing the bottom segment of his Egg Chimera forward and attack the teenage Overlord with the lance of the Egg Emperor.
The tip of the lance strikes at the side of the katana, launching him back as a bit of Nega Hyper-go-on energy is released from the blow. After one flip through the air, Riku swings his wings out one inch before he touches down on the lava. The teenage Overlord worried more about taking unnecessary damage from dipping into lava than he was of dying, but discarded those concerns as he did one brief dash through the air to land back down on his self-made platform.
As the Egg Chimera pulled the lower part of his body back and brushed it against the top of the lava, Riku examined the aura around the titanic machine a little bit further and realized that there was a second component to the aura besides the Nega Hyper-go-on energy. But before he commented on it in his head, Riku was forced to play defensive again as Eggman lashed out one of his Nega-Wisp Armors tentacles at him.
The teenage Overlord expected just the tentacle and waited for just the right moment to parry the blow with his katana, but then the Hyper-go-on energy wrapped around the machine pours towards the mouth of the tentacle and forms into a drill that strikes the chest plate of Riku's armor and rapidly spins around, grinding against it for a good five seconds as the teenage Overlord grits his teeth to bear the pain being inflicted upon his armor and ears while sparks fly out from the tip of the drill.
When Eggman pulls back on the tentacle, he comments in an arrogant tone of voice "I knew this would be easy, even once you increased your strength." But instead of respond to the doctor's remark Riku glances up at him while sheathing his sword and placing one hand calmly on the front of his armor as chunks of it fall off thanks to the drill.
Using his powers to heal the broken part of his armor, the teenage Overlord thinks to himself "Eggman's mixture of Nega Hyper-go-on and Dark Gaia energies is poisonous for my Light element, I can't hope to keep fighting him in this form."
"Now, perish!" Eggman points the drill arm at the boy after making this proclamation, and after a moment he fires the elongated drill at him to force him into the air. Riku leaps back and flaps his wings while moving his right hand to grab onto the handle of his katana as the drill shatters apart the lava rock platform, causing the boy to nonchalantly comment "I don't even know why I needed that…"
The drill falls into the lava, melting apart in the bed of molten liquid as the teenage Overlord passes over it and closes his eyelids to concentrate on his katana, thinking all the while "Takashi…I wish to rely on some of your energy for this battle…"
As he feels the black dragon nod in approval of this plan, Riku's armor of light shatters apart, leaving him back in his regular garb as the sheath and katana held beside his body vanishes into an ethereal conglomerate of black flames, most of which spread out across his body in the form of a hazy black aura. When these very flames touch the angelic wings remaining on his back, the feathers are burned away in order to be replaced with two very demonic looking fleshy black wings. Riku's hair also changes to black as his eyes become a dark-yellow the moment he opens his eyelids.
Once this transformation into his Dark form is complete, the teenage Overlord slowly takes his right hand out and melds the aura into the shape of a five-fingers jagged claw that he holds towards the Egg Chimera. Eggman says with intrigue in his voice "So, you plan to combat my quantities of negative energy with your darkness, hmmm? Maybe you will last a little bit longer with that plan of attack."
Riku looks up at Eggman's cockpit, his calm demeanor still remaining intact as he asks the doctor "Tell me Eggman…How much did you enjoy taking Sonic's friends and turning them against him?"
Eggman grins without so much as a hint of hesitation, responding to Riku's question with a gleeful "If Sonic is a gigantic thorn in my side, his friends are the multiple other thorns that increase the pain tenfold with their very existence! I took great pleasure in turning them all against him for all the suffering they have caused me as I tried to take over the world!"
The teenage Overlord's aura flares up as he clenches his fist and wraps his claws together, drawing in on the power of anger he feels upon hearing Eggman's answer to increase the strength of his darkness, at which point he states with the last recesses of his calmness "Thank you for that answer."
Giving in to aggression, Riku lunges himself at the Egg Chimera as a rift in time opens up to connect another drill to the currently empty arm. With his fist still clenched, the teenage Overlord punches the chest of the titanic machine with all of his might, causing three shockwaves of raw darkness to erupt from the center of the blow before the Egg Chimera is pushed back through the cavern, jolting Eggman back in the seat of his cockpit before he has a chance to react.
The shockwaves from the blow split the lava and upon hitting the ground cause streams of it to erupt into the air, casting a pale red light over Riku before he speeds away from the front of the Egg Chimera and goes straight for the backside. The remainder of the shockwave hits the ceiling and causes the entire cavern to rumble. Once Eggman regains control of his chair and pulls himself back to the control, he looks around for the boy's presence and exclaims "Where did he go?!" Only for his question to be answered when the teenage Overlord takes his right claw and performs an upward slash along the back of the Egg Chimera, scarring the air with crimson gashes that actually rips apart some of the aura covering the robot.
In response to this attack, Eggman fires the boosters on the left side of the robot to flip it around and try to use his drill in order to slash at the boy. Riku flies back though and only ends up having his aura nicked and pulled away from the rest of his body. The girth of the drill collides with the ceiling, breaking a large chunk of it and causing the caverns to tremble yet again. Eggman growls and proclaims "Hold still! You're going to bring the whole cave down at this rate!"
Riku holds his arms beside his body and proclaims to Eggman "Idiot, you're the one threatening to bring this place down!" He then thrusts both his hands out multiple times, sending a barrage of dark energy blasts at the Egg Chimera that covers the machine with explosions upon each impact before Eggman flaps it's wings to blow the smoke away while simultaneously firing the curved lasers from the tips of the wings in a random spread across the air in order to try and force Riku to get hit.
But in a moment of inspiration, the teenage Overlord combines his claws into one large talon and carves a gash into the air in front of him to send the lasers straight into another dimension. This earns him a surprised remark from Takashi, who says in the boy's mind "Hey! Watch where you're sending those, they almost nicked my tail!"
Riku, realizing the mistake he made as the gap closed in front of him, apologized to the black dragon with a simple thought of "Sorry! Didn't know they would end up there." He then went back on the aggressive against Eggman, lunging at him and using a hard hitting barrage of three claws strikes on the chest of the Egg Chimera to push the machine through the air with each blow, not noticing that the shockwaves from his attacks were breaking apart the ceiling with each impact.
The doctor barely tries to mount an offensive, because he's more concerned about destroying the caverns due to how little room he had to move his weapons around now that the boy was focusing on battling in mid-air. Thus, once Riku flew away from his last attack, Eggman quickly slammed down on a button in front of him while proclaiming "Time for a change of scenery!"
Just like when he summoned the parts of the Egg Chimera, a gigantic rift in the fabric of space and time emerges between both Riku and Eggman. The doctor pilots his machine into the rift while Riku flies through it accidentally after preparing to attack the machine again. Thrust through time and space for but a second, the teenage Overlord emerges from the other side of the rift into a new area.
The first thing Riku noticed minus the slight dizziness caused by going through time was that the air was much cooler than before, and the reason for that became apparent upon further observation of the area. He was now high above the clouds as the sky was dark blue to signify it was late at night, with platforms of steel and glass and a large arena hovering just along the top of the clouds in the sky. Around the platforms and arena lied tall turrets that were pointed straight at the boy.
The teenage Overlord turns around once he comes to grips with the fact that he was sent into the past and quickly ducks back to avoid being struck with the lance of the Egg Emperor. While he is pulled back, his entire body is slammed with the front of the Emperor's shield, causing him to be sent flying a fair number of yards away from the Egg Chimera before he recovers.
Riku brushes the bottom of his chin with the back of his right hands and grins, noting that he took a little more damage due to the shock of time travel weakening his powers momentarily. But he quickly regains his aggression as he sees the titanic machine in front of him. With the bottom segment flailing back into place, the teenage Overlord charges at him ready to take it apart in order to limit Eggman's options.
The first step was to deal with the lance and shield that protected the arms and tail. Coating his claws with hardened darkness, the teenage Overlord swipes at the lance to try and cut through the aura and dismantle the weapon into pieces, but Eggman spins the bottom segment around and uses the shield to block the attack. Riku's impact causes his arm to bounce back in recoil, a vibration of pain going through the muscles as he flies backwards to dodge the tail of the machine.
"Open fire!" Eggman proclaims to the turrets down below, causing them to fire their massive burning shells at the teenage Overlord while he shakes the pain out of his arm. Riku looks down and notices exactly twelve turrets coming at him from different directions, but all of them were converging on the same point in the air.
Riku flies up as the shells collide and set off a chain of giant explosions one after the other that follow the boy up a few yards into the air, leaving him vulnerable enough for Eggman to fire a hazy sphere of Nega Hyper-go-on energy at him from the artillery cannon. The blast caused by the impact launches the boy back a few feet and deals a little bit of damage, dissipating the aura around his body as he recovers.
The teenage Overlord looks down at the Egg Chimera and swings his right arm down, using his control over darkness to extend the length of his aura so he can utilize physical attacks from a safer distance. One claw strikes at the barrier surrounding Eggman's pod while the other swipes at the chest, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that these long arms weren't able to do as much damage as close-range attacks.
So Riku instead chooses to grasp onto both sides of the Egg Dragoon's shoulders and pull himself straight at the cockpit. Reeling his arms back in as he launches himself, the teenage Overlord flips himself around and combines his legs together, forming a spearhead of pure crimson and black darkness that impacts with the barrier around the pod and creates a shockwave that disperses some of the aura surrounding the robot but fails to crack the barrier itself.
"This thing is really durable…" Riku comments as he flips away from the cockpit of the robot to avoid being singed by the lasers launched from the wings, after which he proceeds to using one claw to strike at the top of the machine's chest with two swift attacks. This is then followed up by the boy being smashed in the side of his body by the drill of the Egg Chimera, sending him hurtling away from the machine for the time being.
As Riku spins around, he thinks to himself "I feel like I'm barely able to put a dent into the Egg Chimera…" Regaining his straightened posture as he ends this particular thought, he goes on to say to himself as he swings his right arm out to the side in order to create a sphere of pulsating crimson darkness "I'll give Eggman credit again…He definitely would have probably defeated Sonic with this machine had I let him join along."
Crunching the orb in his claw, Riku grins and then throws his claw right out to toss the pulsating black mass at the Egg Chimera. Eggman unsurprisingly takes the attack head-on, and as a collapsing blast of distorting black and purple energy covers the machine the aura surrounding him doesn't vanish even a bit. The teenage Overlord comments again as he dashes at the center of the blast he created "If I can't do anything about this aura though…Then I won't fare any better than Sonic would."
The teenage Overlord strikes the center point of the blast with his right fist to push the robot back quite a bit through the air, and Eggman follows up by locking on to the boy's energy signature since he couldn't see through the remnants of the blast and using the wing lasers while Riku was focused entirely on the chest. But with a grin on his face the boy warned the black dragon with a simple "Heads up Takashi"
The teenage Overlord swings his claw into the air to create a rift that sucks most of the lasers up, stretching his other hand down towards the bottom segment of the Egg Chimera to create a second rift that causes all of the lasers to impact the arms attached to the tail and make the entire bottom segment tremble. In response to this, Eggman lets out a puzzled "What?! What is happening down there?!" Implying a malfunction in his ability to control that part of the Egg Chimera.
Utilizing this distraction, Riku flies down while raising both of his claws into the air, using his sharp-tipped claws to attack the lance of the Egg Emperor with all of his might. The weapon is torn apart into multiple sections, leaving only the handle grasped in the hands of the Big Arms. The teenage Overlord continues to descend as the parts of the lance fall down around him and the malfunctioning bottom segment causes the shield to be swung his way.
Riku then rises up and uses a one-handed uppercut/claw slash on the handle on the back of the shield to rip the protection away from the bottom segment of the Egg Chimera right as Eggman regains control of his machine. The teenage Overlord flies back as Eggman clenches the Big Arms into fists and swings the right one at him.
The battlefield then starts to distort with static, causing Eggman to growl and comment "Gah! You little pest, how dare you damage my wonderful creation!" The doctor then slams down on a button in front of him to create another rift in space and time behind him that he flies back through with a single activation of his rockets.
When the Egg Chimera leaves the area, the distortions along the battlfield disappear. As Riku pursues Eggman through the rift he thinks to himself "It's a good thing this machine appears to be a prototype…So long as there are flaws I can take advantage of, then it shouldn't be too problematic…"
After being shunted through time and space, Riku finds himself floating in the depths of space above the planet with the Egg Chimera rapidly flying towards a field of meteors in the distance. The teenage Overlord wonders just when Eggman had sent the two of them now, something he receives the answer for as he glances behind himself and sees the mighty Death Egg suddenly explode, sending it's debris scattering throughout the depths of space as a crimson robot carrying the Master Emerald is pursued by a golden streak in the opposite direction of where the boy currently was.
Recognizing this place as being even further in the past than the last battlefield, Riku can only be thankful that Sonic's past battle with Eggman was happening far away, since a paradox would have occurred otherwise. Letting out a sigh of relief at this, the teenage Overlord then turns back around and flies after the Egg Chimera at high speed.
"You aren't going to escape from me Eggman!" Riku proclaims as he swings his arms out beside him and rapidly flaps his wings while using the very darkness of space around him to draw in energy and create pulsating spheres wrapped between his jagged claws.
The doctor flips the Egg Chimera around, crashing it harmlessly through every last meteor in his way as he declares arrogantly through the echoing speakers "Who said I was running?" He then grabs onto two of the larger meteors with the Big Arms and flings them at the boy as he weaves around the field of other meteors in pursuit of the titanic machine.
The collision of meteors as Riku avoids the ones thrown at him causes a couple to be dislodged from orbit and be sent flying towards the planet, where the atmosphere burns them up before they can pose a threat. Once close to the Egg Chimera, the teenage Overlord lands on one of the meteors and runs along it long enough to throw out two orbs of darkness at the artillery cannon as Eggman tries to posture it towards him.
Both impacts jolt the cannon back away from it's target, but while Riku was on the meteor Eggman used one of the Nega-Wisp Armor's tentacles to fire a laser of purple energy down at the boy. Riku leaps away from the meteor before the laser connects, but Eggman thinks ahead of the boy and uses the other tentacle to spit out a series of cubes across the meteor field that constantly reflects the laser around until it strikes Riku in the back just a moment before he lashes at the Egg Chimera.
The impact of the laser makes Riku pause and grimace in pain, which Eggman follows up on by using the Big Arms to throw a couple meteor right at him. The impact of the space rocks causes the boy to be launched away farther and farther with each hit as they shatter into dust. Eggman then flips the Egg Chimera back around and takes off through the meteor field, flipping the bottom segment around to keep grabbing onto any meteors he can for use as ammunition while locking the laser blasters at the top of his wings onto the boy.
As the teenage Overlord recovers from the meteors and brushes a bit of blood that dripped from the side of his mouth right off he watches as the curved orange lasers come his way, forcing him to jet forward while leaving behind a pitch black sonic boom before they all collide on his location, leaving behind an explosion for a few seconds as Riku zips around the meteor field in pursuit of the Egg Chimera once more.
The Egg Chimera fires off multiple missiles at the teenage Overlord from around the cockpit, all of them looping around the meteors perfectly as they home-in on their destination. The boy takes pre-emptive measures to ensure that he won't be hit by the ensuing explosions, such as thickening the aura around his body and firing off spheres of darkness in one hand and using the extended reach of his claws to throw meteors at the missiles with the other hand.
A widespread cache of explosions fills the meteor field, disintegrating most of them that weren't involved in the battle up until that point as Riku flies through the front edge of the explosions and finds himself that much closer to Eggman, though with a bit of smoke exuding from his body to indicate that the explosions had weakened him slightly. The Egg Chimera's missile supply is reloaded as Eggman turns his ship back around and swings his drill arm in front of his body, firing it out with a rocket propulsion at the tail end to make it able to speed at the boy without the pressure of space holding it back.
Riku lands atop the spinning drill and runs across it at high speeds, working against the momentum of the drill to avoid falling off until he reaches the end, at which point he leaps forward and flies straight down towards the bottom component of the Egg Chimera. Eggman puts the Nega-Wisp Armor tentacles to good use at this point, lashing them down to intercept the boy and grab clamp the mouths around his arms before he can strike the Big Arms.
At point blank, Eggman uses the Nega Hyper-go-on energy on the boy's arms in the form of two lasers, dealing a considerable amount of damage to his muscles after burning right through the dark aura. Riku grits through the pain of it all even as sweat starts to drip off from his forehead, and when Eggman is done weakening his arms he lifts the teenage Overlord up to the center of his chest and bends the artillery cannon his way with energy charged and ready to fire.
But by taking his darkness and pushing all of it towards his arms, Riku is able to create a burst of energy powerful enough to force the Nega-Wisp Armor's tentacles off of him, which allows him to then descend towards the bottom segment once more as the hazy blast of Nega Hyper-go-on energy breezes right by overhead.
The teenage Overlord goes straight for the Big Arms, using his extended reach to latch on the joints connecting them to the Egg Viper, and once he was between the two of them he clamps on the metal to break the wiring so Eggman can't attack with the arms before proceeding to pull back with all of his might to rip the arms right off from the rest of the titanic mech.
Riku flies back and casts the arms off into space nonchalantly, looking up at the cockpit of the Egg Chimera as the battlefield once again starts to distort around him. Eggman proclaims "Grrr…I should have known giving you this much freedom would be more detrimental for me! Fine, lets go fight in a more enclosed area again!"
Utilizing the time-space rift once more, Eggman flees the past to go to a place further ahead in time from now. Riku comments as the battlefield returns to it's normal luster "I guess he can't stay in the past without the relevant machine parts." As he thinks about this he notices that he has taken quite a hefty amount of damage so far just to take down two parts of the Egg Chimera. "Guess I might have to go a little further to win this battle…" As he makes this remark with a slight grin, he notices the rift starting to shrink in size, causing him to take charge through it before he finds himself trapped in the past. The battle had just begun against the Egg Chimera…
Next Time: The Contradiction to History