Chapter Twenty-Five: How to Make a Monster

I lean forward in the captain's chair on the bridge, pressing my face into my hands. My arms are shaking with both exhaustion and anxiety. It took us hours to escape the atmosphere of that planet without Metarex detection. And now that we're in the darkness of space, I can't stop shaking.

Never mind begin processing what just happened.

Tails pulled his face from his hands to see the crew of his craft gathered before him. They had been less than one-hundred percent before, but now with them all gathered together in this way, Tails was forced to face how far away from whole they really were.

Angel stood at the front of the bridge, rubbing at her throat in such a way that Tails figured it was unconscious. She finally seemed fully solid in this time, but at what cost? There were shallow slices through her skin at her throat where her father had dug in his clawed Metarex hands. The wings on her back were crumpled so terribly that it kept drawing Nova's attention.

Not that Nova didn't have enough to worry about in her own regard. In all honesty, she probably should have been back in the infirmary resting. She hardly seemed able to keep her eyes open. But she had apparently insisted she be here. She lay on the floor with her head in Shadow's lap and her body draped with a blanket, though she continued to shiver. She held the green Chaos Emerald Shadow had retrieved from Sonic in her open palm. Shadow, meanwhile, only had eyes for Nova's exhausted face.

Amy also sat off to the other side of the bridge with her arms wrapped around her legs and forehead pressed into her knees. Like she was quietly disintegrating. Cream and Cheese sat beside her, Cream whispering something to Amy that Tails couldn't hear.

Chris stood off with Knuckles, checking readings from the Master Emerald via one of the side monitors. Or at least Chris was. Though Knuckles stood with Chris, Knuckles paid no attention to the monitors. He was turned away, glowering at the center of the room.

Glowering at C2.

C2 stared up at the monitor in front of Tails, though at this point the screen showed nothing more than the blackness of space before them. Maybe she was thoughtful. Or maybe she was avoiding the questioning eyes of those around her.

Tails's crew. His broken, broken friends. And two of them missing, even more broken than the rest of them. Sonic was a Metarex. Again. And who knew what that meant for the fate of Cosmo?

"C2," Tails whispered. But it was the first time anyone spoke to the room at large in such a long time so even his quiet voice sounded absurdly loud. Tails took a deep breath before he continued, "Please, just…explain what just happened."

To which Knuckles added, "And how you knew who the leader of the Metarex was and said nothing."

"It was a rumor." C2 didn't quite turn toward them. Her body angled slightly away from the monitor but her head didn't similarly move. Her arms crossed against her chest. Her twin tails also wrapped around her from behind, in the same way Tails's did when he was in need of comfort. "I didn't know it was true."

"Says the Time Whisperer," Knuckles snapped.

C2 spun on him. Her eyes lit up, flashed wildly as they snapped to Knuckles's face. "We're immortal, not divine!"

"And did Angel know this too?" Knuckles said, unperturbed by C2's rage.

Angel turned slightly toward Knuckles. Her fingers still trailed across the skin at her neck. "I didn't," she rasped, barely audible.

Tails winced. It was impossible to forget the fact that Sonic had done this to her. Her father had done this to her. Even Knuckles fell silent after Angel spoke.

C2 took a deep breath and mollified her fury before she continued. "Time Whisperers can't see every timeline, nor can they see all points in the timelines they do see. For whatever reason, one of those points is the planet of Greengate. Which led to the theory that after the defeat of Dark Oak, when the Metarex arose again, someone else was pulling the strings from there. Especially when the time rewinds returned different Metarex in each variation of the timeline."

Tails frowned. That was a thought that had crossed his mind as well. However, it had never been one he'd had the luxury of time to process. Other than…

"We figured that the Metarex were responsible for the time reversing, using the fake Chaos Emeralds," Tails said. "But that doesn't explain that girl."

"No, it doesn't," C2 agreed. "But it provided the Time Whisperers focused on this time period a space around which to investigate. Which led to the identification of an odd event that occurred in 1998, around the time when the Metarex invaded Majyk."

Nova, though barely conscious where she lay, took a sharp inhale that pulled the attention of the room. Shadow took her free hand and interlaced his fingers with hers. Pressed his other hand against her forehead and pushed her hair back. But no explanation was offered by either of them. And if either C2 or Angel knew what was going on by virtue of being Time Whisperers, they didn't offer up the information.

"After the invasion of Majyk, a fairy returned to Greengate with the Metarex," C2 continued. "She left the planet a year later, though then with a child who couldn't have been more than a couple months old. But they both returned to Greengate shortly after."

To which Amy asked, "So that little girl became the leader of the Metarex? How? Why?"

"And why," Nova gasped, not opening her eyes, "would a fairy want to wipe out her own—" She didn't finish the sentence. With her eyes closed, it wasn't clear if it was because she couldn't bear to finish the thought or simply because she had lost her already tentative hold on consciousness.

"I don't know," C2 replied softly. "Everything else known among the Time Whisperers was just conjecture, which is why I never said anything. I assumed it untrue. It sounded impossible. But if it's not—" C2 sighed heavily. "—then that girl's name is Black Thorn. And she is a fairy and a Seedrian and a Metarex."

"She's can't be more than eight years old," Amy said. But it wasn't said with fear.

Just sadness.

Eight-years-old and filled with nothing but hatred.

At which point, Knuckles said, "To end this war, we have to kill some kid?"

And no one had an answer to that.