(Oh. My. Chaos. I have had SO MUCH WRITERS BLOCK lately, it's not even funny. Just kidding, it's hilarious. HA HA HA. No. I'm irritated it's taken me so long. ^^; Anyway, here it is!
Last time on In the Dark…
Sonic, Sally, and Amy set out to investigate the first of the three Light Stones, mysterious orange rocks that have the power to separate the good from the bad. A trap-riddled cave leads the trio into a strange cavern containing the first Stone. However, upon touching it, Dark was released from Sonic's body, and a fierce caged battle followed. Sonic, now seriously injured and unconscious, is now back in Dark's hands, and vice versa. Did the hero survive? Or has even more trouble risen? Read Chapter 7 – The Ultimate Form for more details on this gruesome fight, or keep reading to see the aftermath of the battle in the cavern.)
Sally and Amy stood by a grave, tears in their eyes. Sally laid a vase of flowers on the freshly dug earth, along with a small silver medal with the Freedom Fighters crest on it.
"He was one of my best friends," she whispered.
"He was all of our friends," Amy said quietly.
I frowned at the ground, recounting the battle that Tails was lost in. My twisted reflection in the curved glass of the vase stared back up at me, showing me how I felt…warped and broken.
When I had woken a day after the battle in the caves, I had been Dark Sonic once again, my mind inhabited by the evil entity that's been haunting me for what seemed like ages. Sally and Amy had driven me home, put me in bed, and placed a cool washcloth on my forehead. I was lucky Dark and I both was unconscious, or it would've been the ideal time for him to take control. Because of that fear, I haven't slept in days. It's been two days since I woke, since I was too weak to move, let alone get up. Now, I gingerly touched my fingers to the gauze wrapped around my torso, the gash in my side stitched up and bandaged. Dark doesn't get the medical attention and friends who care; he'd push them all away, anyway. I do, and I'm grateful for that.
I turned away from Tails's grave, shutting out the memories and grief. "So what's our next move?"
Sally turned to look at me. "You still need to heal. You could barely run here."
"But I did run here," I murmured.
"Not at more than a hundred miles per hour. On your terms, that's slow."
I frowned. It was true. It had been too painful to run above one hundred, but I managed. I was lucky, though. I have all seven Chaos Emeralds that I keep on me at all times, which may be risky considering Dark's power. They really help speed up my healing. I was already well enough to walk around, and the scar Dark left on my side will disappear within a week or so.
(I think of a week on Mobius as 5 days. I consider time differences when comparing Earth to his planet, because no planet is alike. There's bound to be some time differences. For example, I imagine a minute as 100 seconds, an hour as 100 minutes, but each second is about the length of half a second on Earth. I'm too lazy to figure out the math behind the 6 years on Earth = 6 months on Mobius thing specified in Sonic X, but oh well. I suppose minutes, seconds, hours, etc., would be longer on Mobius than on Earth…*nerd*)
"C'mon," I said after a long silence. "Let's head home." Without waiting, I ran ahead and back to my house.
While I had been healing in bed, I had considered using all three of the Light Stones combined with the powers of the Chaos Emeralds as a way to stop Dark. Luckily, Sal grabbed the first Stone before we left the caves. I just hoped the power of the Stones and Emeralds wouldn't get corrupted by Dark's power.
I got home minutes later and sat down to read one of the many research books and articles Sally had brought me while in bed. I never did much reading; I never got the time. But this was important enough to research. While looking through a book entitled World of Power, I felt a twinge of a headache. It was Dark, letting me know he was there. I growled, annoyed.
"Do you really have to do that?" I asked him in my thoughts.
Dark shrugged. "Just thought you should know."
"I can feel your presence, it's not that difficult," I thought.
He simply rolled his eyes. "Let a guy have some fun, will ya?"
"No. Especially not you."
"Aw, isn't that a little harsh, bro?" he pouted.
I ignored him and went back to reading. However, it wasn't long before I got bored and turned on the TV. When I have nothing to do or none of my favorite shows are on, I'll watch the news for any Eggman complications. It's not hard to find some plan of his to go and foil. But lately, with him in jail, there wasn't much on other than the ruins of towns being rebuilt and people being deroboticized with the newly developed deroboticizer. Today, however, one of the top stories (other than Chemical Plant Zone being remade) made me do a double take.
"Sonic: Finally Broken?" the headline read.
"Young Freedom Fighter Miles 'Tails' Prower's funeral had a record-breaking turnout earlier this week," a reporter was saying. "Some of the most famous Freedom Fighters attended and the authorities brought Dr. Ivo 'Eggman' Robotnik to see the aftermath of what he can do. One of the many guests there was the world-famous Sonic the Hedgehog. However, could the loss of his closest companion have affected him more than he let on? Check out this footage from the funeral."
A video with the words "amateur footage" in the corner played on the TV screen, showing when I had gone up to pay my respects to Tails. My tenseness was more obvious than I thought. I could hear people murmuring about how uneasy I looked in the background. The camera even zoomed in on my clenched fists. The video showed everything from my yelling at Eggman to me totally losing it. But it wasn't until I raced off in a darkening blue blur when people really started to panic.
The video cut back to the reporter woman.
"Not only did this happen, but witnesses say they saw Sonic allegedly trying to attack Dr. Eggman when he first arrived at the ceremony. Sonic had to be held back by the police to keep from hurting the doctor. What do we make of Mobius's hero's strange behavior? Behaviorist experts say it might be that the grief he's suffered may have finally caused him to go insane. Others say he's turned into a new kind of evil. We cannot confirm either of these rumors, however, and will try to get information as soon as possible.
"In a related story, Freedom Fighter leader Sally Acorn and Amy Rose were seen riding hover scooters three days ago, carrying an unfamiliar-looking hedgehog. Witnesses say the dark blue hedgehog was unconscious and had a large gash in his side, which was bleeding heavily. Some sources claim that this was indeed the 'hero of Mobius,' Sonic, in his dark form, which he transforms into when he gets angry. Does this have any connection to his breakdown at the funeral? We hope to have information over the next few days on Sonic's condition and what may be going on. In other news, we turn to Suzie Frost to give us the scoop on the partnership between rivals Nintendo and SEGA…
I froze, stunned that the press had gotten hold of my situation, but they'd always been nipping at my tail. But even so, after only a couple days of this, they already knew about it. It could become a problem I didn't want to face.
Finally, Sally and Amy arrived.
"What took you so long?" I asked, shaking myself out of my trance.
"Sorry, but we're not the fastest thing alive," Amy said, rolling her eyes.
I smirked a little, but that faded quickly. "You should've seen the news," I said. "The press found out about me."
"Do they know what's going on?" Sally asked.
"Of course not," I rolled my eyes. "No one but us three knows." I realized I had wanted to say "us three and Tails," since he always knew what was going on with me. I felt a twinge of guilt and grief, but I tried to ignore it.
Sally frowned. "We should try and find out more about the Light Stones," she said, changing the subject.
"I've been looking through these books you lent me," I said. "There's nothing in here other than what we already know. Wait, there was one thing. In a news article from Day 27, it said there was a strange glowing stone given to our military. They analyzed it, and gave it to someone to hold on to while they saved it for a later use."
"Do you know who they gave it to?" Amy asked.
"In order to keep the stone safe, it didn't say," I said. "But I guess we could talk to the G.U.N. general to find out, right?"
"Yeah," Sally said. "We should do that. But G.U.N. Headquarters is all the way out in the human regions. Are you sure you can run that far in your condition?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Who said I'm coming?"
"Sonic, you have to come!" Amy said. "It's your story!"
I gave her a look that said to shut up before the fourth wall broke.
"But seriously, you're the only one that knows exactly what's going on and why you need it," Sally said. "We can't explain it, plus you tend to get your way more often than we do."
"Yeah, but the commander doesn't like me very much," I pointed out.
"True, but I have a feeling he'll listen to all three of us," Amy said. "And if he doesn't…" She took out her hammer and put it over her shoulder, smiling about as innocent as she could with a giant mallet in her hands.
I sighed. "Alright…" I finally gave in.
"But let's try to keep the violence to a minimum," Sally said. "We don't want to be blamed for assassinating one of the leading military powers."
Amy just rolled her eyes and put her hammer away.
"Let's head out," I said and stretched, but grimaced as the movement put strain on my side.
Sally looked concerned, but I knew she couldn't tell me to stay home. She needed me for this. So she simply said, "Take it easy, Sonic."
Almost an hour later, we reached the military base. The base was several towns over from where I lived, and those towns weren't small. With my injury slowing me down, it took a lot longer to get there than I was used to. By the time we got there, I was irritated, in pain, and ticked off at just about everything. Already I could tell this visit wasn't going to be pleasant.
The three of us went inside. The lobby looked about as severe as a military lobby could get. The walls were the color of steel and the floor was ebony. Pillars, the same color as the floor, supported the ceiling, standing about 20 feet apart on either side of the way to the front desk. Between the pillars and along the walls stood 10-foot-tall bronze statues of leading military officials who had died in combat. All stood at attention and stared down at us with a stony glare. They gave me the creeps as we walked toward the desk. A human man dressed in a military uniform was leaning back on the chair, his feet up on the desk. Beneath his military hat, he had reddish-brown hair and a scar that reached down from under his hat to the edge of his right eye. The sign on his desk read "Lt. Mark 'Rogue' Anderson." As we approached, he tilted his sunglasses down on his crooked nose, which looked like it had been broken at least once, and looked at us.
"Can I help you?" he said gruffly.
Sally squeaked shyly, so I spoke up. "We're here to see General Abraham Tower."
"Do ya have an appointment?" Lt. Anderson asked, sounding bored.
"No, but it's important," I said.
"No appointment, no visit," the lieutenant said. "Comeback when you've made one."
Sally cleared her throat and worked up the courage to step in. "As leader of the Freedom Fighters, I demand to be let in to see the general."
Lt. Anderson raised an eyebrow. "Whatever," he said. "Fourth floor, hall C, second door on the right."
We used the elevator to get to the fourth floor. It took us several minutes to find the command center, but soon we were knocking on the door.
"Come in," a deep voice said. We did. We were standing in a small room with two out of the four walls made of glass. On one wall was a staircase that led to the command room below, which the windows looked out on. The wall surrounding the staircase was almost completely covered in medals and plaques. General Abraham Tower stood with his back to us, looking out over the command room.
"Um…sir?" Amy asked.
"Yes, what is it?" he said, turning around. Immediately, he glared at me.
I got right to the point. "We're looking for something we believe you once had earlier this year. A glowing orange stone."
"Ah, I may have come across one," he said, raising a white eyebrow. "What do you want with it, hedgehog?"
"We need it for something. It could be life or death for this planet."
"How so?"
I sighed. "I'd prefer it if I kept it to myself."
"Then you don't need the stone."
I took a deep breath and tried to keep calm. "Fine. I'll tell you." Then I launched into the story of what's been going on.
When I finished, my head was pounding and my fists were clenched. Dark hadn't liked me telling General Tower about my problems with him, and I found it hard to keep him in line. The general was nodding along with what I was saying. I could only pray to Chaos that he would listen to me.
After a long silence, he spoke. "I understand, but unfortunately, I don't have the Stone. I suggest you talk to Colonel Higgins. I gave it to him. Hopefully he still has it."
"Where can we find him?" Sally asked.
"Right now he's in a meeting, but that ends in about ten minutes. If you guys wanna wait, I can let him know you want to talk to him."
Sally nodded. "Yes, thank you." Then she and Amy led me out of the room. Once the door closed behind us, I grit my teeth and put a hand to my head.
"Do you need a minute?" Amy asked me.
"Yeah," I managed to say before fighting Dark's control became my only priority. Vaguely, I remembered the two of them leading me out an emergency exit (after Sally asked Nicole to temporarily disable the alarm systems while they snuck me out) and into a dark alleyway. Once there, I fell to my knees, clutched my head, and tried not to scream.
(This chapter was WAY longer than I planned. I was going to include talking to the Colonel in this chapter, but I think I'm going to split it. I promise to update more often! I've just been so distracted, busy, and brain-dead to write. But now I'm out of my writer's block thing. I'm so happy to get this chapter done! Sorry if it was boring. Did you all like the little writing trick I tried at the beginning? I got that from a book I read earlier this year (Fated) that made me think the main character actually died, so it was my goal to do that in this. Hope you all liked please review, follow and favorite, and stay tuned for the next chapter, hopefully coming tomorrow!)
~SonicTheHedgehog-Nerd