Chapter 22: Egg Chimera Final: Time and Time Again
Jumping out of the rift of time and space, Riku finds himself in a massive tunnel stuck in the middle of a vast void of distortions in the fabric of time. The tunnel was kept together by hundreds of gigantic rimmed clocks filled with Roman Numerals. In the background beyond the foggy rim of the tunnel were miles long gears that spun around harmlessly. Eggman's Time Eater was seen flying through the tunnel with debris torn away from other time periods floating around, which included clock towers, large trucks and buildings burned away by lava.
Riku swung his katana out and yelled at the doctor "Eggman, there's no escape, just give up!" Eggman was too out-of-control thanks to his desperation to not lose that he proclaimed in response multiple times "Never…Never Never Never!"
Eggman takes the Time Eater and swings it's right arm out, throwing it into a glowing violet rift surrounding by a golden gear-like rim that causes it to emerge in front of Riku and force the boy to raise his katana up to avoid taking the full brunt of the attack. The impact of the clawed fist pushes the boy back through the air while the arm retracts and the Time Eater flies farther away.
The doctor then utilizes the machine's time-space manipulation feature to distort the area around Riku's body and slow him down while also throwing the upper right arm in front of his body to create a series of large spike-shaped yellow projectiles that home-in on the boy's position from far away. Though the teenage Overlord felt even slower than he did before, he recalled what he did last time almost immediately and pulled out his dagger with his opposite hand to slash open a gash into the realm of darkness for his ready escape.
Eggman would have none of that though, and by quickly utilizing the golden-rimmed rift to send another arm at the boy he manages to grab him from behind just seconds after he entered his gash of darkness in order to drag him right back out and put him within range of the homing shots.
The Time Eater lets go of Riku's body and the doctor watches from afar as all of the homing shots converge on that singular location and created a collapsing explosion within the tunnel. Eggman smiles happily at this event and leans forward within his pod under the assumption that it would be enough, and a few seconds of utter silence as he keeps his machine in place leads him to believe that he was correct.
But then Riku tears straight through a large gash of darkness in front of Eggman's cockpit, his body slightly battered from the combined strength of all the homing shots as he folds his katana behind his wings and delivers a hard-swung slash of pure light that Eggman is barely able to block with the upper left arm of the Time Eater. The impact of the sword throws the gigantic machine through the tunnel while severely damaging its arm.
A bit of black electricity emerges from the backside of the arm as Eggman slowly puts it back into position, saying in a growling tone of voice "You little…You LITTLE!" His anger was making him repeat lines from the past, as a searing fury could be felt in his voice the likes of which only Sonic had made him feel before.
"Can't say I blame Eggman…" Riku thinks as he flies back out of the range of two desperate claw slashes from the Time Eater. "Guess this is the cost of being an unexpected element in someone's plans…" As he notes this matter, he sheathes his katana and uses his dagger to cut open a gash that allows him to slip into the realm of darkness once more.
Once there the teenage Overlord flies through it until he winds up behind the still stationary Time Eater, at which point he cuts open another gash to end up behind the wings, where he then pulls out his katana and uses a spinning sword slash on the very ends of the wings connected to the back. He manages to deliver a couple solid blows to the machine, but doesn't carve through the joints entirely.
Eggman obviously notices this attack and quickly flips the Time Eater around while raising all four arms up, drawing in the same type of energy he used for the homing shots into the palms before he slams all of them together in the center of his body where Riku currently floated. The energy burst apart between the fingers, but instead of keeping the boy entrapped within the reach of his claws the doctor watches as a barely visibly spherical rupture of light pushes all the claws away as the teenage Overlord flies back and uses his sword to send out two waves of light at the glowing core in the center of the machine.
The waves pass through the core one after the other, and Eggman reels his machine back after they had passed as the Time Eater shakes around in this center of this tunnel. The doctor furiously swings the upper right arm out at the boy, attempting to swat him away like a bug only to miss entirely and be forced to launch another fist through the golden-rimmed rift that socks Riku square against his body and sends him flying right through the left side of the tunnel.
The teenage Overlord now finds himself in the depths of the time-space void, where Eggman mercilessly attacks him with whatever he can utilize using the Time Eater. The doctor first grabs onto one of the large buildings floating through the tunnel with both claws, throwing it straight at the boy after manipulating time-space to speed the building up immensely.
Riku wastes little time in raising his katana up with both hands and swinging it outward, launching a single wave of light that is as tall as the width of the building that spins around and carves apart said building into multiple bits of rocky debris. The teenage Overlord then flips his sword around and sheathes it by simply dashing forward as he makes his way towards the debris and runs and jumps along as many pieces as he can as he makes his way back towards the tunnel.
Eggman launches dozens of homing shots through the wall around the tunnel, forcing the boy to take out his dagger and cut a large gash into the air that takes all of the projectiles into it while he simultaneously alerts Takashi of their arrival so he can get out of the way. Once done with the homing shots Riku continues to leap across the debris, lengthening his dagger with a streak of pure black darkness so he can cut up any bits that fall down before him until he final leaps right out the other side of the building and rockets straight back towards the tunnel.
The Time Eater awaits the boy with open arms, however, as the doctor commands it to fire one fist after the other through rifts rimmed with gold, weaving them all together in such a way that there was little space for Riku to slip between as he made it through the last stretch back to the tunnel. As he made it past the last arm, the teenage Overlord was flipped so he was flying with his body pointed diagonally, but it would make his next attack all the easier for him as he drew out both dagger and katana and burned the flames of his respective elements into them.
Piercing his way back into the tunnel, Riku goes for the chest between the glowing core and Eggman's cockpit, cleanly cutting horizontally and then vertically through the air to strike at all critical components of the grand machine with scarring streaks of light and darkness. The impact of the two weapons with the Time Eater's body causes the entire dimension to shake, but despite heavy damage being inflicted upon this machine it wasn't down for the count.
As the teenage Overlord ended up behind the Time Eater after his attacks were finished, the light and darkness faded away while Eggman angrily spun his machine around without waiting to assess the damage inflicted upon it, which actually catches Riku off-guard as he is struck with a massive sphere of distorting red energy created by the Time Eater. The attack is done via an uppercut from the palm, which launches the boy up and allows Eggman to throw the remaining three fists against his body before he can defend against them.
The impact of all three fists shakes the realm further as shockwaves erupt from the knuckles, and Eggman glares at the center of the fists while grinning maniacally and being entirely unaware of the damage he was inflicting on the area by forcing the Time Eater to go at full power. The aura rims surrounding the tunnel began to crack, destabilizing the place around the machine at a currently gradual pace.
Riku starts to push apart the fists after recovering from the impact of the spherical attack which damaged his armor slightly. Using both hands to move aside the upper fists while both legs pushed down against the lower left, the teenage Overlord glances around at the distortions created by the Time Eater and quickly exclaims to Eggman in an urgent sounding tone "Eggman, you need to surrender now or you're going to destroy your planet via a temporal anomaly!"
"You think I care?! I'll destroy all of reality if that's what it'll take to kill you and Sonic for good!" As Eggman declares this he pulls his limbs back and flies through the tunnel behind him, using the Time Eater's time-space manipulation to briefly stabilize the dimension as he swings his left arm out and glides along the side of the tunnel while rapid-firing multiple volleys of homing shots at the boy.
Riku takes out his katana once more and rapidly swings it around his body to cut down each and every projectile that came his way while simultaneously thinking to himself "I am trying really hard to resist killing Eggman here…But I can't interfere too much in Sonic's world. Sonic needs to have a constant nemesis in Eggman, even if the doctor can become a lunatic at times."
One hard slash beside his body allows the teenage Overlord to send out a shockwave that destroys any more homing projectiles that head his way for the next five seconds as he charges forth through the tunnel covered in an aura of hard light while he catches up to the Time Eater. The doctor, driven completely mad by his desire to silence the boy for good, performs one last ditch effort to break him apart.
Throwing every single limb he can through the golden-rimmed rifts, Eggman has the sharp claws of the Time Eater tear straight through the dimension itself as they lunge at the boy, damaging time and space with each attack to the point that he threatened the very end of his planet and perhaps even permanent damage to the universe as a whole.
Riku temporarily ceases the damage to the time-space continuum by throwing spheres of darkness and light at the gashes as he weaves and spins around the Time Eater's claws, plugging them up and preventing them from growing further for the time being as he speeds towards Eggman.
The boy draws out his katana as he nears the edge of the tunnel, looking at the glowing core in the center while commenting in his head "Eggman hasn't used the Nega-Wisp Armor for anymore attacks…It must have been weakened from the Egg Dragoon's explosion. All I need to do is take out the Time Eater, and Eggman's plan is done for."
Riku swings his katana in front of his body and straightens his body to line up with his weapon, blazing straight through the time-space dimension like a glowing arrow of raw light. Eggman cannot hope to react in time to the boy's attack as he punctures simultaneously through the side of the tunnel and the core of the Time Eater in the same second, emerging on the other side as the core destabilizes and eventually disappears, leaving the gigantic devoured of time and space to once more crumble apart via a series of explosions.
Eggman proclaims in maddened desperation "N-No! I won't be trapped here again!" With the last bit of the Time Eater's energy, the doctor tears open one final rift and pops himself right out of the cockpit of the collapsing machine, flying himself back around to the cockpit of the Nega-Wisp Armor in a matter of seconds.
Riku turns around, unaware of Eggman's actions as he pulls out a quick and calmly spoken one-liner "Time's up Eggman, your plan is at an end!" But he then notices Eggman violently pounding on the controls of the Nega-Wisp Armor to get it to activate, something that he manages to succeed in as he pushes it upright and starts to fly it towards the rift.
The teenage Overlord widens his eyes in surprise as he sheathes his katana and clenches his fists beside his body, proclaiming to the doctor before he disappears through the rift "You're not getting away Eggman!"
Riku bolts to the rift before it seals up, pushing through time and space once more to end up back inside of the hidden lava cavern deep inside of Angel Island. Eggman was flying the Nega-Wisp Armor through it, obviously in pursuit of the mine of negative Chaos Energy that he spoke of before. This puzzled Riku terribly, since he had already dismantled the Egg Chimera, rendering Eggman's entire plan moot. Nevertheless, the boy pursued the Nega-Wisp Armor to deal with Eggman for good.
The doctor neared the end of the cavern quickly, where the sparkling multicolored gemstones filled with negative Chaos Energy lined the walls for yards on end even before the Nega-Wisp Armor descended into the mine, but as Eggman smiled eerily at his arrival his machine was blasted straight through the back by a bolt of light from Riku, causing his machine to malfunction and plummet straight down into the vast mine itself.
The teenage Overlord swoops down past the lava waterfall as the Nega-Wisp Armor crashed against the ground and the hole punctured through surges with electricity caused by it shutting down entirely. The tentacles limp against the ground while Eggman's pod is launched from the machine, and he quickly falls against the rocky floor dropped from the pod with his body lying stomach first against the ground.
His pod lands on top of his legs a moment later, but doesn't really cause him much pain. Riku lands in front of him, taking a whiff of the smoke coming from the Nega-Wisp Armor before looking at Eggman and saying "Now it's over Eggman. Your defiant attempt to escape has failed."
The doctor looks up at the boy while pounding his right fist against the ground once, scowling all the while without a single word emerging from his mouth. As Riku takes out his katana and points it at Eggman while contemplating what he should do with the doctor, the answer comes to him as a familiar voice calls out from behind "Hey Riku! You ok over here?!"
Riku glances up at the top of the lava waterfall as Sonic and Shadow come flying down into the mine in their Super Forms. Tails and Knuckles follow suite soon enough, with the echidna latching onto the fox's legs as he flies through the cavern. Sonic floats off to the right of Riku, looking over at Eggman and smirking when seeing his current condition "Well, this is a bit of déjà vu Eggman. Only this time you're not going to trick me into a trap."
Riku glances over at Sonic and asks "So Chaos is back to normal now?" The blue hedgehog responds with a happy sounding "Of course. He's back in the Master Emerald with Tikal." Sonic gives the boy a quick thumbs-up afterwards.
The teenage Overlord proceeds to mention as he glances down at Eggman from the corner of his eyes "Chaos is cured, all of Sonic's friends are back to normal, Eggman Nega is likely defeated, Mecha-Dark Gaia is destroyed…"
"Metal Sonic is out of commission, your nuclear reactor and satellite lasers are disabled." Shadow adds on to everything Riku was listing off, and Tails follows up by mentioning "Your Egg Continent is useless now."
And finally Riku adds on to what he said by sheathing his katana and returning to his base form, stating to Eggman as he turns completely his way "And I have destroyed the Egg Chimera, your ultimate weapon. Even though you arrived at the mines Eggman, it doesn't matter…You've lost."
Eggman looks up at all the heroes gathered in front of him and after scowling for a few more seconds, his scowl suddenly turns into a grin as he finally realizes where he had arrived. Noticing all the glimmering gemstone walls filled with negative Chaos Energy in the area, the doctor starts to laugh. At first his laugh was quiet, but then he lifted his head up high and increased the volume of his laughter to unseen heights.
Riku was a little unnerved by the laugh, and thought to himself "That's never a good sign…" While Sonic waves his right hand at the doctor and says in a serious tone of voice "What's so funny Eggman?"
Eggman stops laughing but continues to grin at the heroes while digging his right hand into his shirt pocket, saying to the blue hedgehog "Always so arrogant Sonic…You always assume that you've won."
Sonic points out in an all too honest tone "Well duh Eggman, I ALWAYS win."
The doctor smiles at Sonic and says to him "Hmph, maybe that holds a bit of truth…But there's one major thing this time around that you have wrongly assumed up until this point…You and your friends have all failed to realize, to be exact."
Shadow folds his arms in front of his chest and asks "What do you mean by that?"
Eggman, as he starts to pull his arm out of his pocket, says to the heroes "All of the resources I used…Every person I manipulated and controlled to my whim from my foolish grandson to your irritating friends, they were all used just to deliver one specific item to this location."
The doctor, as he swings his right arm out in front of him to reveal a single golden ring gripped between his fingers, says to the heroes "And you were wrong about one thing…THIS, is my ultimate weapon…And trust me Sonic, I believe you are quite acquainted with this one…"
Next Time: Precursor of the Chaos Emeralds