Recursion Error
Episode 54- The post-life experience
"Well, ain't this just depressing to see."
Any good civilization needed a way of disposing corpses, since just leaving bodies in the streets wasn't very conducive towards promoting public hygiene. Or basic respect and decency. To that end, at the very least you needed a morgue to store the things. As far as Sorun knew there wasn't a morgue in New Mobotropolis, but there was a hospital. And more often than not they had a morgue built-in to store corpses for disposal.
Enter him phasing through and walking through walls to live out his fantasy of being a ghost as he searched around the hospital before he found the morgue in the basement. Little room, had some tables, some shelves and cabinets full of various tools Sorun didn't recognize. The backmost wall in the room had a small row of corpse cabinets, the ones with the small metal beds that slid out of the wall locked behind small, metal square doors. Most of them were closed. Except one, that had its bed extended outwards. It had a body lying on it.
Sorun's body.
He didn't really know what Mobians did with their dead. If there was a custom or something like that they followed, if they preferred burying or cremation. He didn't even think anybody in Knothole or New Mobotropolis had ever died during the duration he'd stayed in all these places since things were usually relatively alright. It somewhat surprised Sorun that they were storing his body in the morgue, but maybe they just didn't know what to do with his body. It wasn't like he ever told them what his own personal culture decided to do with people's bodies, which was either toss them in a box and throw them in a hole in the ground or just burn them to ash. But they didn't know that. So maybe they just didn't want to be disrespectful to him by disposing of the body improperly until they figured out what to do.
"This is weird." He didn't know what to feel, seeing his own body just there. All things considered it looked shockingly intact. He didn't see any signs of decay whatsoever. If it weren't for the fact it wasn't breathing and he knew for a fact the body, his body, was dead, he'd assume it was just sleeping. "It can't have been that long ago, right? Not if the body's looking like this. Unless... the hair's still white..."
Just like his spiritual form. The hair on the corpse's head was still white. Confirmed his theory that the Chaos Emeralds and their power were still in his corpse, so maybe the reason as a spirit he still possessed those powers was that he was still connected to his body somehow. Maybe. He didn't quite know, but the fact the body's hair was white was telling enough.
"Is the regeneration still keeping the body intact even though it's dead?" Sorun wondered to himself as he examined the body. "How the hell does that make sense? Or has it just really not been that long?"
It was just so unnerving, seeing his own face lying there and dead to the world. At least somebody had done him the favor of closing his eyes.
"... Maybe I can pull a Disney miracle and just, like, crawl back inside." He had heavy doubt it would work, but it wasn't like it would hurt to try. It'd be amazing if it actually did work.
Sorun had tried a variety of positions. Matching his spiritual hand up with his body's hand, his head, he'd even tried laying down in it entirely hoping he'd just merge back into the body or something. But nothing worked. All Sorun accomplished in doing was harmlessly phasing through his body over and over with no results.
"Yeah, this isn't working," Sorun muttered to himself. He'd taken a few steps away from his body, looking down at it as he thoughtfully stroked at his chin. He clicked his tongue while also humming in thought, and then materialized the Yamato. "Separation of concepts, huh...?" Sorun asked himself as he held the blade up. "Death's a concept, right? I dunno... kind of a stretch..."
Then again, splitting off one's own psyche to create two separate beings from the context of "separating man and devil" was a pretty vague concept, and that had been the entire plot of the fifth DMC game. And his own Yamato didn't necessarily follow all the same rules. Just the ability to separate anything.
The concept of death, though? It seemed out there, even for the Yamato.
"I mean... I guess I don't have anything to lose by trying..." Hesitantly, Sorun flipped the sword over in a reverse grip. "I got the regeneration, so it should all be fine. Plus ghosts can't die, right?" He held the sword out, with its tip pointed right at his chest. "'Least I hope they can't."
And so, he stuck the sword into himself far enough that the tip of the blade pierced through his back.
He staggered back a few steps, choking out a bit in pain from the katana he'd plunged into his own chest. Blue energy ran down the entire length of the silver blade, and at the same time, Sorun's spirit form began to flicker rapidly. He'd gasped out in surprise at the sight, and in less than a second later, both he and the sword disappeared entirely.
For around a minute at first, nothing happened. The entire room was silent, and the dead body on the table remained motionless. Another minute passed, and still nothing happened. The same was true for the third. At the forth, the corpse's eyes widened, and Sorun took in a deep, wheezing breath as he sat up on the table.
And then with a choked gasp he fell back down on the table. His eyes closed, and his breathing halted. Some seconds later his spirit instantly popped back into existence, lying down flat on his back on the floor with his face blank and staring up at the ceiling. Some seconds passed, after which he sighed and began to stand up.
"Worth a shot," he mumbled out as he stood up to his full height. With disappointment on his face, he turned back to his corpse. "Surprised it even worked for as long as it did," he said to himself, "but I guess dead is dead. Body can't accommodate a soul if it ain't alive; not even Yamato can change that, even if it can circumvent the rules a bit." He made a small sigh as he tilted his head. "Then again, it probably only even worked for a second because my powers are keeping my body intact. The regeneration is running on automatic, healing my body from decomposition and the damage the Emeralds' power is doing to it, fueled by the infinite energy of the Emeralds... but the body's stamina is limited, it can't keep up with all the overuse, so it can't live." Groaning, he rose a hand and rubbed at his forehead. "Shit's confusing," he concluded.
Too active to cease functioning, but too dead to support life or a soul inhabiting it. As best as Sorun could guess the seven Chaos Emeralds inside the body was the only reason the body was in this state. Still powering the body with abilities even though it was dead.
"Weird it's not crumbling to pieces like Vergil was. Maybe it's because the Emeralds are a separate source of power instead of it being my own, like it was with Vergil..." Sorun mused. "Amount of energy was never the problem. Just my stamina and the damage. It was probably a good thing I got Devil's Body last after all, since the constant regeneration might have killed me out of exhaustion way sooner than I planned for... Well, no point dwelling on it, I suppose." he turned away from the body. "Intact and empowered or not, it's still dead, and I'm still a ghost." With a deep sigh, he pocketed his hands and began to walk away from his own corpse.
"Wonder how well the others are holding up?"
He decided he might as well get the worst one out of the way first.
Nicole didn't really have a "home" in the city, per se. Or more accurately, the city itself was her home since she primarily existed in its systems as a digital entity. But Sorun knew she liked to exist in her physical form as long as she wanted to, and a lot of the time she spent time in the server rooms inside the science center. Her own special spot. Her haunt.
... Maye not the best word to use given the circumstances.
"I do not picture this going well at all," Sorun thought to himself as he looked at the front of the science center building. "Why am I... why am I even thinking? Not like anybody can hear me," he muttered out as he began walking towards the building. "What am I even hoping to find here? Not like she'll be able to see me, hear me, even know I'm there. I'm just a ghost looking out at everybody. What's the point?"
None, really, and yet he felt himself compelled to keep moving forwards regardless for no other reason than he wanted to see her. At the same time he felt nervous and anxious at the idea of seeing her again, at seeing what possible state she might be in. It made him hesitate when he finally reached the outer wall of the science center. The trepidation of it all, of seeing Nicole again.
But his desire to see her managed to outmatch the fear of it, so he'd managed to step past the wall into the main lobby of the science center. He walked past it all immediately, going to the halls and stairways, looking for one room in particular. He'd only ever been in this building once, during the Enerjak incident, but it was enough to know the general layout. So he didn't need to spend much time finding what he was looking for.
The server room didn't look like much. It was little more than a cold room crammed with servers. At least, he assumed it was kept cold. He couldn't feel the ambient temperature while walking around as a spirit. But he didn't have to search around very far to find who he was looking for.
She was sitting on the ground with her back pressed against a large server box, with her knees pressed so far into her chest that her face was obscured behind her legs. Her arms were folded up over her knees, unmoving and more or less just hanging off of them limply. Sorun saw that the black and brown lynx had a small, black object held in her right hand. A game controller. And he recognized it as the one he always used when playing with her.
"Oh, Nicole... what a mess I've made of it all." Sorun hopped up on top of one of the nearby server boxes as he looked down at her with a sad expression. "It's all my fault, I guess. If I would have just maintained that conviction I had to stay distant with you all, you wouldn't have nearly been as broken up about me dying. But I had to go and cave in to my desires, to reach out to you and others just so I wouldn't feel so terrible all the time... look where it got us." He shook his head and turned away from her. "You worked so hard to finally have a life of your own, and all I wanted to do was make sure you and everybody else got to keep your lives. No, more than that I... just wanted to live. But I couldn't see a path forwards that let me do that. And I don't even know if I even managed to accomplish saving you all.
"I... didn't mean to be this terrible of a person, Nicole... You shouldn't be wasting your life being so upset over a pathetic nobody like me..."
The door to the server room opened. Sorun looked over in its direction, while Nicole hadn't even stirred from her spot. He watched the familiar form of Sally walk into the room, and then softly close the door behind her. She'd taken a second to just stand there, like she was trying to compose herself, before she began walking away from the door. Sorun's head slowly followed the chipmunk as she walked further into the server room, before she finally stopped right in front of Nicole.
She didn't look all that well herself. An intensely gloomy expression was on Sally's face as she looked down at Nicole. Sorun had a hard time seeing if it was out of worry for her friend or if she was still mourning the death of another friend. He somewhat hoped for the former, but he had no way of knowing how long he'd actually been dead for. He was still going off the assumption it couldn't have been long since his body was still in a morgue, but there was no way of knowing until he heard someone say a number.
"Nicole." Sally's voice had come out as soft and sad at the same time. When the AI didn't even so much as move at Sally's voice, Sally let out a short breath. "Nicole, talk to me," she said, voice growing a bit more assertive. "Nobody's seen you for three days. Is this where you've been the whole time?"
"Three days, huh?" Sorun clicked in tongue. "Not as long as I would have thought."
After she finished speaking, Sally silently watched and waited for Nicole to move, or make a sound, or do anything. But she just continued to motionlessly sit there, with one of her hands still clutching the controller. Sally had softly sighed at the sight. "Nicole, please say something," she pleaded with her. "I'm not leaving until you do."
"... He's gone..."
The words came out quiet and broken, to a point that Sorun had flinched in anguish when he heard just how woeful Nicole sounded. Sally had displayed a similar reaction when she heard her, but it was when Nicole had picked her head up off of her legs so she could look at Sally that Sorun was forced to turn away from the sight.
She'd been crying. Her holographic form was apparently sophisticated enough she could shed actual tears down her face. There'd been so much sorrow in her green eyes Sorun felt like he'd been slapped by one of his own Bringer Claws just from the sight. He could barely stand to be in the room when she was like this, could barely stand to exist at the moment knowing he was the reason she was like this. Him and his screw-ups and failures. It was all his fault somebody he held so dear was hurting like this.
"I know, Nicole." Sally looked off to the side as she rubbed at one of her arms. "It's... it's been hard on all of us. And I know you two were close." She glanced towards Nicole's hand. "What's that?"
Sorun palmed his face. "Goddammit, Sally, why'd you go and ask about the controller?"
"It was his," Nicole brokenly replied. She held the controller closer to her, cradling it with both hands as she looked down at it. "He refused to use the other one. He said the left stick on this controller often became stuck. It was handicap he used as an extra challenge to make games more fun for him." The barest hint of a smile crossed Nicole's features. "I was never able to consistently defeat him even when he was using this. He adapted to me no matter what methods I used. He... I... I very much enjoyed every second of time we spent with each other..."
The faint glimmer of happiness that had been on Nicole's face was wiped out in an instant. She looked sad enough to start breaking out into tears again, but instead she just continued to stare down at the controller.
"This is all I have left of him," she'd whispered out. "This and my memories."
Ah, right. He never really did have much in the way of possessions, did he? Especially after Knothole was lost. Really all he had was his clothes, and fortunately they'd all had the decency to leave those on him.
With slumped shoulders, Sally walked over to Nicole's position. She slowly slid down into a sitting position next to her, close enough that their shoulders were touching. "You two were really close, huh?" Sally asked her.
"From the moment we met he treated me as a real, living person. Not an AI. I had fun being with him, he... helped show me new aspects of life. Sometimes it felt like he had more respect for me than himself." She glanced off to the side. "I never got to properly thank him. For trusting me so much, for spending so much time with me, for everything he did for me, and for all the words he said to me. I... I'd wanted to ask him..." Her voice trailed off, after which her knees pressed in a bit closer. "It doesn't matter anymore. He's gone. Sorun's gone."
"I know. He was my friend, too," Sally said in a sad voice. "He was a bit strange, but... he was a good person, to join us even though we were the ones responsible for bringing him here. I just... can't stop thinking about what Shadow said, about what the Emeralds were doing to him," she muttered. "The fact he was with us through everything while going through all that, I... I just can't imagine."
"It's awful," Nicole mumbled. "He knew he was dying the entire time. He couldn't even tell us. He continued to kill himself more and more every time he touched an Emerald for our sake, and we never noticed a thing." Her face became more pained at the thought. "I can't understand how I never suspected anything, how I never saw how much pain he must have been in. He trusted me, Sally, confided so much to me that he never told any of you. I thought I was doing so much to help him in return by just being there for him, but... but I was never able to help him..." A few more tears slipped out from Nicole's eyes. "It hurts so much knowing how scared he must have been and knowing I did nothing to help him in all that time, Sally."
"Don't say that, Nicole. I know he enjoyed being with you just as much as you did," Sally said in her best attempt to sooth her friend. "If anything, it's my fault. He just... always looked so unwell, you know? There were so many times I thought he looked sicker and sicker with every passing day, but he'd always play it off or just say he was tired from missions. I always took his words at face value because I never imagined he'd be lying about something like him dying." Her own eyes began to become glossy at the mere thought. "I was the one that told him about that last Emerald. I practically told him that day was his last day to be alive, and I was so happy about it. And all he did was... w-was try and get me to not feel guilty because of that promise we made that I broke. Even when he was dying he kept trying to help us." She shook her head. "He seemed so off when I told him and I couldn't figure out why until it was too late. If I'd just known, I... I would have tried to do something to help him. He didn't deserve this."
The odd thing was that Sorun was upset they weren't talking about all his bad qualities. How he'd lied, how he'd conspired to try and kill Eggman behind their backs. If only they'd criticize him, not make him sound like this tragic hero figure they were mourning over than it could have been something that comforted Sorun and not make him feel nearly as bad as how he felt right now watching this. But unfortunately none of these qualities seemed to even come to their minds. He may as well have been a martyr the way they were talking.
Sorun would have preferred being remembered as nothing but a liar nobody liked if this was how his death was hitting people. He regretted so much not sticking to that uncaring persona of his, of acting to be so unlikeable.
"Look at us. He gave up his life for us, and all we can do is cry over him," Sally said with a sad half-smile. "Can you imagine what he'd say if he saw us right now?"
"I can't even imagine it," Sorun mumbled out as he watched the pair.
Nicole shook her head. "What would you suggest?"
"I'm not so sure myself. I'm not saying not to mourn Sorun, but, well... we have to move on eventually," Sally told her. "Besides, I don't think Sorun would like it if we spent too much time over him. He was a selfless person like that."
All Sorun could do was tiredly sigh and rub at his eyes.
"I don't want to just get over him, Sally." Nicole looked back down at the controller she clutched. "I... I miss him too much..."
Sally cast a sad glance towards her friend. She made a small sigh, reached out to gently squeeze at her shoulder in comfort, and then began to stand up. "I know, Nicole. I... know somewhat about what you're going through." She looked off to the side and began rubbing at her arm again. "I'm not gonna lie to you and say it gets easier, but... I-I'm here, you know, if you need to talk about it. You're not alone."
Nicole didn't say anything. She just continued to look down at the controller with a lost, forlorn expression, with her ears flattened against her head. It only served to make Sally a bit more downcast, after which she began to turn around.
"Just... you know where to find me if you need me," she said as she began moving away. "I'll come back and check on you later, alright?"
"... He wanted one last game with me." Nicole's words caused Sally to stop and turn back towards the lynx. Her focus was still on the controller. "Sorun. He knew he would die the next day, and he wanted to spend the last of his time with me. And I said no." Tears began falling from her face. "I shouldn't have said no. I didn't know. I'd made so many plans for after that mission, I had so much I wanted to say to him, I... I-I thought we had so much more time..."
Sally's arms sagged to her side as she looked towards her friend. "Oh, Nicole..."
"I can't watch this anymore." Sorun hopped off of the server box, walked right through Sally, and made his way towards the nearest wall. "Christ, I... I screwed it all up so badly..."
All he'd wanted to do was save them. He didn't know it would turn out this badly. He didn't know he would have failed. He didn't want any of this...
He decided to drop in on Virgil afterwards to see how his Chao was doing. It'd taken some searching around since he didn't know which house Cream and Vanilla lived in, and there were so many homes in the residential district that Sorun felt it would have taken too much time to individually search every home. He'd almost given up entirely until he'd actually found Cream. She'd been walking alongside with Amy, and they'd both had armloads of bags filled with fruits, bread, and other foodstuffs. Sorun assumed Amy had been helping Cream with groceries, and chose to follow them in the hopes it'd lead to the rabbit's home. To his luck that's exactly where they'd gone to.
Wasn't much to say about the place; it wasn't all too dissimilar to the rest of the surrounding houses. Only thing Sorun could see of note was the garden full of vegetables out in front, and even more along the sides of the house. All comprised of what looked like clay pots filled with what he assumed to be actual soil as opposed to the artificial soil the city sat on top of. Under any other circumstances he would have been amused to see the garden pots were mainly filled with carrots, though there were other vegetables growing out from them that he could see.
Another thing he could see was his Chao sitting behind one of the windows to the house. Even from out here he could see the silver crest that was on top of his head, the cylindrical horns. He saw that Virgil wasn't really looking out towards anything in particular. Just aimlessly staring, really, with a sad frown on his face. Sorun would be the first to admit Virgil wasn't exactly a happy-looking Chao regularly, but even this seemed pretty glum for him.
"Thank you so much for helping me, Mrs. Amy!" Hearing Cream's voice caused Sorun to turn his face towards the pair. The smaller rabbit girl was looking up at the pink hedgehog with a beaming smile on her face. "Mother has been terribly busy around the house, you see, and I was worried I wouldn't be able to carry all this back by myself."
Amy mirrored Cream's own smile. "It's not a problem, Cream, don't mention it. I'm happy to help."
At first, Cream's smile had brightened up all that much more at hearing Amy's words. But then she'd turned towards her house, and she must have seen Virgil sitting at the window and staring out. It was the only explanation Sorun could think of for why her smile would lower down a bit right there. "Um, Mrs. Amy?" She looked back up at Amy. "When is Mr. Sorun coming to check in on Virgil? It's been an awful long time since I've seen him, and I think poor Virgil is starting to worry about him..."
The smile Amy wore visibly wavered, to a point Sorun flinched just by seeing it. She did her best to keep the smile up, but he'd have to be blind not to see the pain that was in her eyes. Cream, for being either too young or too innocent or both, fortunately had not seen the change in her. "O-oh, uh, Sorun, he's... I don't think he's gonna come around for a... you know, a long while," Amy tried telling her. "He's... busy with... actually, why don't I help you get all this food inside?"
"She doesn't know? I woulda thought my death would have been kind of a big thing after everything I did," Sorun mumbled to himself in confusion. He looked back towards his sad Chao sitting at the window, and then towards a now-confused Cream looking up at Amy. "Oh, did they just not tell Cream?" Sorun realized. "Yeah, guess I can't blame them. Nobody wants to be that guy that has to tell the kid somebody died. She's like, what, six? Somewhere around there?"
He didn't know the exact number, but he knew it was younger than Tails. Sure, he may have been introduced to the concept first-hand at a way younger age than even that, but those were special circumstances and humans held different values than Mobians. Even then back on Earth he didn't know anybody that'd want to willingly explain something like somebody dying to someone as young as Cream was, so he could see why Mobians would try and steer way clear of the subject. It was practically a natural reaction. Hell, he'd probably be on the same side of the fence as them in that regard.
Whether he actually agreed with it or not was something he couldn't make up his mind about, but again, he couldn't blame 'em.
"Huh?" Cream had blinked up at Amy amidst her confusion. "But doesn't Mr. Sorun want to know how Virgil is doing?"
"I... I'll go ahead and tell him!" The fake smile that was on Amy's face almost brought pain to Sorun as he watched the display. "How's that... nice... Chao been doing living with you and your mom?"
"Oh, he's been absolutely wonderful!" Cream exclaimed as the pair began walking back towards the house. The answer had been one that caused visible surprise to show on both Sorun and Amy. "He's very strong for a Chao! Sometimes he helps my mother tending to the vegetables in the garden." The front door to the house was opened. "Mother cannot stop talking about how much she appreciates..."
The rest of the conversation was lost on Sorun as the two Mobians entered the house, with the door closing behind them. He could have chosen to follow in after them, but he felt he'd heard enough. Between that and the sad-looking Chao sitting at the window, he'd heard more than enough.
"Well... at least he seems to be doing fine. Glad he actually listened to me about not terrorizing the family looking after him," Sorun said to himself. "Amy's taking it all well, too, so there's that. Either that or she's putting up a brave face for Cream. Ugh, I don't know." After running a hand over his face, Sorun turned away from the house and began walking away. "I'm regretting this more and more by the second..."
By now Sorun wasn't even sure where he was supposed to go. In fact, he didn't even know if he should even keep going on at this point knowing he was going to find more of the same: his friends being sad and Sorun being disgusted at himself for letting things devolve into such a state. He didn't know what the point was of doing this.
He was really more of in a daze than anything else by now. A sad, depressed daze.
So to that end, Sorun's feet carried him to the airfield where the aircraft was kept for some reason. If he had to guess, it was because he wanted to see Tails, and if he was anywhere, it was usually near his plane. He was a bit worried about him, about if he blamed himself for what happened with Sorun since he'd been the one to decode those coordinates on the wood tablet and had been the one to drag Sorun to this world kicking and screaming. Now he was dead as a result, and Tails, well... Sorun wouldn't know until he saw him.
When he walked into the air hangar, he immediately was drawn towards the blue biplane sitting in the center of the hangar. Near the top he saw Tails' yellow-orange body, with his front half completely buried in the plane's internals through an open hatch. Burying himself in his work, then, somewhat literally. Could be a good sign or a bad sign, but he was always somewhat of a workaholic when it came to his own projects. Could be he was trying to cope by working his thoughts away, or maybe he was completely over it and this was just business as normal for him. No way to know for sure, and it wasn't as if he could just go up to him and ask.
"Strange fate, is it not, Tails?" Sorun asked as he stepped in front of the plane. "I'm not gonna lie. I hated you at first. I tried not to, I tried seeing things from your perspective, tried putting myself in your shoes, but... it was hard." He took in a deep breath. "I... fantasized about clawing your face clean off. On the one-month anniversary of me being here. Almost did, managed to stop myself just in time since... since you were just a kid trying to save the world and all his friends. Kinda like me, I guess. How could I hate that? I guess because I was too selfish to see past myself." Sorun paused. "I managed to find forgiveness for you eventually, and I'll admit it may have taken way longer than any decent person should have taken. But I did, somewhere down the line. Now I just hate myself more than anything because of everything I've put everyone through. I'm left wondering why the hell I was even born if this was what I was gonna wind up doing. Be some failure that did more harm than good to everyone." He turned around and leaned on one of the plane's wheels. "Things would be different if I hadn't died. Failing to kill Eggman is one thing, that's a mistake that can be fixed, but having that be my last act, leaving things like this... I just feel like I've permanently ruined something.
"But, you'll survive. You're eleven and you managed to outlast me. Not really saying much seeing how big a loser I am, but you get the idea. I just kind of hope you'll eventually forget about me, because this guilt shit is soul-crushing."
The only thing that answered Sorun was the cranking sound of a wrench tightening screws and bolts inside of the plane. He couldn't help but sigh as a result.
He'd almost walked away right there when Sorun saw a blue object zoom into his vision. He blinked in surprise, and when he opened his eyes he saw Sonic standing across from him. Looking up at the plane where Tails was while tapping his foot on the ground in an impatient manner.
"Yo, Tails!" Sonic called up. "You busy?"
"A little bit, yeah," the fox called back down, still in the plane.
Sonic sighed and shook his head. "Busy with anything important?"
"Plane is important."
"Tails, come on." The hedgehog quickly ran his hand through his quills. "Your parents are starting to get worried. They've barely seen you for the past few days. Geez, I'm starting to get worried. Can we just talk?"
Another sigh, this time from Tails. It came out from inside the plane as the young Mobian finally poked his head up out of the plane's innards. He looked down at Sonic, and with another sigh, he spun his two tails up and hovered up off the plane, only to slowly lower himself back onto the ground. The tails ceased rotating after his feet touched the ground, followed by Tails looking up at Sonic's face.
"What do you want?" he asked. Sorun, still leaning on the plane's wheel off to the side, couldn't help but notice how tired Tails looked. The way his eyes were slightly sunken in and darkened around the rims.
"You've been getting enough sleep, right, Tails?" Sonic asked, a hint of worry to his voice.
"Mm-hm." With a small, noncommittal hum, Tailed turned around to the plane. "I just... you know, can't stop thinking about..." Tails' voice trailed off, and without another word he began to walk towards the back of the plane.
Sonic made a sigh as he watched Tails go off. "Sorun?" he finished for him.
"Yeah." Tails stopped at the tail of the plane, and then looked up as his own two-tailed logo stamped on the side. "It's not my fault he's gone, is it, Sonic?"
"Huh?" Sonic blinked, and then opened his eyes widely. "N-no, no way! Not at all!" Shaking his head and hands in a "no" gesture, Sonic began to approach Tails' back. "Sorun, he... he... it ain't your fault, bud."
"But I'm the one that brought him here, aren't I?" Tails mumbled out while looking up at the logo. "I'm the one who built that machine with Chuck and Rotor's help. I'm the one that figured out the numbers and opened the portal. And... and I'm the one that pulled him through that portal when he didn't want to come here." He reached up and began to run his hand along the logo. "Now he's gone and it just feels like it's my fault somehow. I mean, he was here because of me, right?"
"Tails..." Sonic stopped right behind the fox and put a hand on his shoulder. "He's not gone 'cause of you."
"... He was always off around Chaos Emeralds, you know?" Tails' voice had gone a little bit higher and at the same time quieter. "L-like when Knuckles brought us to that mountain, a-and he didn't want to touch it. The entire time back he wouldn't stop glaring at it. He and Shadow kept shouting at each other, and that's when he ran away." He made a small hiccup. "He said he didn't want to die, and I- and I told him he wouldn't..."
Sorun saw Sonic flinch back from what Tails told him as his expression grew more sad. He nearly felt the same himself seeing what was happening to Tails. This is what he'd been afraid of happening.
"Yeah. I remember when he got that second Emerald," Sonic said, making Tails freeze. "Knuckles, he... tossed it into Sorun's hands, and Sorun, he... yeah, he kept bashing Knuckles into the wall with his new arms afterwards." He'd attempted to make a small smile at the memory, though it just came out as a grimace. "I laid into him over it afterwards, told him he couldn't just attack people like that, but... I mean, I don't know if I can even blame the guy anymore if they really were taking time off his life like that. Which I guess is why he was kept from ever talking about it..." His hand slipped off of Tails' shoulder.
"I just feel bad," Sonic continued in a noticeably sadder voice, making Tails turn towards him. "It-it just doesn't sit right with me, knowing he was probably asking for help that entire time and none of us ever picked up on it. There were times he was acting weird and I just couldn't figure out why, and I- I should have known something was off with him, but I didn't." His shoulder slumped downwards. "If anything it's my fault he got dragged into our problems," he said. "I'm the one that talked him into being a Freedom Fighter when he really didn't want to be one. I get where you were coming from, Tails, since... I mean it was really bad back then, wasn't it?" he asked, looking to Tails for help, who gave him a slow, sad nod in response. "A-and he did a really good job, too. Saved Antoine that one time, fought with us on all those missions, helped us with his portals, sheesh, he saved us all after Knothole... you know. He... he came back, knowing if he kept using those Emeralds they'd kill him down the line." He looked off to the side, making a sad, broken chuckle. "I just... really respect him for that, you know? But at the same time I wish he hadn't gone through with it. He shouldn't have had to die. I shoulda seen all the signs and kept him from touching any more of those Emeralds. Should have known him saying he was 'tired' all the time was more than just excuses..." Sonic made small, despondent grin. "He really pulled one over all us, huh?"
Tails didn't respond to the question, and neither did Sorun, even if it'd just end up with him talking with himself. They all just continued to stare towards one another with gloomy looks, and with Tails' eyes being just the slightest amount damp.
"I miss him," Tails finally confessed. "He was nice to be around."
"I know, bud. I do too. He kept my room tidy more than I did. Mom always liked that about him." The small joke caused the both of them to chuckle a bit, and even Sorun had cracked somewhat of a small grin in response. It faded away quickly back to the sad expressions. "It feels like Tommy all over again, and everyone else we've lost over time," Sonic said. "And it's... it's just not getting any easier for me. It's hurting more every time."
Tails made a sigh and looked at the ground. "I know what you mean," he agreed, a few tears falling from his eyes and hitting the floor. "Maybe he'll come back?"
Sonic grimaced a bit at that. "T-Tails, come on, you know better than that." Sonic looked off to the side. "Yeah, his... his body's not degrading for some reason, and it's throwing all the doctors for a loop and a half, but... he's dead, Tails." He reached up and began rubbing the side of his head. "We're still trying to figure out what we're even gonna do with his body. He never told any of us what his people do with their dead."
"But Shadow said Sorun talked with Aurora and Athair," Tails argued. "I know Knuckles said he wasn't having any luck with contacting them, but couldn't they help? They brought Knuckles back to life when he died, didn't they?"
Sorun's head snapped to Tails. "What?"
"Yeah, but that was a really specific thing," said Sonic. "And you can't tell me you actually want to ask them for help?" He crossed his arms and made a soured face. "Rubs me the wrong way, what they did to Sorun... it wasn't right..."
"I... I know. I still can't believe Athair would do something like that," Tails agreed as his ears lowered down a bit. They went right back up as he looked back at Sonic. "But Knuckles didn't even have a body to go back to and they helped him come back! Sorun's is still here, so couldn't they bring him back like they did him?"
"Fucking what?"
"Well... maybe, I don't know. I honestly don't have a clue how a lot of this Chaos stuff works," Sonic admitted with a shrug. "And like you said, Knuckles couldn't even contact them anyways even though he's been mediating or whatever he does on that island, so it's not like we can ask..."
The rest of Sonic's words were lost as Sorun stomped away from the plane and out from the hangar. He made it as far as the middle of the airfield's runway before he was forced to stop completely. He took an extremely long inhale, held it for what felt like a full minute, and then slowly exhaled it in what was probably the most impressive form of self-control he'd ever displayed.
It did absolutely nothing to calm him down.
"Oh, so that's just a thing they can do, huh...?" Sorun's hands clenched at his sides, and they began shaking. "Bring back the dead? That's a thing you can do, huh, Aurora? Didn't think it'd be something important to mention at some point, HUH?"
Bolts of blue electricity began arcing over Sorun's entire form. His anger began to grow at an exponential rate as more and more electricity began to savagely arc around him.
"All this time, you could have done that...? I could have avoided hurting everybody like this if you'd just brought me back...!?"
He was livid. Furious. Enraged. Words alone didn't cover the sheer amount of anger that had began to well up in Sorun as he realized the implications of the conversation between Sonic and Tails he overheard.
Knuckles died once. And the Neo-Walkers brought him back to life. Meanwhile he was dead in part because of them and they'd yet to even lift a finger to help him.
"You damn echidna..." Yamato instantly appeared in Sorun's left hand. "I made her cry... over nothing? I'm dead over nothing!?"
He savagely tore the Yamato out from its sheath so quickly bolts of blue lightning shot out from the sheath. The blade cut right through the air with an angered shout, leaving a thick, blue gash hanging in the space right in front of him. In that small section of space, reality itself cracked apart like glass as a portal was forced open ahead of Sorun.
With a grunt, Sorun slammed the sword back into its scabbard. He took a breath that yet again failed to calm him, and then brushed some of his long, white hair out from his face. The bolts of electricity arcing around him ceased once he got his breathing under control, and he opened his eyes up at the portal in front of him.
"Alright. Alright alright alright... let's not get ahead of ourselves here. If it's too good to be true..." His hands began shaking against, and his left knuckles whitened from his tight hold on Yamato. "No, fuck that, they knew. They knew this entire time, and they let it all happen anyway." He began stomping towards the portal. "Fine, we'll just see what they have to say for themselves. One last thing to do first..."
The second he'd crossed the portal to the other side he'd unsheathed Yamato, swiped it behind him to close it, and then slipped the sword back into its scabbard all in the same motion, his intense anger sharpening his focus and concentration. The sanctuary inside what Tikal had called the Ancient Onyx greeted him once he arrived. Both Tikal and Chaos were right there, sitting next to the pond right in front of him. Both had looked towards him with startled eyes when Sorun had appeared. Or at least as startled as Chaos could look in his case.
The sight of them and the Chao sitting around was probably the only thing that gave Sorun some semblance of mental control at the moment. He was still angry beyond words, but he was thinking straighter now, with more coherent thoughts. Thoughts that began to form questions.
Why? Why hadn't the Neo-Walkers told him they had an ability to bring the dead back to life? Why'd they keep it from him? Was there some piece of context he was missing? Was it not that simple? Did they just not like him? Was it because they didn't think he deserved it since he failed to kill Eggman? Why? Why was he abandoned, especially after everything he'd done? Had they simply forgotten?
Why, why, why...?
"Sorun?" Tikal, seeing the incredibly distressed look on Sorun's face, had immediately risen up to her feet and approached his side. Chaos was not far behind her. "Y-you look awful! What happened?" she asked in clear worry.
"Tikal, I... they..." A loud clack! was heard as Sorun gnashed his teeth together, and he shook his head. "I can't do it. I can't stand to see everybody like this. Nicole, she... I'm not doing this. I'm done being dead."
Blue lightning began to arc around Yamato's scabbard and the sword held within. Tikal had cast wary eyes down at it, and slowly she began to look back up at Sorun. "S-Sorun, I... I do not understand..."
"I don't understand either, Tikal. I really don't." Sorun used his thumb to lift the Yamato out from its scabbard by a few inches. "But I'll get my answers yet," he said. He turned to look at her, expression relaxing just the slightest amount. "I just wanted to come and say thanks for helping me out, and to say goodbye."
His hand wrapped around the sword's handle, and slowly he began to pull it out from the sparking scabbard.
"You see, I've decided it's time I visited a couple of echidna I know."
