Author's Notes:

A new chapter? What? Yes, here it is, and there really is no excuse as to why this took so long to write so I'm not going to list any.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, but the plot.

Make a Stand

It's dark. Again. The walls before her are stone. Again. And she is bound and gagged in a chair. This happened before...right?

The air is a rancid mixture of chemicals and smoke, nothing new. But, this isn't the fresh-ish air that she would get from being outside. It is heavy, stuffy. It slides in through her nose and tortures her lungs, leaving her to plead for the pollution that lurks outdoors..

The monotony of the walls bore her, yet the darkness leaves her wondering, fearful of what it hid. Every one of her senses is stimulated. The taste of blood in her mouth, the fear prickling down her spine, the shadows shifting, emanating from seemingly every corner of the cell.. The air could only be considered putrid, yet normal. Only her heaving and the constant pouring of chemical waste onto the land teases her ears.

"You scared us there, Honey. We can't have you messing up our plans." The voice is as smooth as silk, a light caress compared to her ragged breaths and the roar of falling waste.

The only sign that the lynx even heard what it said was a swish of her tail and an experimental tug at her restraints. Deciding that she's not strong enough to rip them off, she relaxes into her seat, waiting for the lecture to come.

"You know, Honey, you have a special...gift. The...Wishing Queen, if you so recall. A single wish and you can do whatever you'd like. The only drawback: you can't wish for yourself. But that's okay, that works in our favor. We can't have you going around and saving your friends, can we?" And with a snap of his fingers, she is blindfolded.

"So, how do we...resolve this problem?" He drawls the question out, each word laced with the hint of an aristocratic accent. "No answer, eh? Well I'll tell you the answer anyways. We...how do we put it...kill you. However, you wished that impossible. So, we need to strip you of this...power."

The lynx absorbed this information without reacting in the slightest. From years of fighting, she knows exactly what villains looks for in their threats. A slight shudder, an intake of air, even the slightest enlarging of the eyes; they get some perverted satisfaction from such miniscule acts of fear. A satisfaction she has no intention of giving them.

"Nothing to say, eh? Well, we'll just leave you be. You—he turns to look at some lackey standing in the background—cut off the clean air supply." The crony runs off, leaving the figure alone with Honey for the time being.

"You know, we are going to torture you, and by the end of it all, you'll be begging to hand off your powers to someone, anyone else." Turning on his heel, the man walks away, smirking into the darkness.

~.~

For any moron who believes the opposite, keeping your mouth shut when you are being tortured against your will is not easy.

Honey had, for a while, been that moron. She'd taunted her torturer, claiming that she could take anything that he could throw at her. Boy was she wrong!

By now, the girl had fallen out of consciousness from sheer pain more than once. Currently the knife dangles above her throat, just begging her to cry out, to plead for mercy.

"I wonder, if you can no longer voice your wishes, will you still be the Wishing Queen?" She didn't answer. This isn't a children's show where defiance takes the villain aback; here, defiance is punished by more pain.

"No answer? Guess we'll have to see for ourselves." The knife slashes across her throat, not deep enough to kill—never deep enough to kill—just enough to cause a hoarse scream.

"So, make a wish." She doesn't do anything, but deep down her body pleads for relief. She can't wish anything for herself, so what could she wish to rid her of this man? This bastard who is currently slicing up her throat.

"I wish that you could do what you enjoy." Looking up at the man with pleading eyes, she prays that her desires do not have to be be auditory for them to work.

"Maybe I should just kill you. I'll be right back." And he is gone. But he isn't supposed to kill her; hell, he shouldn't have slit her throat in the first place. So, does this mean that her wishing powers still work?

"I wish people can die." A good wish with good intentions, but she forgets that the only thing keeping her alive is her inability to die, and in her moment of ignorance, death whisks her away.

~.~

"People don't just up and disappear." Mighty grumbles picking his way through what seems to be an ocean of corpses.

"And people don't randomly die when said person does disappear. You know there is something suspicious going on here and its all her fault. I knew we could never trust her." Vector yells as he scoops another three bodies and places them in one of the holes that Julie-Su dug up.

"What do we do with all the people jumping off the mountains and cliffs?" Julie-Su asks worriedly, watching as another horde of people fling themselves off one of the few precipices that Mobius has to offer.

"We'll gather those bodies later. Right now, we have more important things to worry about." Mighty states, not sparing a second glance to an ailing old man.

Vector stops and stares at his long time friend, wondering what happened to him. Mighty used to be one of the biggest advocates of taking his time and helping those in need. Honey isn't one of them. She can protect herself and survive. She isn't some damsel in distress like Mighty makes her out to be. She is her own strong person.

"Like what." Vector challenges, vermillion eyes narrowing.

"Like finding out where Honey is and why all of this is happening." Mighty responds flippantly. By now, the others are just following his lead and acting more like dead weight than anything.

"Nice to see where your priorities lie." Vector hisses, moving a couple more bodies into the makeshift graves.

"Sorry, I can't save people who don't want to be saved."

"And I don't save people who aren't worth saving." And that was the straw that finally broke the camel's back. Mighty turns away.. Vector was a friend, so he won't attack. But, if the croc thinks that he's won, or that Mighty'll forget what he said, that reptile has got another thing coming.

~.~

Even the suicidal seem to not want to get near Eggman; as the armadillo makes his way into Eggman's fortress, the hordes of mindless people start to thin out. The robots pile up into a towering mountain, making it impossible to penetrate the citadel.

That's not what throws him off, what's new about the area is that instead of hiding deep within the stronghold, Eggman sits amongst his robots, seemingly staring off into the distance. He doesn't look intimidated or even worried; he simply sits there nonchalantly and waits as though he has been waiting for a long time.

It suddenly crosses Mighty's mind that he hasn't seen or heard from Sonic or any of the other Freedom Fighters since Honey's arrival. In fact, he had just about forgotten about them. No, he had forgotten about them.

Where are they anyway? The world is falling apart at its seams and the hero of Mobius doesn't even have the gall to come and help. What about the Ultimate Lifeform? He's nowhere to be seen, especially now when the land is littered with overlanders everywhere. This seems like the perfect time for the black hedgehog to rear his ugly head.

But this isn't the time to dwell on where the other heroes are. Something's off; he can feel it. There is something dark, tainted about this world, and the longer it's allowed to thrive, the stronger it gets. And at the rate the taint is spreading, it'll only be days before the taint takes over the world, possibly the universe.

Ignoring his mental hyperbole (could something this foul actually take over a universe? Plus, he's a firm believer in optimism), the armadillo stealthily approaches the man.

Suddenly a new question forms, one of his strength, his limits. Every inch of the perimeter of the citadel is guarded, and there is no doubt that the moment he moves within view, swarms of at least a hundred robots would surround him. But could he take them all down, and even if he did, wouldn't more robots appear only seconds later? Groaning, Mighty sits, racking his mind for any way to penetrate the stronghold.

He couldn't power his way through; he would only exhaust himself and get himself killed. There was no one else to rely on. He no longer worked as part of a team; they had abandoned him long ago. Suddenly, he missed Vector and he wished that all the cruel words that he had spat at the crocodile could be taken back. Vector came up with plans when Knuckles wasn't around, and the only people who'd fight him were Julie-Su and Espio. What the armadillo wouldn't give to have his friends at his side.

But this was no time to mope, and putting on his thinking cap, the armadillo scanned the perimeter more closely, looking for even an inch of free space that he could slide into. None popped out at him at first, but then again, if a way in had been so easy to find, then it would've either been guarded or a trap.

~.~

It took a while, almost an hour of staring at the robots guarding the stronghold, but Mighty finally had it. The robots shifted every half hour. That meant that within another twenty minutes the robots would shift again. But that's not what bothered the armadillo, for the stations were so close together that even during the changes, there wouldn't be enough time for him to enter the fortress.

So the armadillo sat, and waited another couple of hours, until he zoned out and eventually fell asleep.

~.~

It's dark. The walls before him are solid stone. And he is bound and gagged in a chair.

The room smells like her. The blood splattered on the wall looks like hers (he knows it's hers). He can only assume what happened to her.

The stone walls encase him, trap him. They are familiar. They are his friends (they protect him). They are his enemies (they trap him). The armadillo breathes slowly, trying to not let the memories destroy him.

Testing the restraints, the armadillo isn't surprised to feel a slight electrical shock. They wouldn't want him escaping now, would they?

The doors screech open and in walks the man with the blue robe. His walk is slow and deliberate, his robes flowing majestically as he heads to the armadillo.

"It's a shame, Mighty. It truly is. Think of all the power we could have given you." He starts circling Mighty. The armadillo gives another tug at his restraints only to be shocked once again. A low chuckle escapes the hooded figure.

"I don't want your power." He knows it sounds lame and clichéd, but they're the only words he can get out between his gritted teeth. He had to find his way back to her; she might be the only chance at fixing whatever is wrong with their world.

"But what about your parents? You know they're walking around right now. I can even direct them to you if you need me to." He sounds so sure of everything he's saying. As if Mighty would comply with all of this man's demands would he see his parents waiting there for him.

"Your sister, she's not with Eggman either. She has no robotic limbs and she knows who you are." Mighty pushed at his restraints again, and once again, he receives a shock.

"What?" The word comes out dazed.

"You heard me. I could take you to your family. They're all here; they're all waiting for you. Surely you don't want to fail your parents yet again?"

"Death looks so peaceful…" The armadillo muses softly. He pushes at his bindings again, this time making sure to push hard enough to get a strong jolt. The electricity courses through his veins as the armadillo keeps pushing, but the voltage stops once the ropes are sliced off

The man in the blue robe looks in the armadillo's general direction, clutching the dagger he had been hiding in his robe. "Can't have you killing yourself now can we?"

Mighty growls, trying to stand up but is still crippled from the electricity running through his body. He glares at the blue-robed man and walks to him.

"No."

"No?"

"No, I don't want to see my parents. No, I don't want to see my sister. No, I don't need your damned power. And no, you will NEVER manipulate me again." With a force unknown to the blue robed man, Mighty yanks the knife from the aforementioned man's skeletal hand and thrusts it through his chest.

Author's Notes:

Um…hopefully I can update faster this time, since this is the second to last chapter of the actual story.

Review?