Chapter 142

Courage

Cream stared at the receiver, hardly daring to believe what she had just heard. Sonic is still alive. It hardly seemed possible. A warmth stole through her, untwisting some of the knot that had settled in her stomach. It felt as though she had been anxious for weeks now. Ever since she had been taken captive by the Hard Boiled Heavies she had rarely felt safe and secure. Going from one danger to another, the whole time wondering when the next calamity would strike.

Things were at their most desperate now. Eggman had returned and the entire world was swiftly falling under his dominion. Resistance felt more like a formality, something her and the others had to do, but there was very little hope in the endeavor. Even one as naturally optimistic as Cream was starting to believe that though they had a duty to try and save the earth, it was an ultimately fruitless endeavor.

But now, everything had changed. Sonic is alive. There was hope. Cream struggled to catch her breath. The sudden flood of adrenaline made her feel as though she had just run a race though she had not moved from her chair. She jumped up, suddenly breathless and flushed. She turned from the radio and went running back into the hallways of the pyramid.

Cream did not know where she was going nor who she was rushing to go and talk to. A pressure built in her chest that made her feel on the point of bursting. Human soldiers watched her wearily as she started skipping merrily. Cream did not notice their nonplussed expressions. She was impervious to embarrassment. Sonic is coming back! Hero of heroes, Doctor Eggman's chief rival and the bravest person on earth. With Tails and Sonic together, nothing can stop them.

She was going so fast now Cream hardly paid any attention to what was in front of her. "Ouch!" Cream toppled backward and felt the person she had run into do the same. "I'm sorry!" She jumped up to find her mother gawking back at her.

"Cream?"

"Mom!" Cream jumped up and pulled Vanilla to her feet. Her mother frowned as she patted down her dress. "Dear, you should really pay attention where your-"

"Sonic's coming back!" Cream jumped up and down, no longer able to hold in her excitement.

Vanilla raised one eyebrow. "Sonic? Cream honey, what are you talking-"

"I just spoke with him!" Cream's voice echoed off the high walls. "Sonic was at the hideout in Station Square. He told me that he would be coming back soon, we just have to hold out a little while longer."

Vanilla searched her daughter, her eyes narrowed with doubt. "Honey…are you sure-"

"YES!" Cream grabbed her mother by the hands and pulled her into a dance. "It was him mother! Sonic, he's alive and he is coming back!"

Cream saw doubt wrestle against hope inside her mother's eyes. It was a pitch battle, and Cream knew that it was probably even more difficult for her mother than for Cream to have optimism. However, so close to the infectious positivity of her daughter, Vanilla relented. A smile spread across her face and she danced in the hall.

Daughter and mother laughed and the sudden outburst of mirth in the midst of the dour setting drew many eyes towards them. Cream saw one human officer quicken his pace no doubt rushing to report to the Vice President. It didn't matter. Feeling something, anything other than dread was such a welcome tonic it was intoxicating.

"Sonic! Sonic!" They cheered happily.

Some of the villagers came hurrying over to them, led by Strider who was limping as fast as his old bones could take him. "What's happened? Is everything alright?"

Mother and daughter both stopped their childish giggling and cleared their throats. "Sonic is alive. Cream has just heard from him. He says he is coming back soon."

Strider gaped at Vanilla before turning over to Cream. "Is….Is this true? I mean…you actually heard him?"

Cream nodded up and down. "It was him. I know his voice. He told me that he was coming back."

The villagers who had been milling over towards them heard these words. Frantic whispers broke out as the news was passed one by one. Soon, everyone was beaming and shaking their fists. Cream saw one young rabbit jump up and down clinging at his mother's skirt. "Sonic! Sonic! Sonic is going to save us!"

"What is the meaning of all this?" Heavy footsteps interrupted the jubilation. Cream turned to see Vice President Acorn striding forward, followed by half a dozen of her closest generals.

The other villagers drew back instinctively. Cream's people had always been wary of humans, and recent experiences had only heightened that prejudice. "On the radio," Cream began. "I was listening when we received a call from the Station Square base. Sonic was there, he told me that he was coming back soon."

Acorn pressed her hands against her hips. She frowned and looked skeptically at Cream. "And you're sure of this?"

"Certain."

"Hmm." Acorn shrugged, turned and made a direct line towards the radio. Cream followed, and it seemed the whole village would attempt to do the same. Strider was forced to call them back, assuring them that Cream would confirm her report.

Cream hurried to catch up to Acorn. It was difficult to try and match strides with the long legged VP. "It was him," She said firmly. "I know it."

The Vice President said nothing. When they reached the terrace she took the place of the radio operator and began to dial the receiver. A minute later, a voice issued out of the other end. It was the slow, monotonous droll of Big the Cat. "Hello-"

"Get me Amber," Acorn's voice was harsh and unnaturally sharp. There was static and then a woman's voice.

"That isn't protocol, you have to confirm your identity first," Amber spoke with a sarcastic tone that often made Cream feel as if she were being attacked over the radio.

Vice President Acorn on the other hand was not phased. "Was Sonic there?"

A pause. "Yes, he was here."

Acorn's eyes narrowed. "What did he say? Where is he now?"

"He barely said anything, but he's gone now."

"Gone?" Acorn slammed her hand down on the table. "Where is he? How could you let him leave?"

"I didn't have much of a choice. He vanished in a flash of light, some kind of teleportation or something."

"Did he tell you anything?" Acorn sounded desperate.

"Just that he was fighting Eggman on another planet."

"And he said he would come back?"

"Yes."

Acorn closed her eyes and took a long slow breath. "But I'm guessing he didn't say when?"

"No."

"Well, at least we know he is still alive, we still have a chance. Thanks Amber." Acorn ended the call and exhaled.

"I told you," Cream added.

"It isn't that I didn't believe you, it's just…."

"Hard to be hopeful?" Cream offered.

Acorn smiled wistfully. "Something like that." The Vice President rubbed the sleep from her eyes. It was still early, and sleep did not come easily here. Cream could feel the bags beneath her own eyes.

"Well, that makes things a bit clearer. We just need to hold out until Sonic can return."

"Tails and the others should be back soon," Cream offered.

"Yes, and once they are here we can-" Acorn stopped short. The radio receiver suddenly started to emit static. Both of them instinctively checked the comms, but the line was red, indicating that they were not receiving a signal.

The static grew louder. Cream had to fold down her ears because the high pitched crackling physically hurt. "What's going on?" She screamed over the noise.

Acorn shook her head. "I don't know-" The Vice President's face had lost all its color. She looked around in a panic. Suddenly, she hoisted the radio operator chair over her head and readied to smash it down over the radio.

Cream jumped back just as a voice called out of the speaker. "This is SG-1991 Genesis. Codename Aurora." The voice was distorted by the static, rising and dropping suddenly in pitch. Cream started in disbelief at the comm.

"Aurora?" Cream repeated.

The static made no answer. Cream shared a look of bewilderment with Acorn. Suddenly, the voice returned. "The emperor is coming. The emperor is coming. The emperor is coming." Aurora repeated the phrase, each time her voice shifted going from a low growl to a high pitched whine. The words thundered inside Cream's head.

"What do we do?" Cream bellowed.

"Intercept scout ships. Reprogram data. Ghost injection." Again, Aurora repeated her words several times. It sounded as if the A.I was being torn apart, her code struggling to keep itself aligned.

"The emperor is coming." With those final words, the radio went silent. For several moments, all Cream could hear was the loud drumming of her own heart.

Then, she felt strong arms pick her up from the floor. Cream did not remember falling over. She stood in a fear drunk daze. The Vice President was pacing rapidly in front of her. "What was that?" She snapped at Cream. "Who is Aurora? Isn't that the A.I that destroyed Emerald City?"

"I-"

"Talk." The Vice President's expression had changed. She buried her own fear beneath a mask of intense seriousness.

"Aurora did destroy Emerald City, but she was killed. Later, Metal Sonic awakened an earlier prototype of her. She was running the Egg Carrier when we were there with them."

The Vice President pursed her lips. "Metal Sonic…" She repeated to herself. Again she started to pace back and forth. "Why give us a warning?" She mumbled. "Ghost injection? Scout ships?" Acorn stopped and scratched her chin. "Why didn't Metal Sonic come with you when you arrived here?"

Cream shrugged. "Tails said that Metal and the others didn't want to fight Eggman. They said it wasn't their place."

"But they did not wish to serve him?"

"I don't think so."

"Hmmm," Acorn closed her eyes, Cream could see that her mind was working hard to fit the pieces together. After a pause, she opened them and looked heavily down at Cream. "I think they are giving us a warning. Metal Sonic may have chosen to leave because he knew that his master would have a way of tracking them down, and that if they stayed here they would only give away our position. But…" Acorn pointed at the radio. "Eggman must have already found them which means he will have access to the Egg Carrier's flight logs. He'll know that Metal brought you all somewhere around here."

Cream's insides turn cold. She suddenly expected a shadow to fall over her, to look up and see a colossal ship hovering ominously in the air. "But he may not be coming here personally," Acorn continued. "The Egg Carrier flew all over the world after the battle at the fortress. That is why they are sending out scout ships. Once those ships see these islands, then Eggman will come to investigate."

"What do we do?" Cream asked. Her knees were rocking back and forth. She felt on the verge of being sick.

"We have to intercept the scout ships. Not destroy them, as that would only alert Eggman even more. Someone will have to catch them and inject them with ghost data, so that way it looks like they did their job and found nothing… DAMN IT" Acorn kicked the chair and sent it spiraling off the terrace.

"We don't have our ship!" Acorn seized her hair and pulled it, as if trying to expand her brain. "We don't have any aerial vehicles, they took them all, how are we supposed to-" Acorn stopped talking and she and Cream looked at each other at the exact same time.

Cream's heart fluttered. She felt faint. The words she knew she needed to say got clogged up in her throat.

"You can use that suit," Acorn said gently. "Does it allow you to fly?"

Cream nodded. Her feet felt molded into the ground. She had never seemed so heavy, or incapable of moving. The Vice President knelt beside her. Acorn had to mask her own fear and doubt in order to give Cream a reassuring glance. "You can do this. I will have my men make the drives. Just get it onto those ships and their scanners will be wiped."

Cream said nothing. She could not bring herself to shake her head. The nerves in her hands twitched repeatedly. She wished with all her heart that Tails was here. Her heart physically ached with the yearning to pass this responsibility off to another. Emerl…Cheese…When it came down to it, there had always been someone else to step up for her. Now, there was no one. Tails had specially coded the suit to only respond to her or himself. Cream knew with a finality as certain as the grave that it had to be her.

She didn't remember leaving the terrace. The world around her seemed to blur into an unseeing mess of color. At some point her mother had found her. Vanilla took Cream by the hand and guided her gently. Cream was aware of her mother's voice but she could not make out the words. All sound was garbled and drowned beneath a high pitched ringing sound. Her heart was missing every other beat causing a stitch in her chest. Cream lagged, feeling suddenly drained and finding it difficult to breathe.

Minutes, or perhaps hours later she found herself standing in front of the Power Suit. Cream's knees felt as if they were knocking back and forth. People were moving all around her. The Vice President's soldiers were showing her devices, but she was hardly aware of them. Everything around her narrowed until all she could see was the golden sheen of the Power Suit. Cream groaned internally as she had a single morbid thought. The suit changed instantly into a raised skeleton. It's his bones…The thought caused a wave of nausea to swim up her stomach.

"Cream? Cream, honey are you alright? You don't have to do this, you know?" Her mother's voice called out to her from far away. It sounded as if it were issuing from the far side of a long tunnel. Cream's head was swimming, the ground beneath would not stop turning. Suddenly, she felt arms around her. They helped steady her, and slowly the world refocused. Cream saw that everyone was looking at her. Blood rushed into her cheeks, but she soon realized that they were not looking at her with disdain.

Her mother, the Vice President, and all the human soldiers looked just as terrified as Cream felt. "Cream? Did you hear me?" Her mother continued. "You don't have to do this."

Cream swallowed down the bile in her throat. The fatigue was falling away from her, the ground as steady beneath her as it had ever been. She shook her head. "No, this has to be done. I can do this."

Vanilla released Cream and stepped back. Cream took the drives from the U.F soldiers and approached the Power Suit. Her morbid imagination changed in an instant. The suit was not Emerl's bones, but his spirit. She placed her hand on the metal and felt the warmth. "Share your courage with me," She asked in a low whisper.

Cream opened the suit, but hesitated before stepping inside. A final weight of finality dragged down at her. She knew that once she had donned the suit there was no going back. It took all the bravery she could muster to make that last step. Once that was done, everything else felt easy. The suit closed around her and she heard as well as felt the powerful electric hum as the machine came to life.

Cream flexed her hands, readjusting herself to the feeling. The others drew back. Cream could feel the weight of their expectations and hopes on her shoulders. I can't fail. She understood the stakes of what she had to do, but the fear was ebbing away. She had already taken that step at which there was no turning back. Everything that followed would happen as it would, there was no use in dreading what could not be averted.

Once leaving the central pyramid, Cream powered up the thrusters and soared into the sky. Her scanners did not pick anything up, which Cream thought a good sign as that also meant that no scout ships would be aware of her either. She decided she would fly towards the sun first and then circle around in a wide orbit around the island.

By using the two remaining Chaos Emeralds that were still powering the suit, Cream could move at supersonic speeds. Despite the danger and her fear, soaring over the water, causing huge waves on either side of her brought a smile to her face. Flying like this was an exhilarating experience that had no rival. She twisted and turned, amazed at how naturally she adjusted to moving in the suit.

It took Cream a little less than three hours to finish her first orbit around the island. She gave a buffer of three hundred miles between herself and the island. Cream hoped that she had balanced her desire to intercept the ships long before they could get any readings from the island, but made her orbit short enough so that the ships did not slip past her.

Aurora's warning had not come with a time frame, but as every minute passed Cream became more and more nervous. However, as the sun started to dip behind the west horizon and the sky was painted a brilliant shade of purple and orange, Cream caught a ping on her radar. Four ships were moving at incredible speed directly towards the island. Cream spun in midair and changed course to intercept.

Using the suit's built in radar jamar, she ensured that the ships could not detect her. Cream caught up to them easily. The ships were sleek and small, built for speed and not for combat. It was only because of the power generated by the Chaos Emeralds that Cream was able to catch up. She landed gracefully on the first ship. Her metal glove tore through its hull with ease. She quickly stabbed the metallic drive into the ship's wiring, and bent the metal back into place. The ship whirred and trembled, but before the ship could try and shake her off, the drive did its job. It was no longer aware of Cream, nor that anything strange had happened.

Elated with her achievement, Cream quickly soared to the other ship. One by one she managed to inject the ghost drives. Each ship would be flooded with incoherent data, and when they returned to Eggman all he would find was scans of empty ocean.

After the last ship was hacked, Cream jumped away and allowed the ships to continue. Even when they flew right above the island it would make no difference. The automated machines would not be able to register that they found anything. Cream smiled. That's what you get for relying on machines. Cream thought with ironic pleasure. An organic pilot would not be susceptible to such a trick. Eggman's absolute reliance on automation made him vulnerable. But if he sent someone else, he would have to trust them. Somehow Cream knew that Eggman would always prefer to trust his own machines over the word of someone else.

I guess I should head back. Cream hovered in the air. The golden glow of the setting sun reflected off her suit making her appear as though she were on fire. The effect reflected off the surface of the water and caused a ripple of light to encircle her. Cream marveled at the display of color and light.

As Cream started her flight back to the island, she found herself laughing. Once it started it was difficult to stop. She could not see why she had been so terrified in the first place.

Hundreds of miles away, Metal Sonic sat on the bridge of the Egg Carrier. His metallic fingers danced on the rest of the captain's chair. Soon Aurora's sabotage would be uncovered. Robotnik will have discovered his treachery and would rush back to avenge himself.

Metal Sonic had given the emperor the Egg Carrier's navigation logs, but since the island that Tails and the others had gone to was not recorded on any database the Egg Carrier's logs could not provide a precise location. All the logs would show is that the Egg Carrier flew over the ocean, circumnavigating almost the entire world before returning to the jungle. Eggman would either have to follow the Egg Carrier's exact flight path, or more likely he would be forced to send out scout ships to the places where the Egg Carrier had made extended stops.

Metal's entire plan hinged on Eggman choosing the latter. By now, Aurora would have integrated herself into all of Eggman's systems, slowly but surely pulling herself back together. Once she was active again, she had orders to use whatever means necessary to communicate with the island, to warn Tails and the others that Eggman was on his way and tell them the best way to remain undetected.

The plan was full of holes. It could so easily go wrong, and even if everything went perfect the best they could hope for was delay. Delay for what? Metal Sonic wondered. That question had nagged at him ever since he had made the deal with Eggman in the first place. Five Sol Gems and infinite time would not give him the power he needed to fight the emperor. What could they hope to accomplish with a few more days of peace?

It wasn't until Metal caught his reflection in the glass like consoles of the bridge did he realize what he was doing. I am waiting for you. Metal closed and opened his fist. The thought made him feel the closest thing a machine could come to indignation. He was placing everything, everything they had fought for on the return of Sonic. He always arrived just in time to save his friends from me.

At that exact moment, the bridge was washed in a red light. Metal Sonic stirred. If he were organic perhaps he would have felt the irony twist inside his stomach. Sonic had always arrived in time to defeat Metal, but now, when it was Metal who could have used saving, Sonic was too late. But Metal was not organic. He felt neither rage nor fear. High above them, the emperor's flagship materialized into view. Hundreds of smaller vessels came pouring out of its hangar. There would be no discussions this time, no deals. Metal Sonic activated the comm to communicate with the rest of the ship. "Prepare for battle."