(Tsunaida tamashii no hi ga / mune wo sasu nara / Kotoba yori motto tsuyoi hibiki ga / ima kikoeru ka?
Um….Sorry! That was Japanese for….
If the flame of the united souls / points at your chest, / is a resonance stronger than words / being heard now?
I'm listening to the Soul Eater Season 1 theme song. If you looked at my profile, you know I like Soul Eater. It's an awesome anime, check it out!
Anywho….
Last time on In the Dark, after the death of his closest friend on a rescue mission, Sonic let his anger get the best of him and transformed into the legendary Dark Sonic, threatening Eggman and battling him face-to-mustachioed face. Dark Sonic had been on the brink of striking Eggman down forever when Sally intervened, pulling him out of the fray to prevent the death of the mad (and cowering) scientist. But at the last moment, Dark Sonic was shot with a ray that, at the time, seemed to do little but boost the hedgehog's anger. Before the furious hero could do anything rash, Sally sent him away.
But now things will start to go wrong. Can Sonic deal with the grief of losing his best friend and his newly refreshed anger and hatred toward his arch enemy? Or will something even more drastic happen to the hero? Look back at Chapter 2 – Dark Consequences for details, or read on to find out a bit more about Sonic's scenario.)
It takes me an hour to calm down.
I stood in the Great Forest, wandering around where Knothole used to be before it was destroyed by Dr. Eggman, back then known as Dr. Robotnik. Being in a place with so many good memories helped calm me, but the fact that it was gone also made it take longer for me to completely regain my composure, even after I had changed back to normal. I allowed myself to grieve for my fallen friend now that I was alone; I allowed myself to cry. I recounted the battle in my head as I walked, going over what I may have done wrong and what Eggman had pleaded to me. Did I really want him gone?
Yes, I decided. We need to restore places like this. We won't be able to while Eggman's alive. He'll just ruin it again.
The man is a heartless, mindless, planet-destroying, roboticizing, insane scientist who doesn't know how to give up. I can't forget that.
After a while, I got lost in my thoughts and lost track of where I was. When I finally looked around, I found I was on the edge of the woods, standing near the edge of a steep cliff face. The view was amazing; from the bluff I could see hundreds of miles of forests, a light fog hanging over the horizon. The full moon cast a glow on the treetops. Something caught my eye. A few meters to my right lay an outcropping of cliffs, a faint glow coming from one of them. I started towards the light. From experience, I knew I should investigate anything that glows.
As I neared the cave, my comlink rang. I opened the cover and saw Sally's face on the tiny screen.
"Hey," I said.
"I see you've calmed down a lot," she said, smiling.
"Yeah…" I replied, looking away and rubbing the back of my neck. "That was a little unprofessional of me."
"That's alright. It's okay to get angry sometimes," Sally said, looking sympathetic. "But no one has a temper quite like yours," she added with a light laugh.
I smiled a little. "Besides Shadow."
"Yeah, well, he's always grumpy."
"Yeah."
There was a moment of silence.
"So are you coming to the party?" Sally spoke up.
"Do I have a choice?"
"Not really." Sally smirked.
I sighed, half annoyed. "Fine," I said. "When does it start?"
"In five minutes."
"That's four and a half minutes more than I need." With that, I shut off my comlink and raced off, following the GPS on my comlink.
Fifty seconds later, I stopped in front of Freedom Fighters HQ. I could hear music pulsing through the base even through the three-foot-thick steel doors, with people cheering inside. I opened the doors and walked in.
"Ladies and gentlemen, your guest of honor!" a DJ said from the turntables. Everyone turned to me and cheered. Caught up in the attention, I smiled and waved, walking toward Sally's table. I sat down across from her. She shook her head.
"What?" I asked, confused.
"You," she said. "In the spotlight. You are such an attention hog."
"Hedgehog," I corrected. She smirked.
"Now that our guest is here, why don't we get this party started?" the DJ said to the crowd. They cheered loudly. "Alright, settle. We all know the reason we're here. After years, we have finally successfully captured Dr. Ivo Robotnik, known to most of you as Dr. Eggman thanks to our own Sonic the Hedgehog!" The cheer was deafening. "Sonic, would you come up to the radio booth and tell us exactly what happened?"
I shook my head and pretended to not want to.
"C'mon!" he said. "The crowd wants to hear the story! Right, folks?" The crowd cheered again and started chanting.
"So-nic! So-nic! So-nic!"
I lifted my hands in submission and the crowd cheered. I stood from the table and walked up the steps on the raised platform where the radio booth was; just a long table with two radio announcers, Charlie the Horse and Bow the Dog from 162.6 WMRB Freedom Radio. I sat next to them, a microphone in front of me.
"Listeners," Bow began, "we have Mobius's hero, Sonic the Hedgehog on the air with us. Mr. Sonic, do you mind telling us exactly what happened this evening?"
"First, you can just call me Sonic," I said. "It was around 19:00…" I launched into my story. I started from the beginning, when the alarms went off here, at Freedom Fighters HQ. I told about our plan to rescue Tails and Amy. I told how we infiltrated the base. I told everything up to the point when Tails died. When I told about it, it felt like I was being choked. I cleared my throat to cover up my emotion. It was hard to talk about him.
When I reached the part when I turned into Dark Sonic, my head started pounding. It literally felt like someone was pounding inside my head. I stopped talking and put my head in my hand.
"You okay, Mist – I mean, Sonic?" Charlie asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I replied, shaking my head to clear it. "It's just…harder than you might think to talk about it." Despite the headache, I continued, not sparing the details.
It took me an hour to tell the story.
"Thank you for sharing that with us, Mr. Hedgehog," Bow said.
"Sonic," I corrected with mock exasperation, leaning against the table and putting my head in my hand, looking bored.
"My apologies," he replied. "Anyway, I think I can speak for us all here when I say I am very sorry for the loss of your friend."
I side smiled, though grimly, and noticed that the crowd was nodding along with what the announcer had said.
"You two were close, weren't you?" Charlie added.
"Yeah," I said. "He was my best friend." I felt heat behind my eyes and my throat tightened, making my voice crack slightly at the end. I hoped it wasn't noticeable.
"Ah," Charlie replied, looking sympathetic. "Well, it shouldn't have happened. I'm sure the proper justice will be served."
I smiled a little at the thought. "Thank you," I said. Then I sat up "But don't think this changes anything. Losses happen. Granted, they're not always as close as your best friend, but even if Eggman escapes or some other evil arises, I'll still be here to defend Mobius. I'm not letting a death deter me. I'm still Mobius's hero, and nothing is going to change that."
At that, the crowd cheered.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Bow said to the crowd. "I give you Sonic the Hedgehog, hero of Mobius!"
I stood and bowed as the cheering heightened, then went back to my table to sit with Sally and Amy, who had arrived while I was talking. They both looked sympathetic towards me.
"What?" I asked. "Don't give me that look, that's what happened."
"I know, but…" Sally began. "We never heard the full story."
"And it's so sad!" Amy cried, tears in her eyes. No one around us noticed her cry, the music had restarted and my favorite song and theme song, "His World," was playing loudly.
"Don't cry for me," I said, looking away. "I'm not the important one here."
I thought over the story I had just told. Why had it been so hard for me to talk about my dark form? What was with the headache? As if on cue, the pounding returned, and never fully ceased, making it hard for me to enjoy the night.
Hours later, near two in the morning, I was showing off my breakdancing skills to fans when a small explosion went off in the back of the room. People ran from the scene, some screaming, and the sprinklers in that section went off. Then, an announcement came on, seeming to resonate from the explosion.
"This is a reminder to you all," the announcement said in Eggman's voice. "I am not down for the count yet. You may have captured me, but my works are everywhere. Sonic, I'm sure you'll find this out soon enough."
The message concluded with five more explosions around the perimeter of the room. The pounding in my head intensified, but I tried to ignore it by guiding the panicking guests to evacuate and helped some other Freedom Fighters sort through the mess and remove the few injured people.
One thing's for sure, my problems with the Eggman were far from over.
(So there's the end of chapter….3 is it? Yeah. Sorry for the late post, I went camping on Friday and wasn't able to post on Thursday or Friday or whenever my last post was. Hopefully I'll be able to post more often, every day hopefully, but with school winding down I'm not sure how busy I'll be. The first week after school gets out I'll be out of town, so not sure if I'll be able to post then. But after that, it's POSTING GALLORE!
Ok, I can't think, I'm half listening to a SEGAbits update while NOT really listening to it if that makes sense. It's kinda on in the background. So yeah.
I appreciate the reviews! Keep on reading and reviewing; maybe give me some ideas because the story is not set in stone yet, so I will consider your ideas! Until next time!)
~SonicTheHedgehog-Nerd