What Sonic witnessed next was not only a light show, but an all-out war with one-man armies on either side. In the cyan corner was Silver the Hedgehog, flying around and encasing the largest objects he could find in the same glow as he psychically lifted them. He flung chunks of ruin and fallen trees across no-man's land, only to be destroyed prematurely by high-yield explosives and impossibly large weapons conjured by the Red Mask.
"I had more important things on my agenda than crushing some has-been hero," the Red Mask taunted, "but I'm happy to oblige. It keeps the rabble in line… Shows them that there is no hope."
The psychic tossed a spherical statue at the thing to shut it up, and it instead collided with a large cannonball and ricocheted like a billiards ball off into the jungle somewhere.
"Does anyone but you believe your lies?" Silver spat.
The Red Mask's crimson glow intensified, and five curved red swords appeared in a fan in front of him before soaring towards Silver. The gray hedgehog caught the first one with his mind, dodged the second one, and used the sword to parry the third before getting in a blade lock with the fourth one. He had to forfeit his position as the second and third swords came back around, engaging in a desperate 3-on-1 battle.
It was a battle that he quickly lost, as the Red Mask itself grabbed the fifth sword and thrust it forward, smacking Silver back into a wall. He fell to the ground, and the one-eyed monster brought all five swords in a cone above the defeated hedgehog.
"Seeing is believing."
As the swords came in to impale their victim, Sonic rushed in and grabbed Silver out of the way. He set his gray counterpart down and stood between him and the Red Mask.
"It's time to tag out, Silver! I've got it from here!"
Now that it wasn't overwhelming its surroundings with that irritating red light, Sonic could finally see the features of the enemy that had defeated him six months ago. It was a male, foxlike creature with dark fur. He wore only some gray-ish gloves, shoes, and, of course, his namesake, a full-face mask that glowed red from beneath. The mask even covered his ears, with striped divets presumably filtering sound through them. Silver strands of fur hung down from the back of the mask and came up from his tail. Most creepily, one of the eye sockets was covered, leaving a single yellow eye gazing down upon him.
"Well, look who's back from the dead," he spoke. "The little blue savior."
Sonic tensed up. He knew he shouldn't let that heartless creep get the better of him with words, but seeing his face… seeing how he beat one of the only people who could match himself in a fight… it made him mad.
The Red Mask crossed one arm over his chest-gem and put the other up to his mask. "But what's that I smell? You reek of fear. Exactly the impression you should have after your effortless defeat."
"Fear? You must be imagining things. You definitely haven't left an impression. I don't know anything about you, not even your name."
"My name? Ahahahahahaha…"
The world went red from the gem on the Red Mask's chest, absorbing the swords in its light. The two hedgehogs were lifted from the ground, just as Sonic and Tails had back when they first encountered this monster.
"Woah. Woah, woah, woah woah!" Sonic exclaimed, trying to keep the memories at bay.
"Sonic, look out!" Silver called.
The Blue Blur was shifted sideways by the other's psychokinesis, just as a black train came barreling through. On second glance, it wasn't a train, but the snake from earlier. Its gargantuan body weaved through the air, eventually settling into a double-loop, laid horizontally, with the Red Mask on its head in the center. An infinity sign.
"You shall call me Infinite, in the brief moments that remain to you."
The gravity effect died out, dropping him back to the ground. But something nagged at Sonic's memory. The way Infinite was perched on the head of a giant serpent under his control… he knew where he had seen that before.
"See, Infinite, now we're getting to know each other. You were in control of Zavok the whole time, weren't you? So, what's the source of your power?"
Infinite bared the gem that held the power in question. "The source of my power is none of your concern."
"Sorry, but I insist. I'll just have to make you tell me by force!"
Sonic sprinted forward and jumped onto the snake's head. Infinite merely floated backwards, easily keeping pace as the hedgehog kept running towards him.
"Still thrashing about, I see, you filthy little sewer rat."
"You know, you should see what happened to the last magic freak that called me a rat. How about I shove you in his lamp, so you can see what infinite punishment really looks like!"
The air seemed to warp towards Infinite as a glitchy red aura burst to life around him. Bands of similar pixel-y things formed around the snake's body, and Infinite travelled to the underside of its belly. Sonic wasn't sure what he was attempting with this, as it was a trivial matter for him to jump over the effect and meet him around the back.
Infinite kept watching him, not showing a hint of emotion from behind that mask.
The bands shifted suddenly, skewing their shape into a spiral that wrapped around their reptilian battlefield. Sonic was starting to feel sick from looking at it, and he lost his concentration and blundered into the inscrutable mass. It felt as if the static had gone directly into his brain, causing streaks and blips to dance across his vision. Where the red bands had been before were now spikes protruding from the snake, like a series of collars.
What the heck is this power? What happened to all the easily-dodgable weaponry? he managed to think in all of the chaos. He soldiered on, jumping over the spikes and keeping moving. After a few seconds, the feeling started to fade away, and the spikes went with it.
Infinite emerged from the redness, his posture showing he was now reveling in the battle. "Well, you may have more fight in you than those other vermin. Let's see how many seconds you last."
The hedgehog was tired of hearing this guy's crap. That freak wasn't even taking this fight seriously. Guess that meant it was time for his secret weapon.
"Test something for me," Ledge said as he got off the shuttle. He showed Sonic a small capsule with a few pale blue creatures inside.
It seems the White Wisps he encountered on the Death Egg weren't hallucinations after all, but he still didn't understand how they got there or how Ledge of all people had managed to capture some of his own to give to him.
He opened the capsule behind his back and let the Wisps' energy flow through him. Infinite created more of the red static in the form of stripes going along the length of the snake, and Sonic was ready for it. He activated his Boost, but instead of the signature blue blur, it was much paler, around the same color as the White Wisps, with a slight rainbow blur around the edge. He vaulted over several of the lines at once before jumping up into Infinite himself. It was a direct hit, knocking the beast through the air and causing him to lose his concentration on maintaining the magic lines.
"Ngh… you little…"
"What's the matter, Infinite? Haven't seen a hedgehog before? I'm just showing you my spines!"
"Spines on one's back are for those who lack a spine in it. Let's have a demonstration, shall we?"
Energy burst out from Infinite's chest gem. They had reached the tail of the snake, and gravity lessened once more as the tail flicked Sonic up in the air. Infinite's form became shrouded in crimson, then separated into seven different clones that circled around the hedgehog. They began generating a ring of power, which started to give Sonic vertigo, but he could feel his Color Power working to combat the effect. He could also see the Infinites getting affected by it. Only one of them wasn't starting to flicker and glitch out, and he knew that was the one he was hunting for. A Homing Attack disrupted the flow and let him fall back down onto the snake's head.
Infinite growled and let loose another burst of crimson. This time, long rectangles formed around the snake, intersecting its sides on their long edges to create gates at various rotations. Sonic weaved back and forward between them, and it felt like a slalom course. It really felt like he was still being tested, like Infinite still wasn't actually trying. Talk about a big ego.
He went for another Homing Attack, and Infinite attempted to coat himself in more of his pixel-y stuff to block it. The attack went through, to both of their surprises, but the Blue Blur recovered quicker and was able to land a second shot before Infinite dissipated himself and reformed farther back.
The masked head shook. "I see you've improved since the last time. But compared to infinity, anything else is zero. A 10% improvement of nothing… is still nothing."
"You've been talking to Eggman too much. It's that kind of logic that always leads to his failure, and soon to be yours."
"I will teach you to hold that tongue."
His foe distanced himself and created more rectangles. He wondered if this was really the best Infinite could do, but that possibility was quickly proven incorrect when the rectangles started spinning. At first, they were simple rotations, but as he got through more of them, they would stop abruptly or reverse directions to try and fake him out. And then one sped up as he was passing underneath it and he was consumed by that terrible prickling across his body again.
Just as before, the red static had been replaced by spikes, but in the form of spike balls rolling across the snake just as the rectangles had. He did his best not to repeat his blunder and made it through without the spike balls performing any feints on him.
Infinite was waiting for him when the visions faded, conjuring up more static on either side. Sonic reacted quickly, activating his White Boost to get ahead and ram into the summoner. He was starting to look real pissed, and another burst of energy sent Sonic back into the air.
He was greeted up there by way more than a few Infinites. Almost twenty, by the looks of it. They were lined up in rows in front of him, charging energy, like a maniacal firing squad. Knowing he was protected from their personal bubbles of the stuff, he began chewing through them with Homing Attacks in search of the real one. Each one would get replaced moments after destruction, and they seemed to be presenting themselves to him to take apart.
It occurred to him that this was probably being set up deliberately by Infinite, and that he needed to change tactics. Instead of blindly attacking, he targeted the weakest points in the cluster to get past them. One Infinite in particular kept shifting away from him, so he sought the quickest path to it.
When he had the Infinite cornered, he focused his remaining energy into one final Homing Attack that sent it reeling backwards, causing all of the other clones to vanish and them both to fall back to the snake.
Infinite clutched his head. "Impossible! Your abilities exceed your previous data!"
"Unlike your stupid mechs, I can grow! I get more powerful every second! And now, it's payback time at last!"
Sonic rushed forward to deliver a final blow, but Infinite produced another red aura. Immediately, it felt like he was trying to run through gelatin, and then the snake started gliding in the other direction and winding itself away from his foe. It formed into a shifting spherical rotation around the increasingly intense red glow, and the effects combined to completely throw off any sense of direction.
That was the moment when Infinite struck, physically bashing the hedgehog with his steel mask and they burst out of the now planetoid-like reptile. Instead of getting pulled back in, Sonic fell back to Earth; he was soon followed by the serpent as the effects on it faded and it crashed down to the ground.
"As I predicted," Infinite boasted, now hovering over him. "How careless of you to assume I could actually run out of power. You're not even worth the effort to finish off." He didn't waste a moment in flying off.
"Sonic, you OK?" Silver called, floating over the serpent and landing by his side.
He picked himself up off the ground with a groan. "Rrrrrgh! We gotta figure out the secret of his power!"
After the two hedgehogs had left, a third spiny Mobian entered the scene. Her purple skin and black outfit had concealed her well in the night. She walked over to a particular pile of rubble and started clearing pieces out of the way, until she had uncovered a small room behind it. On a contrastingly metal pedestal lied a strange red crystal, nearly identical in luster to the one on Infinite's chest. Her suspicion was confirmed – the seemingly random attacks on the jungle were targeting these gems inside the secret rooms she had found.
She pocketed the gem in her coat and returned to the cover of forested darkness.