#I'm tired haha imma go to bed and hope my headache behaves

[true-blue-sonic]

my struggling braincell when i’m sick and cold laying in bed at 1 AM: hnnghhh… espilver angst… 🫠🫠🫠

You and me both😅 But I've managed to kick my headache into gear and wrote a little for that fic about the Ifrit and its mind control, that you talked about earlier today :> :> Something something world setting is like adjacent to my other multi-chapter Espilver fic wherein Silver is from a good world but was also the only one realising Eggman Nega was 100% plotting to destroy them, he's been quite socially isolated because nobody believed him, Espio is his first true friend ever, here's what I have so far. Angst time 100. Enjoy!🍀

~~~~~

“…Espio?”

“Something bad is coming,” the chameleon muttered, his fingers trailing over a shuriken laying loosely in his other hand. “I can sense it.”

And he himself could too, Silver knew: the air clung onto his pelt like tar, his lungs struggling to heave in the black smoke and orange embers jumping of burning rubble. “Then we’d best be careful,” he managed to bring out. “And the moment you see the Ifrit, tell me!”

Espio said nothing back.

Stifling a grunt as he clambered up against more wreckages Silver swallowed, paying it no mind. His thoughts were reeling as well: what had this world been, before it had been destroyed? Had there been people, or any sort of sentient life; a civilisation doomed the moment the Ifrit turned its eyes towards them? There had to have been: terrifyingly large skyscrapers wobbled around them, the underground he and Espio were ever so carefully trying to traverse slipping away underneath them with every step and crumbling into the ocean of lava down below… All because of that monster, the hedgehog snarled, and if Eggman Nega got his way he would let the exact same happen to their own world, and Silver would not let it come to pass.

He was so caught up in his thinking he only realised he was about to run into Espio when he could skid to a halt mere centimeters away from the other.

“Espio? Did you see something?!”

The chameleon stayed quiet still.

“Espio?” Silver tried again, giving the other a nudge in his back. “What’s… wrong…?”

A shambling step away from him followed, Espio’s face blank as he turned around, his hand lifting, Silver’s eyes widening, a gleam of metal coursing through the air-!

“Augh!”

Crying out and staggering backwards Silver threw his hand forward by instinct, a cyan shield grasping at the shuriken… that tore past his palm, a sharp stab of pain making him cry out. “Espio!” he yelled at the other. “What the heck?!”

Espio’s mouth opened… and Silver froze as words came tumbling out, a flurry of nonsense that stirred into a “Destroy…” and then a “Must destroy Silver,” and then a “Destroy Silver, destroy Silver, destroy Silver, destroy Silver” in a never-ending mantra that got overtaken only by a gleeful cackle in the sky.

“You’ve grown so fond of your companion you’ve led your guard down around him, dear Silver?” Eggman Nega jeered, floating in the sky in his Egg Mobile. “What an… interesting development. I did not take you to be capable of that, heehee!”

“Shut up!!” Silver roared back at him- though he had to jump out of the way as a fist, gleaming with a kunai clutched between the fingers, got flung towards him. “Wh- Espio! He wouldn’t-!”

“Tsk. Of course he would. Of course he’d get tired of you eventually. Had you not expected that?” Eggman Nega grinned, elbow lavishly leaning on the side of his Egg Mobile… before he shrieked as Silver flung out his hand and the shuriken rushed past where his head had been if he hadn’t pulled it down microseconds prior.

“You’re lying! Look at how he’s moving!”

And indeed, where Espio’s movements had been ever so graceful and collected before, now they tittered and hitched and jolted as the kunai nearly fell from his hands.

“…The Ifrit has the ability to blind one’s soul. Of course!” A cackle followed, Eggman Nega’s face stuck in a manic sneer. “His soul has been blinded… The Ifrit has him under its control! And that means you are doomed, you little rat. As if you would ever fight the one friend you’ve had in your life.”