Disclaimer: See first chapter.
On Chaos
Whisper woke up with a sense of dew on her face. With one hand she ran it through her fur, getting rid of the water that had built up overnight.
The tent was immaculate, which immediately told Whisper that either something was wrong or something was wrong. She'd slept outside that night, with Metal Sonic standing guard and watch. Violet had taken the tent, alongside all seven wisps. She'd let Yellow out into the tent, having Orange explain what was going on.
The sun had risen, and while there was a cloudy gray cover above them it had at least stopped raining and snowing. The ground wasn't white anymore, it was the normal brown and red that such forests usually had.
The variable wispon was next to her, exactly as it should have been. Metal Sonic hadn't taken it during the night, in fact the robot had hardly moved.
Her mask was still in the center of the clearing on a stump, allowing everyone to hear Metal Sonic should he want to talk. "Good waking," he said tonelessly.
That was a bizarre way to say good morning. "Violet and the wisps still asleep?" Whisper asked. Metal Sonic nodded, and Whisper took a deep breath as she slowly walked over to the tent, peering through the side.
She was expecting to see chaos, and on the wisp side that was...pretty much exactly what she got. Fortunately it hadn't gone through the tent yet.
Small toys and various other things the wisps liked to play with were everywhere, and there were scorch marks from Cyan and Orange, and more than a few flat areas where Blue had started something. Lavender and Yellow were off to the side, both of their eyes shut. Although Lavender was mostly mouth, and in fact was a bit darker this morning than she usually was.
The other side was seemingly fine. Violet was on the ground, her legs splayed out with her head facing the wisps, obviously still asleep. The coat was in perfect order, and there weren't any crumbs or obvious problems that had occurred overnight.
Gently Whisper knocked on the tent flap. "Violet, it's' time to wake up," she said as loud as she could. Violet rolled over, still asleep.
She felt a cold metal hand on her shoulder, and she tensed up a bit as Metal Sonic's visage filled her sight. He had her mask in one hand. "Good waking Violet. Whisper says it's time to leave."
His voice echoed through the small clearing, and immediately Violet jumped up, her head almost hitting the top of the tent. "Who, what!?" She yelled before she saw Metal Sonic and Whisper standing outside. "Oh...oh, right. Sorry..." She murmured as she gathered her stuff together.
The wisps didn't bother yawning as they took left, instead heading straight to their own canisters for either another nap or just because they needed to regain some energy. Even Lavender took her own canister.
She also brightened up a bit as she woke up, so maybe it was just while she was asleep she was much more purple.
As soon as Violet left the tent, Whisper went to work to break it back down. She did grab one of the ration bars off to the side, holding it for the one tailed fox to grab.
Just as putting it up was simple, taking it down was also simple. Tails knew that Whisper was smart, but he was also building it so that Tangle or Lanolin would be able to tear it down easy enough. Not everyone was able to run faster than the speed of sound to find a motel or park to sleep in.
In only a few minutes, the tent had been collapsed, and Whisper was letting it shrink down to where it could fit in her pack. "Whoever designed that thing was brilliant," Violet yawned as she started to eat the ration bar. "It had just about everything I'd need."
"It has everything everyone needs," Whisper answered. "And your dad built it. He might have made more, but this one was the prototype."
"That explains it," Violet stated quietly. "I don't think I'd ever be able to build something like that."
Whisper's mask was still in Metal Sonic's hand. "Unlikely. He was a genius raised in war conditions, whereas you are a genius raised in standard. Do not compare the two of you; you are not the same as him."
"Everyone says I am though. And Mata has all the magic in the family, she has the whole prophecy thing which admittedly is something I'm glad I'm not saddled with but at the same time I wish I was, and sometimes...I just wish I was more like him."
"Do not be. Miles Prower was an exception, due to chaos radiation when he was born. When he first appeared next to the Hedgehog, my Master ran a full report on him."
"Did Eggman run reports on all of us?" Whisper asked. She wouldn't have put it past him.
"He did. Many times, in fact. There were times he even predicted how he would be defeated, and what the parties would say and do. Everything led to everything else."
"And yet he's still gone," Violet said. "So he couldn't predict for everything."
"He could not. He could, however, predict that the Zeti would renege on their deals. He could predict that the Time Eater he augmented would not survive out of the White Space. He predicted that Infinite would lay the way for The End."
"Explain," Whisper asked, her tone flat. The End...she'd heard of it, but only in the stretches of silence from Sonic, Tails, and Amy. Usually when it came about all three of them would start to act shifty, as if they didn't understand what they themselves witnessed.
"The Phantom Ruby was embedded into Infinite's chest. The Phantom Ruby was chaos made manifest, an artifact of similar make to the Chaos Emeralds. My Master hypothesized that it was in fact the Ancients' attempt to make another set of Chaos Emeralds, before the Master Emerald stepped in to stop the experiment, warping the nature of the creations."
"What's the Phantom Ruby? Dad never said anything about it!" Violet said. "And Mom never mentioned it."
Whisper raised her hand. Metal Sonic's would be full of technicalities. "The Phantom Ruby was a gem, similar to the Chaos Emeralds. With enough control, one could warp the area around them into a virtual reality that the wielder could control. The original wielder was named 'Infinite'," she explained. "It was when Eggman took over the world, and the Resistance was started."
"Close enough. Infinite was a jackal, part of a team that my Master hired to protect one of our fortresses. Shadow killed most of the team, not for lack of trying not to, that is. He spared one on purpose, claiming him to be weak. That was Infinite."
"How come no one would tell me that one? It's not even covered in the history books that talk about recent history. We almost never talk about Eggman or anything."
"Probably to shelter you kids. It wasn't fun," Whisper advised. "You'll probably cover it more when you're a bit older. As time goes on, the age will get lower, as more and more of the memories are forgotten, and the nostalgia comes back into play."
"Whisper is correct."
"You never explained how Infinite would lay the path for The End," Whisper said, her eyes narrowed. Metal Sonic nodded.
"Yes. The Phantom Ruby would awake my Master's desire for a reality, any reality, in which he had full control over. That desire turned to virtual reality, and from there he stumbled upon the information stored on the Starfall Islands. He created Sage as a way and means to protect himself."
"So how did he 'predict' it?"
"My Master was very good at seeing the patterns. Anything that he woke up or tried would inevitably betray him. The Phantom Ruby is gone now, lost to time itself. The Zeti are back in the Lost Hex, where they will stay, permanently. The Time Eater augmented is destroyed. Dark Gaia was put back to sleep. The Mother Wisp is back on her home planet. It is without fail. He knew from the beginning that the entity it contained, that Sage knew it contained, would betray him eventually."
"That's why she's still on Starfall," Whisper noted.
Metal Sonic nodded. "Correct. She remains there to permanently keep an eye on The End's attempts to escape free from virtual reality, destroying it again and again."
"What is...how are you saying it, 'The End'?"
Metal Sonic's red eyes close for a moment, or as much as they could. The red irises became lines for a moment, as if he was deep in thought. "The End is...complicated. An entity that resembles more of a concept. A destroyer. It is safely locked away, and need not be spoken about."
Whisper glanced at the sky, searching for the bright spot that would be the sun. They were burning time, but Fern Valley was, from the maps, not actually all that big. Maybe a few dozen miles across at best. By the end of the day they'd make it to the other side, and that's by walking casually.
Violet did a few stretches as she forced herself up off the stump. "We should go. We can talk more on the way," Whisper said. Violet nodded, and Metal Sonic agreed.
"It's too bad your mask only has a one-way speaker. Otherwise I'd say you can keep it on and we can all talk through it," Violet said, peering at it. "Or...hold on," she said, reaching for it. Whisper's first instinct was to grab it again, but she stopped herself.
The fox fiddled with a few settings, before handing it back to Whisper. "Alright, I think I got it. When Cyan made the translation package, she also added a few extra settings. Just put in an earmuff or an earplug so that way it doesn't blow your ears out."
"What settings did you change?"
"Directional output! Now it focuses on one side of the speaker more than the other, allowing it to seem as if it's coming from the mouth. It'll be loud, but it's better than nothing."
Whisper nodded, and attached it not to the side of her face as was traditional, but fully affixed on. Violet blinked. "I suppose now we test," Metal Sonic said, an empty tone that Whisper thought was almost teasing.
The speaker channeled it exactly as Violet had said it would. Rather than going straight to the ears, it went downwards a bit, echoing around the mask before leaving right where the 'nose' portion of the mask was.
"Ha! Got it in one!" Violet cheered. Whisper gave her a helpful nod, and Metal Sonic started to lead the way through the Fern Valley.
"Was the Phantom Ruby and The End really that powerful?" Violet asked. "Or any of those other things you said?"
Metal Sonic nodded. "They were. The Phantom Ruby was eventually brought down by an early recruit by the Resistance."
Whisper nodded. "I never met him. I know Amy and Knuckles did, as they were the commanders at the time. Jewel knows who it was, but she refused to give me a name."
"There was no record of him in my Master's files. And I've checked the current Restoration's; he is gone. There is no trace of whoever it was."
"What about Mr. Sonic? Wouldn't he know?"
"Most likely. But again, as Amy Rose would also know, but hasn't said. It's possible they simply respect the right to privacy."
"Or..."
"Sage's current running theory is that he, too, was a figment of the Phantom Ruby. They were originally Chaos Emerald experiments, after all."
"But Dad created false Chaos Emeralds too," Violet retorted. "According to the old files, they had the same wavelength and properties, but not nearly as powerful."
"I'd assume not. The Chaos Emeralds power is directly connected to the global Chaos Field. A spike in one region is often pronounced as a spike in another. The Master Emerald regulates these spikes, ensuring that the Emeralds do not wreak havoc upon normal spacetime."
"But they're chaos. That's what they do. Dad's only studied the Master Emerald whenever Uncle Knuckles says he can, so it was rare even ages ago, but he gathered that the Master Emerald was more of a hub than anything. Not even much of a regulator."
Whisper wondered if Violet should really be telling this to Metal Sonic of all people. On the other hand, Eggman was dead here. Gone. No way to be coming back, and Metal Sonic seemed to have changed.
"Spacetime and Chaos are very different," Metal Sonic advised. "Chaos is simply the field around our planet. In fact it's near universal as far as my Master could tell. If the Master Emerald is a hub, then...could it regulate all travel through it?"
"If it acts like most hubs, then it would have to," Violet commandeered. "Dad was very specific on the wording, and he always used the word 'hub'. Which means that Chaos energy was always flowing through it, not to it."
"Flowing from one side to the other. From one spike, to the other, creating fluctuations. Areas that the Emeralds were tied to, received more. Opposite, and yet the same."
"Eggman never seriously realized that?"
"He never could. The Guardian was always on his guard around my Master. After being tricked for the second and third time. I had wondered if there would be a fourth."
"Isn't there?" Whisper added in. Metal Sonic turned to her as she stepped over a small branch in the middle of the pathway. Although there was no true trail, but rather simply the trees parting ways at points to make it seem as if there was. "You said it last night in the file. The desert. Leading the Master Emerald to the desert."
"To act as a stabilizing temporal agent," Metal Sonic said.
"Wait, the Master Emerald can act in both Chaos and spacetime?" Violet ejected herself back in. "Isn't that a bad thing? That means the Master Emerald connects the global Chaos Field with that of regular spacetime. The fluctuations, if they occurred through the Master Emerald, would mean that they bend it too. Maybe that's how the Phantom Ruby got made!"
Now the talk was starting to hurt Whisper's mind. She knocked on Orange and Cyan's canisters, knowing this would only end poorly for her. Both wisps came out, Orange looking a lot less tired than Cyan did, who let out as big of a yawn as the cyan wisp could.
"Oh hey we're still in the forest. Boo forest! Forest's are boring!" Cyan noted sleepily. "How's my program doing, still banging on?"
"It's quite well done," Whisper admitted. "I was wondering if either of you were listening in."
"I was asleep. Sleep. Sleep," Cyan said, yawning again before diving into the canister.
Orange stared at where Cyan had gone. "I was...partially? I was teaching Yellow last night how to talk like we do so that way she wouldn't mess with your emotions as much. I think I got through to her, but tonight we'll have to practice more."
"Oh yeah, the Yellow wisp! She was really happy last night, it reminded me of what Dad said about Yacker. A white wisp," Violet noted. "She was also really confused about things like grammar. I suggested trying to try and find a dictionary with pictures, but obviously I don't have one."
Whisper stared at her. "You...withstood the wisps talking in their native language for multiple hours?"
Violet stared back, before the look of the mask got to her and she looked away. "Yes? It's not hard, it's just like dealing with Mata when she's summoning. The things you feel and hear aren't yours, so you have to disassociate a bit."
"Fascinating. Most people have obtuse negative reactions to the wisps native language. Even my Master could only withstand for so long," Metal Sonic interjected. "I wonder if it's from, as you said, learning to live with your sister as she summons the memories of those deceased."
"You can say soul. We've gotten used to it," Violet murmured. "We all know what you're saying."
"Souls have not been proven to exist."
"Yes they do," Orange protested. "Just like Chaos. In fact they're kinda close to each other, yet opposite."
Metal Sonic said nothing, walking straight ahead of the group. Whisper rolled her eyes. "I got you out here for a different reason though. Can you break down what Metal Sonic and Violet were talking about?" Whisper asked as she started to repeat the conversation.
There was some worry there between Metal Sonic and Violet, about the Master Emerald being a 'hub'. What exactly that meant for the world, Whisper didn't know. She wasn't a genius. She didn't know these things.
To be fair, she kind of doubted that anyone else would know these things either. Maybe Tails did. Maybe Knuckles had an idea, and probably Eggman too. The rest of them? Just scattered in the dark, and hoping to pick up the pieces.
"Uh...probably not? I know a lot of things, but Chaos and wisp energy are inherently different. They're similar in ways, but one comes from us simply being, and the other comes from all life, not just us."
Well, it had been worth a shot, at least. The forest around them hadn't changed much, but now Whisper could tell there was a small river flowing through.
The woods slowly changed from being a dry forest to a wetter forest around it. There was a hardened wooden bridge that connected one side to the other, and to Whisper's fortunate luck the wood hadn't rotted away yet. Even when Metal Sonic stepped on it, there wasn't so much as a creak.
"The Phantom Ruby was held by Infinite. Infinite died, and the Ruby disappeared. Probably into a virtual reality of its own," Metal Sonic said softly, his voice barely able to be heard over the sound of the river below.
The trees looked a bit downcast, despite the cloudy sun above them. The rays were cast down through them, giving a gray and yellow tint to the various woods around them. There were other sounds beyond the river, but mostly in the form of small insects or birds.
"Wouldn't that mean that it's capable of inputting into an infinite loop? If the Phantom Ruby could disappear into itself, that means it was never truly there," Violet answered.
"Wait, was this the same Phantom Ruby that the Resistance had to fight against back when it first started?" Orange asked. "Because that kind of recursion only occurs when something has gone really, badly wrong. Cyan would know more."
"It didn't explode or anything. At least...did it? I wasn't there," Violet asked.
Metal Sonic shook his head, "It did not. However, my Master believed that after the forces behind it were defeated, it sought refuge in the Virtual Reality world on the Starfall Islands."
"Where that...The End is."
"Yes."
"Woah woah whoa. Slow down. When did we start talking about The End of all things!?" Orange commented. Whisper tilted her head at the orange wisp.
"Oh, for a while. Eggman apparently predicted that The End was coming out of containment because Infinite died. Or something," Violet tried to summarize.
"Chaos begets chaos," Metal Sonic shrugged. "It made sense to my Master."
"Chaos does beget chaos. It's the whole butterfly theory thing, you know it flaps its wings down in Mazuri and suddenly there's a hurricane on South Island."
"South Island does not get hurricanes," Metal Sonic voiced easily.
"It shouldn't! But I bet if you ask Sonic, considering that he lives there, there's been at least one or two in recent memory."
"I wish I had a computer in front of me now. I'd be able to check on that, now you've got me interested!" Violet grinned. She jumped over a small tree that had fallen in their chosen pathway, Whisper a moment behind her.
"I have a connection," Metal Sonic said, "and there have been three hurricanes that have hit South Island within the last twenty years. Each of them have been known as typhoons, and each of them have been due to 'anomalies' within the ocean's currents."
"How much do you want to bet that those anomalies can be lined up with other Chaos energy spikes?" Orange gloated.
"Wait, how did you know we were talking about spikes? You said you weren't listening for that," Violet commented. Orange froze for a moment, before she blurted out that she needed to 'go do something else' and dove into her canister.
Whisper stared at the canister for a bit. "She knows more, but doesn't want to tell," Whisper understood. The wisps were smart, but sometimes they didn't want it to be known that they were smart.
"The path to the desert valley is over in that direction," Metal Sonic pointed towards a small grove of trees. It had a ray of white coming out of it, despite that the forest wasn't all that dark or dreary. It was actually kind of nice, in Whisper's mind, but it still didn't beat civilization.
"Oh wow..." Violet said as they got closer. A large field of grass and hills dominated the landscape, before it became obvious sand further in.
Mountains sat on all sides, some of them much taller than even where they'd come from. The skyline was much clearer here, spots of blue opening up the cloudy grey.
Metal Sonic perused the sky. "No Angel Island. All reports have it as being here, and yet invisible it remains. It appears that the Guardian can turn it invisible."
"Oh, it's not invisible," Violet said with a smile. "It's just higher up. Above the clouds. I can see it," she said, pointing straight up. Whisper narrowed her eyes as she tried to glance, before zoomed in using the mask.
She still saw nothing. "I see nothing there at all ranges," Metal Sonic answered for her. "While I do believe that it is there, it is not within the visible spectrum."
"Should be," Violet said. "I can see it just fine," she answered. She shrugged, before she took the first steps into the grasses around Fern Valley. There were still a few trees into the plains, but it was definitely a different change. Small stumps were lying around, areas where forest had once been but had either been cut or had fallen away to the elements.
"I can't see it either," Whisper admitted. Violet glanced at her, before she shrugged.
"Your goal is there," Metal Sonic pointed out to the desert area. "I will meet up with Surge and Kit again, before going where next I'm pointed."
"Alright. It was nice meeting you!" Violet said, waving her hand. "Be sure to stay in touch, I'm sure Mr. Sonic would like that!"
"I highly...highly, very highly doubt that," Metal Sonic answered, before he turned around and walked back through Fern Valley, his white scarf playing in the wind and around his eyes.
There was a click in Whisper's radio, and she hurriedly turned down the volume and decreased the settings that Violet had changed. "Shadow to Whisper. Have you gotten past Fern Valley?" Shadow's extremely garbled voice asked. It was familiar, and yet not. She'd only seen him two days ago, and yet it had felt like a lifetime.
"Yes. We're in the bottom valley now, heading towards the city."
"Understood. Knuckles wants to see you both when you get a chance. Could you send your coordinates?"
Whisper raised an eyebrow. Shadow needed to see some place before he could Chaos Control into it, not get coordinates for it. She had a bad feeling about this. She turned off the radio. "Get ready," she turned to Violet. The violet fox stared at her in confusion for a long moment while Whisper repeated her coordinates.
As if on cue, the earth beneath their feet started to rise up.
If anyone could tell me what I was thinking when writing this chapter, that'd be great. I wrote that conversation and looking back on it later I have almost no idea what it means.
Until Next Time!