[SoDi]

Greetings! This is my first fan-fiction. 45 chapters, that I shall post as my last beta-reader does a final read through. The story is set in a version of the world of the Sonic games, or at least those games that I have played. I call it 'dissonance' because I do take liberties with the setting and characters.

I'm glad for any feedback you can offer, but, whether compliment or critique, please be specific so that I am better able to apply your suggestions. Also, though most people visiting SOL may already know: Sonic and other characters and things owned by Sega folks are, in fact, owned by Sega folks. The rest belongs to me, SoDi.

-Sonic Dissonance-
-Wind of Hope-

-1- Racing the Wind

The dark hall had not been disturbed for decades, it seemed. Dust rose in a low cloud as the doors were pushed back and a large machine clunked heavily into the room. It reached the base of a tall set of stairs, and the machine’s lid popped open and a round man with a wide mustache climbed out, wearing an archaeologist’s helmet and laughing to himself.

“Ha! When the legend warned about the many traps and dangers guarding the shrine, I expected more of a challenge! Now, the fabled treasure is mine! Pandora’s Box!” He climbed the stairs and approached a wide stone ledge. As he came closer, two braziers leapt to life with white flame, illuminating a large carving that filled the back wall. It looked like a woman wrapped round with floating ribbons and stars, all carved from the rock. At her feet, on the stone ledge, a round crystal sigil was carved into the stone, decorated with faded images of wings and stars. Doctor Robotnik tapped lightly at the sigil, then began rotating a few of the carvings, until the stone ledge opened up to reveal a broad box of opaque crystal, the circular sigil being part of its lid. Small sparks and pulses of light moved just under the surface of the carvings, tracing their images. Whatever the item was, it seemed to still be active. “Let’s see, how does it open?”

He twisted at a few more carvings, and as he worked, smaller flames of different colors began to flicker into life around the statue on the rear wall, until the shrine was wreathed in a rainbow halo of light. The seventh flame, golden colored, appeared above the statue’s head, and the box shuddered and the lid clicked upward. Robotnik took a step back as the lid slid aside.

A sudden surge of wind filled the room, sweeping outward and causing all of the flames to gutter out. It passed almost immediately, leaving the braziers hissing and dark, as Robotnik jumped forward to look inside. “What? Empty?! But, I don’t understand, I was sure I read the inscriptions correctly! There has to be something here, there has to be! Wait… is this?…” Though empty, the box itself still flickered with some sort of internal light. Robotnik’s comically villainous laugh echoed in the stone rooms.

Outside the shrine, the wind howled out from the dark halls and archways, over the moonlit tiles and fallen pillars. As it fled further away, the sound of swift footsteps began to accompany it, and the outline of a person formed within it, and after a moment, still running, opened a pair of wide eyes.

-

Out on the emerald plain the next afternoon, Sonic was laying on a hilltop napping, while Tails was making repairs to the Tornado. It was badly dented near the front, where they had made a rough landing earlier in the day. From here they could look out over the long grasses bending in the wind, the darker green smear of a distant forest, and a long range of mountains just visible beyond that. Tails stood up and rubbed his brow with his wrist. “I guess finding an alternative way to power the Tornado until we get another chaos emerald is going to take a bit more work, but at least this’ll get us home. …Sonic?”

“Don’t sweat it, no one is better at getting machines to work than you. I’ll just stay out of your way. And I’ll find you another emerald, I owe you one.”

“It’s alright. You needed them all to go super, or we wouldn’t have gotten out of the dead zone at all!” Tails stood back and stretched, turning to look out over the green plains. He froze as something seemed to catch his attention. “Look at that!” and Tails pointed far out. “What is that? Could something have followed us out of the dead zone?”

Sonic stood and walked to the edge of the hilltop, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand, trying to see. There was a sky-blue streak moving across the edge of the forest nearest to them, and birds were scattering up into the air as if they‘d been startled. “It doesn’t move like a bot. Hey, I’ll go check it out,” and Sonic dashed off.

He was through the grass and among the trees, till he drew close enough to match speed a little ways behind a figure darting through the woods.

“Wake up, birdies! Into the air!” she laughed. She had sky blue skin and broad talons for feet, and even paler blue feathers pressed close together across her hips and in a wide diamond shape on her chest, the same color as her short-cropped hair. Two long spikes rose up from the back of her shoulder blades, and she had a tail of three long feathers that bobbed behind her as she ran. She also had a small white horn like a crescent moon rising from her forehead. She continued to laugh as she jumped between trees, striking the trunks so hard that all the branches above shook and sent more birds twittering into the air in agitation. She moved fast, but after hitting several trees in a bounce like this, she sped up and left the forest behind.

Sonic smiled to himself, picking up his own speed to catch up. “Hey!” he said after coming abreast of her, “What kind of a wake up call is that to give someone?”

“This day is too perfect for anyone to stay still!” she crowed.

“I agree!”

Her eyes flashed as they matched speed in the long grass for awhile. “Of course, you might as well be standing still, if I bothered to make a real run.”

“That sounds like a challenge! Think you can keep up?”

“I’m in such a good mood right now, I’ll even give you a head start, if you want it!”

“You don’t know who you’re up against!”

And at the same moment, they both pressed forward in a new rush of speed.

From the hilltop, Tails could follow their race by watching the wave of dust rising in their wake. “I can’t believe how fast that person is! Keeping up with Sonic!” But it wasn’t long before they left his view.

Sonic and the feathered girl crossed over the rolling plains, parallel to the mountains. Sonic was impressed, but feeling a little mischievous himself by now, clipped a few meters ahead so that she could see him running backwards with his arms stretched casually behind his head. She looked surprised, and then he put a hand in front of his face to cover a yawn. But when he put the hand down, she wasn’t there behind him anymore. “Huh?” and he looked to his side. There she was, running backwards with her arms behind her head, too.

“Looks like you need to be put in your place,” she said.

He lowered his head and smiled. “This is serious,” he said.

And they began their run in earnest. They dashed over the plains, and when they ran out of grassland they ran into the forest. The ground rose as they wove among the trees, the forest more blur than substance, leaping from rocks and curving branches and over small streams. Neither could quite break away from the other, so they kept running till they had passed beyond the trees and onto the mountainside, over the stones and gravelly slopes. Still, neither was quitting. Now that they were in open space once again, they each renewed their effort to break ahead of the other, and there was deep pound in the air as they both broke the sound barrier.

Eventually, they came to a last tall peak overlooking the sea. They raced each other in a spiral up its sides, and though the way grew steep very quickly, their speed carried them upwards so that they were moving in a nearly vertical climb. They reached the top at the same time from opposite sides, and continued running into the air by hitting against one another’s feet, until, suspended weightless for a moment in the sky, they both were forced to stop. There was nowhere further to run.

They dropped back down to the narrow ridge of the mountain top lightly, both breathing a little harder. Sonic landed first, in a kneeling pose with one arm extended for balance, and when he stood he made a fist and pumped it towards his chest. “Yes!” he said. “That was a great run!”

The girl simply landed on her talons. Now that they were both still, she took a better look at him, starting with his red sneakers and moving upwards. “Huh. But, how’d you keep up with me? You’re just some kind of big blue rodent!”

“Hey, I’m no rodent, I’m a hedgehog!” And he crossed his arms, still smiling, and said, “I’m Sonic the hedgehog!”

The girl smiled back, a short pair of fangs becoming visible. “I’m Podarge Fleet-Footed! Fastest feet on the ground!”

“Hey, that wasn‘t a clear win!”

“Ha! You’re lucky, I’m out of practice!”

Sonic scratched the end of his nose. “You’re sure you just don‘t like to lose?” He looked out over the sea, stretching his legs. “Still, if you want to consider that last run a warm-up, how about a race back as a tie-breaker? I’ve got to head that way anyway.”

“Sounds fun.” They kept their eyes on each other as they both bent forward, preparing to kick off from the peak, then dropped over the side, using the fall to start their second run at an incredible speed.

-

Tails had finished the repairs, and was now scanning the horizon with a modified pair of binoculars. “Oh! There he is! Huh?”

Through the scope, he could see a bank of faint smoke rising from a set of scorch marks as Sonic and the stranger broke out of the forest and back onto the plain. Their paths veered apart as they approached the hill where Tails was watching from, so that once again both were approaching from opposite sides. The roar of the wind followed behind them. Tails noticed that he was directly between what looked to become a high-speed collision, and ducked, covering his head with a shout just as the two smoke-raising trails converged on him.

But there was no collision, and he opened his eyes cautiously. As the dust settled, Sonic and the stranger were now standing just off to either side of the Tornado, breathing heavily. The girl sat back on the ground, rolling back her head to look at the late afternoon sky, while Sonic bent over with his hands on his knees. Then they both started laughing.

“Sonic? What’s going on? Who is that?” asked Tails, feeling confused.

Sonic stood up straight and walked over to offer a hand to Podarge. She waved him off and jumped to her feet on her own. “My name is Podarge Fleet-Footed, the harpy,” she said to the fox.

“What’s a harpy?” he asked.

She smiled and showed her fangs.

“This is Tails, a friend of mine,” said Sonic, while the smaller fox just stared at the stranger.

“Fine. Sonic, you run pretty well, I‘ll look forward to another rematch.”

“Yeah, you too,” and he held out his hand a second time, this time to shake.

Podarge stared at it for a moment, but didn‘t take it. She smiled at him and instead gave a small salute, “It was fun, but I still have places to go.”

“Sonic, we can fly home anytime now, too.”

Podarge stopped and stared at Tails. “What? You don’t have wings, how do you fly?”

He hovered in the air and smirked. “The Tornado, here. I‘m a pretty good pilot!”

Sonic nodded, and gave Tails a high-five as the fox landed back on the ground.

“What?? This thing can fly?” Podarge said, making a face at the machine.

Tails looked a bit overwhelmed, as he answered, “It’s just a bit beat up, it’ll run fine! Haven’t you seen a plane before?”

Her eyes ran up and down the plane, as if searching it for something, and a smile spread slowly over her face. “…Okay, I’ve decided. Let me ride on it, too. Please? Up into the sky!” and she threw one hand upwards, pointing at the clouds drifting overhead.

“But…”

“Why not?” said Sonic, winking at Tails.

“Okay. Come on, get in!”

Sonic leapt up onto the wing, where he usually rode, and Tails dropped into the cockpit. Podarge followed him and took the rear seat, and the plane rolled down the hill onto the field, gaining enough speed to lift up and then turn to the southeast, gaining altitude.

Once airborne, Podarge skipped up onto the wing opposite Sonic, spreading her arms wide as the wind rushed past them. Sonic shook his head at her, and said, “You look like you’re enjoying yourself!”

“It’s wonderful being up so high!” she crowed, and looked down at the ground below, where the shadow of the plane was a small dark arrow passing over the hills.

“Hey, be careful up there, we’ll lose balance!” Tails warned them.

“Hah! Balance, huh?” said Podarge, turning to give a toothy smile at Sonic. “Well, so long as we time it right between the two of us, we could practically dance on this thing, then?”

Sonic leaned down to say to Tails, “Hey Tails, let’s show Po here what the Tornado can really do, even without a power up!”

“You got it, Sonic! Leave the piloting to me!”

“Po?” said Podarge, then squealed as the plane barrel-rolled into a low cloud bank. “Wheee!”

They made it back to Tails’ workshop as the sun was setting, Sonic and Podarge jumping off the plane as it rolled to a stop. Still excited, Po skipped up onto the roof that provided shade to the front of the building, gripping the metal ledge with her talons and grinning. “That was great! Sonic, how about that rematch?”

“Whoa, I’m all for a good race, but aren’t you tired?”

She crouched down, her tail fanning and her elbows resting on her knees. “Maybe,” she nodded, “But, I spent so long locked up, I don’t care. Well, now that I‘m free again, I suppose there is something that I need to do… but, all I want to do right now is run.”

“Locked up?” asked Sonic.

“Podarge, what happened to you?” asked Tails.

She shook her head. “It‘s not your problem. It‘s something that I...” Her talons tightened on the ledge, and the metal pinched with a squealing sound.

“Whoa, strong grip,” Sonic said to himself.

A voice carried to them from over the next hill. “Soooniiic!” Amy called, dashing up the path and running into Sonic, throwing her arms around him as he tried, too late, to back away. “Sonic, there you are! I saw the Tornado fly in. You and Tails took so long getting back, the rest of us made it home ages ago! Why are you so late?”

Podarge cocked her head, looking curious. “Another hedgehog?”

Hearing her voice, Amy spun around, shoving Sonic back a bit as if to keep him protected behind her. “I’m his girlfriend! Who are you?”

Sonic took the opportunity to get some distance from her. “Hey, Amy, this is Po. She’s a friend we met on the way back, after we had some plane trouble.”

“Friend, huh? How come I haven’t heard of her before? Okay, chicken legs, what are you to Sonic?”

“Amy-” began Sonic.

Podarge jumped down lightly from the roof. “All we did was cross paths. I would hardly call us ‘friends’ because of that. No need to get upset, pinky.”

“Why, you-”

“Still, if my being here is a problem, I’ll leave. It doesn’t matter to me,” she shrugged with a half-smile. She was a blur as she ran off into the forest with a last casual wave.

“What’s with her?” asked Amy, surprised.

“Podarge!” said Sonic, but she was already gone. “You two wait here,” he said, and ran off after her.

He caught up to her running along the riverside. Her expression now was serious, almost scowling, her attention elsewhere. “Podarge! …Up for another run?”

“Ha! Fine, let’s settle it now, blue boy!” she said, becoming upbeat quickly, and she jumped ahead.

“Blue- what?” and he spun after her.

They followed the river a long time. It was evening already, and the broken moon was rising, the wood full of fireflies that scattered as they sped past. Racing in the half-dark was a different sort of challenge, and Po occasionally would knock over stones or small trees into Sonic‘s way.

“Hey, that’s cheating!”

“A win is a win!” she laughed, but she wasn’t actually able to keep the ground she gained. Even slowed down by her tricks, Sonic kept even with her. They ran until they ran out of river, coming to a high ridge where the river became a waterfall, spilling down into a wide lake below. They both skidded to a stop before they would have launched themselves into the air over the water, instead collapsing onto the ground with their backs against each other as they caught their breath. They had done a lot of running that day.

After a little while, Podarge said, “Thanks. Sonic.”

They continued leaning against each other, watching the night sky. “Running feels good, right? Like nothing else.”

“Like the wind,” she said, shaking her head, though they weren’t facing each other.

“So, then, keep running. As long as you want to. But, eventually, when you stop running, there’s something else you still have to do, right? And when you do, I’ll be there to help.” He stood and offered her a hand up.

She stood on her own, crossing her arms and shaking her head. “You know, you remind me of someone.” She half-closed her eyes. “It’s really annoying.”

“Huh?” he blinked, then pointed at his face. “Me?”

“Why would you say you’ll help? You don’t even know me.”

“Maybe we aren’t friends yet, but, we have something in common, don’t we? So, let’s be friends.” And he held out his hand again.

She continued to look at his hand without taking it, and seemed a little troubled. Her shoulder spikes twitched nervously. “Seriously… it’s uncanny.” Sonic didn’t seem discouraged, and after a little while, she went on, “The moon is broken, the whole world is different, there’s a lot that I guess I’ve missed out on. I was sealed away for a long, long time, in a magical device called Pandora’s Box. I got trapped in there by mistake, but that box holds another secret, very powerful, and very dangerous. I’m glad enough to be free, but whoever did it wasn’t trying to help me out, just probably searching for the old treasure of the wind shrine.”

“A treasure hunter, huh?”

“Yeah, some ugly guy, egg-shaped with a wide mustache. I didn’t stay to get a better look at him, though.”

“Ugly mustache… wait, no way! That sounds like Eggman!”

“What? You think you know him?”

“This secret you were sealed with, it couldn’t be described as something leading to an ‘ultimate power’, could it?”

“Wh-what? What do you know about it!?”

“Oh man, Eggman is at it again! So, you need to stop him, right? Count me in! Don‘t worry, I‘ve been beating him and his evil schemes for a long time!”

“…No, Sonic.”

“Huh?”

“Call it a family secret,” and she smiled and held one finger up to her mouth. “Hey, look there! Perfect timing, too,” and she pointed off to the north.

A white light seemed to bubble there, perhaps something that could have been taken for a mist catching at the moonlight, until it grew too bright, gathering and then streaking into the sky in a high, white beam that narrowed and then vanished. The sky was dark again for a moment, then a wave of light radiated outward from the point where the beam had disappeared. “What was that?!”

“The invocation of the white wind! Guess that treasure hunter figured it out already. That power is pretty strong, if used right it can bring destruction to everything the light reaches. Zap!” and she threw her hands up with a laugh.

“What?!”

She grew a bit more serious. “…This is the power that destroyed an old city where a woman named Pandora lived. It destroyed countless cities before that, too. Centuries have passed, it shoulda’ been left forgotten, but it’s going to happen again.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“Me? I didn’t summon this storm. And, there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

A second wave rolled across the sky, like an after-shock, dimmer than the first, but thin webs of lightning arced behind it. The breeze shifted and was suddenly chill, though they might have imagined it. “Well, I’m not giving up! If Eggman thinks he can make a weapon of the wind, I’ll be the one to put him in his place!”

Podarge was shaking her head. “Sheesh, why do you bother? Maybe you and me can outrace a storm, but how do you expect to stop one?”

“I do this sort of thing all the time, I’m used to it. Podarge, you don’t really want to just give up, even if it seems desperate, am I right? As long as we don’t give up there’s still hope, and that’s all we need to keep trying.”

“Why do you say…”

“You have to decide for yourself when to keep running, and when to stand and fight. I don’t know how much time we have, so I’d better get back to the others.” He gave Po a last wave, and turned to begin his sprint back.

This post has been edited by SoDi: 11 February 2010 - 05:49 PM

[SoDi]

-2- If At First You Don’t Succeed

A spiral swirl of clouds had gathered over Silver City, crackling with thin white lightning. Robotnik’s newest bot-plane, the Egg Benedict, coasted in the air above the spire of the tallest of the many tall buildings that made up this place, and was broadcasting loudly as the people of the city were fleeing through the streets below. “Welcome to the glorious rebirth of the Robotnik Empire! This city shall be only the first to come under my rule! Consider yourselves lucky to have such a genius as I as your new ruler!”

On a balcony near the roof of the building, the mayor and his head advisor were conversing. A wind had picked up suddenly and was making it difficult for them, and the advisor’s briefcase fell open and the papers inside scattered quickly. He grasped at the few he could reach before they vanished. The mayor pulled out a megaphone and shouted up at the plane. “Doctor Robotnik! What exactly are your demands?”

“Total surrender!”

“Yes, well, ah….”

“If you are hesitating, you would be most wise not to! Bwahaha!” And, from out of the swirling clouds a narrow, white cyclone shot downward, quick as lightning, pulling up one of the nearby buildings brick by brick until the entire structure had been blown away.

“Aaah! Robotnik, please, we-!”

“Don’t do it, mayor!” said Sonic from the top of the Tornado, as Tails flew them past the balcony so closely that they blew the few remaining pieces of paper out of the advisor’s hands.

They zoomed up towards Robotnik and began shooting with the Tornado‘s guns, but a wall of wind shot downward and deflected the bullets. “What?!” shouted Tails, and readjusted his flying goggles. “I’ll have to make another pass!”

“I’ll get off here!” Sonic jumped down towards the other machine as Tails veered past. A bolt of lightning dove out of the air at the last moment, right at the spot where Sonic meant to land, throwing him backwards and singing his quills. “Ouch!” and he tumbled for a little while across the roof of a nearby building before stopping. He rubbed his quills where he’d been hit, and then made several spinning leaps back at the Benedict. Every time, he was blocked by a bolt of lightning, falling back and then jumping forward to try again. In a few seconds he had managed to try attacking from every angle, but not a one was out of the reach of the lightning crowding around the flying machine. Sonic stopped on another rooftop ledge. “I could take apart that hunk of junk, if I could just get through!”

The booming voice of Robotnik through the loudspeakers laughed, “Haha! Even you aren’t fast enough to get past a shield like this! And, this wonderful power isn‘t just for defense, you know…”

“Uh-oh,” said Sonic. A series of white funnel clouds dropped out of the sky and began chasing Sonic across the roof, chopping up the stone and tile just behind him as he ran. “Whoa!”

“Sonic, I’m coming!” said Tails, who had looped back around. “Here!”

“Out of the way, you little brat!” came the voice from the Benedict, and the long tail of another cyclone reached down and scooped up the plane. Tails was able to throw out a power ring to Sonic just before he was sucked up and thrown powerfully into the sky.

“Tails!” shouted Sonic, but the fox and the plane were both out of sight, hurtling somewhere beyond the thick gathering clouds. Sonic gripped the ring and stood, waiting for the next whirlwind to approach, his body flashing as he used the ring’s power. He began a mad spin in the reverse direction, neutralizing the whirlwind. He leaped between the smaller whirlwinds in this way, neutralizing each one as he went and using them as steps to make his way back to the Egg Benedict. He used a similar powered-up spin when he made contact with the wind wall shielding the plane, even scattering the approaching electric bolts into showers of sparks. After a moment he was able to push through to the roof of the Benedict.

The flying machine suddenly lit up, it’s entire metal surface shining with crackling energy like an over-sized bug zapper when Sonic made contact with it. He screamed and was eventually thrown off, beginning a long fall downward. “Oho, didn’t see that one coming, did you, you little pest? Goodbye, Sonic!”

Sonic hit one sloped roof top and bounced down against a second one before eventually hitting the ground. He didn’t move for a while.

The mayor and his advisor had been watching from the balcony, and at this point the mayor said, “No, even our hero Sonic has been overcome! What will we do now?! Wait, Robotnik! Let’s talk this over!”

“Hmph, I have no need for you in my empire, you useless windbag!” said the voice of Robotnik as a cyclone came and scooped up the balcony, carrying it and the two people standing on it far out into the sky as well. “Haha! Windbag! Bwahaha! I crack myself up!”

Down on the ground, Sonic began pushing himself off the pavement, coughing. “If only, Eggman.”

The wind sweeping through the streets was getting stronger, and the little tables from the nearby café, the bus stop benches and street signs, everything began blowing around in swirling motions, getting drawn into the air. Sonic grabbed the edge of a building to steady himself as the wind pulled at him, too. “This looks bad. If I can’t attack directly like this, I have to find another way! But first, I have to find Tails,” and he ran into the wind, down the street and away from the storm-covered city.

-

The cry was small at first, coming from a long way off, but then growing louder as the crumpled Tornado and it’s small passenger dropped out of the sky towards the forest. Tails managed to bale ship at the last minute and hover in the air as the plane crashed through several branches and then was caught, hanging above the ground between two large trees, draped in vines and broken bits of branches. He drifted down to the ground, gaping at the wreck. “Not this again,” he said, shaking his head and getting a better look at the damage. “Well, it could be worse… wah!” Another large branch gave way and everything seemed to be crashing down, right on top of him, when a sky blue blur zipped through, carrying Tails out of danger.

“Podarge!” said Tails, after she set him down.

“Hey, Tails. You crash often?”

“N-no! I got attacked by Eggman! That reminds me, Sonic is still back there, he needs my help.”

“Aren’t you going to need your flying machine?”

“I can fix it, but I’ll need parts and tools from my workshop.” He looked around. The forest was more jungle than anything, old and dark, and strange sounds were all around them. “But, I don’t even know where that is from here. How far was I thrown? Isn‘t this the vine jungle?”

“I don‘t know what it‘s called, there wasn‘t any jungle the last time I was around here! But, your workshop is… that direction, a long way that way!” and she pointed.

Tails’ shoulders drooped. “I have to hurry.”

“I’ll come with you. It’s dangerous out here, you know.”

“R-really? Are you going to help us, Podarge?”

“I’m looking for Sonic.”

“I’m sure he’ll be coming back to my place, we can meet him there!”

She nodded. “Alright, let‘s go!”

They sped through the vine jungle, Tails flying as fast as he could to keep up. When a giant mechanized wasp swatted him out of the air, Podarge slowed down a moment to whack the bug out of their way with one of her over-sized talons. Tails, surprised by the attack and now unsteady in the air, grabbed at one of the two spikes on her shoulders to catch himself before he fell, gripping hard.

“Ouch! Hey, Tails, try not pulling the spines, okay?” she said.

“Oh, sorry!”

“That’s alright, we’re almost there!”

They avoided any further close calls with the more hostile of the jungle denizens and soon were back in the Green Hill region. They made it up to the hill where the workshop was. Tails ran inside, then began noisily rummaging through his equipment. “You can come in, Po!”

“Thanks, but I’ll wait out here.”

He finished gathering up everything he thought he would need, putting it in a backpack that he would be able to carry with him. “Sorry, I guess Sonic isn’t here yet.”

“How do you know Sonic, anyway? Are you sure he’ll come back here?”

Tails nodded. “Of course! We’re very best friends! And he hangs out here a lot, it’s where we keep our plane. I take care of it for him. Actually, we’ve been a team for a long time, we’ve had so many adventures together!”

“Adventures, huh?”

“Yeah, Sonic is a hero, you know. Doctor Robotnik, he’s always wanted to control the whole world. We’ve been able to keep him from ruining everything, but he never quits. That’s what we were doing today, fighting him again, but… you told Sonic about it, right? This new power that Eggman has, it really is powerful! That’s what knocked me and the Tornado out of the sky.”

“What about Sonic?”

“I’m not sure, but he was still fighting. Maybe he’s beaten that Eggman by now!” and he looked off in the direction of Silver City, which was too far to actually be visible from here.

“I’d be more concerned for his health than Eggman‘s. There’s no way he’d be able to overcome even a fraction of the white wind‘s power, after all.”

“Don’t say that! You don’t know Sonic!”

“Aren’t you worried, then? Don’t you want to go find him yourself and make sure he‘s okay?”

Tails looked at the ground. “Yes, but, I have to trust him. He’s always there for me when I need him, and I have to be ready to help him, too. I know he’ll be back, so I need to have the Tornado up and running again! That‘s how I can help him.”

“Huh.”

“Now that I know the way, I can get back to the Tornado on my own. Po, will you wait here in case Sonic gets back before me, and tell him what happened? I’ll be back as soon as I can!”

“Of course! That’s why I came here, after all, to find him.”

“Thanks!” and Tails flew off.

Later, Po was on the roof, watching the sky, when she saw Sonic and Amy running up the hill towards her. She jumped down to meet them, and Sonic looked surprised. “Po! I’m glad to see you again.”

“Tails is fine.”

“Tails! Is he here?” asked Amy.

Po shook her head. “I caught him when he crashed in the jungle, but he’s gone back to repair that flying machine. He wanted me to tell you to wait for him.”

“I’m glad he’s safe,” said Sonic, and leaned on Amy. He looked pretty badly beat up.

Amy looked concerned. “Sonic, you should rest until Tails gets back. I’ll bandage you up.”

Po narrowed her eyes at him, then smirked. “You idiot!” she said. “Didn’t I tell you not to try fighting? Now look what you’ve done to yourself.”

“I’m fine,” he said, and stood on his own.

Amy shook her head and shouted back, “Sonic got hurt trying to protect everyone! How can you yell at him for that when you didn’t lift a finger to help? Silver City was taken over, you know!”

“Yeah, so what good did getting beat up do anyone?”

“Stop it, both of you!” said Sonic, then shook his head. “Amy, now that we know Tails is fine, we still need to help everyone else evacuate Green Hill.”

“No way, Sonic, leave that to me. You have to be more careful, you’re hurt!”

“But there’s-”

“I said no, Sonic! I can handle it! I’ll bandage you up, and then I’ll go.” She dragged him into the hangar and quickly had his head wrapped with bandages from the medical supplies Tails kept in one of the storage closets. He sat on a workbench waiting for her to finish while Po watched through the hangar door from outside. “Is that better?”

Sonic tapped at his head and said, “I think you’re overreacting, Amy.”

She held her hands under her chin and smiled at him. “Of course, as your future wife, it’s my job to take the very best care of you!”

“Yikes!” he said, flinching away.

“You wait here for Tails!” and Amy left the hangar. Outside, she said to Po, “Whatever it is you’re doing here, keep an eye on Sonic till I get back!”

Po raised her hands behind her head and shrugged as Amy began jogging down the path and toward the village of Green Hill. Sonic came back outside and watched her go.

Eventually Podarge said, “Your friends really think a lot of you. Even if they are a bit dramatic about it.”

Sonic rubbed his head, wondering just how many layers of bandage wrap had been used. “Drama? You’ll fit in great! And that’s just Amy Rose for you, don’t take it personally. Even I don’t understand her a lot of the time.” He began tugging at the bandage, removing some of the layers.

“Are you really alright?”

“Yeah, she just went overboard. She likes to worry over me.”

“I meant, having lost against the white wind, blue boy. Are you okay with that?”

“Lost, me? Hey, this is just a set back!”

“And nothing’s going to stop you from trying again, huh?”

“What can I say? I’m a persistent guy. That’s why I don’t lose.”

“You’re overconfidence makes you so predictable. I knew you were going to be stupid.”

“Got me all figured out? Well, I think I know something about you, too. You came back because you’ve decided to help us.”

Po shrugged and looked away. “…The white wind wasn’t meant to be a weapon. I want to stop this. For my own reasons. But, I can’t do it alone. I’ve already tried that before.”

“You aren’t alone now,” he said, and Po smiled, though only a little. “So, how do we fight this thing?”

She tugged at her horn absent-mindedly. “It’s not that simple. You still don‘t understand. There‘s a trick to it. Pandora’s Box only contains a fragment of the white wind, so it isn’t actually hopeless if we can find another device to short it out. First, we‘ll need to go to the wind shrine, where the Box used to be kept. I know the way back. There‘s something there that should be able to help.”

“And Eggman wouldn’t have already found it?”

“Unless he’s a harpy, he couldn’t have,” she said, making a face.

“I get it. Something that can knock the power down long enough to let me get in there and scrap that junk!”

“Well, maybe. It won’t last long, so you better be able to fight as good as you brag.”

Sonic just laughed. They sat on the roof for awhile, waiting.

The rumble of the Tornado’s engine became audible as Tails flew the plane down towards the runway. Sonic jumped down to the ground and waved to him, “Yo, Tails!”

“Sonic!” said the fox, parking the plane and pulling off his goggles as he jumped out. The Tornado only looked a little worse for wear. “I’m glad you’re okay!”

“You, too, little buddy.”

“Sonic!” said Amy, leaping out from the back of the plane unexpectedly. “Everyone in Green Hill is safe!”

Tails got out of the way as she ran past him to hug Sonic again. He told them, “Anyway, everyone’s in the shelters now, and the Tornado is ready to fly again. We‘re ready for anything!” he said.

“Alright,” said Sonic, untangling himself from Amy and nodding at the three of them. “We know where to go next. Po, lead the way!”

This post has been edited by SoDi: 20 January 2010 - 07:58 PM

[SoDi]

-3- Harpy Tricks

Tails and Amy rode in the plane while Sonic and Po stood on the wings to either side. They had a long way to go, as Po directed them far to the north, over the mountains and the emerald plain, and across the Copper Continent. There was a winding maze of ruins at the base of a deep rift in the earth. If Po was not there to point it out, they might have flown over it without ever realizing it was there. The Tornado wouldn’t be able to navigate the rift all the way in, so they landed on a cliff top nearby, planning to travel the rest of the way down on foot.

“This was an old city that was buried in the earth a long time ago. Actually, it fell. Before the place was abandoned, magic let the whole place fly in the air, but when even that wasn‘t enough to keep it safe, the place was abandoned and thrown down here. So long as the Final Door is safe, it can stay down there, for all I care! The wind shrine is in the middle of the ruins, but everything is overrun with monsters now.”

“Why are there monsters here?” asked Tails.

“Well, that’s part of the history too, I guess.”

Sonic shrugged. “Then we can figure it out when we get inside. We should hurry.”

“Nothing’s ever easy, I suppose,” said Amy, pulling out her hammer and looking down.

They began making their way down into the rift. The earthen paths were worn, and crumbled if they didn’t move quickly over them. Tails could fly over the most broken places, while Amy could use her hammer to break through gaps where earlier collapses had blocked the route. As they got deeper down, it also began to get darker, and they began to hear strange rustling and whistling noises all around them.

“Hey, what is that sound?” asked Tails.

Everyone stopped to listen for a moment. “Probably the elementals,” said Po.

“Elementals?” asked Sonic. “Are those the monsters you were talking about?”

“Yeah. But, if they aren’t hungry, they might ignore us.”

“Hungry?! Would they eat us?” asked Tails.

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging and looking up at the narrow ribbon of blue sky still visible from where they were. “What do you taste like?”

The whistling came closer, and the air around them seemed to be shining. The shining areas began to resolve themselves into the tracery outlines of three small wyvern-creatures, with large toothy mouths and bodies that seemed to be made more of mist than anything else. “…Maybe we should go now,” suggested Amy.

At which point, the three elementals lunged forward, snapping at them, and they all ran away down the path. Amy paused long enough to hammer at the wall beside them, causing a number of stones to drop from the cliff and onto the monsters following them, hoping it would slow them down. Then they kept running, as the path turned into another earthen walkway leading out into the open air, then dropped steeply down and into a fog bank. They slowed down as they became unable to see around them, the stone tiles underfoot indicating this was once part of the ruined city, perhaps a courtyard.

“Hey, you think we lost them?” asked Po.

The mist suddenly began to recede, shaping itself into a flock of dozens of the little wyvern-shaped elementals, crowdedly perched on the stones and old walls and pillars of the ruined courtyard they had walked into. The monsters and the travelers regarded one another for a moment…

“Aaaah!” they all yelled, and ran out of the courtyard as the elementals rose into the air to follow in one massive, misty cloud behind them. The monsters whistled and snapped their toothy mouths, getting close enough to swarm them. The travelers ran onto a broad stone bridge that might once have been part of a highway, but it began to crack down the middle as soon as they stepped on. As the stone structure and surrounding walls began crumbling, some of the elementals scattered out of the way. Visibility improved and they found themselves divided on either side of a growing chasm.

Amy was swinging her hammer to ward off the few monsters still snapping at her and Sonic, who used a strong spin attack to scatter another pair attacking from their flank. Across from them Tails distracted one elemental long enough for Po to land a solid kick that sent it flying across the way and into the wall next to Sonic, where it evaporated. “Nice! But only one?” he shouted over. For every monster they knocked away, another seemed to appear. Or perhaps the beasties were simply reforming themselves.

“There are too many of them here! Sonic, let’s meet up at the wind shrine!” said Po, kicking at another elemental.

“Got it!” he said, and grabbing Amy by the wrist he ran off into the ruin.

“Tails!” said Po, and the fox nodded and flew after her as they began running in the other direction, leaving the nest of elementals behind them.

-

“Sonic, do you even know where we’re going?” asked Amy. They had been running through the ruins for some time now, and all the crumbling stone and earthen walls looked the same. There had been more of the snapping elementals, and some odd floating lights that seemed insubstantial but burned if they came too close, like will-o-wisps. The hedgehogs had been avoiding those since they hadn’t found a way to actually hurt the lights, and ended up taking enough side-turns that Amy felt very lost by this point.

“Don’t worry, we just have to head for the center. Amy, look out, that’s-!”

“Aah!” she shouted, as the vines on the nearby wall twisted to reveal toothy faces and thorny claws that whipped down at her. Sonic scooped her out of the way before they could catch her, letting them instead scrape at the stone where she had just been standing.

He set her down further along the path. “Even the plants are unfriendly around here!”

“You take me to the nicest places,” she sighed, hefting her hammer over her shoulder.

“This isn’t a date, Amy. We need to find the wind shrine.”

“I know that! But…”

“What? This place really isn’t so hot, but you’re the one that wanted to come.”

“Are you saying you would have left me behind?!” and she shifted the hammer in her hand.

“Whoa! No, calm down!”

“…Sonic,” and she looked thoughtful as she began walking again, as if reflecting on something. He caught up and then took the lead, watching out for more elementals, and for suspicious bunches of ivy. “Do I get in your way?”

“Huh?” he said, only half-listening. He poked skeptically at another thick patch of ivy, and when it didn’t attack, he pushed it back to reveal an archway. “There’s a stone gate just a little further in. Hey, I think we can take this as a shortcut!”

“I know that I… I still can‘t keep up with you.”

He let go and the greenery fell back into place as he turned around. Sonic checked the area around them again, which was still clear of enemies, then looked at her. “What’s with you getting so serious? This isn’t like you.”

“You could have gotten to the shrine already, if you weren’t protecting me. Couldn’t you?”

He rubbed his nose. “I don’t know about that.”

“When you collapsed on the edge of Green Hill, I was really scared, but you were still so determined. Anyone else would have been ready to quit. You aren’t just stubborn, you are just so sure that you’re doing the right thing. And you always do.” Sonic waited, confused. “That’s when you told me about your race with Po. She really is fast, like you, but you weren’t depressed at all, talking about it! And you said that she would do the right thing, that she would come back to help us. I asked you what made you so sure, and you said, ‘because that’s what I would do’. I don’t think anyone could really be that much like you. But then when we got to Tails’ place, there she was! You were right. You knew.”

“Po? What about her? Amy, what are you talking about?”

She shook her head at him. “Everyone says, ‘Sonic is a hero’! Everyone knows that you’re special, you’re always here to save us. And to save me, too. But, you’re more than that to me! You are! And yet, I can’t keep up with you. I’m not… I can’t be that special, can I?”

Amy let her hammer rest on the ground, as she looked near to tears. Sonic looked concerned, and reached over to brush the back of her hand, searching her face to try and understand what was upsetting her. “You’re special to me. Amy.”

She looked up at him. “Do you mean that?”

He nodded, and waved a finger. “You’ve helped me out of trouble, too. Lots of times. You‘ve gotten a lot stronger since when we first met.”

Amy turned away to hide a small smile, clasping her hands behind her back. “But, I’m not a hero like you, Sonic. And, I can‘t help you with machines, like Tails can, or fight as well or know as much as some of your other friends.”

He sighed, then smiled and said, “Amy, it’s not like you. You‘re always so confident, this is really weird. All of our friends have things that they‘re good at, and I’m glad for everything that they do. But there are things that only you can do.”

“Really, Sonic? Just me?” she said, her eyes turning heart-shaped. “Like what?”

“Well, ah,” he said, thinking, then smiling wider, “you do make the world’s best chilidog!”

Amy’s expression changed so quickly that the air around her seemed to go dark and a small thread of lightning seemed to flash at her temple. “…..chilidog?” She picked the hammer back up and began swinging it round in a long arc, gaining momentum. “Sonic! You JERK!”

“It-it was a compliment! I- GAH!”

He was knocked so hard that he flew through the ivy archway and struck the gate on the other side, which cracked and then crumbled down on top of him. Amy skipped over to the newly opened gateway, and in the distance could see a larger structure among all of the surrounding ruins. “Oh! That must be the wind shrine!” she said cheerfully, stepping lightly over the broken gate, and Sonic.

-

Podarge was stretched out on the head of a large stone griffon outside the wind shrine, chewing on the stalk of a yellow dandelion and watching the patches of sky visible high overhead. Tails was just below, between the statue’s front feet. He looked anxious, and called up, “Po, do you think we should go ahead?”

“Ahead?”

“I mean, inside. Sonic can catch up with us in there, right?”

“No!” she shouted in surprise. “I mean, we might as well wait! It’s a lot nicer out here.”

“But, what if there are more elementals?”

“There are dangers inside, too, so it’s all the same. If you’re nervous, try watching the sky. It helps.”

“You watch the sky a lot, huh, Po?” asked Tails, looking up but not understanding what could hold her attention there for so long.

“…Have you ever been in love, Tails?”

“Wah! W-what’s with that question, out of the blue like that?!”

She tossed away the dandelion. “You never get tired of looking at the face of someone you love, right?”
“Um, yeah. I guess.”

“Well, I love the sky.”

“Po…”

She hung her head over the statue’s nose so she could see Tails. “And you said it before, right? You have to trust your friends. They’ll be here soon enough, so don‘t be so anxious.”

“Okay.”

And soon enough, Amy sped up to the shrine steps and the griffon statues, Sonic trailing a little behind. Po jumped down to meet them, and her jaw dropped as she saw the size of the bump on Sonic’s head. “What happened to you? Ha, did you let a monster chew on your head or something?”

“Well,” said Sonic, rubbing his head and considering.

Amy interrupted, “Sorry that took so long, were you waiting?”

“Not long, it’s alright, but Po says that we’ll have more trouble inside,” Tails answered her.

“This place is huge!” said Sonic, leaning back to get a better look. The shrine was many stories tall, its outside was covered in canopied walkways and pillared balconies, but there were no windows or doorways other than the immense one directly in front of them. If there used to be other openings, they had all been bricked up. “And there’s only one entrance?”

“This used to be a palace for the spirits of the wind, and even for the harpies, but after they all left it was sealed up to prevent anyone from stealing its treasures,” said Po.

“Seriously? Spirits? Hey, there aren’t going to be ghosts or anything inside, are there?” asked Sonic.

Amy twitched at the idea. “Ghosts?!”

“No. It was truly abandoned,” said Po, still looking up at the building as the others climbed past her to the door.

Looking back, they saw that she was still down where they had left her. “Hey, Po! Are you coming?” asked Sonic.

“Y-yeah! Um, I’m coming!” Po said with a laugh, but she trembled as she ascended the steps.

When she reached them, Sonic asked, “Are you alright?”

She waved the question off. “I’m fine. Let’s just hurry.”

Inside the main hall, which was high and wide, they were quickly shot at by a pair of mounted laser guns. Sonic spun at one, crushing it, while Amy threw her hammer at the other, before any more shots could be fired.

“What was that?” asked Po.

“They look like Eggman’s style,” said Sonic. “So unless the ancient people of this city had really bad taste, he was definitely here.”

He began to walk forward, but Po stopped him and tossed a rock ahead. The tile it landed on suddenly grew spikes and snapped shut like a bear trap before settling back into the floor. “And he had the decency to reset the traps for us. Great guy, this Eggman. But why would he bother? He already has the treasure,” wondered Po.

“Eggman doesn’t need a reason to cause trouble for people,” said Sonic. “He probably gets a kick out of leaving his personal stamp on other people’s hard work. He’d do this to the whole world, if he could.”

“Let’s get going. We’re heading for the room in the farthest level of the building,” said Po.

Managing the local traps as well as the bots and lasers Robotnik had left behind was a hassle, and even Podarge seemed to be lost sometimes. The shrine was a large complex of halls and enormous rooms, old but in relatively good condition, unlike the ruins that had surrounded it. Climbing a wide set of stairs, they came to a hall where the floor fell away and a set of enormous blades began swinging across the gap. Below, it was too dark and deep to see.

“There should be another stairway past here,” said Po.

“Are you kidding?!” asked Amy, watching as some stone and dust crumbled down from the ceiling, falling against one of the blades before vanishing silently below. “Who builds these things?”

“I can get around those blades, if I go above them,” said Tails, hovering into the air. “How about it?”

“I don’t need any help!” said Po.

“Think we can jump between these blades?” Sonic asked, jumping up onto the nearest one and looking down. “Wow! How far down do you think it goes?”

There was a sound of stone giving way, and the blade he was standing on stopped swinging and began to fall towards the place the others were standing. Tails grabbed Amy and flew them both up out of the way, while Po jumped across, grabbing Sonic and carrying him over to the next blade. “Ha! Saved you!”

As this one began to fall also, they jumped to the next, and continued racing across the trapped hall since the whole ceiling seemed to be collapsing, while Tails and Amy made it ahead to the other side.

“Sonic!” said Amy, twisting in the air, worried about Sonic.

“Careful, Amy!” said Tails, trying not to drop her.

All four made it to the solid ground at the far end of the hall just as the last of the oversized blades fell past them. At the end of the room was a doorway, the set of large double doors on the floor, fallen off their hinges. Po stepped through the doorway ahead of the others as the dust of the collapsing hall settled, when out of the dust a large bot stepped forward and shot at Po’s back. Sonic picked her up out of the way just in time, setting her down and then jumping at the bot with a fast spin attack that crumpled it into the wall. “Saved you!” he said.

Po stuck her tongue out at him as the other two joined them in what appeared to be a cross hall. Tails was the one to notice the rumbling sound, and asked, “What’s that? Another collapse?”

They turned to look up the hallway, only to see a giant stone ball rolling towards them, Indiana-Jones style*. They all shouted and began running the other way. This was pretty much their luck through the whole building.

Eventually they made it to the top level and reached the last set of stone doors. Po hesitated, looking at the carvings on the door rather than opening it.

“Po?” asked Tails. “You’ve seemed nervous ever since we came inside.”

She shook her head, and tried to smile at him. Then she pushed open the doors.

Inside the dark room were many pillars reaching higher than they could see. Tails pulled out a flashlight and they walked forward. A set of steps led up towards some sort of carving on the rear wall, and the walls all around them were covered in faded tiles.

Amy looked back and was surprised to see Po still hanging behind. “Hey, stop dragging those big feet and hurry up! The sooner we find what we’re looking for, the sooner we can go! This place is creepy.”

Sonic looked from Po to the rear carving and back. “Po, is this the place you were trapped?”

She nodded, looking nervous as she walked inside, then turned towards the tiled walls. The others followed her. There, faintly, were the faded marks of old pictures and writing. Tails pulled out his portable computer, and held it up towards the wall. “I think I recognize these characters. They’re pretty ancient, but give me a second to translate…”

They waited while the small machine hummed. Sonic tapped his foot, impatient. “Well? Anything about how to stop this white wind stuff?” he asked.

Tails nodded, walking along the wall to continue scanning. “This says, the white wind is the fury of someone named Zephyr, a curse that was released upon his death to carry out the vengeance he couldn’t complete in life. When he was defeated, his curse couldn’t be destroyed, so instead it was sealed up to prevent it from causing any more destruction. A sorceress named Pandora sealed it up. It also says something about the servants of Zephyr, the vengeful harpies, winged death spirits summoned into the world to…” he gulped, and his voice began to trail off as he continued reading, “bring destruction to the virtuous, gnaw the bones of the innocent, snatch up the souls of the dead and continue their torment…”

“Podarge, aren’t you a harpy?” asked Sonic, casually, as if it was an afterthought.

“…I am.”

The stone doors pounded shut. The other three spun around, startled, and the two white flames to either side of the statue’s steps lit up, casting everything in an odd light of stark white and black.

Podarge, though still trembling, grinned in the half-light and said, “That’s me, scourge of the living, snatcher of souls! Scared, little Tails?” she said, and Tails yipped and jumped behind Sonic, afraid.

“Hey, Po, cut it out!” Sonic said.

“Is this a trap?!” said Amy, backing away and looking around for other exits.

“What do you think, Sonic?” said Po. “Aren’t you afraid?”

He crossed his arms, but didn’t seem fazed. “Of you? No way.”

Po looked at the ground and walked toward the statue, Amy and Tails jumping back as she passed them. She lifted a hand towards the carving, and the other colored flames began to burn around the statue, until the stark light was replaced with a warmer and permeating glow that illuminated the whole room. The faded colors in the floor and walls seemed brighter, the ceiling was carved with flowers and the pillars with winged vines.

“Beautiful…” Amy said to herself, getting a better look.

“This isn’t a trap,” said Po, turning back towards them. “It’s because I spoke. The voice of a harpy inside this room activates some of the more dormant defense mechanisms of the shrine.”

“Sure. That makes sense,” said Sonic, leaning back against a pillar.

“So, what’s with this ancient warning? You aren’t a harpy like that. …Right?” asked Tails.

“Pandora had a nasty grudge with us, so her record was a bit exaggerated. But she didn’t get everything wrong. She had this mural put here after the wind spirits left, but there’s an older one underneath, hidden in the walls, from the time when this place belonged to the harpies. That‘s the mural we need right now.”

“How do we get to it?” asked Sonic.

“There’s a trick to it. It’s also voice activated, but this’ll take harpy song. Harpy voices are special. Or, supposed to be. But I’ve never sung before, I don’t know if I can.”

“Can’t sing?” said Sonic. “Nothing to it! Like this,” and he sang a few bars of his theme song while playing an air guitar. “See?”

Po laughed in spite of herself, and seemed to relax a little. “Alright. I’ll try. But don‘t laugh.”

“But you laughed!” he argued, pointing at her.

“Yeah, but that was me,” she grinned. She stood and faced the statue again. She only sang a single sharp note, that after a moment was joined by other chords, as if the air around her were vibrating in sympathy to the sound. It grew to a keening pitch, and then the lights over the statue flared suddenly brighter and the walls to either side seemed to roll in a wave-like manner out from it. All of the tiles were turned, revealing an entirely different set of images.

“Whoa!” said Tails, surprised.

“See?” said Sonic, rubbing his ears. “But next time, you could even try using a melody.”

Po walked over to the walls and began drawing her fingers across the new images and words carved there, searching for something. “I have to try and remember where it was hidden. It’s been such a long time…” She looked around at the room. “I didn’t want to ever come back here.”

“We’ll leave as soon as we can, definitely,” said Amy.

No one noticed as a small mechanical eye rose up from behind one of the braziers, its lens twisting open and closed as it focused on the adventurers.

Tails went behind Po to continue scanning the walls with his computer. “This looks like a warning about the white wind, too,” he said to them.

Po hesitated for a moment, and said, “You don’t need to bother with it, though.”

“Why? I‘ve got a professor friend, he loves these sorts of ancient records.” He began reading aloud, “ ‘The white wind is the threshold between worlds. It was crafted into a doorway, the Final Door, that opens onto the Underworld, lands of the dead. In it are the secrets for mastery over the powers of life and death.’ ”

“Like what, specifically?” asked Amy, eyeing the wall with more suspicion.

“Y’know, immortality, summoning tireless armies of spirits, resurrecting the dead, that sort of thing,” said Po, going back to the wall.

Sonic looked skeptical. “Seriously? That is definitely not something Robotnik should be playing with!”

“It’s not what he has, though,” Po reassured him. She pointed to an image that resembled a carving on the rear wall. “That’s Iris, a spirit of light, and she broke the Final Door up into several seals, and gave them to the rulers of the winds. Four brothers, who used to live here. Zephyr, ruler of the west wind, was captured by Pandora using the spirit box that was left in this room. She wanted to use his power as a weapon, but she couldn’t control him, so she killed him instead.”

“What?” asked Tails, surprised.

“His seal, his fragment of the white wind, is still trapped in Pandora’s Box. It’s more than enough to cause trouble, though. Without Zephyr, there is no real way to control it. If we don’t stop this Eggman before he finishes gathering up any more power with the box, there’ll be no way to stop it from chewing up everything in its path. We’d just have to wait for the storm to blow itself out, then.”

“I don’t like it,” said Sonic, looking at images of gusts and spirals of wind making jagged cuts through the mural.

Amy didn‘t seem to like it either. “What about the Final Door it mentioned? What about the other seals?”

“After Zephyr’s brothers realized that even the wind shrine wasn’t safe, they abandoned this world, and cut off the road behind them. No one can follow them, so it’s not a problem anymore. The Final Door can‘t really be opened without all of the seals, see?” Po stopped and pressed a star-shaped symbol into the wall, revealing a small opening. She stuck her arm in and began feeling around.

“The last panel is blank!” said Tails, seeing an empty space at the end of the mural.

Po shrugged. “Guess there was no one left to draw on it. Ouch!” She said, pulling out a piece of broken stone and then trying again. It seemed to be a very deep recess.

“…How’d you get trapped here?” asked Sonic.

Po stopped and looked thoughtful. “Putting me in a spirit box is worthless, I’ve got no power like Zephyr had. But the people who tricked me, they didn’t actually want Pandora’s Box. They didn’t understand it’s real power, they just wanted the wealth kept in the shrine. Trapping me got me out of the way, that’s all. Actually, I’m surprised your Eggman recognized the thing’s real value.” She seemed to find what she was looking for, and withdrew her hand gingerly, holding up a large clear crystal. “Found it! Always keep a spare.”

“Po… I’m sorry.” said Tails. “We’re going to help you! Right, Sonic?”

Sonic nodded. “Right.”

Po stepped back to take in the whole scene on the mural again. Images of storms, winged Iris, harpies, floating cities. She nodded, as if deciding something. “I don’t want anyone to use the spirit box as a weapon anymore. It isn’t fair to use someone as a weapon like that!”

“What is that thing?” Amy asked of the crystal Po was holding. “It doesn’t look like much.”

Po had started trembling again. “Let’s talk about it outside, okay?”

Amy sighed. “We’re going to have to go all the way back the way we came, aren’t we?”

“Heehee…” Po had an odd look on her face, her eyes unfocused. The trembling was worse, and combining that with the small, strained laugh was downright creepy.

“Po?” asked Sonic.

“This was an old home of the harpies, you know. So there’s a trick to it! And now that we’re here…”

“Huh?”

“Escape button!” and Po leapt over to slap at one of the other carvings in the wall mural. All the remaining walls folded back and the floor flashed with light, warping them up high into the sky where they dropped onto a nearby cliff top. From here, the ruin was invisible through the shadows and mist of the rift below.

Amy pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, shaking her head. “Ouch! Hey, couldn’t you have warned us before you did that?!”

Po made a birdlike laugh as she began skipping towards where they had left the Tornado.

“I guess she’s just glad to be out of there,” said Tails, sitting up and rubbing his back where he‘d fallen. “Still, that was rough.”


* Jones is the property of Lucasfilm ltd.

This post has been edited by SoDi: 22 January 2010 - 06:10 PM

[SoDi]

-4- Another Final Battle

During the flight back, Sonic asked Po, “So, what is that piece of glass?”

“A spirit box,” she winked at him.

“What?! There’s more than one?”

“There are lots! Pandora had to make a very special one, to be able to hold the power of Zephyr, but these have been around a long time. Since only a fraction of Zephyr’s power is left in the box that Eggman has now, even a little one like this should be enough to cause some good interference.”

“So what do we do with it?”

“If we throw this into the center of the storm that he’s generating, it should siphon off enough power to disrupt Pandora’s Box. It won’t last, because the other Box is so much stronger, but it should buy us enough time…”

“To kick some Robuttnik! Alright! Let’s track down that egghead and really teach him his lesson!”

They flew in over the remains of Silver City. Robotnik’s work bots had already begun reshaping the buildings into dark metal egg-shapes, and installed the first few factories to create more bots and spew smoke into the sky. Beyond the city they followed a trail of scorched earth, blasted buildings and tumbled stones, whole swaths of forest uprooted by strong winds. Here bots were chopping up the fallen trees, perhaps to use as building material, or just to burn in Robotnik‘s factories. Ahead, the gathering swirl of white lightning-laced clouds became more visible. “Eggman’s heading for Green Hill!” said Tails.

“Good thing you got everyone to the shelters, Amy,” said Sonic, “But we’re going to stop him here!”

“The storm seems to have gotten bigger! I’ll have enough trouble piloting, so you’re on weapons, Amy!” Tails told her.

“Got it!”

“This might be close. If he sees us approaching, he’s going to know we’re up to something, and do everything he can to stop us,” said Po.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get his attention. Tails can fly you in after that,” said Sonic, giving them a thumbs up.

“What makes you so confident he’ll take you as bait?” asked Po.

“Eggman wouldn’t ignore me! I’m his arch nemesis!” he grinned.

They dropped him off on the road just behind the storm, which was already above the windmills that marked the edge of Green Hill. “If you’re fighting Robotnik again, take it easy!” Tails told him, “It might be a while before we can reach the eye of the storm, but after that, you should be able to beat him.”

“Leave it to me!” and Sonic zoomed up the road as Tails flew the rest of them off in another direction, to try approaching from a different side.

The Egg Benedict was floating among the windmills. Sonic sped up and stood in the middle of the road, and shouted, “Yo egghead! Are you up for a rematch? Because you’re on my turf, now!”

The mechanical plane rotated around to face Sonic, and Robotnik shouted down, “Ah, Sonic! I see I’ll have the pleasure of crushing your spiky blue hide into the ground a second time, how thoughtful of you!”

“Why not come down here and try it?” he answered, turning around to shake the offending blue quills at Eggman, taunting him.

“You are no longer worth such trouble. I will destroy you from here!”

The tips of narrow white cyclones began descending from the clouds all around them, running towards the hedgehog. Sonic sped ahead of them, staying out of their way, and so the cyclones divided themselves into the smaller whirlwinds and flew at him from all sides. He spun them away, but got struck by a lightning bolt that had followed close behind them. He rolled over on the ground several times, rolling back onto his feet and rubbing his arm. “Lucky shot!”

When more large funnel clouds dropped down towards Sonic, he ran round behind one of the nearby windmills and let it get chewed up instead, the debris from the structure pulled back into the storm and striking against Eggman’s plane on its way up. The plane wobbled in the air, and Eggman cursed at him. “Hold still, you wretched little-”

“Make me!”

“Bah! Fine, you will regret asking me to unleash my genius! Behold!” The plane dropped down onto the dirt road and began to transform, wings and body shifting until it stood up in the shape of a roughly human figure with a long metal cape and spiked armor that crackled with electricity. For a brief moment as it shifted, a crystalline box within its chest became visible, shielded at the heart of the machine. “Now, face the true might of the Egg Benedict!”

“Oh, come on,” said Sonic, stopping mid-run to shake his head at the machine. “’Egg Benedict’? That’s a lame name, even for you, Eggman! You must be going soft-boiled!”

“Laugh while you can, vermin! Mwahaha!”

The lightning and whirlwinds continued to drop down at Sonic from above, but now there was also the robot to deal with. On the ground, it could stomp hard enough to send out a short but strong tremor that buckled the earth and sent Sonic sprawling when he wasn’t careful. He tried to attack a few times, but the sparking shield of energy was still there every time to meet him and singe his quills before he jumped away again. So, he kept dodging. After this dragged on for a while, Sonic stopped to look off towards the storm and say to himself, “Where are you, guys? I’m counting on you.”

As Sonic began to tire, Eggman was able to land a few blows directly. After one particularly successful punch that sent Sonic flying into the side of a ruined windmill, the doctor laughed, “You see? No one is here to help you. I know all about your friends, but whatever secret weapon you think that little chicken-girl has found for you can’t help you!”

“What!?”

“Just give up! I can see you’re tiring. You know you can’t beat me, my genius is unstoppable.”

Sonic stood up and smiled. “I can trust my friends. Even with all the brains you think you have, that’s something you’ll never understand! And that’s why we’re going to beat you!” and he sped off ahead of another string of whirlwinds.

-

Tails had been looking for an opening in the swirling clouds ever since dropping Sonic off, but eventually realized that no matter what approach they took there seemed to be flying gun-bots in the way. “I guess Eggman was expecting something like this,” he said to the girls, “So get ready, we’ll just have to force our way through!” and they dove into the edge of the storm.

Tails drove the Tornado between the lightning columns and cyclones drifting through the clouds. Here, the visibility was pretty minimal, but it kept the scout bots from swarming them too quickly. Amy had control of the guns and shot the bots she could, and the ones that made it through to them Po would kick out of the air. But their progress kept getting blocked by broader walls of wind too strong for the Tornado to handle, or by more active patches of lightning. “We have to hurry, Tails! Sonic is waiting for us!” said Amy.

“I know, but there’s no way through!”

“Let’s try it from above,” said Po, and they rose up and out of the clouds. But now, the lightning was arcing up at them, and Tails could not dodge all of it.

Eventually, one of the bolts struck the plane and it began to smoke. “We don’t have much more time, the Tornado is going to be dead in the air soon!”

“Can’t we get any closer at all?” asked Po.

“I don’t think so!”

“Tails, just fly up above the eye!” Amy told him, and they climbed out of reach of most of the lightning.

“Now what?” he asked. They could see the point where all the long spiraling arms of the storm clouds gathered together below them. “Po, can we try dropping the spirit box from here?”

“If we miss, it’ll be a wasted effort. We only have one shot!” she said.

“Sonic needs us!” said Amy. “He can’t beat Eggman alone!” She leapt up and grabbed the spirit box away from Po and dove over the side.

“Amy!” Tails and Po shouted after her.

As she fell, she did her best to twist out of the way of the arcing lightning, which wasn’t too hard, since it couldn’t locate her as easily as it could the metal plane. She was also falling among a number of defense bots, and she used her hammer to smash them and knock herself back on course if she began drifting away from the center of the storm. But she had to keep one hand on the spirit box, so the hammer was flung out of her hand after several hits and she continued to fall.

She quickly reached the level of the clouds, and Tails and Podarge lost sight of her. The crystal held between her hands glowed as a faint spark of light began to grow inside of it. As it grew brighter, the storm around her began to slow and the lightning thinned out into threads that began flowing into the spirit box, adding to the light kindling there. And as the little crystal box grew brighter, her fall began to slow. When the box had reached the very heart of the storm, it stopped in midair, drawing in power from all directions. And by holding onto the box, Amy was also suspended in the air.

-

The lightning flashed and was gone, the cyclones narrowed into streamers and blew away, and the armor on the Benedict dimmed. “What?!” said Robotnik, reading the information on his control panels in disbelief.

Sonic, who had been thrown into the ground again, stood up shakily, but he was still smiling. “Now it’s my turn,” he said, and began attacking in earnest.

The Benedict still had power, but it was no longer able to maintain all of its functions at once. Whenever Robotnik tried to attack, its defenses dropped, and Sonic could get in a good hit before dodging out of the range of the robot’s next attack. The clouds overhead were spiraling together, drawing inward, and the sun was able to shine out from behind them.

The Benedict took a hail of bullets as the Tornado dropped down out of the clouds. Tails tossed Sonic another power ring as he passed over, and catching it, Sonic pounded against the ground and drove right through the body of the Benedict, sending bits of it exploding off in all directions. “No matter how many times you try to take over the world, we’ll be here to take you down!”

Eggman’s round hovercraft rolled out of the rubble and into the air, its pair of mechanical arms snatching up a colorful and detailed box from the debris. At about the same time, Amy was floating down toward them, the strength of the spirit box spent and beginning to unravel all of the power it had managed to gather up. The sky began to grow dark again, as the power began returning to Pandora‘s Box. Sonic changed directions to leap into the air, catching Amy and taking the glowing spirit box from her as he set her on the ground, then he ran back after Eggman.

The Tornado made a rough landing, no longer able to stay in the air, but Po had already let herself drop down and was racing back to the site of the fight. “Sonic, what are you doing?” she called after him.

“We’re going to destroy Pandora’s Box, so it can never be used by Eggman, or anyone else!” The crystal in his hand flashed, and so did his body, brighter even than when he had used the power ring, and he bounced high into the air where he collided with Eggman’s machine.

“Wait! Sonic!” shouted Po, as Pandora’s Box lit up and hid everything for a moment in a wash of blinding light.

The light passed, shooting up into the sky and then radiating out in a wave, like it had only a few nights before. Sonic was left standing with the shining, though much dimmed, crystal of the small spirit box in one hand. The twisted remains of Pandora’s Box were among the wreckage of the rest of Robotnik’s machine. The doctor himself was nowhere to be seen, he had already fled.

Po lowered her arm where she had shielded her eyes, and ran forward. “Sonic! What did you do?!”

“Aw, it was nothing.”

“You idiot!” she shouted at him, surprising everyone. “If Eggman had known more about spirit boxes, he could have used your own invocation of the white wind to seal you up inside Pandora’s Box! You would have been trapped!”

“My what?” he asked, confused.

She shook her head at him, scowling. “How did you that?! Only powerful sorcery, or the will of a spirit, should have been able to use a wind seal like that!”

Sonic looked at the crystal as he turned it over in his hand. “I don’t know. But, as soon I touched it, I thought it felt familiar. Sort of like using a chaos emerald! Guess I went with my instincts!”

Amy held her hands over her heart, closing her eyes as she said, “Yes… it felt so warm! A kind, hopeful feeling. I wasn‘t afraid at all!”

“I can tell it’s powerful.” Sonic looked at it for a little while, then spread his hands wide, letting the crystal and the light it held begin to dissolve into the air.

“What are you doing?” asked Tails.

“I don’t need a power that comes from someone else’s captivity,” and he watched as the last of it vanished in the air.

Po met his eyes and nodded, then walked over to the remains of Pandora’s Box. Sonic turned to say to the other two, “Thanks, Tails, that was just in time. What happened to you, Amy?”

“Well,” she said, blushing a bit, “When I realized you were in trouble, I just couldn’t help myself, you know.”

“You jumped out of the plane!” said Tails. “That was crazy!”

“Yeah, that was crazy!” said Sonic, smiling and crossing his arms. “What if you had just kept falling?”

“I knew you would save me, Sonic!”

“Whoa…” he said, wincing back from the look she gave him.

“I’ll fly ahead to the shelters and let everyone know it’s safe again!” said Tails, and ran back to hop into the cockpit of the Tornado and start it rolling down the road. It seemed like it wouldn’t be taking off into the air until he could repair it again, but at least it could still move on the ground. “You come, too, Amy! They’ll be able to catch up!”

“Good idea!” said Sonic, and he pushed Amy up into the rear seat as the plane passed. He waved them off, then turned around.

Po was still staring at the broken box, and then stamped down a talon to grind one piece deeper into the ground. Coming up behind her, Sonic put a hand on her shoulder and said, “It’s not going to be a weapon ever again, or a trap. For you, or anyone. You’re really free, now.”

“…Yeah.” Po looked up at the sky, which had cleared quickly, and smiled. “It seems almost too simple, but, yeah. The Box, and the seal of Zephyr, with it. Thanks. Sonic the hedgehog.”

He stretched his arms behind his head. “So where will you go from here?”

“I suppose it doesn’t really matter. One place is as good as another, and I don’t like staying in one place too long, anyway. Although,” and she turned to raise an eyebrow at Sonic, “if you can use spirit powers, I’ll have to keep an eye on you.”

“Why not spend some time in Green Hill? Meet the rest of the gang. You’ll be a hero there, now.” He extended a hand.

She gave him a suspicious half smile that showed one fang, and extended her own hand. When he reached to take it, she jerked it into the air. “Psych!” she laughed, and shook her head at him. “Harpies aren’t heroes. And harpies don’t have friends.”

“Why not??”

“We don’t need them. You shouldn’t trust a harpy, you know.”

Sonic shrugged and smirked. “Huh. Well, I’ll remember that. But it’s too bad you don’t even want to visit Green Hill, they make some pretty good food there.”

Po bit her lip, looking back at the sky. She hadn‘t eaten in all the time inside Pandora‘s Box, and for the first time since her escape really began thinking about that. “Yeah, well, I’ll remember that. But right now, there are places to go, things to see! Maybe I’ll run into you again.”

“I’ll look forward to another race!”

They both grinned at each other, and said in unison, “Right?” Then they took off running in opposite directions.

This post has been edited by SoDi: 20 January 2010 - 08:07 PM

[SoDi]

-5- Foreshadowing

The broken moon shone brightly on the stony slopes of the mountains. Far off, the sounds of combat at an old prison complex were beginning to die down, while in the shade of a stand of fir trees a figure was calmly reading over a page of paper. It was well worn, showing that it had been handled frequently, read and reread. The figure suddenly went rigid, crumpling up the paper and tossing it away, then tapped his wrist to turn on a portable communicator.

“Rouge, this is Shadow.”

Her voice came through only partly, there seemed to be some interference. “Is that you? Finally! We’re in the middle of an operation, what happened to you?”

“Something has come up. I need you to finish up this assignment and cover for me. I‘ll be out of touch for a while.”

“What? Shadow, you know how much trouble that’s going to be? We’re supposed to be under contract, you‘ll make me look unprofessional.”

“I know you can handle it. I’ll bring back something nice, you’ll have nothing to complain about.”

“Shadow, wait! What are you-”

“Shadow out,” and he closed the communication link, dropping the device to the ground and crushing it with his foot. Then he darted silently off into the night.

-

It had been a few weeks since Pandora’s Box had been broken apart. Podarge dropped in on Green Hill once in a while, usually to bother Tails about his machines or to try to catch Sonic for another rematch. The blue hedgehog spent his time out running cross country, and found Robotnik up to his usual tricks in different places, signs of different side schemes everywhere from the ruined dead zone to the western desert, though the doctor had a new base to operate out of now. What was left of Silver City had been entirely rebuilt by Robotnik’s work bots, a dead and dirty place where even the air tasted metallic. The doctor had set up several factories there already, churning out more machines as well as a rust-colored smog that hung heavily in the sky.

Podarge had made her way to the city, but had no interest in what the robots were up to, and she zoomed down the alleys too fast for most to notice she was even there, heading for the control building, the large tower in the center of the city. She took her opportunity when a squad of bots were entering the tower to follow in behind them, and when they took a large lift to the upper floors, she grabbed onto the bottom of the lift platform and rode up with them.

They came to a stop, and she listened as the sound of their heavy footsteps carried them down the hall and into a different room. Po crawled up the side of the platform slowly, looking to see if she was really alone.

She wasn’t. The bot stationed at the lift control panel saw her and began to give an alarm. She threw herself up into the air and came down with a forceful kick, crushing the bot’s head in. “Shut up!” she yelled at it, as the alarm squeaked into silence.

Po took another look around. The walls were bare, but hummed with whatever circuitry was constantly running behind them. The metal floor was so polished as to be nearly reflective. And it carried the sound of footsteps very easily. She heard another group of bots approaching, and dashed away.

Robotnik was in his control room, a large glass wall giving him a far view of the city. He was watching the monitors detailing the status of work points in the different sectors, when the door was torn open and a sky-blue blur zoomed in. Right into an energy net that lit up and held Po suspended in the air mere feet into the room. “Whoa!”

“Ha!” said Robotnik, turning to laugh. “Didn’t you think I knew you were coming? I had something prepared, to welcome you!”

Po twisted her body in the air to face him. “No way! I’m way too fast for some stupid scanners!”

Eggman shook his head. “I’ve been dealing with a certain other speedy twerp for years. Detecting objects moving at super-sonic speeds was one of the first challenges I’ve had to overcome in pursuing my dream of world domination! At least you’re more subtle, though. No penchant for needless destruction on your way here, I‘m much obliged.”

“Of course! First impressions are important, I wouldn‘t want you to think I was rude or something.” Po then made a loud harpy screech that caused several of the more sensitive devices in the room to break, and Robotnik threw his hands up over his ears. The energy net flickered and Po wrenched herself loose, launching herself forward, when a barred wall snapped shut between her and Robotnik. She growled in frustration and kicked at the bars.

“You heard a rumor about my having a chaos emerald, didn‘t you?”

“I just wanted to meet the infamous Eggman in person!”

Robotnik’s wide mustache twitched as he stared her down. “I am Doctor Robotnik! And I already know who you are, and why you want the emeralds. You see, I heard that little speech you gave in the wind shrine, I installed cameras there after I left. And I’ve begun hunting down the fragments of the missing mural panel.”

Podarge went rigid, then she twisted her expression into a sneer. “Ha! Think that’ll do you any good?”

“What I want is the Final Door, but all my research is turning up is more lore on the harpies. Strange, isn’t it?”

Po was distracted, her internal dialogue had become a rather circular cursing of her own stupidity, and she couldn’t entirely hide it from her face. “You are so scrambled, egghead.”

“I don’t think so! But let‘s consider what I should do with you now that I have you, hmm?”

“So take a picture, it‘ll last longer!”

“I’m actually fond of chickens, they‘re one of the few animals I have any tolerance for.”

“I’m not a chicken! Chickens don’t have lips!” she yelled, then stuck her tongue out at him, making a raspberry sound.

Eggman smirked. “Podarge the harpy, then. But even after I opened the trap that set you free, you aren’t very grateful!”

A curious look came over Po’s face, and then she said, “That was you?” She smiled wide, showing the ends of her fangs. “You should have mentioned it before! As the one who freed me from my magical prison, I am obligated to grant you three wishes!” and she made a sweeping bow at the bars.

“What??” asked Eggman, confused and stroking his mustache. “Really?”

In the shadow of her down-turned face, Po’s eyes flashed and she said to herself, “…just kidding.”

“What was that?”

“Haaaa!” she yelled, jumping off the nearest wall to give her some extra force as she brought her talons down against the wall of bars and tore through them. Eggman fled through a door that opened up unexpectedly in the rear wall, into his egg-shaped hovercraft that carried him further down the hall. “I wouldn’t help out anyone as ugly as you!” she called after him, even as she began to give chase.

“You’ll regret picking a fight with me!”

“Save me the trouble of looking, and just give me the emerald!” She pulled up short as he vanished into a round hole higher up the wall. They had come up to another side of the tower, with another large glass wall beside them, overlooking the city. “Stop running away!”

His voice began broadcasting from somewhere. “The Final Door can be considered an untamed power, but I already know that the secret to its control must lie with the emeralds! That you, harpy, have come after one proves it! But the door won’t be yours this time.”

“That’s what you think this is about? Then keep your stupid emerald! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

“Oh? Changed your mind? And I was just about to give it to you.” The wall slid open, revealing a large machine with a crystalline box at its center, inside of which a misty black shape was fluttering. The box also had a chaos emerald set into its base, where it seemed to be powering the machine in some way. Robotnik was perched above it, at a set of controls. “I can see you’re surprised. You were trapped in magical suspension so long, you really have no idea what technology is capable of nowadays, do you? Don’t underestimate me! This is only the beginning! Beg for mercy while you can.”

She screamed back at him, “Harpies don’t barter! I win or I lose!”

“Then prepare to lose!”

The misty form in the center of the machine began glowing, drawing the surrounding machinery around itself, constructing a large robotic body. “Haven’t seen that before,” Po said.

It rose up, spider-like, and from within it Robotnik’s laugh was still audible, as he said, “Now you have to face the V-Prototype!”

Po jumped out of the way as the machine clawed at her, its arm passing right through the wall behind them, tearing it open like a wound. She continued to dodge, the machine moving too quickly for her to do anything but stay on the defensive. “How can metal move that fast?!”

“I had expected the hedgehog to be the one meddling in my business again, which is why I had this prepared. You’ll prove a good test for it, however. With the power output my V-machine produces, it is no trouble tracking and blocking your movements!” Robotnik gloated. Po attempted to shift directions, throwing off the robot, but another of its arms was already behind her and swatted her into the wall. “Ha!! You see?”

The arm picked her up and pinched tightly, pinning her limbs. She wasn’t strong enough to break out of the metal grasp, so she gave another resounding harpy screech. It slowed the machine down for a moment.

Inside the cockpit, Robotnik rubbed his head. “I should make the next model sound-proof, as well. What’s that?” he said, startled as an alert on his controls sent his gaze out the room window and across the city.

There, a string of fiery columns erupted from the factory district in a destructive line leading towards the control building. A mechanical voice repeated the alert, “Supersonic movement detected at the city perimeter.”

-

Sonic spun into the outskirts of the city, bouncing between patrol bots as he went and leaving them as sparking piles of scrap behind him. He detoured through one of the large factories nearby, plowing through its generator in route to the other side, so that it exploded behind him. He laughed as he coasted safely out of reach of the debris that was sent flying, and continued making his way towards the city center, scrapping bots and machines on the way.

As he approached the main tower, a large wyvern-shaped bot dropped down from above with a grating roar, blocking his advance. “Oh, is this road closed?” the hedgehog asked, but it only roared at him. It began chasing Sonic, running him into some of the narrower streets and trying to pin him down. Eventually it chased him into a dead end, but Sonic had enough speed to run up the wall, hoping to leave the wyvern bot crashing into the building below him.

It was more maneuverable than it looked, and was able to veer at the last minute back up into the sky, dropping down again at Sonic as he now ran leaping between rooftops. It raked the metal roof just behind the hedgehog as he jumped out of the way, moving faster than he thought it should be able to. “Whoa! Too close!” He didn’t like having the bot behind him where it could shoot at him, so Sonic jumped high enough into the air that it flew below. He hit it with a spin attack on his way down and then landed behind it. He expected the bot to need to wheel around before it could attack him again, but it’s razor-sharp tail spikes shot backwards, piercing the ground around Sonic like large metal lances.

“Missed me!” Sonic had avoided getting hit, but now the lances were in the ground all around him like the bars of a cage. They began to spark, forming a net of electricity between them in the air that effectively created a lid over top, so that he couldn‘t simply jump out, either. “Woops.”

Now the wyvern bot turned around, clacking its metal jaws at him noisily before opening them wide. It began to draw energy, a light growing in the back of its mouth as it prepared to shoot at him. Behind it, Sonic could see that their fight had carried them right up beside the control tower, which rose much higher still above them.

“Sorry that I can’t stay, but I’ve got places to go, people to save!” and Sonic took a moment to spin in place, gathering energy himself, before launching at the wall of bars and bursting through them. Then he bounced up against the bottom of the bot’s mouth, jamming it shut, so that when the laser went off it simply blew up its own head. “Man, that’s a headache!” Sonic laughed at it. The body of the broken wyvern bot collapsed and broke open, and Sonic stopped to watch as a dark raith-like figure rose out and hovered over the machine for a moment, before evaporating. Taking a second look at the machine’s innards, Sonic saw something shining inside, and pulled out a light blue chaos emerald. “Score! What was Eggman thinking, putting this in here?”

He pocketed the emerald and made a running leap towards the nearby tower, crashing through a window and into a squad of surprised bots. Sonic spun in place, knocking those bots nearest to him into those beside them, then spun faster, sending bits of metal in all directions before leaping away.

He heard the sound of muffled explosions and grating metal from several floors above him. “What’s that? Sounds like someone started the party without me!” He raced to one of a pair of adjacent lifts, kicking the guard bot there down the open shaft and starting the machine. These lifts ran up and down the side of a large interior wall that seemed to reach through the entirety of the building, and opened onto a long, dark drop below, protected only by a low guard wall around the edge of the platform. He tapped his foot impatiently as it carried him upwards to the next landing, right into a waiting squad of another dozen bots. “This is getting old, guys,” he said, then almost fell off the platform as they began shooting at him. He took cover behind the platform’s guard wall for a moment, thinking.

After a long minute of laying fire to the platform, the bots stopped. The hedgehog had not risen up from behind the guard wall, so they began to advance. Sonic, out of their line of sight, had climbed down from the platform onto the wall, and was inching carefully across towards the column of the second lift. It really was a very long drop down. While the bots were distracted searching the first platform for him, he crawled up onto the landing behind them and ran off before he could be spotted. “Suckers…”

Running down another wide hall, one of the side walls ahead of Sonic exploded outwards, a pair of large metal arms snapping after a small blue streak who collided with the hedgehog. “Po?! What are you doing here!”

“Me?! I-” then she screamed as another arm crashed down behind her. “Look out!”

They dodged away, the V-Prototype striking at them again but taking a moment to move itself through the wall and into the hallway. Robotnik, driving the machine, laughed and said, “Sonic, you kept me waiting!”

“You just throw a lousy party, Eggman! We call this fashionably late! …Whoa!” Free of the wall, the V-Prototype dashed forward, raking the hall ahead of it with its many arms, sending Po and Sonic fleeing ahead. “What is that?”

Luckily, the hallway was dramatically long, allowing for an extended chase sequence. Po jumped out of the way of another beam attack, and answered, “It could track my movements before I made them, I couldn’t take it down! Just keep running. It can track you, too, you won‘t get in an attack!”

“Track you? Hey Po! Think it could track us both at once?”

Po’s eyes lit up at that, and at the same moment they leapt away from each other and back towards the machine from opposite sides, dodging its long arms and circling it. They weren’t trying to attack yet, but getting in close to it from several sides seemed to be setting off its balance. Po and Sonic took a moment to stand in front of it, and when it stabbed at the ground where they were standing, they darted apart again, the arms that tried to block their retreats tangling up. With the limbs slowed down this way, Sonic and Po could begin striking at the machine where the arms and legs joined the body, knocking them away one at a time. In a few minutes, they had removed every limb and were left with a large pile of scrap metal. Just as the V-Prototype gave a last shuddering lurch before collapsing, Eggman and his hovercraft emerged from the wreckage and into the air above them.

“Fools!” he said.

“Over already?” laughed Sonic. “Sorry, I guess we busted your new toy!”

Robotnik screamed in frustration. “You can’t appreciate my work! But I can still play. This time, you lose! Come to me, my V-Wyvern!” and he jabbed a finger at a button. Nothing happened, so he jabbed again, then began pounding the button repeatedly. “Why isn’t it here yet?!”

“Are you talking about that big metal bird of yours? This just isn’t your day!”

“What? No!” Robotnik wheeled his craft around and shot an energy blast at the nearby wall, the glass bursting outwards and leaving him free to escape, shouting behind him, “This isn’t over!”

Sonic spun up against the pod to help it along, sending it flying high out into the sky. He landed on the floor, shouting after the doctor, “Stop wasting my time, Eggman!”

Po was fishing around inside the remains of the V-Prototype, when there was the sound of breaking glass and a dark mist swirled up past her. It drew away from her body, mimicking her shape for a moment before evaporating. She shivered, but the deep blue chaos emerald was in her hand.

“What was that?” Sonic asked her. “An elemental?” Po didn’t say anything, just looked over the wreckage of the machine, which Sonic also gave a look at. “I get it, it looks like it was being used to power this machine.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Eggman tried something like this before, using forest folk. Called it the E-Series. But this looks different.”

“An artificial spirit box? But, the problem is with control. Using spirits for power is one thing, but he shouldn’t be able to…” Po turned the chaos emerald over in her hand. “Oh. Well, drat.”

Sonic pulled out the emerald he had taken from the V-Wyvern. “Yeah, there was the same kind of device in the machine I beat outside. I guess Robotnik had the Pandora’s Box long enough to learn something about it. I just came here looking for survivors from Robotnik’s takeover, I didn’t think he was up to something like this.” Po watched him put the second emerald away again.

“Eggman had more than one?”

“Emeralds? I guess so. Still, he can’t have many more! Tails and me already found two in the vine jungle, we‘re using them to power the Tornado. And now with these that we have, that‘s more than half.”

“You know about chaos emeralds?”

Sonic put one hand on his chin and said confidently, “Saved the world a few times, with these. So, you could say I know about them!” The sound of the lift rising sent them running down a hall and out of sight. “This place is still crawling with bots, we don’t have a lot of time to hang.”

“I don’t like what Eggman is doing. He‘s after the Final Door.”

Sonic turned thoughtful again, seeing the serious look on her face. “I thought he would be, if he learned about it.” Po grimaced at that, which made Sonic ask, “You alright?”

She shook her head. “I’m just tired of this mess. I thought it was finished.”

“We are going to finish it. That’s a promise!” Sonic nodded.

“This has gotten a lot more dangerous than you know! …Never mind.” She seemed to stumble, and fell into Sonic, who caught her before she hit the ground.

“Hey, are you sure you’re alright?”

She patted the back of his shoulder. “I’m fine, just a bit klutzy, I guess.” She stood up and began walking away. “Good luck saving this Scrap City, but I’ve got other things to look into.” She ran off.

Sonic took in the broken building around him. The sound of scout bots beyond the hall were still constant, so Sonic ran back towards the control room. He pulled a small device out from his glove, which had a small map of the city and the building already lit on it. He plugged it into a computer that did not look as terribly broken as most of the rest of the room, and the computer began to hum, the main screen lighting up. After a moment, the lock-out screen blinked with the message, ‘Access Granted’.

“Nice work, Tails,” Sonic said, and began clicking through more detailed maps of the city, looking for prisoner data and locations. Then he finished activating Tails’ device to crash the system before removing it and bolting out of the room, heading to a different city district.

[SoDi]

-6- Knuckle-Sandwich

Sonic found his friend in the workshop, tinkering on something again. “Yo, Tails! That device of yours did it! Scrap City is going to be scrap in no time!”

“Sonic!” and Tails put down his tools to turn around. “How did it go? Think we‘ll ever get Silver City back?”

He frowned. “That place is dead. It’s amazing how much damage Eggman could do in such a short amount of time. Most people escaped, I guess. There weren’t too many there that needed rescuing, but that gizmo for reading Eggman‘s files found them all for me. They‘re safe again.”

“I’m glad it worked. Oh, Eliot Walnut is relocating everyone he can find from the city upriver. They’re building up a new home along the water in the mean time.”

“Who?”

“You know! The old mayor of Silver City. You can’t have forgotten him already, he’s the one who asked for our help.”

“Oh, right. That guy. Sounds like he’s started being useful.”

“Sonic, he‘s doing his best,” said Tails, shaking his head.

“We’ll still manage. Especially if we can find the rest of the chaos emeralds. That reminds me, I found one there!”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Eggman is using them for a new sort of robot. Po found one, too.”

“Po? She was here not too long ago, I think.”

“Is she still around? She left the city in a hurry.”

“I don’t think so. She didn’t come inside, and I was working. I was hoping she’d stick around to help work on the Tornado again, she really likes planes.”

“Eggman’s up to something, and I think it might be serious. Po said he’s after the Final Door we heard about, but I don‘t know what he‘s actually doing.”

“You still have the decoder?”

“Sure,” said Sonic, pulling out the small device he had used earlier and handing it to Tails. “Why?”

“It should have done a download of the computer’s most recent files before wiping everything, maybe we can learn something this way.”

“What, it did that all on its own?”

“Sorting for useful data can take a long time, which I didn’t think you’d have to spare, and it would have been complicated giving you directions to use the decoder manually. And I couldn’t be there to do it for you, either. It took me a long time programming AI for this thing...”

“Hey, I know computers! You didn’t think I could do it?”

Tails was already sorting through the data display on his screen. “Here, there’s something about the wind shrine!”

Archaeological translations and records scrolled across the screen. Sonic stifled a yawn, then the file turned over an image of the mural from the shrine, and another image that was mostly empty, a few fragments arranged in the blank space. One showed a glowing winged figure surrounded by seven stars of rainbow colors, pointing to another part of the mural that was still blank. Sonic twitched an ear at that, but asked, “So? Anything useful?”

Tails took a minute looking over some data graphs. “There‘s something here about some new technology, but I don‘t get it.”

“He’s using artificial spirit boxes.”

“What?! Well, I guess so. …I can’t understand just reading over it, this is really dense stuff. I’ll need to study it, maybe have the professor look at it.”

“Robotnik is in over his head on this one. He had to use chaos emeralds to control those new bots, so as long as we can keep them out of his hands, we should be able to slow him down. Hey…”

“What‘s the matter?”

“I can’t find the emerald!”

“What? Did you lose it somewhere? Sonic!”

“I know that I had it! Last time I saw it was when I showed it to Po, and she… Uh-oh.”

-

Podarge raced through a thick forest. As she ran, she occasionally set off snares or net traps, or trip-triggered open pits, but her speed carried her past them unhindered. She was wearing a travel pack across her back, and had been crossing back and forth through the trees for a while, when she spotted a large step pyramid. “Bingo!” she said to herself.

Before she could leave the trees to reach the steps, a red-someone jumped out ahead of her, blocking her progress. “You don’t belong here. If you’re thinking of causing trouble, you’d be better off just leaving now.”

“Sheesh! You hedgehogs are all over the place!”

“I’m not a hedgehog! I’m an echidna!” he yelled at her.

Po shrugged. “Whatever. I’m not leaving.”

He pounded one fist into the other hand and said, “Then we do it the hard way.” He moved forward towards her, but only grabbed at empty air as she quickly side-stepped around him.

Now, Po was standing behind him, between him and the steps. “Why? We could just take it easy.”

“How did you-?” he began to say, spinning around. “Get away from there, you thief!”

“I’m not a thief! I just want a look, okay?”

“Ha! The only thing you’re getting is a knuckle-sandwich!” He jumped at her again, throwing a punch, but she dodged again.

“I’m not a sandwich fan, actually. I’ll have to turn you down.”

“Keep joking like that, but even if you are a girl, I’m the guardian of this place and nobody is allowed here!”

“Guardian?” she said, jumping out of the way of a stronger punch that broke open the ground where she had been standing and sent pieces of earth flying. “Hey, watch it!” she said as some of the loose earth struck against her face. In retaliation, she threw a kick at his back.

The echidna blocked with his arm, then had his next punch blocked by another of her kicks. After they had exchanged a few blocked blows like this, he said, “Not bad. You’re pretty determined. But I won’t let you have your way, thief!” Since his weak attacks weren’t doing enough, he used more of his strength on the next punch, catching her foot and throwing her back a long way along the ground, so that she rolled into the trunk of a tree with a loud thud.

“Ow! I don’t have time for this,” she said to herself, standing up as he charged for the next attack. She stopped trying to attack back and just began dodging. He was strong, but that didn’t help him if he couldn’t hit her.

“Hold still!!”

“Okay!” and when she jumped out of the way of his next punch she landed on his large, gloved fist and gripped with her talons.

“What? Hey, get off!” and he swung his arm to try and dislodge her, but she wouldn’t budge. So then he began waving his hand, trying to shake her loose.

“I’m telling you, I’m not a thief!” When he stopped shaking her, she looked rather dizzy.

Next he tried to punch her into a nearby tree, but she dropped out of the way without letting go of his hand. “Why else would you be here?!” he shouted.

“This is an altar, right?” she said, and finally dropped down onto the ground. “I just came to pray! See? I brought an offering!” and before he could try another attack she upturned her travel pack. Four large crystals, chaos emeralds, rolled out.

“What??” the echidna said, confused. He stopped attacking, though he kept his fists raised, ready.

“You said you’re the guardian here?”

“Yeah. I’m Knuckles.” He looked her up and down, “Who are you?”

“I’m Podarge Fleet-Footed!”

“I don’t know what you’ve heard about this place, but, this isn’t the kind of shrine you pray at.”

“I know, I can’t manage it myself.” She clapped her hands together. “But, since you’re the guardian, you know how to do the prayers, right? Will you help me out? And you can keep these.”

Knuckles looked over the small pile of chaos emeralds, still skeptical. “Do you even know what those are?”

She nodded. “I know what I’m doing! So, will you help me? …It‘s important.”

They regarded one another silently for a while. Then Knuckles closed his eyes and nodded. “If you aren’t a thief, you’ve still gone to a lot of trouble to get here. Fine. But then you leave! And I keep the emeralds!”

“Yes, sir!”

It didn’t take very long for Po to set up. She finished drawing the third ringed-star symbol under a floating chaos emerald. The four emeralds were all positioned now on the pillars surrounding the master emerald. “Well, it’s not perfect, but at least we have more than half of them. Should be enough to manage a collect call, anyway,” she said, looking the arrangement over.

“What is this supposed to do?” asked Knuckles, who was careful to watch her.

“I’m trying to make contact with someone, a long way off. If this can get her attention, it‘ll be good enough to open a channel. Don‘t worry, you know it can‘t hurt the emeralds, since you‘re the one doing the work.” She hopped over to the fourth pillar, and up to draw the last star symbol.

“If anything happens, I’m holding you responsible,” he said, but she seemed unbothered.

Finishing up, she jumped down to the edge of the altar beside Knuckles and nodded. “Okay, echidna-man. Do your thing.”

He held up his gloved hands toward the master emerald and began to speak. “The servers are the seven Chaos. Chaos is power, power enriched by the heart. The controller is the one who unifies the Chaos…”

The four chaos emeralds flashed and shot a narrow beam of light of their respective colors into the master emerald. That stone began to glow, small motes of white light beginning to drift upward from its surface where an image began to form in the air. It was a woman, surrounded by a nimbus of soft light and wrapped round in a robe made of drifting, long trailing ribbons of rainbow colors, floating above the altar. A silver-white circlet was set on her head. She spoke, but her voice had an echo to it, as if it were actually coming from a long way off, and not from the image of her at all. “I am Iris of the Rainbow. …Who are you, young guardian, to wake me from my long dream?”

Knuckles seemed too shocked at having an apparition appear above his emerald to reply.

“Hey, stop ogling and say something to her!” said Po. Since Knuckles could only stare, Po shoved him out of the way so that she would be in Iris’s direct line of sight. “Sheesh. Hiya, Iris! Actually, I’m the one who wanted to talk to you.”

Knuckles stood up and shook a fist at Po, his senses returned. “Who is that, and what’s she doing on my master emerald?!”

Iris smiled gently. “Podarge, my Fleet-Footed. You are alive. You have been freed…”

“Yeah, well, stuff happens. That’s why I’ve changed my mind. I need you’re help, Iris.”

“Yes. But it is graver than you know, small harpy.”

“What do you mean?”

The image of the woman faded and returned; the energy from the four chaos emeralds was already strained. “I have been apart from the world, as well. I have fallen to dreaming… Yet, many spells I made from the bright light of chaos, and still can I sense their movements. Where once they lived in the house at the back of the wind, now the winds have been scattered.”

“What!?”

“So long as they remain lost in the world, I cannot grant your wish, small harpy.”

“No way! Not even if I can find all of the chaos emeralds? But, what about the harpy sisters? They lived in the house, too, they were supposed to be guarding the seals!”

“The road there is still closed, and cannot now be opened from where they are. They are trapped.”

“Then how did the seals leave?”

“I do not know. I can only sense their absence. The sisters might be able to tell you more.”

“Lot of good that does me, I can’t get there!”

The image faded and returned again, dimmer this time. “I cannot help you.”

“Wait! I, I have to ask you something. If the seals were found again, and the emeralds with them, then could I- Hey, wait!”

“I cannot continue to speak across so vast a distance. I return to dreaming…” and the image faded and did not return. The air around the shrine was quiet, and empty.

“Who was that?” asked Knuckles. “And what does all this have to do with my emerald?!”

“Don‘t get so upset, it wasn‘t a total waste of time. …Iris still has a connection to all of the emeralds, like you do, that’s why they can be used to reach her.”

“So she used to be a guardian?” the echidna asked. He looked doubtful.

Po looked tired. She sat down on the top step of the shrine and found a yellow dandelion to pull up and chew on. “Iris was a keeper of the master emerald a long, long time ago. She’s actually really old, now.”

“She is?” Knuckles asked, remembering the image that had appeared above the altar.

“She’s an immortal now. A spirit.”

“Ah. Like Chaos.”

“Who?”

“There was a water spirit who guarded the master emerald a long time ago, too, a god of an ancient civilization. I guess that makes this whole thing more believable. But he had been sealed up inside the emerald, and that‘s not the case with this Iris woman, right? So where is this person now? Hey, she‘s not a ghost, is she?!”

“No! She studied the relationship between the master emerald and the chaos emeralds, and used that knowledge and their power to create the seals on the Final Door. And other stuff, but mostly that. Iris was called the lady of the rainbow because she could handle vast amounts of power that no one else could even touch! But there was a trick to it. See, like when you take a strong beam of light, and use a prism to divide it into the different colors of the rainbow?” Po moved her hands as she spoke, using motions to try and illustrate what she was saying. “Each one is easier to handle alone than they are focused together. She could do that to power, and it’s how she created the seals. But handling that much power… she had to draw strength from many different worlds at once, many dimensions, because the Final Door holds a power that flows through all of them! And doing that sealed her up between dimensions. I guess you could say she’s trapped there.”

“Huh. You mentioned that door before. It’s dangerous?”

“Yes. It could destroy the whole world. The harpy sisters, the strongest of us harpies, they’re supposed to guard it, to keep it from getting misused.”

Knuckles nodded. “They’re part of your tribe, right? I still don’t understand, but, they were supposed to guard something, and it sounds like something went wrong? Now they’re trapped. So why are you moping when you should be rescuing them?”

“What?!”

“That’s what you spoke to Iris about, isn’t it?”

“If they’ve gotten themselves trapped in another dimension, that’s their fault! And I couldn’t get to them anyway, they’re a long way off!”

“Hey, that reminds me! You can’t fly, so how’d you get up to my island?”

-

“Sonic! The Tornado’s gone!”

“Not just the chaos emeralds?”

“No, the whole plane is missing!”

Sonic thought it over, then nodded. “Alright.”

“Alright? What’s alright?” asked Tails.

Sonic put a hand on his friend’s shoulder to reassure him, since the fox seemed rather upset. “Don’t worry, I’m figuring it out. But even after tracking our stuff down, we’ll still have Eggman’s scheme to deal with. That‘s a lot more important right now.”

Tails looked unsure, thinking. “But, I don’t know anything about spirit boxes, even artificial ones. I was working on a disruptor, but if these new bots use a different energy source, I don‘t know…”

“Come on, Tails! You’re the man with the plan!”

Tails was already thinking. He nodded to himself, then said to Sonic, “…Alright, I’ll figure something out. I‘ll look over the data you brought me, there has to be some way to make it useful.”

“Yeah! And while you work on that, I’ll be keeping busy, too!” He and Tails gave each other a thumbs-up and then Sonic raced away.

-

“It is serious. But it’s not my problem.” Po shrugged.

“Yeah?” Knuckles looked over at the chaos emeralds assembled around them. By now, he was sitting on the steps, too. “You went to a lot of trouble for a problem that isn’t yours.”

“I can meddle if I want to. Besides, if the harpy sisters messed up, that makes me look bad, too. What about you? What’s an echidna doing as a guardian?”

“I’ve been here guarding this place for as long as I can remember.”

“Who told you to do it?”

“Nobody had to tell me! It’s just what I do.”

“Huh. Convenient.”

“I’m content like this. You shouldn’t worry too much about what you can’t change, is what I think. As long as you know what you are supposed to be doing, what you can do, you can put all your energy into that.”

“Hah! Is that a sense of duty or something? I’d rather be free!”

“What else are you going to do with freedom?”

That turned Po serious again. “It’s complicated. The house at the back of the wind… it’s a hard place to reach, you know. The name ought to say it all!”

Knuckles looked at the sky and began a monologue. “If it’s too much trouble to try, then don’t. If it’s worth it, then do it. But make up your mind! Make decisions and trust yourself, and don’t carry regrets. If you second-guess yourself, or worry all the time about what to do, then you lose focus and can’t succeed at what’s still in front of you. Whether it’s your place or not, some things you have to do just because it’s who you are, not because anyone tells you to. We make mistakes, but if we do what we think is right at the time, then we still don’t have to regret it. What’s important is to keep moving forward. Understand, Podarge?” He had been talking for awhile, and turned to look at Po, only to see an empty Po-shaped hole in the air where she used to be sitting. Looking back over his shoulder, he noticed another empty emerald-shaped hole where the Master Emerald used to be sitting.

Po was carrying the large stone over her head as she ran off. Knuckles jumped to his feet and began to chase after her, shouting, “Hey, you said you didn’t come here to steal anything!”

“I didn’t! But I changed my mind!” she called back with a bird-like laugh.

“Hey! Bring that back here!!”

[SoDi]

-7- The House at the Back of the Wind

Sonic had to run a very long way before he reached the rift where the wind shrine was hidden below. He found the Tornado parked haphazardly nearby, and knew that his guess had been right. He eyed the mist-filled rift, unsure if he could navigate it alone this time.

But he didn’t have to. The earth began trembling, as the wind shrine and some of the ground around it began rising up into the air, dragging at the walls of the rift around it, the mist and elementals flowing over and away from it like water. It moved slowly, and Sonic gave himself a running start to jump out onto the piece of land as it passed by where he stood next to the Tornado. Then he began climbing his way up the outside of the wind shrine, which was built, conveniently enough, in a step-pyramid fashion. But the shaking was strong enough to be toppling dirt and stone, and that made the climb harder. He had to be careful to avoid being knocked back down, but eventually he jumped up over the last ledge and reached the final chamber of the shrine. He saw the Master Emerald set on the dais, and Po standing below it. This chamber was still open to the air, like it had been when they had first been warped out and all the walls had been folded back. “You did come back here,” he said, and she jumped around with a start.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“You stole the chaos emerald right off me! That was slick, I’ll give you that.”

“I’ll accept your compliment!” she said, turning up her nose at him.

“You stole the other emeralds from Tails. And the Tornado. He was upset, he really likes that machine, and I need it, too.”

“Why should I care if he’s upset? He’s the one who left it out.”

“And I bet there’s a certain echidna you’ve stolen from,” said Sonic, eyeing the master emerald. “He really doesn’t like thieves, you know. Well, you probably do know, if you met him.”

“You’ve made your point, and I still don’t care. So why are you here? Just to scold me?” She made a fist and set her feet more firmly on the ground. “Think you’re going to punish me?”

Sonic lifted his arms behind his head and said, “Why? I came to help.”

“W-what?! Don‘t play with me!”

“I’m serious!”

“How did you find me? Even I didn’t know I’d end up back here!”

“It was what you said the last time we were here, I guess. ‘The winds abandoned the world, and closed the road off behind them.’ I remember. And you had also said that this place fell out of the sky after they left, and then when you took the Tornado, I figured you would have done that only if there was someplace you couldn’t go on foot. Like the floating island? I don’t know of anything other than the master emerald that can manage it, but I had a hunch you might be trying to raise the wind shrine, and follow after the wind spirits. My hunches are usually right!”

Po looked baffled. “How’d you come up with that idea?! Well, you were wrong, I hadn‘t planned on raising the shrine with the master emerald, that was a last minute decision! Your hunch wasn’t right, it was just lucky!”

“Really?” Sonic said, making a face as he tried to understand her logic.

“It doesn’t matter. This is something that I have to do, but you don’t need to be here.”

“If this is about Robotnik getting his hands on the Final Door, I’m already in.”

She shook her head. “It’s not.”

“Huh?”

“The other three wind lords, and their seals to the Final Door, are loose somewhere in the world, they aren‘t here anymore. Who knows, maybe Robotnik has already found them. I don’t know how it happened. If you want to play hero again, and save the world, you should be tracking them down before he finds them. They are very powerful, but if Robotnik’s developing artificial spirit boxes, he can trap them without having to fight. So you ought to hurry.”

“I don’t get it. I thought that wherever this wind shrine leads to was where they were hiding.”

“It was! But, I guess they just aren’t there anymore.”

“So why are you going? Isn‘t guarding the Final Door something the harpies are supposed to do?”

“Nobody tells me what to do! I’m free. But, the harpy sisters, Iris chose them especially. All the other harpies are gone by now, but the sisters should still be where Iris sent them. The wind lords guarded the Final Door with their seals, and the sisters guarded them, see?” She pointed over at the mural, still visible though the rest of the walls had been vanished, where three stylized harpies flew beneath a ring of four clouds chasing one another’s tails. “But with the wind lords gone somehow, and this route cut off, the harpy sisters are trapped there.”

“So you’re going to rescue them?”

“Rescue sounds so dramatic! It’s just something I gotta do. I’m still a harpy, even if I’m not much of one. …You should leave, we get much higher and you won‘t be able to get off the shrine at all.”

“We can save the world after this.”

Po’s feathers ruffled and she bared her fangs at him. “Why do you talk like that?! I’m not asking for your help!”

“You don’t have to ask! I don’t need a reason to help a friend. Podarge, I’d have helped sooner if you had said something. You didn’t need to steal from anyone.”

“We aren’t friends! What is it with you?” she growled at him, and turned away. After a moment, she turned back, and was surprised. “…H-hey, what are you laughing about?!”

Sonic was trying to cover a laugh, and failing. “Oh, man! That’s it, isn’t it?” He calmed down a bit, and went on, “It’s not like you don’t know what friendship is. We’ve helped each other out lots of times. But you have some kind of hang up using the word. Am I right? Look, it‘s not that hard to say,” and he raised his hands up to his mouth to help shape the words as he said, “ ‘Sonic is my friend!’ See? Easy.”

She scowled at him. “Friends are supposed to trust each other, you shouldn’t trust a harpy!”

He shook his head, “That’s not really it. You’re the one who doesn’t trust me. That’s why you stole, when you could have just asked.”

“No one trusts a harpy, that’s why I can’t trust anyone, either. The people who trapped me in Pandora’s Box, they called me friend, too!”

“Podarge…”

“It‘s just a word, but it‘s dangerous.”

“So harpies never trust anyone?”

“That’s not it,” said Po, crossing her arms. The shrine was clear of the rift now and starting to rise a little faster, up through a low set of clouds that turned everything around them hazy. It was cool, and damp for a while.

“Maybe you‘ve had it rough, but are you going to let that make you afraid forever? Friends are important, Po.”

“Of course you say so, you have lots of friends! You’re a hero, right? I’ve heard them talk about you, Sonic the hedgehog, the legendary hero! Everyone wants to be your friend.”

Sonic looked out over the shrine as the clouds thinned. They began to rise up out of the clouds back into the sunshine, and other clouds like white hills stretched out in every direction around them, the sky blue and empty overhead. “You’ve got it backwards. If I can be a hero, it’s because I have friends, to help me and make me strong.”

“Sonic…”

“You are free, Po, you can do and say what you want. I don’t have to change your mind. But I am your friend. You can count on me. I‘m coming with you.”

“…You’re so stubborn.” The shrine stopped moving, adrift in the sky. “I guess we’re here.”

“What’s here?”

“The warp trigger we used to escape from this shrine only tossed us up out of the rift, but that‘s because the shrine was in the wrong place. From the right position, the warp leads to the sky road, an inter-dimensional passage created from the power of the white wind. Probably. I’ve never done this before, only heard about it, but it should work. Only someone that can overcome the strength of the wind can cross the sky road. Me, I’m a harpy, I can run fast enough to get through even without wings! So, you better keep up.”

Sonic nodded. “I‘m the fastest thing alive, you better not fall behind!”

Po nodded back at him, then walked over to the mural and pressed the image that activated the warp device, and the floor beneath them flashed. The landscape around them vanished, and they were standing in bright empty space. “This is the end of the sky road. This part might be calm and empty, but it should start getting rough the further in we get. And there are more elementals that live here. Stay on the road. Since we can’t fly, we’d have a long way to fall.”

“Alright, let’s do this!”

Po pushed off and began running in what looked to Sonic to be a random direction, and he followed a half step behind her. The wind gradually became noticeable, and quickly grew stronger as they continued running into it. The surroundings changed as well, the bright space turning sky colored, and farther off were streaks of cloud, but nowhere was there any sign of land below them. The road looked like a ribbon winding through the air even as they ran on it. Small flocks of toothy elementals began drifting towards them, at the same time that the wind really began to pick up, and when Po had to stop to kick one away from her, the wind threw her back along the road. Sonic fared a little better, since he could use a spin attack without slowing down, but there were too many of the monsters attacking all at once, and he ended up being thrown back as well.

He and Po stopped rolling back and lowered their heads against the wind, standing back up. “Maybe we can’t,” said Po.

“Don’t give up yet! Together, we can figure out something.”

They were quiet for a moment, thinking. “Hey, I could sing at them!” said Po.

“Yeah, that could scare them off.”

“Hey! I’m serious, I could stun them long enough for you to attack them.”

“I get it!”

They bolted forward again. Po could shriek without slowing down, and the stunned elementals could then be scattered by Sonic without them swarming him. Together they managed to overcome every cloud of the airy monsters, though they had to get used to the rhythm of it. They were still occasionally thrown back or slowed, but their teamwork eventually sent them flying down the road into the wind. They kept this up for a long way, until the wind grew so strong that it was hard to tell if they were making any progress at all anymore, or just running in place.

Sonic tightened his spin and made a last final push against the ground, breaking through what might as well have been a solid wall of wind, and Po slipped through after him, using him as a windbreak to keep pace with him. Then everything went still. Sonic’s ears were ringing, with the sound of the wind so suddenly caught off.

The featureless surroundings of the sky road were gone, and they were standing in a stone room that resembled the last chamber of the wind shrine, only here there was no mural, no statue, and the walls were closed.

“We made it…” said Po, a little disbelieving.

“Yeah, we make a good team!” Sonic sat down and exhaled loudly. “I’m beat!”

“We aren’t done yet. This is the house at the back of the wind! A little dimension of its own. And dangerous in its own way, so don’t relax too much.”

“Sheesh, you harpies couldn’t just have a brick house with a backyard, huh?”

“Then go back.”

“No way, I gotta see this place!”

They walked out of the room onto a narrow stone walkway suspended over empty space, and both gasped. Ahead of them was the rest of the ‘house’, a massive globe of twisting stone walkways and partial, curved walls. Around them the sky was nothing like it could look on earth, the horizon was a vertical slit between two vast seas of storm-colored cloud to the left and right, the house hanging in the air between. The whole space was lit dimly by a small sun that was far below and behind where they were standing.

“I hear something,” said Sonic, noticing a strange musical hum in the air all around them. Some sort of aria.

Po listened for a while, then said. “That’s harpy song. Be careful, it’ll get to your head, and lead you off a cliff or something.”

“Hey, it’s not like it’s that good.”

Po looked curious. “You think so?”

“Yeah, it could be better, maybe use some electric guitar! So, where are these harpies we’re looking for?”

“We follow the music. Duh.”

They made their way inside, but the place was entirely empty. They passed through large halls, past fountains, high balconies, lanterns that were dark and looked like they hadn’t been used in a long time, following the sound of music. Pushing through a last large set of doors they came to a ledge looking out onto the strange vertical horizon, two figures sitting on the edge with their backs to them, large wings pressed to their shoulders. They were the ones singing.

The door shut noisily behind them, without any help, and the singing stopped. The two harpies stood and faced them, each about twice the size of the two visitors. One was many shades of gold, ochre and topaz and russet, with long thick hair and a set of large horns curling round her ears on either side of her face. The other was as many shades of green, dark emerald and lime and jade, and had a narrower pair of spiral horns rising up from her temples. Her hair was just as long, but pulled back into a number of ponytails.

“Hey Aello, look who it is!” said the gold harpy, then asked Po, “How did a wingless runt like you get in here?”

“And what did you bring with you, a pet?” said the green one, Aello. Though the singing had stopped, their voices were very rich, and naturally musical even when speaking. It was especially odd listening to them say such coarse words with such beautiful voices.

“I’m Sonic the hedgehog!” he answered them.

Aello shrugged. “A friend of yours, Podarge Flat-Feet? The company of small vermin suits you better, but bringing him here with you is inexcusable.”

“He’s not my friend! He got here on his own,” Podarge growled at them. “Besides, it’s not like there’s anyone left here for you to guard! We opened up the sky road, so shouldn’t you be leaving to chase after them?”

They scowled at her. The gold one said, “It’s not our fault that the wind lords are gone! And why do you care what happens to them? It‘s not your business, is it?”

“Ignore her, Ocypete. She’s not worth our time,” Aello told her sister. “We should go. Someone like her couldn‘t understand what we still have to do.” They turned and began walking towards the ledge.

“I thought the story on the mural showed three harpy sisters,” Sonic said to Po. “Is there someone else we need to find?”

Po shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. Iris used the seven chaos emeralds to handle the power of the Final Door, that’s why there had to be seven spells. Four seals and three guardians. But the third sister was destroyed in a fight with Zephyr, while he was under Pandora‘s influence.”

“Oh. Sounds like some heavy history.”

“Old and done.”

Aello stopped walking, and spun around. Her voice was very cold and very sharp, as she said, “I don’t like how you talk to this boy, Podarge. It’s not his business, either. Someone’s been talking too much, if someone found this place and stole the winds away. If you had stayed in Pandora’s Box, maybe none of this would have happened!”

Po went stiff, and said nothing. Sonic was shocked, too, and said, “That’s enough! How can you say something like that? She came here to save you!”

“Save us? Some pathetic wanna-be harpy like her?” Aello laughed, covering her smirk with her wrist.

“I am a harpy!”

“You?” Ocypete chimed in, covering a smile of her own as she went on, “Who ever heard of a harpy without wings? Who cut your hair? You don’t even have a voice, all the most precious possessions of a real harpy. You’re nothing.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Sonic, crossing his arms. He knew they were ignoring him, but he didn’t like Po having to take all of their attention. “She has a voice, she’s using it right now!”

“That little squeak? Pathetic!” said Ocypete, tossing her long hair behind her wings.

“Run away, little flat-feet. You always wanted to run, didn’t you? Once we‘re gone, all the magic of Iris will have left this place, and this little world will collapse,” and Aello flew off, her sister close behind her.

“Seriously?” asked Sonic, but the sisters were already out of sight. He and Po gave a nervous glance at each other, and they bolted out of the room.

It turned into something of a race, the harpy sisters occasionally visible through the gaps in the walls and ceilings, flying outside while Po and Sonic had to navigate the halls and curving paths inside. The building itself seemed to be groaning, the floor buckling as they went. Even with the harpy sisters still here, the absence of the seals of the three remaining wind lords seemed to have put a great deal of strain on this magically created space.

They ran out onto a balcony that had no further path forward, but the hall behind them was already warping and they had no time to backtrack. Sonic grabbed Po’s wrist and pulled her over the side, and falling beside the wall he pushed off against it after several seconds and launched them sideways onto another path. They kept running.

The small sun below flickered and flared violet, casting everything in awkward shadow, making it harder for Sonic and Po to see where they were going, or which paths would lead forward and which ones led nowhere. They came to a long staircase, the stairs already falling away, and slid down the railing only to come out onto a landing near the base of the house. Above them, a good forty feet away, was the warp room and the path leading to it. That room seemed like it was slowly spinning in place, the walls and roof drifting apart and away, and a soft glow was coming from within the space. Aello and Ocypete were flying down from above the house toward the warp room.

“Sonic, can you jump that far?” said Po, turning to see him breathing hard, barely standing.

He rolled his eyes, saying, “Where’s a power ring when I need it?” They looked behind them. The odd building was crumpling backwards onto itself, everything seemed to be pushing away from the warp room, where even the light seemed to be expanding. It enveloped Aello and Ocypete, who quickly vanished from sight.

Po shook her head, grabbed Sonic and took a moment to crouch down over her large talons, then made a standing leap that flung them both up into the air. The glow grew brighter as they drew closer, but the remains of the house and of the seas of cloud were also now shooting past them in a last jarring burst, and it seemed like the whole world was exploding.

[SoDi]

-8- The Sister from Hell

“Soooonic!” Amy called out as she poked her head into Tails’ workshop. “Oh, he’s not here either?”

Tails startled, then shifted his work-lamp away, where he had been lighting up the inside of a palm-sized device while doing small, detailed adjustments. He sighed, his concentration broken, and turned around. “Hi, Amy.”

“Tails, have you seen Sonic? He’s supposed to meet me for dinner today. I thought he might forget, again, so I’m going to find him first!”

Tails shook his head. “He isn’t here. Actually, something major is going on, I doubt he’ll have time for that right now.”

“What?! Don’t say that, he’s always coming up with excuses! What’s so important that it couldn’t wait until after dinner?”

“Look at this!” Tails offered, and leaned over to hit a key on his computer, bringing up a map of the continent, some archaeological sketches, and a few schematic drawings of some sort of machine. “Without getting too technical, Eggman has been making artificial spirit boxes, and using them to create stronger robots! He’s been working through several models already.”

“Uh-huh?”

“It looks like he’s concentrating on control. I guess he learned after Metal Sonic turned on him, so Eggman is being real careful, and using chaos emeralds to keep the spirit boxes in check. He’s not stupid, so he must think he can get more power output from the spirit boxes than from just using the emeralds alone. If he makes much more progress, we might be in for a real fight!”

“Uh-huh?”

“Some of this still doesn’t make sense to me, but I got Professor Pickles to look over this, too, and we think he’s hunting for something more powerful to put into the spirit boxes than just elementals. If Flickie could power something like the E-Series, imagine what kind of bot Eggman could make using a demon!”

“Demon?”

The screen zoomed in on some illustrations from old books. “Like in old stories, about summoning powerful spirits from the underworld. I don’t know, it’s just something Eggman was looking over, and may be part of his interest in the Final Door that Po talked about. But after we went to the wind shrine, I began to wonder if there‘s more truth to these kinds of stories than I used to think, and maybe that‘s why Eggman is looking into it, too. It‘s too bad we don‘t have more of his data, but this is enough to give me a few ideas of what might be happening.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Actually, I’ve been using Eggman’s research to come up with a device that should be effective against spirits, underworld or otherwise, in case we run into any more of his V-Series machines.” Tails gestured at his workspace, and a few metal devices that resembled flat sunburst shapes in different stages of completion. “”I’m calling them spirit hexes. They work by an inversion, they should disrupt spirits rather than contain them.”

“Uh-huh?”

“So?”

“I’m sure it’s great and all, but I still don’t know why it can’t wait until after our dinner!”

“Amy!”

Amy sighed. “Fine, I get it.”

“Do you want one?” Tails seemed really excited about the devices, but Amy just wasn’t as interested.

“Do they come in any other colors?”

“Huh?”

“You should really try to make your inventions more fashionable. Anyway, where is Sonic?”

“Well, he went to look for our chaos emeralds.”

“What happened to them?”

“They were stolen…”

“Good grief!”

There was a sudden rumbling sound outside. “What’s that?” Tails asked, as he and Amy ran out of the workshop to see.

An odd light was erupting in the sky. They moved up the hill where they could get a better view of something that looked like a violet explosion in the air a long way off. It mushroomed and began to dissipate, leaving a narrower column of smoke.

“Wow!” said Amy, and then she put one finger to the side of her face as she seemed to think of something. “I’ll bet Sonic is over there!”

“Why do you think that?”

She put her hands on her hips and her nose in the air, and said emphatically, “Because wherever there’s trouble, he’s not far behind! And that?” she gestured at the dissipating light.

“Looks like trouble!” Tails nodded in understanding.

“Let’s take the Tornado and go look for him!”

“Um, about that…”

“What?”

“The Tornado was stolen, too…”

“What?! Well, don’t you have anything else we could use? I don’t want to run the whole way!”

Tails thought about it. “There might be something! Wait right here,” and he ran back inside and down the stairs to a lower level. After a moment, a different side of the hill opened up, revealing a smaller garage, and the fox guided out a an odd looking motorcycle. He was now wearing a helmet and knee and elbow pads. Always wear appropriate safety gear!

“What is that?” Amy asked.

Tails grinned. “I modified one of Eggman’s speed bots. It’s fast, and has its own radar and tracking systems, but can’t be picked up by most radar itself! Still, it can’t fly, so I never really used it.”

“…Can you really drive it?” Amy asked, looking it over. It did look like it had been patched together, or perhaps the design was just over-complicated. It was painted in the same colors as the Tornado.

“Of course, I built it!” said Tails. “I’ll be back as quick as I can,” and he jumped on the bike.

“I’m coming with you! If Sonic is in danger, I’m definitely going to be the one who saves him!” She pulled a red helmet out of nowhere and pushed it over her head, then jumped up behind Tails. “Drive!”

“I am!” and Tails kicked off, the bike gaining speed quickly and bouncing off the hill.

Amy shouted into the wind as they rode, “I’m coming, Sonic!”

-

Sonic and Po fell out of the sky above the wind shrine’s little island, which seemed to also be plummeting out of the air at an angle. It crashed into the ground, and they fell against the now-slanted roof of the shrine and tumbled, end-over-end, off the building and along the tiles of the ruins, altogether off the little land mass and into a thick blanket of long grass below. The master emerald landed heavily beside them a second after everything else had already gone quiet.

The dust settled. Po groaned and stood up, holding her head. Looking around, she saw one red sneaker visible in the grass. “Sonic?!” she said, pulling him up.

“Guess we made it,” he said, standing on his own but leaning over, hands on his knees, still breathing hard. He looked up at Po and managed a weak smile. “We’re lucky you’re better at a standing jump! That was close…”

“What happened to you back there?”

“You took the Tornado, remember? And, I knew I needed to hurry if you were headed to the wind shrine, or you might take off without me.”

“You ran all that way? And then the sky road, too. No wonder. You must be pretty tough. Or something.” She walked over to the master emerald, shook her head at it’s awkward size, and swung it onto her back to carry it. “Well, we shouldn’t just leave it here,” she said to Sonic.

“The Tornado can’t be too far off. Let’s go find it. I think I‘d rather ride back…”

“You look terrible.”

“So do you.”

They both grinned at each other, and then began walking.

After a little while, Po said, “That was really something, Sonic.”

“No problem!”

“Really. I ..couldn’t have gotten through the sky road on my own. I’m… not strong enough. And I think that the house at the back of the wind was already breaking apart, even with the sisters there. If we had taken any longer…”

“You did good, Po. But, seriously, what was their problem?”

“Ha! They are harpies, you didn’t expect them to be grateful, did you?”

“Well, I can tell they‘re related. They deserve each other!”

“Harpies don‘t need friends, but at least they have each other. …I guess they made it out safe,” said Po, looking up at the sky, but it was empty. They were quiet for a little while, when she asked him, “Um… Sonic, could I… would it be alright, if I called you ‘brother’?”

Sonic had been walking with his arms raised behind his head, also watching the sky, and quickly turned to look over at her. Po looked away, and tugged at her horn. She looked somber, which was unusual for her. It took a moment, but a look of recognition crossed his face and he smiled, giving her a thumbs-up. “Sure thing, sis!”

Po shook her head, still not meeting his eyes. Then she looked at the sky and smiled, “…Thanks, Sonic. I always wanted a little brother!”

“Hey, why am I the ‘little’ brother?”

“Are you kidding? There is no way you’re as mature as me!”

“Oh, right. You spent centuries in the wind shrine, so really, you’re like an old lady, huh?”

“What?! Sonic, that‘s awful!” she yelled at him, but she was smiling. She was still smiling as she spun her leg around to kick him hard in the back of the head and send him tumbling, end-over-end, through the grass.

He landed on his face a good distance ahead of her, pushed himself up and shook the dirt off. He said to himself, “Ouch. That kick hits almost as hard as Amy’s hammer!” Sonic heard a noise, and standing up saw someone running towards them. “Knuckles?!”

The echidna was already shouting, “Podarge! Sonic, you were in on this too? Stealing my master emerald!” He stopped nearby and shook his fists at them.

Sonic crossed his arms over his chest. “Nope. Wasn’t my idea. This one is all Po.”

“Sonic!” said Po.

“Hehe. Good luck, sis.”

Po tugged at her horn, twitching all over as she said to herself, “Oh man, I forgot!” Knuckles began charging across the ground, and Po took off, shouting, “Hey, I was planning on giving it back!”

“Then give it back already!” the echidna yelled.

“Okay!” and she stopped running long enough to throw it at him, hitting him in the head. “…Um, woops?”

“What was that for?!” he said, rubbing his head and then running after her again. “You’re going to pay, you thief!”

“Ack!” She darted away.

“Coward!”

“Hey, it’s safe, and you’ve got the chaos emeralds, too! What are you so upset about?” She stuck her tongue out at Knuckles as she ran.

“The chaos emeralds?” Sonic asked. “That’s right, I forgot you took those!”

Po frowned and stopped running, ducking a punch as she answered back, “The echidna has them! Don’t look at me! So how about a little help?!”

Knuckles managed to graze her shoulder with a fist, the strength of even a glancing blow enough to throw her back onto the ground. He stood over her and said, “What, you stole those, too? I don’t forgive thieves! You had me confused before, but you were just trying to make a fool out of me!”

“I wasn’t! Chill out! I just needed your stupid emerald for a little while!” she rolled onto her feet and jumped away again, out of his reach.

“That shouldn’t make it alright. Angel Island fell out of the sky, because of you!” He crossed his arms over his chest. “…So? Did you manage to save those people you talked about?”

“Huh? Well, yeah!”

“I can understand having something you need to protect. But you can‘t just take things that don‘t belong to you.”

Sonic walked over to them. “Are you both finished yet? We’ve got bigger problems. The wind lords are lost somewhere, and Robotnik is probably looking for them. If he doesn‘t have them already!”

“Still playing hero?” Po asked him, side-stepping so that the hedgehog was now between her and Knuckles.

“What are you two talking about?” Knuckles asked them.

Sonic explained, “Robotnik is after something called the Final Door.”

Knuckles shrugged. “I’ve heard of it.”

“Want to help us? It’s been a while since you saved the world,” the hedgehog joked.

“I’ve got to get the master emerald back to the island. You take these,” and Knuckles pulled the smaller gems out, handing them to Sonic. “I don’t accept stolen goods,” he added, glaring at Po.

Sonic took three, but left the last one. “You keep that one.”

“What for? I don’t need charity!”

“One was Po’s. These I’m giving back to Tails.”

“…Oh. Alright, then.” Knuckles pocketed the emerald.

“Hey, don’t I get a say?” Po said, watching them divvy up the gems.

“No!” both boys declared in unison.

-

When Tails and Amy made it to the fallen wind shrine, it was already late in the evening. As confused as they were to find the ruins above ground now, they kept driving till they found the Tornado, and Sonic and Po trying to repair it. Those two looked up as the bike pulled up near them, Sonic making a startled face as Amy leapt off to tackle him with a hug. “Sonic, you look hurt!”

“So stop squeezing so hard! Ouch,” he said, trying to untangle himself from her.

“Podarge! You’re here, too? What happened?” said Tails.

So they quickly exchanged news, and then Tails took out his newest invention, handing it to Sonic. “I’m using Eggman’s research against him!” he said, proudly.

“What’s this?” asked Sonic.

“I’m calling it a spirit hex, it should work against the V-Series technology.”

“Hey, this isn’t-”

“Don’t worry, it runs on regular power cells, not spirits, but the similarity isn’t a coincidence.”

“Way to go, Tails!”

“I’m getting one, too. We’ll be like a matching set!” Amy said to Sonic, who ignored her comment.

“I haven’t had a chance to test them yet, and their range might be pretty limited. But, they should work. This is how you operate it,” Tails said, showing Sonic how to work the device. There was a high-pitched, almost inaudible sound, and the hex lit up.

Beside them, Po’s eyes went wide and she went pale all over, her legs buckling. A mist began rising off of her body. “Wha-?”

“Whoa!” said Tails, stumbling back in surprise, almost knocking Amy over.

And Amy said to Po, “H-hey! What’s wrong with you?”

“Podarge!” It was Sonic who quickly twisted the little machine off, and immediately, the mist effect vanished and the harpy began to breathe again.

Tails looked frightened, so Po smiled at him and said, “Well, I guess we know it works.”

“That shouldn’t have happened!” Tails said.

Po shrugged and laughed it off, saying, “I’m a harpy! We got summoned into this world, too, you know. This little machine works by an attunement to this reality, right? That’s how it can disrupt the spirits Eggman is using in his machines, who belong to other worlds. You’re a bright kid, Tails. I’m impressed you could make something like this.”

“Another world… Somehow, I’m not surprised,” Amy said to herself, staring at Po, and the harpy stuck out her tongue in reply.

Sonic nodded at the plane. “Tails, can you fix the Tornado? Then we can all head home.”

“Again? Yeah, leave it to me.”

“This should help, right?” Sonic said, handing his friend the chaos emeralds.

-

Sonic found Tails outside the workshop, working on the Tornado once again. He was so deep in the engine that only his tails and legs were showing. The hedgehog coughed to get his attention, and Tails wiggled back out and smiled at the sight of his friend. “Any luck?”

“Not yet. No sign of anything between here and the coast. What about you?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Guess we just have to wait for him to find us, then.”

“That reminds me. Po just got back, she said she didn’t find any sign of Robotnik either. She’s over in the oak grove now.”

“She is?” asked Sonic, and he zoomed away.

“Wait, Sonic!”

Sonic zoomed back. “Yeah?”

“I finished re-modifying the Tornado, so it should be back up to spec now, but I’ll need some help testing it to make sure. Will you have some time later?”

“Of course. Back in a flash!”

The oak grove was a stand of particularly old, large trees to the south of Green Hill, and close to where Tails had his workshop. Po was up high in the branches, chewing on a large strawberry and watching the sky. Sonic bounced up, branch to branch, and sat beside her. “What took you so long getting back? I was able to search three zones while you were still out in the jungle! Or did you find something else to do with your time? I’d figure you’d be anxious for another race, after losing the last one,” he taunted.

“I didn’t lose! I tripped into the river, you can’t count it as a real win since I wasn’t at my best!”

“Heh, I’m glad you aren’t a sore loser or anything.” They heard shouting from below. “That sounds like Amy!” Sonic said, looking out to where the pink hedgehog was visible running toward the oak grove. “Wow, she looks mad about something.”

Po hurriedly finished her strawberry in one bite, and began inching away to the far side of the trunk so slowly that Sonic didn’t notice until he turned and saw that she was gone. “Tell her I’m not here!”

“You could just sing for her, that’d scare her off.”

Po growled at him from behind the tree trunk.

Amy spotted Sonic from below and shouted up, “Sonic! This is awful!”

“What’s the problem?”

“Cream’s strawberry patch is all torn up! I bet it was Po again! The place is a mess now.”

“Huh? Oh,” and Sonic scratched an ear, looking back to where Po was hiding.

“She’s up there, isn’t she? Po, I know you are, get down here! You’ll have to replant the whole patch, you know!”

“I’m getting out of here,” said Sonic, laughing as he jumped out of the tree and sped away.

“Sonic, you coward!” Po shouted after him, then called down to Amy, “You don’t know it was me! It must be your poor character, accusing people without proof like that!”

“Your big foot prints are all over the place! Cream and her mom work really hard on that garden, it isn’t fair to make them clean up after you. Now come help fix it!”

“Make me! …Ack!” said Po. Amy’s hammer was in her hand, and she whacked the big tree so hard that Po was thrown out of the branches and onto the ground. She stood up, dusting herself off and then crossing her arms. “Why should I have to do what you say?”

“Show some responsibility, would you!”

When Po just smirked, Amy grabbed at the horn on her head to get her attention. As soon as she did, Po’s eyes went wide, her feathers all went on end, and she made some gibbering sounds. “Huh?” said Amy, pulling to the right, then left, Po following closely. It seemed like it was a very sensitive spot, and the harpy was left limp as a rag doll. An evil look crept over Amy’s face, and she headed back to the garden smiling, dragging Po behind.

Sonic came by a short while later, and found Po walking along the road with her arms full of little planters. “Oh, are you busy?”

Po looked away. “I just felt like doing some gardening.”

Amy ran up, wearing a broad-brimmed sun hat, and added a watering can to what Po was already carrying. “Hey, you should help Cream with the rhubarb, too.”

“Why aren’t you doing anything?!”

“I’m more of a city girl, this work doesn‘t suit me. Anyway, I‘m helping Vanilla fix a lunch for all of us.”

“I don’t even like rhubarb! I shouldn’t have to-”

“You see, Sonic, Po has become so much more agreeable. All I-”

“No! Don’t say it!” shouted Po, before Amy could finish.

“Say what?” asked Sonic.

“Nothing,” said Amy, smiling. “Po and I came to an understanding. Sonic, you‘re staying for lunch, too, right?”

“Ah…” said Sonic, nervous, as Amy walked away ahead of them.

Po leaned over to whisper, “Is her cooking that bad?”

“No, she’s pretty good, that’s why I’m in a bind.”

“Huh?”

“The last time I tried to compliment her cooking, she got really angry.” He and Po shrugged at each other.

Amy saw that they had fallen behind, and shouted to them, “Hey, hurry it up!” She took out a basket and began picking vegetables.

Po’s arms were full, so she lifted up a talon and used it to make a clawing gesture at Amy’s back. “Hiss!” Then she followed her in to the patch.

Sonic laughed. “Wow. I won’t ask. Hey, Tails picked up a signal on the emergency line. Probably means trouble, so we could use an extra pair of feet. You up for an adventure?” He caught the watering can when Po knocked it towards him. Po hurriedly began dropping seedlings into the ground.

She finished in a flash, darting along the row, and used her foot to rake some dirt around the last seedling. She had dirt all over her, and shook herself to get most of it off. “Anything to get me out of here!”

Amy stood up from where she‘d been working a few rows down. “What?! The emergency line isn’t for invitations to parties! What if it‘s something really dangerous? Or if Robotnik has turned up again?”

“Like, with some kind of giant new robot?” Sonic wondered.

“Or some kind of super energy ray?” said Po.

“And he’s had enough time, it would be just like Eggman to have started work on his next evil plot!” added Sonic, grinning.

“He’s probably just waiting for us to show up to test out his new toys,” said Po, grinning back.

“We should at least be there in person to see his face when we break them!”

He and Po gave each other a thumbs up and said in unison, “Right?!” Then they turned and sped out of the garden toward Tails’ place.

“Sonic!” shouted Amy, but they were already gone.

Cream, a small tan colored rabbit with a chao tagging along at her shoulder, ran over from the far side of the house. “Is Po gone already? Sonic was here?”

Amy growled to herself. “Those two together are worse than ten of them alone! What a pair of brats! …Really, they need someone to keep an eye on them.”

“Oh, the garden looks nice!”

“Well, Po shouldn’t have been here messing it up in the first place.”

“I don’t mind. If she likes my garden, then I’m glad! Thank you for helping me, Amy.”

Amy looked off in the direction that the other two had vanished, the dust still settling on the road. “Sure thing, Cream. I‘d better catch up to Sonic, lunch will have to wait,” and she ran up the road.

Sonic and Po joined Tails at the communication terminal. He opened the channel and an old man appeared on the screen. “Professor, I’m here, and Sonic is, too. Sorry you had to wait.”

“I understand that you are very industrious. But there is some rather urgent news.”

Sonic waved. “What’s up?”

The image began to flicker with static. “Some odd weather has begun appearing, I consider it reminiscent of the storms generated by Doctor Robotnik not so long ago. I worry he might be behind this, as well. That’s why I wanted to ask for your help in the matter.” The transmission began to compete with a growing sound of static.

“What?! Where?”

“The national satellites have difficulty pinpointing anything due to the atmospheric interference. It has begun interfering with other systems, as well. I think it possible that we’ll even lose long-range communication shortly by-” and the broadcast died.

“No duh,” Po said, looking at the blank screen.

“Well, let’s go ask him in person,” said Sonic, and Tails drove the Tornado to the runway and they flew out immediately. Amy arrived at the workshop just after they had left, and realized that she had been left behind.

She was about to throw a tantrum, when she remembered something. “Don’t worry, Sonic! I’ll be with you soon!” She pulled out her red helmet and ran inside the second garage, turning on the motorcycle’s radar. The Tornado was easy to track, and she clapped her hands, jumping onto the seat and driving after Sonic.

This post has been edited by SoDi: 23 January 2010 - 04:37 PM

[SoDi]

-9- Pandora’s War

Since assisting Sonic thwart Robotnik’s plan to unleash Dark Gaia, Professor Pickles had received a commission from the government to work as a consultant in matters relating to ancient history. His office was under the protection of the national army, and his security clearance involved him in stranger work now, but nothing about him had really changed. His office, though in a new location in Liverspool, was decorated with the same comfortable furnishings, and the walls and tables were still crowded with books. It was his connections to the government that had alerted him to the strange weather elsewhere in the world, and the professor was expecting to hear more as news became available. And, since it was beginning to rain outside, he invited Sonic and his friends to stay for a while as they waited for more information. Amy had caught up, and Tails had just sighed when he saw his bike outside, not bothering to ask how or why she had followed. She was too busy trying to tackle Sonic with another hug, anyway.

“I’ve already made some cucumber sandwiches, and there are hot drinks,” Pickles offered, after they had all settled into his office.

“I don’t like sandwiches,” Po complained, and Amy glared at her.

“Well, there are some tea cakes, as well. Just the pre-packaged store bought variety, I‘m afraid.” said Pickles.

“Score!” said Po, brightening up quickly.

“What’s wrong with sandwiches?” Amy asked, frustrated by Po’s rudeness.

“I don’t like bread!”

“But you like the cakes? They’re a kind of bread,” Tails pointed out.

“No way! I don’t like bread because it has the nerve not to be cake!” Po said. Amy sat in a chair near the coffee table, while Tails sat on the couch, and Po perched on the back of the couch where she could look around the room. Which she was doing continuously, as if nervous. The sound of the rain outside was soft, like a brush stroking against the glass windows. “Old man, how long are we going to have to wait here?”

“You in a hurry? Not that I don‘t understand,” asked Sonic, who had sprawled across a large cushioned chair under a window.

“This sounds different than when Robotnik was using Pandora‘s Box. There’s weird weather in lots of places, but nothing concentrated. We don’t even know for sure it is Eggman!” said Amy.

Tails disagreed. “Who else would it be? We have to find out how he‘s doing this, and then stop it at the source! A lot of people could get hurt if it keeps up, there could be floods, and blizzards, and whole towns could get blown over.”

Pickles added, “There were sightings of a mysterious light in the sky, before the storms appeared.”

“The invocation of the white wind, right?” Sonic thought aloud. “We know that the three wind lords are loose. Would they be doing this?” He had begun tapping his foot against the chair impatiently, which he usually started doing after staying in one spot more than a few minutes.

“No way!” Po said. “They want to protect this world, not wreck it! I don’t think they’d have willingly left the house at the back of the wind, for that reason. They must have been kidnapped! And if these storms are being generated from their power-”

“Then Eggman must be the one controlling them. We have to wait for a lead, but I hate waiting!” said Sonic.

“He must be operating out of a base somewhere,” Tails figured. “But we know he’s already given up on Scrap City.”

The professor assured them, “All of the military is scouring the land for signs of signal locations or robot activity. It is a little slower with so many systems affected by the weather, but with Robotnik so active now, it is only a matter of time.”

“I still don’t understand how he could have gotten the three brothers out from their house in the first place,” Po said.

“That’s not as important as how to stop him now,” Sonic answered.

She smiled a little and showed her fangs. “As long as the winds aren’t together, the invocation will be incomplete. Of course, if they were all together, nothing could have caught them! Maybe this weather is so scattered because Eggman meant to split up their power this time.”

The professor stood as his assistant entered, and helped him to set out a tray of cups and small sandwiches and cakes. Po snatched what she wanted almost before the tray hit the table, and then bounced back up to her place on the couch. The professor didn’t seem to mind. “It seems to me that you all have been busy, and it would do you some good to rest while you can.”

His assistant nodded. “We’re glad you’re here. Actually, the president wanted to speak to you himself, Sonic, but he can’t get through at the moment. If there is any news, the professor will be among the first to know. I‘ll get back to the receiver. With most other communication systems down, we need to make sure these ground lines stay open.” Then the younger man left.

“Sonic, have you met the president?” Amy asked, trying to remember.

“It’s not a big deal,” said Sonic, scratching his nose and looking out the window. By the way he acted, it really wasn‘t a big deal, but Amy seemed a little disappointed by his response.

“Congratulations on your new job,” Tails said to the professor.

“It is more an honorary title than anything. They really don’t want a scholar like me getting in the way, but I prefer it like this, it gives me more time for my own research. Oh, I have been looking over what you sent me from Robotnik’s base in Silver City. Fascinating! It relates to the war on the Thorn Continent hundreds of centuries ago, that destroyed much of the world, and which we have very little record of! Since we have time, perhaps you would like to hear some of my analysis. You don’t mind if I keep a copy of the information for posterity, do you?” He picked up a pointer, the sort he used for the blackboards during academic lectures, and used it to begin unrolling scrolls on his desk.

Tails shook his head. “That should be up to Po. I think Robotnik took the information from the wind shrine, and that place belonged to the harpies.”

Po looked over at the mention of her name. “Huh? I don’t care, it’s just dusty old rock. And Pandora’s War was a long time ago, anyway. Do whatever you want.”

“Yes, the harpies are in the records as well, but what has that to do with the young lady?” the professor asked Tails, curious.

Po was the one who answered him, “Because I’m a harpy!”

“Of course not!” the professor said with a genial laugh.

“I know what I am!”

He walked around behind her, getting a better look. “Oho, then where are your wings?” and he tapped the end of the pointer between her shoulder blades.

Po whirled around, hitting the stick away from her. “Back off, old man!” He looked startled by her sudden flare of temper.

“Relax, Po, we know you‘re a harpy,” said Sonic.

Po crossed her arms and sneered, “This guy is a waste of our time! I’ll be on the roof if you need me,” and Podarge leapt through the window and outside, shattering the glass.

Amy shouted, “Couldn’t she have used the door?! She is so melodramatic…”

“Oh dear, I didn’t mean to upset her like that,” said Pickles. “I will have to apologize later! Don’t mind the window, the agency will take care of the repair. I just don’t want the books to be rained on.” He began taping some plastic over the window, where the wind was blowing in, and Amy went to help move his books out of the way of the water leaking through.

“Guess Po needs some time to cool off,” Sonic said to Tails.

The fox nodded. “Actually, I think she might be claustrophobic.”

“Oh. I get it.” Sonic stared up at the ceiling, as if he could see through to the roof.

Tails helped the professor to finish moving books away from the window onto a different table. “Po already told us about Pandora and the seals of the Final Door, but I didn’t know how much destruction it caused!”

They all sat back down, and the professor tapped the coffee table, which had a monitor under its surface connected to his computer, so he could start showing them some of his analysis. “It was not the war itself that destroyed the land. Not directly, anyway. In fact, it was a harpy!”

“What?” the other three asked together.

“A harpy queen called Bright Celaeno. Don’t misunderstand, but the end of the war seems to have been a rather complicated affair. The only stories that survived from that era described an attack on the different kingdoms by armies from the underworld, including harpies. It’s rather sparse, and more myth than history, but these new records you sent to me describe something rather different. I know from my research, and my correspondence with Tails, that the Final Door controls the power of the white wind, a power that leads to and between many dimensions. A being called Iris broke the door up into four seals guarded by four lords of the earthly winds. So long as the seals remain apart, the door cannot be opened, but this did not make it impossible to use the power of the Final Door, only more difficult. Even the diminished powers of the Door’s white wind were still potent. Many people were greedy for the power the wind lords possessed, and there were often battles. So long as the wind lords, four brothers, were together, they had the power of the Final Door, and nothing could overcome them. Still, the brothers grew tired of such a life, and eventually there was an argument. You see, Iris apparently had the ability to move between dimensions, and could create small worlds apart from this one.”

“Like the place you visited, Sonic?” Amy asked, then noticed Sonic was dozing off, and kicked him awake. “Hey! This could be important!”

“Just resting my eyes!” said Sonic, and sat up. But then he just began fidgeting distractedly with a lampshade as the professor went on. Amy rolled her eyes.

Professor Pickles waved it off, seeming glad enough to have an audience at all. “The lord of the west wind, Zephyr, was against such a retreat. Apparently, he had agreed to become a seal of the Final Door, not for the power that it would give him, but for a desire to protect this world. He was unwilling to abandon it, to close himself off in a separate dimension, and convinced the others to stay as well. But it was not long after this that Pandora managed to isolate him from the others, and thus capture him, and use his powers in an attempt to conquer the world. Iris sent the harpies with the other wind lords to free him. Since they were unwilling to defeat Zephyr, and freeing him proved so difficult, the war remained a stalemate and went on a long time.”

“Like this story…”

“Sonic!” said Amy.

“Um, maybe you could just give us the abbreviated version,” Tails suggested to the professor. “You’ve done a lot of work on this, but it’s getting late.”

“Of course!” said the professor, but he looked a little disappointed. He tapped the screen in the table and brought up a few more images. “The eventual plan was to use the power of Iris, which had created the seals, to combat Zephyr. She created another power, something rivaling even the scope of the Final Door, but Iris could not battle directly and so could not use this power herself. So it was left to the harpies. Three harpies had already been to the realm of Iris, and somehow had participated in the spell that created the seals, receiving a lesser portion of power than the wind lords. When this new plan was begun, only Celaeno the Dark was strong enough to reach Iris and receive that new power. The record relates a bizarre transformation, after which the harpy was called Bright Celaeno.” The image that came up on the screen was the one of the winged figure and the seven rainbow stars, pointing over to a glowing white harpy in the center of a spiral of clouds.

“Hey, did she go super?” asked Tails.

“I cannot tell from this,” said the professor, then nodded at Sonic, “But anything might be possible. We have seen how powerful the chaos emeralds can be!”

Sonic smiled and tipped his head in a casual way.

“So defeating Pandora meant wiping out everything? Isn‘t that a little extreme?” asked Amy.

“Perhaps she went mad with power,” the professor hypothesized. “The city of Pandora was destroyed in a single day. Zephyr was freed in the process, but when Bright Celaeno continued to wreak destruction, he fought her and they both were destroyed. After so much trouble avoiding such losses, to have the war end like that! And the remaining wind lords finally left for the shelter Iris had prepared for them, while much of the land was left a barren waste. That is the short history, at least.”

Tails looked confused, and said, “Po said something a little different. I’d like to ask her about it.” Sonic looked thoughtful.

“I am a discerner of the voice of history, my translations are very accurate!” Pickles defended himself.

“We know. Thanks for your help, professor,” Sonic said, standing up and stretching.

-

Knuckles stood in front of the master emerald, returned to its place in the heart of Angel Island, and turned the chaos emerald over in his hand. Ever since he had heard about Iris, another guardian, he had continued to think about his conversation with Podarge. There was so much he didn’t know. “Iris…”

The chaos emerald in his hand glowed and sent a tentative thread of light at the larger gem, and the image of Iris appeared there in a steady glow of light, though much faded. “You have called me again…”

“I-I didn’t do anything!” said Knuckles, startled to see her. “Who are you?”

The image of Iris considered him, smiling softly. “You have a power even you do not fully understand. The power that binds you to power…”

“The emeralds?” Knuckles asked, looking at the master emerald. “What are you talking about? Why are you showing up here again?”

“Only you know. You called me here.”

Knuckles shook his head. “I didn’t. …Were you really a guardian here, like me?”

“…It was a very long time ago. …But being able to speak with you again, I must ask your help.”

The echidna, who had become lost in thought, looked up suddenly. “For what?”

“I cannot dream. The voices of the emeralds will not let me rest. They are troubled.”

Knuckles nodded. “I know. I can sense it, too. But, why?”

“They are afraid. Once, we risked the ruin of the world. I fear it may happen again… Part of this is my fault, but I have no power to act from here. Please, become my hands in the world, and help me to save it from destruction!”

It doesn’t take a lot to convince Knuckles of something at the best of times, and Iris’s voice was so pleading, he was practically teary as he said, “We can save the world! We have to! …But what‘s the problem?”

“Take this with you,” and she removed the circlet from her head and let it go. The half-faded image of it descended slowly down into the master emerald, and Knuckles held his hands out to the crystal as if warming them at a fire, feeling his palms tingle and instinctively reaching out with his will to touch whatever was there.

The circlet reformed as it was drawn out of the emerald and drifted into his hands, solid and real. “What is it?”

“A finding ring. It will help you to find the bright ring, an artifact that was stolen from me, I know not how. The road to me is closed, but so was the road to the house at the back of the wind. Something terrible must be happening. You must find the bright ring before it can be used. With it, I tamed the master emerald, and bent the power of chaos.”

“What do you mean?”

“Their power is called ‘chaos’ because it is infinite, the power of the heart, of thought, of everything. Love and hate, joy and sorrow, peace and rage, what appears as contradiction, yet all together. Because of that, they can be used to destroy, or to protect and heal. They turn thoughts into power, because no matter the thought or wish, there is that same feeling a hundred times over within the gem, to resonate in response to the heart of the wielder. So vast, and yet the will of a wielder with a strong enough heart can use them, without being drowned in their power. And that is only because of the master emerald.”

Knuckles seemed to realize something. “Because it works as a dampener. It has the power to suppress the energy of the chaos emeralds.” Iris nodded.

“I created the bright ring to negate the influence of the master emerald over the others.”

“What??”

Iris closed her eyes. “It was my craft, to gather and divide power. When the seven chaos emeralds are gathered together, their resonance with one another unlocks their potential and that power can flow into the wielder. I considered the master emerald to be a safety measure, a way to keep the power of chaos in check should a wielder with wicked intention claim the chaos emeralds, but I did not realize that without it, the will of a single heart, no matter how strong, would be overwhelmed. Rather than using the power of chaos, the wielder would be used by it, utterly overwhelmed. All the varied colors of chaos, gathered together into one bright radiance! It was my masterpiece, and my mistake.”

“Why did you even try to make something like that?” Knuckles stared at the ring he was holding with both his hands.

“Because of another power that threatened the world, the power of the white wind. If the Final Door is opened, and that power turned loose, the ebb of life and death will race out of control, and destroy the world as we know it. I do not know why the bright ring would be stolen when someone seems to be after the Final Door, since it is perhaps the one instrument capable of overcoming it.”

“Maybe Eggman wants to make sure no one can use it against him.”

“Please, use the finding ring to find the artifact first, before it can be misused! The master emerald itself is threatened, if the ring is wielded against it. There is no one else left for me to ask…”

Knuckles smiled to reassure her. “Count on me.”

-

Pickles had some guest rooms that he let Sonic and his friends use, and the next morning Sonic went out to look for Po, who hadn’t come back yet. The rain had turned to a feathery drizzle that hung in the air a little thicker than fog but hardly strong enough to still be called rain. The wet city glistened in the early morning glow. Sonic did not have far to go, since Po was only sitting on the roof, watching the gray, featureless sky. Sonic jumped onto the roof and walked over beside her, saying, “Kind of wet up here, isn‘t it?”

“I’m used to rain. …What? I‘m not going to apologize, so don‘t ask!”

Sonic didn’t say anything. He sat down beside her, and looked out over the city.

So Po said, “We’re wasting time. But it might not matter, we probably won’t win anyway.”

“Why do you say that? We beat Eggman once already, didn’t we?”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. Even if we stop Robotnik, there’s nowhere left for the wind lords to go, to hide. Iris isn’t around anymore to fix things. How can we make a plan?”

“Not having a plan never stopped me!”

Po looked at him sideways. “I can believe that…”

“This world is worth protecting. There are a lot of wonderful things that happen here, and my friends live here. That’s enough of a reason for me to keep going.”

“But how? How can you keep going when you don’t know what will happen? You might lose everything. Maybe its best to keep what you can, rather than risk it all.”

“No way! That’s like giving up halfway through!”

“It’s weird... You know how I said you remind me of someone? It’s giving you way too much credit, but you remind me of Zephyr.”

“You knew Zephyr?”

“Of course! Everyone knew him! He was a hero-type, too. The title for his share of the white wind was ‘the wind of hope’, because he was so upbeat, and optimistic to the point of being obnoxious, but, everyone really liked him, that‘s why we listened to him.”

“The professor was telling us about Pandora’s war.”

“You already know what happened! I told you, didn’t I? Zephyr lost in the end.”

Sonic scratched his nose. “He said it was a harpy who destroyed the world, and Zephyr.”

Podarge gave the sky an angry look. “Celaeno? She was crazy! But even without Pandora to control Zephyr, he was still stuck under the influence of the spirit box. If it wasn’t for that, he would have survived the fight with Celaeno! It’s the same as if Pandora had destroyed him herself!”

“He got caught, didn’t he?”

“…Yep. Everyone in that war was a fool. The whole war itself was stupid, you shouldn‘t be so eager to start one again. Zephyr made a bad move choosing to stick around in this world, rather than get out while he could. And you know how Pandora tricked him? By appealing to that noble nature of his! She was such a liar, he walked right into a trap, because he had that same sort of hope about the goodness of the world. And everything he cared about got burned up in the fighting!”

Sonic scratched his nose, and sneezed. His quills were getting wet, but he ignored the damp. He thought that Po was trying to say, in an awkward way, that she was worried about him. They were both quiet for a while. Then Sonic said. “It all happened a long time ago.”

Po looked away, scratching at the roof tiles with a talon. “Yep. All in the past, now.”

“We still have to deal with the present. This time, things can be different, because this is our fight, and we’ll figure it out as we go. The threat right now is Eggman and the Final Door.”

Po stood up, and shook the wet off of her. “Thanks for letting me talk, Sonic.”

Sonic shrugged. “No prob, sis.” She smiled at that.

There was a shrill ringing from somewhere in the house below. Lights were turned on, and there was the sound of stumbling and shouting. Sonic stuck his head over the edge of the roof to look down, and saw Amy throw open a window and stick out her head, shouting, “Sonic!”

“I’m right here, Amy!”

“Oh, you are! Sonic, we just got some news! Eggman is up to something under the dead zone!”

“Seriously? Why that place? We beat him there once already!”

Tails elbowed Amy to the side and called up to Sonic, “The energy field in that place is so warped, it took a while to notice anything was happening there! His bots were seen heading into the old mine tunnels. Robotnik might be there too, so it might be where he‘s controlling the winds from!”

“And we can put a stop to everything at once!” Sonic smiled. He was excited that they finally had a lead. “Alright, Eggman, I hope you’re ready!”

[SoDi]

-10- Shadow Box

Sonic and Po raced through the murky landscape as it went from dark grasslands to barren wastes and cracked earth, while Tails and Amy flew above them in the Tornado to keep up. They had left the motorcycle behind with the professor, since it wouldn’t have kept up. The sky was dark with roiling clouds, the perpetually bad weather that clung to this region ever since Robotnik’s experiments here had warped the landscape. They eventually arrived among a nest of large, stony hills riddled with cave openings and the entrances to abandoned mine shafts. Nothing here was moving, but there were tracks on the ground that looked fairly recent.

“Why would Eggman want to be underground?” Po wondered.

Sonic and Tails looked at each other, then Tails said to her, a little impishly, “You don’t have to go in if you’re scared!”

“I’m not scared! I don’t care about some stupid caves…”

“These tracks go everywhere. No knowing how far we have to go before we find Robotnik,” Sonic said, looking at the marks on the ground.

“Maybe we should split up. It might be faster searching,” Tails suggested.

But Amy shook her head. “Is that a good idea? It’s dangerous here. I know, we should use the buddy system!” She grabbed Sonic’s arm. “Sonic, we can go together!”

“I’ll head out alone,” said Po. When they looked at her, she explained, “Splitting up will cover more ground, and besides, you‘ll slow me down.” She ran off toward one of the larger entrances.

“Who are you talking to?” said Sonic, zooming after her. They were gone in a blink.

“Sonic!” said Amy, too late. She glared and crossed her arms. “They are both such brats!”

“So much for having a plan. Let’s go. I guess we’ll meet up eventually,” said Tails, as he and Amy headed in.

The air inside the mines seemed stale, eddying out from the tunnels with a smell of moss and old stone. The cavern walls were purple in the dark, occasionally streaked with shining gray flecks of mica or other colorful stone, and the remains of mining cart tracks littered the ground sporadically in twisted rows curving towards other tunnels that branched away. Smaller creatures scattered ahead of the adventurers, filling the tunnels with the sounds of skittering feet and small wings. Lamps were strung along many of the tunnel walls, enough of them still humming with electrical power to light the way, and their wan yellow light cast oddly green shadows along the dark walls. Po and Sonic ran between lit and shadowed stretches of tunnel, deeper into the earth.

The ground gave way for a third time and Sonic leapt across another pit filled with sharp, broken stone. “This place cramps my style, I can’t get any momentum,” he complained.

“Chasing Eggman here was your idea!”

“But we’ve got to save the world, right?”

“I just want to kick his butt! You take this hero stuff real serious, huh?”

“I don’t have to be a hero. I made you a promise.”

“Quit saying that!”

“Even if I hadn’t, there are some things I just gotta do.” He used a tipped mining cart to launch himself into the air across a large span of broken ground where a number of electrical cables were exposed and still sparking. Something had torn through them, fairly recently. Po followed behind, coasting into the air, and they both hit the ground and kept running. Sonic looked over his shoulder at her and laughed, “What, am I dragging you into this adventure?”

Her own smile showed her fangs. “I’ve got my own reasons to be here. You really do need someone to look after you. What would you do without me?”

“Ha!”

“What is that?” Po asked, looking ahead. They stopped to look over a busted guard bot, its body raked open as if by claws.

“Robotnik is definitely here somewhere, but maybe we’re not the only ones looking for him,” Sonic guessed as they ran on, passing more broken bots and security gates as they went. With no enemies to slow them down, it was only the traps and the natural instability of the tunnels they had to deal with. And following the trail of scrapped bots, they reached a larger chamber where a number of tunnels led off in different directions. And there, standing in the rubble of what must have been a rather impressive machine at one time, were the two taller figures of the harpy sisters. “You two are here?”

Ocypete looked up at Sonic’s voice. “We can’t get away from these pests!”

“Are you here looking for the winds? Are they here?” Po asked them.

Aello crossed her arms. “So, you are after them. You realize that what we do is for Iris, but a bug like you has no business with the lords of the wind!”

“Hey, we’re trying to stop Robotnik from using them to take over the world!” Sonic argued with them.

“Really? That’s a bit too noble a cause for a harpy, don’t you think, Podarge?” Aello asked her.

“There are a lot of reasons to want the winds, and what they carry,” Ocypete agreed. “Run along and play somewhere else. This business is serious, and we don’t need you meddling.”

“I’m entitled!” Po shouted back.

“Don’t we want the same thing? Why can’t we work together?” Sonic asked them.

The harpy sisters looked at each other and smirked. “Some ‘friend’ she’s made, hasn’t she, Aello?”

“Leave Sonic out of this, I’m the one talking to you!” Po said, and Sonic looked confused.

“I’m afraid we take our role very seriously,” said Aello, “If you really are seeking the winds, you’ll have to get past us, first!”

“What?!” Sonic shouted as the green harpy leapt at him, jumping out of the way just as a talon crashed into the ground where he had been standing, gouging out the stone. “Stop this! We don’t have to fight!”

The harpy sisters were very coordinated, each one as fast as Sonic and Po, and so they were able to isolate the smaller adventurers very quickly. Without a speed advantage, Po did not seem to know how to fight, and instead tried to stay ahead of Aello, out of reach of her talons. But Aello did not only have her feet, she reached out with her strong wings and batted Po off the ground and into a wall, diving after her and then pinning her against the rock wall with one broad talon pressed hard over her chest and neck.

Sonic was also in trouble. He didn’t want to fight, and so he also spent his time trying to avoid Ocypete rather than attack her, but he couldn’t outmaneuver her. He jumped up and through a fissure in the wall into a neighboring cave, the opening too small for the harpy to pass through, but she kicked hard with both her feet and broke right through the wall behind him. He turned around, surprised, and Ocypete pulled a chaos emerald out from under her wing. She sang four notes that grew quickly in volume, the emerald glowing, and then sang a final note, a much louder and piercing sound than Podarge had ever made. The air in front of her visibly wavered, and the sharp sound even caused the ceiling here to crack, sending a shower of pebbles and dust falling down on top of the two of them. Sonic clapped his hands over his ears, his head feeling as if it were splitting open. He was right in the center of the sound blast, and it sent him reeling. While he was disoriented, Ocypete threw a heavy punch at his head, pounding him aside, then kicked him while he was down, so that he stayed down.

“Sonic!” said Po, and bit down hard on Aello’s foot. The green harpy shouted in surprise more than pain, but Po managed to drop down to the ground and run beneath the spread wings of Aello, through the broken wall. She rolled across Sonic where he lay on the ground, grabbing the spirit hex off of him as she passed and turning back around to stand between him and Ocypete in one motion. “Leave my brother alone!”

“Brother?” Ocypete said, but then Podarge turned on the small device and they both screamed, their bodies beginning to unravel, hazy around the edges.

Aello had begun to run after her, but stopped on the threshold of the wall as she brushed against the edge of the hex’s effect radius. “Podarge, what are you doing?!”

Ocypete managed to step forward, moving with great difficulty, and Po turned the dial on the device higher, dropping them both to their knees. The chaos emerald rolled out of Ocypete’s hand. Po’s face was strained, but she looked up at the two sisters and managed to say, “You… stay away from us!”

Ocypete fell back and began pushing away along the ground, till Aello could reach her and help her to stand. Ocypete shook her head, leaning on her sister, and said to Po, “So much for pride! He‘s not even a harpy! Maybe you never were, either.”

“Get out! And leave the emerald.”

“You can’t even use it!” said Aello.

“Get out of here!” Po, still in the center of the effect of the spirit hex, was becoming difficult to see beneath the mist rising off her skin. She held the device in her hand out towards them, menacingly.

Aello glared at her. “You’re as heartless as Celaeno was, aren’t you?” But they both fled away into the other cavern and down a tunnel, swiftly out of sight.

Po turned the hex off with a gasp and crawled over to Sonic. “Sonic?” she said, but he only groaned as she shook him. He was just semi-conscious, but seemed fine otherwise.

“I can’t wait around for you to wake up, blue-boy,” she said, shaking her head and putting the spirit hex into one of his hands, closing his fingers over it. “Stay safe, okay?” Then she ran off in the direction the sisters had gone, scooping up the dropped emerald as she went.

-

“Aaiiihhh!”

In one of the larger caverns deep within the mines, there was a sudden trembling in the ground, and then the screech of metal and a frightened wail as a beat-up mine cart careened out of a high tunnel and off the broken end of a set of tracks, the bridge long ago fallen down. Tails grabbed Amy and hovered in the air as the cart plummeted below and crashed, breaking up into dozens of jagged pieces. He then set her down and they both collapsed on the ground, catching their breath.

Amy pounded the ground with a fist. “Whose idea was it to try riding that old mine cart, anyway?”

“You’re the one who didn’t want to walk!”

“These mines are a menace! And who builds a track with a vertical drop like a roller coaster? This isn’t a theme park!”

“I don’t know, I thought it was exciting,” Tails said.

Amy stood back up and brushed herself off. “You and Sonic really are alike. Who else thinks like that? Some excitement…”

“Hey! What’s that?” Tails asked, noticing the glowing red eyes of a robot perched above them. With a clattering sound, a few dozen other metal eyes opened, and Amy and Tails were surrounded. “This is bad…”

Amy pulled out her hammer and rolled back her shoulders. “I am not in a good mood right now!” Then she yelled and jumped forward at the nearest bot, pounding it into its neighbor and crushing them both.

The other bots began to fire at them. Tails pulled out an odd looking machine that he could hold in one hand that began firing beads of yellow light, the shots opening up like nets as they struck the bots and pinning them stickily onto the ground or against the walls. Behind him, Amy was clearing a path out of the cave as more bots continued to arrive, allowing them an exit.

“If these bots are here, we must be going in the right direction!” Tails said, as a shot whizzed past his shoulder. He fired in return, and then hovered up into the air as two bots charged at him. They crashed into each other instead, and he flew ahead, shooting at a bot that had come up behind Amy unnoticed.

“Thanks, Tails!”

They continued pressing forward, though they heard the sound of more bots ahead of them. Rounding the bend, Tails collided with Po, who had been running from another swarm of machines. Those swooped down on the three, guns firing madly, and Po grabbed onto Tails as she darted out of the line of fire, carrying him behind a stone column that gave them some cover from the attacks. “You okay?” she asked.

He nodded, and then leaned around the side of the stone column, firing out at the bots. Amy ran past them both and continued smashing everything in reach, and Po leapt out behind her to kick over two that she missed.

“About time you started helping out!” Amy shouted at Po.

Jumping out of the way of another blast, Po clung to the wall for a moment with her talons, and shouted down to Amy with a laugh, “What’s with that hammer, pinky? Are you compensating for something?”

“What?!” said Amy, swinging the weapon into a bot and throwing it toward the wall just inches from the harpy.

Po watched it crumple down to the ground. She whistled as if impressed, then dropped down beside it.

Tails clicked the gun he was holding a few more times, but nothing else was coming out. There were only three bots left. “Out of ammo!” While Amy pounded one and Po kicked another hard enough to crunch its head down into its torso, Tails jumped out and spun himself into a ball, knocking the last one over with a strong smack.

He looked up, about to say something to Po, only to see her running down a side tunnel. “Wait for us!” he said.

“In a hurry!” Po called back over her shoulder, before she was too far for her voice to be heard at all.

“We should follow her,” Tails said. He and Amy were left standing in a small field of broken robots almost as deep as he was tall.

“Why? She doesn’t seem to want our help enough to wait! And where’s Sonic?”

“When we catch up to her, we can ask!” and Tails began running down the tunnel Po had vanished into.

“She’s probably lost! Did you think of that?” said Amy, but she ran after him.

-

Knuckles held the finding ring out in front of him like a dowsing rod, trying to concentrate. Ever since it had led him underground, it had become harder to use, and now he wasn’t getting any sense of a pull from it at all. He sighed, holding the ring at his side as he walked on. Rounding a corner, he saw a familiar blue shape lying in the middle of one of the cavernous rooms of the mines. “Sonic? Hey!” he said, running over to the hedgehog, who was just starting to wake up.

“Someone get the license number on that truck?” he mumbled, sitting up. “Huh? Knuckles?”

“Taking a nap in a place like this?”

“What? You say something?”

“Something wrong with your ears?”

“My head is ringing…” Sonic lifted a hand to rub at his temple, and noticed he was holding something in the other. Opening his palm, he blinked at the spirit hex.

“What happened to you?”

“…I don’t know.” He looked at the hex a moment longer, his brow furrowing, then stood up, looking around. But only he and Knuckles were here. “Come on, we should keep moving. Eggman is down here somewhere, up to no good again.”

“Yeah, I thought as much. Alright, I’ll help you out.”

-

Podarge was following what she thought was the trail of the harpy sisters. It led a long way down into the earth, the tunnels getting darker and narrower as she went, and she was getting more nervous, but she moved with a purpose. A large metal door in the tunnel wall was indistinct enough that at first she ran past it. It took another moment to realize what it was and then she ran back. It seemed like the door must have been part of more recent construction, since it was not the sort of architecture found elsewhere in the mine. She went inside.

There was an enormous room at the end of a short tunnel, the walls lined with metal panels rather than naked rock like the rest of the caves. The ceiling was too high overhead to see with the lights out, and there were also a number of platforms at different heights around the edges of the room. Po walked forward tentatively, her talons clicking on the cold floor.

With a heavy thud and electrical hum, the lights flared on, momentarily blinding her. Illuminated, the room held a number of large, strange machines and there were viewing monitors arranged around most of the platforms, though all were currently dark. “When did you have time to build all this, when you weren’t getting your butt kicked?” Podarge asked Robotnik, as he rose up from an elevator at the back of the room.

“So many visitors today! I would be happy to entertain you as well, but I have finished my research here, and have no further need of you.”

“What?! Who else was here? Spill it, egghead!” and Po began running across the room. Square metal panels began shooting up from the floor to try to block her way, and she had to run around them. They slowed her down, but they could hardly keep her away. As she leapt up to the platform with a quick charge, she skidded across the ground, through the flickering hologram of Robotnik. “Huh?!”

Her concentration broken by her surprise, the next panel rose up and she crashed head first into it. Immediately three more panels rose up nearby and slid up against the first, forming walls around her, and then a fourth folded up from the side and snapped down like a lid, leaving her trapped.

Cramped and in the dark, she began screaming and kicking back and forth between the close walls. Outside, and in fact standing on a different platform, the real Robotnik made a villainous laugh. “Mwahaha! That should keep you out of trouble for awhile. If you‘re here, that blue buffoon must be as well! I am looking forward to-”

“Letmeoutletmeoutletmeoutletme-!” Po was still screaming from inside the box, which could only muffle the sound so much.

“Grrrrr…. Shut up! I’m trying to monologue about my brilliant plan!”

“Letmeoutletmeoutletmeout!!”

“Oh, never mind!” and Robotnik walked over to the elevator and rode it down, the floor twisting shut solidly behind him.

-

“This is going to take forever, we don’t know which way to go!” said Sonic.

Knuckles stopped him as they ran down another tunnel. “Wait, do you feel that? The earth around here has been shaking for a while now.”

“Might be Robotnik. Or maybe an energy reactor?” Sonic thought, nodding as he noticed the vibration. “Whatever it is, we should try finding it.”

“It’s stronger here, we must be getting closer.” They ran out of the tunnel into another larger cavern. Crystals grew from the walls, still partially buried in the rock, glinting in the faint lantern glow. Another half dozen tunnels stretched out on all sides.

“What tunnel should we take?”

“We don’t know where they lead. Besides, the shaking is coming from below. So let’s make our own tunnel,” Knuckles said, smiling, and began digging in the middle of the floor.

“…Well, I guess I have to trust you when it comes to being underground,” Sonic said, raising his hands up behind his head. After Knuckles had made a bit of progress, which didn’t take very long given how quickly he could shovel earth out of the way, Sonic jumped down and helped by tossing larger rocks back up out of the hole.

A dozen feet down, the ground beneath them began to give way. There was nothing here to grab onto but the wall, so Knuckles jammed his spiked fist into the side of the hole and held on as the ground finished falling away, Sonic clinging to his ankles. The dirt and stones fell down perhaps another twenty feet before disappearing with a splash. “Water?!”

“Must be an underground lake. It’s not that uncommon,” said Knuckles. “Hey, quit that!”

Sonic had started trembling so hard that he risked shaking Knuckles loose from the cavern roof. “Yeah, great plan Knuckles!”

“This is still the direction we need to go in!”

“No way! We can go around!”

“Weren’t you the one who said we should hurry?” Knuckles made a small smile as he let go of the cavern ceiling and they began to drop. “Just hold your breath!”

“Wait, don’t-! Aah!”

They hit the water with a crash and Sonic began thrashing just below the surface, making ‘glub-glub’ sorts of noises. Nearby, Knuckles’ head and shoulders rose up out of the water as he stood. The water was only about chest deep, and he reached down and grabbed Sonic’s head, pulling it up into the air. “Stand up, already!”

“Wah- oh.” Sonic calmed down once he realized he had some footing. He splashed water into the echidna’s face. “You did that on purpose!”

“If you have that much of a problem, why don’t you learn to swim?!”

They looked around. The water stretched out in every direction, the walls of the cavern turning into pebbled banks around the edges of the lake. There was not a whole lot of light here to see with, but the water did seem to flow through a tunnel nearby. “Now what?”

“Let’s head for that tunnel. Be careful, the ground might be uneven, you don’t want to step in a hole. …Oh, quit whining!” and he splashed back at Sonic as the hedgehog began making nervous noises again.

They climbed up onto the slope that followed a wall of the tunnel, which kept them out of the water, and began walking. It became brighter as they went, and they began to hear a roaring sound ahead of them, so neither was too surprised when the water led to a waterfall crashing down into the largest cavern they had yet encountered. Far below the cavern floor was another small lake, but ledges around the sides of the cave, and platforms made from stone columns of differing heights like huge mushrooms rising from the water below, made it possible for them to start heading across the room without dropping down again. “Was the vibration just the waterfall?” Knuckles wondered as they climbed out onto the first ledge nearby. From here, they could see wheels built into the wall below the waterfall, spinning as the water churned over them. It seemed likely that those were being used to generate power.

The light here wasn’t created by lanterns as it was elsewhere in the mines, but by more advanced light panels built into the walls. One side of the cavern was completely covered in metal, making the cave look a little like a half finished room. “Looks like Eggman was here. But where is he now?” Sonic asked, leaping up onto another one of the stone platforms.

“We came in the back way, so to speak. Maybe he doesn’t know we’re here yet.”

“Oh, don’t I?” said the voice of Robotnik from above them, as if cued.

“Show yourself!” said Knuckles, spinning around but not able to see where the doctor was speaking from.

“I know what you’re up to, and I’m here to stop you!” Sonic said, crossing his arms and shouting at the ceiling.

“Oh, don’t you think I know you stole some data from me in Silver City? That was hardly even a set back, but I’ll be sure to repay the gesture today!”

“Are you after the Final Door? You monster!” said Knuckles, still trying to spot where the voice was coming from while Sonic just stood casually and waited.

“I am Doctor Robotnik, whose brilliant mind shall unite the world in one global rule! Mine!”

The hedgehog shrugged. “For being so smart, you’re a real slow learner! Where are the wind spirits? Haven’t you already figured out that anything that powerful has no reason to follow your orders? You’re going to wind up with another mess you can’t handle and need us to bail you out!”

“Don’t be so cheeky with me, hedgehog! And I need not worry about lack of control, the Final Door was designed for the sole purpose of absolute mastery over the white wind. The element of control is already achieved, you see, and I need only to claim it! This time, victory will be mine!”

“What do you think you’re going to do with something like that even if you get it?!” Knuckles asked in a shout, frustrated by the invisibility of the doctor.

“What can I say? Me and limitless power, like a bee drawn to nectar… or like you to a trap!”

Sonic yawned. “So stop yapping and start fighting already!”

“Fool! It’s on its way.”

“It?” asked Knuckles, as the metal wall began folding back, whatever was behind it pushing outward, and a massive machine pressed into the room.

“The V-Mega!” Robotnik announced, still disembodied. “Ha! Do you think I have been idle? Since you took that data from me, even if you had the capacity to understand it, my technology has progressed by leaps and bounds!”

The wall panels, as well as some seemingly superfluous cables and metal scraps, continued to fall away as the machine stepped clear of the breaking wall, then rose up in a standing position, the surface tingling with white-blue energy. This machine was more anthropomorphic than the other two V-Series, but sleeker and without the needless details the Egg Benedict had sported. Its hooked limbs were polished metal and yet seemed to move fluidly, without noticeable joints or seams.

Sonic, still calm, pulled out the spirit hex and twisted it on, then threw it at the V-Mega where it clung to the side of the machine as if magnetized. The white-blue energy pulled away from it momentarily, as if the device was disrupting the energy somehow.

“An anti-spirit field? Where did you manage to find that, hedgehog?” came the voice of Robotnik.

Sonic scratched his nose. “You aren’t the only one good with machines, egghead. I got friends in high places.”

“It won’t be enough to help you!” The spirit hex flickered and then shattered, and most of the blue-white energy on the robot vanished with it. The machine, however, was still moving. “Bwahaha! Didn’t I tell you my technology had progressed? Besides, the V-Mega is powered by a being of this world, and cannot be banished so easily!”

“Is one of the wind lords inside it?” Sonic said, now on his guard.

The arm of the V-Mega lashed out, stretching to reach all the way to the platform where Sonic and Knuckles were standing. It was amazingly fast, and they were both struck down, but the attack had also managed to crack the stone itself and the whole column began to collapse into its neighbor. Wincing from the blow, Sonic and Knuckles still managed to jump onto that next platform before the first one fell down into the water below.

“Careful, Knuckles! It’s fast, but I can still outrun it! I’ll distract it, and you get in closer!”

“Right!” The echidna threw himself over the side and glided up underneath a different platform, moving along out of sight while Sonic ran. The columns had begun to act like dominos, falling into one another. The continued attacks of the V-Mega weren’t helping the stability of the room, but Sonic managed to stay out of reach until every platform had been knocked aside and he was left on a ledge on the far side of the room, out of reach of the machine’s attacks.

“Ha! Now how you gonna’ get me?” Sonic taunted.

The V-Mega flickered and vanished. Before Sonic could wonder what had happened, it reappeared behind him and struck him with another whip-like arm, throwing him off the ledge.

Sonic managed to land, though awkwardly, on the stub of one of the stone platforms, now just a pillar. “What?! Did it teleport?” He jumped between the tops of pillars as the V-Mega continued to teleport one step behind, trying to get in another blow. Sonic made it back up to a ledge on the wall of the cavern and ran around to the metal side of the room. When the V-Mega followed behind, Knuckles leapt from where he had managed to climb and brought both fists down heavily into the machine’s chest.

The chest panel parted and curled away for a moment, revealing a large glassy crystal at its core shot through with arcing blue-white light. At its center was a much smaller form, suspended inert in the way a fly would be suspended in amber.

Sonic was so shocked that he stumbled and fell, turning round to stare. “Shadow?!”

[SoDi]

-11- The Ultimate Battery

“Shadow!” Sonic called out again, as the broken metal husk of the machine curled back up and over the glassy spirit box containing the black hedgehog, closing seamlessly again and showing no sign of having taken the hit.

Knuckles continued to fall past the machine and landed on the ground only to be flung back by a whip-like strike of its limb, crashing him into Sonic. Two limbs then flowed outward, lightning quick, and snatched them both up, squeezing until they both screamed.

Robotnik laughed. “Over already? You disappoint me! Bwahaha!”

From within the V-Mega’s grip, Sonic managed a weak smile and said, “I hate to disappoint my fans!”

“You were right about one thing, Sonic,” the voice of Robotnik went on happily, “I have no need of minions more powerful than me, they have the unpleasant habit of rebelling. For a time I assumed that the most powerful tools would need to be free-thinking, capable of learning and adapting independently.” The V-Mega squeezed harder.

“Can’t… breathe!” wheezed Knuckles.

“Spirit boxes are marvelous inventions, and they can be miraculously improved! They completely superimpose the will of the user, which would be me, over the subject of imprisonment! A powerful being can supply not only endless energy, but also wondrous strength! I was surprised myself, that this technology was compatible with Shadow. Now, he can truly live up to his potential as the ultimate weapon, without a conscience to get in the way!”

“That’s low, even for you, Eggman!” Sonic said, still struggling. He managed to pull an arm out, but the silvery limb of the V-Mega was slowly expanding and was already covering his neck. “When Shadow gets out of there, he is going to be really, really mad!”

“Then we’ll have to ensure that he doesn’t, won’t we?” In his control room, Robotnik was busy reading over the monitors showing the condition of the V-Mega. He seemed surprised by the readouts tracking the status of the robot, and twitched his mustache in approval. “And now, this is the end for you both!”

“Shadow! I know you’re in there, snap out of it!” Sonic shouted as the silvery metal rose up over his face, preventing him from saying anything more.

-

Amy and Tails had made their way to the metal door in the tunnel and, finding it still ajar, wandered inside.

“Do you hear that?” asked Tails. There was a muffled gibbering sound coming from the box at the back of the room.

Amy walked closer, climbing up next to the box and looking it over. It was dented outward in a number of places, but too solid to have broken from the inside. “See what Po got herself into? Still, we better help her out,” and hefting her hammer she swung it hard at a corner of the metal box, warping it enough to allow the lid to spring back open.

Podarge flung herself immediately out of the box, falling limply against Amy with her arms squeezed around the pink hedgehog’s shoulders. She couldn’t even stand, and her eyes were big and wobbly with tears. “A-A-Amyyyy….” she sobbed.

Amy thought of saying something sarcastic again, but the harpy looked so pathetic that she just patted her on the head. “There, there.”

It took a little time to calm Po down, so Tails made himself busy investigating the rest of the room. Finding a terminal in the machinery, he began trying to override some of the systems, and eventually forced the elevator back open. The lift platform rose to the surface. “Hey, if Robotnik went this way, we can follow him!”

They heard a rumbling in the ground below them, and the lights flickered and died. “Did you do something, Tails?” asked Amy.

“I think that was a surge of some kind. Something must be drawing a whole lot of power!” Some sort of emergency power must have kicked in, as secondary lighting came on, but the rest of the machinery still seemed to be unresponsive.

“It might have something to do with Sonic. I don’t know where else he would be,” Po told them.

“Then we have to go, now!” said Amy.

Amy pounded the now useless elevator platform into a wall of the shaft, and Tails hovered himself and the girls down until they all reached the bottom. They emerged in another large metal room filled with odd machines, including a wall lined with tubes, large enough to hold bodies but currently empty. “What’s Eggman been doing here?” Tails wondered, but the control panels and monitors were all dark.

“It’s a waste of time just standing around and wondering,” said Amy. “Let’s keep going.”

They ran into a hall and past some other doors, the floor lit with small emergency lights. They stopped in front of a door with a green light above the frame. Tails told them, “I think there must still be power in this room, we should check it out!”

“There’s no handle,” Po said.

Tails put an ear against it. “I hear something on the other side. It must open somehow! Maybe there’s a keypad, I can override the lock then.”

“It’s just a door!” said Amy, and swung her hammer hard enough to knock it in. “There. Unlocked.”

Po’s eyebrows went up. “You get scary when you get serious.”

Amy smiled at her, and they went inside.

A dark panel of glass on the far wall was a one-way window looking out into a large cavernous area, where some sort of robot was flailing around. Eggman sat in his hovercraft in a circular control booth nearby, laughing. As the three came in, he and the hovercraft rose up and turned to face them. “Too late!” He hit a button and the wall opened, and he flew out and above the silvery machine, out of reach of any direct attack, but still able to control the machine from his hovercraft. “None of you are strong enough to stop the V-Mega!”

Po leapt down, out of the room, and kicked at the machine, but she was knocked away. Tails ran over to the controls Robotnik had just left to see if he could do something from there, while Amy stood at the edge of the room looking down. “What is that robot?!”

Knuckles strained and broke free of the V-Mega’s hold, jumping at the machine and throwing a flurry of punches at it. He could make some marks on it, but after a few seconds the tears would close back up again. He looked over at Po and said, “It can regenerate! It has Sonic, we still have to help him!” Knuckles then jumped at the silvery limb that was holding the blue hedgehog and punched clean through it, severing the arm.

Po nodded when she saw the strike work, and when the next whip-like limb thrashed at her she spun around and kicked into it as it passed, carving the end of it away. Once separated from the body of the machine, the ends of the limbs darkened and turned hard. She continued to kick at the bot, but it teleported away and hit her in the back from a distance.

While she fought, Knuckles ran to where Sonic had fallen. He was encased in hard metal, only a hand and both feet and the ends of some blue quills showing through, and the echidna didn’t want to just pound at the metal since it would hurt Sonic. “How long can you hold your breath?” He stood back up and shouted at Tails, who was still working in the room in the wall, “Do you have a power ring?!”

“Here!” said Amy, grabbing one off of Tails and tossing it down. Knuckles caught it and pushed it into Sonic’s hand, whose fingers closed over the object as it began to glow. The metal encasing him buckled and then burst away as he began a tight spin, and Knuckles shielded his face.

Sonic gasped and stood up. “…This is not my day.” He looked over to where the V-Mega was chasing Po along the edge of the room. “Knuckles, if it’s a V-Series, it should be using a chaos emerald. If we can remove that, the whole thing should shut down!”

“But that’s Shadow in there,” said Knuckles, as they ran after the bot. “Can we really beat him?”

“It’s just Eggman using Shadow’s power! We can still do this. We have to!”

In the control room, Tails was trying to make sense of the panels as quickly as he could. “I can’t tell what this is running off of, it seems like several power sources are all feeding into a room somewhere else, but it wouldn’t be for the V-Series that‘s fighting Sonic. That should be able to supply its own power.”

“How is this helping anything!?” Amy shouted at him. “We need to stop that robot, who cares what else Robotnik is doing with the energy?”

“There must be a reason it’s draining! And with that much energy on the move, maybe we could cross it with the V-Series and short it out temporarily!” He looked around the controls again, then outside. “Hey, the water wheels are sending power through a generator above the waterfall! I could blow it from here, but we’ll want to get the safety casing off first!”

“Fine,” said Amy, and she jumped out and down onto a ledge of the cavern, then began running along the wall towards the waterfall.

Meanwhile, Po, Knuckles, and Sonic were all carving away at the V-Mega, but it was fast enough that for every blow they got in they took another strong hit, and the machine continued to teleport across the room to keep them confused. When it appeared behind Knuckles and hit him away, Po jumped towards it with a jarring shriek. The metal rippled but did not break, and then a limb struck at her head and knocked her over the side. Knuckles jumped over the ledge and glided to catch her before she fell into the water, but she was stunned.

Sonic watched them both reach another ledge safely, thereby noticing that Amy was on the move towards the waterfall. He seemed to realize what she was up to, and turned back to the V-Mega. “What’s the matter, Shadow? I’m still standing!” He raced away, along the wall towards the waterfall as well. “We’re going to have to knock some sense into you!”

The V-Mega warped closer and then shot another limb towards the hedgehog. At that moment, Amy had made it to the wall above the waterfall and after several hard smacks with her hammer managed to knock the metal cover of the generator loose, so that it fell away. Sonic grabbed her up and jumped back again just as the arm of the V-Mega shot towards him, and Tails in the control room directed the power to loop back into the generator. A blinding arc of light raced up from behind the waterfall, exploding the wheels out from the wall and then erupting from the generator and out onto the arm and body of the V-Mega. The flowing metal of the body seemed to stiffen momentarily with the shock of the blast. Knuckles had been climbing at top speed back up the wall, Po still hanging onto him. Now the echidna threw himself once more at the bot, and this time his punches made better progress, opening up the chest again. “Now, Podarge!” he said, and Po gave one more shriek so that, without the silvery body to shield it, the crystalline substance of the spirit box cracked and splintered.

Sonic dropped down with one more spin attack and broke through the splintering heart of the V-Mega, emerging on the other side with Shadow over one shoulder and a chaos emerald in the other hand. “Teamwork wins again!”

Near the ceiling, Robotnik’s broad mustache twitched, and with a terrified look he fled through a tunnel. “Idiots! You’ll bring the whole mine crashing down on you!”

The area had already taken a beating during the fight, but now the room really was crumbling, stone from the ceiling splashing down into the water below. Sonic carried Shadow and Amy ran while Knuckles climbed and Po jumped back to the relative shelter of the control room where Tails was. They all took cover behind the control panels to shelter them from the dust and debris falling into the room as the larger cavern beyond finished giving way. Eventually the collapse slowed and the shaking subsided, though the ground still shook with collapses that must have been taking place elsewhere in the tunnel complexes.

“Maybe that energy was being used for something important after all,” Amy said, once it had become quiet enough to hear each other again.

“Dang it!” said Knuckles, pounding his fists together.

“Knuckles, what are you doing in the mines?” Tails asked him, as they all began standing up.

The echidna smiled and shrugged. “Treasure hunting. But I guess all I found was a rotten egg.”

“Hey, Shadow?” Sonic said, noticing as the black hedgehog began coming around. Even before Shadow’s eyes had reopened, his arm punched out and knocked Sonic away. “Ow!”

Shadow finished coming awake and saw who they were. Looking at Sonic he said, “Sorry.”

“Your head ringing, too?” Sonic asked, relieved that Shadow seemed to be himself again.

“What?”

“How were you generating that much power?” Po asked him. “You aren’t a spirit.”

Knuckles crossed his arms over his chest. “He can use chaos control. That’s probably why the V-Mega could use some of his chaos powers.”

Shadow stood and glared at all of them, then said to Po, “Who are you? What are the rest of you doing here?”

“I’m Podarge Fleet-Footed!”

“…Podarge?”

Sonic tipped his chin at him, answering, “We’re here saving you! Ol’ Eggy just turned you into the ultimate battery!”

Knuckles nodded. “How could you let Robotnik trick you into something like that?”

Sonic put his hands behind his head and looked away. “Look who’s talking…”

“Yeah, I- hey!” Knuckles said.

Shadow stared at his hand, and made a fist, scowling deeply. “That doctor…”

Amy wondered, “So Eggman was under the dead zone just to try some experiment with Shadow?”

The black hedgehog disagreed, “No, we were here creating an army.” He looked around the room, at the dark computer monitors and lifeless controls.

“What do you mean, ‘we’?” Sonic asked him, his expression serious.

Shadow kept his own face blank, but said calmly, “We were in the middle of tracking the last wind spirit, with the V-Mega. He wasn’t cooperating…” he said, staring at his fist and thinking.

“What?!” Knuckles asked, his surprise mirrored in the others, except for Po.

She only looked curious. “So, you can teleport, like that machine did? You kidnapped the spirits from the house at the back of the wind!”

Shadow nodded. “I separated them, so that we could capture them with less of a fight. Robotnik won’t try to open the Final Door until he knows he can control it.”

“Things would start making sense,” Sonic realized.

“Wait, did you steal from Iris, too?!” Knuckles said, shoving at Shadow’s shoulder only to be shoved back, harder. He skidded a few feet along the ground, and then asked another question, “Where is the bright ring?!”

“Watch yourself, Knuckles.”

The echidna pulled out the finding ring. “I have to find that ring! The master emerald is in danger, if Robotnik has it!”

“Like we don’t have enough problems,” Tails said to himself.

“Why would you team up with Robotnik?” Amy shouted at Shadow.

“Duh. He wants the Final Door,” said Po.

“But, why?” Sonic asked him. “You’re practically immortal as it is. You suddenly get an urge for world conquest? That‘s not like you. Wait a minute… you wouldn‘t-”

“What I do is none of your business. I appreciate you’re help just now, but stay out of my way!” said Shadow, taking the chaos emerald from Sonic.

Tails shook his head. “But, Robotnik betrayed you, so you know better than to want a power like that from him now, right?”

“You wouldn’t work with him again, would you? That would just be stupid, whatever you’re after!” Amy said.

“His last mistake. The plan was to launch an assault out of Alydia, the mountain city, so that’s where I’ll catch up with him.”

“That’s in the Blue Ridge zone, right? What’s in Alydia?” asked Amy.

“By now, Robotnik’s army, and his newest base.”

“Oh,” she said.

“And if he isn’t there?” Sonic asked him.

“He can try to hide from me while he can, but he’s a walking dead man!” Shadow said, his face contorting with rage, and he teleported away.

Sonic sighed. “If he didn’t have it coming to him, I’d feel sorry for Eggman right about now.”

“Whoa…” said Po, surprised to watch Shadow vanish.

“We need to get to Alydia!” said Sonic. “I wish Shadow would have told us more about what we’re going to be up against. But that just means we have to hurry, too.”

The spikes on Po‘s back twitched. “But he did say Robotnik was using this place to create an army, so this place still might have something to do with the wind lords. I have to know, so I’ll catch up with you. Tails, do you know where the energy was being sent, before we blew everything up? That‘s probably where I‘ll find out.”

“Po, you want to stay down here?” Amy asked, surprised.

“No way! Consider me already gone! But I have to do this first.”

“One question,” Sonic said to her, and gave her one of the few serious looks she had yet seen him make. “We still don’t know what the Final Door really is. Podarge, what actually happens when the Final Door is opened? It’s a strong power, but it’s dangerous because it can be misused, right?”

Po shook her head slowly, “I don‘t actually know. This stuff was never my problem. But Iris wanted it to never be opened.”

“Maybe it can’t be controlled?” Knuckles asked, looking at the finding ring in his hand. “Opening the door would set the white wind loose, and the flow of life and death would be altered, the barrier between dimensions would break down, everything could...”

“What does that mean?” asked Sonic.

Knuckles closed his eyes. “I’m not sure, but it’s even more dangerous than the bright ring that I’m looking for.”

“All four seals are needed to open the door that wide, and one is already broken! Anyway, it won’t matter if I can find the other wind lords first,” said Po. “Tails, about finding that army?”

“I bet I could find the place Eggman was working,” said Tails. “So I’ll go with you. You shouldn’t go alone, anyway.”

“Tails?” asked Sonic.

The fox nodded. “It’s alright, I’m sure it won’t take us too long. You be careful, too, Sonic.”

Sonic smiled. “Alright, we can leave it to you. See you on the surface!” He, Amy, and Knuckles left the room and ran down the hall, looking for their exit.

Po stretched her arms behind her head. “You didn’t have to do that, Tails.”

“I’m sure Sonic would have gone to help you, but I can also understand why he’s worried. Shadow is a friend of ours. …Sonic might be fast, but he can’t be everywhere at once.”

Po nodded. “Let’s go, we don’t want to keep them waiting.”

“It’ll be that direction,” and he led her out of the room and down a different hall.

-

Amy led Sonic and Knuckles back the way she had come with Tails. At the elevator shaft, Sonic bounced up the sides while Knuckles carried Amy and climbed. Back in the tunnels, wherever there had been a collapse the echidna could dig them through it, so they were making quick progress. If there were any bots left from Amy’s last trip through, the recent activity must have scared them all off.

“Shadow really was mad. But we aren’t going to try saving Robotnik, are we?” Amy asked Sonic.

“That’s something between them. I’m more worried about what happens after that.”

“But Shadow is out for revenge, he isn’t going to be cooperating with the doctor again,” Knuckles said.

Sonic sighed. “I’m not sure why Shadow thought he needed Eggman, but even alone, he still might want the Final Door.”

“Why??” Amy argued. “He’s not our enemy, Sonic!”

“I know. Still, even if Shadow thinks he’s doing the right thing… I might have to stop him.”

“What’s he trying to do? Hey, Eggman didn’t memory wipe him again, did he?” Knuckles asked.

Sonic shook his head. “He wouldn’t have needed to. Amy, remember what Po said in the wind shrine, about what the Final Door can do?”

She thought it over, then her eyes opened wide. “But, no way!”

“What?” Knuckles asked, feeling outside the loop.

Sonic stared off down the tunnel as they finally neared the exit, his look distant. “I’m going to ask him myself. Shadow…”

This post has been edited by SoDi: 24 January 2010 - 08:27 PM

[SoDi]

-12- Widdershins

Tails had seen enough of the map of the mine’s power grid in the control room to know where to go. They came to a three-way split and paused while he tried to get his bearings.

“We aren’t going to get lost, are we?” Po asked, looking at him sideways.

“Hey, I just need a second!”

Then he noticed as a pale sphere began to take shape behind the harpy’s head, a small pair of clawed hands emerging from its sides as it opened a pair of googly red eyes. It rolled back and forth through the air, keeping behind Po’s head as she looked around. Tails‘ own face went pale. “P-P-Po?”

“What?” she said, and turned to look over her shoulder. The specter vanished as she turned, so she looked back at Tails and scolded, “What’s with that face? You’re creeping me out!” The ghost faded into view again the moment she had turned back to Tails.

“There is something behind me, isn’t there?” Po asked, and this time when she looked behind, slowly, the ghost remained visible, mere inches from her face. A jagged line of a mouth appeared, as it smiled. “Aaack!”

Tails and Po ran away as the small ghost chased them. But as they turned a bend in the tunnel, a trio of ghosts was already there, gnashing their teeth at them gleefully. The two adventurers screamed and skidded to a stop, then ran down a side tunnel as the ghosts began floating after them, laughing with low, echoing voices.

“Why are there ghosts now?!” asked Po.

“Maybe the bots had scared them off before, but they came back!”

Because the tunnels remained treacherous, Tails and Po couldn’t just outrun the ghosts, and occasionally a new one would drop down from the ceiling or out of the walls and join the pack already chasing them. Eventually they came to a place where the tunnel opened up into a larger cave, poorly lit and with a large metal door shut tight at the end. They stopped and wheeled around, prepared to fight, when the ghosts halted and all of them gasped, their faces showing large frowns. The ghosts quickly fled back the way they came.

“What was that about?” asked Po. She put her hands on her hips and nodded, “Guess they knew we were going to get serious!”

“Umm… Or, they were afraid of that.” Tails pointed up at the dark ceiling above them. But the ceiling wasn’t actually dark, just covered with something. That substance seemed to waver and then began to drop down in viscous blobs that shaped themselves silently into silhouettes, so inky black that no features of any kind were visible, no faces nor even the glint of eyes, even though there was light enough here to see by. Tails and Po could only guess at their real shapes as the silhouettes turned, allowing outlines of clawed arms or horns or fanged jaws to become visible. There were four of them, holding still, making absolutely no sound.

“…What are these things?” said Po, and at the sound of her voice, as if they had been listening, the silhouettes began charging at them, still soundless as they moved. “Oh drat!!”

Tails jumped back to the door and began pulling at the mechanical lever that seemed to be holding it shut while Po took a stand a little ways in front of him, to buy him some time. “It’s stuck!”

“Just keep working on it! Hey, over here, inky!” she called at the shades, and they stopped for a moment as if to listen, flickering. “Can you hear me? That’s right, yo’ mama was an ink-blob, too!”

She ran off along the cave wall, drawing the shades away. Tails was tired of tugging at the lever, then noticed a metal pin jammed in above it. He jumped up and pushed it away, and the lever began to rotate, the door cranking open. “Po!”

Po had let herself be backed into a corner, but she made a standing jump that allowed her to clear the heads of the taller silhouettes, hit the ground and ran back towards the door that Tails had opened. She ran in behind him even as the door began closing again with a heavy thud, the lever cranking back to its original position. This side had no lever, and no way to open the door. “Guess it’s a one-way,” Po said, looking anxious.

“Then we should keep moving forward,” Tails said. “Uh-oh. There are more?” They turned around to see another of the silhouettes blocking the tunnel, this one larger, with wide, clawed hands.

It charged at Tails, and Po gave a harpy shriek at it as it ran past, but the silhouette only ran faster. Tails jumped and hovered out of the way, and the thing’s claw swept past him, scooping up Po instead. It squeezed all the air out of her, and she couldn’t continue making the noise. Tails dropped down against its chest with a spin attack, burrowing partway in and ripping shreds of inky shadow away from its body, fragments that looked like burnt paper that quickly vanished in the air. The body of the monstrous thing was yielding, as if it were spongy or not quite substantial, and surprisingly, painfully cold.

The silhouette let go of Po, who bounced against the floor and launched herself at its chest, throwing a kick against its already weakened middle, tearing it the rest of the way through. The whole thing shuddered and flickered and then collapsed into a flurry of ashy shreds.

Po shook her head as the last of it vanished. “That looked like what Eggman was keeping in the V-Series, back in Scrap City. I guess it‘s probably true, then.”

“What?”

“When that Shadow guy said ‘creating’ an army, he didn’t mean Eggman was making more machines. With the power of even one of the seals, he can open a road to the underworld. It’s not as powerful as the path opened by the Final Door, but it’s a pretty scary army as it is. That’s how Iris brought so many of us to fight the war against Pandora.”

“What?!”

“But it’s weird,” Po said, crossing her arms over her chest and thinking.

“That inky thing’s not what he would be summoning, would it? I mean, it…” and he glanced at Po.

“It’s nothing like me, I know. But, maybe it was only partially summoned.” They looked around. There were the remains of more equipment down this hall, ripped open as if by claws or large teeth.

“Still, if it was from the underworld, why would it be so mean? It’s not like Eggman was controlling that one with a spirit box. Are people really that vicious down there?”

“I don’t know, I was too young when I was summoned. But they wouldn’t have to be. I mean, if you had your body and soul smeared across the gap between two dimensions, you might be real ticked off, too.”

“…I’m sorry.”

“Huh?”

“If it really was from the underworld, then we-”

“We don’t know what happened to it. You got nothing to apologize for.” She kicked at a broken generator, and it fell apart onto the ground, cogs rolling out across the floor. “What a mess. Eggman doesn’t seem to know much about what he’s doing, I guess he’s learning the hard way.”

They moved on, quietly, and came out into another large cavern, more equipment and wiring torn and broken, dangling from the walls and ceiling. A large round space was cleared in the center of the floor. Tails stared at the ground there. “I guess he was using this as a summoning circle. What do you think?”

“I don’t know much about this stuff.”

“Really?”

She shrugged. “I’m not a summoner.” She poked around at the equipment for a while, then sighed.

Tails also looked the equipment over. “Hey, this looks like it was designed to run off of a chaos emerald!” He pulled out the emerald that had been powering the Tornado, which he had decided to not leave behind this time when they had to leave the plane above ground.

“What are you going to do?”

“This looks complicated, so I want to understand it,” and he put the chaos emerald inside the machine. It sparked and blinked, the room lighting up slightly. Finding a data screen, Tails began opening log files.

“Well, what’s it for? With the wind seals, Eggman wouldn’t need an emerald to summon anything.”

“Maybe he was trying to do more than that. Or maybe he couldn’t summon anything except those half-formed silhouettes. And there’s something here about newer spirit box technology, but… drat! Too much of the data is corrupt. This place really did get scrapped.”

“Maybe he finally found a way to create spirit boxes that won’t need chaos emeralds,” Po wondered.

“I… I hope not.”

“The only other way to control a summoned army would be to negotiate a contract. That’s what I’ve heard. Underworlders are supposed to be willing to negotiate their services, vicious or not! But Eggman doesn’t strike me as the kind who would want to barter when he could just take what he wants.”

“We should find Sonic and tell him he‘s got more than bots to worry about! However much of a spirit army Eggman has, it’ll be waiting for him in Alydia!”

“I still have to find the wind lords! Eggman can‘t have more than one or two seals, if this is the best he could do summoning.”

“But how can we search? I can’t tell anything else from here.”

“I thought following the harpy sisters would work, but we need a better way to track the wind lords! …I have an idea.” Po tugged at her horn, her face pinched with concentration. “Maybe I could get one of those underworld spirits to help!”

“Are you joking?”

“Remember that mural that Pandora left in the wind shrine? She didn’t get everything wrong about us harpies. We are soul snatchers.”

Tails did a double-take. “What are you talking about?”

“If those inky things really are half-summoned, I might be able to pull one the rest of the way into this world before it fades away. Maybe.”

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea…”

“Don’t worry, I’ll look for a small one.”

“Huh?”

“In case it doesn’t feel like negotiating!”

“…Okay, I’ll help. I’ll lead one back here, it’ll be better to be in a more open space if we do have to fight again. So, you wait.”

It didn’t take him long to find one and lure it into chasing him. He flew back into the large cave of battered equipment where Po was hiding. As they passed her, she jumped down behind Tails and braced herself against the ground, letting the silhouette charge into her. She screamed as her hands pushed into its chest and a flurry of inky shreds erupted around her.

“Po!”

The silhouette began to mist outward, into an inky vapor that roiled and spread like fog. Tails pushed through and found Podarge, and tried pulling at her, but she seemed to be holding fast to the shadow in front of her. “Drat…” she said, stuck. “Tails, I don’t have the energy to reach this far!”

“So let go!”

“What if you tried using a spirit hex? It might loosen it up a bit…”

“No way! …What about the chaos emerald? It might have a reaction, if it was doing something for Eggman! Can you move closer to the summoning machine?”

“N-no… But, I have another one. Can you get it out for me?”

He took the emerald from Po, and held it towards the now-unshaped silhouette at the center of the mist. The shade was so cold, it burnt, and when his hand jerked away from the pain of it he dropped the emerald. The gem hit the circular drawing on the floor and the drawing flashed, and both Tails and Po were thrown backwards by a sudden pulse of energy.

The mist was still too thick to make out anything, but it began to dissipate. Po sat up and put her emerald away again, saying to Tails, “Don’t ever, ever let me try that again.”

Tails shivered. “Done, and done.”

A shape began stepping out from the mist ahead of them. Dark, but substantial, not like the silhouettes. She looked canine, and a little smaller than the shade had been, hardly taller than Po. She actually seemed to match the stone of the mines, her fur so dark as to look violet in the mist, but as that evaporated and the light shone stronger on her, she was just a very deep shade of green, with a white throat. Noticing them, she narrowed her eyes. “You brought me here?”

Po stood up and smiled, making a wide wave. “Greetings!”

“Are you fools? What sort of a summoning was that?” the stranger growled at them.

“Hey, I was finishing what someone else had started, don’t get mad at me,” Po told her.

“Aren’t you a harpy?”

“Podarge Fleet-Footed!”

The stranger‘s ears twitched, then she smiled, showing her teeth. “So why bring me here? Harpies don’t usually play well with others.”

“I want your help.”

Tails looked at the two of them. “Doctor Robotnik was summoning here, we’re trying to stop him from using the Final Door to take over the world! Have you heard of it?”

“The door?” asked the stranger, a little surprised. She looked Po over again. “I don’t help, I barter. One pact at a time.”

But the harpy shook her head at Tails, and said to the stranger. “Me.”

“What terms? You have an enemy to overcome? Or perhaps you want the Final Door?”

“I need to find the magical seals that guard the door. They‘re being carried by three wind spirits. That’s it. What about you?”

The stranger laughed. “Have you heard of the wheel?”

“What’s that mean?” asked Tails.

Po ignored him, not looking away from the stranger. “…I’m good for it.”

“I suppose you must be.” The stranger reached out her hand. “I agree to the terms of this pact.”

Po looked at the proffered hand for a moment, then extended her own. “Ditto.” They shook on it, and a small light threaded it’s way out from between their palms, over their arms, beetling across their bodies for a moment before vanishing.

The stranger let her hand fall. “I am Widdershins, hound of the river crossing. Call me Shin.”

“River?” asked Tails.

“Must be a place in the underworld,” Po explained.

Shin bared her teeth. “And who is this?”

“Be nice, he’s with me,” Po told her.

“I’m Miles Prower! But call me Tails.” He offered his hand, too, but Shin ignored it.

Shin sniffed at the air. “There are others here?”

“Others?” asked Po.

“Do you mean the other ink- I mean, the other half-summoned people?” Tails clarified.

“Half-summoned? That must be it. They‘ll fade away on their own, soon enough.”

“Is that alright?” Tails asked, thinking of the silhouette that he and Po had already shredded.

Shin nodded. “They’ll just go back, they can’t remain in two worlds at once for very long on their own.”

“Can we share back-stories later? We still need to get out of here!”

“So what’s stopping you?” said Shin, twitching her ears as if to listen for something, then running off into a different tunnel than the one Po and Tails had entered by.

Tails grabbed the emerald out of the machinery, and he and Po hurried to follow, Tails asking, “What was that about?”

“I think we’re pretty lucky, I’ve heard that underworld hounds are especially good trackers. I can’t wait to get back aboveground!”

“I meant, what did you just agree to, Po? What’s a wheel?”

Po shrugged. “I think it’s a manner of speaking.”

“Think? Did you just sell your soul and not know what you were doing??”

“Why worry when it’s not your business? I‘ll worry about it, later.”

“But-”

“Come on, we’re falling behind.”

[SoDi]

-13- Instinct

Alydia was dark and silent, the stone buildings cold and the streets empty. “Maybe Eggman isn’t here, after all,” Amy wondered. She, Sonic, and Knuckles were running towards the city center. A large tower, like the one in Scrap City, had been built over the old city square there, it’s brooding walls overshadowing the buildings below, clearly out of place. The surrounding mountain tops, and the top of the tower, were hidden in a slow eddy of low clouds.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Knuckles said to them. “All the people are gone, but where’s Robotnik?”

“Yeah, the welcome wagon‘s late,” Sonic agreed. He watched as Knuckles pulled out the finding ring again, but it didn’t seem to be telling him anything. “Knuckles, that other thing you’re looking for, is it something like that?”

“I think it looks the same, but it’s a very different item. This finding ring might be broken, though.”

“Maybe you aren’t using it right!”

“What!?”

“Can I see it?”

“This mission was entrusted to me! I can handle it. That‘s why I‘m here to fight Robotnik, and get it back.”

“I’m just playing with you! But really, can I look at the ring?”

“Sure. It’s been acting strange, so it’s no use to me right now. I’ll just have to ask Robotnik myself.” He handed it across to Sonic and they kept running. Sonic held it, but he couldn’t feel anything from it. It was just a metal circlet to him.

“We might be alone fighting Eggman this time,” Amy said to them as they ran. “I hope Tails is alright.”

“Him and Po are fine. They can handle themselves,” Sonic answered, pocketing the useless ring.

“I wasn’t asking about her!”

Knuckles shook his head at Amy. “Don’t you think you get jealous too easy?”

“I’m not jealous!” she said.

Knuckles gave Sonic a humored look, but the blue hedgehog just glared at him.

“What’s up ahead?” Sonic said, noticing something, and they all looked. An odd violet mist was seeping down the streets ahead of them. Something seemed to move within it.

In the shadow of the taller buildings of the city center, inky black silhouettes were drifting silently among the streets and alleys. Each one had a sparking white-blue heart. Not knowing what they were, Sonic grabbed the wrists of Knuckles and Amy and dashed down the street, right past the shades, which began swarming after them. They ran towards the large control tower, its top hidden in the low, dark clouds of smog still clinging to the city.

The three pulled away from the horde of shadowy monsters and turned down a smaller street. One more silhouette was waiting there, and Sonic dropped his friends and kept running, pounding against the glowing chest of the monster as he jumped over it. The shade flickered for a moment, and Amy pulled out the spirit hex she had received from Tails, and the silhouette slowed and its edges went hazy. Knuckles ran up then and pounded the chest again, hard, and the silhouette melted away. A crystalline object with sparking ends of wire sticking out from it dropping to the ground.

Knuckles shook his fist as if it stung. “Cold!”

Sonic picked the small crystal device up and turned it over in his hand. “Is this a new kind of spirit box?”

“Isn’t the spirit supposed to go inside the box, not the other way around?” Amy asked, turning her hex off again.

“I guess Robotnik is going for quantity over quality,” Sonic joked, and they noticed a dark cloud rounding the far end of the street as the other silhouettes began catching up to them. “Ha! At least we know how to fight them!”

“We don’t have time! We have to get to Robotnik!” Knuckles told him.

They began to run again, but Sonic argued, “Did you see the tower when we passed near it before?”

Amy understood. “We saw those sorts of locks in Eastopolis! We won’t be able to enter the building without activating all the doors at the same time.”

“But they won‘t stay open very long, we‘d all have to enter separately or risk getting stuck outside,” Knuckles said.

Sonic grabbed them again and began running faster, as they had to dash through another group of silhouettes. “Guess we’ll need to split up.”

“Eggman is using his head! We’re stronger when we’re together, splitting up is exactly what he wants,” said Amy, worried.

“But we have to get in. Are you two ready?” Sonic asked, and they nodded.

He dropped Knuckles off on the north side of the tower, and Amy on the east, then ran on. Knuckles hit the ground running, yelled and charged, punching at the chests of the silhouette monsters guarding the locked door near him, and reducing the monsters to a cloud of vapor.

Amy, on her side of the building, turned up her spirit hex and the silhouettes froze long enough for her to reach her door and deactivate the lock there. That just left Sonic on the south side, who rolled past the silhouettes and hit his lock, too. With a shudder, doors opened up in front of each of the adventurers, immediately beginning to swing shut again, and the three of them ran inside.

-

In one of the metal halls of the control tower, Shadow blinked into reality and looked about. Knowing his way around, he found the door he wanted, and was unsurprised to find it locked. He spun through it recklessly, scattering metal fragments forward into the room beyond which were shot down by defensive laser beams before they could hit anything.

Stepping through the remains of the door, Shadow was now standing in one of the development rooms, a large workshop with one glass wall showing nothing but a viciously fast swirl of cloud on the other side. Robotnik sat in a chair near the window, flanked by the protective laser turrets, which tracked Shadow menacingly. He didn’t seem upset by Shadow’s presence, so the hedgehog gave a careful glance around the room as the doctor greeted him, “You recovered from your accident in the dead zone mines, I see. You’ll be glad to know our last endeavor there was still a success,” he added, waving at the cloud wall. “We found what we were looking for.”

“No more ‘we’, doctor. Your ambition finally outran your common sense, when you thought you could use me as another of your tools.”

“Now, now! You know I had nothing to do with your becoming linked to the V-Mega. I was as surprised as you must be, that you were compatible with the V-technology. But knowing that now, the next stage of the-”

“I don’t care how I was trapped. I am no one’s weapon!” and he clenched his hands into fists as a red glow spread across him.

“You should care. Or accidents like that could happen again,” said the doctor, glancing towards the control panel.

Shadow looked at the panel, then teleported next to it, behind the doctor. He kicked Robotnik violently away from the controls even as he punched into the board and pulled out the chaos emerald powering it. “Not if you can’t control him!”

Robotnik looked up from the floor. “Shadow, we are so close! Don’t you still want the Final Door?”

“You made me think I needed your help, but I’ll claim it on my own. You aren’t going to get in my way again!”

He turned to give Robotnik his full attention, the doctor already backing away, when the glass behind Shadow shattered and the clouds there reached out and swiftly turned the whole room white, nothing left visible. At the first sound of the window breaking Shadow began to turn but immediately something lanced through his back from behind, a piercing pain that spread across his chest. He drew a hand up to clutch the wound.

Wind howled through the room, without any apparent origin. The doctor’s voice seemed similarly disembodied as he said, “Fool! Without the right preparation, using the Door would destroy even you. But you might never have the chance, since you‘ve been caught again.”

Shadow lowered his hand, revealing a large and almost ethereal-looking crystal lodged in his chest. “You think this can control me?” Shadow turned in the blinding mist, trying to detect where the voice of Robotnik came from. “Chaos spear!” he said, and shot a bolt of energy at the place he had seen Robotnik fall. The attack exploded uselessly against the ground, having missed its mark. The red glow spread a little further over Shadow’s body.

“Haha! It might control you in time. But resisting its affect will expend your energy quickly. Either you will succumb, or you will exhaust yourself completely, but either way you won’t be able to follow me this time. Now, I have other places to be, victories to claim! I won‘t need this base again, the wind beacon can finish here.”

“You’re only buying time.”

“Valuable time! If you won’t work with me, then I’ll have the Final Door for myself, and even you won’t be able to stop my plans. Ungrateful creation!”

“No one owns me!!” Shadow shouted and released a blast of chaos energy in a wave all around him, burning away the mist and melting through what was left of the equipment, but when it cleared the doctor, and the wind spirit, were gone. Robotnik had escaped again.

The crystal in Shadow’s chest glowed and then dimmed again, and he felt winded after using so much energy, letting himself drop to his knees. He shook with anger, pounding the floor hard enough to dent the metal, then closing his eyes to think. After a while, he noticed the sound of some small alarm, near a burnt label that read ‘wind beacon.’ The alarm wasn’t the only device still active, and Shadow looked up at one security monitor dangling from the ceiling that had somehow survived his attack. It was rotating though different shots of the lower levels of the tower, the halls filled with silhouette monsters, and a few more familiar faces.

-

Amy swung her hammer back up onto her shoulder, but it was a little worse for wear. The room she was standing in was full of equipment that she had already smashed, since she had been too impatient to try hacking the computers. The lights dimmed and then turned red, and a computerized voice said, “Breach detected. Initiating auto-defense protocols. All units return to control center for lock-down.”

“What?!” Amy shouted, and smacked the main computer terminal again.

“….Manual override. All units entering stand-by mode.”

“Much better!”

Leaving that room, she ran back into the hall and past the walls where the elevators had been running. She had already found that none of the lifts in the tower were operational, but while looking for an alternate route had stumbled across the computer room. Now she resigned herself to having to make the climb, and began jumping up between stalled platforms. Pausing to rest against a wall, she shouted in surprise as she was jabbed by a metal spike. The walls here were lined with dense patches of spikes. “Like it wasn’t enough trouble already?” she sighed to herself, continuing on. She had to go carefully, since if she lost her balance there would be nothing safe to grab hold of to stop her fall.

Several levels later, she stopped to catch her breath on another landing. Looking up, she saw Knuckles gliding around between platforms. She scowled, but once she recognized him, her face lit up and she shouted, “Knuckles! Heeey!!”

He veered and then dropped down next to her. “You‘re only this far?”

“I’m going to ignore that. Have you run into Sonic?”

He shook his head. “The lower levels were more trouble, but a lot of these upper shafts lead nowhere,” and he gestured up at the dark, empty air above them. “Robotnik might not even be here. Or maybe Shadow got to him first!”

“Don’t say that! Shadow wouldn’t…”

“Why not?” Knuckles crossed his arms. “Robotnik crossed a line, and Shadow doesn’t forgive easily.”

“So you think it’s okay if he-?!”

“It doesn’t matter what I think! Like Sonic said, this is between Shadow and the doctor, it’s out of our hands how they handle it. What’s with you? I thought it was Sonic you were worried about.”

Amy looked away. “I am! But, I’m worried about Shadow, too.” She shook away the melancholy feeling, and said to Knuckles, “We can’t stop here! Let’s go!”

Knuckles turned towards the wall, then looked back to her. “Hang on to me.”

She hung her arms around his shoulders as he began climbing up the wall, moving much faster than she had trying to navigate on foot. They made their way across a side passage and through a series of other elevator rooms, but stopped on a larger landing near a wide hallway.

“Watch it, the ground is broken here.”

“Thanks, Knuckles.” Amy stepped away and tapped a finger against her chin. “Everything looks the same in this place! Are you sure we aren’t going around in circles?”

“There’s something down this hall, I’m sure of it.”

“What? Shouldn’t we keep heading up?”

He began walking. “This is a treasure hunter’s instinct! I didn’t say you had to follow.”

“Instinct?! We’re looking for Sonic!”

“I’m not,” and Knuckles kept walking. Amy hesitated, watching him head down the hall, and then gazing back at the elevator room, the roof still too distant to see.

Knuckles passed several doors, then stopped in front of one that didn’t seem noticeably different from the others. He placed one hand deliberately on the lock-panel, waiting for the door to open. He was unsure why he felt there was something here, but he trusted himself and walked inside.

He stopped, jaw dropping open, and Amy crashed into his shoulder as she rounded the doorway. She had decided to follow him, and rubbed her face where she had hit him, saying, “Hey! What are you stopping for? Ohh!” She finished with a gasp. After another moment of silence, she put her hands on her hips and said with her eyes closed, “You did leave it unguarded again. You don’t have to look that surprised!”

The master emerald was plugged into a large shelf in the rear wall, the surrounding cables running between the floor and ceiling.

Knuckles came back to his senses and jumped over the large cables crossing the floor till he was beside the gem and could lay his hands gently against it, a gesture of reassurance. “Well, I’m here now.” Then he pulled it out from the wall, and raised a fist at the ceiling. “That Robotnik!!”

[SoDi]

-14- City in the Blue Ridge

Tails flew Po and Shin towards Alydia, using the Tornado. The clouds seemed to thicken and then twist around them, pinching the plane and actually raking into the metal. Soon they could see that the darker patches of the cloud they flew through were actually winged silhouettes, clawing at them and the plane.

“What’s happening?” Tails shouted, trying to keep the plane in the air.

“They must be harpies, but they aren’t fully summoned, so why are they still here?” Shin said, waiting till one silhouette flew close enough for her to claw the place a face should have been. She howled aloud at how cold it was to touch the thing, her hand burning.

Podarge noticed the crystals in their chests. They seemed made from the same stuff that had formed the core of the V-Mega, so she shrieked and the smaller crystals cracked, the silhouettes around them unraveling from the now broken spirit boxes.

Unfortunately, the shriek had also caused some of the equipment on the Tornado to short out. “Don’t, Po!” Tails shouted as they began losing altitude, the plane smoking. The half-summoned harpies continued to claw at the plane, and Po and Shin could not beat them all back. Tails told them, “Hang on, we’re going down!”

He managed to crash them through a large window in the control tower, and they were thrown rolling across the floor. Po hit her head hard against the far wall, her horn striking the metal with a ringing sound, and she blacked out.

-

Thousands of years ago, after the war had ended, and the wind shrine had fallen, the world was full of ruined cities and other devastation that follows violence. The army of Iris had been banished, the army of Pandora was scattered, and with the major cities destroyed there were only a few small villages left to try and rebuild.

A couple of war orphans were climbing over the walls of the wind shrine, aiming for a higher window, since none of the outer doors and windows had been bricked closed yet. One, a raccoon with a round face, stopped at the base of another high wall. He said to the gecko behind him, “Hey, Keeks! Lower a rope from the top, would you?”

“What? Oh,” said Keeks, who had been distracted by some carvings on the stones. “I got this,” and he took a coil of rope from the raccoon, slung it over a shoulder, and climbed up. His toes made a wet popping sound against the smooth wall as he went. He then tied the rope to a pillar and let the rest fall back down. “Cedar! Don’t let Podarge fall behind!”

The raccoon grabbed up the end of the rope and looked around for the harpy, who had disappeared again. “Where-?” he began, then a blue streak zipped past, up the rope, and Podarge laughed at him from the top of the wall.

“Like you two would be the ones waiting on me!”

Keeks crossed his arms as Cedar climbed up the wall. “You’re sure there’s anything decent here? It‘s not going to be like the castle you led us to, right?”

“Hey, how was I supposed to know the mercs were using it as a fort? You shouldn’t dwell on the past, anyway! This is a new adventure!”

She gave Cedar a hand up, who panted as he reached the top and then said to her, “But before, you didn’t want to come within miles of this place.”

They packed the rope back up and crawled in through the broken window. While Cedar was lighting a torch, Po answered, “Pandora had captured this place in the war, but her soldiers didn‘t stick around, and the wind lords don‘t need it anymore. Now it should be fine! And this way we’ve got first dibs on what’s here, before the mercs come. They’ve been eyeing this place, too, y’know.”

Keeks nodded. “I know! Let’s just grab something and- whoa!” he said, as the torch flared up and he could see through the open doors many rooms still richly furnished. The fall of the shrine had knocked everything around, and a lot of the furnishings were broken, but it was still obvious that this had been a palace until very recently.

“Is it okay to be scavenging in a place like this?” asked Cedar. “I feel like we aren’t alone…”

Po put her hands behind her head and made a bird-like laugh. “Trust me! I said I’d help you out, right? One run through here, and we won’t have to worry about funds for a long time!”

Keeks took another long look around them and nodded. “Is there a treasure room or something?”

“Sure. Follow me,” said Po, and led them down the halls.

In the highest chamber, the door was barred with an ominous looking lock carved like a snarling face. Cedar pulled out a pin and began picking it, and after a moment, the lock fell away. “We’re in,” he said, and the three of them pushed open the heavy door. Inside was most of the wealth of the wind lords, coins and jeweled armor and large gems piled about.

Keeks and Cedar both dropped their jaws, while Podarge grinned and slapped their backs as she went in ahead of them, reaching the back of the room and disabling some mechanism on the rear wall. “See? And no more traps.”

Keeks jumped atop the treasure pile and began scooping coins into his belt-pouch. “You finally made good, Podarge! You were right about this place! …I think I’m going to need a bigger bag,” he added, as he quickly filled his pouch and began doing the same with his back pack.

Podarge turned away from the wall, and jumped up to perch on the edge of a crystal-carved box below the dais. It was ajar, but its sides flickered with motes of light racing through the carvings. Cedar stopped his investigation of the long mural on the wall, the last panel still brightly colored from being recently finished, and asked her, “Podarge, is that a treasure, too? What is it?”

“Looks magical. Think we could sell it?” asked Keeks.

“It’s magic, but it’s a trap. You won‘t get any money for it, just a lot of trouble.”

Keeks shrugged, then picked up a silver scepter and hefted it in his hand. “Hey, look at me! Think I‘ll find a crown to match.”

“Get over yourself,” Cedar said, rolling his eyes.

“Hey sticky-fingers, don’t forget you’re splitting this haul with us, too!” Podarge laughed at him, as he tried to put the scepter down but it stuck to his hand.

Keeks and Cedar looked at each other, and the gecko told her, “You said you don’t have any use for treasure.”

“Changed your mind?” asked Cedar.

The harpy turned back and looked at the box. “I’ve been thinking, I heard that the Babylonians have something that lets them fly in the air. If I have enough money, I might be able to get something like that from them.”

“…Oh,” was all Cedar said. Then, “Hey, what’s your problem, Keeks?”

The gecko was still trying to shake off the scepter. “You know how I get when I’m nervous! I feel like we‘re going to get caught,” he whispered. They both looked at the harpy, who still had her back to them, staring into the magical box.

“Don’t be stupid,” Cedar told him, but they both hurried to finish packing what they could.

Suddenly, from behind her, Podarge heard a thud and then the voice of Keeks close at her shoulder, yelling, “Podarge!”

She began to spin about, but before she could she was knocked inside and heard the heavy thud and click of the lid closing above her. The box lit up from the inside, humming to life, unraveling her into energy that would be held in magical stasis for as long as the box stayed shut. It was the beginning of a long, numb wait.

-

“Is she okay?”

“She’s waking up,” Shin said, and when Po opened her eyes and sat up, the hound asked her with a grin, “What happened? A nightmare? You looked upset.”

Po stood quickly, fluffed her tail and shrugged. “Nah. Plot-induced flashback. It’s nothing.” She shook off the last of the memory, still uncomfortable.

Tails nodded, and ran back over to the plane. “Looks like we all made it, and the Tornado should be okay, too, with a bit of attention.”

“Sonic should be here already,” Po said, looking around. At least there didn’t seem to be any guard bots around yet. Or any more silhouette monsters.

“Sonic?” asked Shin.

“He’s our friend!” Tails told her.

Po shook her head, scowling like she had while she was dreaming. “I don’t bother with friends. …He’s my brother.” Tails looked confused, but Po crossed her arms and said, “We adopted each other. But he’s a hedgehog, Shin, so don’t be surprised.” Shin raised an eyebrow. “Anyway, we better find him, and everyone else,” Po added.

“Aren’t we looking for the seals of the Final Door?” asked Shin.

“Well, yeah, but this is something else I gotta do,” Po told her. “I’m fastest, so I’ll run ahead,” said the harpy, already beginning to leave.

“I’ll follow you!” said Shin, but Po turned and shook her head.

She spoke softer, so her voice wouldn‘t carry to Tails. “Shin, there may be more of those shades here, or at least guards, so stick with Tails. Y’know, look after him. After we‘re done here, you know what we need to track, so I’ll leave you to it. I‘ll find Sonic on my own.”

Shin stared at her, then nodded. “So be it. The fox will be safe. And when I find anything, I’ll come to you then.”

Podarge gave them a small salute and ran off.

“Shin, you go ahead, too,” Tails said, still beside the Tornado.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m going to fix this plane, so that we have a way to get out again if something sudden happens.” He stood, waiting for the hound to leave. Tails was more nervous now that Podarge had left him alone with her, but didn’t want to show it.

“Then I’ll wait here with you.” She said it matter-of-factly, and grabbed a fallen piece of metal rod, sitting down with it and using her long claws to start sharpening the end into something spear-like. Tails shrugged, hoping he looked nonchalant, and began working on the plane.

No guards or monsters came after them. After a while, Tails noticed that Shin was humming to herself. He asked her, “…What is that song?”

The humming stopped. “Something we sing where I’m from.”

“The underworld, right?”

“That’s not what we call it, though.”

“So what do you call it?”

Shin shrugged. “The world.”

“Oh,” said Tails, ducking back into the plane. Shin smiled to herself and continued humming happily as she whittled. A little more time passed, and looking back over at the hound, Tails got up the nerve to ask another question. “Why are you making a weapon?”

“Because I already have claws?” she said, flicking her ears.

Tails tried not to shudder, seeing how those claws had been able to shape the metal rod into a spear. “It just… doesn’t seem like you need it.”

“A spear gives me a bit more reach. I miss my halberd, though.” She swung the metal pole out in front of her, testing its balance.

“Um, do you-”

“You ask too many questions! And none of them are what you really want to ask, so just say what you mean and be quiet!”

Tails was startled, but then asked, more softly, “What… what was the deal you and Po made?”

Shin raised her ears. “You worry?” She looked in the direction Po had gone, then back at the fox. “…Harpies don’t often make friends outside of their tribe.”

“She wouldn’t call us that, but, I think we are friends. She‘s going to be okay, right?”

Shin nodded. “She’s interesting. That’s why I made a pact with her.”

“So what is a ‘wheel‘?”

Shin went back to whittling, smoothing the pole where she would be gripping it. “It’s an open pledge of service. I am freely at her service for a time, and she can ask anything of me but my certain death. Because then I would never have the use of her service in return, you see?”

Tails seemed relieved. “So you’ll just take turns helping each other out? That sounds good…”

“But with the wheel, the second holder of the pact can ask the first for any service, including certain death, since the exchange will have already been made.”

“W-what?! Why?”

“Having already gotten whatever she wanted from me, I can ask absolutely anything, and she will be bound to it. That’s how the wheel works.”

“You wouldn’t-”

“She should have known what she was agreeing to. Even if she didn‘t, it‘s no excuse. But people are more valuable alive than dead, so don’t worry so much.”

“Really?”

“What a strange world this is…”

Shin seemed satisfied with what she had managed with the metal spear, and leaned it over her shoulder. Tails finished what he was doing, too, and shut the engine of the Tornado. “That should do it!”

“So, you will be alright now.”

Tails nodded. “Yeah, we can go anytime. I still won‘t be able to fly through the harpy shadows for very long, but this‘ll get us out. And maybe they-”

“I’m going ahead,” Shin nodded, and ran out of the room, eager to be elsewhere.

-

Several stories up, but not so far from where Tails had crashed, Sonic slid inside a room and brushed a bit of inky vapor away from himself, the remains of his fights on the lower floors. He looked up as another door opened and Po ran inside. “Podarge!”

“Blue boy! Ha! Guess I caught up.”

“How’d you get in? Eggman was really slowing us down. This place is huge!”

Po thought about the plane crash, but all she said was, “Heehee…”

“Have you found Robotnik?”

She pursed her lips. “Well, no. But, this is a villain’s hideout, he’ll probably be at the end of the highest level.”

“That’s true.” They stopped and shielded their eyes as a bright light flashed, and Shadow appeared beside them, a chaos emerald still in hand from teleporting. “Shadow! I can always leave it to you for the dramatic entrance.”

“Sonic, you’re here.”

“You know me. Hey, what‘s with the bling?” Sonic asked, pointing at the crystal on the other’s chest.

Shadow glowered. “It’s slowing me down, and I need to catch up with Robotnik fast.”

Sonic smiled, waving a hand casually. “He got away?”

“He fled. He has the third wind lord with him.”

“Third? You mean he has all of them now! Doesn’t that mean he has the Final Door, too?”

Shadow shook his head. “Only when they’re brought together. The seals have to be gathered in one place. I already told you, Robotnik won’t let that happen until he knows he can control the door.”

“How is Eggman controlling the winds, then? He can’t have enough chaos emeralds.” Sonic said.

Po shrugged. “Or is it something like the spirit boxes that are controlling the army outside?”

Shadow looked down at the emerald in his own hand. “No, that wouldn’t be enough. But he was looking for another way, and I guess he found it. That’s why I wasn’t expecting to be caught again, but that’s the last time I make that mistake.”

Sonic nodded. “You want some help this time?”

Shadow looked up at him, and put the emerald away. “He has worse weapons than that army. I’ll catch up to him, but I won‘t be able to get much farther until I‘ve gotten rid of this V-cell. I‘ll need you to operate the device that will remove it from me.”

“Wait, wait,” said Sonic, grinning and waving his hands. “I want to save this moment in my memory! You’re asking for help?” and he made the shape of a square with his fingers, pretending to take a photograph of Shadow. Po laughed.

Shadow swung an arm and pushed Sonic’s hands away. “Stop playing around! I’m not going to put up with you. Are you coming or not?”

Sonic looked thoughtful, as if he had something more serious he wanted to ask Shadow, but he quickly put his smile back in place. “Of course! Lead the way!”

[SoDi]

-15- Friends in High Places

It was still a long trek to the room containing what Shadow called the spirit chamber, and Shadow was moving slower than he usually did.

“You okay?” Sonic asked.

“Stop asking and keep walking,” Shadow answered gruffly. “The sooner I’m rid of you and that loud mouth of yours, the better I’ll be.”

Sonic looked at Po and shrugged. “Well, he’s still himself, so I guess he is okay!”

“I wanted to ask you something, Shadow,” Po said, and though he acted like he couldn’t hear them, she continued, “You didn’t run across a pair of harpies back in the dead zone, did you? Come on, why so cold? Don’t ignore me, I wanna know!”

“Better let him brood, Po.” Sonic said playfully, but that didn’t get a rise out of Shadow either, who stayed a dozen steps ahead of them.

Podarge’s shoulder spikes twitched a bit in disappointment. “Whatever. They probably moved too fast for him to spot, anyway!”

“They did move fast,” Sonic said, remembering. “Po, are all harpies that quick?”

“Yeppers! We’re descended from wind spirits ourselves. Cool, huh?”

Sonic put a hand under his chin, his eyes wide trying to imagine it. “Did you race each other a lot?”

“Hee! Harpies don’t like losing, so we don’t play if we don’t know we’re going to win. And everyone knew who was going to win! Celaeno’s gift was speed. Even for a harpy, nothing could keep up with her. Only light could travel faster! That’s why her title was ‘the dark’, because she followed right behind the light, and why she was the one who received the full power of Iris in the war.”

“Now that would be a race,” Sonic thought out loud.

“Even you couldn’t have beaten her! There was a trick to it, you know.”

“Oh, was she a cheater, too?”

“A win is a win! Still, she lost in the end.”

“I guess so. Her other title was ‘heartless’, right? I wonder what her problem was.”

Ahead of them, Shadow paused to say, “She was summoned into this world to be a weapon, and fight a war that wasn’t hers. Why wouldn’t she have used her power against those trying to use her?”

Sonic scratched his nose. “You heard about the war from Robotnik? I didn’t think it’d be your kind of story.”

Shadow went back to ignoring them.

Po crossed her arms. “No one thought she’d go crazy like that… The real reason she was called heartless was because she never cried in the war. Not once.”

“Why does that matter?” asked Sonic.

“A lot of bad things happened, Sonic! Even Zephyr got captured, and was forced to fight against the people he cared most about. That‘s tragedy, right there.”

“So she had something more important to do with her time. Like destroy the world!”

“Hey! That’s not it. Celaeno was stupid, but she wasn’t evil. She had pride, and thought she had to be strong for everyone, that she was better than everyone because of it. I… always hated that about her.”

“I still don‘t get it,” Sonic said, scratching his nose. “So she had a reputation for being heartless, but she was fighting with everyone else to stop Pandora. Maybe she went crazy, but even if she didn’t, people don’t have to cry to show they care. Wasn’t fighting to protect everyone enough?”

Po‘s shoulder spikes drooped a bit. “When you lose someone, if you cry, that means you loved them. That’s what I think. She didn’t cry for anyone, so she didn’t love anyone, either. …Maybe she never loved anyone. That’s heartless. And no one cried for her, after she was gone. …She was really alone, in the end.”

“What about her sisters?”

Po shook her head. “Nope. So, she must have really messed up, get it?”

Sonic thought about it. “It’s hard being alone.”

She shrugged, her thoughts still elsewhere. “But we’re harpies. It‘s not a big deal.”

Sonic wondered how Po could go from manic to melancholy so fast, but wanting to cheer her up again, what he said was, “But you aren’t alone.”

“Quit it with the hero act!”

Shadow stopped ahead of them and pulled open one of the large barred doors. “If you two bleeding hearts are finished, we’re here.”

They all stepped through the doorway, into a room similar to the chamber under the dead zone, with computer terminals and large tubes lined along the walls. “What is this place?” asked Po.

They walked inside, and Shadow pointed at one of the larger tubes, almost like a smaller chamber adjacent to the room, and then to a control terminal nearby. “Seal me in there, then activate the chamber in reverse. The machine will do the rest, but watch the meter here, you have to shut it down again at the right time.”

“But what’ll it actually do to you?” asked Po.

“It will drain what strength I have left. After long enough, the V-cell won’t have enough power to continue latching onto me, and will reject my body, but don’t take too long to shut it down, either. Or,” but he didn’t have to finish the sentence.

Sonic blinked. “That… doesn’t sound good.”

“I am the ultimate life form, and I can take this.”

“Whatever, tough-guy. So what do I do?” Po asked.

“Stay out of the way!” Shadow said sternly.

“This isn’t my kinda thing anyway, I don‘t care.” She shrugged and walked away, saying as she left, “What’s all of this other equipment for? What sort of mess has Eggman made from Pandora’s Box? It’s like the whole V-series, I just don’t get what the emeralds have to with this stuff! There’s something wrong about it all.”

“How much of this were you a part of, Shadow?” Sonic asked, after she had made it back out to the hall.

“…This is a terrible technology. You don’t need to know more than that. It’s bad enough that I know.” He opened the lid of the tube chamber, which slid back like a door, and jumped inside. The machine activated a set of restraints automatically, locking him in place.

Before the lid could drop shut, Sonic caught it, not finished with the conversation. “I-”

“Just do it! Afterwards, it might take me a while to recover my strength, but Robotnik is finished. The harpy is right about this much, none of this is necessary,” and he nodded at the room around them. “The doctor never can leave well enough alone.”

Sonic gave another look at the spirit box, the V-cell, planted in Shadow‘s body. “Yeah. He can’t. Well, I know what to do to help you, that’s enough for me,” and he let go of the door, which made a hissing sound as it shut, sealing the tube completely.

Shadow closed his eyes and waited, his expression stern. Po, through the doorway, watched with curiosity as Sonic let his hands play over the different knobs and levers, finding the ones that would bring the machinery to life. The walls of the chamber around Shadow glowed and sparked, and the V-cell began to flash. Each time it did, a band of golden energy was drawn out from his body and into the machinery of the chamber. The light began to build up, making it harder and harder to see Shadow through it, but Sonic was keeping his eyes on the meter, and by the time the chamber was too bright to see anything, the small hand of the meter hit the low mark Shadow had pointed out to him and Sonic slammed all of the dials down, the hum of the equipment dropping quickly to silence. But the light inside wasn’t dissipating.

Sonic was already unclasping the locks on the chamber lid, and threw it open. “Shadow?” The bright light seemed to rush out over him, as if it were more than light, spilling into the room thickly, like water overflowing a glass. He reached inside the chamber, and for a moment it looked like Shadow was only partly there, his body hazy, but it was likely just a trick of the light. At least the V-cell had been reduced to a crystalline dust in the bottom of the chamber. Sonic pulled the other hedgehog out onto the floor.

Shadow shrugged him off and then sat upright, placing an elbow on his knee, resting. “Sonic, you should get to the roof. Before he left, Robotnik activated the tower wind beacon, something that runs on power he’s been leaching from the wind lords. The winds aren’t here, but he found a way to channel the power from a distance using the bright ring that Knuckles was after. That’s how the doctor has been able to create storms all over the planet. If you hurry before it becomes fully active, you might be able to capture the ring, and prevent him from using it again.”

“Concerned for the rest of us?” asked Sonic, half-joking, but half-serious.

“The V-cells controlling the spirit army won’t function beyond the range of the storms, so stopping the storms will stop them too. They’re in my way, that’s all.”

“Okay, sounds fun. Are you coming?”

“Do I need to?”

“You can leave this to me!” Sonic waved a finger. “But I’ll see you again.”

Shadow nodded. “It isn’t over yet.”

Po tried to come back into the room, blinded by the unexpected brightness of the place and tripping. “Whoa! What happened in here?” she said, as she tried picking herself back up off the floor.

“Here, Po,” Sonic grabbed her arm and led her back out into the hall, where their eyes could begin to adjust back to the normal light.

She rubbed her face and asked, “Is he okay back there? Maybe he‘s sleeping off whatever it was.”

“Just resting his eyes. He’s had a long day, too.”

“He should rest them somewhere else, that afterglow is like a brain freeze outside the brain!”

“We need to get to the roof!”

“What for?”

“One of Eggman’s machines! We’re shutting it down, if you’re up for it.”

She smiled, showing her fangs. “I’ve been waiting for something to rip apart! Let‘s go!”

They made their way to the roof at a run, zipping through the halls and up the defunct elevator shafts, finally opening up a last hatch to the outside. The wind was already incredibly strong, and as Sonic and Po began to make their way a little more cautiously along the outside of the tower, they still risked being blown off.

The top of the tower was the eye of the growing storm, and so as soon as they crawled over the top ledge the wind relaxed and they could catch their breath. The tower roof was a solid field of dark metal, with broadcasting towers built up in different places, the sky overhead a puddle of mist that led into the swirling wall of clouds surrounding the building on all sides. In the center of the roof was a larger tower that must have been the wind beacon, shooting lightning bolts off into the storm that seemed to speed the clouds up and turn them darker with every strike. Around it a smaller orb of some kind was rotating slowly, blinking in a sequence of different colors. And below the beacon, someone was waiting for them.

“Eggman?! He’s still here?” asked Po, skidding to a stop.

The figure turned to look at their approach, and Sonic shook his head. “No way! A metal Robotnik?” He stood, tapping his foot as if agitated, or perhaps excited. “What’s the world coming to?”

The bot was actually smaller than the real doctor, but recognizably modeled after the original. It blinked it’s red eyes and stroked its metal mustache as it said, “Look who’s come to visit, a rat and a chicken!”

“What?!” asked Po, digging her talons angrily into the ground.

“Hey, that’s ‘a hedgehog and a harpy’! It’s alliterative, so even a bot can remember it!”

Po shouted in support, “Yeah! …What’s alliterative mean?”

Sonic just slapped a hand against his forehead.

The bot laughed, an odd mechanical rendition of Robotnik’s familiar villain laugh. “Ah, the infamous Sonic, at last we meet! I am called Sinister Dexter, for I am the right AND left hand assistant* of the genius Doctor Robotnik!”

“Okay, ‘Eggster’, hope you can put up a good fight!” Sonic said.

“That’s Sinister Dexter to you! And direct confrontation would be an illogical risk at this time,” said the Eggman bot.

“So you’re giving up?” Po asked, disbelieving.

“Of course not! Merely taking a rain check! Haha!” and the bot stepped back into the beacon tower which closed behind him, the tower quickly armoring itself in scale-like sheets of metal. At the same time it made a thunder-like sound and the sky began pouring down rain, turning the rooftop into a slick sheet of water.

“He has ol’ Eggy’s sense of humor. Bummer,” Sonic complained.

“Hey, what’s that?” asked Po, and both looked up to notice the orb beginning to move in faster and larger circles around the beacon tower, spiraling away until it was zooming along the very edge of the wall of storm clouds, hovering a distance above the edges of the building. It continued to blink back at the beacon tower.

“I think that’s what’s powering this beacon,” Sonic guessed.

“Are you serious? Can’t we just knock this tower thing over and be done with it?”

“One thing at a time, I guess,” he said, and they both bolted toward the structure. Podarge jumped and dug her talons into the metal, trying to claw her way in, but a lightning bolt zapped her back to the ground. Sonic was a stronger fighter, and spun clean through the base of the beacon tower, his spin attack enough to cut open the metal and send him out the other side. But once outside again, he began hydroplaning towards the edge of the roof, a bolt of lightning shooting out and knocking him the last bit of distance over the side. “Whoa!” he said, catching himself by one hand and pulling himself back up onto the roof. He jumped out of the way before another bolt could shoot at him. He and Po watched as the hole he had punched through the beacon, and the smaller scratches she had made in the walls, began to close themselves. Sonic shouted. “No fair! This thing isn’t the V-Mega, so how’s it mending itself?”

Po raced around the perimeter of the roof, drawing a line of lightning bolts after her and then zipping back over to Sonic. “Okay, so now what? We can‘t run too fast, we‘ll slide off the roof!”

“I’m going back to my first plan,” he said, looking over at the orb bobbing along the edge of the storm, where it was continuing to churn up the clouds. The rain was falling harder. Before they could try dashing after the orb, a bolt of lightning zapped the ground below them, knocking them back. “This… might be tricky,” said Sonic.

Po nodded. “If you can catch that orb, I’ll try to keep the metal-head busy.”

They zipped apart, Po making a beeline for the beacon tower. She dug into it with her talons again and began climbing up its side, when the surface of it lit up with electricity and shot her down. “Grrr!” and she stood back up, giving the tower a last kick as she raced ahead of a line of bolts. She tried a standing jump that landed her a good height up the beacon, carving open a hole quickly to climb inside, but the metal healed itself so fast that she had to jump away again before it could pinch shut around her. She went back to dodging lightning bolts.

Sonic, meanwhile, had run to the edge of the building, which was the closest place to try and nab the floating orb from. First he tried waiting for the orb, hoping to jump and grab it as it passed overhead, but it simply rose out of reach when it came near him. It was only close enough for him to see that it was a round bubble-like shield with a large white ring hanging inside of it. Every few seconds it shot a beam of light towards the beacon tower; it was definitely supplying it with some kind of power. Sonic knew he was going to have to chase after it and grab it from behind, if he was going to catch it at all. But it moved insanely fast, the roof was wet and uneven here along the edges, and every time Sonic had to turn a corner or make a jump at the orb he risked falling off the building altogether. It was, for him, a painfully slowed process of chasing it down.

After circling the building alongside the orb a few times, he had come close enough to lay a hand against it, but not grab it out of the air.

Po saw Sonic struggling and decided to switch her tactics. She tried to leap in the way of one of the light beams that the orb was shooting toward the beacon, but with the orb moving so fast her first two attempts missed altogether. The third time she managed an interception, but it passed through her as if she wasn’t there, and the beacon tower absorbed the energy and then shot another bolt attack at her, knocking her out of the air and heavily down to the rooftop. “I can’t do anything to this thing!”

The orb suddenly leapt away from the storm clouds high into the air, hovering a moment above the top of the beacon tower, then slowly descending towards it. The armor scales on the tower began to curl upwards, almost flower like, as the orb faded and the ring inside set down gently into the hands of Sinister Dexter, who rose up from the tower in one of Robotnik‘s hovercrafts, ready to make his escape.

Po raised an eyebrow. “Out of time. Hey blue boy, you were too slow!”

“Me? Slow? That hurts!” Sonic ran up behind her, and shrugged. “What next?” he asked, as they watched the wind beacon begin to glow.

The deep, mechanized voice of the Eggman-bot announced, “Bwahaha! Enough playing around, this storm is at full power now!” and the glow grew more intense. Then, suddenly, it flickered out altogether, the beacon shields crumpling and the lightning dying away. “What?!”

Sonic tossed a white metal ring casually in his hand. “Guess this one is the real deal after all. What he’s got up there is just a dud finding ring. Hehe…”

“You made a switch?” said Po, her face lighting up. “You cheated!” she crowed, and then laughed.

“A win is a win, right?” Sonic said, and flipped the ring one last time before pocketing it.

“I think I’ve been a bad influence on you.”

“What is this?…” said the voice of Sinister Dexter, drifting higher into the air. “Whatever you‘ve done, there’s still enough power left to finish you off!” and he pressed a small device in his hand. The surrounding storm clouds began swirling into the top of the tower at the same time that a wave of intense wind began blasting outwards from its base, knocking Sonic and Po back along the wet roof.

“Hey!” Sonic said, managing to stop himself and catch Po’s wrist before she could skid further behind. “Hang on!”

The beacon tower and rooftop flashed with an electric shock, that knocked them both over, the wind then knocking them back a few feet closer to the edge. It was still too slick to get traction, so running too fast risked hydroplaning, which would just blow them back faster. Another shock shook them a few more feet closer to the edge, while Sinister Dexter laughed. “The doctor will be pleased! The energy left from the storm will be more than enough to get rid of you, even if the storm itself is expended. Too bad you can‘t fly, you pests!”

“It’s true. And it’s a long drop from here,” said Po, as they were pushed close enough to the edge of the roof to see the thick blanket of mist below. Even with the storm clouds gone, the mountain mist hung so thick over the city that they couldn’t see through it to the rest of the buildings below. “If only I had wings! …I’m sorry, Sonic.”

“Hey, don’t lose hope yet! We don’t need wings to fly!”

“Huh?” Po asked, as they were knocked to the ledge. He nodded at her, his look unfazed, and she seemed to understand something. “Right!”

He nodded. “Because all we need are friends in high places!”

At the same moment, they turned and jumped away from the building, plummeting downwards. Dexter halted the wind and hovered over in time to see them vanish into the clouds. A moment later, they rose back up, standing on the wings of the Tornado that surfaced from the clouds a moment after them. Tails was at the controls, and they all began flying away, much faster than the hovercraft would be able to catch up to them. And there wasn’t enough of the storm left to send out any more wind or lightning after the plane.

“Curse you, Sonic the hedgehog! This isn’t over!”


*Since not everyone knows Latin, the literal translation of 'sinister' is 'left side' and 'dexter' is 'right side'. Bwahahaha!

[SoDi]

-16- The Longest Day

“Tails, that was perfect timing!”

“Thanks, Sonic! As soon as the storm began to fade, I figured you‘d need me again.”

“I better be careful, or you’ll steal all my thunder.” And Sonic laughed at his own joke.

Tails chuckled, too. It really was a bad joke, but Tails was used to them.

They had landed the Tornado on a mountain slope just below the city outskirts. Po sat in a dandelion patch, shaking the water out of her hair. Sonic and Tails looked back out towards the city, and Sonic said, “Eggman is staying a few steps ahead of us. I think I’ll have to finish this myself. We need to get the chaos emeralds together.”

Tails nodded, and reached into the plane to pull out the one there, handing it to his friend. “I know. Here.”

“I owe you again.”

“Yeah. You do!”

Sonic grinned.

“Oh, and Po has an emerald, too!” Tails ran over to the harpy. “Podarge! We need to gather up all the chaos emeralds so Sonic can fight Eggman. He can use yours, too, right?”

“But I… I guess so.” She pulled out the emerald she had taken from Ocypete and turned it over in her hands.

“What’s the matter?” the fox asked.

“I know I can’t use it. But someone once told me, that bringing all of the emeralds together can grant a wish.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Tails, rubbing the back of his head.

Sonic walked up to them and asked her, “What would you wish for, Po?”

“Doesn’t matter. We gotta’ beat Eggman first, right?” and she handed the emerald to him.

“Knuckles has one, but I guess he’s still in the control tower. And Shadow- Shadow??” said Sonic, as he saw the black hedgehog walking up the hill towards them.

When he got to them, he nodded at Sonic. “I have two.”

“So that’s all of them! This‘ll be over quick!” said Tails, excited.

“We’ll stop Eggman now! No sweat!” Sonic assured him.

“The doctor’s mine,” Shadow said to him, then added coldly, “Give me those emeralds, and then I’ll find Knuckles, and the doctor.”

“You need them to take down Robotnik?” Sonic asked, curious.

“I don‘t need any more power for that, but these will help me finish what he and I started.”

Po frowned and stepped back, wary, while Tails looked confused. Sonic lowered his face and said to Shadow, in a serious voice, “You don’t need to do that. Are you planning to-”

“Don’t meddle. This is my business.”

“You have to make your own decisions. But what you’re trying to do is going to hurt a lot of other people, and it’s not right to make that decision for them. …I’ll fight you myself if I have to.”

“You understood from the beginning what I’m after, didn’t you? And you still helped me before.”

Sonic nodded. “Because we’re friends, Shadow.”

“So why get in my way now?”

Sonic pocketed the emeralds he had gotten from Po and Tails, and stood facing Shadow with his arms crossed. “For the same reason. We’re friends, and I’m not going to just stand by while you do something you’ll regret.”

“What do you know about regret!?” said Shadow, and jumped forward to attack. He tackled Sonic with his whole body, throwing them both against the ground beside the Tornado. Sonic kicked back, his legs a spinning blur, and Shadow was knocked away only to make another leap that knocked them both further down the hill. Po grabbed Tails and got them both out of the way before the hedgehogs fell into them.

Tails tried to join the fight, but Po wouldn’t let go of his arm. “Let go! I have to help!”

“No you don’t!” They both ducked as the two hedgehogs, locked together in another exchange of blows, bounced over their heads. “They look serious, so we better stay out of it.”

Shadow punched Sonic hard in the face, but the blue hedgehog fell back and then kept rolling, beginning a rolling dash away from the hill, Shadow following close behind. The two of them ran out into the mountains surrounding Alydia, occasionally bouncing towards one another in matching spin attacks, their quills sparking like crossing swords before they bounced apart again.

Sonic leapt up a tree and perched at the top, calling down, “Why do this, Shadow?”

“This is something I have to do, you can’t understand!”

“I guess I don’t, and I don’t want to!” and Sonic jumped away as Shadow shredded through the branches he’d just been standing on. They began a chase through the treetops. “What’ll happen if you open the Final Door?”

“You don’t know?”

“I have a hunch it’s a bad thing. And my hunches are usually right!” They dove towards each other again, their fists locked against each other. “Wars were fought to keep it closed, and they were bad enough.”

“I don’t know what else will happen, but I don‘t need to. If Maria is on the other side of that door, the rest of the world can burn for all I care!”

“That doesn’t make any sense! Think about what you‘re saying, Shadow!” and Sonic suddenly bent lower, using Shadow’s strength to throw him forward.

Shadow landed on his feet and immediately kicked at Sonic’s back, knocking him onto his chest in the dust. While Sonic was trying to get back up, he shot a bolt of chaos energy, knocking him down again, and then he kicked him hard in the side, knocking the wind from him. Shadow then ripped the other chaos emeralds away from Sonic while the blue hedgehog fought to get his breath back. “Stay out of my way.” Shadow began walking off.

Sonic stumbled back onto his feet, not ready to give up. “H-hey! We aren’t finished!”

Shadow looked at him for a moment. “…This is over.” And with that, he vanished.

Tails and Po caught up to a slightly battered Sonic a little later. “Yo,” he said with a wave.

“Sonic! What happened?” asked Tails.

Sonic crossed his arms. “Shadow took the emeralds. He’ll be after Knuckles next.”

“Shouldn’t we go after him?” asked Tails.

“He beat you, huh?” asked Po.

Sonic laughed, but looked away. “I was holding back! But I can’t change his mind for him, we‘ll have to stop him the hard way. If we hurry back to Alydia, we might be able to catch up to him.”

“We’re getting sidetracked, aren’t we? We know what he’s after! So we just have to beat him to it, and can stop him there,” Po said.

Tails said to her, “The Final Door? But, that isn’t really-”

“The best way to keep anyone else from getting it is to get it first!” she told them.

Sonic thought it over. “I see your point. You sure seem confident.”

She fluffed her tail. “Well, we can do anything working together, right?”

“But we don’t know where the wind lords are now, either!” Tails reminded them.

Sonic pulled out the bright ring and looked at it thoughtfully. “Maybe there’s someone else who does.”

-

Shadow arrived in the chamber of the master emerald, and saw that it was already gone. “So, the echidna already found it. But he can’t have gotten far,” he said to himself, looking around the room. He hadn’t expected Knuckles to still be here, but he knew that once he did get the last chaos emerald, he would still need to find out where the doctor was heading, so he began accessing one of the computers, trying to see if there was any information in the V-tech files about Robotnik’s recent activities. But there were only the locations he already knew, where he and Robotnik had tracked and captured the three winds. He brought up a log of access dates, and saw that the last file opened was a homing program for Sinister Dexter. He began tracing where the bot was headed, suspecting that it would be traveling with or behind Robotnik.

Shadow heard a noise and spun around. He raised an arm protectively as a dark figure stood up in the back of the room. “Who’s there? Show yourself!”

Shin was carrying a broken piece of cable she had cut from the wall, and let it drop. “The trail picks up here, so I suppose you’re hunting the seals now, as well, hedgehog? Where is Podarge?”

“So you know that harpy?”

“I need to find her, and tell her what else I‘ve found. You’re Sonic?”

Shadow crossed his arms. “It’s been a while since someone mistook me for him. But you look like an underworlder. How’d you escape the V-cell?”

“The what?” she asked, putting a hand to her white chin. “Looks like we’ve both mistaken each other for someone we‘re not.”

“If you know something about where the wind lords and their seals are, tell me!”

“Why?” she smiled, showing her teeth and dragging her spear noisily along the ground behind her.

“Because I need them to open the Final Door for me. Don’t make this hard for yourself.”

“It’s not that I’m disagreeable, but I’m already tracking them for someone else. If you were to find them and claim their magic first, I wouldn’t be able to keep my pact. So sorry, but I can’t help you. Are you upset?” she was practically laughing.

“Don’t play with me. Do you know something or not?”

“Maybe I do. Think you can make me talk?”

“…You’re stupid, hellhound.” Shadow made a spin-attack at her, cutting into the wall as she dodged at the last minute.

She turned around, swinging her spear up and holding it in front of her defensively, her ears upright and her eyes bright with excitement. “You’re fast! I wouldn’t mind a fight. Tracking is boring work on its own, and you look like a decent warrior. But you’re already tired, I can see how worn you are.”

“Worn?” Shadow stood up and turned his face to the side to answer her, where she was behind him, “You’ll learn the hard way, what I am!” He teleported, blinking back into the air behind her to kick her in the face. The hit knocked her back, but he was blinking out again to reappear on her other side and punch her in the small of her back. Several more times he used his chaos control to hit her from multiple sides before she could counter with any strikes of her own.

She slammed back into the wall, and he stood in the middle of the room. She raised her spear back up, asking, “What are you?!”

“I was created to be the ultimate life form. You picked the wrong fight.”

Shin was badly bruised, one eye already beginning to swell shut, but she was still smiling, “I suppose you could be what you say. I’m honored to have this match. What are you called?”

“I’m Shadow the hedgehog! You know now you can’t win. Unless you want to die here, tell me what else you know.”

Shin stood forward and took another fighting stance. “Show me.”

Shadow frowned and jumped, vanishing mid-air and beginning another series of blinking attacks. But now, Shin began blocking his moves, swinging her spear around to deflect much of the force of the blows. Eventually, she managed to clip Shadow’s chin with the blunt end of her spear, tossing him back. He landed and wiped his chin with his wrist. “Putting up a fight now?”

“I’m a fast learner, and you’re vain enough to ignore how predictable you are.”

“You’ll still lose.”

She nodded, but her expression was calm, and still smiling. “Probably. You are stronger than anyone I’ve faced before! Still, that trick of yours is exhausting you. By all means, keep showing off, or show me a new trick at least!”

He began shaking in anger. “You think this is a game? Chaos spear!” The attack caught her full in the chest, knocking her into a wall hard enough to break a cable there and send a shower of sparks around her like a curtain. Shadow waited, and a moment later Shin leapt out, her fur embering with sparks that flew off her claws and the haft of her spear as she swung the weapon down in an attack. Shadow caught the spear with one hand and with the other punched through the haft and into her shoulder, snapping the weapon in half. Shin took the blow and rolled back with it, but it was still strong enough to render that arm useless. With her weakened arm she still held onto one half of the spear, and dropped the other from her good hand in order to grab onto the edge of a table nearby, carving off a jagged piece of it with her claws and throwing it at Shadow’s head as he ran towards her. He knocked it away and kept running, catching her good claw in his left hand, shredding his glove. But he kept running, carrying her with him and pushing her up against the wall with his other hand at her throat. He held her there by her neck, which forced her long-muzzled head to turn upward, her body suspended off of the floor. “I don‘t bluff!”

Though most of her face was hidden by the angle at which he was holding her head, she was still smiling. She breathed thinly, getting less air in that position. “I know. I can tell, you‘re a bred killer, like me. And I‘ve lost.”

He frowned, but didn‘t loosen his hold, and actually pushed her higher up the wall as he said, “The Final Door is mine! Tell me where the spirits carrying the seals are going!”

She wheezed, the closest to a laugh that she could manage. “…I never break a pact.”

“Even if it kills you? You‘re just somebody‘s soldier, why be used like that?”

“…I have no regrets.” Her body relaxed; she didn’t need to fight any longer, and the half of the spear in her injured hand dropped to the floor.

Shadow waited a moment longer, then tossed her behind him. He watched her, but she wasn’t moving, only unconscious. He gathered energy for a final attack, a light growing in the hand with the shredded glove, but looking at the wounds on his fingers he let the energy fade again, unspent. He left the room.

-

Knuckles and Amy had found the roof and the beacon tower there empty, and had left the building, now making their way out of the city. Knuckles carried the master emerald with him, while Amy used her spirit hex whenever the shades wandering the streets came too close. One of the dark shapes ahead of them didn’t shrink away, and Amy ran forward to get a better look at who it was. “Shadow?”

He walked down the street, passing her without a second glance, and said to Knuckles, “You have something I need.”

Knuckles put the master emerald on the ground, and stared him down. “You stole this for Eggman, too?”

Shadow waved the question off. “You think I needed to? You’re the one who left the island unguarded, any fool could have taken it.”

Knuckles, angry, shouted back, “I’m here now!”

“What’s going on, Shadow?” Amy asked. She saw how torn his left hand was, and the injuries on his body, and frowned.

Shadow only blinked at her, and said to the echidna, “I’m here for the last chaos emerald. I don’t need to fight you, if you don’t get in my way.”

“Last? …What for? What are you up to?”

Shadow pulled out a chaos emerald, beginning to draw on its power so that it glowed visibly in his hand. “You can’t stop me.”

Knuckles looked at the chaos emerald in the hedgehog’s hand, then the master emerald behind himself, and finally back to Shadow’s face, allowing himself a small smirk. “Mine’s bigger.” He turned and raised a hand towards the master emerald, beginning to speak in a low voice.

“What?” asked Shadow, then realized the echidna was no longer talking to him, but chanting over the master emerald. He shook his head, and pointed the emerald towards Knuckles. “Chaos control!” Nothing happened, and he stared at the emerald.

Knuckles turned back to him and nodded. “Did you forget? The master emerald has the ability to suppress the other emeralds. You can’t use your chaos powers with me!” He spoke confidently, but even as he did he planted his feet more firmly on the ground, raising his fists and watching Shadow closely.

Shadow put the emerald away and clenched his fists. “I don’t need them to beat you!”

“Stand back, Amy,” Knuckles warned her.

“Stop it!” Amy shouted at them as the other two leapt at each other, exchanging blows, but they both ignored her.

Knuckles stood his ground against the force of every blow that Shadow landed, while his own punches tended to miss the faster hedgehog. But he was waiting for a better opening, and when he saw it he grabbed Shadow’s arm and threw him down the street, over the roofs of a row of buildings and out of sight. Amy gasped, surprised that he would have been tossed so far. Knuckles looked a little surprised too, but planted himself firmly again on the road, knowing what would be coming next. Shadow reappeared as a black streak a moment later, speeding back up the road with an angry yell. Knuckles braced himself for the charge, and Shadow collided with him, their fists locked against each other but the echidna losing hardly any ground. They strained for a moment, then Shadow jumped over him and away down the street. He gave himself enough distance to start another running charge. Knuckles was waiting to block this one, too, but Shadow didn’t try a direct attack this time, and instead began a quick circular dash, that turned into a narrow vortex of wind strong enough to lift Knuckles into the air. Off his feet, Knuckles couldn’t prevent Shadow from leaping into him and kicking him into the wall of a neighboring building, the stone there crumbling behind him.

Knuckles dropped back down to the ground, and when Shadow raced towards him again the echidna pounded hard at the pavement at the last minute, sending up a wall of broken debris all around him that Shadow slammed into. Shadow kicked the broken pieces of road away, but Knuckles was gone, and the hedgehog stopped to look around.

Amy was avoiding joining the fight, and gave him an exasperated look. “Why are you even fighting?! Shadow, what are you going to do with the chaos emeralds? What happened to Sonic?”

He looked over at her. “I can use them to control the Final Door. Nothing is going to stop me!”

She was about to argue with him, but the ground beneath Shadow buckled as Knuckles dug up from the ground below, leaping into the air in a shower of gravel to try and attack Shadow from behind. But Shadow side-stepped at the last minute, bringing his elbow down in the middle of Knuckles’ back as he passed him, grinding him into the broken sidewalk. While Shadow had him there, he pulled the last chaos emerald away from Knuckles, and ran over to the master emerald.

Knuckles pushed himself up from the ground. “Stop, Shadow!”

Shadow punched the large emerald, breaking it into pieces. Without the interference of the master emerald, brighter light began to creep back into the chaos emerald he was holding, the one he had just taken. “They’re all mine, now.”

“Shadow!” Amy shouted, running forward and grabbing him just as he began to teleport away, vanishing with him.

“Amy!!” Knuckles shouted, but she was gone. The streets were empty and starkly silent in the wake of the fight. “Dang it!”

-

When Knuckles heard an engine, he looked up to see the Tornado flying low into the city, and waited as it landed nearby. “Over here!” he shouted, a few fragments of the master emerald in his arms.

“Knuckles! I take it Shadow was here?” Sonic said, jumping out and waving to him.

“This is serious, Sonic! What’s going on?!”

“Hey, relax, this is no time to lose your cool.”

“This is the perfect time to lose it! Shadow’s lost his mind! The master emerald is broken, and he’s got the chaos emeralds and Amy!”

“Amy?” Sonic asked.

Tails pushed his flight goggles up, and asked, “Why would he take her?”

“She jumped after him before he warped away! There’s no knowing where they are now, but given Shadow’s mood, I don’t think he’ll be happy when he finds out she followed him.”

“Chill, cowboy,” Po said, sitting on the wing of the Tornado with her legs swinging over the side. “We just need to find out where they’re going.”

“That’s the problem!!”

“Hey, are you really that bummed that you lost a fight?” Sonic asked. “Look, Shadow wants the Final Door, so he’s going after Eggman, who has the wind lords with him. If we can find out where the winds are, we can stop him and Eggman both before anything bad happens.”

Knuckles took a deep breath and drew a hand down across his face, calming himself. “So? Now what?” he asked. Sonic pulled out the bright ring and tossed it to him. Knuckles caught it, and then his eyes grew wide. “This?!”

“So you can tell the difference? It’s just another ring to me, but I got it from a metal-head at the control tower. The finding ring’s bust, though.”

Knuckles pocketed the ring. “So how do we find these ‘winds’?”

“We should try asking this Iris person, who made the seals in the first place,” said Tails.

Po fluffed her tail and pointed a thumb at herself. “I’ve already got someone tracking the winds.”

Sonic crossed his arms. “Like I’m going to wait around! You’re the one who said Iris might know, so at least it’s something we can do in the meantime.”

Knuckles put a hand on his chin, thinking. “I don’t know. Maybe. But I don’t know how I can contact her, we have none of the chaos emeralds.”

Tails waved, and pointed at Podarge. “Po said there’s another way!”

The harpy nodded. “Sonic told me you got the finding ring from Iris, so maybe you could do this, too. If you have the master emerald, even if we can’t contact her remotely, we might be able to just drop by for a visit.” She dropped down and put her hands behind her head as she said, “But you might not be up for it. Sonic, remember the house at the back of the wind? Iris lives at the back of the light, it’s a whole lot harder to reach. Because no one can move as fast as light.”

Sonic asked, “Except Celaeno, right?”

Po nodded. “Yeah, she could get there. But, there was a-”

“Trick to it?” he finished for her, smiling.

“Well, she was a harpy,” Tails said, unsurprised. “So what do we have to do?”

“…Look, this is a big secret, even among harpies, so I’ll just tell you, Sonic.”

He shook his head. “We’re all in this together.”

She scuffed the ground with a talon. “I thought you’d say that. Okay. But first we need to open the way, or it won‘t matter.”

“But how will the master emerald do that?” Knuckles asked her.

“You don’t know?” she asked, surprised.

“Of course not! Why would I?”

“You’re the guardian! It’s not like I know how to use the thing!”

“You’re sure the master emerald is what does it?” Sonic asked her.

“Yeah! That’s how Celaeno always got in.”

Sonic waved a finger and smiled at Knuckles. “Then you can figure it out.”

“But-”

“You don’t think you can do it after all?” asked Tails.

Sonic shrugged and sighed, “Some guardian!”

“Yeah, he’s all talk,” Po said, stretching.

Knuckles shook a fist at all three of them. “Don’t underestimate me!”

“So you’ll try it?” Sonic asked with one eye open, scratching the end of his nose.

Knuckles nodded seriously. “We need to gather up the pieces of the master emerald first. They should all be in the city, or nearby.”

“No problem!” said Sonic, giving them a thumbs up. They began their search.

[SoDi]

-17- A Rose By Any Other Name

Shadow appeared in an old forest thick with the colors of early autumn foliage, gray-green moss trailing low off the branches. The colors were heightened due to the red glow of the setting sun, which caught in the leaves like fire. Shadow threw Amy away from himself as soon as they materialized, and she hit a gnarled oak tree with a whimper, picking herself up and asking, “What was that for?!” She rubbed her left arm, where she had hit the tree.

He looked surprised to see that it was her, but said, “You shouldn’t have followed me! I don’t have time to baby-sit you.”

“Where are we?”

The wind was crisp, and after the thin air of Alydia, almost sweet with the scent of fallen leaves. “The Gallowood.”

“But that’s not so far out of Silver City! Mayor Walnut has his new town somewhere downriver. I didn’t know it looked like this out here…”

“Enjoy the scenery,” he said, and turned to go.

She shouted, “You can’t just leave me alone in this place! Or are you going to fight me, too, if I follow you?”

He scowled at nothing in particular. “I don’t care what you do, so long as you stay out of my way.”

“You’re such a grouch!” He didn’t answer, he just kept walking. “Grr…” she growled to herself, trying to think of what else she could say to him. She did not, in fact, want to fight him. “Wait up, I’m not done talking to you! There’s something really wrong happening, look at this place!” Amy gestured at the forest around them, and the brightly colored leaves. “It’s barely summer here, but the leaves are already turning. Robotnik isn‘t just changing the weather, is he behind this too?” When he continued ignoring her, Amy ran ahead and stood in Shadow’s way, forcing him to stop.

Shadow shook his head at her persistence. “This whole forest is dying.”

“Dying?! Why?”

“The Final Door has a certain way it works, even when only drawing on part of its powers. Summoning the spirit army required an exchange of energy,” he said, motioning at the forest all around them.

Amy pointed at him, understanding what he meant. “And if that Door were opened completely?”

“An infinite power could be summoned, and in exchange it would devastate the planet, and everyone in it. But that’s not what I’m trying to do.”

“…I know. You’re trying to get Maria back, right?”

“So why are you in my way?” he said, and Amy looked away, unsure how to answer. Shadow pushed her aside and kept walking.

“That doesn’t mean I agree with what you’re doing!” she shouted at his back. “I want you to stop because it’s the right thing to do, not because anyone forces you, or beats you in a fight. Why do you think fighting solves everything? Being the winner doesn’t make you right!”

“I don’t have to be right, but I have to win.”

“Why are boys so dense?” Amy asked herself, following behind him. “Isn’t the Door dangerous? And why would you try something like that? It seems… wrong.”

Shadow stopped in his tracks. “It was wrong that she died. I was the reason the military attacked the ARK.”

“Is that how Robotnik convinced you to help him? He only said that to manipulate you, didn’t he?”

“Even so, he understands what happened, and so do I. I could not change anything, then. But now, there is a power I can use, to make things right. Nothing will stop me from saving her this time!”

Amy was afraid of the look on his face, but wouldn’t turn away. “Sonic won’t give up.”

“He’s just trying to save the world from another threat.”

“It’s worth protecting! Isn’t that why you made your promise? And if using the Door does such terrible things, why would you still…”

Shadow crossed his arms and his eyes grew distant, thinking. “It won’t. Gerald made me with a heart and a soul, to make me more than a weapon. A soul identical to Maria’s. I can use that, to find her and call her back through the Final Door. And then, I can use my own life in the exchange. I won’t break my promise, and I-”

There was a resounding smack as Amy Rose slapped Shadow across the face, hard enough to turn his head around. “Don’t be so selfish!” Perhaps out of shock, either from the slap or from having his rare monologue interrupted, Shadow kept his face turned away so Amy couldn’t meet his eyes as she went on, “Didn’t she protect you? I know I wasn’t there, and I never met her. And I, I don’t know what I would do if I lost someone that important to me, but I also have to wonder, if I were in Maria‘s place, I…” She shook her head. “It doesn‘t matter if the world is safe from the Final Door or not, you aren‘t doing this for her, or for anyone but yourself! Didn’t Maria make her own choice?! She had something to protect, just like you do. And you think you can just undo that decision for her? Tell me, Shadow! Is this really what she would want?!”

Shadow turned back to her, slowly. “Amy… You don‘t-”

The ground began to shudder violently, and some of the more brittle trees began to fall, broken branches showering down from overhead. Shadow kept Amy shielded behind him with one arm as a large flying vehicle drifted down from the sky, forcing it’s way through the branches, motor roaring. Amy tried to look at it even as she shielded her eyes from the dust flying around them, “Is that Robotnik?”

A mechanical voice replied, “Well well, two hedgehogs for the price of one! What a touching scene!”

Shadow pushed Amy a bit further back, giving himself more room to take a fighting stance. “Dexter, I was hoping you’d still be here. Where is the doctor?”

“Too busy to be bothered with meddlesome rodents!”

“So, you did come here to meet up with him. He can’t be too far.”

“This is as far as you go! The Egg Scrambler and I will finish you!” The aforementioned vehicle began to float up again, guns and cannons rotating into place as it prepared for combat.

A small video monitor with a picture of Robotnik’s face on it hovered around from behind Dexter and began shouting at him, “Dexter, that’s enough! Pull back, I’m sending in a real fighter.”

Dexter looked startled, and saluted the monitor even as he argued, “But, I can win this time, I-”

“Incompetent fool! You had your chance!”

While they were distracted, Shadow moved to make an attack, but Amy grabbed at his elbow and said, “You can’t fight again, you haven’t recovered enough of your strength to use your chaos powers, have you?”

“I don’t need them to win this fight!” But he pulled out the emeralds and put them into her arms, saying, “You can’t let the doctor get these, they‘re the key to the Final Door. Move fast, I know you can outrun this machine.”

“No way am I leaving! I can fight, too, I-”

“Get out of here! Now!” and he pushed her away. Robotnik and the robot were still arguing when a large streak of energy bolted at the Egg Scrambler and knocked it into the sky, finally putting it on the retreat. Amy and Shadow were thrown to the ground, the emeralds spilling out of her arms. The monitor Robotnik had been speaking through tumbled through the grass towards Shadow’s feet, and he picked it up. “Blowing up your own machines to save me the trouble? Surrender, and we can end this chase. You can’t hide from me for long.”

The image on the screen flickered, but Robotnik looked as smug as ever. “The real question is, can you hide from yourself?”

Something shot at Shadow’s injured hand, and he had to release the monitor, which hovered back out of his reach. Something was emerging from the dust cloud that the flying machine had left behind. It looked like Shadow, carrying some sort of large gun in one hand. “An android? This won’t even slow me down,” Shadow said, his eyes glinting.

“True. Because it will instead stop you in your tracks! V-Shadow, destroy him, and get me those emeralds!” Robotnik ordered. Quicker than could be seen, the look-alike leapt forward and drove a fist into Shadow’s chest, right over the scar from the V-cell. Shadow was winded and tumbled backwards a long way, but he managed to pick himself up and jump out of the way of the copy’s next gun shot, which shattered the ground.

“What sort of android is this?” Shadow asked, still feeling the force of the first blow. He watched as the look-alike picked up the red chaos emerald from the ground and slung the gun over its shoulder, and when Amy tried to wrest the crystal back, kicked her away easily.

Robotnik laughed, able to watch the fight through the floating video device. “It was so beneficial giving the V-Mega your ability to use chaos control, we decided to revive the old clone project using your life-data. With some improvements, of course.”

“Improvements?” Shadow scoffed, jumping away from another blast attack. “It’s just another fake,” he said, and in the middle of his next jump he scooped the monitor out of the air and crushed it against the ground when he landed. Shadow and the copy regarded each other for a moment. “What, ‘V’? You can’t fight without someone to give you orders?”

The look-alike raised a hand, and the emerald it was holding began to glow. It spoke in a harsh voice, “Quantum chaos spear!” And a larger bolt of energy tore through the forest towards Shadow. It was too large an attack for him to dodge completely, and it threw him clean through two tree trunks and buried him partway into a third, his body singed. He slid to the ground and was still. The V-Shadow walked towards him, but once it came close Shadow’s eyes flew open and he made a spinning leap towards the enemy, scarring its body with his quills.

The look-alike was not made of metal, Shadow realized. “You are no machine. What are you?”

The clone tossed him away and then lifted another hand. “Quantum chaos blast!” and a wave of light shot outwards, striking the tree where Shadow had been standing, as he managed to dodge again. The tree lit up, then seemed to vanish in an eerily silent explosion. Fragments of the tree phased back into existence all around them, some branches dropping out of the empty air, some larger pieces of root and leaf jammed into the surrounding trees or rocks where they had reformed inside of those solid objects.

“What was that attack!?” Shadow wondered aloud, leaping away again.

“Project Shadow. I will scatter your atoms across the continent,” said the look-alike, even his voice sounding like Shadow‘s.

“So you can talk,” Shadow said, standing up from where he had landed. “You’re still just a copy.”

“Technology is made to be improved upon,” said his copy, expressionless. “You are an obsolete experiment. My master considers you a threat, but I am disappointed to find my prototype so inept. Or were you just unprepared?”

Shadow glared, bracing himself. He knew that he was too tired to win a direct fight, even if he could get the chaos emeralds back. At that thought, his eyes darted towards Amy, who was sitting up on the grass beyond them, rubbing her head where she’d been kicked. The clone saw Shadow look away, and followed his gaze to her.

“Secondary target, Amy Rose. Retrieve the remaining chaos emeralds. Small challenge,” and the V-Shadow glided swiftly towards her. Shadow raced after him, trying to beat him there, grabbing the look-alike around the waist and throwing him sideways into a tree. They were just a few feet from Amy and the scattered emeralds now. But the look-alike hit the tree with its feet and used it to jump back towards Shadow, kicking him to the ground.

Amy had seen them coming, and pulled out her hammer. “Get away from me, creep!” The V-Shadow stopped, one foot still on Shadow’s back to pin him to the ground, and with the chaos emerald launched a round energy-ball at her. She pounded it away with her hammer and kept running forward, sending a second swing against the enemy’s body. It hardly moved.

“Move!!” Shadow shouted at Amy, using the opportunity to push himself out from under the V-Shadow. She turned just in time to see that the energy ball she had knocked away had circled back towards them. Shadow stood and in one motion picked Amy up from behind and threw her out of harm’s way as the energy ball engulfed him and the look-alike both.

“Quantum chaos control!” said the V at the last minute, and appeared nearby, leaving the energy attack to batter only Shadow’s body. Shadow screamed, and the V-clone shot an attack at the scorched earth where the wounded hedgehog stood. “This is over. Quantum chaos blast!” Shadow’s body lit up and then vanished silently within the effervescent light. A whole patch of the forest vanished with him, as if it had simply been scooped out of existence.

“Shadow!!” shouted Amy.

“You finished that battle for me, Miss Rose. I will have to thank you by finishing you off just as quickly.”

Amy stood back up, her eyes wet and wide. “Where is he? That’s some sort of chaos control, you didn’t destroy him! So where is Shadow?!”

“Which part of him?” the V asked. It would have been the sort of thing to say while gloating, but his voice and face remained so lifelessly expressionless that it was somehow worse to think he meant the question seriously. Amy was left speechless, and he raised a glowing hand to attack, when the Egg Scrambler reappeared noisily above them.

“Halt! Our master Robotnik wants this one detained, to lure in Sonic, so don’t destroy her! I’ll take her and the seven emeralds back to base.”

The clone lowered its hand. “…That mission suits you.”

“What?! You are to-”

“I know my mission,” and the V-Shadow vanished silently, but left the red emerald behind.

Sinister Dexter rounded the Scrambler and its weapons menacingly towards Amy, but she seemed more concerned about the vanished patch of earth than the immediate threat. “You’ve already lost, so don’t make this harder for yourself. Come quietly!”

“You’re going to trap Sonic like that, too?” Amy looked at the forest around them, at the scorched earth and the brightly colored leaves. Shadow had told her to run. And even if she was captured now, she knew Sonic would still save her. But she shook her head. “I’m not going to let anyone use me against Sonic. And I’m not going to run away, either! I have things to protect, too!” Slowly, her expression became set, and sharply determined as she stared up at the Robotnik-bot and argued, “We can’t lose to you now! We have too much to protect!” The emeralds laying around her feet began floating into the air, drifting about Amy as a bright aura began to shine around her. Amy rose up a short way with them, and clenched her hands into tight fists as her body flashed, her quills turning golden and even her red dress and headband brightening to pink. Before Dexter could quite see what had happened, she zoomed out from the golden aura in a tight spin, slicing through a wing of the Scrambler and setting it to wobbling dangerously. He began shooting the machine’s weaponry at her furiously, but she evaded the shots and flew into the air after him as he tried to escape above the forest canopy.

“Uh-oh…” Dexter stated, his metal mustache trembling as Super Amy then commenced slicing through the rest of the Egg Scrambler until nothing but the spherical hovercraft and Dexter himself were left, still puttering forward in a useless attempt to outrun her. Amy paused for a moment, hanging in the air behind him as the scrapped pieces of the machine fell away to the forest below with a loud crashing. Once it was quiet again, Dexter looked up at her and asked meekly, “I suppose you aren’t coming quietly?”

Super Amy smiled, then began a tight spin, launching herself at the hovercraft and hitting it hard enough to knock it clear over the horizon, where it vanished with a small twinkle. She shouted happily, “Never fear, Super Amy is here! If only Sonic could see me now! Uh…” she added, noticing that she had reverted to her familiar pink self, and dropped out of the sky onto a tree branch. The fight had hardly lasted a minute, however. “It isn’t fair! How come it lasts so much longer when Sonic does it?” The chaos emeralds had scattered away after being used, like they always did, out over the forest canopy. So she didn’t even have those anymore. She climbed out of the tree, careful to keep the hem of her skirt down, and then turned to look back through the forest. The hole in the ground where Shadow had vanished was long out of sight by now. She became wistful, thinking of the conversation that the Scrambler had interrupted, and worried to herself, “I still have to make him understand. He can’t really be gone, not before I can tell him how stupid that was! But I have to find him first!”

[SoDi]

-18- Riding in the Wake

Sonic and the others had taken the pieces of the Master Emerald back to Angel Island and now were waiting for Knuckles to finish mending it.

“How’s it looking?” asked Sonic, after the echidna came down from the shrine steps to where the others were waiting.

“We found all the pieces, so the emerald is fine again.”

Sonic nodded. “Then we’re finally ready.”

Together, the four of them returned to the top of the shrine, where the master emerald was shining. “You have that bright ring, right?” asked Po.

“Of course! My goal from the beginning was to return it to Iris,” said Knuckles.

“You managed to get a finding ring out of the master emerald?” she went on.

“Yeah? Only because she sent it through.”

“Uh-uh, you had to be on this side to draw it out, or it’d have nowhere to go. So, just do whatever you did then, in reverse!”

“What?” asked Tails.

“Use the bright ring to force a way into the emerald. Once a way is open, though, leave it open so we can get in. We’ll get to the road that leads to Iris by passing through the master emerald!”

“How is that supposed to happen?!” asked Knuckles.

“Iris opened a way before because she has a lot of power of her own. The bright ring channels power even from a long way off, right? So it should be able to do the same thing she did, you just got to know how to use it. So, you know, do whatever you guardians do.”

Sonic asked, “This is how Celaeno got to Iris?”

“Well, she had a share of Iris’ power with her, like the other harpy sisters. The power of Iris, even a small share like the harpy sisters have, ought to be enough to reach her. That‘s why the bright ring ought to be enough to do it, too.”

“Fine, let’s just do it,” said Knuckles. The others were surprised that he wasn’t going to protest further. When they all looked at him, he said, “What? I’m thinking about this too hard, if I just make it happen, it’ll happen.” He turned away from them and held the bright ring out towards the master emerald, closing his eyes in concentration.

Sonic grinned. “Alright!”

The emerald flashed, surrounding them with a blinding light, and they could feel their skin pinching all over, as if they were being squeezed through the bright space. They found themselves standing on a small disk of earth floating in the open sky, a few clouds and floating rocks around them but no ground visible below. It looked a lot like the sky road, but without the road. The sky here was a strange patchwork of daylight and night sky, stars visible some places and not in others, bands of twilight colors skirting the edge of their vision. And the sky was also shifting, as if day and night were passing through each space more rapidly than they should. It was dizzying to watch for very long.

“See? I made it happen,” Knuckles told them, crossing his arms.

“Where are we now?” asked Tails.

“The edge of Iris’s home. She lives in the Rain Palace, way that way,” and Po pointed straight upwards.

“Why do these places always look so weird?” Sonic wondered.

Po shrugged. “It’s an artificial dimension, like a broken place in reality.”

“I suppose I can fly, but, how far will it be?” asked Tails, anxious that he couldn’t actually see anything above them but more sky.

“It’s not a matter of distance,” Po said, shaking her head. “Iris lives at the back of the light. So to get there, you have to outrace the day! The most important thing is speed, but flying would really help right now,” she said, staring upwards and tugging her horn. Then she clapped her hands and turned to Sonic. “Listen up, blue-boy. I’m going to tell you the secret to running fast as light.”

“Really?” said Sonic, a little disbelieving.

“See that?” said Po, pointing to a few small sparks of light darting through the air above them. They were sky-colored, so they were hard to see until she pointed them out.

“Maybe it’s an elemental,” Knuckles guessed.

“Of light, maybe. There are twelve winged hours, spirits of the day and night, and because of that, they move fast as light. They can get to Iris, and they’re our key to getting there, too. Those there are called Early Morning, I think. To follow them, we need to ride in their wake. That‘ll let us move as fast as them, at least for a little while.”

Sonic was tapping his foot impatiently. “Twelve, huh?”

“We’ll have to follow them in order or we‘ll head in the wrong direction! If we can jump into their wake, we’ll still drop out eventually because we’re too heavy. So before you drop, you have to dash into the wake of the next winged hour, okay? But dash lightly, or you’ll drop anyway, and if you don’t time it right, you’ll miss altogether.”

“A light dash? Fine with me.”

“Because we can’t fly, we have to make one clean shot of it all at once, or we’ll just keep dropping, right back to Angel Island. Every second up there counts, because there’s no second chance, get it?”

“Are you nervous, Po?” Sonic asked, smiling and scratching his nose.

“No! I just don’t want you to get left behind, so try to keep up,” she growled.

“What about us?” Tails asked.

Sonic looked over at him and Knuckles. “Oh, yeah.”

“ ‘Oh yeah?’ You forgot?” asked Knuckles. “Doesn’t sound too hard, we can handle this,” he said to Tails. The fox nodded.

“Well, hard or not, don’t tell anyone, okay?” asked Po. “It’s still supposed to be a secret!”

“Why?” asked Sonic.

“I don’t want people to know my secrets, that’s all.”

“But everyone already knows you cheat,” laughed Sonic. Po tried to smack him on the back of the head, but he nimbly dodged.

“Let’s just do this,” Po said, and made a high leap into the air, the others following a moment later. The harpy slid up behind the small spirit of Early Morning, which looked like a hazy glowing outline of a person, startling it away and upwards. She dashed along in its wake, speeding away from them almost too fast to see. The others looked around for other winged hours to follow, and soon they were all streaking through the sky.

Sonic was used to the rush of the wind around him, and rode the wake of the light spirit high into the air. From inside the wake, the whole world became a long smear of light blurring past him. When the spirit suddenly veered to the side, he was sent flying forward because of his momentum. He didn’t have a lot of time to look for the next small spirit, this one a little brighter blue, and he kicked off from a nearby floating stone and then a second one to make it into that spirit’s trail. He continued following the wakes of the winged hours, most leading in curving spiral lifts into the sky or tighter coils that kept carrying them higher. Po was a larger sky-colored blur always a little bit ahead of him, she and Sonic bouncing between rocks or into gusting updrafts to move between wakes. From the corner of his eye he caught sight of Tails lose momentum in the wake of the Noon hour and fall, vanishing in a puff of cloud. He dashed up alongside Podarge and shouted over, “I think we lost Tails!”

“He’ll be fine, he’ll just have to wait for us! I lost sight of Knuckles ages ago, too. You don’t plan to join them, do you?”

“Not with Iris waiting on us!” he saluted, and threw himself out of the wake. He had seen the next winged hour a slight distance below them, and let himself freefall, catching its trail as it sped by and racing ahead of Po while she was still kicking herself up between floating rocks. She made a sound of displeasure and strained to catch back up.

As they moved, the sky around them shifted from daylight colors to the rose and violet of dusk, and then to night colors. It became more difficult to see the winged hours they were supposed to follow, and a few jumps later Sonic misjudged his leap and missed the trail he was targeting. He was lucky enough to see another winged hour further out and catch the tail of that wake. Eventually, after crossing into the path of Darkest Night by luck more than planning, he dropped from that wake and almost collided with Po as they both veered through the air towards the twelfth winged hour, and rode Dawn in a vertical shot upwards. It wasn’t just the darkness obscuring his vision now, Sonic realized, but thick mist. The cloud they were inside of grew brighter quickly as they were tossed out of the wake of the Dawn hour and the rush of wind began to slow.

Their freefall dropped them onto a small stone landing, and the clouds vanished as the daylight returned and Sonic and Po stood up.

“That was great! Let’s do it again!” said Sonic.

“We made it,” said Po, looking around. “But I guess it’s just us.”

The Rain Palace was a floating gathering of marble towers and ribbon-like paths, the broad floating stones here covered with wildflowers or with crystal-clear pools of water that overflowed their edges and sent streams of waters plummeting down out of sight. Waterfalls were everywhere, spilling musically out from those pools or from carved fountains or over walls, ending in clouds of mist, and Chao were playing in the water everywhere they looked. Rainbows were everywhere, too. Without the ground to get in the way, the largest of the rainbows were full circles, rings suspended in the air around the Rain Palace. Narrow stone paths meandered about, like paths would meander through the grounds of a large garden, but without the ground. These paths led under waterfalls and through rainbow rings, and up to the balconies and pillared walkways of the main building.

Sonic picked one of the flowers that grew to the side of the landing where they stood and sniffed it. “Did the place look like this the last time you were here?” Sonic asked.

“Huh?” Po said. “What are you talking about?”

Sonic wagged the flower at her. “How many people know about that trick?”

Podarge put her hands on her hips. “Too many if you don’t keep it to yourself! Really, I don’t know anything useful when it matters.”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t have to agree with me!”

“I mean, you’ve traveled thousands of years through time, and have heard about all sorts of things that are starting to turn up again, but you don’t seem to know the details about them. Unless you‘re holding out on us.”

“You mean like spirit boxes, and summoning, and stuff? And the Final Door, too. I’m just a harpy, little bro. All this stuff was around back then, but it wasn‘t so important that I learn the details. Seems too bad that the person who traveled all these centuries to help bail you out of trouble now doesn’t actually know how any of this stuff works, huh?” she laughed sarcastically. “But it was just a stupid accident that got me here.”

“Some coincidence.” Sonic looked around again, taking in the scenery. “Still, you did good with this place. You and Celaeno must have been close.”

Po shrugged and began walking down the path. “I guess you could say that. But I never liked her.”

Sonic didn‘t push the subject after she didn‘t deny that his guess was right. “Hey, where do these other paths lead?”

“You can follow this one right to Iris, but all the other paths loop back to the same places.”

Sonic stretched his legs. “Now that we’re here, there’s no hurry, right? How about a quick run around the place?”

“What!? Why would we waste time like that?”

“Because we’re here, and because we can! Or are you just afraid you’ll lose again?”

“Stop saying that, I didn’t lose! This time I‘ll prove it to you!” she argued, and they took off along one of the side paths that ran in a wide arc around the sides of the palace, through the fountains and flower patches.

It was a great place to race, but before they could get very far they heard a shout, “What are you two doing?”

Sonic skidded to a stop and saw Knuckles running down towards them from the palace walls. “Hiya, Knuckles! Guess you made it, too.”

“I was waiting to see if you’d turn up, but you were just goofing off again.”

“You mean you beat us here? I don’t believe it!” said Sonic.

Knuckles shook his head. “I’d like to say I beat you, but I think I warped here. After all, I was still carrying the bright ring,” he said.

“You could still say you won,” Po told him. “I mean, that was a great look on Sonic’s face just now, why couldn’t you just let him believe you outraced him?”

“But, that’s not what happened,” said Knuckles, a little confused.

Po sighed and shrugged.

“Let’s find Iris,” said the echidna, pointing to the large doors nearby.

As he and Sonic headed for them, Po scuffed the ground and put her arms behind her head, her shoulder spikes twitching. “I’ll wait here, guys.”

“All this way and not going in?” Sonic asked.

“It’s fine. You two are here to talk to her, and Iris won’t want to see me, anyway.”

“Why not?” Knuckles asked her. “You seemed to be on good terms when you spoke before.”

“Visits are just different, you know? It’s been a long time, and I don’t want to, you know, bring up bad memories for her, or anything. Sonic, we can finish our race later.”

He waved as she took off. “I’ll say hi for you.”

Knuckles shrugged, and they walked around to the main entrance. The front doors were very heavy, but Knuckles pushed them wide, slowly. Inside, large gaps in the ceiling and even in the floors allowed daylight to move through the halls freely, and there were columns of water falling in from the higher levels, as well as thick flowering vines spilling down the walls. Large crystals set into the stone of the building or hovering weightless in the air caught at the light like prisms. And there were more chao, napping on ledges or flying around the water. Some of them looked down at them curiously as they walked through, apparently unused to having visitors.

“There are so many chao here, it must be a good place,” Knuckles observed.

“All this colorful stuff sort of looks like Amy’s room,” said Sonic.

The echidna raised one eyebrow at him. “You’ve been in Amy’s room?”

Sonic raised a hand and opened his mouth, looking as if he was ready to give some witty comeback. But nothing came to him. He put the hand on his chin and shook his head. “Man. I walked right into that one, huh?”

Knuckles tried to hide a laugh, turning to a group of chao sitting on the wings of a large bird statue. He held up the bright ring for them to see. “We’re here to see Iris.”

The chao looked at each other and then fluttered away, calling out in their chirping voices and rolling through the air ahead of the two adventurers. Knuckles and Sonic followed them to a larger room with a glass ceiling, where a bright golden light filled the center of the room. Wisps of the light resembled golden feathers floated in the air. The light pulsed as they entered, folding in on itself, and shaped itself into Iris. “I am Iris of the Rainbow. Welcome here,” she said. Sonic waved, and Knuckles let go of the bright ring as it drifted out of his hands and to the ribbon-wreathed woman. She placed it above her head, where it hung like a halo. “Thank you, young guardian. I am in your debt,” she smiled at him gently.

The echidna blushed and looked away. “It’s nothing. And, this is Sonic,” he said, introducing his companion.

“I did not expect you to come all this way, and it has been a long time since I have had any visitor able to reach me in this place. The harpy arrived with you, but she is not here?”

“She’s outside,” Knuckles answered. “She thought you wouldn’t want to see her.”

“She didn’t want to see Iris,” said Sonic.

Knuckles looked confused, but Iris nodded. “You know her that well. I cannot grant to her what she most wants of me. But there is another reason you came all this way.”

Sonic made a cheerful half-bow. “Eggman is still after the Final Door, whatever that really is, and we‘re going after him. We just need to know where we‘re going.”

“Yes, the Door, portal for the white wind. That wind, you see, is a primordial power of motion, fed by life and will. The Final Door allows it to be controlled by a strong enough will, but the Door itself is just as ephemeral, and is itself dangerous to command. That is why I divided it, that it might not be abused, and guarded the fragments with magical seals. So long as the seals are in your world, they are beyond my ability to sense them. I am sorry, I do not know where the three are now.”

“Then we’ll have to go back to hunting down Robotnik. He has all of the wind lords now,” Knuckles told her.

“Which means he has their seals as well,” Iris agreed. “But he does not have all of them. He does not have the seal that Zephyr carried.”

“That was destroyed with Pandora’s Box, right?” Sonic asked, remembering the fight with the Egg Benedict. “So does that mean Eggman can’t use the full power of the Final Door? That‘s convenient.”

Iris shook her head. “No. But that does not matter, because it was not destroyed,” Iris went on, and the other two looked surprised. She explained, “Zephyr’s seal was not in Pandora’s Box, only a portion of his power that was lost when he died. He hid the seal in the world so that it would not be destroyed with him, and so that it would not be found and misused. Hidden and lost all these centuries, too distant for me to discern its location. Until now.” She smiled. “With it, you might be able to free the spirits who carry the other seals from whatever fate currently binds them.”

“Sure! We got this,” said Sonic confidently. “Guess it’s not a wasted trip after all.”

“I’ve been wondering how Robotnik trapped the wind spirits, when they’re supposed to be so strong. We…” Knuckles paused to watch a purple chao as it cartwheeled slowly through the air above their heads, distracting him. The chao were everywhere, making small noises and watching the visitors with rapt curiosity. He shook his head and refocused his attention. “We might have a real fight on our hands, once we track them down.”

Sonic began tapping a foot. “No sweat! I can take whatever Eggman throws at me.”

Knuckles began to argue, but Iris spoke first. “Yes. Sonic, you might be the only one now who can free them.”

“What? Sonic?” asked Knuckles.

Sonic laughed at the look on his friend’s face. “I guess my reputation’s the only thing fast enough to get ahead of me. Even in para-dimensions!”

“I know who you are, wielder of the bright light of chaos. Sonic the hedgehog, hero of nations, savior of worlds!”

“Quit it, you’re making me blush!” He was really enjoying the look on Knuckle’s face right now.

Iris pointed a narrow finger at the hedgehog, out from her long trailing sleeve. “You are the vessel of the wind of hope!”

“… … …What?” Sonic was frozen, having lost the thread of the conversation.

“Are you serious?” asked Knuckles.

“I knew from the moment you entered my domain. You carry the seal of the white wind that once was Zephyr’s. However far it traveled before your time, it was passed to you. You carry this power now, and its strength is yours.”

“So what does that mean?” he asked.

Iris drifted closer towards him. “This power grants great speed and vitality, which you may already know. But it grants other powers as well, in resonance with the other seals.”

“Like the wind lords in the stories? Wait, does that make me immortal, too?!”

“Don’t be stupid,” Knuckles said, embarrassed.

Iris laughed. “No. You cannot wield the true power of these seals, that I made for the four brothers.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because you aren’t a spirit, you’re a hedgehog!” Knuckles explained, exasperated.

“Better believe it!” Sonic agreed, apparently undismayed by the answer to his question.

“But I really can’t believe it,” Knuckles said to himself. “Well, I guess it was clever of Zephyr, hiding it by giving it away. And it‘s the last place anyone would think to look for it.”

“What‘s that mean?” asked Sonic.

“Other than telling you this, I am afraid I can do no more for you. It rests on you and your friends, now. Sonic, please do not underestimate what you carry, and be cautious lest it be used against you. Go. You may not have much time,” Iris told them. But before they left, she added, “Wait, guardian. I would have a further word with you, alone.”

The adventurers looked at each other, and Sonic shrugged. “I’ll go find Po, you can catch up,” and he dashed away quickly.

Knuckles turned. “What is it, Iris?”

“Our hope rests on the wind that Sonic carries, but it is also a hazard. I must ask again, be cautious.”

“Yeah. Because he won’t be,” Knuckles agreed.

“The wind fragments must not be released from their seals. If even one of the seals remains whole, you will be able to reseal the Final Door shut. But it becomes much more difficult the fewer seals that remain, so try not to let it come to that. I tell you this because, as a guardian, it will fall to you to protect this world should Sonic fail. We must work to save what we can, rather than risk everything. Do you understand?”

“I do. But it won’t come to anything like that.”

“I hope not. What little aid I can offer is still yours. Return to me if it becomes necessary.”

“Podarge led us here before, but I might not have gotten through on my own.”

“It was not the bright ring that carried you here. It was your own strength, and my help. You and I share a craft, remember. You are stronger than you know, but you are yet unpracticed.”

“Iris, I-”

“Perhaps we will be able to discuss these things more fully at another time. I would like that. But there is still a task before us.”

“…Right.” Knuckles left, and Iris ribboned away into feathery light behind him.

Outside, Sonic had caught up to Podarge, who was running loops along the garden paths of the floating Rain Palace, her eyes on the bright sky all around them. When she noticed Sonic, she stopped and said, “Took you long enough! Find out anything useful?”

“Oh, yeah! Everything we need to take on Eggman is right here,” he said, pointing a thumb to his chest.

“Get over yourself,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Seriously, Iris just told me that I’ve got the seal of Zephyr.”

“What?!” Po shouted, almost dropping off the path in her surprise. She looked more disturbed than excited for him. “Sonic, do you even understand what that means?!”

“Yep.” He threw both hands into the air in a victory pose. “I am the wind!”

She just slapped a hand to her head.

Knuckles found them a little later, and said, “We better go. Tails is waiting on us.”

“How do we get out? Is there a back door or something?” Sonic wondered.

“I forgot to ask,” Knuckles realized.

“Back door, bottom door, whatever,” Po said. When they turned to ask her what she meant, she jumped and kicked at them with her feet, just hard enough to knock them off the narrow path. They shouted in surprise, and she watched for a moment as they fell before jumping after them. “Whee!”

[SoDi]

-19- Thicker Than Water

Amy ran into the streets of Riverton, the new town that Walnut and the Silver City survivors had built. The streets were especially crowded, though, and temporary shelters had appeared in every open space. She spotted a familiar face sitting on a stack of supply crates, calmly holding a tea cup as everyone else around him moved in a frenzy of activity. “Professor Pickles! What are you doing here?”

“Ah, Amy Rose! It’s a disaster. Not the natural disasters, those have rather cleared up, Sonic did well. But, Liverspool and a number of other major cities have all been decimated. Why, I barely made it here myself, using that motor bike Tails left behind! I even had to leave my emergency stores of cucumbers.”

“Did Robotnik’s army attack you?”

“When the storms cleared, the military was able to push back those strange soldiers rather quickly, and they only seem to show up in conjunction with bad weather, at any rate. No, I’m afraid it’s Shadow. He’s been moving between major military targets since yesterday, destroying everything! I don’t understand at all.”

“Because it’s not Shadow! Look, if we stopped the storms, then communicator channels should be working again, right? Can you contact Tails for me?”

“Of course!” he said, standing and leading her to a tent assembled from spare patches of tarp. Inside was a thick carpet and a large cushioned chair, and a small video communicator on a desk. Pickles turned it on and began dialing

After a moment, the screen lit up as Tails answered the signal. “Hiya, professor! How’s the world crisis?”

Amy pushed Pickles aside. “Tails! Where’s Sonic?”

“Amy? Where’d you come from? Sonic went to see Iris.”

She told Tails everything she had seen in the Gallowood, then said, “I bet it’s that V-Shadow that’s on the rampage now. When he attacked, Shadow just vanished! I couldn’t find him anywhere, and I don’t understand what happened!”

“Quantum chaos? He vanished?” Tails thought it over for a minute, trying to make sense of what she had said. “Well, if conditions are right, an evanescent wave coupling effect can occur. But even in quantum mechanics it’s an issue of calculating probabilities. I’ve actually begun a hypothesis relating chaos theory to chaos powers, but to be able to use those powers to manipulate quantum probabilities directly-”

Amy picked up the video machine and began shaking it violently. “Stop talking gibberish and tell me what happened!!”

“I, I don’t know!” said Tails, frightened the more he thought about it. “This is really bad! It means that there’s a way to use chaos powers with much finer precision, using chaos control even at the atomic level. That sort of quantum tunneling could warp all the atoms of a target in all different directions, so that they could never reform. Shadow would have-”

“Never mind, I‘ll figure it out for myself later.”

Pickles came closer to the screen and told Tails, “For the moment, the attacks have ceased. We don’t know where Shadow, I mean, this android Shadow, has gone now.”

Amy shook her head. “Eggman is probably sending him on some other errand of destruction. But Tails, you have to warn Sonic!”

“Right! I’ll go find him,” he said. “But, about the chaos emeralds, I found one when it fell onto Angel Island,” he said, holding up the white emerald.

Amy held up the yellow and purple emeralds. “And I found two in the Gallowood while looking for Shadow. We don’t know where the rest are anymore, so we should keep an eye out. But be careful, Tails.”

Tails nodded. “Yeah. You be careful, too, Amy!”

-

Knuckles was helping Tails fix the Tornado back at the workshop using that white chaos emerald. They would need the power up to travel faster while tracking the wind lords. Po wanted to look for Shin, so Sonic went with her and they began heading north. But they hadn’t gotten far when Shin met with them on the road.

“Shin, how did you know to find us here? We were just heading to Alydia to look for you!” Po said.

The hound had found a new weapon, an actual spear that she carried on her back as she ran. “Not necessary. So long as we have a pact, I will always know where you are,” she said, holding up a hand as a small web of light beaded along her arm, the same light that had appeared when they shook on their agreement.

“Creepy…” Po said.

“I tracked the location of the seals after I took mark of their magic at the Alydian tower. They are a long way off from one another, each of them guarded inside of strange fortresses, but I am sure I was not mistaken. The locations may be hard to penetrate, but not to reach, since the surrounding world is in an uproar. Little will hinder our travel. War seems to be breaking out, and many of the places I passed through have been destroyed.”

“Sounds like that V-Shadow Amy told Tails about,” Sonic nodded. “Like we don’t have enough world crises to deal with.”

“And this one is your brother, then?” Shin asked.

Po nodded. “Of course! How many hedgehogs are around meddling in world crises?”

“More than I ever expected to encounter, frankly.”

“I’m Sonic the hedgehog. Tails told me about you. If you know where the winds are, that‘s the best news we‘ve had all week!”

“Shall I lead you there, then?” Shin asked Po.

“Actually, if you tell us where we’re going, we could handle that,” Sonic said, then looked at Po.

The harpy seemed to understand what Sonic was thinking, and said to Shin, “Yeah, there’s something else you could track for me. Looks like a black hedgehog with red stripes?”

Shin’s ears twitched. “You might have some trouble going after the winds alone. But whatever you like. I am at your service. For now. This one you are seeking, he is the one calling himself the ultimate life form?”

“That’s definitely him!” Sonic said.

“I already know enough to track him for you, then.”

“Good. Then you can catch up to us again with him later. ‘Cause I guess you can do that,” said Po, a little unnerved when Shin gave her a toothy smile.

“Yes. I can.”

-

When they got back to the workshop, Tails and Knuckles had finished with the plane. “You found Shin? But she didn’t stick around, that’s too bad,” the fox said, though he actually seemed a little relieved.

“Can that tracker of yours really find Shadow?” asked Knuckles.

Sonic shrugged. “Can’t hurt. Besides, there’s no more room in the plane, and we need to book before Robotnik makes his move.”

Tails hesitated where he’d been climbing into the plane. “But, can we ignore V-Shadow? If he really can use quantum powers, and Shadow was-”

Sonic jumped up beside him and tapped his shoulder. “Don’t worry. It isn’t the first close call for Shadow, after all. And if a bare reentry through the atmosphere couldn’t keep him down, one bad guy has no chance!”

“You’re right,” said Tails, though he didn’t sound completely convinced. He pulled his goggles down over his eyes. “I can calculate the particular coordinates for the closest seal from what Shin told you, and we can leave whenever we’re ready,” he went on, tapping information into the navigation system of the Tornado. “Next stop, the North Sea!”

“Why did it have to be the ocean?” Sonic sighed as the Tornado took off.

“Show some spine!” Knuckles told him.

“I’ve got spines, lots of them! I am one cool blue hedgehog,” Sonic answered, running a hand through the quills on his head.

They flew out to the coast and beyond it, until they arrived a few hours later over a vast whirlpool just beyond the reefs. Although most of the anomalies with the weather were supposed to have disappeared after Sonic took the bright ring from the Alydian tower, the locations that Shin had described had all appeared about the same time, and yet these had not disappeared. The whirlpool did not look like a fortress, but as they came closer they could see large broken segments of an old Egg Carrier bobbing in the water around the whirlpool.

Tails ran a scan, and said, “Looks like there was an underwater base here, built from an old carrier we defeated months ago. I guess it fell into the ocean, and Robotnik just rebuilt it on the sea floor. Maybe that whirlpool is responsible, but this is all that’s left of the place now!”

They stared out over the sea below them as the plane circled. “Can you sense that? Sonic,” said Po, biting her lower lip with one fang.

“I know. I just figured it out,” he answered her.

“What? So where’s the wind lord? He’s not here after all,” said Knuckles.

Sonic shook his head and pointed out over the churning water. “He is. That whirlpool is the wind lord!”

“That base wasn’t caging him in, it was weighing him down! But not anymore!” said Po, shaking her head as the whirlpool began to rise up, forming itself into a giant, misty vortex of air and water. “Eurus!” she shouted at it.

“What?!” said Tails, flying them out of the way as the vortex continued to rise. The sea was chaotic, and more debris began to float to the surface. One of the massive waves forming around the wind spirit almost capsized the low-flying Tornado.

Po shielded her eyes from the spray and said, “Eurus is the wind of change. He’s actually a weather mage. But what’s wrong with him?!”

“You mean he’s not in the habit of sending tsunamis after his rescuers?” joked Sonic, coughing out a mouthful of cold saltwater.

“There!” shouted Knuckles, as the misty vortex shaped itself into a giant horse, all made of wind and green sea foam, that took off running across the waves. It moved fast. But Knuckles was pointing at the much-more-solid crystal covering its chest, an especially bright light burning at its heart.

“Is Eggman controlling Eurus now?” Po wondered, already looking defeated.

Sonic was not ready to give up yet. “So we’ll snap him out of it! That looks like a V-Cell.”

Po nodded. “It has his heart. And the magic of Iris is bound to the heart, so the seal for the wind of change is in there, too. If you just smash it, you’ll smash the seal with it!”

Sonic was frustrated. “That Robotnik! He’s really put us in a bind this time.”

“Can’t you take it out without breaking it?” asked Tails. “Like when you summoned Shin!”

“I… guess I could try,” said Po, but she seemed hesitant. “But it’s a big spell, and I’m a small harpy.”

“We‘ll have to catch him first,” Knuckles added.

“Tails, follow that wind spirit!” Sonic pointed dramatically towards the retreating target.

“You got it!” said the fox, and they lurched through the air. The sky had darkened and thick clouds were trailing after the weather mage, the sea a bristling tangle of white choppy waves below them.

“Can’t we go any faster?” Sonic asked as they made no real progress. The wind had picked up suddenly, as well, and he had to shout.

“The wind is too strong, I’ll lose control of the plane if I push it any further!”

“Then we’ll have to catch up to him on foot,” said Sonic, stepping to the edge of the wing.

“Hope you can,” said Knuckles.

“Who are you talking to?” Sonic said, crossing his arms.

“We have to fight him. Don’t we?” said Po.

Sonic considered her for a moment. “It’s alright. If you can’t come.” There was thunder echoing through the sky around them.

“…I’m coming.”

They both jumped off the wings and onto one of the large floating platforms in the water below, part of the broken base. Overhead, Tails was taking the Tornado higher to avoid the splashing water. Sonic and Po dashed across the platform and leapt to the next one, catching up to the transformed wind spirit. The platforms were slick, and kept bobbing under the water, making it hard to know where to run without falling into the sea. They couldn’t take the most direct route to Eurus, but the spirit seemed to be running erratically, as if mindless, or frenzied, kicking up thunderbolts where his hooves scraped the waves. They caught up as he rounded another curve, towering over the highest waves like a storm cloud himself, the wind howling behind him.

Sonic shouted across to Po, “I’ll distract him, and you grab the seal! Then the real fight can start!”

She nodded, and he jumped ahead and surfed a smaller piece of debris up the crest of a large wave. He used that height to jump up to the wind spirit’s head, landing between his ears. Luckily, it was more solid a landing than it looked to be, but the horse began rearing and bucking, trying to throw him off. Sonic fell, but Po caught him before he hit the water and they both landed on another platform. She shook her head. “I could reach the seal if he reared again, but his hooves move too fast like this, I’ll get trampled over!”

“Then we’ll try it again,” Sonic said, and ran off to do so. “Just don‘t be so slow this time!”

Flinging himself up towards Eurus, Sonic grabbed hold of part of the long mane and pulled. While Eurus tried to toss him away again, Podarge ran beneath the spirit, avoiding the flashing hooves and jumping towards the exposed V-Cell. She grabbed and held on to the V-Cell with both talons, shrieking at it, but this crystal was made of something stronger that did not crack against the sharp sound. Deciding on a different tactic, she plunged both arms inside the crystal, her hands passing into it as if the crystal wasn‘t solid at all. When she dropped back to the platform below, her hands were full of bright, twisting light, a floating knot of radiant threads, but she landed just as Eurus brought both hooves down in a heavy stomp. She rolled out of the way, careful not to drop the seal. Sonic leapt away, too, the storm convulsing, and they both watched as the horse-shaped storm cloud that was Eurus writhed and began to diminish, taking on a more humanoid shape, though still a horse made of dark mist. The V-Cell was smaller as well but still caging his chest. Eurus raised a hand and the sea beneath him turned to ice, all the waves around them becoming caught up in the spell so that the whole sea became still. The air was terribly cold, and it made breathing painful. Eurus then pointed the hand at Sonic and the ice between them cracked, shooting up a curtain of water that froze into a dozen icy spears and hurled themselves toward the hedgehog. Sonic dodged just in time.

“Eurus, stop it!!” Po shouted at him.

“He still can’t hear you!” said Sonic, jumping at the weather mage to attack. Eurus made a fist, and a dozen tornados sprang up around them, filled with sharp pieces of ice that rang like broken glass or wind chimes as they were tossed about. One whirlwind caught Sonic in the middle of his jump and carried him up into the sky.

Another one caught Po as she tried to run, and jerked her up so hard that the seal was wrenched out of her hands and tossed into the air. “Sonic, the seal!” she shouted.

Sonic spun against the whirlwind to neutralize it, getting his bearings. When he spotted the seal, a bright tangle of light coasting a small distance away, he used the force of a second whirlwind to throw himself after it. He tried to grab it, but it passed through his hands as if he weren’t there, or as if the seal were actually intangible.

Which, of course, it was. Sonic landed next to Po and watched as the seal hovered and began to shine, casting a narrow beam of light high into the air, wind gathering round it. “What happened? I couldn’t grab it!” he said, shaking the frost out of his quills.

Po tugged her horn. “Because you aren’t a harpy. I forgot!”

“You forgot?”

“Heehee…”

“Now what?” The beam widened and became a bright pillar reaching between sea and sky.

Po frowned. “That’s the invocation of the white wind! I forgot that, too! You must have triggered it when you came into contact with the other seal!” They both jumped away as Eurus threw a flurry of hailstones at them.

Sonic jumped toward the horseman, but the air grew so cold so quickly in proximity to the mage that his quills had turned brittle and the ends of a few snapped off when he tried a spin attack. He skidded away, over the crest of a frozen wave that he could use for cover, and took a look at the damage.

Podarge used the opportunity while Eurus was distracted to leap towards the pillar of light. She grabbed the seal and landed, sliding, on the other side. But the pillar of light itself remained, and continued to widen. Even Eurus, maddened by the possession of the V-Cell, seemed aware of the odd light.

The wind had stopped. Suddenly, the middle of the pillar seemed to expand, then unravel into a mass of thrashing tendrils. One wrapped around Eurus, grabbing him up and towards the shining light. When that happened, the ice everywhere around them all cracked, more of the bright tendrils shooting up from sea and smashing at everything in reach. The ice quickly began to revert to a churning mess, and the wind picked up again, this time blowing strongly toward the pillar of light, as if it were sucking the air into it rapidly. Sonic was keeping hold of a piece of metal debris that had resurfaced when the ice broke open. Po’s talons raked ineffectually across the crumbling ice as the wind carried her towards the light, until she reached one of the platforms from the old base and could plant herself more firmly. In very little time, the wind and writhing tendrils were being drawn back into the base of the pillar of light, which was beginning to narrow as quickly as it had widened. Eurus screamed, an unearthly sound as the wind spirit was dragged into the light and vanished.

Another arm of light uncoiled and snapped at the seal in Po’s hands. It was able to grab hold of it tightly, and was trying to pull it back into the light. The harpy was so surprised that it could touch the seal at all that she almost lost it, grabbing it back at the last second. Another coiling arm had burst up from the sea below Sonic and grabbed him by the legs, and Po only caught sight as he was dragged under the waves.

Po did not let go. She could feel that the light, and the strange limbs it was shooting out, were weakening. Once the pillar closed completely, the arms would vanish with it and she would have the wind seal, so long as she did not let go. But Sonic was underwater, and she did not know what it would do to him. For one long minute, she did not let go of the magic in her hands.

She tried one last time to wrench the seal completely away from the other grip, but it held on stubbornly. So she let it go as she slid towards the edge of the ice. The seal was crushed so quickly into the pillar of light that it was gone before Po had finished diving into the water. She was able to glimpse it evaporating, the white wind released and roaring outward like a sudden hurricane. The water, though no longer frozen, was still ice cold, so much so that the shock of it forced all the air out of her lungs, but she didn’t have time to return to the surface and take a second breath. She kicked forcefully, pushing downwards. The pillar of light extended far under the water, granting scant illumination broken by floating ice and metal. The light had lost the strength to send out the long tendrils, and the one that was dragging Sonic by the neck receded quickly, but he continued to sink even without being pulled. He had struggled hard to keep from being dragged into the pillar of light, but now he was out of air, body limp and eyes closed.

Podarge kicked harder, reaching him and wrapping her arms around his chest, then kicking for the surface again. The pillar of light thinned and vanished, and everything was dark, and she could only hope that she was still moving upwards. But she could not remember if she ever reached the surface.

[SoDi]

-20- Playing With Fire

There were sounds and images that came nearby sometimes, but none of them meant anything to him. With a melancholy feeling, he observed the passing shades of brutal fights, a smiling girl in a blue dress, an old man demanding something of him. He wanted them to mean something. “Where am I?” he wondered, only to hear the sound of his voice echo as if it was very distant from the ears he was listening with. That was rather disconcerting, so he didn’t try speaking aloud again. Then one more wisp of memory, a fleeting sound that felt more familiar, drifted closer, and instinctively he reached to grab at it. But he realized he had no limbs to grab with, he was frustratingly immobile. He waited for awhile, but he could not really think the situation over, since most of his thoughts were not there with him.

“I think you lost this,” said a different voice, and pressed something into his hand. Or perhaps it was his hand, because now he could move his fingers. A second time he reached out to grab at the small thought that drifted so close, but Shadow’s hand remained empty. Yet in that moment he realized that he must have forgotten his name. With that returned, he began searching out whatever other pieces of himself had become lost, reaching desperately for those few scattered memories that were still in reach. It was painful, clinging to those violent images, but he fought to keep hold of them because that pain meant that they were his, and that they mattered. Slowly, he gathered himself together again, and opened his eyes in the dark.

-

Sonic woke up in Green Hill with a bad cold and his quills bandaged. Tails set him down with his feet in a bucket of hot water and a thick blanket around his shoulders as he explained what happened. “After the invocation passed and the wind lord was gone, the storm stopped real fast. I was able to fly in and find you then. But you were out for a long time!”

“Hehe. Sorry I worried you. Achoo!” Sonic sneezed, and rubbed his nose. “Guess we failed that one.”

Tails shook his head. “At least you’re okay. Knuckles thinks that the invocation of the white wind actually opened the Final Door. Not for very long, but that would explain why there was something in there. It was trying to get out! We didn’t expect anything like that to happen,” Tails worried, thinking out loud. “But it might be because the seal of Zephyr and Eurus came into contact, not like when it was just a power fragment, like with Pandora’s box. It might do that every time two of the seals come into contact. That was my guess, and Podarge thinks so, too.”

“And that’s how Robotnik would get the Final Door to open all the way? With all four seals. Wait, what happened to Podarge? And Eurus, and-”

“Po saw the seal break. And, Eurus is gone, too.”

“Gone where?”

Tails shrugged, and Sonic frowned. Tails waited a moment, letting his friend have time to think all that over, then told him, “Podarge ran off somewhere once she woke up. Amy went out, too.”

“Amy’s here?”

Tails nodded. “She’s been here the whole time you were asleep! But this morning she went to get a welcome-home picnic ready outside. She said you’d wake up today, but I don’t know how she knew.”

“Sheesh! What is she thinking?” he wondered, standing up and sneezing again.

“I’m thinking you need to get better before you run off again!” Amy said at his shoulder. Sonic startled at her sudden appearance, but she must have come in while he and Tails were talking. “You still need to rest. Everyone does. If you push yourself too hard, then you might…” she ended weakly.

“Amy, we don’t have time for-”

“I made chilidogs!”

“-more than a quick lunch, then we’re outta’ here!” Sonic said, switching directions mid-sentence and now heading outside, overlarge blanket still wrapped around his shoulders.

Amy was about to follow, when she stopped and asked Tails, “Do you know where Po is?”

“She isn’t back yet. You want me to look for her?”

“No, I think I know where to look.”

Amy found Po in the old oak grove, sitting in a dandelion patch and weaving the flowers into rings. She didn’t notice Amy until the hedgehog asked, “What are you doing?”

Po seemed embarrassed, shoving the half-made flower ring behind her. “Nothin’. Cream was showing me how, but it’s harder than it looks.” Then she sneezed, scattering most of the small yellow petals immediately. The white fluff of the dandelions that had already gone to seed floated into the air and drifted away. Po shrugged and dropped what was left of the tattered flower ring.

“Maybe you should use something other than weeds, then! Come on, we‘re late,” she said, pulling Po by the wrist.

“So why are you here? Blue-boy is awake by now, but you’re wasting time looking for me?” Po said, as they made their way out of the grove.

Amy slowed down, brushing out her skirt as she said, “Actually, I wanted to talk with you.”

Po’s shoulder spikes twitched. “Look, I don’t want a lecture. Some things just-”

“I wanted to thank you,” said Amy, serious.

“W-why do that?” said Po, looking more anxious than ever.

“Tails and Knuckles told me what happened. I wasn’t there to save Sonic when he needed me, but you did it.”

“I almost didn’t! They tell you that?”

“You’re a real brat sometimes, I‘m trying to thank you, you know! But,” Amy said, calming herself down, “let’s call a truce, okay? Sonic is safe now, and that’s what matters. So, thank you.”

Po shrugged, and they made their way up to the hilltop where the others were. A checkered picnic blanket was spread out over the ground, and the sun was bright and warm. Cream was there with her chao, Cheese, and they were laying out plates and napkins. Knuckles and Tails were busy talking, and looked rather serious, but Sonic was just laying in the sunshine. He had dropped the blanket, and looked over as Amy pushed Po down into a sitting position. He laughed, “Amy really has a way with you, huh?”

“Watch it,” Po glared at him, then looked back at the lunch. “I don’t even like hotdogs,” she complained.

“You can take the bun off! Besides, I made strawberry shortcake for desert,” Amy told her, reaching across her to take the cover off a desert dish.

Po blinked at it. “Strawberry… cake?” she said, figuring out what sort of food that must be. Then her eyes lit up and she leaned over, throwing her arms round the other girl’s shoulders and hugging her tightly. “Amy Rose, I love you!”

-

Their next destination was a mountain on the other side of the continent, called Tar Mountain. There were dark black clouds clinging to the summit, and only a few hangar doors and landing pads built onto the outside of the mountain showed it to be a fortification of some kind.

Tails landed them about halfway up the mountain, and then ran over to the doors. He began tinkering with the security locks, searching for a way to get them inside. While he worked, Knuckles was staring at the dark sky overhead. “Smell that?” he asked.

“What?” asked Po.

“Those aren’t clouds, that’s smoke.”

“And where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right?” said Sonic, as he finished tying his sneakers. “Maybe this base has already been blasted for us, too!”

“Are we that lucky?” asked Amy.

“Would it be good luck?” asked Knuckles. “We still don’t understand what happened to the sea base. We better be careful here.”

“Yeah! Sonic, if we find another wind lord here, stay back this time! The last thing we need is the Final Door opening again,” Po said.

Knuckles nodded. “That resonance is dangerous. But that’s exactly what we’re here to find.”

“Who’s left?” Sonic asked.

“Boreas, the wind of destiny, and Notus, the wind of fortune. I just hope nothing bad has happened to them yet,” Po answered, tugging on her horn.

“That’s why we’re here,” Sonic said confidently.

Tails stepped back as the large doors dragged open, revealing a long corridor leading deep into the mountain. Guide lights brightened automatically along the bases of the walls.

“No guards,” Tails said to the others. “Not yet, at least. Come on!” The five of them ran inside.

Although there were no guard bots, there were mounted lasers in the halls that shot at them as they passed. Sonic and Po ran ahead, ripping through the guns so that the others could follow. Tails got them through the next three locked doors that blocked their way. The halls began to slope, leading them downward and inward.

“Is it just me, or is it getting hot?” Amy asked, after swatting a wall camera with her hammer.

“That next door looks different,” Tails said, flying forward and looking for the door controls.

Sonic had finished taking out all the nearby lasers and began tapping a foot impatiently. “What’s taking so long, Tails?”

The fox shook his head. “There’s a lock-down in place, I don’t know if I can do anything from here.”

“Let me try it,” said Knuckles, punching a fist at the door. It hit with a resounding thud, but bounced away again as Knuckles shouted and held the hurt hand. “Whoa! That’s hot!”

“Huh?” asked Po, putting a hand on the door and jerking it back as it began to burn. “Yowch! What’s with this door?”

“Wait, I got it this time!” Tails told them, hitting a last sequence of panel keys as the doors slid aside. A wave of intense heat rolled outward from the doorway, the room beyond a bright red haze.

“Uh, Tails? Has this mountain always been a volcano?” asked Sonic.

“Is that lava?!” asked Amy, as they all got a good look. The ground below was crossed with glowing rivers of molten metal. Stairs and suspended platforms led up and down the walls of the wide room, some of them already partly melted and useless. Occasional pillars of flame would erupt from the ground below. “We aren’t going in there, are we?”

“Of course!” Sonic said, pushing onward.

Once they were all inside, the door behind them slammed closed again, and the whole place shook as a large sphere of a machine sporting a pair of curved horns rose up from below, red with heat. A lid near the top of it opened and Sinister Dexter appeared, apparently driving the machine. “Bwahaha! I was expecting you, fools! Welcome to my little trap!” He was wearing a sweatband, and despite being a robot himself, was sweating profusely.

“Eggster, we don’t have time for you!” Sonic complained, as the others took fighting stances.

“You shall be overcome by the awesome power of the Deviled Egg!” Dexter shouted at them, then added to himself, “My, it’s hot. Ahem! Sonic and company, prepare to fry!” And he ducked back inside, the lid closing seamlessly behind him.

The upper and lower hemispheres of the Deviled Egg began to twist in opposite directions, a continuous line of lasers appearing in the gap as the two halves pulled slightly apart. The lasers shot out in a full horizontal sweep of the room, forcing the adventurers to jump upwards and out of the way, onto the platforms overhead. The Deviled Egg drifted upwards after them, it’s middle closing while the base opened briefly to drop some sort of bomb. Whatever it was hit the ground with a flash and a loud hissing noise, and the lava below began to rise.

Tails looked up. “It’s a high ceiling, but I don’t see a way out!”

“Find one! We’ll keep Eggster busy,” said Knuckles, and Tails flew off. The machine launched another spray attack with the lasers.

“Eggster, didn’t you take the hint last time?!” Amy shouted as she jumped forward and swung her hammer at the Deviled Egg. It bounced away with a popping sound as the end melted instantly, deforming the weapon. “Ew!”

“My name is Dexter!!” he shouted from below the machine, dropping another lava bomb and forcing them all upwards as the lava below rose another dozen feet.

“We’re going to run out of room! Sonic, can’t you draw it’s fire?” Knuckles asked.

“Draw it where?! It’s not like he‘s aiming!” Sonic shouted back as they all jumped another level while the lasers went off.

The next time the lasers stopped, Podarge dropped down below the machine, surprising Dexter with a quick kick to the face before the bot could retreat back inside the Deviled Egg with an angry shout. She then had to move quickly before the rising lava could catch her, though she still singed her tail before she could get out of the way. She looked at Sonic, who nodded, and after the next round of laser fire they dropped down and caught Dexter from both sides, denting his mustache and setting the whole machine to rocking. But they still didn’t have time to get in a second hit since the lava below continued to rise. They and the Deviled Egg continued making their way up through the shrinking room.

Dexter changed tactics. The sphere began rotating its left and right hemispheres now, the two horns of the machine launching large fireballs as they spun round. The adventurers were running out of platforms to retreat to. Meanwhile, Tails had found some sort of device near the ceiling, and was working as quickly as he could. The others were close enough now to see that the ceiling in fact looked like another set of doors, but they must have been locked as solidly as the entrance to the room, because Tails was having trouble making them open.

Dexter was not giving them another chance to hit him by making himself visible, but the lava kept rising on its own now. “Tails needs more time! What can we do?” Po asked as they all continued dodging fireballs.

“I wonder how fireproof that thing really is?” Sonic said, and winked at Podarge. “Wanna’ find out?” He began to run along the side of the room, and Po did likewise, the two of them moving fast enough to run on the walls like a single mad blue blur. Seeing what they were trying to do, Knuckles and Amy jumped up near to Tails and kept close to the walls as the speed of the other two kicked up a pillar of lava, right up the center of the room where it engulfed the Deviled Egg in a blazing vortex of fire. At the same time, Tails finished with the door, overriding the last lock. Knuckles carried Amy as he climbed and Tails flew up out of the lava chamber and they emerged outside, near the mountain top. The column of fire rose out from the ground they had just left, and they were surrounded here by thick smoke that made it difficult to see or to breathe.

Tails shouted down with a cough, “Get out of there! I’ll lock him in!”

Sonic and Po leapt up the walls and outside, landing beside the fox as he began closing the door again. But the force from the fire column was enough to launch the Deviled Egg up just before the trap doors finally snapped shut. The machine was still red hot, landing heavily nearby, but out of the lava chamber it began to cool. There were loud crackling noises as the outer shell began to cool too quickly, and it did not otherwise move.

Sonic scratched the end of his nose, and said with a smile, “We win! What’s next?” He coughed, and Po began sprinting around the group in a wide circle, like they had in the room below. The wind she created drew away the smoke, but now they could all see that from a hundred different openings in the mountainsides below them the lava-like substance was pouring outside, spurting up huge towers of flame as it rushed down the slopes.

“The whole mountain’s on fire!” Tails exclaimed, seeing that they were surrounded by walls of fire on all sides and now had no easy way down. “How are we going to get back to the Tornado?”

“We still have to find the wind lord!” Knuckles reminded him. “There’s nothing here to burn but rock, so the fire should burn itself out pretty quickly.”

“I guess,” said Tails.

“I can’t believe I lost my good hammer because of that fight! Why would Eggman fill a mountain with lava!?” Amy vented.

“Well, I don’t think it was really lava. I mean, if it was, all the air above it would have been superheated so that we couldn’t have even walked in without being incinerated!” Tails assured her.

“Don’t tell me I lost my hammer to some volcano-wannabe! That was way too much trouble to not be real,” Amy argued.

“We aren’t finished yet,” Knuckles said, drawing their attention back to the Deviled Egg. It began to rock in place, knocking away the last broken bits of the outer shell, and a smaller sphere covered in short spikes began rolling along the ground. Eggster laughed as he bowled the prickly Deviled Egg toward them, and the adventurers scattered. Knuckles stopped first, turning and holding his ground so as to punch at the machine when it came close enough. He broke one of the spikes, but there were so many that there was no clear shot to the machine’s body. The momentum of the Deviled Egg kept it moving forward, up over Knuckles and then rolling on, pressing the echidna into the ground as it passed and left tread-like marks on his back.

“Knuckles! ...This could be tough. Do we have another power ring?” Sonic asked Tails as they ran.

“No!”

“Split up!” Sonic told them, and he and Tails veered away from the girls. With fire all around them, there weren’t very many places to run to. The Deviled Egg rolled after Sonic, following right towards a steep drop-off. Sonic and Tails split directions at the last moment, leaving the machine to roll most of the way over the edge. But at the last minute, the machine reversed its spin, madly rolling back onto the ledge before it could fall.

“That Eggster just won’t give up!” said Sonic, the machine now between him and the rest of the party.

The Deviled Egg darted forward in a burst of speed, this time after Tails, a slower target. The fox jumped into the air, but the machine was large enough that he wasn’t going to get out of the way in time on his own. The higher spikes would catch him and drag him down into the ground, and he shouted in panic as he tried to get ahead of it.

Just before it caught him, Shin leapt out from the wall of flames nearby, plucking him out of the air and out of the path of the Deviled Egg, which could not reverse direction quickly enough to follow them immediately. While it was trying to change its position, they heard a familiar voice shout, “Chaos control!”

In several flashing slices, what was left of the Deviled Egg was sundered, Eggster rolling out from the inside of the machine where he’d been controlling it. A chaos emerald that had been powering the Deviled Egg rolled out beside him. Shadow reappeared, kicking the bot and bringing him to a jarring halt before Eggster could roll farther down the mountain. Shin stood up, shaking the ash from her fur as the others gathered around them.

Sonic spoke first, trying to wipe the grime out of his own quills. “Shadow! You’re okay?”

Shadow looked him up and down. “Better than you.”

Tails looked up at Shin as she set him down. “Thank you! Shin, how did you do that? Are hellhounds fireproof?”

She planted her spear in the ground and blinked at Podarge, wavering a bit on her feet. “…No,” she said, and promptly fell face-first onto the ground.

While Podarge and Tails helped Shin, Sonic picked up the emerald that had fallen out of the Deviled Egg and asked Shadow another question, “What happened to you?”

“Is this the best place to talk?”

“What about him?” Sonic asked, nodding at Eggster.

“The original Shadow, is it? You’re alive?” the bot asked, apparently surprised.

Shadow crossed his arms and glared at the machine. “Doctor Robotnik created Dexter using his own life data. He should know most of what the doctor knows, so I need him to answer a few questions.” Eggster’s mustache twitched nervously.

“Shadow!” Amy shouted, running over to the others from where she had fled farther up the stony slope. “I knew you weren’t dead! But what happened to you? Where did you go? Are you still going after the Final Door? Because I-”

“Dexter, why was the mountain activated prematurely?” Shadow asked, ignoring Amy.

“Don’t ignore me! You owe me an explanation!”

The robot sat up on the ground and blinked at them. “The intention of the doctor is to use the destruction of the facility to finish breaking the will of the wind spirit. Only a genius of Robotnik’s caliber could understand and predict so well the interactions of spirits with the modified V-technology!”

“I guess that’s what happened to Eurus,” Po nodded to Sonic, her talons raking deep into the ground as she thought about it.

“That hurt. I‘m going to flatten that robot,” Knuckles said to himself, standing up and shaking his quills out where they had been crushed. “But at least we know that the wind lord is here.”

Shadow asked the bot, “Why is the doctor doing this? He hasn’t found a way to remove the wind seals, has he?”

“Eggman didn’t take the seal from Eurus. That one was broken in our fight with him,” Sonic explained.

“What?!” said Shadow.

Eggster nodded. “That blue barnacle is correct. So long as they are unwilling, even in a state of induced madness, the spirits can’t be separated from their seals. But they make marvelously strong weapons!”

“But that wasn’t what he needed them for! It makes no sense. Tell me what the doctor is plotting!” Shadow said, raising a fist menacingly.

Eggster was shaking so much that he rattled. “I, I don’t know!”

“I’ll rip the information out of you!”

“I don’t know! Ever since I failed to protect the wind beacon in Alydia, I have been kept outside of the doctor’s council. I’m only given orders, not explanations.”

“Hmph. So you’ve fallen out of favor? That makes you useless to me.”

“…I suppose so,” said Eggster, resignedly.

“He might still be lying,” Po pointed out.

Eggster shook his head. “No, indeed! You see, I was programmed with all of Robotnik’s intelligence, but none of his ambition. Lying after my defeat achieves nothing for me.”

“No ambition, huh? I’m surprised there’s anything left!” Sonic laughed.

“And it still seems too nice of you to be so helpful now, considering how you talk up your boss!” Knuckles said to Eggster.

The bot shrugged. “Loyalty is ambitious. Flattery is not!”

“We still don’t know where the wind lord is!” Amy reminded them.

“Notus was being held at the very base of the facility,” Eggster answered.

“What? But the whole mountain is still burning!” said Tails.

“We were too late,” Po shook her head. “He’s going to have to find us, like Eurus did.”

“I’m not just going to stand here waiting,” said Shadow, examining their surroundings.

“Thanks for the help, Shadow,” said Sonic. “But why are you here?” He and Shadow looked at each other, not needing to say more than that.

So Po broke the silence. “Because I told Shin to bring him to us! Right?” she helped Shin to stand, the hound better now that she was able to breathe easier. It must have been a long, choking climb up the mountain.

Shadow glared at the harpy. “She helped me out, and this wasn‘t out of my way.”

“Did you really help him, Shin?” Tails asked.

“I never asked it in return, he has an odd sense of honor all his own.” Shin gave a short bark of a laugh, and said to Shadow, “So instead of thanking me, do me a different favor. Don’t let anyone else kill you before we can fight again.”

“What happened to you two??” Amy asked, vexed.

“You plan to face him again, don’t you?” Shin said to him. “I was afraid that he had beat me to you, when I found what was left of your first battlefield. You might not be so fortunate next time. He is even more of a weapon than you.”

Shadow made a fist, staring down the mountain. “I am no one’s weapon! That’s why I can beat him. I’ve put that past behind me.” He began skating down the slope, using chaos control to vanish just before hitting the wall of fire and then reappeared on the other side to continue skating away.

“Strange place to put one’s past,” Shin said to his back, smiling with all her long teeth showing as he skated out of sight. “It’s the perfect place for it to bite you in the butt!”

“Still, he found a chaos emerald, so that’s five of them, isn’t it?” Tails wondered aloud. “I guess they didn’t get very far. This is pretty lucky that we‘re finding them so fast!”

“I, as well,” Shin said, holding out the red emerald to Po.

The harpy took it with a quizzical look. “Whatever happened to them, anyway? Did Shadow lose them in his fight with that look-alike?”

“No, I used them to fight Eggster!” Amy announced. “I wanted to tell you, I did it!”

“Whaaat?” asked Tails.

Sonic crossed his arms. “No one likes a liar, Amy.”

“I did! Don’t you believe me?”

Sonic stretched his arms behind his head and looked away, half-smiling. “Right.”

Amy pursed her lips and waved her arms at them. “But I was so cool! Eggster, you can tell them!”

“I do recall being hit rather hard. But my circuits were damaged and I have lost record of the particulars,” said the bot.

“What?! This is so unfair!!”

“Well, anyway, what now?” asked Tails.

Podarge looked over to Sonic, pocketing the emerald. “…I think it’s coming.”

He closed his eyes, and nodded slowly. “Yeah.”