When Blaze the Cat had first handled the Sol Emeralds, she had been just five years old.
It had been just two months after the state funeral of her parents. Two months after having to watch, dispassionately, as their ashes had risen into the sky.
It had been so hard to avoid letting the pain show on her face. Then, or in the days that followed.
The minister of culture must have thought two months enough, however.
"Princess," she'd said, opening the large, ornate wooden box the guards had brought with her "these are the Sol Emeralds. Soon, you must learn to commune with and protect them; as your family has done since time untold."
She should have hated it. She should have cried at the unfair burden, placed atop the hole in her heart where her parents used to be.
But instead she'd met the minister's eyes with steel in her own, and demanded they begin right away.
To her credit, the minister for culture had tried to ease her into her role gently. But Blaze had been stern and demanding, even as a five year old. She'd insisted that she could handle the emeralds without issue, and well… she was the princess.
Already a pyrokinetic even without the emeralds, Blaze had assumed she knew fire. When her emotions raged out of control, flame and smoke inevitably followed. The fearful gazes of her people… that, Blaze had naivety believed, was the worst that fire could bring.
Then she had touched one of the emeralds, and she had realised just how wrong she was.
The emeralds had shown her a world consumed by fire; littered with dead streets, burnt-out shells of buildings, and creatures of pure flame that ruthlessly hunted for any survivors.
The strange thing was, the vision didn't strike Blaze as a warning. It almost seemed more… like an apology. There had been a hedgehog in the vision… a naive boy who had taken her hand and fought back the flames with everything he had. There had been a great betrayal, but not by him… the details had never been clear to begin with, and the years since had hardly made them clearer. But she remembered the her-that-was-her-but-not wishing the boy goodbye, as she took the flames inside herself and sent herself somewhere so far away that the fire could never hurt him again.
It would be several years before anyone would allow her near the Jewelled Sceptre, even though she had insisted over and over they they had misunderstood the reason for her tears.
It would be several more before the Time Eater attack, and the shock that that ruined city existed outside of her nightmares.
"Oi, Blaze!" Marine the Raccoon stuck her head below decks. "We're coming up on Southern Island now. Ya gonna come up and have a gander?"
Blaze's face screwed up, and she opened her eyes. She'd sat down to try and focus, but had only succeeded in becoming lost in her memories. She had to do better than that – especially now. "Thank you, Marine – but I cannot afford to relax. We are in dire need of every ounce of speed I can coax out of these engines."
"Blaze, you've been roasting the boilers the whole arvo." Marine rolled her eyes. "If ya don't ease off now, we'll be swimming the rest of the way, and I didn't pack me togs."
Blaze hesitated, but slowly relaxed her shoulders. The Sol Emeralds, previously orbiting around her and helping her maintain the fire under the Ocean Tornado's boiler, lowered themselves down into her waiting hands. As the fire in front of her dimmed to a more normal level, she quickly and deftly put the emeralds securely away.
Blaze rose to her feet, turned, and began to climb the steps to the Ocean Tornado's deck. She grit her teeth as a wave of glitching passed through her body, leaving her thoughts scattered and scrambled.
A sudden surprised yelp from the deck let her know that Marine had just glitched as well. "Crikey!" Blaze reached the deck just in time to see Marine pinwheeling her arms, having lost her balance for a moment. "This baloney is messing with me head somethin' fierce!"
Blaze said nothing, instead shielding her eyes with one hand and trying to spot Southern Island. As Marine had said, she could just spot it on the horizon.
It would still take them precious minutes to arrive. Blaze started pacing anxiously back and force on the deck; wondering somewhat desperately if shooting fire from the rear of the ship would make them go any faster.
"Blaze, at this rate the crew are gonna have to follow after ya with a mop and bucket." Marine said with exasperation.
Blaze looked behind herself to find that she had been leaving flaming footprints on the wooden deck. She winced as one of the crew of koalas hurriedly tossed a bucket of seawater over the flames. "Apologies." She mumbled.
"Blaze, c'mon. Talk to me." Marine folded her arms. "Ya ain't said squat since we set off. You just came barrellin' into me cabin howling 'bout some kind of 'super wave' and how we had to shoot through, quick smart! I thought you were going 'troppo on me!"
Blaze winced again, even as her eyes traitorously glanced at Southern Island again. It was still too far for her to swim… "It's… difficult to explain." She swallowed, trying to remember what exactly she had said to Marine when they had set off.
It was difficult, as she was pretty sure it had been a different Blaze that had said the words in question.
"Gah!" Blaze was unable to hold in a cry as she doubled over in sudden discomfort. A wave of glitching passed through her and the others, each crying out as their very beings wavered between themselves and themselves and themselves and nothing at all…
The wave passed, but Blaze noted with dismay that this glitching fit had been by far the longest one yet. At this rate… she grit her teeth. "At first I thought it was a second Super Genesis Wave, yes."
Marine held up a finger, questions clearly on her tongue, but Blaze continued talking. "But the wave, for all of its terrible might, was over in a moment. This is something else." She bit her bottom lip as the ship finally came up to the pier. "Something that might be just as dangerous."
Without waiting for the Ocean Tornado to dock properly, Blaze leapt over the side of the ship, a quick burst of fire sending her shooting across the distance to land on the pier.
"Blaze, hold on a tick!" Marine called, still stuck behind the railing of the ship, not able to match Blaze's Jump Step. "Ya still haven't told me what the rush is…!"
Blaze sprinted across Southern Island with every bit of speed she could muster. She wasn't Sonic, but with her flames propelling her along she could maintain a pace that was much faster than what normal people could manage. Within moments, she was at the entrance to the tunnel that Tails's Magma Hurricane had bored into the mountainside.
Since that initial – rushed – excavation, a vault door had been installed over the entrance, and two guards were posted in watchtowers with large canons set into them. In the case of any serious attack their job was more to call for help and buy time for reinforcements than anything else; Blaze trusted her guards, but all the same she did not expect them to defeat the likes of Captain Whisker.
Blaze suspected the two guards had spotted the large jet of fire fanning out behind her as she ran, because when she came into view of them they were already running around in a mild panic. Upon seeing that it was, indeed, their princess, the two practically fell over themselves activating the mechanism that opened the door. Without a word said to either guard, Blaze sprinted inside the still-opening doors.
She still was not sure if she had the seconds to spare on a greeting, let alone a proper explanation.
The doors opened up into a tunnel that led deep into the earth under the island. The heat quickly became stifling… or so Blaze had been told. The heat never bothered her anyway.
As she ran, the dark lighting of the tunnel started to give way to the glow of magma. Seeing she was nearly there, Blaze put on one more burst of speed.
There was one more vault door before the final chamber, and this one no guard could open. Much of the Sol Empire's wealth had gone into making this chamber the most secure location on the planet – many times more secure than the panic room in the palace. It was rather unfortunate that Blaze could not bring herself to seriously hope it would keep out Eggman or Eggman Nega, but as Sonic had told her once…
"Eggman? Ha! Nah, he gets bored even more easily than me. I'm pretty sure the only do-hicky he's really gone for more than once has been the Chaos Emeralds, and… well. You can see why he'd go for those, right?"
(At that point she'd had to fight back a sudden and very un-princess-like urge to elbow him in the ribs, as the Sol Emeralds made their displeasure at being implicitly dismissed very clearly known.)
Allowing herself a moment to take a deep breath, Blaze took out a large, ornate key from her tailcoat, and…
The loud screeching of a quadbike's engine caused her to fumble and nearly drop it.
"Blaze!" Marine called, her bike breaking frantically as it slowed to a stop. "Seriously, where's the fire? I was hoping t' surprise you with me new bike, but…" She slowed to a stop. "Hey… isn't this where…?"
Blaze sighed, and unceremoniously inserted and turned the key. "Yes, Marine." She stood back as the vault door very loudly unlocked, and started to slowly creak open. "This is the Jewelled Sceptre's chamber."
Beyond the door lay a long 'river' of magma. On an island in the middle of that river was an altar, above with floated the greatest treasure of Blaze's family – though she could feel the Sol Emeralds burning with disagreement.
The Jewelled Sceptre looked exactly like what it sounded like – a sceptre with a hooked end, inlaid with enough and big enough jewels to buy a large island. But the true worth of this sceptre was beyond measure, for Blaze's ancestors had somehow made it tap into the Power of the Stars: the primal force that allowed parallel universes – such as her world and Sonic's world – to exist without destroying each other.
Marine looked rather uncertain as she watched Blaze stride forwards, walking fearlessly across the surface of the magma. It was clear she remembered the first time she'd been in this chamber. How Super Sonic and Burning Blaze had fought the Egg Wizard… and how Eggman Nega's act of spite would have blown the whole planet away if Marine hadn't interrupted him. "Do… ya need anythin' from me, Blaze?"
Blaze pursed her lips, approaching the ancient altar and standing before it. "Make sure I am not interrupted."
"Righto!" Marine called back from the safety of the 'shore', relieved at having something to do. "Nothin'll get past me!"
Eggman and Eggman Nega, for all of their cruel ambitions… were not stupid. They had built the Egg Wizard for the sole purpose of drawing power from the Jewelled Sceptre – knowing that if they tried to do it themselves, the raw influx of energy would obliterate them long before even the Sceptre could reject them.
(Throughout that encounter, Nega had referred to Blaze's world as though it was his own. This confused Blaze, given that Silver had been adamant that he was Eggman's descendent from 200 years in the future. Maybe their family had migrated across at some point in the intervening centuries?)
Blaze did not have an Egg Wizard to do this task for her, and she was attempting something far more difficult than merely destroying a world.
…she really hoped that being the rightful owner of the Sceptre counted for as much as she thought it did.
Blaze took a deep breath… and firmly grasped the handle of the sceptre. Immediately, she gasped with pain, her eyes lighting up with power. There were an unlimited number of worlds, which required an unlimited amount of Power of the Stars to keep them all separate. The tiniest sliver of the tiniest sliver of that kind of power… well, the Eggmen hadn't been lying when they said it was more power than the Chaos Emeralds and the Sol Emeralds combined.
Without any thought from her, the Sol Emeralds shot out of her pocket and took up orbits around her. The fiery blaze that was their power pushed back against the crushing infinity that the Jewelled Sceptre put out, and Blaze found herself slipping into her Burning form without actually meaning to; just to avoid losing herself in the flow.
"Ah… Blaze? You right? Yer glowing a lot more than usual…"
The maddening thing was, Burning Blaze hadn't even started to properly tap the Jewelled Sceptre's power. This was just the excess energy leaking out of it, and already it was nearly enough to destroy her. No wonder her ancestors had never made serious use of it – it had likely killed anyone who tried. But she was not seeking to do anything as petty as expand her rule – hers was a mission that could not be stopped. So with every ounce of her willpower, Burning Blaze let her mind dive into the rush of power.
"Er… I'm kinda hopin' tha' this is supposed to be happening?"
For a moment, she thought that she had gone blind. But as she fought back the sparks of power exploding inside her eyes, she realised that no – she was seeing cracks. Cracks throughout everything, spreading outwards in a spiderweb pattern much like cracks in glass.
Or crystal.
"Seriously, if you could, like… nod, or somethin'…"
But, Burning Blaze realised, the cracks in the world were made of the Power of the Stars – wounds left in reality by a force that had slammed the world into itself. Different verses of the same song, previously separate, were held back from merging completely by the remnants of the force that had previously kept them far apart.
So Burning Blaze tightened her grip on the Jewelled Sceptre, and pulled.
"Ack! Crikey gee wizz that feels weird!"
The leftover Power of the Stars that kept her world from being one with itself was starting to drain. Nearly identical already, the three versions of her world were now melding with each other. But this left her with the problem of what to do with the leftover energy. With no other ideas, Burning Blaze directed it to within herself, and fed the flames within.
She… expected it to hurt. But it didn't. It almost felt… like an old wound being healed. Like a hole being filled in. A missing piece of a jigsaw, finally where it should be.
"Er… Blaze? What's so funny?"
She could see, now, beyond the boundaries of her own tiny world. Even once she finished merging her world with itself and itself, there remained nine voids. Nine empty spaces where her world should have been, but wasn't.
But that was alright.
She just had to burn away all those unnecessary bits, and everything would be fine.
"Blaze, fair dinkum, that laugh o' yours is freaking me right out…!"
The more power Burning Blaze drew inside herself, the higher the flames surged, the more complete she felt. Like she was hatching from an egg, or rejoining with a lost part of herself. Soon, she wouldn't need this paltry body any more. Soon, her flames would surge across All That Is, burning away anything that dared to threaten –
The Jewelled Sceptre clattered to the ground, the Sol Emeralds joining them shortly afterwards. The flames outside of Blaze – and more importantly, the flames inside – spluttered out and died as she collapsed backwards onto the ground.
Blaze wished she could say it was because she had suddenly come to her senses, but really it was because Marine had just punched her in the face.
The mysterious blue energy around Marine's fist – the same energy that she had used to interrupt the Egg Wizard's planet-busting laser – dissipated as she leaned over Blaze in concern.
"Ya all good now, or do I need to clock ya again?" Marine asked, frankly.
Blaze blinked upwards in astonishment at Marine. For a long moment, words refused to come out of her mouth.
What… had just happened? What had she nearly become?
Marine scratched her head. "Gonna take that as a yes." She leaned forward and pulled Blaze to her feet.
She stiffened as Blaze suddenly moved forward… and wrapped her in a tight hug.
"Thank you." She breathed.
"Heh heh, uh, okay. This is weird…" Marine patted Blaze's back. "Uh, any time?"
The flames from her childhood nightmares, from the city with the boy whose face she almost remembered… did they lie inside her, waiting to be awakened? Or were they merely the fuel to create something far more dangerous?
She would need to double the protections on the Jewelled Sceptre. Not to keep it safe from others. To keep it safe from her.
Her, above all others.
"So, uh… you gonna tell me what in blazes all o' that was about, or…?" Marine prompted, prying Blaze's arms off of her and stepping back.
Blaze blushed, suddenly realising how out-of-character she was being. She coughed, trying to regain a bit of her regal bearing… or at least as much as she could with her cheeks aflame. "Well, I, uh… do you remember me telling you about the Super Genesis Wave?"
"'course." Marine answered easily, even though mere minutes ago she would have given a firm 'Nah' as an answer. "That's that thing that that Eggman lunatic did with the thing and the stuff, right?"
A snort of laughter managed to escape Blaze's nose before she could stop it. A multiverse-destroying wave of unstoppable energy… made with 'the thing' and 'the stuff', indeed.
Blaze glanced down at the Jewelled Sceptre… and, trying not to be obvious, took a nervous step back from it, her good cheer gone at once. "The sceptre prevented the destruction of our world though the wave, but it did not cancel it out any of its other effects. There was still a clear line between our world before the wave… and our world after."
"Right… and?"
"And I removed the line." Blaze decided to simplify, leaving out the third version of their world. She didn't yet know how it related to the other two.
Marine rolled her eyes. "And that was suddenly so urgent, was it? Honestly, Blaze… yer allowed to chuck a sicky every now and then, y'know that right?"
Blaze bit her lip. "I'm… we're… not done yet." She said, correcting herself mid-way through.
Marine's shoulder's drooped. "Of course we ain't. What's burning now?"
"Nothing in our world caused the damage I just fixed." Blaze was very sure of that, if nothing else, from her experience just now. "Which means it must have come from –"
"Sonic's world?" Marine actually perked up. "Oh, ripper! I get to see me mates again!"
Blaze opened her mouth –
"And if you try to leave me behind, I'll be forced to make me own way there!" Marine folded her hands and nodded firmly. "So don't even try it!"
Blaze found herself chuckling. Marine would probably manage it too. Somehow.
"Alright," she caved "I suppose I'll have to bring you along then."
"Darn right ya will." Marine grinned. "When do we set off?"
Blaze sighed. "Well… not right away. I left the palace in a hurry, and Gardon must be frantic by now."
Marine let out a big sigh, drooping forwards. "Okay, fine. We say our goodbyes and then we set out."
AN: There was supposed to be a second half of this, but this chapter was getting pretty large already, so I'm splitting it in half.