Disclaimer: See first chapter.
Darkness
The wisps took only a second for their mark. The frenzied man was running towards her, and suddenly there was almost everything she could envision in the way. Blocks to keep him coming in a straight line, lasers and random objects shoved in his way, spikes to ensure that he couldn't move that quickly, and her own lasers from Orange in the wispon.
Each attack slowly but surely rocketed off a little of the purple aura surrounding him. Whisper growled a bit as she realized that if this kept going on, they were going to end up killing him. Was that really that much of a loss, though? He'd taken Islanders like her and hung up their taxidermied heads in his foyer, or lobby, or whatever that room was.
The wisp attacks never let up, and finally the man stopped, the aura barely cloaking him now. "I'ma gonna paddywhacka yous hards now!" he roared, dropping onto all fours.
Whisper never stopped firing, but it was almost as if the aura had come back to life again. It coated him fluidly like a second body, and the wisp attacks didn't seem to be bothering to do anything now, despite that Whisper could tell their power had not eased up in the slightest.
"Out the window!" Whisper commanded, jumping out a moment later just as the man slowed down, running into more of Pink's spikes. The four wisps outside the wispon came with her, and Green traded places with Orange, letting her fall confidently onto the concrete down below.
As soon as she landed, she bolted for the torn down front door. Alarms were flashing, but that didn't matter to her. There was a loud crash above her as the man jumped out the same window, but he'd overshot his jump a bit, landing straight into the fountain.
She wheeled around, firing some more of Orange's shots at him. "I don't think there's anything we can do, except tire him out!" Green said.
Tire him out? "Blue, make a maze of the cubes, minimal power. Cyan, light them up and blind him. Green, Orange," Whisper said instantly. A plan was forming in her head.
"Oh yeah, a real Whisper plan!" Orange cheered as she disimbued herself from the wispon. Whisper was glad that someone had faith in her, because as it was right now she had only the semblance of an idea what she was going to do.
She was a sniper, not a close range. She was no Tangle, no Slinger the ocelot, she wasn't meant for this kind of fighting.
But running and hiding? That, that she could do. The frenzied man let out another roar, running towards as if the fury had overridden everything he'd ever had and thought. Blue's eyes glowed as more cubes were generated, barely anything more than shells.
Whisper fired towards the ground, pushing herself up and then falling into Green's hover, pushing her above the entire field. The man was howling now, actual purple claws extending from his hands. It wasn't just the pure jaws.
The cubes broke apart into thousand of polygons, and right there that was when Cyan took into action, lighting them up into a blue light that flared next to him. Pink was laying down dozens of spike traps, some on the cubes and some on the floor, impossible to really walk his way out of.
She landed on the second floor, watching as he howled about doing...something...to her. He was impossible to understand now, his howling and raging having effectively neutered his ability to talk, but he could still reason. Especially as he suddenly turned to the stairs, rushing his way up them, ignoring all of Pink's spikes.
She kept firing at him, each one hitting close to or on him directly, but nothing seemed to cut through that frenzied aura of his. He'd just reached the top when Whisper jumped down to the floor with barely a light glance.
"Pink, spike him inwards," she said lightly. She wasn't sure if he heard her, but he must have, because as soon as the man got towards where she'd jumped off, his aura and jaws breaking through the railing, dozens of pink spikes emanated from it, doing their best to actually impale him rather than just hurt him.
"This isn't working!" Pink yelled out. "Nothing we can do is hurting him anymore, he was surprised at the second floor, but now it's doing nothing!"
The aura started to fail again as the man jumped off the second floor, landing in front of Whisper. His teeth were yellowed and pitiful, but now she could actually see him underneath the aura.
He was a giant mess. Each of Orange's shots had been successful, and he had dozens of bullet holes through his shoulders and chest. Even a few through his neck, with large blood spatters flowing down his bare chest. His feet were essentially gone from stomping all over Pink's spike traps, and there was a large piece of wood from Green's chosen array of 'everything' lodged in his left arm. It didn't seem to bug him any.
He growled with a grin, impossible to understand. "Cyan," Whisper said simply. The laser wisp tackled the man, using everything in her power to push him off to the side. There was a large hole in his chest where the spikes had sat.
"We're still hurting him, underneath all that. He just can't feel it," Whisper claimed softly. The man's purple aura was starting to waver now. "And he's dying."
"If he gets a third wind, we're goners," Orange said in a hurry. "So how do we do this?"
Surprise had been the most effective thing on him so far. Once he steeled himself there was no wavering in his willpower, and the purple aura responded to that. Which meant that she needed to find a way to surprise him, and end it through the aura all in one shot.
He gave another howl and Whisper took off running towards the foyer or lobby room, whatever it was, where the shotgun had lay tossed to the side. Still in pieces from Blue's assault.
"What's the plan? Is there a plan?" Cyan asked as she hovered nearby.
"Buy me time. A minute, if you can," Whisper asked. They all nodded, and went to find various ways to mess with the frenzied man to keep him from the course of coming into the room. Blue filled the space with cubes, dozens of them all of various sizes and strengths. Orange hovered nearby, unsure of what to do with herself. "Orange, you too. Spot for them," she said.
"But...oh alright. Fine! Don't hurt yourself though," she said, rocketing up towards the ceiling to keep an eye on the man.
She spread out the parts in front of her. Blue had done a good job wrecking it, which was what she had wanted at the time. But now...Smithy was the best at this, but he had taught her a few tricks. She was no Tails, nor any kind of weaponsmith or gunsmith...
The barrel was the worst part off, and she tossed it off to the side a bit. She'd get to that in a bit. The part that she really wanted was the base, the stock and the hammer. If those were in good condition, then she was good to go. The stock was decent, a bit battered, and the hammer was still in one piece.
When Smithy had first invited her to be part of the Diamond Cutters, he'd made sure that she could service her wispon with any kind of speed, seeing as how they were supposed to be a rapid response team to all of Eggman's misdeeds.
Smithy would have had no trouble putting this back together, but it was like a puzzle to her, the pieces partially broken or the edges cut off from each other. Hammer went here, stock went here, barrel pieces would go here, trigger here...
"Hurry! He's getting through Blue's cubes!" Orange warned from the top. Sweat poured down her neck as her ears twitched, but her focus didn't switch. She was almost done, she just needed...the barrel.
"Cyan, here!" Whisper called out. It'd been less time than she hoped, but it was the best that she could do. The rest...well, she hoped that sleight of hand would work. There was one shot left in one of the barrels. He must have reloaded at some point.
The wisp came down and quickly imbued herself in the variable wispon. Instantly she fired the laser at the barrel, shortening it by nearly half. The top at the part was wrecked beyond belief, but the first part, the part closest to the gun, would be salvageable. "Ooh, I think I know this plan!" Cyan grinned as she disimbued herself.
"He's here! I can't hold him back anymore!" Pink yelled out as he turned more of the cubes into spikes, trying to buffer up their defensive capabilities, but the frenzied man was effective at getting through them, not caring about the pain he was in, or the damage he was doing to himself.
Blue and Green surfaced back, both of them hovering and swaying in position. Whisper could tell they were tired, and to be honest she was too. She was operating almost entirely on adrenaline at this point.
She pointed the remade shotgun towards the man as he broke through the last bits of Blue and Pink's defense. The pink wisp was off to the side, his eyes wide with fear from the frenzy.
The aura disappeared instantly. "Mah...mah paddywhacka..." he murmured out.
Whisper's shot rang out in the now silent house, or she'd made all sound disappear from her thoughts. A bullet hole popped up in the man's head, cutting through the aura entirely. His eyes turned a bit more blank, and the aura didn't come back.
He fell down to his knees, and a moment later he fell onto his chest, his eyes open. Whisper took a moment to take a deep breath. "I really didn't like you having to do that..." Orange muttered.
"I didn't either," Cyan said, "But I understand why."
"He wasn't going to stop. The frenzy had taken him over completely," Green muttered. "Please...Whisper, don't make this a habit."
"I was never going to," Whisper said softly. She dropped the shotgun, kicking it off to the side. "And I never like to," she kept going.
The wisps nodded sorrowfully, and Whisper could hear them talk in their native tongue, her emotions bouncing up and down from it, mostly down. She walked up to the man, and reached down, ensuring that she closed his eyelids. "I wish I didn't have to," Whisper said softly.
"I think...I think he knew. He wasn't going to get out of that frenzy alive. I'm surprised it only took one shot though," Blue said quietly. "How did you know that would work?"
Whisper nodded. "I wasn't sure. The aura dipped whenever he was surprised, or feeling an emotion other than anger. Seeing his old gun, modified, brought out...many other emotions."
"All of which deadened the aura," Pink nodded. "Hence, shooting him then."
She nodded. The rest of the house was supremely quiet, and it appeared that the alarm had actually stopped. "No alarm?" she asked as she went to the ruined main room. There were hundreds of pieces of wood scattered around, ceramic of various broken vases everywhere she could look.
"No, it was starting to get annoying, so I went and turned it off," Cyan said, almost proudly. Almost, because Whisper knew that she wasn't. "Did you want it back on?" she asked, her eyes narrowing towards the wolf.
Whisper gave her a look, before shaking her head. Her boots crunched down on the wreckage, as she flipped down the mask again, turning on its night vision. "You know I can just turn on the light?" Green asked. "You don't need to shelter yourself now."
"No. Leave it off," Whisper commanded. Green and Cyan gave her a questioning glance, before they nodded. Pink was playing with one of the paintings that had survived the wrath, his spikes lifting it up carefully to hang it against the wall again. Blue and Orange were conversing quietly far above them all.
At the back of the main room was a small steel door, and Whisper didn't really want to go back to frisk that man for a key. She could probably search the rest of the mansion, but this was what had her attention. She tried the doorknob, surprised when it opened without a problem.
The five wisps gathered around her, curious as to where the door went. Whisper went on through first. It was a simple long stone hallway, compared to the wood that made up the rest of the mansion. At the end was another steel door, this one also unlocked.
A stone tower, with stairs going far deep down into the earth. "Alright, am I the only one getting zombie vibes from this?" Green asked. Whisper took the stairs two at a time, slowly heading downwards.
They spiraled, and Whisper kept one hand on the wall to make sure she wouldn't fall and slip. Her boots were sturdy, but the stairs were slippery and falling apart, despite being made of stone.
There were small streams of water from the top, falling down the spiral stairs. Further and further downwards Whisper went, and she started to feel the small chill of cold as it bit at her. "Okay, so I'm not the only one?" Green asked.
"No, no you're not," Orange offered. "Who had the bet that we'd come across something like Mr. Frenzy Man up there?"
"...Blue?" Pink asked. "I think it was Blue."
"No, I bet that we'd come across some special prophecy or anything following some urban scientist."
Why were the wisps taking bets on what kind of stuff she'd come across? And why were they doing it now, of all times?
The stairs finally ended at the bottom, with a small grate to let the water out. Whisper was grateful for that small design decision, as otherwise she had no doubt the entire thing would've been flooded beyond belief.
The floor was still soaked though, and there was yet another steel door here. The hinges had been rusted shut, and when Whisper tried this one the door was unlocked, but just stubborn enough to not open.
"Oh good, our adventure ends here," Orange said, her relief palpable in her voice.
"What!? No, we can't end it here! I want to see what's behind the door. Come on Whisper, open it, open it!" Pink cried out.
"Trying," Whisper commented. The door would open outwards, she could tell by the hinges, but it was stubbornly shut. Just in case, she tried pushing it, to receive the exact same thing. Not a push door then, just as she thought but it was better to try it and look like a fool than to not try it and realize it.
She put one boot against the wall next to it, and tried pulling with all of her strength. The hinges squeaked something awful, and all of the wisps covered their...ears? Places of anatomy of which they can hear sounds with? She'd really have to look that up one of these days...
"It's times like this we need a Red with us. They can just use burst on the door, and boom! Open!" Green mentioned.
"Ooh, or Black! Just bomb the door...Whisper why are you glaring at us?" Blue murmured as he noticed that Whisper's eyes were narrowed towards them.
"Orange or Cyan, I have an idea. Blue, keep yourself occupied I'll need you in a moment," Whisper said. Both Cyan and Orange promptly tried to imbue themselves into the wispon, and unfortunately got themselves stuck.
Most wispon's were capable of exactly one wisp imbuing them at any one time. Red wisps were for flamethrowers, or Yellow drill wisps. The variable wispon was unique in that any amount of wisps can imbue it and have it be shaped appropriately. It was why the variable wispon was so uniquely shaped.
Unfortunately it could still only imbue one wisp at a time, and whenever Cyan tried to imbue it, Orange was already there and would kick Orange out, who would then try to imbue it again and kick Cyan out.
Whisper watched this show for a long moment with a few sighs. "Orange then, we'll try Cyan afterwards," she commanded. Orange gave a cry of glee and imbued the wispon again, kicking Cyan out and having her give Whisper a small glare.
She aimed at the hinges, and Cyan gave an 'ahh'. "Oh I see what you're trying. Would that work?" Cyan asked. High power but low actual velocity would make it come out closer to a beam. The same thing that she did on the lock back in Green Hills, actually.
"One way to find out," Whisper admitted as she fired at the hinges. Orange was capable of extremely high power, but the wispon itself probably wasn't. She was capable of shooting her and another person she imbued high into the air after all.
The hinges slowly warped and peeled under the high heat, but it was slow. Very slow, and Whisper knew that by the time she ended up on the third and final hinge that the first one was starting to cool off. "Blue, hurry!" Whisper said.
Orange dis-imbued herself with a quiet sigh, and Whisper made a mental note to give her a treat for that. Not many wisps could do what Orange had just done for a consistent amount of time, let alone the ten or fifteen minutes that it had taken her.
The hammer wispon in hand, Whisper swung and crashed into the door. The first hit dented it back, jamming the hinges outwards, and the second hit knocked the door flat out with the hinges melting out of the wall.
"Whoa. Remind me not to get on Orange's bad side," Cyan muttered.
"Much too late for that," Orange commented snidely. Whisper ignored them as she cautiously stepped over the door. The passageway on this one was much more...Eggman-like.
A white hallway, filled with tiles. Lights automatically turned on as she walked past, the long fluorescent tubes hanging from the ceiling. She paused as her eyes adjusted to it, and she flicked her mask back up. "Alright, who voted for 'mad scientist'?" Pink asked. "Cause it wasn't me."
"Blue called it," Green and Cyan said at the same time. Blue came up above them and gave a small bow, best as the wisp could, as he started to give a makeshift speech for how he could so easily identify what Whisper was going to go through.
Mad scientist though was a viable explanation. The hallway opened at the end to a large room, still underground. Tubes of various things were filled all over it, with a large computer on one end, still operable. On one side was the creek from above, either transported or teleported down here.
In the middle of the creek lay a small purple wisp, shaking violently in place. It had only a jaw and the small appendages, no eyes to speak of, but it seemed to know where Whisper and the others were at all times as it immediately faced the intruders.
It was trapped in another canister, much like the same ones she had on her person at all times.
The wisps immediately started barraging her with information in their native tongue, eager to get the purple wisp out or at least to respond. Whisper felt her emotions go out of whack, up and down, sideways, up a loop and through a few dozen springs before she could try to force herself into awareness.
The purple wisp did nothing to the bombardment. Behind them was the word WILL, written in all capitals. There was the frenzied aura from the man above surrounding it, and Whisper couldn't look away. The aura disappeared, but the word was still engraved in her head, much like the word undo.
Whisper raised a hand to her head, massaging off the incoming headache. The wisp's words finally cut through to her head, Orange's especially, "Whisper, hurry! We have to give her some more energy, she's going to die if she doesn't!"
The...the purple wisp? Purple wisps could die? Actually, she knew that wisps themselves could, but weren't the purple ones the ones perverted by Eggman's research? Blue and Green continued their shouting at her, the words barely heading through her head.
She reached into her bag for one of the energy treats that Tails had made, holding it out gently as she opened up the purple wisp canister.
As soon as she did, the other wisps, her usual wisps, surrounded her and stayed quiet. Whisper was thankful, as the headache from the will written on the wall was still prying into her.
The purple wisp cautiously looked up, and Whisper half expected them to be like a feral animal, but instead sat back down like a depressed dog.
She blinked; that was exactly what had happened. The creek underneath the wisp was turning a dark, dark purple right underneath her, and then teleported or pumped back up to the creek above.
Right here. This wisp was what was being used to poison Spiral Hill. The purple wisp looked up, one large eye opening up on her head. She sniffed the treat, a small energy bar, before licking it lightly.
"Good, yeah? Don't worry, she won't hurt you. She knows how to treat us right," Orange commented.
"She does. Trust us, if not her," Cyan added.
"We wouldn't be here if we didn't trust her," Blue said softly.
"And we would never hurt others of us," Pink continued the train.
"We took a geas of that, if you remember," Green exclaimed. The purple wisp's eyes widened, as she nodded excitedly. The treat went down in a quick second.
Whisper hadn't even realized how angry she had been getting recently since she had come here, or how tired. The purple wisp's powers had been drained enough that it had changed from anger and frenzy to a cold depression. The purple wisp gave a startling howl.
Which was joined in a moment later by all of her own wisps. Whisper wasn't sure what was causing it, but she knew that they might not have explained anything. Half of their culture she still didn't know, and she was probably one of the most knowledgeable on the planet.
"You...You angered him, and sundered him. Dr. Henderson," The purple wisp's voice was soft and careful, as if she hadn't spoken in days, or years. It was cautiously feminine, similar to Orange, compared to the high energy of Cyan.
"Dr. Henderson?" Whisper asked.
Purple blinked in confusion for a moment. "Oh right, and she has a translator. Should have mentioned that," Cyan commented. Orange gave a full body sigh, and Pink used Blue's body to act as a facepalm.
"The man who trapped me in there. He was...hurtful."
She motioned towards the computer, and Whisper could see that it was just now finishing turning on. It had turned on automatically when she'd entered the room, but between the word on the wall and the wisp, she had barely even noticed.
"Ooh, I got this!" Cyan grinned before diving into the computer. The computer's fans suddenly went crazy for a moment before it suddenly exploded, and Cyan came out looking far angrier than Whisper had ever seen her.
She might've looked that way in Green Hill, but Whisper had also not 'seen' her then. "Long story short, the guy thought that he could break what Eggman did by forcibly transferring the 'aura' of a Nega-Wisp to himself."
Pink sucked in air. "That's...that's awful! And purple wisps aren't...oh my mother I am so sorry," Pink said as he quickly went to comfort Purple. Green and Blue joined in a moment later, and even Orange, tired as she was, peeked in her head.
Whisper tilted her head towards Cyan. "Purple wisps are created, not born. Drain a wisp of energy long enough, and think negative thoughts, and it...transforms them. Generally White to...well, this. Purple. I'd use Violet but we already know a fox by that name," Cyan answered.
Whisper glanced at the broken wisp, still floating there despondent as the others comforted her. Somehow...Whisper thought...that she knew exactly what that feeling was like.
As a person with severe depression myself, I find that anger is a good way to break myself out of it...for all of around five seconds. Then the feeling of motivation goes away, and end up with normality again. There comes a time where no matter how angry someone is, eventually the anger leaves, creating a hole within the psyche. Depression.
Hence Spiral Hill being changed by a single purple wisp for who knows how long.
Until Next Time.