[SoDi]

-41- Wild Blue Yonder

Rouge and Amy, deeper within the crystal ruin where they had sheltered from the burning wind, climbed outside when they heard the rain ringing against the walls. “Where’d this come from? And without a cloud in the sky! Not that this isn’t just the latest in a string of bizarre problems,” Rouge noted, trying to shield her face from the rain with her hands. “I’m really getting sick of this place.”

Amy, ignoring the wet, pointed up to a silvery rainbow shining above the base. “Look at that! Come on, Rouge!” and she began racing to where the rainbow reached towards the north end of the base. “The rainbow was in my tarot reading, I’m sure that’s where we’re supposed to go!”

Rouge was unconvinced. “You take that stuff seriously? If you’ve been navigating like that, it’s no wonder we’ve wasted so much time searching. Hey, are you listening to me?” Amy was on the move, so Rouge had no choice but to fly after her.

But she had no argument when they ran into Sonic’s team on the north side of the spirit beacon. Though they seemed to be in a hurry, Sonic stopped to wave at them, smiling. “Heeey! Over here!”

When Amy ran to hug him, he dodged away in a blue blink, grinning wildly. “Sonic, you got your speed back! I‘m glad to see you so happy,” she said in relief, though there was a touch of disappointment on her face, too.

He nodded, but then there was an odd blinking in the light overhead, and then a twisting shadow. What was left of the spirit beacon was too brittle to stand any longer, and began to come crashing down in a cacophony of breaking glass. The adventurers kept out of the way, but before the remains had even finished settling there was a shrill cry of distress that started a long way off and drew closer quickly, a familiar indigo harpy dropping out of the sky to crash nearby. She broke through the first layer of crystal she hit in a puff of glittering dust and dark feathers, her flapping wings not enough to slow her fall before she hit. Sonic ran over, the others close behind, and came up to the hole as Celaeno was climbing back out. Disoriented and all of her feathers ruffled, she blinked a few times before she seemed to recognize them. Seeing Tails, she practically jumped away, losing her grip and falling down a second time.

“Po! Need a hand?” Sonic called down. But Celaeno seemed to have recovered her senses and flew back up, appearing a little way past them as she used her speed to avoid coming too close.

“Nope,” she said, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes. She just stared at them all for a minute, looking unsure and not saying anything else. She stretched her arms behind her head and looked away.

Tails was the next to speak, asking, “Why did you fall? Were you fighting Boreas?”

“It’s not your business!” she said to him, harsh and sudden. Then she made a wide frown, looking awkward, and she hurried to add, “He doesn’t fight fair! He can turn into wind, and I can’t even tell where he is. It’s like he doesn’t want to fight at all.” She scuffed the ground with a foot. It was strange seeing such a grown-up looking harpy acting in the way Podarge always did.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Amy. “Sonic, how can we fight him if we can’t find him?”

Tails had run over to Celaeno to say something else, but she saw him coming and was already a dozen yards away. She was keeping her distance. “Podarge, wait!” Tails called.

“Guess the fox is okay. No thanks to me,” she said, nose in the air.

“No, I-” Tails began.

“I’m not sorry, Sonic!” Celaeno interrupted, ignoring him.

Sonic shrugged. “You don’t need to be,” he said.

The harpy looked angry. “What kind of a lame brush off is that? You even got your speed back, so I guess you can say whatever you want!”

“I had something I had to do. I couldn’t afford to be slow anymore. Didn‘t I tell you?”

“That it’s just that simple? You still talk like that.” She stared at him, disbelieving. “Was it when the white wind went loose? And you won the wind back, even without a seal to trap it in.” Celaeno held her arms, hugging herself and looking at the ground. “Maybe you never needed one, maybe that’s it. Maybe you aren’t like Zephyr because you had the white wind, maybe the wind just likes you because you’re like that.”

Sonic smiled at her. “It’s good having friends, right?”

“…The wind will always be your friend,” she said, and then as if she realized how serious that sounded, she added with a laugh, “Because you’re just weird that way.”

“We’re going to fight Boreas, too,” Tails told her. “We can help you! We can finish this, together!”

“I’m not going to bother,” she said. “I told you, harpies don’t like games they don’t know they’ll win, and this one is too hard.”

“Are you running away?” Knuckles asked.

Celaeno looked at Sonic, and noticed the emeralds he was carrying. “So you’re going to find a way to win no matter what? Good luck saving your world, but it’s not my problem.”

“How can you talk like that?!” Amy asked.

But Celaeno really wasn’t talking to anyone but Sonic, no matter who else was speaking. She pointed out beyond them, beyond the ruined base to the horizon. As the rain finally began to stop, the air was clear and even distant things appeared sharply in the fresh air, but the view was disheartening. The blackened landscape shifted muddily, arms of white light reaching up from the ground and vanishing in the air as the planet’s ebbing life force continued to drain and convert itself into the light and wind and raw power Boreas had intended. “Sonic, the planet is mostly dead already. Eggman thought he could stop it before there was too little world left to rule over, but the drain has a momentum of its own now and won’t stop till there’s nothing left. Boreas is still duping Eggman to help him with it, and the Final Door isn’t even usable anymore. At this point, I’m going to concentrate on surviving. You were a bit late getting here, y’know? You were a part of all this, so it’s your fault, too.”

“Why, you-” said Amy, pulling out her hammer.

But Sonic raised an arm and kept the pink hedgehog at bay. To Celaeno he said, “Are you really going to let it go, like this?”

“I got what I want!” she said, stretching her wings wide. “I got back what I lost. The rest of what happens isn’t so important. This planet, or whether Tails came back or not. You worry about that stuff, I’ll worry about my own problems.”

Tails looked sad to hear her talk like that, but said, “You don’t mean that.”

“You don’t know what it’s like being broken! I just wanted to be myself again, but you don’t know what it’s like, so don’t think you know what I feel!” she yelled. “A lot of bad happened to make something go right for me, so I’ll cut my losses here.”

Sonic took her meaning to be a little different than her words, and said, “If you have time to second guess yourself, you have time to fight back!”

She stuck her tongue out at him half-heartedly. “It can’t change what’s already happened. Don’t you ever regret anything? Even you don’t win all the time. How can you act so brave when you don’t know you’ll win?”

“You’ve asked me that before,” he said.

“And I still don’t get it! How do you know this is the right way to go forward? And what if you think differently when you look back on it? If we even last that long.”

“I don’t look back. I have no regrets ‘cause time doesn’t wait for me, I choose to go my own way.”*

“Whatever. All I get is a headache, talking to you,” she said, and flew away.

“She’s gone again,” Tails said.

“I’m sure that was cathartic or something, but shouldn’t we be going?” asked Rouge, impatient as ever.

“Yep. But we need to find where Boreas is hiding,” Sonic said. They thought it over.

Amy had a sudden idea. “Tails! Do you still have that machine from the Mystic Ruins, that one that maps air currents?”

Tails’ ears shot upward as he grinned, “Yeah!” He rummaged in his pack to find the device, but yelped and pulled his hand back quickly, Eggster hanging onto the glove by his teeth. “Uh, sorry. I forgot about you again, huh?”

-

The team kept their search to the area around the ruined spirit beacon, which was more than enough ground to cover. They came to a place where the fox pointed upwards and shouted, “There! Eleven o’clock!” Eggster had refused to go back into the pack, so he was riding on his shoulder.

“Boreas, show yourself!” Knuckles shouted.

“He is otherwise occupied,” said Robotnik, rising up from the rubble nearby as he rode the Deus Egg Machina into the air. The shattered building chimed as the emerging machine broke free, a sound that almost resembled a simple if villainous MIDI theme song. But that must have just been a coincidence. “You brats are already too late!”

“That’s one nasty machine,” Sonic warned them. “But if we can just knock out the guy at the controls, we can get on with this show!”

“Ha! As if you could,” Eggster laughed. “That is the Deus Egg Machina! That isn’t just any boss robot, you know.”

That seemed to catch Eggman’s attention. “Eggster, are you siding with them again?! What are you doing down there? I’ll turn your head into a spittoon! Return at once!”

“Coming, sir!” said Eggster, rolling off Tails’ shoulder and along the ground. Until Sonic’s foot just happened to stretch out in front of the bot, blocking his roll.

Rouge flapped her wings to launch herself a few feet into the air. “Let me try it,” she said. She flew as fast as she could towards the top of the Deus Egg where Robotnik was working at the controls, his machine already carrying him higher than a jump could reach. But before she could approach him the machine shot out a bulky arm that swatted her away.

“Rouge!” shouted Knuckles, watching her fall. But she stood up and retreated back to the others, so the echidna picked up a large chunk of crystal and tossed it a short way above him, pounding it as it fell back down to send it flying towards the Deus Egg. It struck the side and splintered, the machine immediately healing itself.

“Maybe we should try a curve ball,” Sonic said, tapping his foot to send Eggster spinning into the air where he could catch the bot in one hand. “Nothing personal, Eggster,” said Sonic. “But you were heading that way anyway, right?”

“That’s true,” the bot admitted.

“Swing, batter!” Sonic shouted, throwing the bot head at Knuckles. Knuckles punched it hard and sent Eggster flying. Robotnik had time to see the mustached orb coming, like a reflection in a mirror that was approaching far too fast. Both of their mustaches twitched identically, anticipating the impending collision, when the Deus Egg Machina lifted another blocky limb between them. Eggster hit with a thud and then slid off the machine with no further ado. “Ha! Strike two! I win!” Robotnik laughed.

“I don’t think you understand baseball,” Knuckles said.

“We better make the next one a fast ball! Batter up!” said Sonic, spinning in place to gather speed and then leaping forward. Knuckles barely had time to swing his fist before he would have been hit himself, but now the super-fast hedgehog had the boost from that hit to send him all the way up to the hovering egg, fast as blue lightning. The super machine jabbed forward with several strong arms, but Sonic bounced between them and kept going forward, losing hardly any momentum. He landed in the cockpit with a small boom, crushing Eggman back into the controls. The Deus Egg began flailing wildly, shifting too quickly between random shapes as it crashed back to the ground. The others ran up immediately, hitting the black machine from every side as they made their way to where Sonic and Eggman were still fighting over the controls.

“You obstinate obstacle! Get away from there!”

“Ain’t that the way with robots? No good without a driver!” Sonic laughed, spinning hard and kicking Robotnik out of the machine.

Robotnik landed hard, but sat up and pulled out a smaller device. “But that’s just the beauty of machines. Control!” The ground trembled as large crystal pieces of the ruin below them began flinging themselves into the air. “The Deus Egg Machina has a secondary command for remote control! I’m a genius, you prickly pest, and of course I’ve thought of everything! Bwahahaha!”

The machine wasn’t responding to Sonic’s mashing of buttons in the cockpit, and now the cockpit itself did the liquefying trick, melting away and almost snapping Sonic shut inside. Before the Deus Egg could snap up any of his friends, Sonic raced across the outside, picking them up and dragging them all away from it. They tumbled into a heap a safe distance away, and watched the machine rise once more high into the air, even higher than it had before. The crystal debris, meanwhile, was still rising as well. One large piece was beneath Eggman, and he rode it upwards after his machine. The other pieces were hovering in the air like steps and windows without supports or walls, a strange assemblage of half a palatial building. “What’s he doing? Or is it Boreas controlling all that?” Amy wondered.

“You don’t even know the true power of the Deus Egg Machina, do you? And it’s true function, powerful enough to even destroy a wind lord!” Robotnik shouted back down at them.

“What?!” Sonic shouted back.

The wind began to pick up again. The crystal pieces began to rotate slowly, caught in the spiraling vortex, but perhaps too heavy to move as quickly as the wind rushing by. The Deus Egg suddenly snapped upwards as a misty cloud began to form from the invisible air around it, the black metal swallowing up the wind spirit and forming itself into a massive, sparking beast of hooves and horns and wings. The transformed wind lord roared and hovered protectively above the doctor. Like armor, the moving metal shifted and a countless number of bright gems flashed on its sides and crowned its head. “Are those V-Cells? Sonic, we have to go now!” Tails shouted.

“You can’t go super with a bright ring around,” Knuckles reminded him, holding up the white halo Iris had left behind.

“What’s that, a treasure of some kind?” asked Rouge. “And Shadow still hasn’t shown up. He’ll miss the fun. But if you need that gone, I can take it for you while I go look for him.”

“No way!” Knuckles answered.

Sonic nodded. “Get it to a safe place, then, since we can’t just leave it unguarded. You can leave the rest to me.”

“Aren’t you coming, Rouge?” asked Tails. “It all depends on this!”

“Please! I’m not a spectator, and if Sonic is so sure he’s got this, I’ve got other places to be,” she said, flying after the echidna.

“You two wait here,” Sonic said to Amy and Tails, racing towards the first crystal step. It was large, and more like a platform, and as the next one drifted by he jumped to that one. But Tails and Amy were close behind, following him.

“We’re coming, too!” said Amy.

“You don’t think I can manage this? Puh-lease! I’m Sonic the Hedgehog!”

A dark blur zoomed up from behind and was flying alongside them. Celaeno laughed, “More like Sonic the stage hog! This isn‘t just your show, you know!”

They made it to another large platform and had to wait for the next one to drift close. The harpy landed beside them, looking sheepish but smiling. Sonic smiled, too. “I thought this wasn’t your world?”

“But it is my home! And I’m going to protect it.”

Armored Boreas roared again from overhead. Sonic looked back at them. “I have the emeralds, you don’t have to do this.”

Celaeno stomped the ground. “So all that talk about ‘teamwork‘ was just so you could sound cool, is that it?”

Amy shook her head at him. “You might think you’re keeping us safe, but you need us, Sonic! We can help you!”

“It’s our choice, isn’t it?” Tails pointed out. “We’re coming!”

“You guys…”

“Enough talk, look out!!” Celaeno shouted, as a cold blue ball of light shot towards their platform, thrown by Boreas. Tails and Celaeno flew out of the way, but Amy was left on the platform with Sonic.

The blue light engulfed them both, and Tails landed below while Celaeno circled. But the blue light turned golden, and Super Sonic and Super Amy both flew forward in a dazzling flash.

“Amy?!” Celaeno shouted in surprise.

“Way to go!” Tails called out to the two hedgehogs, who looked at each other and nodded, flying towards the wind lord.

Super Sonic dove towards the head of Boreas, hoping to collide with him hard enough to throw him down from the air. The wind lords’ armor rippled with light and a massive silvery bolt hit Sonic first, sending him rolling back through the air. “Be gone, worthless mortals,” Boreas spoke in a deep and serious voice.

“Boreas, what are you doing?!” Sonic said, dodging the next bolt as Amy flew in behind to tear away an armored wing. The wind lord screamed, his voice mixing with the mechanical screeching of the Deus Egg Machina. The black machine rattled and froze stiffly, the wind inside forcing it to fall away like ash. But the armor was hollow; Boreas was still invisible as wind.

Tails already had his mapper out. “There, below the blue platform!” Tails told them. The two super hedgehogs dove down to the chunk of iridescent crystal, throwing arrows of light ahead of them. The air became misty and the Deus Egg Machina lanced up from the ground, rebuilding itself into armor around Boreas as he flew away.

“It’s still just a machine, so we can break him apart a little at a time if we have to!” Super Amy shouted while in pursuit. Sonic joined her and they dove at Boreas together, a golden meteor that tore away a second wing. But several more were still left, and his flashing hooves lashed out and kicked them away so hard that they risked being flung a mile away, far beyond the transparent room of floating crystal. But Celaeno was racing along the side of the wide vortex, and reached them first. She kicked back at them hard so that they were knocked towards the wind lord rather than away. The reversal was sudden enough to catch the wind lord off guard, and they were able to tear away a leg of the armor. Boreas howled again as the damaged armor dropped to the floor and he fled into the wind.

But there was nowhere that he could go that Tails couldn’t track, shouting that information out to his friends, and so the chase continued, the armor reforming every time the hedgehogs cornered the wind spirit. Less and less armor left to reform every time they did. Sonic drew close again and shouted, “Boreas, why would you let Robotnik do this to you?!”

“This was our agreement,” Boreas intoned, as the remaining V-Cells on the damaged armor flickered blue and another massive blast shot forward. Sonic dodged, but didn’t notice the scorpion-like tail swinging round to catch him from behind.

He had lost to Eggman due to that move before, but the tail was shattered before it could reach him this time by a massive golden jolt hurled through the air. “Chaos hammer!” Amy shouted as she loosed a second attack immediately behind the first and tore the tail from the armor completely. The remaining armor dropped again.

Super Sonic whistled, impressed. “Wow! Nice hit, Amy!”

“Oh, thank you, Sonic!!” said Amy, eyes going heart-shaped. Perhaps it was because she had just used up so much energy, or perhaps it was because she had lost her focus, but the aura of her super power faded and she fell, pink again, from the air.

“Amy, look out!” Tails warned them from below, as a strong, freezing gust caught her and carried her away.

“Amy!” Sonic and Celaeno both shouted, flying after her.

The wind tore right past the platform where Robotnik was, Boreas not as concerned with protecting the doctor as he had first appeared to be because the doctor was flung clear of the whole fight. “Curses! This isn’t overrrrr!!!” He vanished over the horizon but no one was really paying attention to him anymore, the harpy and the hedgehog zooming after Amy. The Deus Egg Machina reformed ahead of them, and Amy was hidden beneath the shattered armor of the wind lord.

Boreas’ voice echoed from within the metal, laughing at them. “Will you still attack me now?”

“Fight fair, Boreas!” Sonic shouted, but he had stopped advancing.

Celaeno, on the other hand, hadn’t slowed down at all. “Or learn a bit more about fighting dirty!” she crowed. She didn’t fly towards the remaining legs or even the head, she dove for a broken place in the armor and tore through. There was a terrible racket from inside, and the armor buckled inward as Boreas struggled with the internal attacker.

A piko piko hammer knocked wide a second hole in the black metal and Celaeno made her escape from there, carrying Amy in her arms. Both looked battered already, and Boreas made a last kick at them as they retreated, knocking them hard into the platform below, but he had no time for a follow-up attack as Super Sonic crashed into his face.

The remaining V-Cells flickered and then exploded as Sonic unleashed a radiant blast attack of his own, ripping through the armor. What was left of the Deus Egg Machina crumbled and fell away, the air empty again. But the mini-machines it was made from were too damaged now to rebuild themselves anymore. “Tails, where is Boreas now?” Super Sonic called down.

“I can’t tell!! I can’t track anything, he’s just gone!”

“Is it over?” the hedgehog wondered, stepping onto the crystal platform that drifted below him.

“Since my physical being was being contained by the Deus Egg Machina, you have released me from my corporeal existence,” a deep voice echoed from nowhere in particular.

“Not over, then,” Super Sonic said with a shrug.



*Yes, I took this slogan from Sonic Adventure. Credit to the game.

This post has been edited by SoDi: 20 February 2010 - 07:05 PM

[SoDi]

-42- Eudemonium

The wind that had slowed down now returned forcefully, but it was no natural wind. Like trailing webs of silver, light drifted through the air from all directions, gathering high above them. The same light they recognized from the invocations of the white wind. “The true power once contained by the Final Door shall now take me as its new host, and I shall not only control that power, I will become that power! Iris was once the only one of us who could move freely between dimensions, but no longer, for mine shall be a power to reach through all worlds. The soldiers that I harvested personally from the underworld you have banished prematurely, but all numbers of realities are within my influence now. You have stopped nothing, and after gathering the energy of these worlds for my strength only husks shall remain,” the wind lord monologued. “Those shall wither to dust, and that dust, too, the white wind shall destroy.”

Below, Amy and Celaeno stood back up, the harpy staring at her hands as silvery grains of light began creeping out from her long hair and feathers. The lights beaded away into the stronger currents blowing towards the voice of Boreas. “So he’s only energy? Is that how come he can gather up the white wind into himself?”

“Is that even possible?” Amy wondered. “Well, I suppose he’s a spirit, so he’s not normal anyway. Are you okay, Podarge?”

Celaeno held her head, then flapped her wings experimentally. “I’m fine. He can nab the night wind from me, but I’ve still got what’s left of Iris’ magic!”

“You have to help Sonic,” Amy told her, and they both looked up to where Super Sonic was circling the growing light in the sky. He kept trying to dive through it, but there was nothing left of Boreas substantial enough for him to hit.

“We all have to help him.”

Sonic, meanwhile, had noticed the same silvery light pulling out of his own body. “This stuff is taking my energy with it, and I won‘t be able to maintain my super form for long. I better move while I can!” Super Sonic flew higher, approaching the silvery light. “I can’t touch Boreas now, but other energy attacks can still reach him, right?” He gathered his strength and threw a lance of golden light into the silver sky.

The lance attack was caught, and the sky gleamed brighter, shifting into an ephemeral image of Boreas. “Fool! Your mortal chaos cannot harm me, I shall only take its energy into myself and grow stronger. And however you managed to reclaim a share of the white wind, I shall still have that back, as well. Even if I must rip it from your flesh mote by mote!”

“That sounds serious. So how about not?” Sonic said, flying away as the silvery light flew after him. But as fast as he could fly, Boreas could match him, and the silver nimbus caught up to Super Sonic and engulfed him. Strength was pulled bodily from Sonic and his golden quills drooped and darkened to blue as the majority of his energy was leeched away. The chaos emeralds, no longer kept in place by the presence of their wielder, were flung in all different directions, soaring out to dark horizons and vanishing. No longer able to fly, the hedgehog began to fall out of the sky.

“Sonic! Need a lift?” Tails said, flying past to catch him by the hands.

“Thanks, Tails!” They landed on one of the crystal platforms, traces of silver light still beading away from Sonic, as if reluctant to leave him. Celaeno brought Amy and now the four of them were standing together as Sonic turned back to shout at the transformed wind lord, “Just give up now and I’ll go easy on you!”

The deep voice laughed from within the light. “Resist until the end, but end you will. Everything will. I am Boreas, the North Wind! By my hands the forces of life and death are shaped, and creation and destruction are at my command!”

“Sonic, what are you going to do?” asked Amy.

“What I do best,” he said, and took a step backward. That step carried him over the edge of the platform and he dropped out of sight, but before either Tails or Celaeno could fly to catch him, he was caught in one of the strong updrafts blowing towards Boreas. He rode the wake into the brightest part of the light, beyond where the others could easily watch or follow, though that didn’t stop the fox and harpy from trying. Tails wasn’t a strong enough flyer, and Celaeno knew that the winds were strong enough to snap her wings when she tested them against the glowing air, so they both fell back beside Amy and could only wait.

Sonic made it back high into the air, into the wind-torn nimbus of light. He knew that Boreas could hear him from here, and said, “So what’s bothering you so bad that you have to destroy the whole world? You know I’ll have to stop you!”

“Are you still here? You cannot save this world, it is beyond redemption.”

“I disagree!” Sonic said, moving between air currents to stay afloat, silver energy still trailing out behind him as he moved.

“Your gaze is too narrow to sense it. But my view covers the span of ages.” The voice was calm, Boreas knowing full well that he was now beyond the reach of any attack.

“That’s all in the past, Boreas. Even you don’t know what the future will be!”

“It will be no different.”

“The future is what we make it!” Sonic said, holding out a hand and watching as another silvery mote drifted out of his palm and then hovered just beyond his fingertips. “…And we can make it a good one.” The tiny light drifted back into his hand, and Sonic closed his fingers gently around it. With renewed energy, he dropped from the wind current he was riding, spinning off of a large crystal fragment hanging in the air nearby and making several leaps higher into the sky, always following the silver nimbus as it drew slowly away from the dying planet.

His friends were still watching from below. Celaeno watched, more and more confused as Sonic let himself be thrown through the air, cart wheeling and bouncing off of crystals and diving through strings of bubbles that were formed where the drifting lights gathered. He even laughed as he went on like this, and finally Celaeno said in fearful frustration, “He can’t fight like that!! What is he doing?!”

But Amy actually seemed to relax, and answered, “He’s being himself.”

Sonic continued to fight for altitude as the conversation with the wind lord went on, Boreas intoning, “A new world will rise from the ashes of the old. Freed of a history I shall erase, hope might be born anew.”

“That’s what Eggman figured he could rule over, huh?”

“He will be destroyed with this world. Only his vanity convinced him otherwise.”

“So that’ll leave you in charge of a whole new reality? No wonder you and him got along so well!”

“I will not rule.”

“Why not?”

“The power of the white wind is vaster than even a spirit such as I. A force larger than any single life. After I have set its work in motion, it shall consume my soul just as it consumed my flesh. But my strength shall become part of the foundation for that new world. This is my hope, that even if fulfilled I know I shall never see.”

“Sounds epic,” said Sonic. “But that’s too depressing to be hopeful, you know? I mean, if you’re going to remake the world, you need a foundation that’s stronger than just sadness and anger to build on. Like, a sense of humor, maybe? A world needs that, right?”

“…What… is happening?” Boreas wondered. As Sonic continued to move through the bright silver cloud, more and more of the drifting motes were gathering on him. The silvery dust clung to his body and stopped drifting away from him, and at the same time, the ethereal form of Boreas was becoming, if only slightly, more distinct and finite within the larger light.

“Kindness, and patience, and maybe the ability to sleep in till noon. Have you ever tried that? It’s great! You know, for a nearly omnipotent being, you don’t seem to know how to enjoy yourself. You’re way too serious, if you’re thinking of remaking reality. Because you would need hope, too. Real hope, not this cop out. And with that, you wouldn’t need a new world,” Sonic said, and he was hardly having to work at staying in the air anymore, gliding easily in the light that clung to his quills.

“Whatever good you are thinking exists in this place, hedgehog, there is still more suffering to outweigh it. There is such terror and despair and chaos!” Boreas countered, and a wave of energy was thrown against Sonic. As if the pain in Boreas, not contained by a body, were forcing a way through Sonic’s own heart. And, as when he had gone bright on Tar Mountain, Sonic felt his heart and body racked by emotions that were not his own, life much larger than himself trying to fill him so full that he might explode. At the least, he thought he might lose his own mind and go unconscious. The spirit’s voice was much more serious now, menacing him. “You are mortal, and cannot hope to claim the real power of the white wind. No one life can hold such force, so I shall take the power from you again once your frail being has been burnt to ash by it.”

“But I’m not… alone here…” Sonic struggled, remembering how he had looked for Tails in the dissipating light of the Final Door. “There’s a lot of life in me, not just mine. My friends are always with me. …All this power you’ve gathered, that’s you trying to turn the power of the world against itself.” The white wind was close to his heart now, swollen by the life stolen from the planet, and it shook his body like a leaf.

“That power is no ally to you. The world is already divided against itself, vice consuming virtue. If you mean to wield it as a blade against me, know that it will cut you as well.”

That power ripping through his heart was the dying cry of everything Sonic had ever known, ever cared for or fought against. “…I know there’s a lot here, good and bad, but I only ever want to take it for what it is.” Sonic shook his head to clear the dizziness and opened his eyes. “And what it is, is enough, Boreas!” The wind did not break him as it blew through his being, he rode it like a wave and now it pushed his heart wide. He could sense it everywhere around him, the echo of a whole world, vast and deep and struggling just like he was. With him, not against him. It carried him still higher into the air. “The wind is a friend of mine! This whole world is. I’d like to think so. You’re trying to use the white wind, command it with overwhelming force, but friendship is still stronger. …A lot of things are.” Boreas was beginning to struggle, the silver cloud contorting on itself as the spirit lord became confused by the unexpected ebb in his power. Sonic could sense that, could still sense the fierce will of Boreas moving through his own mind, but it was no longer able to overwhelm him with fear or pain. Those weren’t enough to hurt him anymore. And Sonic began to sense what hid beyond that fierceness. “…A lot stronger, and you used to know that. You had friends, too. You knew. But you gave them up. ….Whatever made you forget?” he wondered.

“What are you attempting, speaking nonsense?!” Boreas said, now fully visible. Though he was still incorporeal, he could no longer keep hold of the infinity he had been trying to gather. Sonic himself was going a bit ethereal around the edges, too, the white wind visibly moving through his body like it was a part of him. They were both now in this liminal space where the forces of the world were pooling together, on the verge of either transforming into something else entirely or escaping into nothingness. Boreas raged, “If you are trying to steal the white wind from me, you will have to defeat me utterly! I will not stop fighting for my destiny!”

Sonic considered the horse. But it was hard to see him as an enemy now. “You don’t have to fight any more,” he said.

“What?!” Boreas screamed. There was a flash and the silvery air narrowed into a bright pillar. The power of the white wind had returned to a perfect equilibrium between them, and that balance had allowed the Final Door to reform itself.

Once again, a myriad of different landscapes seemed to open up around them, horizons Sonic had never seen and worlds he had never visited, and he wondered briefly just how many places the Final Door led to, a door built from such strange power. “There’s a lot of adventure left in me,” he said, and meant it. “So how about we wrap this up and get on with things?”

“Do not mock me!!” Boreas attempted to attack, but now it seemed the situation had shifted. Both he and Sonic were suffused with this living power spun from the life of worlds, and that power could not be used to hurt them. There was a violent unleashing of energy, but whatever Boreas attempted in desperation only made Sonic stronger. He was flying easily on his own, not even in a super form, and he waited for Boreas to tire.

“It’s good to have something worth fighting for,” he told the wind lord. “But it’s better to have something worth living for.”

Boreas, now a cloudy wraith within the light shining around them both, lifted up his hands and watched the silvery power sifting away from him. “…I understand now why it was you that could win over a harpy, even the most wretched. But your hope comes too late for me. Thousands of years too late. I gave up hope so long ago.”

“That’s not right!” Sonic argued, shining like a beacon beside the Final Door, more wind than hedgehog now.

“I need no hope. I still have purpose! Is that not enough?!” Boreas screamed at the sky. The Final Door had opened wider, and lashed out now with long trailing arms of light, still thirsting for what strength it could reach. Pushed away by the fierce wind shielding Sonic, the arms of the Door clung to Boreas instead and dragged him back. The wind lord grabbed back at them just as fiercely.

“Boreas!” shouted Sonic, trying to reach him and drag him back, “Let go!!” It was Boreas’ hold now that kept the wind lord in the narrowing pillar of light, for he would not let go of the Door.

“Let the world perish with me!” Boreas pleaded with heaven, trying to collapse the frame around him.

Sonic’s friends were able to see what was happening once the white wind coalesced into a pillar and not just a wash across the sky. So far away, they could not hear the conversation, but it looked like a struggle. The wind was still too strong, and the platforms did not reach high enough even if they were willing to risk following. In fact, several of the crystal platforms had already cracked or had been tossed away in the gale.

“Didn’t Sonic win?” Amy wondered above the noise of the wind.

“He resealed the Door, but Boreas is trying to collapse it again! Darn it!!” the harpy worried.

“We can’t reach him in all this,” Tails said, ducking as the shards of another breaking platform blew past.

“…I can get there,” Celaeno said, testing her wings against the shifting air.

“And do what, exactly?” Amy asked.

“They’re fighting on a whole different level now,” Tails admitted. “Energy forms affect energy forms, but we don’t have the chaos emeralds to use for another transformation or any chaos powers. There’s nothing left we could try even if we could get there, so we just have to trust Sonic!”

“As if a harpy would trust anyone,” and Celaeno jumped into the air, spreading her wings wide to brace against the violent wind rushing past while she summoned a few last winged hours, small lights that zoomed up ahead of her. She caught their wake and rode through the wind, but even so feathers were torn from her, and she worried she would arrive too late.

“Boreas, what are you doing?!” Sonic was asking, still tugging back. The other landscapes had vanished from view, all of them collapsed into the bright light of the Final Door as it continued to pull slowly shut with Boreas still inside.

“Once the Door is broken again, I shall retreat to the underworld to recover my strength. I have all the time I require, but you are yet only mortal. You have no will to strike me down. I will have my destiny!”

Sonic could sense it. The Final Door would either close, taking the wind lord with it, or it would break open, shattering Sonic since so much of its energy was now gathered in him, too active a power to even try getting rid of it yet. But Boreas would not let go of the Door.

Celaeno flew up behind the wind-blown Sonic, dropping out of the wake with her wings beating heavily. “Boreas,” she said, reaching a hand against her heart. Her hand glowed where it passed into her chest, and her whole body shone as her wings retreated and her body grew small again. Her voice thinned even as she continued to speak, “Go back to Hell!” She flung the spell fragment away from her, a tangle of colorful energy that fluttered like a small pair of wings and hit Boreas full on. He lost his hold of the Door and Sonic lost his hold on him, and Boreas was thrown into the pillar of light as it collapsed into a narrow thread. And then that thread, too, vanished.

The power of the white wind still clung to the hedgehog in a gentle silver glow, and Wind Sonic caught wingless Podarge as she fell. He flew down to where Amy and Tails were trying to get off the falling platforms, which could no longer stay in the air with Boreas gone, and the wind surrounding Sonic scooped them all up and carried the four of them down to a stable patch of ground amid the shattered ruins as all the crystal melted into smoke. With the Door finally closed, the gale subsided, but a last breath of warm wind rolled out behind them, then past them, flying across the planet. Everywhere, people that had been stricken began to wake up, ghosts evaporated, and the sky returned to normal, the once-violent force of the white wind now letting go of its grip.

Podarge uncurled herself from where she had rolled up into a frightened sky-blue ball. Amy Rose and Tails stood up, too, looking at each other and then at their rescuer, who was hovering above the ground in the midst of a playful breeze that didn’t seem to touch anyone else but him.

He nodded, his edges hazy and hard to see even as they looked at him, but his smile was as honest as ever. “I’m glad you’re okay,” his voice echoed directly into their hearts.

“Um, Sonic?” asked Po, giving him a suspicious look. “You do know that you aren’t moving your mouth when you talk, right?”

Wind Sonic laughed, but she was right, his mouth didn’t need to move at all. His voice was already there with them, present and invisible as the air. “Things can start getting back to normal, at last.”

Amy looked at their devastated surroundings. “Really? The damage was done, but, you know how to fix it now, right?”

Wind Sonic closed his eyes, the breeze that the others couldn’t feel still tousling him. “…The Final Door turned the energy of this world into a power Boreas thought he could use. This power,” and he lifted his hazy silvery hands and stared at them. “It was meant to destroy, to be weapon, and can’t be changed back. But it won’t be doing any more damage,” he said, and raised his hands. The playful breeze pulled away, the silvery glow surrounding him beginning to drift up into the sky. "We have a world to heal. There will be a lot to rebuild and replant, so we can’t stop yet."

“After what just happened, I’m sure we can handle the rest,” said Tails.

“Are you sure about this?” asked Po, watching the power drifting away. “Even if it can’t fix anything, why give it up? I mean, with a power like that, you’d never lose!”

“Are you kidding?” Sonic grinned, most of the echo to his voice gone as the last of the silvery light winked away. “No way do I need the life force of a world as a weapon! I like having it as a friend better.” He stepped lightly back onto the ground, running a hand through his quills where the wind had blown them over. “Back to my cool blue self! What’s better than that?”

“Nothing in the whole world!” Amy sighed happily.

Sonic nodded, then rubbed his chin as he said to Po, “You’re looking like yourself again. Except your hair is still real long. Was that because of the night wind, too?”

“Huh? Oh, that,” was her only answer. She poked around in the rubble nearby till her foot found the right size of a sharp metal fragment. Without any rigmarole, she used it to cut off the long blue-white hair. It was a hasty hack-job, but now she looked just as she had when they first met her. Po looked back out across the base. “So it’s all over, then,” she said, smiling and juggling the metal scrap in one hand. “Can we relax a bit now?”

“There’s going to be a happy ending after all!” said Tails, practically jumping in his enthusiasm.

“What are you thinking about?” Amy asked Sonic, noticing the thoughtful look on his face.

He crossed his arms. “The Final Door. Even if I don’t need it, the Door exists, and others still want it.”

“Yeah, that’s what always bothered Iris, too,” Po said, the vestigial wings on her back twitching. “But I can guess where this going. So, you want to find a way to break it down without blowing everything else up with it? ‘Cause I don’t think this planet could take that kind of light show twice.”

“There’ll be a way,” he said.

“Sounds like something to add to the to-do list,” Amy said. “But that can wait! We all deserve a rest first, don’t we?” She spoke casually, but she was creeping closer and closer to Sonic as she spoke.

“Sure,” he said.

“A peaceful getaway somewhere? Just for two?” she went on, just as she was in a position to throw her arms around him.

“W-whoa! Amy, don’t sneak up like that!” he said, darting away just in time. It turned into a chase.

“Why?”

“It’s suspicious!”

“What?!”

While they argued, Po shrugged and tossed her metal shard back into a scrap pile. It landed with a small ‘oof’. “What was that?” she wondered, Tails already investigating.

He fished around and finally lifted up a dented lump of metal that opened two eyes at them and twitched its nose, since it didn’t have enough mustache left to even be called such. “Eggster!”

“That thing is still working?” Po asked, stretching her arms behind her head.

“Not very well,” the bot wheezed.

“Don’t worry!” Tails worried, getting a look at the damage. “Maybe I could fix you. I just need to get you to my workshop, so hang on!”

“Why?” asked Eggster.

“Well, if we don’t fix you, you’ll shut down for good,” Tails said, making a long face.

Eggster blinked at him. “And?”

“But…”

“Bah! You let the strangest things trouble you, and it is senseless to waste so much effort. Survival is ambitious in its own right, after all. Goodnight!” he said, and his eyes went dark, and all the moving parts inside went quiet.

Tails didn’t say anything, just looking at the cold lump in his hands with a puzzled look, so Po put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on,” she said, and they walked in the direction Amy had chased Sonic.

And as they walked, Tails turned to her and said, “Podarge, I wanted to-”

She bristled as soon as she heard his tone and cut him off. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“But, I have to say it!” he argued. “Po, I’m sorry!”

“…What is it with you guys? Where did that come from?” said Po, now thoroughly confused.

“What you told me in the holding cells, you were trying to help me, but I didn’t listen to you,” he said.

“You wouldn’t have even known about the core chamber if I hadn’t mentioned it. It’s not your fault you were suspicious of me. I was suspicious!”

“That doesn’t change what happened.”

“Exactly. We’d both have been better off if I hadn’t said anything, right?”

“Well, maybe, but-”

“See? So just let me be wrong!” she laughed, circling the argument.

But Tails was persistent. “No! I mean, that’s not what I meant! Po, I don’t want to be the kind of person that doesn’t trust others. I’m sorry,” he said again, bowing his head toward the ground in apology.

Everything about him was so sincere that Po really didn’t know what to do with it. Her eyes shook a little, turning wet, and then her mouth ran across her face in a squiggly line, but before anything more mushy than that happened she grinned and picked him up and spun him around. Which was harder now that they were close to the same size again. “You are way too good for me, Tails!” she crowed.

Tails smiled back as she let him go, but he was still serious as he said, “And, I’m sorry you lost your wings again.”

She shook her head. “Just stop, okay? I’m used to being broken by now, so don‘t treat it like it‘s a big deal.”

“But I know it is, to you. I think you really saved us back there. Because you know we’re your friends. And because you know you really are a good person. Even if you won’t say so!” he added when she tried to argue. “We already know that, so you can trust it, too. So maybe, in all the most important ways, you are whole.”

Po’s mouth went all squiggly again, so she laughed again. “Heehee! That’s sweet, Tails. But no matter how you sugarcoat it, I’m broken!” They had caught up, so she looked over to where Sonic and Amy were still arguing. Mostly just Amy, while Sonic tried to avoid her. And Po laughed, a little more honestly this time. “Still,” she added, tugging at her horn, “There might be some things better than being whole.”

Sonic attempted a diversionary tactic, and shouted over to Tails and Podarge. “Hey guys! How about we try to find the Tornado and head out? It’s getting late.”

“I’m still talking to you!” Amy complained.

So they were heading to where they had left the Tornado, or what would be left of it, when Amy stopped. The others stopped to look back at her, and she tapped her cheek and said, “Wait up. I feel like we’re forgetting something important.”

“Like what?” asked Tails, and they were quiet as they thought it over for a minute. Then, they all looked at each other and said at the same time, “V!!”

[SoDi]

-43- The Refusal

“It doesn’t belong to you!” Knuckles shouted.

“I just want to look, don’t be so stingy!” Rouge argued, holding the other side of the bright ring that the echidna was trying to keep from her. They were on Angel Island, the safest place that Knuckles had been able to think of. When the warm breeze had blown through and the birds had started chattering again and the late afternoon sky looked like itself, Knuckles thought it was his chance to breathe easy for a little while. Until Rouge had taken the opportunity to sneak a look at what he‘d taken from Iris. Knuckles and Rouge were beside the emerald shrine, scuffling.

“Rouge, stop it! It isn’t very lady like,” he accused.

She pulled harder. “Ha! A gentleman wouldn’t be so rude to a lady!” With a last heave they fell apart, the bright ring humming as it divided into two identical rings, each of them holding one.

“Oh, no!” worried Knuckles.

“You’re no fun. I guess I’ll go make trouble elsewhere,” Rouge smiled, tucking her ring away immediately and getting ready to fly off.

“Get back here!”

The ground shook and something erupted from the ground nearby. Or perhaps something crashed, it was too sudden to tell. A black hedgehog appeared in the crater that remained.

Neither Rouge nor Knuckles were fooled. “V!?” the echidna exclaimed.

“If you’re here, where’s the real Shadow?” Rouge asked, raising her fists.

“I’m real enough for you,” said the clone, lifting up a red chaos emerald in one hand and pointing at them with the other. “Quantum chaos spear!!” The bolt flew from his hand like a bullet from a gun, tearing across the ground and crashing into the lowest steps of the shrine. Rouge and Knuckles leapt out of the way of the attack.

“Why are you here?!” Knuckles asked as he rolled to his feet.

“The fact that I am anywhere at all means that my master has failed.” V vanished, reappearing behind Rouge and kicking her aside. She hit a distant tree face-first and fell down stunned, but not before V had already vanished and reappeared a second time behind Knuckles.

Knuckles was expecting it and blocked the kick with a fist, throwing V back into the stairs. “Then what’s left for you to do? Why are you still causing havoc?” Knuckles asked, as his opponent stood and brushed himself off.

“Lord Boreas was defeated before he could realize the destiny for this world. I will fulfill his final wish in his place.”

They exchanged a few more blows, and though the echidna hit harder, he wasn’t hitting nearly as often as he was missing. “Grrr!” he roared in frustration, “So you’re after the master emerald?! The spirit beacon was destroyed and Robotnik won’t bother building another one after everything that’s happened! Or do you just like destruction?!”

A chaos spear pounded the ground, exploding it into dust between the two of them. “I won’t deny that,” V smirked. “But I don’t need the doctor. I already contain the V-technology within myself, and with the wind seals broken and the master emerald acting as the control, I am strong enough to command the Door. And with it, the fate of this reality.”

“Not on my watch,” Knuckles growled, vanishing into the broken ground.

“Do you still think that I need to see you to attack you?” V asked, unimpressed. “Quantum chaos blast!!” The silent blast clawed outwards, chewing up the ground below and the trees and steps nearby to dust and nothingness, fragments of the ground reappearing elsewhere in broken chunks. The area that had been affected was sizable, and V jumped up to the lowest remaining step and looked back at the damage. It was quiet, and the angle of the sun cast long shadows into the emptied area. But V shouted, “Quantum chaos spear!”

The energy attack struck Knuckles in the head as he was diving down from a higher level of the shrine. His attack thrown off and his skin screaming like it was on fire, Knuckles crashed to the broken stairs below.

V raised his eyebrows in mock interest as the echidna struggled back to his feet. “You’re still trying to stand? Let me help you,” and he reached out with one open palm towards Knuckles. The emerald in his other hand flashed and Knuckles arched his back as his insides revolted, guts twisting under the precise handling of quantum chaos control. He didn’t even know that he was screaming, and V continued the attack for some time even after Knuckles had stopped making the noise. The mute echidna dropped and slid to the base of the shrine as V finally turned his attention to the master emerald. He tossed away the smaller gem like so much trash as he leapt up to stand on top of the larger jewel, crossing his arms and looking up at the rising, broken moon.

The sky overhead flashed and he and the large emerald were standing at the base of a thin pillar of light, the invocation of the white wind. The pillar widened only slowly, and then stopped widening at all while it was still barely as broad as a hand. V concentrated, exerting himself to tap into the vast and ephemeral power. He strained, trying to manage more than just an invocation of weather. Dark clouds seethed outwards from where the pillar pierced the sky and thick lightning crashed down at the island. One tree far off, tall enough to be visible even at this distance, caught on fire, and the forest around it began to burn. Lightning began sparking fires all across the withered island, the half-dead vegetation ideal tinder. And while the island burned all around, V stood with his arms crossed, stone still, willing for the Final Door to open.

Rain began to fall, hissing against the blaze. Smoke and steam, lit red by the flame beneath and the setting sun beyond, quickly filled the ground below the shrine. But amid the noise of breaking wood and steam was another sound, and V turned to look at a dark figure striding slowly towards him.

“What shadow is lurking out there, waiting to die?” V asked.

“The only Shadow,” said the hedgehog, emerging through a last curtain of flames.

“How?!” V shouted, leaping down to the steps for a closer look, the Final Door left half-summoned behind him. “You can’t be alive!”

“I refuse to die!” Shadow screamed back, charging forward.

So they began their fight again, and again it was an even match. V rolled aside to grab up the discarded chaos emerald, but Shadow had found one of his own, so it continued evenly. But as the fight wore on, V still had the edge, his chaos powers still better honed.

Locked in another grapple, Shadow grunted and shoved away, retreating a few paces. “I can beat you,” he said aloud, willing it to be true.

“No,” V said. “But I’ll beat you down however many times it takes to keep you dead!”

They went at it again, V still pushing the advantage, his eyes wild. “Just-admit-defeat!!!” he said, one word at a time between blows. But the sky grew dark and the stars glistened behind the smothering veil of smoke, the island fires dying to embers before V’s slight advantage proved enough to lay Shadow flat and keep him there for any length of time.

V, shaking either from fatigue or rage, stood over him shouting. “It doesn’t change anything! Nothing you do can stop me, you just aren’t powerful enough!”

Shadow rolled himself onto his back, and V kicked him hard enough to keep him rolling several more times until he came to a stop against one of the large boulders lining the path towards the shrine. Shadow reached a hand up its side, pulling himself ponderously into a sitting position, his breathing slow and shallow.

“Say something!!” V ordered him.

“So it really is true,” Shadow said to himself, looking down at his open palm resting limply in his lap. “You are more than a clone. You have my powers, my strength, my knowledge. …My memories. Even my…” he drew the hand up over his heart and held it there. He saw Knuckles still laying motionless in a gathering rain puddle, the bright ring still clutched in one hand, and Rouge farther off. He began chuckling quietly. He was laughing to himself.

“What was that?” asked V, coming closer since he hadn’t been able to make out what the hedgehog had been mumbling. Seeing that Shadow was laughing silently, he raised one eyebrow. “Is it so hard to imagine losing that you’ve simply lost your mind?”

Shadow looked up at him from a downcast face. “It’s just funny. I know you’re going to lose.”

V, unimpressed, shrugged. “What is this, a last show of bravery or words of desperation?”

Shadow was still laughing, weakly, silently, but for a guy that hardly ever smiled that just made it seem like the joke must be the funniest thing in the world. “I know you’ll lose. Because I’ve lost.”

V had his foot stomped just below Shadow’s neck so fast that he might have been using chaos control to do it. “Don’t you dare compare yourself to me! We are nothing alike!!”

“Changing your story now?” Shadow rasped.

“I can’t even stand the sight of you!!”

Shadow gave a menacing smile. “Must be hard to look in a mirror, then.”

“You’re defective beyond hope of comparison,” and V raised the foot and kicked Shadow sideways into the next boulder. “I’ll have you begging for your life before I take it away! You still think you have any hope of walking away from this?”

“If I can lose, then so can you,” Shadow insisted from where he’d fallen down. He pulled himself back into a sitting position, his head rolling a little unsteadily. “But you won’t have to lose to me.”

“Nothing else stands in my way.”

“Sonic beat that wind lord, he’ll be hunting you down next.”

V laughed. “That faker? Is that the best you can threaten me with?”

“Boreas even had the Final Door.”

“I’ll have the Final Door!!”

Shadow scoffed. “You couldn’t control it even if you opened it. That power was with us in the capital. With all the seals broken, it’s as unstable as ever, and there‘s not even that machinery to try and keep it in check anymore.”

“I will become a living spirit beacon, and finish what Lord Boreas began!” V repeated.

“That’s just theatrics. You can’t channel both the white wind and your chaos powers. I can leave the rest to Sonic.”

“Why do you keep talking about that loser?!” Then V calmed down a little. “But I see why you think that it can’t be done. Because of what happened when you compressed a temporal rift into yourself, when distortion of the white wind infected your chaos powers. But you’re still a fool if you think I’m on your level!”

“You think you aren’t?”

“It sounds dangerous, but even you survived.”

“That’s all I did. I couldn’t even touch the Final Door, much less control it.”

“But I can!”

“Where are you going to get that kind of power? You haven’t even got the Door open. How long were you working at it before I sh-” Shadow was interrupted by another kick to the face that threw him to yet another boulder in the path.

V stared him down. “…You talk too much,” he said, turning away. He surveyed the scene, then walked over to the fallen echidna, yanking the bright ring away. V held the thin object in his hands, as if to think it over. But he wouldn’t let himself even glance backwards as he returned to the master emerald.

Shadow, leaning against the stone below, watched and waited, still too hurt to stand or fight. V leapt up onto the master emerald, holding the bright ring above his head and lining it up with the base of the pillar of light.

Several things happened at once. The bright ring itself began to spin madly of its own accord, caught in the current of the white wind. The pillar of light widened to cover all of the dais, the Door opening and the bright ring swallowed up inside it as it channeled the power that the hungry Door wanted. The red chaos emerald, and the blue one that Shadow had been using, both went bright where they had fallen, blindingly white. V-Shadow’s quills bristled and then burned golden, then brighter, a cacophony of energies vying to claim him discordantly, the red-violet of his own chaos aura seeping outward all around him, like excess dye bleeding out in water. The master emerald was the last to change, but beneath the needle of the widening Final Door it blazed bright as well. Angel Island began to shake, rising higher even as much of it began crumbling and falling to the sea below.

The conflict of crossing energies finally knocked the bright master emerald off the shrine altogether, but arcs of energy lanced between it and the Final Door like electric claws. And V-Shadow was stuck suspended in the current between them. He struggled, but every time he tried to break free of the current it pulled him back with a force still stronger than himself. The boundless tide of chaos channeled by the bright ring was now pouring through his cold iron heart, and he screamed. “No! No!!” he pleaded, as his body began to disintegrate like coal dust. “I can’t control this!!”

“I said as much,” Shadow told him.

“I can’t die! Even you didn’t die!!” All the pieces were still there, hanging in the air, but there was less and less there at all, the energies burning him down to a chalky blot of darkness. And when even that was gone, V’s voice remained a moment longer, echoing in the current. “Why not you?!? Why!?! Whyyyy!?!”

The eroded inhibitor rings dropped down the steps, Shadow grabbing at one that came near before it hit the ground. “I guess you don’t have anyone guarding your heart,” he said, opening his hand and seeing how the metal was already dust.

[SoDi]

-44- Resonance

The Tornado reached the island as the Final Door was flaring black and red and a chaos of other colors. Knowing trouble when they saw it, Sonic and the others raced to the shrine, and found a bruised Rouge standing guard over an unconscious Knuckles.

“Rouge, what happened?” Sonic asked her, and she pointed over to where Shadow looked to have collapsed at the base of the shrine.

Before Sonic could try to shake him awake, Shadow opened his eyes and stood. He looked from Sonic to Podarge behind him, then said to him, “Are you still slow?”

“Nah, just late!” Sonic answered. “What happened here?”

“I beat that imposter.”

Sonic took another look around. The Final Door was a wildly fluctuating pillar of light, the master emerald and two chaos emeralds were still glowing bright enough to light up the dark night like midday, the trees were burned to the ground and the island was still crumbling smaller with each passing moment, while a large chunk of the shrine itself and the ground nearby seemed to be missing. “Okaaay… But you must be glossing over some details, right?”

“V threw that ring of Knuckles’ into the Final Door to force it open!” Rouge told him. Amy came over to her to help with Knuckles, so the bat asked Shadow, “What was it that happened to him? If you went through the same thing, then why are you still here? Not that I’m complaining.”

Shadow looked away. “I am the ultimate life form, after all. A lot of fakers want to be me, but no one else can make the cut.”

“Is that so?”

Tails was trying to pick up the fallen emeralds, but they sparked at him whenever he reached too close. Po said to him, “It’s the big one I’m worried about. I don’t think that ever, ever, ever was supposed to happen. I‘m still not sure it did happen, and here I am looking at it!”

The fox nodded. “I’m not even going to try to pick up that one,” he said.

“I bet I can,” Po said. “I can’t use chaos emeralds without Iris‘ spell in me, remember? So I bet this can’t hurt me, same as it can’t help me.”

“I’m not sure it works like that,” Tails began with concern.

Po shoved the blinding master gem back upright, then turned away again to shield her eyes. “See?” she told him. But every hair and feather on her body was on end.

Rouge shook her head at them, then looked back up at the Final Door. It wasn’t opening any wider, but for some reason it wasn’t going away, either. The wind and lightning were still a big distraction, too. “I thought you said you could handle things?” she asked Sonic.

At that moment, the power holding the Final Door open made himself known. The hands appeared first, fingers grasping at the edge of the pillar of light from inside. A monstrous figure resembling Boreas was attempting to pull himself back into this world. Amy shrieked. Even as they watched, the edges of the body were melting away, layers of skin and bone peeling back. Of course, he still had no corporeal body at all, so it was the layers of his mind that they watched being stripped away.

“Let… the world… end with me…” the deformed voice choked out the words.

“Too late, we already saved it, loser! Back off!” Po shouted, her voice strong but her face terrified.

“Then you… with me… traitorous… harpy!!!” Boreas threw one arm forward, something releasing from his hand and flying out from the Final Door even as he lost his grip and tumbled back inside, lost again to view. The object was a winged tangle of light, but it was held trapped within a madly spinning ring.

“Look out!!” shouted Sonic, too late. The winged ring struck the harpy as if shooting right through her, her wings bursting out from her back where she had been leaning against the bright master emerald that now flashed brighter, engulfing her in its light. Her whole body raged with white light and the bright ring hummed and spun faster. Ember-white hair fountained out from her head and every feather on her wings burned bright as the sun, but no brighter than her wild, terrible eyes. Bright Celaeno shrieked and flew into the air, the shining wind off her beating wings throwing everyone else to the ground. The Final Door continued to flicker colorfully, but it was beginning to shrink. Slowly.

The air seemed to sting with emotion, chaos flailing invisibly around them all. Sonic shook the sting from his head and ran over to Knuckles and the girls. “Can he get up?”

“He’s hurt bad,” Amy shook her head.

“Take the plane and get out of here,” Shadow said, coming up behind them.

“Tails, you’ll fit in the Tornado, too!” Sonic said to his friend.

“What about you two? What about Po?” Tails asked.

Knuckles suddenly grabbed at Sonic’s arm, but his eyes wouldn’t focus. “…were two… bright rings…” he managed to say.

“What are you talking about? Don’t move, you’ll hurt yourself,” Rouge scolded him.

“What is he talking about?” Sonic asked her.

She sighed and reached into her shirt, pulling out the bright ring she had taken earlier. “I think he meant this. Whatever it is, it’s trouble, so I don’t want it!”

Sonic took it with a confused and reluctant look. “Great. Just what we needed, more trouble.”

“You boys can catch up with whatever Knuckles uses to travel. We’ll meet up in the Mystic Ruins and make a plan, okay?” Amy asked, helping Rouge carry the echidna away from the shrine.

Tails added, “He keeps a glider on the south side, remember? Should I come with you?”

“No, I know where it is. The girls‘ll look after the knuckle-head, and I need you to look after the Tornado,” Sonic said, and Tails nodded and hurried after the others to his plane. Watching them all leave, Sonic added, “We might not have much time to help Po.”

“Less than you think,” Shadow told him.

“What do you mean?”

“When you went bright before, GUN went through a lot of deliberation about stopping your rampage using the banned weaponry. In the end, they won clearance, but by then they didn’t need it. With another bright enemy loose, and with all the red tape already out of the way, they’ll probably launch as soon as they catch her on radar.”

“They’re going to drop a nuke on us?! But this whole island will go, and the damage will hit the coast, too!”

Shadow crossed his arms. “They know how much damage you did, and it won’t take her long to reach the mainland. GUN believes in acceptable losses, Sonic.”

“Well, I don’t! No way! How can we snap her out of this?”

“We might have had that option. If the guardian was still conscious.”

“I don’t think we can wait for him to come back around. We need another plan!”

“You have one?”

Sonic thought it over. Hard. He stared at the ground, and said softly, “I need that favor, Shadow. I didn‘t need it going after Boreas, but I need it now.”

“What is it?”

“No one can handle the chaos emeralds like you can.”

“What’s your point?”

“Even if they’re bright, I bet you could still manage to use your chaos control. I’m going to go bright, and go after Podarge. Shadow, I need you to teleport me and Po somewhere that our fight won‘t hurt anybody.”

“Are you crazy?” Shadow asked. It was not a rhetorical question. “Even with an equal power, that doesn’t mean that you can beat her.”

“I’m not trying to beat her. Maybe nothing can beat a bright ring. So, what would happen if the two fought each other, and neither could lose? I have a hunch something will have to happen. And I still have a promise to keep.”

“Sonic…” Shadow said, looking over at him slowly. “…Don’t die out there. Because when you get back, I’m going to beat the quills off you for upstaging me.”

Sonic grinned, but there was nothing else that needed to be said. Sonic held the second bright ring out, and approached the crackling master emerald. He didn’t even have to get very close before the chaos energy seemed to recognize him and leapt forward, enveloping him in a wash of light. The bright ring grew behind him like a large halo, and Bright Sonic shot himself into the sky like a rocket. The new threat was so obvious, Bright Celaeno dropped from where she was wheeling among the lightning bolts and dove straight back down. She and Bright Sonic were already tearing violently into one another.

Shadow only watched them for a moment before leaning down to the ground beside the master emerald. He was still weak, but he knew he needed at least enough strength for this. “Chaos… control!!”

-

The Tornado had landed on a high hill along the coast, where the mainland reached as close as it could to the floating island. It was late at night and the sky was dark, but in the distance the narrow thread of the Final Door finally winked out and the summoned storm vanished almost immediately, clearing the sky. Which made it obvious when a sudden explosion of lights began going off just beside the broken moon.

“What’s all that about?” Amy wondered.

From behind, they all heard Shadow answer, “Sonic, and Celaeno.” They hadn’t heard him approach, and there was no way to know how long he’d been standing there, so they were startled.

“What are you talking about?! What are they doing up there?” Amy asked.

“He isn’t going to try and fight, is he?” Rouge echoed from the ground where she was keeping close to Knuckles, who was still passed out.

“Sonic knows he can’t win a fight like that,” Shadow agreed.

Amy argued, “He’s going to come back! He promised me he would!”

Shadow just watched the moon. “Even if he doesn’t, he’ll have lived the life he wanted.”

“Grrr!! You are so frustrating!!” Amy yelled, pulling out her hammer. But he didn’t flinch, and she didn’t bother swinging it. “Why do you always have to be such a downer!? Hey, I’m talking to you!” she said, but he was already leaving the hilltop.

-

Past the far side of the moon, floating in the void of space among fragments of Angel Island, Bright Celaeno and Bright Sonic were fighting savagely with all the power of chaos. The dark planet they had left floated visible beyond the moon, the slim edge of the sun rising over its side. In the other directions, an infinite expanse of emptiness was littered with stars.

Bright Sonic clapped his hands and a wave of destructive light broke over the harpy. She climbed back out from the light, spread her wings and opened her mouth wide, as if to scream. There was no sound in space, but dozens of effervescent lights like small suns leapt away from her shuddering wings, bursting against the hedgehog like fireworks. But nothing either did seemed to harm the other, a dazzling but useless display of explosive powers that trailed like comet tails and stardust in their wake.

They flew through space, exchanging attacks back and forth. Each attack only seemed to make them stronger, the bright rings that possessed them both feeding off one another. Though there was no sound, there did emerge a rhythm to their movements. Back and forth the bright lights played, and where one attacked the other flew to meet it, and where one fell away the other parted likewise. And the shining radiance that both gave off seemed to grow brighter with every move matched, as the rings attempted to draw and channel the power of the other, an escalating feedback loop where the more they channeled the more there was that remained. The fighters continued to collide, driven by the chaos that began to synchronize, and there was a growing resonance that forced the strange battle into an otherworldly dance. The looping energy finally locked into mirror-like motion that brought Bright Sonic and Bright Celaeno diving towards each other at the speed of light. The two bright rings wrenched away at the last minute, crashing into a single light that swallowed up both fighters and their separate radiances and exploded outward in a thousand rays that lit the ember-filled sky afire, visible to everyone on the planet below.

-

His eyes never could adjust to so much light, he could only hope to get used to the headaches, so when Sonic first tried to open his eyes he winced and shut them again. “If it’s too bright, just cover your eyes,” said Po, stretching out a wing to protect them both from the glare.

Sonic couldn’t remember ever feeling so exhausted. “…Did I win? Did I… save you?”

“…Yeppers.”

Sonic opened his eyes more slowly the second time, and found himself in the wide and featureless void of white light. Beside him, the harpy looked like Podarge, but she had Celaeno’s dark violet and indigo colors. The wings on her back were ragged, and floppy rather than strong or graceful, but they were there. She was smiling, her fangs showing, but it was a tired smile, and she would not meet his eyes. He tried to smile back. “So are we in my heart, or yours?” he asked.

“Neither,” she said, pointing past them. It seemed there was one object to break up the featureless space, a tall pair of ivory carved doors nearby.

Sonic got up to take a better look, and Po stood from her crouching position. “Funny how it looks more door-like from the inside,” he said.

“I think I’ve figured something out,” said Podarge. “It’s not made of stone or glass, but the Final Door is like a spirit box. It holds the white wind, makes it a power that people can tap and control. Even binding it shut with seals to restrict that control doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a trap!” she went on, not too tired to sound angry.

Sonic put his hands on his hips. “We don’t need a power that comes from someone else’s captivity. I don’t think anyone does. Right?” He and Po nodded at each other. There was something so familiar about the allusion to their first adventure together, even in such strange surroundings, that they both laughed, comforted and relieved. But something about that familiarity made the moment seem suddenly painful, too.

As they watched, the Door opened slowly. Not like normal doors, these seemed to unfold. They were not, in fact, carved at all. The long twining arms that Sonic had seen snatching at Eurus and later at Boreas were what formed the doors themselves. Now the arms did not snatch or snap, they just waved gently, framing a space within them more than large enough to walk through.

He asked, “What now? Can we take this home?”

“I doubt it,” Po said, walking closer to him. “You’re home is the other way, remember?” and she pushed him hard as she laughed. Maybe it was because there was no floor that there was no friction, but Sonic slid a far distance and now he and Po were looking at each other from a long way off.

“Podarge!” he began to argue, but she wagged a finger at him.

Another strangeness about this place was that their voices carried clearly, as if they were still standing right next to each other, and the harpy told him, “Just hear me out, okay? Somebody must have made this Door thing, but it’s made out of energy, so what’s holding it together like this? The spirit beacon’s busted, the seals are gone. But it still exists, under its own power. So, as long as that power is active for anything, the Door is going to keep its shape. If the Door stopped having to work, if it lost its purpose, it might vanish on its own without us having to break it apart. The spirit army is gone, thanks to that trick that Tails pulled. Shin has gone ahead already. Shadow said that V is gone, and the seals are all gone, and the spell fragments my sisters had left with them. Even Iris and the Rain Palace, right? And, all the magic is gone out of me, too, thanks to you,” she smiled at him, crossing her arms. “But, I’m still here.”

“So?” Sonic asked.

“So I’m all that’s anchoring this thing in place, now. Because even without Iris’ magic, I was summoned into this world through the Door, remember? You did what you said, you saw this mess through to the end. So I guess I can’t stay, or it‘ll never be over.”

“That’s not true. You could stay.”

“But if I go back, and the Door shuts behind me, the Door itself will disappear. I think so, anyway. I have a hunch.”

“Podarge, you-”

She spun around toward the Final Door, stretching her arms up behind her head and laughing while he couldn’t see her face. “Because you have so many friends, I bet you hate goodbyes, huh? I bet you wanna’ cry. But don’t get all mushy on me! You’ll just embarrass yourself, anyway.” Sonic didn’t argue, he just let her keep talking. Because he knew that Po was, in her awkward way, talking about herself. “And I’ll bet you’ll be lonely without me! You’ll be so bored. What’ll you do without anyone to race?”

Sonic crossed his arms. “…Then I’ll race the wind,” he smiled.

Po’s wings twitched and she didn’t say anything. She was quiet for a minute, then she laughed, the harsh crowing sound she made all the time. She walked to the Door, lifting one hand in farewell but still not bothering to turn around and face him as she said, “’Bye! Sonic the Hedgehog!”

Sonic raised his own hand in a high wave. “Goodbye,” he said, as she vanished into the light and the Door eased shut and vanished in the same light. “…Sis.”

-

As her eyes adjusted, Amy was unsure how many of the bright lights remaining in the sky were stars and how many were simply sparks left in the wake of that blaze, but every one of those lights seemed to come raining down from the heavens, crashing earthward. Those millions of needles of light fell through the air and into the earth, and everywhere left a warm glow rising from the ground, a gentle emerald light. Trees began to straighten and sprout green leaves, new plants budded up from the dirt and even from the most unforgiving reaches of stony ground. Breathing in the air was enough for Amy to feel a lively tingling fill her body all the way through to her toes and fingers. So she was glad to see Knuckles suddenly take a deeper breath and sit up, eyes wide as he watched the strange rain. Rouge was still trying to hold him up, but it didn’t seem like she needed to anymore. He held out a hand to catch at the falling lights, but the drops skittered away as they broke into tinier vanishing motes. “…Regeneration?” he wondered, looking at his empty hand.

Amy leapt to her feet, watching the sky for the larger meteorites that were flashing through the atmosphere. “We have to go and-” but she was interrupted by the loud thrum of the Tornado’s engine. Tails already knew what to do.

Elsewhere, Sonic was waking up with a strong wind in his face. He was falling through the air from a huge way up, opening his eyes to the sun rising over the horizon. The whole world seemed to stretch out below him, plains and forests, glinting rivers and lakes, and cities with their lights like patches of fireflies in the dawn glow. It was a beautiful view. That began drawing closer incredibly quickly.

“Whoa!!” Sonic shouted, running in place in the air, yet that didn’t slow his fall at all. But as the wind gusted past it carried with it a familiar sound, and Sonic waved as the Tornado flew to meet him. Catching hold of a wing, he rode with his friends into the sunrise, all the way home.

[SoDi]

-45- Epilogue - Racing the Wind

Rouge had caught up to Shadow, spotting him walking along a country road below. She alighted just behind him. “Shadow! You aren’t thinking of reporting in, are you? I don’t think they’ll take you back.”

“They won’t take you back, either. If you keep following me.”

She shrugged. “I’m bored with all that, so I was ready to take my pension and split, anyway.”

“Aren’t you too young for retirement pay?”

“If they don’t like it, I have other ways of getting my money from them. I think I might try running a night club. …What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Shadow answered, and kept walking.

“And you still haven’t given me that gift, you know.”

“What?”

“Just like a man to forget! Even before all this trouble started, and you promised you’d bring me back something nice? Typical!” she laughed.

But Shadow stopped cold, and she almost flew into him from behind. His tone was serious, but then, it was always serious. “I keep my word. …Guess I’ll have to make it up to you.”

“With interest!” she cheered, playing along. He nodded, ever so slightly. But something about the whole exchange made her suspicious. So before he could start walking again, she said, “Wait, Shadow.”

“What now?”

“…Listen. You’re strong, and handsome, and deliciously mysterious. There’s a lot to like. But, Shadow, don’t let me depend on you. Not if you aren’t going to be there when I really need you.”

He looked back at her. She had mended her suit, and by now of course had cleaned up her makeup. Rouge covered the lower half of her face with a hand, like she thinking something over, not meeting his eyes. Shadow started walking again. “I’ll be there.”

Behind him, Rouge lowered her wrist, that had been covering another, softer smile, and flew after him to keep up.

-

The summer passed by and everyone found ways to keep busy. Chaos regeneration had done a lot, but it could not rebuild houses. Even so, though the land still bore the scars of that adventure, people were quick to settle into their routines and carry on with life like they always had. Sonic and his friends found themselves watching the sky a little more often than they used to, though none of them could have said why.

Green Hill’s windmills were among the last buildings to be repaired, the houses all fixed up first. A group of eight men came up the road carrying one of the logs that would become a main support beam. Knuckles came up behind carrying a second. He set the beam down gently, then turned as there was a nudge on his elbow.

Cheese, the little chao with a sharp bowtie, was tugging on him to get his attention, and Cream held up a tray of glasses filled with cold lemonade. “Are you thirsty, Mr. Knuckles?”

“Cha-o?”

“Yeah, thanks!” Knuckles said, helping himself.

“I have one for Tails, too!” and they walked over to where Tails had set up a drawing board nearby in the sunshine. He was making notes on blueprints for the new mills, but set down his pencil and stretched when he heard them coming.

He thanked the small rabbit for the drink, but before he could enjoy it the glass spilled as he jumped in surprise, a voice behind them shouting loudly, “Sooooniiiiic!”

Tails brushed spilt ice off himself as he turned. “Hi, Amy.”

“Wow, everyone’s here! Almost. Have any of you seen Sonic?”

“Not since I got here,” Knuckles said.

“Maybe he went out for a run?” Cream guessed.

“Of course he did! You’d think he’d find something more productive to do, since the rest of us are working so hard!” Amy fumed.

Tails was confused. “Um, but, aren’t you just looking for him?”

“That’s productive!!” Amy insisted.

“I’m sure he has a good reason. He might still be looking for Robotnik,” Cream said, still trying to calm her friend down.

“Grrr!” Amy fumed.

Knuckles was looking up at the sky, and the few white wisps of cloud drifting there. “And to think,” Knuckles said, “nothing of the past couple months would have happened if Robotnik hadn’t opened Pandora’s Box!”

“A lot has happened,” Tails agreed thoughtfully. Then he grinned, joking, “Maybe we should thank him the next time we see him!”

“Yeah, with my hammer!” Amy frowned.

A sudden wind zipped by, and Sonic tapped Amy’s shoulder from behind. “Hi, Amy! I’ve been looking for you.”

She was stunned as she turned around. “…You were looking me?”

He scratched the end of his nose. “Do you have some time? I want to show you something.”

“Um, yeah!” she said, still too surprised to move.

So he took her by the wrist and pulled her after him. “Come on,” he said.

The others watched them go, and then Knuckles asked, “What do you think that was about?”

Tails tapped the end of his pencil against his chin, thinking it over. “I suppose it never hurts to guess, but,” and then he shrugged and went back to scribbling with a small smile. “Sometimes, the smartest thing is to keep my mouth shut.”

“Huh?”

-

Amy stood on a hill looking out over the emerald plain. The breeze was warm and smelled sweetly of late-blooming wildflowers, a few puffy white clouds drifted through the sky, and the green grasses stretched into the distance. She put her hands on her hips and sighed. “The plains? I guess you spend a lot of time here, but it’s not very exciting. Well, I won’t complain, I guess. At least we’re spending time together, but we could have brought a picnic, or… huh?” she said, her words trailing off as Sonic took her hand and pulled her to the edge of the hill.

“There’s something I have to show you,” he repeated, picking her up lightly. “Hang on tight, okay?” he smiled, and began running down the hill. An easy loping pace at first, then faster. The wind began whipping by.

With nothing in the emerald plain to slow him down, Sonic ran faster and faster. Amy, held close and shielding herself from the wind by leaning against his chest, looked up at his face. His eyes were already fixed on the far horizon, bright and smiling eyes. That was the look she knew so well, and she smiled gently, watching him. Then she turned, trying to follow his gaze, and she gasped. The horizon seemed to melt as it rushed to meet them, land and sky bleeding together as it all blew past, until it seemed that the whole world was made up of nothing but wind and light. She had never seen the world like this. It felt a lot like flying, Amy thought.

And as they went, the wind followed like a whisper close behind. It blew through the grasses and the wildflowers and the clouds, hugging the emerald plain and carrying an echo with it. As if words had caught in the wind and were kept there, timeless as it breezed along.

…How can you keep going when you don’t know what will happen?
…I know who I am…
…Of course… You’re a hero…!
…If I can be a hero, it’s because I have friends, to help me and make me strong…
……The wind will always be your friend…

- - The End - -

Families come in all shapes and sizes.
This story is dedicated to yours.

- Roll End Credits! -


It may seem arrogant, but please allow me to write here my gratitude for what allowed this experience to happen. This fiction has been a lot of hard but rewarding work, and is written in tribute to all the people who made and still make the original Sonic so awesome. Thus I hope it goes without saying that all of the characters and such owned by Sega people are, in fact, owned by Sega people, and so forth. The rest of this fiction belongs to me, SoDi. It took a lot of work, so if any part of this fiction shows up elsewhere, please give me credit.

Naturally, I couldn’t have done it alone. Hurray for teamwork! I’d like to thank everyone who helped and made this fiction possible. First, of course, are my beta readers and editors: Train, KittyMama, Miriamne, and Sheyga, as well as everyone who let me talk at them about my ideas. BIG special thanks to Sheyga, who was the only one able to stick with me all the way through to the end. For hours of brainstorming and re-storming, for being my consultant on all things pseudo-science and real-world quantum mechanical, and because the entire V-Shadow arc probably wouldn’t exist without him.

I want to thank fellow fan-fic writers, especially those who post/moderate at Sonic Online (since that is where I first discovered the world of fan-fic). Reading your work gave me the courage to try it myself. ...Even if no one responded to my posts. I shall still choose to believe that someone out there is bothering to read it...

NaNoWriMo deserves praise, because it opened up a whole new writing style for me. One that has actually allowed me to finish something I started. Even if I didn’t finish it within a month.

I would like to thank my school, the Pacific School of Religion. Because if it wasn’t for the rigorous terrors of senior year at seminary, I never would have turned to escapism for shelter, fleeing from deep and unanswerable questions like “What is the nature of evil?” and “Why do bad things happen to good people?” and “What are you doing after graduation?” Really hard questions. Without that, I would never have sought refuge in the safe haven of childhood animated movies, like the Sonic movie that kick started my whole obsession- I mean deep and abiding affection for a physics-defying blue hedgehog.

Also, and randomly, there was a lot of music that got me through the actual writing process. The first half of WoH was written to the tunes of the ‘Unearthed’ CD by ES Posthumus. Once my internet access became more regular, I also had access to all kinds of Sonic music on Youtube thanks to posters like TrueSonic1. Much gratitude!

And that’s it. You’ve gotten through the whole story, no small feat, and even through all the credits. You rock!! Thanks for reading!

[Scourgekito the hedgehog]

Awesome hun!..I think you thought this through very well...better than me who has never fifnished a story..LOL...keep on making fics like this and you'll have people beggin' to learn your secrets.

[SoDi]

XD Thank you, Scourgekito / Kina! It means a lot to me