Recursion Error
Episode 47- Essence of stabbing a god in the face
There was little for Sorun to think as he regarded the floating metal head in a ball in front of him. Because that was just it: there was nothing. His mind came up blank as he looked at the head. He just plainly didn't know what to think.
What does one do when a floating head floats up to them and starts asking questions? Do they humor it? Scream and run away? Wonder why there's a floating head talking to them in the first place? Sorun didn't know the answers to any of these questions, as the answers were far beyond his mental capacity to grasp.
He did know he didn't want to deal with this, though.
Sorun pointed up and past the head. "Hospital's that way. If you're lucky there's a sanitorium you can admit yourself to," he said to the head before lying back down and closing his eye.
"You imbecile, I do not need medical attention!"
"You sure? You're missing a whole body. Seems pretty medically alarming to me."
There was an angered scoff, followed by Sorun feeling a presence settle next to his head. He opened his eye back up with an annoyed groan as he spotted the floating head right next to his face.
"Why even is there an Overlander here in this city?" he asked him. "It was my assumption this was a Mobian city."
"World's full of exceptions, pal. Some people live with a completely different species than them. Others get to live without a body despite the fact it shouldn't be physically possible. Do the impossible, see the invisible, row, row-" Sorun cut himself off by snapping his spectral arm towards the bubble. Blue claws wrapped around the clear sphere, causing the head to gasp out in surprise as Sorun lifted him up. "Twenty words. You get twenty words to explain why I have to deal with you."
The head's mechanical eyes darted around as they looked at the hand gripping him. He quickly regained what little composure a head could have and spoke out to Sorun. "My name is Dimitri. I come from Angel Island. A grave threat named Enerjak has arrived and I need help."
"... I didn't think you'd actually perfect-score the word limit," Sorun admitted after a long pause passed. He hummed a little and leaned his head back on the grass, his curiosity piqued. "Dimitri... and Enerjak, huh? Those names sound familiar... did Knuckles tell me about them...?"
There was some vague source of familiarity with those names. Sorun could have sworn they were names mentioned back when Knuckles had been explaining echidna lore to him. The problem lied in the fact that Sorun hadn't been paying all that much attention because the history of his people was so confusing. The names definitely rang a bell, though. Somehow. He knew they were relevant, Sorun knew it, and he tried digging deep into his memories to try and pull up everything Knuckles had told of them.
...
...
...
... Nah, he didn't remember.
"Those names mean nothing to me," Sorun said. "I think Knuckles told me about you, but-but I'm not gonna lie, man, I didn't pay much attention. I kinda just tuned him out after a while. I'd have an easier time decrypting the Zodiac Killer's messages than understanding echidna history."
It was almost astonishing how so much confusion could be shown on a metal disembodied head's face. Eventually confusion morphed into slow understanding as the echidna head's mouth set into a deep frown. "You really are an imbecile, aren't you?" he asked.
"I like to think I'm the smartest idiot on the planet. Unfortunately, insulting me will get you less than nowhere." Sorun lifted the head up more, much to his protest. "Farewell, Dimitri," Sorun blandly stated. "Go bother someone else."
Before the echidna head could get another word in edgewise, Sorun's spectral arm threw him. Where, he didn't know- he hadn't been looking. He didn't care, though, as long as the head was out of his hair.
Deeply sighing, Sorun settled back into a comfortable position on the ground. Somebody else could deal with the freaky cyborg head or whatever that was. Maybe Sonic would find him. Sorun hoped Sonic would find him. He coped with weird stuff well. Floating heads were right up Sonic's alley, not Sorun's.
No, sir, Sorun wouldn't be dealing with that at all. All he'd be doing is sitting here, relaxing and enjoying the day to his heart's content without a care in the world. Maybe he'd go and talk with Nicole later. That sounded nice. In fact, it sounded like the perfect idea-
"I have absolutely no idea what a zodiac is, but it is imperative that you at least lead me to somebody that can be of assistance!"
"..." Sorun deeply inhaled, and then slowly exhaled. "It takes a special kind of conviction to show your face after getting yeeted like you just did. For that, you have an infinitesimal amount of respect." Sorun sat up to lock his eye with the red eyes of the head right in front of him. "But that's all ya got," he continued, "so I'll give you one chance to tell me why I should care about your problem."
"The whole world will be doomed if you do nothing."
"As far as reasons go, that's a pretty solid one." With a groan Sorun stood up to his feet. Seemed like there was no getting out of this one if it was that severe- which it probably was. Floating heads didn't just come out of nowhere to undersell global threats, after all. "Hold, please," Sorun politely requested, before turning around to the camera in the tree. He frantically waved at the camera with his blue, spectral arm, and in less than a second Nicole's body appeared next to them.
"Sorun?" she began. "Do you require assistance with-?"
Nicole wasn't able to finish before Sorun placed the head-sphere in the surprised AI's arms.
"Here, take this. His name's Dimitri. He's a talking head. He's your problem now." After handing the head off Sorun sat back down and leaned his back against the tree. Nicole, meanwhile, began trading odd looks with Dimitri. "Take him to Sally. Or Sonic. Or somebody else other than me. I don't care. Just get him out of my sight, please."
"Well... I suppose that is a reasonable request..." Nicole hesitantly stated, still eying the head in her hands with a mixture of curiosity and wariness. "I am afraid Sonic is currently indisposed at the moment, however."
"Finally ate himself into a food coma eating all those chili dogs, huh? I told him those things were poison."
"No," Nicole denied with a shake of her head, "as of this moment he is occupied conversing with Sally on how to deal with Dr. Robotnik, who is currently outside the city's defensive barrier-"
Sorun Tricked away.
"Sometimes I wonder how such a smart guy like Robotnik can also be an absolute moron. It's the wisdom thing. It's gotta be."
It wasn't really news for Sorun to know that Eggman absolutely loathed the fact that everybody from Knothole he captured managed to slip through his fingers and make a home in the nanite city they stole from him. He himself saw that sometimes he'd send a ship from his fleet to the city just to pelt them with ordinance from on high, probably out of spite. The dome-like force field that protected the city made it so it was little more than an annoyance more than anything else, but it made it pretty obvious Robotnik was frothing at the mouth in rage for what they pulled off.
All the more power to everybody in Knothole who collectively gave him a middle finger everyday by thriving in New Mobotropolis. Not a term Sorun would ever share with anybody he cared about, of course. At least not so crudely. But it's what he felt.
It absolutely bewildered Sorun that, after all that, the mad scientist would come here personally to carry out some stupid scheme, but if it meant him getting another shot at saving some years of life by killing him now so Sorun didn't have to hunt down that last Emerald, hey, he'd take it. And as a added bonus it got him away from the talking head and whatever nonsense he was carrying around with him.
"Still, fate of the world, huh...? Eh. I'll let the others deal with it. More their thing. I just wanna cut Eggman's head off."
So, after a series of Tricks, that left him here. Just on the outside of the wall that surrounded Knothole, in a small grass field. He didn't even need to look around long to spot Eggman in... something. Some machine that looked so ridiculous it made Sorun do a double-take.
It looked like some kind of weird robotic crustacean thing. A robotic red shell, not unlike a hermit crab's shell, with multiple mechanical tentacles waving out of it. Eggman himself was sitting out in the open inside a pilot's seat in the opening of the shell.
"Well, Nicole said that Sonic was busy getting briefed by Sally on how he's to proceed... which'll probably get accelerated once they learn I booked it out here," Sorun thought to himself as he manifested Yamato in his grasp. "Got seconds at best. And he's got no Chaos Emerald protecting this one. I'll make it quick."
There was no hesitation as Sorun pulled Yamato in and out of its sheath in rapid succession. Judgement Cut after Judgement Cut consumed and cut away all the mechanical tentacles writhing outside of the robot's shell. Eggman himself barely had any time to gawk at all the severed, disabled tentacles before Sorun Tricked right in front of him on the lip of the metal shell.
"Tell me, 'cause I really wanna know," Sorun began before Robotnik could get a word in. "The hell was your plan here?"
"Hrrgh..." The previous shock transformed to ire, and a frustrated growl left Robotnik's throat as he looked up at Sorun. "None of you would even have this city if it wasn't for that infernal AI Nicole," he angrily grumbled up at Sorun. "My plan was to upload a computer virus I had coded to end her so I could finally attack the city."
"Shit plan. I've seen what's she's capable of in that digital world, and trust me, it wouldn'ta worked," Sorun said.
"Well, we'll never know now, will we?" Eggman snarked. "You cut my Egg Nautilus' tentacles up before they could even do anything." He leaned back in his seat, frown still on his face. He oddly just looked more disappointed than angry now. "I get you're the practical type, but there's an order of operations to these battles you have to adhere to if there's any fun to be had in it. I took your arm and eye away, Sorun, not your brains, and you need as much of those as you can get."
"Ha-ha, die."
No sooner had the word "die" left his throat did Sorun stab forwards with the katana. No hesitation. No remorse in his eye as he plunged the sword's tip straight towards Eggman's face. It'd approached so quick that Eggman hadn't even had time to make an expression of terror as the sword neared him.
Unfortunately, the sword never made contact. Because a familiar voice just had to shout up at Sorun to make him freeze right before he'd plunged Yamato into Eggman's irritable face.
"Sorun, stop!"
Oh, he'd stopped. The point of the sword was mere millimeters away from Eggman's large, pointed nose, but he'd stopped. Eggman, meanwhile, head let out a heaving sigh of relief, while Sorun's face became strained in anger. Slowly, the both of them turned their heads, Sorun's right and Eggman's left respectfully, towards the voice.
It was Sonic. He was down on the ground in front of the Egg Nautilus, hands on his hips and foot tapping rapidly against the ground with an unhappy expression. And for some reason his green eyes were glaring up at Sorun, and not Eggman. A fact that made Eggman begin to grin, irritating Sorun all the more.
"What!?" Sorun shouted down to the blue hedgehog. "What do you mean stop!?"
"I mean stop!" Sonic shouted back up, and Sorun almost felt insulted that he had the gall to actually sound upset at him. "What are you even doing here, Sorun!? You're hurt! You're suppose to be resting in the hospital, not out here fighting Eggman! Get down from there!"
Sorun couldn't believe what he was hearing. "What the- no!" he shouted in refusal.
"Sorun, you have one eye!"
"And I'm still trying to figure out how many eyes you have!" Sorun tore his gaze away from Sonic and looked to Eggman. "Seriously, how many eyes do hedgehogs have?" he asked. "You see what I mean, right? The weird thing going on with their eyes?"
He couldn't help but be surprised when Eggman offered him a helpful shrug. "I'll be honest, Sorun, I don't know, either. I have a running theory that it's an evolutionary trait meant to give them higher depth perception, though I've yet to discover if the eyes are separate or just a single organ with two irises. Or if this theory is even true for that matter."
"... How does squishing a pair of eyes together give someone better depth perception?"
"Biology isn't perfect, Sorun. There's a reason I stick to machines."
"This is getting me nowhere." Shaking his head, Sorun focused back down on Sonic. "Can you just give me, like, a single second!? I'll get down after!"
"No! You'll get down now!" Sonic demanded. "You know how much you keep stressing everybody out by doing this!? I get it, you don't like being chained down, believe me I get it, but you gotta slow it down!"
"Yeah, Sorun," Eggman added, face-splitting grin on his face as he leaned back with his hands behind his head, "that's rather rude of you to be so inconsiderate of your friends. They're just worried about you."
With a barely-contained growl, Sorun reared back at Eggman and hissed out, "You stay out of this." He paused, eye blinking as he realized something. "Why am I even arguing about this?"
He stabbed forwards with the sword again, though this time Eggman didn't even flinch away from the relaxed pose and smug look he was giving Sorun. The pale teen didn't bother wondering why that was, although he got his answer when the tip of the sword was once again stopped millimeters away from the Doctor's face. It wasn't because Sorun had paused like last time, though.
No, this time the sword was stopped when a gloved hand reached out and grasped the blade before it pierced Eggman.
A deep, heaving sigh escaped Sorun as he slowly looked upwards. Sonic, in a burst of speed that had been all but imperceptible to Sorun's eye, had appeared right in front of him and was keeping a firm grip on the blade of the sword. And he was still maintaining that serious glare he was shooting Sorun, which only served to make Sorun that much more irritated.
"Hey. Just what do you think you're doing?" Sorun questioned the hedgehog in a low, even tone.
"Stopping you from making a terrible mistake," Sonic answered back in a tone equal with Sorun's. "Put the sword down, and go back into the city."
"Better idea. Let go of the sword so I can end the war in approximately two seconds."
"You're gonna end the war by taking a life?"
"Oh, come on! Do you hear yourself!?" Sorun shouted at him. "This is Eggman! There's not a single government in my world that would hesitate to kill him for a fraction of the things he did!"
"Well, you're not on your home world right now. You're on Mobius. And that isn't how we do things." Sonic shoved the sword away from Eggman. Sorun had stumbled back a bit, his eye still affixed to Sonic even with the blade held at his side. "Besides," Sonic continued, "we need him."
There probably wasn't a stranger sentence that could have been uttered to Sorun to make him as confused as what Sonic just told him. It was so unexpected that Sorun had nearly dropped Yamato and the scabbard held in his left hand, and he'd gone from glaring at Sonic to looking at him with a completely bewildered look. Even Eggman seemed completely floundered by what he just said, his hands falling away from his head as his spectacled eyes looked up at the blue Mobian.
"You... need me?" he repeated. "What exactly is running through your rodent-sized brain, rodent?"
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm with Eggman on this," Sorun said. "What in the world do we need him for?"
"That talking head you met, Dimitri. Nicole brought him to me and Sal at the same time she told us you ran out here on your own," he said. "And he told us that Enerjak's back. So we need Egghead's help."
Some small part of Sorun had been hoping that Sonic could somehow pull some justifiable reason for why the hell they needed Eggman of all people's help in dealing with whoever that person even was. Sorun didn't feel any satisfaction from it, though. In fact he felt even more lost than he had before, and all it caused in him was frustration. He genuinely couldn't understand why he thought they needed the help of the man who ruined the entire world. For some random guy named Enerjak no less.
"Shoulda fucking locked myself and Eggman in a pocket dimension before he had a chance to stop me."
Even now Sorun still wanted to, but he couldn't when Sonic was this close. And he didn't have any illusion of being able to pull it off now, not when Sonic was actively against it. The guy could move faster than the electrical signals needed for Sorun to make conscious movement. He couldn't do anything. And that just made it all the more frustrating for Sorun, knowing Eggman was right there, mere feet away and completely vulnerable, and Sorun couldn't do a thing about it because Sonic wouldn't let him.
"We could do that. Alternatively," Sorun offered as he pointed his sword at Eggman, "you let me drop the crackpot over there and we just go deal with it ourselves."
Rolling his eyes, Sonic placed a finger on the sword and pushed it down back to Sorun's side. "A, we don't take things that far, and B, that's a mondo bad idea. We can't just 'go up' against someone like Enerjak. Not without some major preparation, at least."
"Why," Sorun angrily hissed out, "is this Enerjak guy such a big deal that we need Eggman's help?"
"Didn't Knuckles tell you about him?"
"Probably. Refresh my memory."
"Ah, for the..." Sonic's ears flattened against his head briefly in irritation, and at the same time he'd rubbed at his nose. His ears straightened back up as he took a deep breath to explain, during which Eggman had leaned forwards in interest to listen to him. "Okay. Enerjak: literal god. No good. If we fight him, we lose. If Eggy fights him, he loses hard."
"Watch it, Sonic," Eggman warned, though was quieted down when Sonic held a finger to his lips.
"Tut-tut-tut, the sane people are speaking," Sonic said, and then turned back to Sorun. He'd quickly smirked for a single second when he heard a growl of indignation from the scientist behind him. "Look, bottom line, every side's cooked goin' up against him alone. So as bad as it sounds, and I know it sounds bad, we gotta truce up for a bit."
Sorun scoffed. "A god? Sonic, come on," he said with a shake of his head. "He can't be that tough-"
"He is!" Sonic refuted with a raised voice. "Look, I-I don't know all the details, okay? It's mostly Knuckles that dealt with him all the time, but he went to Angel Island the other day to check on things and we haven't been able to raise anybody there, Julie-Su and the rest of the Chaotix are freaking out, it-it's a whole big mess, and you running off like this isn't helping anybody."
There was a beat of silence as Sorun paused. He thought over Sonic's words, and slowly Yamato and its sheath began to dissipate. "Knuckles is...?" he hesitantly asked, causing Sonic to shrug his shoulders and sigh.
"We don't know. Best case he lost all ways of contacting us, worse case he got captured by Enerjak," he said. "Sally's thinking of sending me and Tails up to the island along with a drone Nicole made so we can all scope things out. So I am asking you to please go back to the hospital so everyone can focus on the literal god coming for all of us."
"... Fine. Maybe this actually is a more pressing issue." He had serious, serious doubts it was until the detail with Knuckles came up. He'd seen the echidna in action enough. Suffice it to say he was... tough. Extremely so. Up there with some of the best fighters he met in this world. Hearing something bad might have happened to someone as capable as him did more than give credence to the threat. It all but confirmed it for Sorun.
But still, a god? That alone was too vague a word for Sorun to go on, which made it so he couldn't accurately gauge how big a threat Sonic was implying here. At the very least, someone powerful. Scary powerful if it was making Sonic desperate enough making truces with Eggman of all people.
"I still think you're overhyping this guy by a wide margin, Sonic, but... sure. I'll go," Sorun agreed with a small sigh. "On the condition," he added, halting Sonic from forming a relieved face, "that I go to where Sally is to check things out. Alright? I'll go to the hospital afterwards."
"Seriously, Sor- ugh, fine, sure, works for me, but you're gonna have to take it up with Sal," Sonic reluctantly agreed with a wave of his hand. "Just please go back into the city. I gotta hash out terms on old sunny-side down here."
Another scoff, smaller this time, left Sorun as his eye drifted towards Robotnik. The guy was practically eating all this up from that wide grin on his face, and Sorun knew he was doing it just to mock him for the fact he couldn't kill him because of Sonic. Sorun could practically feel the smug wafting off of him.
Another chance lost, then. But if Sonic was to be believed, which Sorun doubted, this was more important.
"Yeah," Sorun airily muttered as he began turning around. "You do that."
"Until next time, Sorun," Robotnik mockingly called after him in a faux-friendly voice. "Do try and get better for next time, you hear?"
Sorun didn't bother to deign him with a response before Tricking away.
"Ludicrous. All of this is just... so ludicrous."
That was Sorun's sole opinion on the matter as he stared up at a metal ceiling. The room was somewhere in the science center, one of the buildings in New Mobotropolis Nicole had built. In particular this room was a communications hub of sorts, or a makeshift one at least given the current situation. He wasn't actually doing anything, though. He was just in the back of the room sitting flat on his back on a bench, idly kicking his crossed legs every so often with his hands tucked under his head.
The teen turned his head a bit to look at the people in the room that were actually doing something. Sally was in front of a large computer and a bunch of monitors, one of which was displaying drone footage of Sonic and Tails on the floating island- which, according to Dimitri, was approaching the city. Not in of itself a good sign. Nicole was in the room concentrating on controlling the drone. Julie-Su was pacing around looking like a nervous wreck, likely, Sorun presumed, because of Knuckles. Dimitri was just... there. Existing. Kind of like Sorun was right now.
If Sally was upset at him, she wasn't showing it, probably because she was too focused on what was going on. He'd asked to stay for a bit and she'd just immediately ordered him to sit on the bench and do nothing, and if he disobeyed her Nicole would force him back into the hospital.
Nicole wouldn't even speak with him. He'd like to think it was because she was occupied controlling the drone. He also didn't really believe this was wholly true, and that maybe he'd pushed things too far with rushing after Eggman like that. Even she had limites, after all. Sorun feared he may have pushed them too much.
"I get they're worried for my health, justifiable worry admittedly if not for the wrong reasons, but goddamn, I'm not gonna fall apart from moving a little bit. And can they really blame me for taking a shot at Eggman?" The answer, apparently, was yes. "Really makes me feel like that one guy in the room nobody wants to deal with. Like I'm a liability or something. Christ, I'm not fuckin' fragile."
He didn't even know what was getting to him worse: that or this whole Enerjak situation. A situation which had come completely out of left field, right out of the blue. A threat that was apparently so great everybody was dropping everything and scrambling to deal with him. A freshly-elected council was already mobilized. Guards around the city were at the ready. It honestly felt like everyone was preparing for war.
"Over one guy I'm just hearing about now, though? Isn't it overkill? And god? Really?" He still didn't know what that implied. The word "god" meant a lot of things, too many to simply list. Sorun didn't even know if a title like that was applicable to the guy, even if everybody was acting like it did. Was he omnipotent? Omniscient? How far did his powers span, if he even had any? What was he, actually? Or who? He didn't know anything other than this was a threat that originated from Angel Island.
Because of course it did.
"Angel Island..." Sorun thought. "Fucking... echidna. Why do they always gotta complicate everything with their mere fucking existence?"
It all boiled down to a confusing mess for Sorun. He didn't know what was what, nobody was talking to him because they were either so preoccupied they couldn't afford the time or were too frustrated at his actions, or both, and he was sitting here twiddling his thumbs like the kid shoved in the corner at school.
He tried not thinking about Eggman, because thinking about how Sorun failed to kill him again on top of everything else was too much.
Some movement in the corner of Sorun's one eye drew his attention. He turned his head more to the side, enough to see the floating head stop next to him. A head that really did just look like Knuckles if Knuckles was a robot head, down to the mechanical dreadlocks. It, he, Dimitri, somehow looked old past all the electronics, though. Sorun couldn't quite pin down why. Or even what the hell he was.
So much was happening and he didn't have a clue on any of it...
"Hey there, Dimitri," Sorun muttered out in greeting. "It seems I vastly underestimated just how severe your problem was, because everybody's freaking out over it. Thanks for bringing all this trouble."
"You would rather I have remained silent and left you all in ignorance?"
Sorun snorted through his nose. "Sarcasm just flies right over your head, don't it? Guess it wouldn't be too hard, seein' as how low to the ground you are."
"Pah! Sarcasm," Dimitri all but spat. "The-"
"The last refuge of the witless, yeah, yeah, I know it's the lowest form of verbal combat," Sorun interrupted with a roll of his eye. "Doesn't stop me from using it as my go-to, though. I try to mix it up sometimes, but it's easy to default to it. Doesn't help how great a coping mechanism it is."
The floating echidna head paused. The red, mechanical eyes he had widened in surprise at the human. "That... you said what I wanted to say better than I would have said it," he admitted. "I'll admit, you confuse me. You strike me as someone that is somehow wise beyond their years and yet not wise enough at the same time. It's a confusing conundrum."
"Told ya already. I'm the smartest idiot," Sorun said. "Put too many points in wisdom and not enough in intelligence."
"Er... right." A beat passed. "'Sarcasm, the last refuge of the witless.' That quote. I quite like it. Is it yours?"
Sorun shook his head. "Nah. Stole it from a video game character. Like everything else." He sighed through his nose. "Don't even know if I got it right; I only ever heard it once and it's been a while. It was from this scientist guy in an RPG. Had a cool story, lots of themes about the devaluation of human life and real-life parallels to the soul-crushing reality of working in a corporation all alongside a really quirky cast of characters. You play video games? You seem like a guy who plays video games."
Dimitri's expression turned lost. "I... I'm afraid I don't follow a single thing you just said."
"..." Sorun turned his head back up to the ceiling. "You've lived a sad life, dude."
"On that, I sadly say we must agree." Dimitri's artificial eyes looked focused in on Sorun's body. Specifically, the blue, spectral arm replacing his lost arm, which was currently folded under the teens head. "What exactly are you?" Dimitri finally asked. "That arm. It's not natural. Just what is it? Who are you?"
"Question of the hour." Sorun turned his head back to Dimitri. "I'll tell ya if you give me the details on this Enerjak guy everyone's panicking over. Deal?"
The first step to unraveling this mess, Sorun supposed, was getting to the bottom of the mystery surrounding this Enerjak guy. Offering his own origin story in exchange didn't seem like a big price. Not like he cared about keeping himself a secret, unlike other things about himself. At the very least he hoped to get a rundown of his abilities.
Fortunately, Dimitri seemed to be in agreement with Sorun's logic. "That is fair enough," he decided. "Very well. Enerjak, simply put, is an entity who resides in the Chaos Force. I myself know very little on how he came to be, though I do know that, for all his power, he cannot sustain a physical form to interact with this world. He requires a compatible vessel. I myself was at one point Enerjak."
Any other time Sorun might have made some over-exaggerated response. Made a sarcastic response about how he sounded more like a ghost than a god, make a parallel to some piece of fiction from his world. Something like that. But Sorun was too mentally exhausted to do anything but slowly breath out. "So how'd that happen?" he asked.
"I was a young and ambitious echidna. For various reasons that are irrelevant to the conversation, I had infused myself with the power of a Chaos Emerald."
Sorun's interest was piqued with that statement. "Really?" he asked in a slow drawl. "I assume this was back when there were a lot more of the things, before the... great joining or whatever when they became the seven. So you juiced up on a lot of Chaos energy and became... what, little-g god, big-G God, what's the power scaling, what are we actually dealing with?"
"As Enerjak, my power was near-omnipotent," Dimitri informed him, making Sorun groan out. "The power allowing me to remain as Enerjak was lost to me, however, some part in thanks to... certain events that had transpired with the current Guardian."
"... Y'mean Knuckles?"
"Yes, that's correct. I harbor no ill will towards him. It's only afterwards I realized being Enerjak had corrupted certain priorities of mine, but such things do not matter at present," Dimitri said. "With a body aged hundreds of years and with no Chaos energy to sustain it, I was forced to undergo a full cybernetic conversion so save my life. My current... disembodied state," he'd grumbled out in a low voice, "was due to the demented curiosity of what can only be described as a mad scientist. An echidna by the name of Dr. Finitevus currently located on Angel Island who, until as of late, we'd thought had the interest of the echidna species at heart. Obviously we were incorrect."
"Ah, great, just what we needed. Another psycho-doc. And he's an echidna to boot, of course..."
"Somehow, in some way, he has found a way to reincarnate Enerjak," Dimitri continued in a grave tone. "I can't say I know for certain what his or Enerjak's true goals are, but I do know it can only mean disaster for all on Mobius. But I cannot hope to do anything in this meager state, and with the Guardian currently missing, I had no choice but to seek the Freedom Fighters out for help."
A small hum left Sorun's throat. "Alright, so... the lore is you juice up with Chaos energy, become Enerjak, get knocked out of the Enerjak state and get borged, crazy scientist guy on floating island brings Enerjak back somehow for some nefarious and nebulous purpose, got it, don't need any more details." He wasn't sure he even wanted more details past that. His brain hurt just catching up with that much. "Man, it figures," Sorun mumbled out as he lifted his right blue hand up above his face. "Some random echidna beams some Chaos energy into himself, and he gets omnipotence. I go out of my way to eat Chaos Emeralds, and the strongest thing I get from that is a nifty sword." He clicked his tongue in annoyance. "'Least I get to keep my sense of self. This Enerjak thing don't sound like that good a deal."
"You... what?" Sorun tore his gaze from his hand to the cybernetic head floating next to him. "You've absorbed Chaos Emeralds?" Dimitri repeated in a disbelieving tone. "How? Such a thing should not be possible. To absorb Emeralds in their entirety is... is unthinkable."
"Well, start thinking," Sorun retorted. "I don't have a link to the Chaos Force like everything else. Not even a weak link like most everyone else has. Just nothing at all. Zip. Nada. I'm a void-type."
"That's even more impossible," Dimitri claimed, though he sounded believing from the slight awe to his male, electronic voice. "Chaos energy fuels all life. It's present everywhere, in every facet of the universe, of the multiverse! It's ubiquitous in its nature. Nothing, absolutely nothing, should be able to exist without even the weakest link to the Chaos Force." His red eyes stared intently at Sorun's one blue eye. "If you did not have a link to the Chaos Force, you would be dead. Your cells would not function. Organs wouldn't be able to operate. Your very soul wouldn't exist. Life requires Chaos energy to function."
"Take it up with my home universe. Apparently it gets to defy all the rules." Dimitri quieted down at that, prompting Sorun to elaborate. "Yeah, I'm not from this zone. I'm from one that's apparently so far away they needed the power of all the Chaos Emeralds just to get there. That's how removed from the multiverse Earth is." He formed Yamato in his spectral hand's grasp, causing Dimitri to bob back a bit in shock. "The ability to get powers from Chaos Emeralds is a trait unique to my entire species. I'm the only one that ever got the chance to utilize it since I'm the only one that's ever been on Mobius, or anywhere else with Chaos energy for that matter." The sword disappeared, followed by the hand flopping down and hanging limply off the bench Sorun laid on. "To answer your question, I'm a human from Earth. Either call me that or an Earthling, though that latter identifier never really seems to take off all that much." He lifted his head up a bit. "And don't mix me up for an Overlander. I don't like being compared to them."
"Fascinating..." Dimitri's head leaned in closer to Sorun as he rested his head back down on the bench. "The sheer amount of Chaos energy in your body must be... staggering. Truly astounding. You do not even seem to be suffering any debilitating mental side effects due to your abilities, unlike the corruption of Enerjak..."
"From the powers, no. The stress of living, eh..."
"If only Albion hadn't been decimated by Eggman's fleet. I would have been quite interested to learn what the scientists there would have made of you," Dimitri said, making Sorun's eye flash to him. "Echidna resided there. They had a greater understanding of Chaos energy and its effects on living beings than anyone else on the planet I would think. I'm sure they would have been very interested to meet somebody as you."
A slight frown found its way on Sorun's face. "Don't take this the wrong way, Dimitri, but asides from Knuckles and Julie-Su, your entire species gives me a migraine. This whole Enerjak kerfuffle is happening because you echidna screwed around with Chaos energy. Why would I ever trust some pencil neck echidna to get anywhere near me with the intent to study me?" That just wasn't happening. He'd be liable to kill anybody that tried, not just for his safety, but because he plain didn't trust them not to mess up somehow and endanger multiple people around them. Like his friends. And Aurora and Athair's actions still rang heavy in his head.
He wouldn't say he hated the echidna species, but it was hard for him not to dislike them for how much their presence inconvenienced him. It was a drastic generalization Sorun tried to avoid. He didn't do a very good job.
"Perhaps I was too forwards," Dimitri admitted as Sorun sat up on the bench. "And, in truth, your fears are not unfounded. In terms you would probably use... our track history is not the greatest."
"You don't say?" Sorun shook his head, lightly scoffing as he looked up. Sally was still at the computer, now giving orders to Sonic and Tails on the island. Nicole was still focusing on the drone. "They're busy."
"Yes," Dimitri agreed, and then turned to Sorun. "I sense things are tense between you and the rest of the Freedom Fighters."
"Tense is putting it lightly. Nicole is getting ready to put me in a straight jacket and toss me in a padded cell until I heal from injuries I got in a fight because everyone's worried a slight breeze will atomize me."
He glanced up a bit after finishing speaking. He spotted Nicole still holding a hand to her head while focusing on controlling the drone. He also saw one of her eyes was half-opened and looking at him. She didn't look very pleased at what she heard, either. Sorun wasn't hopeful enough to assume it was just because she was concentrating on the drone.
Making an unsettled hum, Sorun turned back to Dimitri. "She'd probably be right to. Can't rightly blame them for the way they keep reacting around me," he continued, noting from the corner of his eye that Nicole's own opened eye widened just the slightest bit. "I don't like worrying them all the time like this, but it's hard to just sit still and do nothing. All this power, Dimitri, and sometimes it feels like I can't do anything with it."
The green eye that was watching Sorun continued to be trained on him for a few seconds after he finished speaking, and then it closed as Nicole turned her head back up to the front of the room. Her expression didn't change even the smallest amount, causing Sorun to make a sigh.
"Dunno if I saved it or not."
"So what do you plan on doing?" Dimitri questioned him.
Looking back to the floating head, Sorun said, "You know, believe it or not, I actually do think swinging a katana at a literal god would be the stupidest thing I've ever done and would like to avoid this entirely. And I'm sure everybody else would, too, since I'm a bit busted at the moment. What'll actually happen, though..." Sorun blew a lock of black hair out of his face and leaned back on the bench. "I don't know. I'm just gonna see where the chips fall and go with it. Plannin' ain't my style."
"Surely with all your power a more active role in this is warranted," Dimitri argued.
"Maybe, maybe not." Sorun shrugged. "We'll see."
Dimitri didn't look overly satisfied on Sorun's answer based on the scowl his mechanical face wore. "Then I hope for all our sakes you end up making the right choice."
Sorun remained silent as he watched Dimitri's head float off towards the front of the room where everyone else was. A commotion towards the biggest monitor Sally was sitting in front of had drawn everybody's attention, Sorun's included. And it was from there that Sorun finally got to see what all the fuss over.
There he was, right there on the drone's camera. Right in front of a small army of echidna, most of which Sorun saw sporting various cybernetic bits on their body. Part of that Dark Legion whatever he'd only paid half attention to. He was less focused on them and more on Enerjak, who was standing right in front of him. Seeing him alone made Sorun think everybody may have been right to worry about him.
He couldn't see his face. He had some kind of blue outfit on fitted with gold, regal-looking pieces. Even the helmet he wore that obscured his face looked to be made of solid gold, and also resembled something the Egyptian pharaohs of old from his world would wear. Something that brought great confusion to Sorun.
"Guy looks like he walked straight out of the pyramids with that getup, right down to the gold miniskirt and weird circle neck thing." An unsettled feeling began to grow in him when he actually saw the so-called god at work. A green aura of energy continually flowed around him. Cannon fire from tanks and lasers from weapons bouncing harmlessly off of him. Sorun had to watch as Enerjak effortlessly did little more than wave his hand and cause the legion of echidna in front of him to change. Just change, instantly, with but a single gesture. In a single blink of an eye Sorun watched as the echidna he fought changed from being cyborgs to full flesh-and-blood echidna. "So we got nigh-invulnerability to conventional arms and heavy munitions, the ability to selectively disintegrate anything just by looking at it, ability to regenerate damn-near anything on anybody just by thinking about it if he managed to de-cyborg all those echidna... holy fuck, he actually is omnipotent. Or at least really close to it. Teleporting, too?" He wondered as he saw some of the echidna he'd changed be enveloped in a green aura and shoot up into the sky. "Or at least some form of fast travel he can use on others, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him use raw teleportation at this point. Probably doesn't even have a range limit like my Tricks do."
None of what he saw just was good. He could say one thing for certain: nobody had undersold just how dangerous he was after all. Because Sorun was starting to get nervous looking at him. "Maybe Sonic was right to ask for Dr. Robotnik's help after all. Can they even beat this guy?" Sorun looked down at his spectral hand. "Could Yamato even hurt him? Maybe..." He glanced up at the screen again. "Dimitri became Enerjak from infusing himself with Chaos energy from an Emerald, right? But he's here, and Enerjak's there. Dimitri himself said he's a separate entity. So what does that make him, some... some concept of sorts? One that needs a host to exist?" Eyes back down to the arm. "Yamato can separate concepts..."
"Why is this even a matter of debate!?" Sorun was interrupted from his silent musings when a raised voice caused him to look up. The voice had come from Dimitri, who had risen his head up to be at eye-level with Nicole. "If you truly have limitless control of the nanites in this city, than construct a weapon to aid us in defeating Enerjak!"
The look Nicole shot at Dimitri was one Sorun had never seen on her before. He thought he'd seen her be angry before. From that time she'd been upset at him for avoiding her, or more recently for pushing himself too far despite everybody asking him to dial it back. Looks of exasperation and frustration. He thought he'd seen the worse she could do be thrown at him.
But what he saw right now, that look she was giving Dimitri, she'd never given him that look before. Something that looked like genuine anger. Eyes intensely narrowed, posture rigid, teeth bared. She'd never used anything even close to that on Sorun. She looked downright scary.
"I will not," Nicole asserted in a low and threatening tone, "devote the nanites or this city to weapons of any kind."
Unlike Sorun, Dimitri didn't even seemed fazed by Nicole's anger. "You cannot seriously-!"
Scraaaaape.
Both of them snapped their heads towards Sorun. The teen had manifested Yamato bare of its scabbard and had scraped it along the metal floor. Not hard enough to cut, but just enough to make that loud, unbearable sound. "Hey. Chrome Dome," Sorun intoned in a blank voice as he stared towards the floating head. "Leave her alone."
"You agree with her!?" Dimitri cried out, tone cynical. "You would take her side-!?"
"I look like someone who'd side with a guy he met half an hour ago over a friend?" Sorun muttered out. "Her nanites. Her choice. Deal with it or I'll drop you in the ocean." He tapped Yamato against the floor. "I'm not kidding around with that, either. I'll do it if you don't stop bothering her."
Dimitri had stared after Sorun for a couple of seconds, and then without a word scoffed and floated away. Sorun released the breath he'd been holding, though he'd only been allowed a moment's reprieve before Nicole appeared right in front of him, arms crossed and face... not nearly as angry as she'd looked with Dimitri, but still agitated.
"I can handle myself, Sorun," she said.
"I'm just trying to help." Sorun lifted up Yamato. "Speaking of which-"
"Absolutely not," Nicole interrupted with a shake of her head. "Sorun, you shouldn't even be here right now. I understand you wished to be informed of what was happening, but we only allowed you to stay here on the condition you go to the hospital and stay there right after."
"That was then. This is now. And right now I have an idea." He Tricked right behind Sally at the other side of the room before Nicole could get a retort in. The chipmunk started in her seat at his sudden appearance, but before she could get a single word out Sorun beat her to it. "Sally, hear me out. I need you to let me stab Enerjak in the face with my katana."
The sentence spoken by Sorun seemed to leave Sally absolutely mystified in her seat from the way she was looking at him like he'd sprouted a second head or something. She was quick to regain herself, though, and then adamantly shook her head at Sorun. "Not a chance. You're not joining the battle with the rest of us. Not when you're still recovering."
"No, listen, Sally," Sorun tried, "you don't understand. Yamato can-"
"Sorun. That is enough." A black-furred hand fell on Sorun's left shoulder. He turned around, purple and brown filling his vision when he perceived Nicole standing right behind him. "You are still in no condition to be doing anything as strenuous as combat. The entirety of the Freedom Fighters and Chaotix, with the exception of Knuckles who is still missing, as well as the forces in the city are ready to fight him. Sally is even calling for outside help in assisting us. I realize you wish to help as well, but it is unnecessary."
"Nicole-" Sorun weakly protested, though was quieted down when the AI began to lead him away from Sally.
"Please, Sorun, just please let us handle it. You've done enough." The lynx lead Sorun all the way back to the bench at the back of the room, where she'd sat him back down. By the time Sorun opened his mouth to speak back to her she'd already moved away back to the front of the room. This caused Sorun to sigh out as he sagged on the bench, Yamato disappearing from his hand.
"This is unreal. Frustrating. Infuriating. I get where they're coming from, I know they mean well, but they're seriously planning on fighting that?" It may have sounded a bit hypocritical from him considering how skeptical he'd been of Enerjak at first, but seeing him on a screen, seeing those near-omnipotent powers at work... of course he had doubts they'd be able to actually do anything. He'd taken out an entire army by looking at it.
That was power. Power Sorun had doubts anybody in even the Freedom Fighters could fight against. Power Sorun didn't have, either. But maybe he had something that could cheat around it.
"I'm really fearing for them here. I don't want them fighting that guy." He looked back up at the front of the room. Nicole had gone back to controlling the drone, Sally and Julie-Su were in an argument, Dimitri had just straight-up left at some point, Sorun didn't know where... it was practically chaos. "If I'm right I'd only need a single shot at the guy- wait, wait..."
Enerjak was back on the screen. Looking right at the drone's camera. Uncomfortably close to the drone, mere inches away. He'd raised his hand, glowing green with Chaos energy. The monitor was barely able to pick up the drone being telepathically crushed before the feed cut out completely.
And then Sorun heard Nicole cry out in pain and stumble back a few steps while holding her hand to her head.
All the ambient noise in the background was deafened to Sorun's ears. His single eye had snapped right up to Nicole as the rest of Sorun's body froze, the pupil constricting to a pinprick. His heartbeat began to grow louder as blood rushed through his body at a faster rate. Underneath his completely blank face true anger began to roil in Sorun.
"Enerjak destroyed the drone Nicole was linked to. He hurt Nicole. He hurt her."
Sorun Tricked to Nicole's side without even thinking. He held a hand out to her, but refrained from touching her when she quickly managed to regain her composure and shake off whatever had hurt her. He still couldn't help but to call out to her even after seeing she appeared fine. "N-Nicole?"
"My link to the probe being cut so abruptly proved to be a bit more than expected," she mumbled out as her eyes turned towards Sorun. "I'm fine. More importantly, Enerjak is coming. Angel Island is already nearly over the city."
A small amount of relief flooded through Sorun. It wasn't enough to quell any of the quiet anger inside of him. "I'm not sitting on the sidelines while you all go out there."
Nicole grimaced. "Sorun, you said-"
"You're seriously gonna bench me when a god's about to come down here and-!?"
"We are not 'benching' you," Nicole argued, "we are making sure you don't get hurt any worse than you already are!"
"Nicole-!"
"Go to your room, Sorun!"
A flash of white-green light flooded Sorun's view, causing him to cry out in surprise. He felt a strange sensation along his body - like static running over him - followed by another strange sensation. Him sitting down on something soft.
"... Huh?" The white-green light faded from Sorun's vision, only to replaced by more white. The white of a hospital room. A hospital room the teen was certain he hadn't been in a few seconds ago. "What- what the- she... she teleported me? She can do that?" Sorun muttered out.
He hadn't known she could forcibly teleport people in the city. Or that the nanites had that type of capability. Did they? Did she build some kind of teleportation machine she could use it anywhere she wanted? Wouldn't surprise him; he saw similar tech on Eggman's mech suit. She herself said she was familiar with it. It still shocked him she even had something like that. And even more that she'd used it to force him back to his hospital room.
"... 'Go to your room.' What am I, four?" Sorun quietly scoffed to himself as he looked up from the bed he was sitting on. "I can't believe she- what happened to the door!?"
The door to his hospital room was gone. Simply gone. It just wasn't there anymore. Where once there was a door there was now only a smooth, white wall. Nicole removed the door.
"Oh my god, she did me like Ed's parents when they grounded him and trapped him in the basement by taking the stairs away in that one cartoon," Sorun mumbled out in disbelief. "She really does think I'm four, doesn't she...?"
It'd been... Sorun wanted to say around twenty minutes. Twenty minutes since Nicole effectively grounded him to his hospital room, a concept that still had him reeling. Could have been thirty minutes. There were too many emotions swirling around in Sorun for him to keep track of something like that.
Sheer bewilderment over Nicole having actually gone as far as to trap him in his hospital room out of fear for his health. Frustration over everybody treating him like he was made of glass. Exhaustion from this whole Enerjak situation. Fear over Enerjak himself. Unbridled fury at him having hurt Nicole, even if it was unintentional and momentary. It was all too much. Sorun couldn't think straight.
What made it worse was that he heard the sounds of combat outside. Sorun couldn't see it, of course- the most he got were glances out of a window that wasn't even a window anymore, just a glass pane that didn't open in any way. The thundering of Chaos energy attacks being shot off and other such things. Sorun could have sworn he'd seen flashes of very familiar-looking spear-shaped energy attacks in the distance, and flashes of a red and black form. So Shadow, then. Sally apparently managed to get through to G.U.N. and they'd at least sent Shadow.
It didn't do much to make Sorun feel better. He couldn't stand it. Everybody out there fighting somebody that seemed way out of their league, and here he was stuck in a hospital room pacing around like a maniac because he just couldn't sit still through it all. Too antsy. Too eager to get out there and help. Too worried about what was happening to everybody because the bloody idiots chose to fight a god.
"Yamato has the capability to rend man from devil. If Vergil can stab himself with the Yamato and separate his human and demonic halves, creating V and Urizen, then I can for sure separate Enerjak and whoever he's possessing. All I'd need is one clean hit." Sorun ceased his pacing and firmly planted down on the bed, groaning out loud in frustration. "Agh, but everybody has a fucking point! My body's shit, it just can't keep up with a Mobian, let alone a fucking juiced-up super Mobian god or whatever the fuck Enerjak is. Especially right now when I'm so many Emeralds deep I get winded so easy. I wouldn't last long enough. I need... I need something to help me."
He got up off the bed, and immediately turned to the back of the room. Towards where the cabinets were, above the small sink in the counter at the back. Sorun approached it without a moment's hesitation, and then began opening cabinets with the intent to rifle through them.
"Come on, this is a hospital. There's gotta be something, ANYTHING, that can help me out here. A pick-me-up, a booster of some kind, I'd take a fucking Flinstones chewable vitamin at this point if it'd even give me so much as a second longer-"
Sorun's thoughts cut out when he opened a cabinet and saw something. A syringe. A single, innocuous syringe just sitting there, looking so out of place in the otherwise empty cabinet. Sorun blinked at it, and then reached out towards it. He grabbed it, and then pulled it out of the cabinet. He rolled the syringe full of a clear fluid around so he could see the label on the others side, and then started reading it.
"... Oh. Oh, shit. Seriously? They just leave something like this lying around? Pffft, I'll take it. Perfect." The syringe was sent straight to Sorun's pocket. Maybe it wasn't so strange, seeing as he was in a hospital, but he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. The contents of that syringe were just what he needed.
"Alright. Got what I need. Now..." Sorun approached the unopenable window and made a contemplative hum. "How do I escape the hospital room? There's no door, and I don't know if even the Bringer Claws are strong enough to punch out a window made with Nicole's nanites. With my luck they'd just regenerate. Maybe I could..."
His thoughts trailed off, followed by Sorun's expression falling flat. He inhaled, and then looked down at his hand as Yamato appeared in his grip. "... Right. I can just do that." He looked up at the window. "Sorry, Nicole, but I can teleport, too." He sliced the sword through the air. "Or at least make portals."
Wanted to find where in the city all your friends were fighting a god? That was easy: just ignore the city shaking and follow the red and green lights in the distance. That's the method Sorun employed, anyways. He'd gone straight towards the source of the fighting after escaping the hospital, only giving the large island floating above the city a cursory glance before facing back to his destination.
"So that's what it looks like. Huh. Guess it's about what I expected. Giant floating island."
He only needed to round a house's corner to see where all the commotion was happening. It was in a small grass clearing, between a bunch of houses and near the library, all of which looked to be in rough shape. The first thing Sorun saw was the crowd of people. Not just all the Freedom Fighters. Not just the Chaotix, sans Knuckles. Not even just Shadow and Rouge, who were also there. No, there were even random New Mobotropolis citizens there, too, all grouped up to one side. And seemingly frozen in place, as they were all surrounded by a green aura and none of them were moving.
And in front of them all was the man of the hour himself. Enerjak. Nothing more to say about that. He was just standing there, talking, seemingly, to the crowd of Mobians he'd evidently frozen. Sorun's patience ended there, and he Tricked a few meters behind Enerjak and the frozen crowd.
"You know it's bad when you gotta rely on the cripple to save the day."
Gone was all the fear, the anxiety, the worry. Not when the source of all today's ire was standing right there in front of Sorun, in all his golden glory. Not when he was still upset at everybody for the way they were treating him, even if he understood it. Not when he had to see Nicole hurt like that.
He was just genuinely pissed off.
Enerjak had stopped in whatever monologue he'd been in, and turned around. The only part of his face Sorun could see past the gold helmet was his mouth and red dreadlocks, and Sorun saw Enerjak's mouth was open a bit in surprise at seeing him. Even the white lenses of his helmet seemed a bit wider in shock.
Sorun ignored him completely and looked towards the crowd behind him. He made a "tch" sound and looked towards where he saw Sally's frozen body. "Wow, Sally. You let civilians fight the guy but not me. Really feeling your confidence in me here."
He saw her eyes, as well as everyone else's eyes, move around, but that was all that could move. He even heard muffled sounds as they attempted to speak out, but nothing significant made it out of whatever that green energy trapping them was.
"What did you do to them?" Sorun demanded, facing back towards Enerjak.
"They're unharmed, I assure you." Enerjak's voice was completely normal-sounding. And also familiar to the point that Sorun was starting to suspect who it actually was. And it just went to piss him off even more. "They're all merely in stasis. I've quieted them down so we can talk uninterrupted, but they're completely aware of everything happening."
"... Knuckles, take the stupid hat off."
Again, Enerjak started in surprise. Afterwards he lowly chuckled, and obliged Sorun by reaching up and taking the helmet off. He tucked it under his arm afterwards to reveal... just Knuckles' plain face. Same face, same violet eyes, he even had an easy smile on his face.
Expression was off, though. It looked friendly, but there was something there not quite right that Sorun couldn't put his finger on. Might have been the Chaos entity possessing him. It was, but wasn't Knuckles at the same time, despite it being his face. It unsettled Sorun a bit.
"Nothing gets past you, does it, Sorun?" Knuckles - Enerjak - asked. "I'm... glad you're here, actually. So we can talk."
"Wow, this came out of nowhere. Like, literally. There was no buildup to this at all. It just happened." Sorun began to pace back and forth, eye still locked on Knuckles who followed him with his own eyes. "So, Knuckles! You're coming up in the world. Got god-like power, fought everybody and won, Shadow couldn't even scratch you it seems, hi Shadow, long time no see," Sorun interrupted himself by nodding at the nearby, frozen dark hedgehog. "I'd go as far as to congratulate you," Sorun continued, facing back to Enerjak, "if you didn't also seem to go completely insane by attacking everybody around you."
The pleasant smile that was on Enerjak's face started to drop off. "You, too, do not approve of my ascension, it seems," he realized. "Sorun, you have to realize that what I do is for everybody's own good, including you."
"You know, I've been getting that a lot lately. It's starting to really tick me off."
"You're angry."
"Ohhhh no, Enerjak, I'm not angry. Knuckles, if he's still in there somewhere and not a mind puppet at this point, saw what me being angry is back in New Megaopolis with everyone else. Me when I was fighting Eggman? Cool, quiet Sorun? That was absolute anger. That was my peak." He held his spectral index finger in the air as he whirled his body to face the god-like echidna. "We're not quite there yet, but we're gettin' there." The hand fell back to Sorun's side, and he made a large sigh. "I'll give ya a chance to explain yourself, though, even though I doubt it's gonna be good. But I'm a good person, right? And good people give others chances."
It was Enerjak's turn to sigh. "You misunderstand, Sorun. I am Knuckles."
Sorun scoffed in response, but remained quiet otherwise and allowed the echidna to continue.
"You are aware," he began, "that my people, the echidna people, were utterly decimated due to the machinations of Dr. Eggman, are you not?"
Shrugging, Sorun said, "Sure, real tragic. Failing to see the point, though."
"It's just one blot of misery on the bloodstained history that this planet has," Enerjak continued, looking down at the ground and grimacing. Sorun himself paused in surprise when he registered genuine anguish on his face. "My people, almost rendered extinct due to one madman and his sick fascination with technology. Before that my people were divided because half believed fusing their bodies with machinery and becoming abominations was the way to truly elevating the species. Before that the Overlanders used their technology to wipe out swathes of Mobians in the Great War. The effects of technology are still felt from how polluted parts of the planet are! This very city is powered by poison as a result of technology's misgivings!"
"What," Sorun interrupted, "does any of this have to do with attacking the town and our friends?"
"Everything, Sorun. Everything." He looked up at Sorun, and his expression turned even sadder. "Even you, dear friend," he mumbled out, making Sorun quirk his eyebrow. "You're only here because we abused technology out of desperation to defeat Eggman. We stole you from a home you can never return to, and stranded you in this world. And you still fought with us, despite all that." His expression grew warmer. "You have no idea how much I grew to admire you, how deeply I respected you for everything you risked for a cause you had no right to be a part of. I can never express how grateful I am to you for how you put everything on the line to save everybody when Eggman took us all to those life-draining pods of his." The warmness fell away from his face, the helmet creaked as the arm it was under tightened. "Seeing you torn apart like that, to yet another technological monstrosity perpetrated by Eggman, hurt deeply. Don't you see how technology-"
"Don't make this about me." Sorun's voice cut through Enerjak's speech, causing him to quiet down and look at Sorun with questioning eyes. Sorun's own expression remained flat and unamused, the teen having actually felt anger at the god having tried to use his own suffering as a reason for all this. "You don't like technology, I get it. It's... it's this thing with echidna. The Knuckles I know never really seemed like he was in the crowd of radicals that was flat-out against it, though, so I'm believing less and less you're a hundred percent Knuckles. It's lookin' more like Enerjak than Knuckles to me." Slowly placing his hands in his pockets with the thumbs hanging out, Sorun leaned his body forwards in Enerjak's direction. "You don't like technology. It's a grave sin or whatever. Okay. We've established that. Now why don't you tell me what you plan on doing about it?"
It was around halfway through listening to Sorun's own words that Enerjak adopted that surprised look again. It began falling to a neutral expression towards the end, and once Sorun finished by asking the question he sighed and nodded towards him. "You are correct. Technology is a sin; its use even moreso. Everything it has touched has created nothing but blights and suffering for those involved." He tilted his head upwards, towards the island floating above them. "Through the efforts of Dr. Finitevus, I have seen the light. The world is far too corrupt. It cannot be saved. The only answer is to cleanse it and begin again. To usher in a new age ruled by benevolent strength, not cold metal." He lowered his head back down to Sorun. "This is what I have decided."
"So you're gonna save the world by destroying the world. You know, they have a term for that. It's called a logical fallacy. Alternatively we could simplify it and call it what it is: you being a moron." Sorun crouched down, loudly sighing as he looked up at the island. "So Dr. Fish Stick up there got it in your head that the world needs a reset because 'technology bad', so you're gonna reshape the world with your neato burrito powers that got you possessed by Enerjak." His head tilted down to Enerjak. "You're literally a walking trope villain right now. You know that, right? Ultron, Light Yagami, Mass Effect Reapers, these names mean nothing to you but I can go on. It never ended well for any of these people, by the way."
"My cause is just," Enerjak argued, violet eyes narrowing.
"Ehhhh, not really." Sorun stood up to his feet. "So now that we've analyzed your motivations and, surprise surprise, they're awful, we get to the part where I say stop it before I stab you in the face."
The threat hadn't registered at all with the echidna. If anything, he just looked more sad. "Sorun, please. Consider your actions," Enerjak pleaded. "It doesn't have to be like this. I can heal you- restore everything you've lost! Please. Just stand aside."
"The whole world for an arm? What an offer," Sorun sarcastically remarked, going as far as to examine his spectral arm. "Lemme ask you this. Technology is a sin, right?" He gestured his arms out to the sides, gesturing to the city around them. "Is all this a sin? This genuinely beautiful city that gave everyone a home?" His arms fell to his side, and he cast a glare towards Enerjak. "More importantly," Sorun said, voice going still and eerily calm, "is Nicole's very existence a sin?"
There was absolute silence between them. Sorun stared at Enerjak expectantly, while Enerjak just silently gazed at Sorun. Even all of the people put in stasis behind them stopped their struggling against the Chaos energy restraining them to silently watch as Sorun let the question hang in the air.
"Well? Is it?" Sorun asked. "Technology is sin. That's what you believe. So is Nicole evil just because she's born from technology? Does her being an AI make her inherently evil? Is she not allowed to exist just because you say so? Are you gonna snuff out a sentient being over belief alone? Hm? Enerjak...?" he all but hissed out.
"..." Enerjak's eyes hardened. "It's for the good of the planet," he settled on.
"Hm, alright." Sorun slowly inhaled, and then exhaled. Despite his overly calm appearance on the outside, the breathing did nothing to quell the wrath coursing through him. "Well, we're at that point," Sorun said, voice still calm and even, his iris constricted. "I couldn't possibly be more angry than I am right now."
A light frown. That was all Enerjak offered Sorun as he grabbed at the gold helmet held under his arm. A light frown and a pitying look. "Why oppose me, Sorun?" he asked, sounding hurt. "Why?"
"I just don't like you. That's all." He took his left hand out of his pocket. "Other than that? You hurt Nicole when you crushed that drone. You shouldn'ta done that." Yamato materialized in his grasp. "You called Nicole's existence a sin. You shouldn'ta said that."
Making a displeased sound, Enerjak donned the helmet over his head. "I'm monumentally disappointed in you, Sorun," he rumbled out.
"Yeah, I do that a lot," Sorun said back as he began drawing Yamato from its sheath. "Get used to disappointment."
The sword was fully drawn and and held to Sorun's side. Sunlight glinted off the silver blade, with the empty scabbard held in his left hand.
"Have you forgotten that I am a god incarnate?" Enerjak questioned him, half in amusement and half in a tired tone. "None before me have even posed a challenge. What could you possibly hope to do?"
"Mm, yeah, you got a point," Sorun admitted with a nod of his head. "You forgot to account for one thing, though."
"And that is?"
"I got the power to stop time from the last Emerald."
"... Wha-"
"Quicksilver."
It was less than when the word was said and more when it was merely thought did the power activate. The world around Sorun slowed to a crawl as a wave that inverted the colors of everything it touched expanded from Sorun's position. The colors slowly returned to their normal pigmentation, and at the same time the world came to an absolute stop. Falling leaves paused in midair. The energy roiling around the people in stasis behind Enerjak froze. Enerjak himself remained immobile.
All was completely still. All except for Sorun, who was calmly walking towards Enerjak with his sword in hand.
"Dante's ability from 'DMC3'. Now I can do it too, Shadow." Sorun stopped in front of Enerjak, silently staring down at his body. "Where's a non-vital area I can stab? Don't wanna accidentally kill Knuckles." He aimed the sword at Enerjak's stolen body, humming slightly as he aimed it. "I would assume the locations his organs are in are relatively close to a human's, but... eh, I don't know shit about Mobian anatomy. I'll play it safe and go for the shoulder. Doesn't matter anyway; I just gotta stick it in somewhere."
Yamato was plunged through Enerjak's left shoulder and pierced through to the other side effortlessly. Blood flew through the air, pausing midair momentarily before it began to slowly fall to the ground as time sped back up to its normal pace. Less than a second later it splashed to the ground.
Enerjak grunted out in both surprise and pain from the blade that, from his perspective, had instantly embedded itself into him. He only managed to stare at the blade in absolute shock for a second before blue energy coated the blade. "What are you- ergh!" Green sparks of electricity arced around his body. The blue and gold clothing began to fade in and out of existence, and as a result Enerjak loudly gasped out. "You... no, no stop it-!"
Sorun tore the blade out of Knuckles' shoulder. Along with the blade and some blood flew out a third thing: a golden, spectral projection of Enerjak that rolled onto the ground behind Sorun. In his former place was Knuckles, who, with his shoulder bleeding profusely, collapsed down to the ground.
Without even paying the fallen echidna a single glance Sorun turned to the golden ghost behind him. He wordlessly began to approach Enerjak's projection, his spectral hand flipping the katana around to hold it in a reversed grip. He stopped right above Enerjak, who was flat on his back and staring straight up at Sorun.
"Warned ya."
No sooner had the words left Sorun's lips did he plunge the sword down right through the ghost's face.
The reaction hadn't exactly been what Sorun had wanted. There was a lot of screaming and thrashing from Enerjak's golden spectral form, which was good. There were even cracks forming along his body. Even better. But Sorun had been hoping for a sword going through the ghost's face to result in instant death, not mere damage.
"Of course he'd be resistant. He's made of Chaos energy," Sorun's mind spat. "Fine. Whatever. If I can't do it in one, I'll just keep cutting him 'til he dies."
Enerjak had other plans, though, much to Sorun's annoyance. He watched as the spectral ghost glowed brightly, and then condensed down into a small orb. It flew away from him and Yamato, with Sorun lazily turning around as he watched the orb race towards Knuckles' body.
The gold orb flew right in without any resistance. Knuckles' eyes snapped wide open as the blue and gold clothes returned to his body. He stood up in an instant, Enerjak panting out heavily as green energy rolled over the wound on his shoulder and healed it in an instant. His helmeted head then looked up at Sorun, his mouth practically in a snarl as he stood up straighter.
"What... what did you do...?" he demanded, still lightly panting. "What did you do to me!?"
"The Yamato can separate anything. So I separated Enerjak from Knuckles," Sorun answered in a simple tone. "I wanted to just kill the Enerjak half right afterwards, but it seems you're a bit resistant to Yamato. You can still be damaged, though... guess I'll just have to do that a bunch 'til you're dust."
"That sword..." Enerjak's helmeted gaze fell from Sorun to the sword in his grasp. "I can see it for what it is. That thing... that wretched, ruinous blade... something like that should not exist."
There was something to Enerjak's voice that gave Sorun pause. Something different from the overconfidence and mightier-than-thou attitude Enerjak had thus far. There was fear now. His tone had gone completely serious, but underneath it was fear. Not an overwhelming amount, but it was there. Fear not directed at Sorun, but specifically at the sword. Yamato.
"The Yamato?" Sorun propped the katana on his shoulder and gave Enerjak a questioning look. "'S nothing more than a magic katana made from a Chaos Emerald. You know that."
"It's more than that..." Enerjak mumbled, taking a step back. His eyes were still on the sword. "Your will, your heart, you shaped it into that monstrosity! Why would you make such a vile thing, Sorun...!? Why would you create that!? Such a demonic, cursed thing-!"
Enerjak cried out in pain when, once again, Sorun had stopped time, walked up to him, and this time stabbed him through the stomach before time resumed again. Just like last time, Enerjak was torn from Knuckles when Sorun ripped the blade out. Unlike last time Sorun resorted to cleaving the sword down on Enerjak's ghost, again and again, making him scream more as numerous white cracks formed along his ghostly form. And like last time he went back into Knuckles to manifest his physical form.
Sorun hadn't waited for Enerjak to catch his breath, and walked right up to him with the intent of stabbing him again. When he stabbed down, however, there was a flash of green, and all Sorun managed to stab was nanites replicating dirt. He looked behind him, humming a bit when he realized that Enerjak had teleported to the other side of the clearing.
"You leave critical wounds on my body by doing that," Enerjak said, regaining his composure as he stood up straighter. "You'll kill me at this rate, Sorun. Is that what you want? To kill your friend?"
"First, Knuckles is my friend, not you. Second, you're regenerating the wounds." Sorun pointed his katana at him, at his shoulder and the wound on his stomach that sealed up faster than Sorun could perceive. "It doesn't matter where I cut, it seems.
"I gotta wonder..." Sorun continued, idly twirling the blade around in his spectral hand, "if you can even jump hosts instead of having to fix Knuckles' body over and over. Julie-Su's right over there, but instead of getting a new body you're sticking with Knuckles. And as far as I know, the only other echidna who's ever been Enerjak is that freaky Dimitri guy. After he dosed himself with a helping of Chaos energy. Knuckles told me his own dad did something similar and hit him with a Chaos energy beam when he was an egg. That's why he's special." The sword was flipped up to rest on Sorun's shoulder. "Could it be..." he wondered, "that you can't inhabit just any old echidna body? You need a special one that's been modified like Dimitri and Knuckles? One with an unnaturally strong link to the Chaos Force? If so, you're not gonna let your host body die. You'll keep fixing him up regardless of the damage I do. Which means I can cut you up as much as I want since Knuckles will be fine in the end."
It'd been a scenario Sorun had been running through his head as he'd walked towards the battlefield everyone was at. He'd seen it in various forms of fiction before. The all-powerful such-and-such needed a special host body to preserve itself so it could exist. A host body that needed to fulfill certain prerequisites. Dimitri telling Sorun Enerjak initially only existed because of what he'd done to himself had him thinking it was something along those lines. That Dimitri and Knuckles were viables hosts that met prerequisites needed for Enerjak to possess them. If so, it was simple: separate the entity from the host and kill it.
That's what he intended to do. To keep separating Enerjak from Knuckles over and over until he finally managed to kill it.
"You're making a mistake," Enerjak growled out to him as green energy gathered around his hands. "I am Knuckles!"
"So it's a fusion-type deal where you can't disassociate yourself with the host, same difference. I already proved you're separate beings by separating you." Sorun began walking forwards. "It's actually really sad if you think about-"
Sorun was abruptly cut off mid-sentence as a wave of exhaustion overtook him. He made a frustrated growl as he dropped to a single knee, his grip on the sword and scabbard loosening completely as the weapon fell to the ground. He began panting lightly as he looked back up at Enerjak. The furious snarl he'd had on previously was turning into a smirk.
"You may be able to wield the forces of Chaos such as I, Sorun, but your body is mortal," Enerjak stated. "You have limits, doubly so from your previous injuries. You cannot heal like I can. I can keep this up all day, while you're already on your knees after a couple of minutes."
"Yeah, yeah..." Sorun bit back on his own frustration as he, with some effort, climbed back to his feet. "That's why I stole this epinephrine from the hospital," he said, digging into his pocket for the syringe he'd pocketed from earlier.
Epinephrine. In other words: straight adrenaline. He knew enough medical know-how from his mom to know what it was the moment he'd read the label. Sorun'd been amazed to find a syringe of the stuff just lying there for him to take, and had taken it immediately in preparation for this. With any luck, it'd keep him going long enough to end this. He'd also crash hard right after, but as long as he finished before that happened, it'd be fine.
He'd deal with Dr. Quack's nagging later.
"Really, Sorun?" Enerjak asked in that disappointed tone of his, his hands lowered as he watched Sorun twirl the needle between his fingers. "You're resorting to using drugs?"
"Hey, if it works. Hope Cream isn't watching me set a bad example." Without another word, he plunged the needle into his neck and compressed the plunger. He felt nothing from it, of course, not the needle entering him nor the cold fluid flooding into his body, and only chose to take the needle out and toss it over his shoulder once he'd decompressed the plunger completely. "So- whoa, that hits different..."
Sorun was hit with a sensation soon after the spent syringe was tossed away. He felt... energized wasn't the right word. Close, but not quite right. Restless, more like. Like his muscles were ready to just move. He wasn't sure about the fact it felt like his heart rate tripled, though. A side effect he'd just have to weather along with everything else that was to come after.
"Haven't felt this good in months," Sorun thought as he made a short hop, katana and scabbard reappearing in his grasp. "It's gonna suck later when my body crashes from all this."
A low growl emanated from Enerjak's throat as the green energies swirling around his hands increased in brightness and intensity. Sorun's grip on Yamato tightened, with blue, barely-perceptible wisps of blue energy sliding up and down the blade. Both faced each other, ready to spring forwards at the other at a moment's notice in preparation for the fight to come.
Said fight was interrupted by laser blasts raining down from the sky and peppering Enerjak.
"... Huh?" Confusion stretched across Sorun' features as the blade he held was lowered down to his side. He watched, stupefied, as Enerjak's body was pelted by an endless barrage of lasers that impacted him again and again. He'd even tried to erect an energy shield to protect himself, though this was done to no avail as the shield was shredded apart in less then seconds. "Who's... oh, I see."
Looking up in the sky answered Sorun's question of just what was happening. A small fleet of ships flying in the sky bearing Eggman's logo hovered above the city, all of which were firing down on Enerjak. The beams impacting his body made him gradually disappear more and more. And then, Enerjak simply vanished completely.
"... I swear if I just drugged myself with adrenaline for nothing-"
"Whoa-ho-ho! Goodness gracious, that couldn't have played out more perfectly if I tried!"
There was no stopping the loud, aggravated-sounding groan that escaped Sorun, who by now was so sapped of willpower his shoulders were sagging and limp. He turned around and saw a familiar form materialize behind him. Eggman's form. A hologram Sorun would have believed was the man himself standing before Sorun in the flesh if he hadn't seen the image flicker into existence in the first place. And much to Sorun's ire he had the same smug smirk on his face that he had when Sonic stopped Sorun from killing him earlier on.
"... You teleport Enerjak somewhere?" Sorun asked in a bland tone, eye twitching from having to see that smirk on Eggman's face.
"Correct!" Eggman confirmed, grin growing wider. "Sonic was kind enough to warn me beforehand of this Enerjak fellow, so I thought why not take this opportunity to sweep a being of unbridled power off your hands to use of for my own devices, metaphorically and literally speaking? I'd do the same to you, Sorun, but, eh..." He tilted his head downwards towards his katana and pointed at it. "That little item makes it a bit hard to contain you. And it wouldn't that sporting of me anyways. So!" Eggman clapped his hands together. "You all get to live to see another day until I say otherwise and I get a veritable infinite source of energy. Win-win."
Sorun sharply inhaled. "I... genuinely hate you with a burning passion. And I'm not that passionate about a lot of things."
"Eh, you're just saying that." Eggman spun his head left and right to gaze at the damages houses and structures all around, making a light whistle while doing so. "Huh. Not gonna lie, place could use some work. I could take this opportunity to bomb your brand-new city since it seems all that clashing Enerjak did with everybody temporarily brought down your city's defenses, but... well, like I said, I'm a sporting man. We'll call it good for today. Do me a favor and tell that AI to at least try and make the place look presentable by the time I come back to conquer you all for real." He turned around and waved at the large gathering of Mobians behind him, who Sorun noticed weren't frozen in place by green energy anymore. "Good seeing you again, Sonic! Thanks for the heads-up!"
The last thing Sorun heard before the hologram dissipated was Eggman's raucous laughter, which he could have sworn lingered behind for a few seconds even after the hologram disappeared completely. The inhale Sorun had taken earlier was slowly breathed out of him, a process he had to repeat a few times to normalize his own breathing. Once he got it under control he looked over to where the Mobians were, his eyes instantly locking onto the blue form of Sonic.
He didn't even allow the hedgehog a second to get his bearings before Sorun Tricked right in front of the hedgehog, startling him and making him jump back a bit. And then he froze when he saw the intensely irritated look Sorun was giving him.
"Gee, Sonic, he sure was a lot of help. Thanks for that. Thanks for enlisting the help of the guy actively working to destroy us all and enslave the world. The guy I was seconds away from ending. Thanks."
Groaning a bit, Sonic rubbed a hand over his face and stepped closer to the other teen. "Sorun-"
"That was such a brilliant two-hundred IQ move that I can't even comprehend it, Sonic," Sorun scathingly remarked. "You must be five moves ahead of everybody else because I can't even begin to fathom this elaborate move of yours. We're all over here playing checkers while you're playing 4-D chess like some clairvoyant-"
"And you were gonna do what!?" Sonic interrupted in a raised voice. "You were gonna go take out the big bad on your own!? You really saw that workin' out for you!?"
"It probably wasn't gonna, no, but I still made it further than you all which was literally zero-"
"Both of you, cut it out!" Sally wedged herself between the two and pushed them away with her hands, sending sharp glares at each. "Sonic, now isn't the time." She turned to Sorun. "Sorun... adrenaline? Really?"
"What?" Sorun gave her a hapless shrug. "I just found it lying around so I thought-"
"You thought it'd be a good idea to go injecting a random drug you found into yourself!?" she all but screamed at him.
Sorun didn't visibly react at all to the scream, instead giving her a flat look. "First of all, I knew what it was. I wouldn't have done it if I thought it was dangerous. I'll pay for it later on when it wears off and I start puking my guts out. That's my choice." He leaned in closer towards Sally, who wasn't fazed in the slightest and continued scowling at him. "Second, are we not gonna talk about how you let this random crowd of people join in on the fight against Enerjak and not me? Me and my all-powerful sword? The sword that actually did something as opposed to the nothing everyone else brought?"
He noticed from the corner of his vision that some of the Mobian citizens were shifting around uncomfortably while looking away from the pair. In fact, everybody was beginning to back off to give the pair some space. Sorun continued to stare right at Sally while some of the aggression in Sally's face disappeared as she glanced towards the crowd.
"I... we all... it was a desperate time, Sorun," she sighed out as she looked back at him.
"I tried telling you," Sorun said to her. "I thought I'd be able to go, 'hey, Sally, I think Yamato can separate Enerjak from Knuckles, maybe we can all plan around that and come up with some super great strategy to save the day.' Instead all this happened." He threw his arms out to the side. "Sally, I get it, I know you guys are trying to look after me, but for god's sake, woman, I'm not... I'm not super sturdy like you guys, but I'm not that fragile, either. I made it this far, didn't I? Granted not in one piece, but still. Come on."
"I know." Sally gave him a small nod and an accepting look. "Sorun, I-"
The pale teen held his hands up to Sally to stop her. "I don't want apologies. I just want to put it behind us so we can focus on more important things. Mainly that." He pointed up at the floating island above them. "And everything else. I'll forgive everybody for everything if we can just do that right now."
Honestly, he really just said it because he couldn't handle another round of apologies, and because there really were bigger and pressing issues. Fortunately Sally seemed to see the logic in everything Sorun said, and gave him an agreeing nod. Sorun just managed to breath out in relief as he saw Sonic's blue form approach them, flanked by Julie-Su.
"So," Sonic began, the two Mobians stopping next to Sally and Sorun, "what do we do now?"
"I don't know, I'm thinking." Sally turned around and began pacing in small steps, simultaneously rubbing her index fingers on the sides of her head. "We're not really in a good position to be doing anything right now-"
Something golden appeared in the corner of Sorun's vision, causing him to shift his attention from Sally to the object. He'd felt an internal shock from the gold color at first and thought it was Enerjak, but then calmed down when he saw it was just a large, golden ring floating in the air behind Sonic and Julie-Su. And then he grew confused as to why there was a floating golden ring behind them. Confusion grew to curiosity, causing Sorun to trick right behind the pair of Mobians so he could eye the ring with a curious eye.
"Huh, this ring..." Sorun thought as he looked to the center, where he saw that the entire hollow of the ring was filled with a bright, golden light. "It... kind of looks like a... portal...?"
That was as far as Sorun's thoughts carried him before a red-furred arm with a brown glove shot out of the portal, grabbed Sorun by the scruff of his shirt, and pulled him through the ring-portal.
A/N- You can really feel when I go from doing my own plots to just going through the comic's plots from how faster the pacing gets. You don't realize it reading the thing in comic format but once you actually write it out it just goes. And if the ending feels abrupt it's because this chapter and the next were supposed to be one, but it was getting a bit long so I split them in two.
Like a lot of things about the echidna the comics did I don't like, which is pretty much everything, they introduce a character like Enerjak with near-omnipotent powers. And the problem with introducing a character with near-omnipotent powers is that you either have to jump through a lot of writing hoops to find a way to get the main characters to beat them while making it look believable, or you just straight-out make them fight the god and win. The problem with that latter thing is that you're gonna mess up the power scaling by basically implying your characters can take out near-omnipotent beings, and that kills the tension. To be honest I would have liked never including Enerjak in the story to begin with, but guess what, he's an important character in the comics, so in he goes.
Comic suffers this problem a lot when you look deeper into comic Sonic's feats and how powerful he really is and realize there should really have never been any reason he couldn't have blitzed, like, ninety percent of the villain cast solo. Guy's stupid broken. I'm not even gonna get into the stupid universe-crushing mammoth guy and mountain-sized buff Tails.
That image of mountain-sized buff Tails is cursed.
Originally I did plan to just have Sorun flat-out fight him to a draw before Eggman teleported him away like in the comics with the justification being that he just happens to have a hyper-specific power set that's a perfect counter to Enerjak, but, again, gotta keep the power scaling consistent. So "Sorun fights Enerjak to a draw" turned into "Sorun gets some cheap shots in with time stop and then Eggman swoops in to teleport Enerjak away before they fight for real and Enerjak massacres Sorun".
