Disclaimer: I do not own any of the recognized characters or gameplay patterns within this fanfiction. Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails, Eggman, Blaze, and all related characters of such are owned by SEGA. All original character's are owned by me, unfortunately.

Exasperation 7.5

Tails wasn't sure what had happened, and his body was moving on automatic while his head tried to process what had happened.

It had almost sounded like Katia had given a prophecy, or channeled an oracle or something similar. Sonic was the one with the knowledge of the occult, not Tails. Tails was everything else. Still, he kept her on her side, moving her head to let airflow in easier. He ignored the fact she was naked from the waist up, and carefully put his hand to her throat to ensure she was still breathing. She was.

The Miles Electric hadn't been recording at the time, so after he made sure Katia was alright he tried to write down all the words that he remembered.

Bringer of Chaos, he remembered, along with the Guardian of Sol, so him and Blaze, and then another called 'the anomaly'. Who could that have been referring to? 'The land will die, and the path will open only once the cycles end'? Does that mean that they have to...do something, end whatever these 'cycles' are before they can go home? Suddenly, the thought chilled him to the bone. 'The blooming tides'. That phrase haunted him in ways that he wasn't sure why, as if a subconscious part knew what it was but refused to tell his waking mind.

He'd have to wait for Katia to wake up again to ask what the Blooming Tides were. Or if they were a thing in general. She seemed so into it, though. Her irises were gone, and her eyes were just pure pupil, almost a pitch black despite the starlight and light. She was still breathing, and he could hear her heartbeat when he put his ear close to her chest, ignoring what else was close to his ear.

His stomach growled, and he sighed after a moment. There wasn't much food around asides from flowers. He sat down on the ground, feeling the soft flowerbed beneath him, and he felt and heard the small digging sound of moles far underground. His mind jumped to the driller moles back at the plains, when it was just him and Blaze. He still missed the electrite that he'd found, a septagonal crystal that he'd had to throw away to distract the tremor sensitive moles.

They'd come far, he knew. The moon was bright above him, full as it could ever be. He felt a pang for Blaze, knowing that she was not going to be enjoying the next day or two. Had it been a month, already? It had to have been, a full moon cycle.

He heard the scratching sound behind him again, and he turned as the green lights slowly coalesced into a single form, impossible to tell. It was vaguely sapient of some shape, and it reminded him strongly of the nymphs from the Lost Jungle, as those of Ikan'Thoa called it.

It's head turned, and Tails saw the shape slowly melt into a shape that mimicked his own. Then came the color of the fur, and from there the facial features and shapes. The eyes were last, a pale green that slowly became more blue as Tails stared. A doppelganger. A double, he thought Katia had called it. Despite the hundreds of green lights flowing out of the ground, only one had formed. It made him wonder why that was. He wasn't liable to be confused by a double, it was of him after all. And assuming they got all the memories...

"Do you ever not think?" the double asked in his voice, a gratingly high pitched voice that he knew was his own even if he hated it. "I can't stand this not-silence."

"No, I think too much."

"I can tell," the double growled. It sneered at him, "And yet you don't think enough. Odd, isn't it? That a boy who can't stop thinking doesn't think enough. You just let a doppelganger take your place, idiot."

"Do you get all the memories of your targets, too? Or just vague impressions?" Tails asked. He pushed himself up, his tails swirling wildly. He remembered Tikal's advice; find the rhythm, and swing to it. Let his body guide him. He could use the Charger, but if the double inherited abilities, too, it probably gained his electrokinesis. He wasn't about to test that theory.

"You're more of a moron than I thought if you think I'm going to answer that."

"Vague impressions then, otherwise you'd know why you shouldn't try," Tails answered. He wasn't scared of a double. Even if it had the same abilities and lines of thought he did, and the body formed from how he was at the time, it didn't have the same experiences or equipment. And as someone who had seen the worst sapients had to offer, and the best...no, he wasn't afraid of any double of himself.

"You think I'm afraid of you? You, a pathetic little child who thinks he's much smarter than he actually is? You're a failure...Prower."

This is how they tried to get into their targets head, he knew. He would take the vague impressions that they got and use them to find the weaknesses of their mentality. No wonder this place was also used as a fertility area; after dealing with the worst of one's own mind or their significant others, everyone will almost always want to become closer.

"Stuck thinking again, Prower. They didn't want you, even she barely thinks of you as anything more than a sack of meat -" the double started to say, only to find itself on its back on the flowerbed, Tails having sped over and whacked it with his namesakes. "Heh, guess even you have a trigger to pull," the double said, pushing itself up. Its two tails were dead and limp.

"Were you going to stand there and talk? Explain anything, or were you just another tool used by the Elders to try to gain control?" Tails asked.

"I'm not a tool!" The double said instantly, a snarl painted on Tails' own face. Even if they only got vague impressions of memories, or the complete thing, Tails wasn't sure, but if there was one thing he was good at, it was overthinking things. It only made sense that something made from him would have the same problem.

"Aren't you? The only ones who come here willingly are sent by the Elders of Ikan'Thoa. Which means the only damage you can do are to the ones the Elders let you do it to. Definition of a tool," Tails said, his eyes not meeting the vision of his own. "Without us here, what are you? The Elders of Ikan'Thoa control access to here, so without them, no one gets here. Alone, and in the dark."

The double was shivering now, its eyes cold and dark. "Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up! I'm not a failure, not a tool!"

"Then why? Why do this?" Tails asked, his eyes meeting the double's own for the first time now. The fox twin was reeling, its legs weak as it tried to stand. Tails hadn't hit it that hard, had he? He'd aimed for the torso, and he only managed to knock it down. Unless he was going far faster than he'd intended, he knew he didn't hurt it as much it was pretending he had.

"Because I am supposed to! Just as the dryads were, just as the mountain was! Everything here is on a script, Miles Prower, and here you are flipping it!" The double proclaimed.

"Bringer of Chaos? The rosuvel said that to us. Me and Spark, back at the swamp. I don't think you'd have much luck with Blaze, either," Tails answered. His eyes narrowed. A script?

"You claim to be the Bringer of Chaos?" the double said, green light enveloping it as it shifted out of Tails' form, one of its tails going back in and make it slightly shorter as it took Katia's form, just as naked. "You are not Chaos," it sneered at him. The look seemed out of place on Katia's face, harsher and more unforgiving than the real thing.

Tails stared for a moment, making sure to keep his eyes on the double's face. He wasn't chaos, no. But there was a sense of something else there. Something was on the tip of his tongue, and he wasn't sure what it was. "I'm not sure what that is, let alone if I am. Care to explain?" It was pretty clear from the naming actually, 'Bringer of Chaos'. But was it talking about chaos as in disorganization, or chaos as in chaos energy?

"I'll tell it to your dead corpse!" the double answered as it charged forward, Katia's claws fully ready to try and ream his stomach. An image flashed in his mind of the claws reaching into his stomach, seeing the feint moments before it occurred. Tails jumped to the side to avoid the swipe, and lashed out with his tails to try to knock it down again. The double laughed and jumped to the other side.

He got a sense again, that it was going to try something from...under? He blinked, and jumped to the air just as the double shoved its entire arm down into the ground, small cracks appearing on the ground. Large rose vines came from the ground, fully grown with hundreds of thorns and brambles. Tails watched from the sky. "Don't tell me your kind is all over the place. I've had more than my fair share of brambles from up north," Tails commented as he flew. The vines retracted, and the double pulled up its arm, still clad in Katia's fur.

His brain told him to jump to the left, the double was about to attack his right. He watched as Katia, or the double posing as her, jumped on the right foot first, then left, then charged. How was he able to do this? He couldn't have done it in the past. There was a rhythm here, he felt. He spun, his feet hitting the ground in the rhythm that he only vaguely remembered. The double jumped away, only to hiss as Tails' namesakes grabbed at his legs.

That was when Katia's spear appeared through its chest, green light bursting out of its heart. Behind them both, unnoticed to both, stood Katia, her spear in her hand. "How many more of your kind do we have to kill?" she asked.

"There is only one of me!" the double said, seeming ignoring the spear through its heart as it reached behind him for a backhand on the hunter. Tails ducked out of his spin, running as quick as he could. He remembered the experiment he did in the swamp, and with a minor push of a button, he gained a charge. His body flooded with electricity, he sent it forward, heating up the air and vacuuming him towards it as he tried to emulate what his brother had done so many times. It was almost natural to Sonic, but Tails had never tried it, except for that time in the swamp.

Tails could see the hand moving, and the double's eyes widening as he ran, faster than he'd ever done, a layer of electricity surrounding him, towards it. He didn't feel the push, nor did he feel the slight resistance of the lightning and air hitting the double.

The electricity was faster than him though, and soared away before he could keep up, barely another ten feet. The wall of lightning kept pushing the doppelganger, straight into the flowers, where it burst with green light, dozens of the lights emitting from its body.

There was another odd scent in the air, and it was one that Tails did recognize from his time with Spark, but it was one that he wasn't going to think about. "You alright?" he asked Katia.

"That was amazing! You're just as fast as Blaze, did you know that? That was fantastic! And you were talking with it! I didn't even know that was possible!"

They...had never tried talking to them? He could have guessed, given Ikan'Thoa's general perception of outsiders was to hunt them down and kill them, but there was no diplomacy involved in most of those cases?

Granted, most of the time it did involve being broken down by false comments, but still..."No one's tried to listen?"

"No, we're trained to kill them. I knew they can talk, but it was always just talking about us being failures and such. Why didn't you wake me up when you saw it forming? They're always much easier to take out when you're in a group."

"Because you said some weird things and passed out, you didn't look asleep," Tails stated simply. Katia stared at him, her head tilting to one side.

"I said some weird things? The last thing I remember was how warm your hands were, and feeling a small bit of electricity in my head similar to when being brainshifted...and then nothing."

"So nothing about a Bringer of Chaos? Nothing about Guardian of Sol? None of those?" Tails asked.

Katia shook her head. "No, I don't remember any of that. What're those?"

"Blooming Tides?"

Katia stared. "How...how do you know that term?" she asked, her voice hitching in a way that told Tails she had turned deathly afraid. Her hand tightened the grip on her spear, making him worried she was about to turn it on him.

—Side B—

Blaze's eyes wandered over the full moon as her mind went into a thousand miles a minute. Spark was asleep in a small den they had found, and Blaze had taken the opportunity to stay up for watch duty.

The Sol Emeralds weren't charging like they were supposed to be. Everything that she had ever been taught was that the Sol Emeralds would recharge, given time. Was that because they had another way home again? Or was it because they were being used?

Except Marine had no use for them, the way she did. She didn't actually have Marine tested for the capability to use the emeralds, but she had assumed. And it was a dangerous assumption these days. Burning Marine? That's what it would be, using the Sol Emeralds. Generally, aquakinetics didn't have the ability to use the Sol Emeralds or the Chaos Emeralds. Although the only kinetic she knew to have ever used the Sol Emeralds were pyrokinetics...she should probably look into that once she got back.

No, there wouldn't be a reason for Marine to be using them. A power source, maybe? Marine would know the legends though, if she bothered to look through Blaze's side of the Wave. Actually, now that she thought about it, would the tanuki have? Probably.

Blaze wouldn't have hesitated to search through Marine's stuff if she felt the need to. Admittedly, she probably couldn't understand the hundreds of schematics books the aquakinetic owned, but she'd look through them. She had to assume then, worst possible scenario, that Marine was using the emeralds and preventing them from charging. And hadn't looked up the legends and myths that Blaze had told her to should anything happen to her.

It meant...what changed? Nothing, really. She was still stuck on a death world with an emotionally abused vixen, with Tails who was the only other one remotely stable except for self-confidence issues, but that was true for most sapients his age, and with another emotionally abused and physically abused vixen. Something was off, about all this. It was almost pre-planned, it seemed. Two highly trained fox women to assist them in the 'Exception' missions? She already knew about their plan to essentially pull Tails in to the village. But her? Was she good to go?

It was one of the reasons she wanted to get out. The elders were tackling them one problem at a time, rather than all of them. Blaze first, to prove her worth, and Spark in the temple and swamp, respectively. Then Katia and Tails...how low did she want her opinion to be of the two-tailed fox?

Granted, Spark had admitted to being told to ensure he laid with her, and he still managed to defend himself. At his age, that was impressive. Most men wouldn't hesitate when a woman like Spark comes up and demands it.

No, there were other things going on, and she couldn't see what they were. The dirt beneath her feet crumbled slightly as she dug her toes into it, trying to figure something, anything out. Did they not have enough information? Were there missing parts?

How big was this ocean that they were supposed to cross?

Her midsection was hit with a sudden cramp, tendrils of pain flowing through her. She looked up towards the full moon before she sighed. Of course it would be the full moon. She didn't actually hate the full moon, she knew it wasn't its fault her cycle happened to fall exact with its own.

If anything she hoped that Spark was more tactful than Tails was when he'd found out. Admittedly, she'd underestimated how powerful his nose was, but even she smelled it quick enough. Spark turned over in her sleep, causing Blaze to watch her for a moment as she curled up, her clothes next to her folded nicely.

Blaze forced herself up, brushing off her tail and legs. She wasn't going to get anything done just by standing here, wishing for things to go their way. She had to study the Special Zone teleportal rings, maybe there was one that would lead back to Sonic's world. Or the Sol Empire, she'd be perfectly okay with that one too. She could always use the Jeweled Scepter to launch Tails back.

"Use rimweed," Spark murmured from the corner. Blaze looked at her, surprised that the vixen had woken up from the near silent movements of the pyrokinetic cat.

"Did I wake you?" she asked softly.

"No, the smell did," Spark murmured as she uncurled, stretching her back to the insane amounts that Blaze knew sentient cats did all the time. She'd never seen Tails do it though, and she idly wondered why. Then her midsection hit again, and she gave barely an grunt of pain. "Rimweed," the vixen said after a moment, getting up slowly. "You do know rimweed?"

"Can't say I do. Do you have any here?" Blaze asked. Spark started at her, before she reached into a small pocket of fur at her side.

She pulled out a small green mass, like a combination of mistletoe and moss, with a hint of cinnamon and lichen. "Rimweed. All females are supposed to carry some."

"What is it?"

"It's a herb. Natural help when it comes to the cycles. Just pop a bit into your mouth, and suck on it for a bit," Spark answered, tearing off a small piece.

Blaze held it in her hand gently, running her fingers over it. It was extremely soft, despite the look of mistletoe. She was hesitant about putting it in her mouth, especially considering that Spark had just pulled it out of her fur. Then her midsection protested loudly her hesitation, and she popped it into her mouth.

It was extremely bitter at first, but over time her mouth got used to it a bit. Immediately she could feel the fading away of the pain she'd been inflicted each full moon. It wasn't completely gone, but it was much less...there. Medicine...similar to the usual pills she'd take at home. General painkillers. The only difference was how quick this one was. Most of the time it would take hours before it would kick in.

"It won't stop kits, but it should ease things. I was given more than needed because it also helps with the aftereffects of a successful mating. They never asked for it back," Spark shrugged. Blaze internally rolled her eyes. Of course Spark would call it that. "Since I'm up anyways, and you haven't slept, we should keep going," Spark said, putting her clothes on quickly and easily. It took her only a second before she stood ready for the next fight, or for the next disaster that would befall them.

Blaze took a deep breath. Now that the bitterness of the rimweed had been taken out of her mouth, she could concentrate a little better, especially as she wasn't being kicked in her abdomen every few seconds by her body. "I agree," she said a moment later. The faster they found something worth scouting out, the better.

Or finding the remains of the previous scouting teams. Spark had said this was essentially a dead zone, and Blaze could understand why. Her eyes were perfectly suited to the low light level, and Spark's were probably just as well. It made the walking surprisingly easy as they went in silence.

"Why do you not carry a spear?" Blaze asked after a moment. "Katia carried one always, until it melted."

"Melted? I'm not allowed to. Not old enough, they say," Spark explained with a questioning gaze. "You must be at least fifteen winters before they'll let you carry a spear, and that's only if the instructor thinks that you are ready for one," she finished.

"Melted," Blaze reaffirmed. "That seems strange. They sent you out here without a weapon? Asides from the crossbow, I mean."

"Crossbow is only beginner weapon. Meant for children, to keep at range. Spears are for adults, to use their greater strength. As for me, I am my greatest weapon," Spark said, creating a small bolt in between her hands. Now that she was looking for it, Blaze saw the small twitch of pain as it crossed her face. Nearly imperceptible.

"Store it for longer before releasing," Blaze said. "When you create a bolt like that. Increase the potential-"

"Are you a lightning channeler? Do not try to explain channeling to me, caller. If I needed a flame caller to explain-"

Blaze calmly made a square of fire around Spark, almost a complete box, while barely moving from her spot. "I don't...I'm not an electrokinetic. That's true, but I am a pyrokinetic. A flame caller, you say. Except I do not call the flames, they merely answer to what I tell them to do," Blaze said. "But it is there that I can teach you. I can teach control. Because I've been on the other side, where you are."

Spark said nothing for a while, her foot tracing the angles of the box. Nearly a perfect ninety degree angle. "Control. I...am not in control. Of my channeling."

"I've seen a chaoskinetic force his power into a spear, and into a blast. I've also seen them force it into themselves, to control time. I've seen an aerokinetic fly faster than sound on a whim. You've seen what I can do. Control is possible, but you must work for it. You have power, and from that comes an inverse of control. You must have both."

She was purposely riling Spark up now. She'd only met Shadow a few times, and the three way race between Sonic, Blaze, and Shadow was one that she wouldn't forget anytime soon. Spark stared at her, the red eyes peering out at her with an ethereal glow behind them. "We can do more as we walk and scout," Blaze reasoned.

Spark looked away for a long few seconds, obviously thinking it over. "...Fine," she said once she looked up.

Blaze launched immediately into a discussion of how she controlled her power. Most of the elements from it came from her lectures to Marine, trying to help the aquakinetic learn more about her own power over water.

Granted, water didn't seem to need to be compressed like electricity did, or fire could. Now that she thought about it, compressed water was almost impossible to create, wasn't it? She'd have to ask Tails. It was a physics thing, and that was the fox's specialty. Spark seemed to listen closely, her ears shifting angles every few moments to listen to something farther away. Blaze didn't hear anything unusual, but Spark's ears were similar to Tails', and he did have better hearing than her. And smell.

She wasn't jealous.

Spark suddenly held out her hand, and Blaze stopped a moment before. The last echoes of her words died out as they crossed over a small hill, revealing a giant pit shaped like a sphere beneath them.

In the middle stood the obvious bodies of a half dozen others, all at various moments of decomposition. The sides were perfectly smooth, almost unreal, and Blaze noticed with more than a hint of worry that there was a slight change of color within the pit. Instead of a dull brown, there was a purple, swirling towards the center.

A spiral. "Think those are the scouting teams?" Blaze asked, even though she felt she didn't need to. Spark nodded absently, worry crossing the vixen's face.

"Didn't that note speak something about spirals?"

"Everything's a spiral," Blaze confirmed as she reached down and grabbed a small rock. She tossed it down the side and watched as the purple lines leapt up out of the sphere pit, crushing the rock instantly before going back to its spiral design. "You know anything?" she asked.

"It seemed like art, but I've never seen art that comes alive," Spark admitted. She closed her eyes, seemingly trying to recount something. On a hunch, Blaze reached down again for another rock, tossing it on the purple line this time. The design stayed flat. She reached down and gently patted the sides of the pit; nearly perfectly smooth, cold rock.

"How fast can you go?" Blaze asked after a moment. Spark gave her a side eyed glance, as if debating how to answer that.

"Not as fast as you can," she eventually settled for. Blaze nodded, her foot running over the almost supernaturally smooth rock. In an instant she grabbed Spark, ignoring the way the vixen's body sparked at her, and called upon the flames.

If everything was a spiral, then it made sense to go with it.

We get answers, and more questions. I was tempted to go extremely in depth as to how kinesis works from Blaze's perspective, but I decided not to. It didn't really seem necessary; there was nothing there that couldn't be gleamed from future chapters.

The Exasperation arc as a whole, really. More unhappiness with Blaze and Spark.

Until Next Time.