Disclaimer: See last chapter.
Time
It was almost a sea of green out there. Hundreds of islanders, even a few humans, stood in strong green uniforms, each of them staring at her as if she was responsible for the giant mess of the palace behind her.
To be fair to them, they were right.
"Bring out Whisper the Wolf and CyanCantCatchMe!" One of them called out towards the front. Whisper glanced towards them. The uniform was a bit stockier, suitable for the bear wearing it, with dozens of small lines on it. Maybe a commander of some kind?
She blinked. "Cyancantcatchme?" Whisper asked aloud, hoping that her voice would carry. The Enforcers were near silent, and it was only the wind that could stop them from hearing her.
"Oh, sorry! That's me, that's my hacker handle!" Cyan chirped as she popped up from behind Whisper. The other wisps fell in line behind her, giving a kind of off V shape to her.
"You have a hacker handle? Why!?" Orange protested from the other side.
"Because it was fun and I needed a name! So that way I could be like 'Bam! You just got hacked by Cyan Can't Catch Me!'"
Whisper took a moment to close her eyes and sigh. "The wisps are yours?" the same bear asked, holding his arms out as if to stop them all from firing.
"They have wisps now!? When did that happen!?" another voice shouted.
"They've been here for years! Remember your local time idiot!" another voice said next to him. Whisper had to refrain from showing anything as the Enforcers slowly realized that she was not some kind of eldritch abomination from out of time.
"Wisps aren't that strong. We can take 'em!" one of the front Enforcers said to one right next to them. Whisper felt that the wisps were taking offense to that bit. Whisper felt sorry for him, soon enough.
She nodded though towards the bear. "They are. Cyan is the hacker."
"Wisps can hack?"
"That's a bad sign, isn't it?"
The bear said nothing. "Then you, Whisper, are hereby sentenced to Out of Time. You and your wisps. Everyone?" he called out.
Before he could announce to fire a red demon suddenly showed up in the center, diving from nearly fifty feet up. A blue and white blur slammed down next to him, both of them creating shockwaves that Whisper could feel all over.
She didn't know what Out of Time meant, but really, it wasn't that hard to figure it out. The specifics may have eluded her, but the phrase was obvious enough.
"Cyan, Pink!" Whisper called out as they dove into the wispon. Hopefully they'd realize that she wanted aggressive actions and not-
That was before Orange and Blue combined their abilities to slam a massive blue block nearly ten times the size of Whisper into the rest of the Zerotime. A rocket powered cube.
It made the paltry amount that Knuckles and Metal slammed away look like nothing.
The path was clear, at least. "Blue, Pink! Set up a barrier!"
"Fun times yay!" Yellow started to screech out of her canister. Whisper had only a moment before she realized what it was that Yellow could do. Which was a moment too late as a large hole suddenly appeared under a good chunk of the Enforcers.
Green and Pink had actually relegated themselves to making sure that everyone lived. A sinkhole appearing in the middle of the city? A giant cube that looked as if it crushed the structures and buildings with ease? They were fighting a wisp army now at this point.
But the path was clear for her, at least. Whisper grabbed the wispon, making sure that it was safely on her back, before she started running. Far off in the distance she could see the sparkling effect of Chaos Control depositing everyone on one of the high rises.
Shadow was doing his job, which was transportation. The Shadow of her time would've balked at being such a thing. The Shadow of this time, however, realized that it was really the best thing he could do.
She made sure to run away from the sparkles. She didn't want to lead the Enforcers closer to the kids, and to Tangle. And if she could find a Clockwatcher that would be great...
And to Sonic and Tails too, but they could probably defend themselves. Maybe. Tails could, if he wasn't lying about trying to stay fit, really. Either way, they had some amount of defense, but it would still be best to not lead the Enforcers closer.
Shots started to go wide on her. Knuckles and Metal were doing their best to keep the Enforcers off of her, but it was the wisps that did most of the work.
Blue's cubes were almost obsessively helpful. And Green continued to prove that hover wasn't so much disregard of gravity in one direction so much as it was complete control over it. How Green managed to get that one by her for so long, she didn't know.
Cyan was, entertainingly enough, the least effective on the Enforcers. It wasn't as if they had some kind of computer system that linked them all up that she could shut down at once. She'd have liked that though, Whisper knew.
Orange was rather effective by suddenly blinding them, creating a burst of light which was also something Whisper had no idea she could do. How many times had she been surprised by the wisps during this adventure?
Yellow was going around making small sinkholes, and fortunately Lavender must have got to her because the sinkholes were much smaller than they had been initially, and Whisper had no doubt there was now a mess of tunnels underneath Zerotime. Assuming, of course, that Yellow didn't fill them in when she was done.
Pink's spikes were small and numerous, and it seemed like almost everything had some amount of spikes on it. From the devices the Enforcers carried to, according to one of them yelling out, spikes on the inside of the uniform and how could Pink even do that!?
Whisper had always thought that Pink had to be able to see something to be able to affect it with his power. But no, he could just do that, because of course he could!
Lavender was...well, holding back. She knew she wasn't much use as the rest of the wisps, considering that she was a white wisp at heart, which was capable of giving energy but not really doing much else. A way to boost the effectiveness of others, but not much in the way of combat herself. And Frenzy was far too damaging to be able to trust it being used out here. So maybe it wasn't Cyan that was least effective, but Lavender.
Honestly Whisper was just glad there was one of them that was slightly more useful than she was. All she was doing was running and dodging those shots that were aimed at her. And there were a lot of shots aimed at her.
Most of them went wide, hitting some of the other shops nearby the main path. Or whatever side street she was on. Some of the walls vanished, rusting instantly into dust. Some of them hit the doors, and the doors simply...stopped existing.
Zerotime was a surprisingly large city, Whisper found. More of the Enforcers started popping out of the woodwork, taking small potshots. Hopefully that meant that everyone was already out of the jail.
They'd forgotten to sync radios and watches before this too. That was a rookie mistake, and Whisper had completely forgotten it.
She'd been going solo or with the Neo Diamond Cutters for too long. "Alright, I have no more ideas," Cyan said, hovering next to her. "It's another ten or fifteen blocks before the entrance, but..."
Why was there a but there?
She felt, rather than heard, the doors slam shut. "Oh," Whisper said quietly. That's what Cyan meant. She didn't even need to see them to know that the doors of Zerotime had closed.
Why were they so insistent on her!?
A loud roar cut through her thoughts, and suddenly she realized she'd forgotten the other thing that was still chasing her. The Time Eater itself.
The purple klaxon from earlier went off again, and the Enforcers couldn't decide who to try to shoot, shoot at Whisper or the big blithering gas monster that was now visible to everyone and Whisper started to run.
Good news on her part at least. The Time Eater was definitely chasing her. Bad news was the Enforcers were still.
Even worse news is that the Time Eater then reached out with a claw and sent one of the Enforcers through a sign. His partner then buckled down and tried shooting it with the rust beam or the 'make things disappear' beam gun. She had to find a better name for it. Vanisher?
Whisper gave out the whistle to gather the wisps. Shadow could still get out, she hoped. Which meant that she could simply wait for Chaos Control. And the Time Eater probably wouldn't be able to...right, Chaos Control won't work with wisps.
Never mind. She was doing this the old fashioned way. Or finding a Clockwatcher, but that seemed to be getting harder and harder as time went on.
She stopped at a crossroads, the giant Time Eater heading towards her, its claws fully solid. The wisps gathered behind her. "Lavender, me!" Whisper shouted, her voice tearing at her throat.
Whisper was prepared this time for the sheer anger, the pure presence that being in Frenzy form did. Was it because she was getting more used to it now?
The Time Eater proved that it was capable of being smart by going intangible just as Whisper's claws soared through where its hands would have been. That was just unfair. It should stay still, so she could hit the thing!
How dare it try to avoid her hits!? She let out a snarl as the Time Eater gave a surprisingly mocking laugh. Then one of the Enforcers...Gray, actually now that Whisper could see her, aimed the Vanisher.
At the Time Eater.
And the beast recoiled as if struck. That was what she was supposed to be doing! This interloper had no business messing in her fight, for it was her fight to cause pain, pain and agony, endless obliteration!
It turned physical just long enough to slam a deck down at the Frenzied Whisper. The wolfess felt it beam her on the head, but the Frenzy itself had taken most of the hit. Whisper barely felt a thing, except unending rage.
"Whisper, I can't keep this up! Your soul...it's too tainted!" Lavender's high pitched voice cut to her. But...she was so close! All she had to do was keep hitting the thing until it died.
The anger left Whisper alone with only the fear and pain as Lavender disimbued her. The Time Eater was in front of her, in physical form, as Gray was off to the side, the Vanisher not doing anything to the physical form of the Time Eater.
"Why did it work that time but not before!?" Gray was shouting. "And what was that thing!?" she shouted towards Whisper.
"Cyan, Pink!" Whisper said as loud as she felt she could go right now as the wisps took the fight to the physical form of the Time Eater again. The same deck was tossed with a combination of Green and Orange, slamming into it with a force that Whisper could feel.
"I'm sorry!" Lavender started to apologize again.
"Time Eater, it goes incorporeal, hit it when it does, no sign of it, Frenzy form, Lavender's specialty, it's alright," Whisper answered in as many short sentences as she could. The wispon shifted and changed, and suddenly there was a pulse rifle that shot pink spikes in her hands.
And the pink spikes were homing.
How can Pink do that!?
"It goes incorporeal but with no sign of it being so!?" Gray shouted as she fired another blast of the Vanisher. The Time Eater raised one hand up, turned it physical to absorb the hits, as the rest of Pink's spikes went through the rest of it.
"We'll need to corner it, make sure that we aim at the same target," Whisper said. "It can only block one of us at a time."
"It's like Ikaruga!" Gray shouted, her eyes glistening with excitement. "Alright, we can do it!"
What.
"It's a game Whisper! We are forcing you to play it once we get back!" Green shouted from the side. "It's ignoring everything we do!"
Because it was incorporeal again, which meant it needed to be hit with the Vanisher. Whisper took a moment.
Another Enforcer went around the corner, and raised his Vanisher towards Whisper. She saw it only a moment before he fired, and she rolled out of the way. The small block of debris she'd been next to Gray with was gone, vanishing into nonexistence. Or someplace else. Maybe the jail.
She sure hoped that Shadow had managed to get everyone out at this point.
"Treearm! She's not an enemy right now!" Gray called out. "And you almost hit me!"
Whisper jumped over an iron bar that the Time Eater threw her way, the wispon barely having enough time to be raised before she kept firing. The Pink spikes created a path on the floor, against the houses and shops that lined the streets as she aimed it at the thing.
"She's an enemy!"
"Yellow, I know we haven't had time to talk much but when I call your name, imbue the wispon!" Whisper tried to explain. Why Yellow was with the others instead of going around making more sinkholes or things worse for everyone, Whisper didn't know, but she wasn't about to take it at face value.
There was a keening wail of the klaxon, and Yellow was mimicking it. "Blue, what's going on with her?" Whisper asked as she whistled for all the wisps to gather. Only Lavender and Yellow didn't. Lavender was alone facing the Time Eater.
She had a moment to breathe. Maybe.
"Yellow's afraid. She doesn't know what's going on, she's not supposed to be here," Blue explained. His eyes were huge with worry. "Whisper, can you use the words?" he asked.
Green shook his head. "Not yet. It's not time yet, if she uses them too early then everything's going to be going wrong!" Green murmured.
The Time Eater grabbed a sign. Not a small stop sign, either, but one of the bigger concrete and iron signs that had the same icons that Whisper couldn't read, but she liked to imagine it said 'This is a giant sign. Try to avoid it.'
She'd like to, giant sign. She'd wanted to. "Yellow, imbue me, wisps, scatter!" Whisper shouted. Pink disimbued from the wispon just long enough to shove Yellow towards her before they fled in different directions.
Fear. That was the only thing Whisper could truly understand at this point. The thing was bigger than her, wanted to eat her, wanted to consume wanted to consume all things.
She was going through the ground now. Yellow should leave directions to her, because while the Time Eater was terrifying, and she was aware of that, she still had a part to play. She needed to get out of Zerotime. Could Yellow just make her go straight through the walls as she did the ground?
The Time Eater came out of the ground, from seemingly below her, and slammed Yellow out of her imbuement, sending Whisper flying upwards out of the ground. The wispon was on her back, at least.
And it had hurt. A lot. "Yellow!" Whisper shouted as the wisp continued to freeze up. Her head was bleeding, she was sure. Her back was going to be in pain for just about forever.
A blue ball came out of nowhere, rescuing the Yellow wisp as Metal Sonic grabbed her and flew towards the others.
A red line shoved itself towards the Time Eater, slamming it into the ground with just as much force as Knuckles the echidna came from...somewhere. "You can't honestly think we're leaving you behind now!" Knuckles smirked.
The Time Eater let out a loud roar as it turned incorporeal again, only to find Vanishing shots from dozens of the Enforcers that Gray had managed to amass. "Kill the Time Eater first!" she shouted, her head held high.
Whisper's was gripped by something soft, and at first she thought it was Green until she heard the small sounds of whirring above her. The gaunt Tails, impossibly thin, had caught her.
The Time Eater was sent towards another pair of shops of empty buildings, before it crashed and flew into the air, the flames of a red wispon obvious to anyone that had fought with one.
A white bat, whom Whisper recognized but knew for a fact that Rouge was dead was in its way as she slammed it back down onto the ground. Knuckles was right there, his fists filled with fire as he let out a shockwave laden punch.
Tails let her down. "Hey. Sorry we're late. We had to argue things," he said. "And Shadow doesn't like being used as a taxi."
"It's called a ride-share nowadays," Violet's voice called out from behind. She had a red wispon in her hand, and a small but eager red wisp flared up behind her.
"Taxi, ride-share...I've been out for a while. Come on, I thought it was good," Tails answered.
Rouge disappeared as another form, that of Omega, formed in front of Whisper and the team, firing hundreds of bullets each second. They slammed into the Time Eater, pushing it further and further into the structure, pieces of it falling down near it only to be battered by them as bricks. "My apologies, Whisper. We are not late. We are simply gone," Omega said softly, his voice grating and yet still less machine-like than the entire time that Whisper had ever known him to be.
Some of the Enforcers looked to the team, and took a few potshots of their own before their teammates stopped them.
"What...I told you all to run!" Whisper snarled. "Run! Don't die for me!"
"We died once," Tails said softly. "And we're not dying again."
A blue blur slammed into the Time Eater again, forcing it into the Enforcers nest. They scattered, jumping everywhere, some of them trying to shoot at the team while some of them kept up the work on the Time Eater. Whisper noticed that it hadn't turned incorporeal for some time. It must really not like those Vanisher shots.
Whisper blinked. That wasn't Metal Sonic though, because Metal Sonic was with the wisps, slowly trying to calm the panicking Yellow down.
Sonic stood on a nearby shop, his arms crossed as he stared at the thing. "Come on! That all you got!?" he shouted, one of his legs covered in metal. And he looked...like his teenage self again. All the confidence, all the haggardness of life for a long time, it was as if he was brought back in time itself.
"Zerotime's timesetting!" one of the Enforcers shouted.
The Time Eater howled, roaring and setting her bones and soul alight. It wanted to crush her, it wanted to crush them all, and they'd done so much to it and it was still just coming and coming.
What would it take!?
"It took Super Sonic to work with his past self last time. And Shadow...is still working on that past self part," Knuckles explained.
Whisper turned to see Surge and Kit surrounding Mata from the various Enforcers, most of their attention was on the big giant purple monster thing, but admittedly some of them were rather curious...in a bad way...about the tiny two tailed yellow cat. Her eyes were shut, and Whisper realized that she was still channeling for Omega.
"What? I'm just here to watch. And steal the idea. Come on," Surge said as soon as she noticed that Whisper was staring. "Do it do it do it come on..." she said, glancing up towards Sonic.
What could he do? And where was Shadow? Tangle? If the kids were here then she had no doubt that Tangle was still here as well.
Sonic closed his eyes, as Shadow teleported in right behind him.
The buildings they were on vanished, before reappearing far more futuristic. Sonic appeared much older, an older gray blue hedgehog with white streak in his quills, and Shadow looked the same.
Whisper looked around. They were all different now. Mata was fully grown, Violet was an adult older than Tails was now. Tails himself was slouched, and yet his eyes held only stern determination. The others too appeared much older. But she? She was the same.
The blue Chaos Emerald appeared first. The Enforcers started to scream and shout that it was a bad idea. The green one next, followed one by one as more appeared.
Finally, in an instant as everything disappeared, reappearing as a much older ruin. The city itself was changing based on what it was that Sonic and Shadow was doing. And she'd only seen it once.
The metal in Sonic's leg disappeared as the fully teenage Sonic stood there, his spines a glowing yellow and facing upwards. Looking much like Shadow was normally, actually. Shadow, was much the same. A glowing yellow silver, his spines forcing upwards more than usual.
Zerotime flickered. They were older. It flickered again. They were younger. Whisper couldn't have been the only one to notice, but not one other person was saying something. "Something's wrong..." Whisper said as everything seemingly froze.
Sonic and Shadow stood there, two super forms, as they changed ages rapidly.
Then everything seemed to...slow down. The rapid aging became nonexistent, to the ages that Whisper knew them to be. All movement just seemed to stop as the city continued to change, before that, too, slowed down. Everyone else seemed stuck in time, frozen to the spot. Even Mata and Violet had rapidly changed ages from their usual age to even younger, or to fully grown adults.
"I don't know what's going on either," Orange offered from beside her. "The city itself has frozen."
The Time Eater had not. But it was stuck, wrapped in the structure of the shops it had collapsed into. Whisper wasn't sure why at first until she saw the tail. Tangle had chained it up using her tail, and was forcing it to stay put.
Zerotime itself was changing, too, but the Enforcers weren't moving either. "Something's wrong, definitely," Cyan said as she glanced around. "It's as if time...just stopped."
"I think it did," Lavender noted from the sideline. "No one's moving. They just...aged. And de-aged."
"Think the chaos energy did something to mix with Zerotime? The Enforcers did say that the city itself was timesetting. Shifting to a different time," Green offered.
"I think that it had to. I don't know how though. Any ideas, Cyan, Orange, Pink?" Blue said.
"I got nothing," Cyan shrugged. "This is far out of my area of expertise. If someone had hard numbers sure, but the only hard numbers I got is how many years Tangle looks when she's older."
"Someone going to tell Whisper that she ages grace-ouch!" Pink offered before Lavender slapped him gently on the back of the...head? Tentacle? She really had to look through to find wisp anatomy. She'd been telling herself that for this entire time but she hadn't yet. Maybe she would eventually.
Also, she was ignoring Pink. Completely. Pink had said nothing, and if she happened to glance at Tangle and think that the lemur was aging surprisingly gracefully then she wasn't going to tell any of the wisps that. They had enough teasing ammunition for years. And that had been even before this adventure.
Could she walk? Whisper moved up a moment, moving closer to the Time Eater. It was still moving. She could move, at least. There was some kind of energy coming from Sonic and Shadow, although what it was she didn't know.
Worst part is, it was still fluctuating even though everything else had stilled. Everything except the wisps, her, and the Time Eater.
Zerotime had stopped doing its weird aging thing by now, and she walked towards Tangle and the Time Eater.
It was still struggling against the lemur's tail, even though Tangle herself had been frozen in place. "Don't get too close, we don't know what's going to happen!" Orange called out.
This was the first time she got a good look at the amorphous blob that was the Time Eater. It was mostly an aberration, with no solid form to it except its hands and its face.
If she had to give a name to it, it looked like some kind of ghost, honestly. A big purple ghost with only a face and hands. "Why are you here?" she asked, her voice reverberating into nothingness.
Zerotime started to flicker again...and then it all went white.
Did anyone think I was going to actually make it easy? There's still one major character that we haven't seen yet...
Until Next Time!