Chapter 27- Light Versus Darkness

Rouge and Omega finally arrive at Mazuri, a small village located on a reddish-brown savannah and features many exotic animals. At Mazuri's Gaia Temple, Zor and a horde of Chronos's henchmen took care of the village's defenders with relative ease.

Zor was about to finish them off, up to Rouge swooping in and knocks back Zor with a flying kick Omega lands where the henchmens' where at and spins his robotic torso around clockwise, unleashing a full-force weapon barrage from his built-in arm cannons ranging from hails of bullets in a circular radius around him, flamethrowers or missile launchers.

This left Rouge to face down Zor, another member of the Deadly Six. Zor shoots a black composed of a black thick fluid substance, Rouge rotates her body at high speeds appearing almost like a tornado and drills through Zor's attack and lands a wicked dropkick.

Rouge gets into a fierce fighting position, dead set on beating Zor. "No more will I be considered deadweight!"

Zor gets back up on his feet, wiping some dirt from his cheek. "I see…neither will I."

Zor calls upon his ability to utilise the darkness and other forbidden arts of dark magic that Master Zik once said could make Zor as strong as Zavok in the future and if he was more confident.

Zor declares with a twisted sense of joy, while flocks of black bats with one red eye that are made of shadows appear behind him from portals of the same thick fluid substance from before. "Oh! Symphony of the dark void bless me with your sparks of enlightenment!"

Zor uses the bats to blind Rouge's field of vision, and then make a few of his bats amalgamate into shadowy clones of himself.

Rouge dodges their burst of synced-up strikes, studying what Zor clones are capable of. "These clones are probably much weaker than the real Zor. This might be a cake walk for me".

Even so, Rouge unfortunately underestimates the clone's power and is caught off guard by a heavy backfist. The clones follow up with a combined punch that sends Rouge outside the Gaia Temple through its stone walls.

Rouge flaps her wings to help me land on the ground without taking any fall damage, stunned from the impact of Zor's clones united assault. "Dammit! Those clones seem to have possessed the same physical stats as the original…maybe retaining Zor's abilities as well. Now, this just got problematic."

The clones altogether attempt to crush Rouge immediately after, with the bat avoiding their crushing kick. Rouge proceeds to spin her entire body once more to create a tornado that traps the clones and promptly shoots up with each spin for the airspeed to create blades of wind that inflicted too much lethal damage on them.

To Rouge's surprise, the clones turned into a pool of black liquid and instantly dissipated later. "Hm..the clone focuses on explosive power, at the cost of having a weak body exterior."

Just as Rouge figures out clones' weaknesses, three more confront her as backup.

Feeling free of Rouge's interference, Zor goes on to destroy the Gaia Temple as part of Infinite's plan if the Resistance make their arrival to the area. Omega comes down to deliver a two-handed hammerfist on Zor, the Zeti moves back to avoid the attack. The impact of Omega's attack breaks apart the part of the ground Zor was standing on, breaking his balance. Omega charges in and kicks Zor into the air, and flies up past him as a feint and flies back to roundhouse kick. Omega grabs the Zeti by his ankle and flies downward to slam him into the ground, putting them down below the temple.

Zor gets back up on his feet with some difficulty, scowling at the sight that Rouge had come back defeating his clones with a smirk on her. "Kinda a coward move to let your clones do all the work for you!"

Zor discerns the blood dripping down his forehead, angrily gritting his teeth. It is until he recollects Zavok's words of wisdom. "By melding hatred with delight, Zor. You could have this world in the very palm of your hand, trapped in eternal darkness where you would be the one on top."

Zor all at once starts grinning uncontrollably, much to Rouge and Omega displeasure. Zor decides on an all-or-nothing "Darkness Veil", casting the three of them in an area of nothing but pure twilight. Omega briskly responds to this by manifesting force fields around him and Rouge, who rushes towards Zor in an attempt to defeat him before he does something that changes the battle outcome straight to his favour.

Zor aims a beam of darkness as fast as lightning towards Rouge, but changes its trajectory at the last second and pierces through Omega's lower torso. This concerns Rouge as she stops running, for Zor to push her back quite far with a flying kick and proceeds to rush Omega.

Zor uses a physical attack imbued with dark matter for a ravaging direct hit, dealing serious damage on E-Series Robot. Omega goes for a sliding kick to retaliate, but was actually a chop feint to misdirect Zor. With his free arm, Omega elongates his arm to launch Rouge who was already in the middle of swinging her leg. Zor realises his predicament too late and is struck directly to the face by Rouge's vertical roundhouse kick.

Zor after a bit regains his footing, still having the same cheeky grin on his face. "That damn robot got me, I admit. But in the end, Darkness always prevails."

Zor powers up using the surrounding dark matter and dons it like an exoskeleton, laughing maniacally. "HAHAHA..YOU HEAR THAT, HEROES? YOUR PRECIOUS SYMPHONY OF HOPE WILL BE CRUSH RIGHT HERE AND NOW!"

With Omega down for the count at the moment, Rouge challenges the enkindled Zor and quickly produces ultrasonic waves with her voice, blasting Zor with a concussive force. Zor's darkness permeate exoskeleton took the attack head-on, that little damage from it, as Zor makes his move morphing his hands into two shadow claws and strikes down Rouge with accumulating tempo.

This added with his manifestation of nocturnal animal-like shinigamis, Rouge finds herself severely overpowered by Zor who keeps on laughing maniacally. Zor grabs Rouge's face and slams her into the ground, and enlarges his exoskeleton into a mammoth owl using its fist to punch the beaten Rouge.

Rouge struggles to get up, with her body battered and bleeding apologies to everyone. "...sorry everyone…I guess I am truly deadweight."

Before Rouge's spirit is crushed completely, Omega is seen in front of her trying to push back Zor's giant avatar fist from crushing her. "We're not done yet! For the fallen, the anguish. We can't lose here, or everything we fought for was for nothing. Giving the people without a beackon of light that tells them that everything is going to be okay."

This was enough for Rouge to regain her fighting spirit, Omega uses the jet boosters on his elbows and the one built into his back for added power and manages to push back the avatar fist. Omega then hurls a massive fireball right after it.

Zor tries to return fire, only for his avatar to melt away and he even coughs up blood. "WHY NOW, WHEN I AM SO CLOSE TO VICTORY!"

Rouge takes notes of this, and figures out what happened. "He must have hit his limit, to have used a technique as powerful as this must be draining."

Omega nods his head, once hearing what Rouge had said. "Indeed, my sensors had deciphered a route to our victory."

Omega proceeds to tell Rouge what his sensors had found, whereas Zor looks with disgust at their symphony brimming with renewed confidence. "NO NO NO…THIS SHOULDN'T BE HAPPENING!"

Rouge in a flash goes on the offensive on Zor, much to the Zeti's surprise. Omega crosses his arms and bends his legs slightly upward, a spark ignites in Omega's chest. Rouge uses a spinning kick in the form of a drill that throws Zor backwards by the impact, Zor manages to recover by using darken tethers to balance himself up.

Once touching the ground, Zor directs all of his manifested shadowy tendrils towards Rouge. Going berserk, Zor releases the full power of his technique where whitish lines spread his Darkness Veil spreads the area consuming it with darkness like the act of disintegration.

Rouge simply closes her eyes, as Omega bursts out Chaos Energy all over his body like a bright swirling dome that repels Zor's Darkness Veil.

Zor yelps with a frenzy of rage, and bloodshot eyes. "THAT DAMN ROBOT HAS FOOLED ME AGAIN?!"

Omega's previous attack may have cost a large quantity of his power supply, but he manages to set up Rouge to deliver a clean shot.

Rouge enters the same mental state of being immersed with a feeling of energised focus, in the midst of battle that Silver and Shadow uses. "GO TO HELL WITH YOUR DARKNESS!"

With incredible acceleration and spurring propulsion, Rouge ferociously kicks Zor in the sternum and sends the Zeti flying from the impact.

In a different place, Surge, Kit and Mighty set forth for Chun-nan. A quiet mountain town that is known far and wide for its delicious meat bun recipe which has been passed down for generations. Starline is seen trying to translate the manuscript on the walls of the Gaia Temple, while bodies of Chronos's henchmen are being tossed aside behind him. But what caught his attention was the glimpse of a bolt of electricity shown in the background, as he proceeds to turn around and sees a flash of electricity approach him at high speeds.

He identifies the individual emitting that flash of electricity as Surge, and calls her out with a demanding tone of voice "What do you expect you can do…my failed creation."

Surge launches herself towards Starline at full speed, exclaiming Starline's name with intense rage and anger. "STARLINE!"

Starline unveils a dagger-like weapon with her right hand and launches a blast of electricity at Surge, which hilariously proves ineffective due to Surge's affinity for electricity.

Surge cracks her knuckles, smugly notifies Starline his lack of intellect. "HA! Have you forgotten about my affinity for electricity!"

Starline responds back at Surge, still retaining his base tone of voice. "I was simply testing your current capabilities, and still you are a failed creation of mine."

Surge grits her teeth upon hearing this, and shouts out to him. "...Well, answer this! What was my purpose?"

Starline remained quiet for a brief second, and proceeded to answer her question. "Might as well tell me, as you are going to die anyway by my hands…I once had a dream to serve as Dr. Eggman's apprentice, but gave up that dream after seeing Eggman's flaws. Assuming a new career path, I soon realised I could do better than Eggman and so sought to rule the world himself as Eggman's superior replacement. I went on to modify you and Kit, cyborgs built in the image of Sonic and Tails with the intended to replace the world's heroes, thus allowing me to control the "hero-versus-villain" dynamic from behind the scenes."

Surge finally meets the one who made her life a living hell, how would she react to that revelation of her true purpose. Find out in the next chapter.

See ya!