#SHADOW SAW THIS LIKE VISION OF SONIC SORT OF???

[tsubomiiiii]

OK BUT WHAT IF….WHAT IFFFF…..

[virune]

If you still want prompt ideas, I’ve got one:

Shadow comes home from a really long G.U.N. Mission and expects Sonic to be right at the door, really excited to see him, but goes into the house to find the blue blur cuddling a lavender-scented pillow on the couch, fast asleep

Based on a post of yours I saw a while back

The apartment was dark and quiet when Shadow stepped inside.

A year ago, this would not have struck him as odd. He used to live alone, after all. But even as exhaustion seeped into his bones, worn and weary from his long, arduous mission, Shadow found himself waiting in the hall for Sonic to greet him like he always did.

The absence of his… well, Shadow supposed they were boyfriends now, as Sonic had insisted on it just before Shadow left a few months ago. The thought made his chest flutter, even now. He still wasn't used to it.

Shadow realised then that he'd forgotten to tell Sonic when he'd be back. Of course, then, it could only be expected that his apartment was empty. Sonic must be sleeping at Miles' workshop. With a yawn, Shadow ambled forward tiredly, wanting nothing more than to sleep. He'd get some rest and contact Sonic in the morning.

If it weren't for his night vision, Shadow would have missed the fuzzy blue head of relaxed quills visible from behind the couch. Shadow rounded into the living room with muted surprise. Green eyes shut, a tan muzzle was squashed against the pillow that Sonic was cuddling with both his arms and legs, much in the same way he would cuddle Shadow whenever they slept.

Shadow allowed himself a moment to appreciate his boyfriend's sleeping form. Rarely was Sonic so calm and still. He looked peaceful, as though comforted greatly by the pillow's plushness against him. He did not stir, not even as Shadow knelt down on the carpet beside him and carded fingers through his short fur.

A familiar scent caught Shadow's nose. The pillow was coated in his favourite lavender cologne to an almost nauseating degree. But he'd been away long enough for his scent to fade. Did that mean that Sonic had sprayed the pillow in his absence?

And did that mean… Sonic had missed him? Enough to stay, to sleep in his apartment, even while he'd been gone for so long?

A strange, new sort of fondness soared up from Shadow's chest and he leaned in to place a kiss on Sonic's forehead. Carefully as he could, he gently snaked his hands beneath Sonic's body to pick him up, leaving the cologne-scented pillow behind. Sonic still did not wake, but he seemed to lean into Shadow's warmth as he was carried to bed.

Forget the pillow, Shadow thought, I'm here now, and I missed you terribly.

[nagichi-boop]

My Thoughts Prior to Sonic x Shadow Generations (mostly Dark Beginnings)

This won’t have much rhyme of reason to it, but I want to go over my thoughts of the episodes and some related information released prior to the game’s release. So this is sort of a mix of a review for Dark Beginnings and predictions based on that and the promotional information for the game? I may reblog this after playing the game to expand my thoughts, or I may just make a new post and reference this one if it’s relevant. Well, assuming I make a post about my thoughts on the game, anyways.

Since this will likely be rambly, I will put my thoughts under a cut so as not to clog your feed. I’ll try to organise my thoughts as cohesively as possible. I’ll start with the Dark Beginning episodes as they give the most story information, then I’ll go over a few thoughts from the promotional material.

Warning - Spoilers! (But also…this is a really long post lol)

Episode 1: Shadow and Maria

The first thing that stands out is, of course, Shadow and Maria’s relationship. Shadow is certainly more the anxious type, perhaps in part to Gerald informing him on Maria’s condition. But they have such a cute sibling relationship! It was also nice getting a glimpse into Maria’s sickness and how Shadow handles it, and how Maria shows concern for his insecurities and such. They look out for each other. And you can see just how deeply he cares about Maria. The fact he went out of his way to view the aurora borealis in the present day shows just how deeply he cared about her love of nature and how he carries that with him.

We learn a little bit more about Maria’s backstory. Not only is it confirmed that she has in fact been earth prior to living on the ARK (some people thought maybe she was born on the ARK or smth?), but we also learn that the reason being in space helps is because the gravity keeps her condition in remission. As a side note, I love seeing characters with invisible disabilities in media. Maria has the capacity to run if she wants, but it comes with consequences. As someone with an invisible chronic illness, I appreciate the representation! And it’s nice to see Shadow being gentle yet firm with her when he reminds her not to exert herself. And when he holds her hand before running off, you can see him gently squeezing her hand. He is so careful and caring with her.

I haven’t played Battle, but it was also nice to see them referencing older games by including Emerl. I get that Generations is all about revising the past, but it’s nice to see them bringing stuff all together.

After the glass shatters (which I interpret as time/space shattering?), we see Shadow fall into the cell Gerald is in. I can only imagine how Shadow felt being there with him in this vision, especially because he saw the firing squad shoot him. He almost seems pained by it with how he grabs his head. And then he of course falls into some void space after reaching out for Gerald. Again, I see this as the timeline breaking, especially because we see Maria’s death portrayed in the cloud/mist. Then we get that brief glimpse of Black Doom reaching out and grabbing Shadow, which leads him to believe Black Doom is back.

It’s also clear just how often Shadow thinks about and has nightmares about what happens, to the point he more or less knows the timelines of events. We really get to see how much his trauma affects him. I’ll touch on this a bit more later, but this feels like a really good depiction of PTSD and trauma. In the past few games, he hasn’t really seemed as affected by the events on the ARK, as if he has moved on. But that’s just it - he can’t completely move on from his trauma. Sure, he appears to have a better understanding and is better at coping with it (again, I’ll expand more on this as I go), but him relapsing feels like an accurate depiction of how someone with PTSD, CPTSD, or really any mental illness will go through ups and downs with their disorder.

You could argue that this wasn’t a nightmare and was a vision of sorts because of the timeline distorting, but he speaks as though he does get frequent nightmares. He is able to differentiate this situation from a nightmare presumably because he gets nightmares so frequently. He also mentions it happening in view of the ARK. I interpret this to mean he didn't fall asleep (especially given he is standing when he snaps out of it), but more like a trance-like state. Maybe he looked at the ARK while admiring the aurora and it started the vision?

It’s also pretty interesting that he seemed scared at the idea of Black Doom being back. When he had amnesia in ShTH, I guess he didn't have much of a reason to be scared of Black Doom. But he knows how powerful he is, and with his memories back, he knows fully what Black Doom’s influence is on his past - sharing his DNA and making an agreement with Gerald that Shadow would later collect the Chaos Emeralds for him. We know from the next episode that Shadow isn’t the most fond of his Black Arms DNA, so it makes sense that he is worried he will have to confront that part of himself…I’ll come back to this thought later. Even without that, it would be pretty disconcerting to think about a foe you defeated coming back, especially after a vision like that.

Episode 2: Finding the Way

We get another wonderful glimpse into Shadow’s past. It’s a bit more speculation, but it’s somewhat reasonable to assume that Maria is the only one who has a friendly relationship with him. Abe calls him a freak, and though Gerald created him, Maria is the one who gave a deeper meaning to his name. Maria and Abe were also friends, so I imagine that she at least tried to get him to like Shadow, but it obviously didn't work. Maybe because Maria was the only one saying nice things about Shadow? Given what he went on to do with Shadow’s memory following Maria’s death, I can’t imagine even Gerald had the closest relationship with Shadow. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we don’t really have anything canon to show that he cares much for Shadow as an individual versus as his science project. It makes sense that Shadow is so weary of others and why Maria’s death hurt him so much - she was the only one among many who cared about him personally.

We see more of Shadow’s insecurity and his struggles with his identity. He seems genuinely afraid because of his alien DNA. This once again makes me think that Gerald was very clear to Shadow about what his origins were and his purpose, but perhaps not much more than that. After all, Shadow doesn’t believe he has a place on earth. If Gerald really cared, I figure he would have talked to Shadow about going home with himself and Maria about going home together, and he would have dispelled Shadow’s fears about being a monster because of his DNA. Besides, Shadow’s negative perception of the Black Arms had to come from somewhere, right? This is speculation, of course, but I can’t find much to suggest Gerald cared much for him. It’s heartbreaking to think that because Gerald messed with his memories, he could have used the ARK to destroy all life on earth - not too dissimilar to what Black Doom wanted. Can you imagine the guilt Shadow feels by almost becoming the thing he feared so much?

In the midst of Shadow’s worry, we get to see Maria being a sisterly figure to him. I love this scene so much - I genuinely teared up when I first watched it. Anyways, we see that Shadow clearly struggles with his origins, but Maria doesn’t view him the way he does - he’s not the heartless monster he thinks he is. She genuinely listens to his concerns, and when she sees him become depressed over his origins, she immediately comforts him She sees that he genuinely cares, even if he struggles to express it. Autistic Shadow, yay! To her, it’s what Shadow does, not what he is, that makes him a good person. She was perhaps the only person to view him as more than just a science project. And despite him being viewed poorly by others, Maria sees that he cares for others. This is supported by a scene later as well as one in the third episode, but I’ll get to that.

Fast forward to modern day and yay, Team Dark! It’s interesting that their introduction comes after Maria says that Shadow will find more people he can trust, aka Rouge and Omega. (I’d also argue Sonic is someone Shadow trusts and maybe Amy too, but we ain’t talking about them right now.) We get to see Shadow and Rouge’s friendly relationship with one another. They may not be partners per se, but she greets him like a close friend that she’s comfortable with. He, in turn, shows curiosity about why she’s there without a hint of malice. They both openly share why they’re there, which is a testament to their trust in one another. He was listening but also making sure to watch out for dangers and saves her, much like he does for Maria in the first episode when she collapses. It’s in his nature to look out for others.

We then get to see a glimpse of his leadership. Sure, I don’t know if you can really say they’re strictly a team. As much as I love Team Dark, they seem to mostly team up due to convenience and circumstance, but he directly but respectfully gives them an order and they follow without hesitation because they trust and respect him. When they’re together, they work as one unit. It’s also nice to see all three of them being more than competent fighters.

The way Rouge teases Shadow about him going to Sonic’s birthday party in return for her help adds to the idea that they’re familiar with one another. You wouldn’t really speak that way, nor call a platonic friend “handsome”, unless you had a degree of familiarity and closeness with one another. If they weren’t friends, Shadow would have gotten mad at her multiple times throughout this scene. Instead, he sighs in a way that is interpreted as a reluctant yes (again, he doesn’t deny this, so it is more or less confirmed that he was agreeing to go).

We also get more confirmation that Rouge is a free/double agent. She doesn’t work for GUN, but she still works with them occasionally. She will team up with whoever it’s convenient to team up with. Of course, I like to think that her teaming up with Shadow in this instance is more her being a friend doing another friend a favour. She doesn’t really have a reason to help Shadow, and her request doesn’t personally benefit her. She’s helping Shadow because she cares about him. You quite literally see her eyes light up when she notices Shadow is there. This went from a boring intel mission to something more interesting to her.

Episode 3: To the ARK

This episode hurt me so much and made me lowkey worried that I’m gonna cry when playing Sonic x Shadow Generations.

First thing I noticed - Shadow smiling? I love that for him. I do appreciate we are seeing more of that with Shadow. He isn’t constantly brooding and miserable - he has a more casual and fun-loving side too. We also see that he has a somewhat similar view of GUN as Rouge does. They have both worked on behalf of GUN in the past in varying capacities, but whether or not they are on GUN’s side fluctuates depending on their goal. It’s what separates them from Team Sonic - they act according to their best interests and what their mission is.

I don’t have much to say about the fight. It’s epic of course, but I’ll talk about production and such later. I will say it’s funny to see they’re continuing to show how destruction-hungry Omega is. I also mentioned earlier that this episode has a scene where Shadow shows compassion for others - I was referring to him saving the GUN agent. Strictly speaking, this guy was in Shadow’s way and was attacking him, so he could’ve left him. But he saved him, possibly because he recognised that he wasn’t attacking out of a vendetta, but that it was his job to protect GUN’s machinery and assets. That and we get to see that Shadow can teleport small distances as a natural ability, not because of a Chaos Emerald.

When Shadow is under threat of the spacecraft he’s in being shot down, you can see the panic in Rouge’s face. Thankfully Abe comes in and tells the GUN forces to stand down, but it’s nice seeing how much she cares about Shadow. We know she cares of course, but she definitely has a soft spot for Shadow. There’s the scene in Heroes where she worries about Shadow not being the real one, which also showcases Omega’s wisdom and own compassion. Then in 06 we get to see her assuring Shadow that she’ll be on his side, even if the world turns against him. And now in this episode and the previous one, you see that she gently pushes him out of his comfort zone, has a genuine comradery with Shadow and Omega. Not just that though, she clearly understands Shadow very deeply as evidenced by her conversation with Abe.

From Abe’s point of view, it’s nice to see him genuinely wanting to connect with Shadow. He is remorseful for the way he treated Shadow in the past and wants to be trusted by him. And he clearly has implicit trust in him - he did let Shadow fly off in the spacecraft without even knowing what he was doing.

I will say one minor nitpick I have with this scene is what Rouge said. When Abe scolds Rouge for not talking Shadow down, she says that only one person who do that - Maria. You could argue that Sonic and Amy can both talk Shadow down, though. Amy was the one who convinced Shadow to help everyone steer the ARK away from earth. And in the IDW, Sonic talked Shadow out of hurting Mr Tinker (Eggman), even though his worries came true later on. I assume what Rouge meant though was the Maria is the only one he will trust wholeheartedly and follow unwaveringly. With Amy, he backed down because she reminded him of Maria’s true promise. With Sonic, his past was leveraged against him, and seeing how hard Shadow is on himself regarding his past mistakes, you could argue he backed off out of guilt rather than agreeing with Sonic.

And then…that scene plays. Shadow daydreams about what could have been if Maria was alive, and the vocal track clearly highlights that he blames himself for her death. This causes him to get anxious until he snaps himself out of his daydream. The way he says “stop that” so softly breaks my heart. This is one of the first times we have seen Shadow be so emotional, and it makes sense. He had a vision that made him relive his most traumatic memory, and he was going back to the very place it all happened. Not only that, but there was the possibility of Black Doom being back - what would he do if he was there? Of course he was thinking about Maria!

I know some people don’t like that Shadow is going back to his old memories because they think he should be over it, but as I’ve already said in another post, PTSD doesn’t work like that. Even ignoring the situation at hand - the vision he had and having to return to the ARK with the possibility of facing Black Doom again - recovery isn’t linear. Of course he is going to fluctuate in how affected he is by his past. What happened to him was incredibly traumatic. We have now seen how Maria was perhaps the only person who cared about him and the only friend she had. His job was to cure and protect her and, by his definition, he failed to do the one thing he was created for - saving her. Not only that, but his memories then got screwed with, and his relationship with Maria was manipulated by the very person he was created by, causing him to do the very thing Maria didn't want him to do. He then had to struggle with his amnesia, deal with identity issues surrounding potentially being an android, and facing against Black Doom, who like Gerald tried to use his past to manipulate him. Those things aren’t just something you “get over”. Sure, he seems to be better at managing his symptoms, but he can’t ever really forget or get over what happened.

The song lyrics also reveals a lot about Shadow’s thought process in this scene. Him referring to his situation as a never-ending nightmare once again highlights his PTSD. It’s a memory that will likely haunt him for a long time. I would say for the rest of his life, but he’s immortal - I believe eventually he will come to focus more on the positive parts of his memories with Maria, but that will take time. Or maybe just Sonic x Shadow Generations? Who knows. He also talks about pretending to see Maria again and imagining a world where he saved Maria, which we see him doing in the episode. But we clearly see he blamed himself - he says he “failed” to save Maria and how he “can’t forgive the wrongs” he’s done to Maria. And the final line about him remaining alone? Obviously he has people he trusts and cares about now, but being lonely and feeling alone are two different things. He has people like Rouge, Omega, Sonic - but ultimately he feels alone because he struggles to get close to them emotionally. Think about it - this is perhaps the only time we have seen Shadow so emotional, but he does this when he’s alone. He struggles to be vulnerable with others, I assume in large part because those close to him have used and manipulated him in the past. Plus he holds on dearly to the title of Ultimate Lifeform - perhaps he views that it’s a weakness to be vulnerable. Or given how much self-blame he has, maybe he feels he isn’t allowed to receive help. Either way, it’s really sad that he feels so alone. I hope someday he opens up to someone.

Okay, so before I move on to my general thoughts and predictions for the new game, I just want to quickly talk about…

✨ The Production ✨

…because man, these episodes slap!! The animation is absolutely gorgeous. It’s 3D but it almost looks 2D? The lighting is amazing, especially when showing energy sources like Shadow’s chaos energy or the glowing tubes in the first episode. It’s so incredibly striking. And the choreography? Amazing!! The music is also so incredibly emotional. The ones that stand out is the one that plays when Maria grabs Shadow’s hand in the first episode, and of course the vocal track Without You in the third episode. I honestly don’t have the words to properly describe everything, it’s just so incredible.

SxS Gens — Promotional Material (Trailers/Interviews)

I won’t go super in depth, but I’ll briefly mention some of my thoughts about what we have seen so far. I’ll probably miss stuff out, but the game is two weeks away, so all will be revealed properly soon enough.

A lot of Shadow’s character so far has been him moving on from his past, but this game seems to be him confronting it. The two biggest hints for this is the Doom Powers and the return of Maria and Gerald. With the Doom Powers, Shadow is having to fully embrace his Black Arms DNA. We see how insecure he is about his origins in Dark Beginnings, but now he is going to have to confront that part of himself, face it head on and make it his own. With regards to Maria and Gerald, perhaps he will talk to Gerald and ask more questions? Not sure exactly what they’d talk about, but I hope they talk in some capacity.

I assume the biggest thing will be Shadow deciding between keeping Maria around or restoring the timeline. I’ve seen some people want a Life is Strange type decision where you get to choose which you want, but I highly doubt it. I would also argue that’s a regression in Shadow’s character. Not only would he be disregarding Maria’s wishes, but it would also be him backtracking on his growth in finding himself outside of his history with Maria. Also, I know he cares about Maria, but to think he’d sacrifice everything just to stay with her? It goes against his resolve to sacrifice himself for humanity and his desire to fulfil Maria’s wish to protect humanity. And it would also mean he screws over all his new friends. Sure, I reckon he’ll struggle with the choice, but ultimately it makes more sense for him to sacrifice her again, both in terms of honouring Maria’s wishes and to develop him as a character to show he is genuinely moving on. There’s also the chance they bring Maria back somehow while restoring the timeline, but I personally don’t think it’ll happen and don’t want it to happen. I love Maria, but it’ll be more impactful to have Shadow decide to restore the timeline instead of sacrificing it to save Maria.

A few points from the Developer Interview I’d like to talk about quickly. It’s mentioned that Shadow’s story will be “dramatic” and that we will be “emotionally moved by it.” Given the response from the just 10-15 minutes of animation in the Dark Beginnings, I can definitely see this game being emotional, and it seems that’s what they're trying to accomplish. They mention portraying him being in pain, which we have definitely seen the physical sides of in the trailers. But I assume he’s also going to suffer emotionally, both because of Black Doom and seeing Maria again.

They bring up Sonic’s birthday party and that Shadow isn’t there. Obviously we know that he was invited by Rouge, but my assumption is that he doesn’t show because he is already wrapped up with the Time Eater and/or Black Doom and so can’t make the party. Perhaps he is even taken to White Space before the Time Eater crashes Sonic’s birthday party?

From a gameplay perspective, it seems the Doom Powers are intended to let you traverse the levels in different ways. To quote the video: “We needed to make sure when we’re designing the levels that the player could find a different path if you use Chaos Control, or if you’re using the Doom Powers in a certain way or in certain locations and that those powers could create new ways of getting through the game.” This links up with the Famitsu interview where they state that “you can complete the game without using Doom Power.” It seems these powers are there to make revisiting the levels more viable by creating shortcuts and helping you reach different locations. It’ll be interesting to see just how much exploration the levels have!

It’s clear as well that they want this game to be a love letter to old fans and an introduction to new ones. That makes sense - being a new fan is likely intimidating given all the spinoff games and such. I haven’t played all of them and I’ve been a fan of Sonic since I was a kid! And bear in mind, as much as it feels aging to hear, Shadow was introduced in 2001 - over 20 years ago. Although my friends aren’t as intensely interested in Sonic as I perhaps am, they are aware of Shadow’s existence. But they definitely don’t know his backstory. It’s completely valid to not know the full extent of Shadow’s backstory - whether or not you’re a new - especially given it’s scattered across 20+ years worth of spinoff games spanning a variety of consoles. If you’re one of those people, you’re completely valid. It doesn’t make you more or less of a fan because you don’t know every little detail of the Sonic lore.

Final Thoughts

I’ll be honest, when I initially saw the game advertised, I wasn’t really hyped for it. I think I was nervous because if you ignore The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Prime, Shadow’s writing has been a bit mixed. (My thoughts on Shadow’s writing in TMOSTH can be found here if you’re curious!) There’s the infamous Boom characterisation, which I think is universally disliked. And even in the IDW, Shadow’s writing can be a bit iffy. I had lost faith in Shadow’s modern characterisation until TMOSTH and Prime came out, so I was desperately hoping they took the positive feedback from that and continued it. I was worried though, given that one was a short April Fool’s game and the other was a TV series.

Thankfully, it seems they are continuing to do Shadow justice!

Dark Beginnings has done most of the heavy lifting when it comes to my excitement for the game. Not only is it beautifully animated with gorgeous music, but the writing is incredibly emotional. It really feels like the writers poured a lot of love into it, and I’m so incredibly happy to see Shadow being more than just “Sonic’s edgy antagonistic rival”

Sonic x Shadow Generations seems like a good format to introduce new fans to Shadow’s lore. They’re clearly taking it all into account given how much they referenced in Dark Beginnings. Generations is about celebrating and exploring the past again, which feels like a brilliant opportunity to explain Shadow’s lore and how it affects to his future.

I’m sure I’m missing some thoughts and maybe I’ll sneakily edit this post as new thoughts and revisions come to me, but I feel like I’ve already said a lot. To anyone who read this far, thank you! I hope my thoughts were…interesting to read? Who knows! This was mostly just my way of infodumping in the absence of friends to talk to.

I can’t wait for October 25th!

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

My favorite funny thing on occasion is to imagine sugar baby/daddy dynamics with Tails ships

Something so comical about the fact that Sonic the hedgehog (hedgehog without a home) would be sugar baby to Tails (fox who has so many labs. Like who needs to worry about money when your little buddy pays for stuff heroing doesn't and keeps his bases fully stocked with ingredients for your favorite food

Or like, Tails, who basically ended up being Sonic's sugar daddy, accidentally gaining more sugar babies by virtue of making sure certain characters don't inconvenience people (basically playing damage control)

While I think it's Rouge mainly who would probably suppliment the money for Omega and Shadow (if need be) and play this sort of role for them, it's still funny to imagine Tails insisting on setting them up in hotel rooms because Shadow was just about to sleep outside and saw no problem with that (and because Tails can't very well just let Shadow do that)

A friend of mine also moved that, under this framework, after the idw issues where the Chaotix took a job helping Knuckles get an artifact back, Tails would just silently patch them rent money as an apology for the whole thing.

Rich inventor Tails accidentally gaining bfs out of the main cast as his sugar babies because he's assumed responsibility for their antics and cares about them too much to just let them live life the way they have been. Do you see my vision?

[sonichaunt]

Coloured an older AU sketch, when I did a lot of the redesigning for my AU I was really into the sonic movie style so that's why all the eyes are separated in these older sketches xD

This AU was meant to explore my personal headcanon that Sonic is one of the "miracles" created by the 7 chaos emeralds to serve as a guardian. The AU was meant as a SA3, that connected all the lore from the games (+ a little from the movies etc.) prior to forces (which I have still not played xD) with each other into one final story. The character you see here is Zephyr, Shadow and Sonic in this drawing are seeing a vision of the past, because long story short Zephyr and Sonic are sort of the same entity in a long convoluted way, so they don't exist at the same time. Zephyr's design is based on the mural from angel island and Sonic, Shadow & Silver. Zephyr is very chaotic, not necessarily a force of "good", his fur becomes a lighter and a darker colour depending on his emotional state. Zephyr's chaos energy takes the form of wind and lightning. He usually wears a red long skirt around his middle and 2 long white ribbons around his upper arms, but I didn't draw those here. Zephyr is NOT on good therms with the black arms, Black doom found it very ironic and took satisfaction in how Gerald based Shadow on his old foe, seeing as Shadow was gonna help him do what Zephyr and the other chaos guardians prevented. Black doom also absolutely had a heart attack when he first saw Sonic. On the flip side, if Zephyr had met Shadow, it is very likely he would have treated Shadow as a case of: kill on sight.

You can view Zephyr as similar to chaos 0, this AU also had a Solaris 0, which actually became something I used for the 06 rewrite I also did later, Solaris having been a guardian of the sol emeralds, more on that eventually.

[caffeine-clouds]

Chapter 40 Discussion...

I feel like doing a bit of a director's commentary, if you will, for Chapter 40 of The Butterfly Effect - so, I guess spoilers if you haven't gotten the chance to read it yet teehee

Is it obvious that I love mind fucks? Probably. With the amount of nightmares I've given Sonic - of course I do.

When Sonic and Shadow made it into the crystal cavern - they learned that 14 chaos emeralds are needed to be placed upon the pillars. So essentially - they need both sets of emeralds from both timelines, which is of course is going to be very easy to find (not).

But when Shadow decides to run off ahead because he's a professional dummy - Sonic and Shadow find themselves plagued with their own unique visions that are essentially a personification of their fears - and I wanted to talk about those.

----

Sonic's obvious major concern is the safety of his true friends - he wants them back, but he's having doubts about the whole situation - mainly due to the fact that it's very likely the new timeline will disappear as a result. But those are the doubts at the back of HIS mind, he can ignore that as he sets off to fix the world.

But you know what he can't ignore? His friendssss. He has visions of their reflections and they are the ones voicing his doubts back to him. So Sonic starts to listen to them more, as much as he'd rather not hear it. His friends are basically all telling him some sort of variation of "Just quit it, accept the existence of the new timeline - trying to fix everything is just going to cause more problems".

And with Shadow, we got to see that the visions were a sort of trap - because as he lost himself to them - his body was getting trapped in crystals.

Whatever was trying to influence him, whether Sonic's theory of it being Pachacamac was right or not - it was definitely trying to make Sonic turn back - even if he didn't end up getting trapped down tere. There is obviously something they don't want happening - but obviously, they very clearly understimated Sonic. Even with all the confusion - there's no way he's going to give up on saving the world, that much is certain.

----

Shadow, unfortunately, was a lot easier to manipulate. For him, he really didn't lose Maria that long ago - he's still grieving her tremendously. He has not gone through the same growth as OG Shadow has - he's defining himself by Maria's wish, he's still fueled by hurt, and he's going to do a lot of actively pushing people away. So essentially - it was no surprise he got so affected.

Since Sonic showed him glimpses of the new timeline, Shadow just can't wrap his head around the idea that there's a life where he seems to have moved on from Maria completely - to him, it's like he's neglecting her wishes and shoving her aside for his own selfish wants. He saw himself smiling with Rouge and Omega and he's like "No! What are you doing? You should be fighting, doing something other than indulging yourself! Why do you have new friends? Did you forget all about her?"

So ALT Shadow is already making assumptions about OG Shadow - ALT thinks he must be selfish and borderline crazy if he found himself able to move on from her (hence, Shadow giving all those creepy smiles and being just a tad deranged). And that disregard for Maria was shown quite plainly when OG Shadow broke the Maria crystal.

Obviously, that isn't OG Shadow - it's a vision, but - ALT Shadow doesn't know what the true OG Shadow is like.

ALT envies OG for being able to have a happier life, but at the same time resents him - because after all, as he screams at him - he doesn't believe he deserves to move on because he thinks everything that happened on the ARK was his fault. He screams this at himself - both figuratively and literally. He believes he just doesn't have the right to live his life for himself - not after everything he's responsible for.

Now Shadow's gotta grapple with the question of whether he wants to help bring back this supposed timeline - where that Shadow, supposedly, isn't even honouring her wishes - and is instead living selfishly, rather than devoting his all time to protecting humanity. Does ALT Shadow... want to bring back that world?

Guess we'll have to find outttt~ Hope you enjoyed my rambles, I just wanted to talk about these scenes pfft.

[the-era-of-shadow]

The Same As I (A Distorted Reflection)

Written by Ash Rose Red

Summary:

As Eclipse leaves to go run a quick errand, one of the wisps that they had taken from Whisper awakens, that wisp being Blue. They strike up a conversation with Blurk, who was nearby, and quickly, it becomes clear that despite his form, Blurk is just about the same as them, but not exactly. He's like a distorted mirror image, or perhaps, a premonition of a dismal future? By the way, what is this strange sensation they've been feeling?

Notes:

CW/TW for body horror of a sort. Also just like. horror in general

Cold, heavy wind, quick in its journey across the skies.

That is what woke Blue up.

For a split second, they wondered if it was them once again crossing paths with the world renowned Sonic Hogpine, but as their vision adjusted to the sunlight, it would seem that there was no such heroic blue hedgehog in sight.

But there was someone.

That doctor, Doctor Ezrieal Clysdale, the one that Blue and their friends had been with for a good few days now - perhaps even longer. They stood just somewhat beyond the room that Blue was in, looking at who-knows-what, or perhaps looking for who-knows-what. They were in that strange form again, the one that they had been in since that battle at their clinic took place. Was this their true form? It didn't feel like such to Blue, who had met them as a fox mobian. They were supposed to only stay with that fox for a day or so, they were meant to be returned to their caretaker, Whisper. But Whisper attacked Doctor Clysdale, and then left without a trace, leaving Blue and the other wisps behind with the Doctor, now in that strange form.

Blue didn't understand why she would do such a thing, Doctor Clysdale was very kind to Blue and the others, so why attack them? What did they do wrong? Maybe it was because of Blue's aversion to violence, but they just couldn't wrap their head around it.

Even though the doctor was at a distance, Blue had the inclination to ask questions. Where were they? Why are they here? When will Whisper come back? Why did Whisper attack you? 

But none of those questions actually left their head, too scared to say them and then not be heard, or not understood. Doctor Clysdale didn't have one of those masks that Whisper and the others used to understand them. But they are a wisp doctor, so perhaps they had some other way of understanding them?

A shadow began to loom over from the side of Blue. They turned around to see that it was one of those young attendants of the doctor that Blue would see from time to time around the clinic, before the battle. 

This person, too, was once a fox, but he too was now in that strange appearance. Mobian, but also not quite? Maybe not mobian.

He looked so much like Doctor Clysdale, but also so much like Blue themself, like the middle ground of a two-toned gradient. His eyes had black irises that had pupils that were box-like and were a vibrant shade of cerulean blue, like a simplification of Blue's reflection, which matched the accent color of the young boy's… hair? Fur? Neither term seemed right. Whatever it was, it was very angular, just like his pupils.

"First one awake? Can't relate, honestly." He said, seemingly directly to Blue.

"I'm not usually the first one up, just a light sleeper, that's all." Blue responded impulsively.

"Ah. Again, can't relate. My siblings will tell ya, I sleep like a rock." 

Did… did the boy just… understand them??

"Anyways, did that lady like, give you an actual name or what?" He spoke again.

"Uhm… The Diamond Cutters always called me "Blue", and Whisper never saw a reason to call me anything different…" Blue explained.

"So no, then." The boy replied bluntly, "Is that just in your case or are all of you like that?"

"... All of us, I guess?"

"Figures. I'm sure Ma will think of somethin' for y'all." The boy noted vaguely. Blue wondered why it was that this "Ma", who they assumed to be referring to Doctor Clysdale, would have to think of new names for them and the others. But there was a matter that was far more pressing in their opinion that they wanted to get out the way first and foremost.

"How… How are you able to understand me?" Blue asked, their voice shaking ever so slightly.

"Oh yeah. Should probably change out of my bodysuit or whatever." The boy said with a chuckle, seemingly dodging the question. But his statement caught Blue off guard regardless.

"Y-your what-?!" They exclaimed in confusion. The boy did not answer, walking towards and eventually onto some sort of platform. The platform was ever so slightly raised from the floor itself, and contrasted in its high-tech appearance, being completely ebony aside from a strip of what looked like neon lights to Blue, glowing in the same hue as the boy's pupils. Or at least, in the same hue that his pupils once glowed, as when the boy stepped onto the platform, the color faded out, leaving an empty gray in its wake. 

From behind the boy's now completely blank face, a creature flew out into Blue's view, and approached the very confused wisp. The creature certainly looked like a blue cube wisp, but still, things were a little off. The skin tone wasn't nearly as vibrant as Blue's was. The eyes looked completely different, having completely black slits for irises that had no pupils, and not just that, but the eyes themselves were completely misplaced. While Blue's three eyes were all on their face, the creature only had one eye on his face, while the other two were on the sides of his head, one each. Lastly, the creature had a visible mouth, which was jagged and sharp, while Blue had no visible mouth at all. It was a sight that sickened Blue to see, but the creature's facial expression would suggest that nothing was wrong at all.

"Okay, cool. So is the answer clear to you now or what?" The boy's voice came from the creature, implying that the creature was the boy.

"... A-Are you… also a wisp??" Blue asked, their voice shaking as they did, not wanting to consider that this contorted form truly was a variation of their own self.

"Yep. Name's Blurk by the way. Sorry that I didn't lead off with that." Despite his apology, his tone did not waver for even a minute, it was as flat and monotone as ever, which seemed to only add to the unnerving aura this "Blurk" had in the eyes of Blue.

"... Why do you look so…?" Blue attempted to question, but was lost for the word they needed.

"Strange? Contorted? Corrupted? Yeah, that's a fair ask, I guess. Can't remember all the details but Ma's had us since we were still in eggs, and they, like, messed around with our genetics and stuff to maximize our potential and make us more Black Arms-like and stuff. Oh yeah, Ma's a Black Arms by the way. It's fine if you don't know what that is just yet, but I guess I should let ya know." Blurk explained in a rambling sort of way.

"...And that caused all… that…?" 

"Yep. Came out of the egg lookin' like this. Makes me wonder what it'll be like for you lot, having lived the most of your lives as just regular ol' wisps and all." Blurk began to speculate.

"What… it'll be like… for us…?" Blue echoed fearfully, suddenly feeling a strange pain surge through them.

"Yeah. Sorry 'bout the short notice, but since that lady decided to book it from the clinic, Ma decided to assimilate y'all into the hivemind. I'd rather you not make a fuss about it, I'm sure it means a lot to them to have the chance to go back to where their whole science shtick began, ya know?" Blurk revealed.

Blue was shocked, that's for certain, and still very, very confused. Assimilate? Hivemind? Black Arms? What does it all even mean?? It seemed like they weren't going to get much explanation on those fronts from Blurk.

"I don't really know how most of this stuff works, but I've listened to Ma and Rhy go off about it enough to have part of their scripts practically memorized. Basically, Ma did most of the heavy work last night while you all were asleep, and there's gonna be some neuro gas stuff coming out in like, a couple of minutes, to chill y'all out and numb your bodies while the whole mutation thing happens, so it doesn't hurt." Blurk continued to monologue.

"Mutation?!" Blue gasped, feeling the pain from before begin to return.

"Mhm. You lot are gonna look like us, now isn't that exciting?" Blurk responded, still as monotone as ever. "I wonder if you'll look like a clone of me or if you'll look a bit different. Both of those thoughts excite me, personally, but if you don't like what you end up with, there's always the bodysuits. Gonna have to talk to Rhy 'bout that stuff though. She won't mind, of course. In fact, I bet she'll be really happy to talk that sorta thing with you. Surprised she ain't here as we speak." He continued.

"B-But what if Whisper comes back for us?? Then what will you do, huh?!" Blue suddenly blurted out in a sudden fit of fury.

"I hope she does. That would mean Ma could assimilate her too. Wouldn't you want that as well?" Blurk surmised, his resolve not faltering for not even a single moment.

"NO?? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU??" Blue yelled, giving into their anger.

"I was created to be a vessel for chaos. For that which orderly society fears the most. I know that such a concept is foreign to you. I can tell that you remain tied to your dimension of origin. You were born there, perhaps even raised there to a certain extent before being brought into this dimension by those "Diamond Cutters" you speak of. But you will come to understand the importance of chaos. Your mind and body will become a distorted reflection of the you that lingers in this moment. You will become one of us, and I will watch the process with the utmost excitement." 

Blue wanted to say something back, something, anything, but they came to realize that they could not. A mental fog took control of their brain's processes and stopped them dead in their tracks, and before they could try to fight it, the stench of anesthetics filled their senses, and blurred their sight.

"It is time. You must rest now…

Blarjikære*…"

*Translation Note: Close friend within the Black Arms

[darkjanet2]

Sonic Adventure 2: Sonadow

Chapter 12: Road to Space Colony ARK

The Sonic Team flew to Egypt as fast as they could. They needed to find a hidden base as soon as possible before Eggman could activate the Ark. They needed to find a way to travel to the Ark before it became too late.

In this desert area, Rouge stood there using binoculars. She was searching carefully for any sign of life, hoping to find someone who could point him in the right direction towards the place where Sonic had said he knew a safe landing spot. But there were no life forms around that seemed like it belonged here. Not even animals. There was nothing but sand and rocks everywhere.

Then a blue biplane approached across the sky coming from the north direction. Its outline was unmistakable: a young fox carrying Sonic crew members on board. Rouge spoke to the walkie-talkie.

"Shadow! They're in that blue plane, spotted at 11 o'clock!" said Rouge.

"Copy that. I'm in pursuit," said Shadow through the walkie-talkie.

Then he headed off in the direction where the plane was leading, there was a pyramid at the distance that looked like it would lead them to the destination. He stopped there and watched the plane go down into the desert area. He spoke to Dr. Eggman through the walkie-talkie.

"Doctor, they're heading directly towards us. What should we do?" asked Shadow.

"Just sit tight. I've got them on my radar. There's no way they can get away. I don't know what they're planning, but I'll be sure to give them a warm welcome," said Eggman, smirking evilly.

*Meanwhile*

The Sonic team arrived at the desert area where the plane landed. The sun beat against their bodies, making it harder to breathe. They dismounted the plane and looked around at the surroundings. It appeared to be completely deserted.

"Here we are at Egypy. Boy, it is hot out here!" said Tails as he looked up at the hot sun.

"Yeah, that doesn't look promising. We'd better start looking quickly for something that might hide us in a cave nearby," said Sonic.

He shielded his hand over his eyes scanning around the area. Suddenly his vision was interrupted by a triangular building, it was a pyramid from the distance.

"Inside that pyramid?" asked Sonic.

"I saw Eggman go inside that pyramid and more importantly, I saw that bat girl go inside with him. as well. You saw them, too, right?" asked Knuckles.

Amy nodded, "Yes, I did. That's where we have to head. Let's try to find an entrance to the secret base."

"She's right. We should be able to get into outer space from there. I have no idea what this space colony is all about, but I'll find and destroy that cannon, and then kick their asses!" said Sonic.

"Alright!" said Knuckles.

Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles led the way while Amy was left behind.

"Wait for me, guys!" Amy shouted as unpacked her bag to pick out her big, pink water jug. She drank water that she had to stay hydrated before running in the hot sun.

"Ah, good thing I bring water with me," she said as she ran after them.

After that, they were inside that pyramid building, finding stairs going underground, and following the voices echoing through the pyramid walls, until they reached an intersection, which led to a large room. At the opposite end of the room was another pyramid with another corridor leading up. It was dark, the torches lit only by orange light.

"Whoa, this place is huge. Maybe we found something important?" asked Amy. She looked around cautiously, waiting for some sort of danger or trap to pop out at her. Then she looked at the walls, trying to read the symbols engraved along them.

"What are these?" she asked.

"They look Egyptian," answered Sonic. He studied them for a little bit and then turned to his friends. "These are hieroglyphics, from ancient Egypt.''

"Ancient Egypt? Is this an old tomb or something?" asked Tails.

"I learned them from school. Apparently, there used to be an ancient race called Egyptians, but now they disappeared, so we probably aren't talking about them anymore. Now, come on. Let's look further," said Sonic as he led the way deeper into the maze of tunnels. They walked and walked and still didn't find anything useful. Finally, Sonic stopped abruptly at the door, there was the Eggman logo engraved on it.

"Looks like we're heading toward the center of the base," said Tails.

"That egghead sure loves mechanical things, doesn't he? I bet he has one or two spaceships lying around here somewhere," said Sonic.

"The door is locked. We need a key to get in there," said Tails.

"Not a problem, we can find it, right, Knuckles?" asked Sonic.

"Huh? Me? Why do I have to find a key?" asked Knuckles, clearly confused.

"Because we're counting on you, buddy! The world's greatest treasure hunter!" exclaimed Sonic. He smiled and gave Knuckles a thumbs up.

"Well, alright! I'm going to find it," said Knuckles.

*15 minutes later*

Knuckles came back to his friends and he had found the key underground. After unlocking the door, Knuckles opened it wide enough for them to pass in front of him. "All right! Come on, let's see if there's anything valuable here," said Knuckles as they all went deeper into the room. There was a rocket in the hidden base, they were astounded at its size, and the power of its energy system. Amy and Tails smiled and laughed in excitement.

"This is it! We found the rocket!" exclaimed Amy happily.

"Amy, we did it!" exclaimed Tails.

Amy and Tails hugged each other and jumped up and down with joy. "We're going to Space Colony!" screamed Amy as she hugged Tails tighter. Sonic chuckled and Knuckles crossed his arms with a smile.

"You little thieves! Do you really think you can get out of here alive?" They turned around where the voice came from. It was Eggman.

"EGGMAN!" they all yelled in unison.

"This time, I'll take your lives as well as Chaos Emerald. I call on you to destroy these pests. Come out, my servant!" Eggman ordered. A ground rumbled underneath their feet, making the Sonic team stumbled. A rocky giant hand came out of the hole.

Sonic gasped in horror. Then the rock body came out of the hole entirely. He stared at a monster as big as a mountain, it opened its eyes glow red in anger, as if ready to attack.

"What the hell is that?!" screamed Knuckles.

"Oh, crap! This is not good! You guys ahead go to the spaceship! I'll take care of that rock guy!" yelled Sonic.

"No! You will not take care of that thing by yourself!" shouted Amy.

"Amy, you've gotta trust me! You have to leave! You won't make it out alive!" replied Sonic.

"Are you sure?" asked Tails, who was frightened by what he was seeing.

"I'll be okay. Don't worry about me. Just go!" yelled Sonic as he charged at the golem.

"SONIC!!!" screamed Amy, her hand reaching out.

"C'mon! We gotta go!!" yelled Knuckles, grabbing Amy's arm and pulling her away. As Amy was leaving, she glanced over her shoulder at Sonic who was facing the rock monster alone.

"Hey, rock guy! If you wanna fight, then fight! But let me warn ya, I am the greatest hero the universe has ever known!" Sonic bellowed with a loud battle cry.

The golem raised its fist and slammed on the center, but Sonic dodged it in the nick of time by leaping away to the side. As he moved forward, he was trying to find a weak spot on the golem's body when he saw something shining on the top of its head. With lightning speed, he ran up to the creature and grabbed ahold of the red pearl with both hands. In his grip, the creature lifted upward and threw him backward into the floor where it crashed hard. Once again he was sent flying in the air and landed heavily on the floor on his stomach. His breath was knocked out of his lungs.

"Son of a... Bitch!" groaned painfully Sonic.

Sonic weakly stood up holding his broken ribs. He took a deep breath in and breathed out loudly. Slowly, he regained his composer and began to concentrate his power. He slowly closed his eyes as his body glowed blue, the sound of buzzing and crackling, and the electricity surged through his body. His eyes widened open, and his irises glowed blue.

The golem slammed the azure hedgehog, but with lightning speed, Sonic dodged easily out of the way and ran in the direction the golem had just been thrown. Once he got there, Sonic launched himself at the beast and landed hard on its head breaking the red pearl. The golem staggered backward and fell on its face, unmoving, and completely immobilized.

Sonic rose to his feet. He panted, breathing deeply, his chest rising and falling rapidly. His whole body ached, and he collapsed to the ground all four, exhausted. His blue aura glowed down to his normal state.

He cracked one eye open and glared hatefully at the unconscious giant golem.

"Now that wasn't so difficult…" he whispered.

Inside the rocket, Tails began to activate the rocket's engines while Amy sat next to him, her face filled with worry that Sonic was going to come back.

"Is Sonic going to be okay?" asked Amy, anxiously.

"He'll be fine. He said he will catch up to us soon," said Tails.

"I hope he hurries up and defeats that monster," said Amy.

Tails started the engine, the fire began to ablaze from the nozzles preparing to liftoff. Knuckles fastened his seatbelt and looked over at Amy.

"Don't worry. Sonic will be here," said Knuckles.

Amy was about to say something, she turned her head to the window that the blue figure coming to the rocket. It was Sonic!

"You guys, it's Sonic! Sonic is here!" exclaimed Amy, happily.

"So he is!" exclaimed Tails.

The computer's male voice began the countdown.

"Prepare to liftoff. 10... 9... 8..."

Sonic hurried through the rocket door, ignoring the pain in his body. He had to go Tails quickly before the rocket departed.

"7... 6... 5..."

Sonic made it to the rocket and quickly sat down in his seat and fastened his seatbelt.

"4... 3... 2... 1... 0."

Suddenly, the rocket ignited and lifted off the ground, soaring into the sky above the Eggman base, high above the city, and then disappearing into the blackness of space. Sonic gazed upon the moon that shone brightly in the night sky. He felt content and happy. He closed his eyes for a brief moment until his eyes slowly opened.

"You okay, Sonic? Did you beat that rock guy?" asked Tails.

"Yeah, totally," answered Sonic.

"Well, that's good. Now, we don't have to worry about Eggman anymore," said Tails.

"Yeah, I guess that's true," replied Sonic. He sighed quietly. "Look, I know this sounds cheesy, but thank you for waiting for me. Without you guys, I would've missed the rocket launch and wouldn't have gotten back here in time to stop the ship from taking off," said Sonic, giving Tails a warm smile.

"It's nothing," answered Tails.

"You're awfully hurt, Sonic. Are you okay?" asked Amy.

"Yeah, just got thrown against a wall," lied Sonic, trying to convince them.

"I can mend your wound if you want," offered Amy.

"Uhh, sure," answered Sonic. "But don't do anything crazy."

[power-rings]

Shadow embraced the tall blonde human even tighter, afraid it was a dream, and she'd disappear like so many times before. As he peeled his eyes open, he realized that this was not a dream. When he met her eyes, however, she appeared to be confused by the embrace. Maria opened her mouth, and then shut it again, patting his back, before pulling away. "There, there, buddy. Uh...do I need to take you to the doctor?" Her blue eyes searched for any noticeable injuries after his fall.

Shadow felt his heart sink. Did he really travel to a timeline where Maria didn't know him? He gave her some space, and cleared his throat. "I'm fine." His crimson eyes searched his surroundings. Behind them stood a two story home, which he assumed belonged to Maria. Wherever they were it was quiet here. So quiet that he could hear the busy city a couple miles away. "...I didn't mean to scare you.. I-" His ear twitched, at the sound of the front door opening. He noticed a familiar outline of the figure standing at the door. Could it really be his creator? He didn't even think. Once he came fully in his vision, instead of his creator standing before him, it was actually his grandson... Ivo. Robotnik. Or, as his timeline knows him as Dr.Eggman. He felt nausea. Was she sharing a home with him?

"Ah, there you are my dear." His voice rough, and annoying just like 'his' Eggman.  Shadow watched Maria greet her cousin (he still couldn't over the two being related). While Maria talked to Eggman, the dark hedgehog just watched the taller human lift his goggles and his brows suddenly raise in surprise. Eggman didn't acknowledge his presence, instead, "we've got to get going." He addressed to Maria.

"I still think we should get him checked out, Ivo. He took a bad fall.." Her soft eyes watching Shadow. 

His expression was unreadable, "he looks fine to me. Let's head out, Maria." He walked towards the end of their driveway. Hesitating only for a moment for her to catch up.  Maria looked back at Shadow, as she walked to catch up to her cousin. 

--

Miles away...

"Maria, where did he come from?" Ivo's voice echoed across the room. He spun around in his chair, facing his young cousin. 

"The hedgehog back at home?" Maria looked up from her notebook, "there was some sort of flash and then all of sudden he appeared..." The blonde girl returned her attention to her notebook. "He seemed harmless, honestly."

"Hm." Robotnik grunted. "I'd stay clear of him." He turned his chair around to watch one of his many security cameras. 

Maria glanced over, and bit her bottom lip. "He acted as if he knew me? I don't-" The young human couldn't shake the thought that maybe her cousin was hiding something.

"Don't worry about him, let's finish our upgrades, Maria." He turned his back to her, as he unscrewed an electrical panel underneath. "Hm. Figures. This piece of crap is shot." Some of the wiring were fried, and the motherboard looked damaged. Nothing Ivo couldn't handle. Maria didn't pry anymore when it concerned the dark hedgehog, and helped her cousin around the base. Several computers were needing a new upgrade, which weren't too bad. At least his base was still standing, right? 

--

At Home

Maria couldn't sleep, she kept thinking about the stranger she met earlier that afternoon. How odd her cousin acted towards him. Where did he come from? Was she suppose to remember him? After hours of no luck getting any shut-eye, Maria walked downstairs to grab a late snack. As she entered the kitchen, she saw her cousin's computer was on in his room, but her cousin was nowhere to be seen. Quietly, she tiptoed further in the room, and looked at the open tabs displaying on the computer. Most of which didn't catch her eye, until she saw an article that displayed a familiar hedgehog. Behind the hedgehog stood a haunting creature with two horns. She quickly scanned over the article, before she would get caught. Of what she could make out of the article, it read:

"Project Shadow: An Experiment Gone Wrong

 .... alien blood...

Created for war...?

Prof.Gerald Robotnik had planned for his experiment to bring healing, and hope to the world, but was unprepared for the power.... it wielded. The government wanted his creation to aid in the war... it was proven to be too deadly... they ordered for it to be shut down... Funding was cancelled...

His choice to keep the experiment costed him his life..."

Maria felt like her heart jumped out of her chest when she felt a hand on her shoulder, "Shouldn't you be asleep, by now? Instead your prying on your favorite cousin's computer?" The blonde smiled back at him innocently. 

"Hey, you left it on." She shrugged. He frowned, disappointment on his features. Ivo scanned over the article she was reading. "... Was that him? The one... I met earlier."

"...The thing is... it shouldn't be. Project Shadow was shutdown." Robotnik encouraged her to exit his room, and led her into the living room. "That's why you need to keep your distance from it. Like stated in that article, Project Shadow was powerful."

"... But he hugged me..."She didn't realize her thought was spoken out loud, until Robotnik paused at the entrance to the kitchen. She rubbed the back of her head, "yeah, it was odd." Maria dropped on the couch, resting on the cushion. "I almost feel like I should know this guy?"

Ivo seemed like he was frozen in time, then he walked towards the fridge to retrieve a bottle of water. "Maria, if this was Project Shadow that you ran into, it... is just an experiment. Nothing more." He took a big gulp of water, "it could be possible that this experiment met you while you were with Grandfather. You were awfully young then. Perhaps it does have a memory of you." He shrugged his shoulders. "Let me do more research..." He muttered, before giving her a warning. "Do not go near it." He walked towards his room, and shut the door. From inside his room, she heard him wish her a goodnight. 

Maria lifted her body, and gave a deep sigh. She figured at almost 18 years of age, Ivo Robotnik wouldn't be so... protective towards her. It was annoying. She wasn't allowed to go out past 10PM. Unless she had to work late. She didn't mind him, but there were things that she didn't approve of. Like attacking a well-known hedgehog named Sonic, and his friends. He had a hatred for his kind for some reason. But, she kept her space. She had to give him credit... her cousin stopped building robots to attack Sonic, and his companions. After years and years of failing to beat him, perhaps he got bored? She wasn't quite sure. At least he kept himself busy with other projects. 

Finally, Maria's body gave in to sleep around 3AM that morning. She was grateful that she wouldn't have to work tomorrow. She slept peacefully knowing that she didn't need to set an alarm. Deep in her slumber, she kept thinking about that hedgehog she met. Was he really dangerous like Robotnik warned? Or perhaps he was someone totally different than the "failed experiment" as the article described. If she was to run into him again, which she kind of hoped, whether or not her cousin would approve... she had so many questions. ' I am a Robotnik... I can take care of myself.'  She constantly told herself. 

--

She woke up to the sound of Ivo Robotnik leaving the house, and then the piercing sunlight through her windows disturbing her from her slumber... she rolled over, her face buried into the coolness of her pillow. Maria ended up sleeping for another two hours. When she woke up around 10AM that morning, she felt so awful. Thoughts of "Project Shadow" still on her mind. Oh, great her cousin also drunk all the coffee. Peachy. Before leaving the house, Maria made a quick breakfast, showered, and got dressed. She wore her favorite pair of blue jeans, and an old cola shirt. When she stepped outside, she walked around perhaps wondering if the strange hedgehog had stayed hidden in their yard. Something told her she'd see him again. Giving up, she took off to the city. She preferred taking her bicycle over her car that sat in the garage. Sure, she was grateful that Ivo bought it for her, and upgraded it with all the bells and whistles, her bike provided plenty of exercise and that was the excuse she stuck with.

Before she got too deep in the city, she suddenly felt a sharp pain just near her shoulder blade. Perhaps she had laid wrong last night? Who knew? The pain seemed to intensified as she continued on. Everything around her grew blurry, she barely even noticed getting off her bike, and it falling to the side of the road. Gradually she made her way to the sidewalk, while her world continued to spin around her. She shut her eyes, and laid her head on the concrete sidewalk. When she opened her eyes again, she swore she saw blood on her hands. It was coming from her chest! She heard a voice... somehow familiar but also foreign to her ears. Trying not to focus on the blood, she just stared at the clear blue sky. Then two crimson eyes met her startled gaze. Those eyes from the other day... the hedgehog... ? Her vision flashed, and all of a sudden she saw a version of her on the floor, bleeding out, unfamiliar voices ringing in her ears. What was this image she was seeing? Was this a nightmare? She felt two strong arms holding against his furry chest. "Please make it stop... get ... help.." She begged. 

[atangledfate]

Jewel seemed distant when he mentioned her strength and it was true, but she hated it. Using her strength was like admitting she needed her father to protect her. She hated the idea that he was still there trying to push her to be something she wasn't. She was half goliath beetle, which meant physically she was capable of lifting quite alot if she chose to. But she always hid that side of herself, she liked being pretty, and soft and sweet! Maybe its why she and Amy got along so well. She was never gonna match someone like knuckles but she was still way stronger then people thought.

" I... know.... But i won't use it if i can help it... "

She whispered in a soft dejected tone.

" ... I will if it comes down to it ... but i'd prefer to just use the stun baton... "

She didn't expect him to understand as she buzzed down the hall to the shaft so they could easily get to the next level. It was her choice to try and avoid using her fathers gift. But one she made a long time ago! and one she wasn't about to start using now if she could avoid it. She just turned to the flames and looked more determined then before, as she had to be a leader Amy was right now!

" Don't worry about me i'll do my part... we all have a role to play and i know mine... let's make this happen..."

She darted down the shaft to the next level, almost instantly confronted by security. Though a quick thrust of her baton saw the poor guard getting a nice dose of his own medicine! dropping him to the floor before she turned waiting for the Flaming clone.

" Ok... do your thing and i'll do mine... after this is over--- in case i don't see your other half again. Thank you... "

================================================

Miles Darted into the lower levels of the fortress as he stepped over a couple of groaning security guards. several of them had jumped him the moment he stepped out of the elevator but he was no slouch in hand to hand. As a child he'd learned to deal with bots and all sorts of tough opponents. He regularly sparred against Sonic, and even Amy and compared to them these chumps were not even a work out. One of the guards was crawling toward his baton but Miles Tails lashed out smashing him in the back casually as he kicked the baton away and left the guard in a heap.

Miles and Sonic differed in many ways, one of those was Miles tendency to not play around with a fight. He struck hard, fast and ended it instantly where as Sonic liked to draw it out and have fun. Miles hated fighting and so he preferred to end it as fast as he could. The other way was his tactics, as he'd approach every battle with a strategy in mind. He gripped his wrist mounted miles electric and killed the lights on this level and placed his goggles over his eyes flipping on night vision.

He'd dash down the hall slipping past most of the security--- he'd be at the engine room soon, and the less he had to fight the better. Luckily the lights going out were restrained to his level only.

================================================

The Security all stopped cold seeing there batons sliced in half and were two seconds from fleeing! But when they saw metal come out of the shaft! that was it, they were done! dropping what weapons they had and turning tail and running! Clearing Clutch did not pay them enough to die for him!

Metal tossed a little disc on the floor as he exited the shaft, and in a little flash of green light Eggman appeared. Since he wouldn't fit in the shaft he just warped himself down to the lower floor using a bit of Eggtech. He looked at the mess left behind and tilted his head at the stranger still curious who he was. At first he thought Shadow but the flames might suggest blaze yet, clearly not. Oh he did like mysteries! He was a big clumbo fan after all!

" Hmm... Clutch should be in the Hanger ahead, probably planning a quick escape. I took the liberty to lock the hanger door... he'll try and hack through it i imagine... but he's likely finding it quite troublesome... shall we go say hello? "

================================================

Within the adjoining room looked admitted that the door to the hanger wasn't opening. His techs were stumped, he was getting quite worried that Eggman was getting to close. He turned hearing a commotion as several of his people ran in weaponless and pointing to the room they just came from. Clutch realized he was out of time and quickly jumped up into the old Egg Carrier he'd retrofitted for just a situation! Flicking his fingers across the console and pressing a key it fired up and rose into the air!

" Looks like i ain't got no choice... time to bring down the house... "

He slid a keycard into the carrier, and flipped a few switches and pressed the big red button. Flashing red lights began to shine throughout the carrier as Clutch activated the Self Destruction system! The airship would go down in flames! destroy restoration and he'd escape with all the assets! all he had to do was blast a hole in the hanger door! and he was home free!

" Time for a Tactical Retreat..."

"Seriously? You just saw me punch a solid steel door hard enough to smash into another guy and think a bunch of useless stun batons can stop me?" A chain with symbols would fall from the sleeves of the cloak, him swinging them once and cutting all of them in half as they were clearly giving off intense heat and cut through the batons like butter. "That's what these do to your batons. Anyone wish to see what it does to the body?" He asked, retracting the chains back into the sleeves.

In truth this was a simple scare method, though one he was sure would work quite well as he doubts any of them would be stupid or brave enough to test that theory. "And before you assume I'm bluffing I already tossed one guard down into the depths of the engine room. You won't get so lucky as I'll just punch of right off the airship."

===========================================================

"Well, I was going to say he can forget introductions since I don't have a name, at least to me I don't." He would then turn to Jewel. "I was simply going to start smashing my way down, though guess we'll have to go down one more floor before I can do that." Hard to ignore a flaming smashing his way to the engine room after all.

"I don't think you'll need that to be honest. You may not know how to fight, though if my guess about your natural strength is spot on then you can knock most people out with a good punch. Not to mention I'm sure most will be too busy trying to find a way to stop me than focus on you., though if you want the baton then take it. So, lead the way."

He was a bit surprised security hadn't come this way already, though if Tails gave access to this Belle there's a chance they've already taken notice to Clean Sweep no longer having any money. That's the problem with hired help. The second you can't pay they're gone and leave whoever their employer is to the wolves.

[detectiveriley]

oh, because i love you (Geraskier Mini-Fic for Witcher Bog Exchange)

This is a mini-exchange gift for @stinastar​! I hope you like it lovely!

Archive link here

Rating: Teen and up audiences Fandom: The Witcher (all media types) Relationship: Geralt/Jaskier Additional Tags: Whump, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Feelings, Getting Together, Sleepy Cuddles, Canon-Typical Violence

Description: It was incredibly stupid, Jaskier realizes belatedly, to go wandering around the abandoned ruins, at night, alone. To his relief, Geralt comes to his rescue. Jaskier hasn't seen Geralt in full witcher mode before, but it's Geralt. He'll get used to it. But he's not sure what to make of the conversation that follows.

Story under the cut!

 All of the air left Jaskier’s body as the sonic shriek threw him all the way across the stone circle. He slammed into the wall before tumbling to the ground. Pain radiated from everywhere, and he was pretty sure he was bleeding. It had been incredibly stupid, Jaskier realized belatedly, to wander out near the abandoned ruins, at night, alone.

 It hadn’t been his plan, originally. They had just made camp near the town where there was supposed to be work. But Geralt had been busy doing his witcher-ing, and Jaskier had gotten bored. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy watching Geralt working. On the contrary, Jaskier enjoyed the way Geralt carefully sharpened his swords, and sorted his potions with calloused fingers. But Jaskier could imagine plenty of other things Geralt could be doing with his hands. Things that Geralt probably wouldn’t approve of. So that night, before his trousers got any tighter, Jaskier excused himself to go on a walk and clear his head. He didn’t think Geralt had even noticed.

 That was how Jaskier had ended up all alone, facing off against a monster. He had nothing with which to defend himself, not even his lute. The thing, which looked like a young woman but wasn’t, had caught him off-guard.

 She was watching him now, with a bone-chilling smile and hungry eyes. Jaskier struggled to prop himself up. His ribs, along with the rest of him, twinged in protest. The collision with the crumbling stone wall hadn’t finished him off, but it seemed likely that the she-beast would. His vision swam and he groaned, blinking.

 When his eyes focused again, there was a shadow above him. Craning his neck, he saw a black mass, underneath a halo of white. Then it turned, and Jaskier’s heart skipped.

 “Ge-r-ralt,” he managed, his lips curling into a bloody smile, maybe Jaskier should have been frightened. He’d never seen Geralt like this before- eyes pitch black, dark veins reaching out around them across his pale, mottled skin. He could see now where the rumors came from- that witchers were monsters, half-breeds of some dark magic that bound the flesh of beasts to human bone. If he did not know Geralt, perhaps he would have been petrified. Perhaps he would have screamed.

 But Jaskier had never been more relieved.

 Now that he was no longer facing certain death, Jaskier faded in and out of consciousness. Dimly, he heard the sounds of fierce combat, the monster shrieking and Geralt grunting with effort. His eyes flew open when Geralt landed next to  him, shouting in pain and anger.

 “G’ralt?” he slurred, even as darkness crept in around the edges of his vision.

 “M’fine,” the witcher growled, shaking his head and crouching to strike again. “Stay down.”

 Jaskier obeyed gladly. Geralt was there now, he was safe. Probably. He sent a quick prayer up to Melitele with his last conscious thought before darkness claimed him.

 ~

 When Jaskier awoke again, he was no longer splayed against the cold, hard rock or the ruin’s floor. He was in bed. He was still in pain, but marginally less so. And he wasn’t alone.

 Geralt was watching him like a hawk. He looked… not great. His potions, whatever they were, had since worn off, and he looked like himself again. But he looked like he hadn’t slept.

 Jaskier tried to speak, but all that came out was a hoarse cough. Wordlessly, Geralt handed him a glass of water from the bedside table. He waited as Jaskier downed it greedily. He didn’t remember being so thirsty at the ruins.

 “How long was I out?” he wondered aloud.

 “A day and a half,” Geralt answered, “You went down pretty hard.”

 Wincing, Jaskier nodded. “I was there, I remember.”

 “How do you feel?”

 Geralt’s brow was furrowed with concern. Jaskier straightened and assured him, “I feel fine. Could be worse. But we’re both alive! And safe.”

 Geralt tensed at that, and Jaskier held his breath.      Here it comes    , he thought. The dreaded lecture about himself in harm’s way, and how he couldn’t always rely on Geralt to rescue him.

 Instead, Geralt simply said, “You didn’t look afraid.”

 Jaskier tilted his head. “Well, I      was,     but when you showed up… then I knew I’d be alright.”

 “No.” Geralt’s voice was abnormally soft, and he was looking down at his hands. “I meant that you didn’t look like you were afraid of me.”

 Jaskier blinked. Then he laughed. “Why would I- I’ve never been afraid of you, why would I have been afraid?”

 Geralt seemed to shrink. “The way I looked that night, at the ruins…” He trailed off. After a long moment, Geralt added, “I’m a monster.”

 Jaskier scoffed. “Are not.”

 “Jaskier…”

 “You are not! The only monster there that night was the thing that actively tried to kill me, and you saved me. That makes you a hero.”

 “That’s not what everyone else thinks.”

 Jaskier furrowed his brow. “I don’t give a flying fuck what everyone else thinks.”

 Geralt actually laughed at that. Jaskier smiled back. He knew that the witcher could be hard on himself, and it broke Jaskier’s heart. The idea that Geralt thought Jaskier should be afraid of him was unbearable.

 The bard hesitated. Perhaps he was still bleary from sleep, perhaps it was a concussion. He wasn’t sure he should say what he wanted to say next. But he’d be damned if he said nothing.

 “I hope you know that, no matter what- black, witcher-y eyes, covered in monster guts or blood- that you’ll always be Geralt to me.” He reached out to take Geralt’s hand in his own. “      My    Geralt. Do you understand?”

 The witcher nodded curtly. “I think so.” After a moment, he continued. “Witchers… don’t get happy endings,” he said, his voice low and tender, “We age, we slow, and we die, in combat usually. I don’t know what end awaits me, but… I didn’t think I’d make any friends between now and then.”

 Jaskier swallowed. Right.      Friends    . He moved to pull away, but Geralt’s grip on his hand tightened. Geralt turned it over so their palms were pressed together. “I used to think… Hmm. Fuck.”

 Jaskier smiled gently. There was that gruff but earnest spirit that had endeared the witcher so closely to Jaskier’s heart. He stroked the back of Geralt’s hand with his thumb. “Take your time.”

 After another few minutes, Geralt spoke again. “I thought once that you just followed me for inspiration, and stayed for coin. And I let you, because… well, you didn’t leave me much choice.” They both chuckled at that. “But… you’ve given me more than I deserve.”

 Tilting his head, Jaskier asked, “How so?”

 “You’ve become… someone I care for,” Geralt offered quietly, “which most witcher’s don’t have the luxury of. But… you seem to care for me, too. More than I’ve earned. In equal measure.”

 “Oh, Geralt,” Jaskier sighed, leaning forward to cup Geralt’s cheek with his free hand. “I care for you quite a bit more than that.”

 Geralt’s eyes fluttered shut, and he leaned into Jaskier’s touch, humming. It was closer than they’d ever been, and Jaskier’s heart quickened at the thought of it.

 Geralt noticed immediately. Gingerly, he placed Jaskier’s hand back at his side. “Get some rest. We can continue this when you’re better.”

 “You should, too,” Jaskier admonished, “I adore you, dear heart, but you look like shit.”

 Geralt smirked, chuckling in response. “That’s nothing new.”

 Jaskier’s eyes softened. “But really, when was the last time you slept?” When Geralt didn’t answer for a few moments, Jaskier sighed and adjusted himself, scooting to the far side of the bed, before patting the space beside him. “All right, come on then.” Geralt hesitated, and Jaskier added, “It doesn't have to mean anything. Just rest. You very obviously need it.”

 Geralt sighed before relenting, laying down next to Jaskier with care so as not to aggravate the bard’s injuries. To Jaskier’s surprise, Geralt threw an arm around Jaskier’s shoulders and pulled him in. When Jaskier gave him a look, Geralt sighed.

 “I almost lost you back there,” he murmured, “so I’ve gotta keep an eye on you. Keep you out of trouble.”

 Jaskier laughed. “Obviously. You’ll stay with me then?”

 “Always.”

fin  

[blazehedgehog]

People say that Sonic is inconsistent, but ironically that's the only thing the series is consistent with. Sega/ Sonic lacked focus and never had a clear vision on what the franchise should be and should not be, and this has been an issue even during it's infant years. Sega likely planned the series to be a long runner, but instead of building a solid foundation first THEN start experimenting on the status quo they hastily did the complete opposite, hence Sonic's "identity crisis" problem.

See, I'm not so sure about this. There was a time where I would agree with you, but I also wonder about, just, like, the language barrier, right. And the distance barrier. There are things we're only just learning now here in America because websites like Shmupulations (and elsewhere) are translating Japanese magazine articles.

Like how the Sonic Adventure era of games were inspired by American action movie cinema. We knew Shadow was, but apparently even Sonic Adventure 2 shares common inspirational ground, from what I've heard people talking about. In retrospect, the hammy vibe makes a lot more sense if they are trying to ape the tone of mid-to-late 90's action movies like True Lies, The Rock, and Goldeneye or whatever.

I'm starting to think Sonic Team was a lot more reactionary than we used to think, it's just they weren't openly divulging their plans to the American press like they were in Japan. There's a whole side to this company that most of us are totally unaware of because all we ever saw was what came out of the American branch.

That's not to say they are secret geniuses or whatever. Those games still have problems. But I also think that regional disconnect explains a lot. Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, and Shadow might've all been made at a special "Sonic Team USA" branch in San Francisco, but that was also the era of things like Sonic X, which to me seem targeted at widening Sonic's appeal in Japan first. No matter what Sonic Team USA was doing, the rest of Sega seemed to be beefing up Sonic's presence at home (in Japan), rather than abroad.

Which is where the inconsistency probably comes from, really. I think Takashi Iizuka probably realizes that Sonic needs the west, but he's not the only person with hands on this ball. Other people can, and will, and do steer the direction of this franchise. And not just licensors like Archie, but people within Sega. And different people want different things.

Which has less to do with Sega "planning" on this being "long running" and more to do with basic corporate culture. Mega Man X5 was written to be the final game in the X series, but Capcom upper-management went over the original development team's heads and made Mega Man X6 with completely different people. Konami did the same thing -- fired Hideo Kojima, but made Metal Gear Survive anyway. Sonic Team works for Sega, so if Sonic Team is unavailable, or unwilling, Sega can just find someone else to do it instead. Sega owns Sonic. That's a power they have.

That's how we end up with things like Sonic 1 Genesis on the GBA, right? Nobody who actually cares about Sonic signed off on that. That was a bunch of suits in a board room saying "we could hire someone to make an extremely cheap port of Sonic 1 to the GBA and get an easy 5000% return on investment." Some of the people making decisions like that might not even actively play games, or have ever created games, or anything of that sort. Their careers are in business. Which is fine, we need business sometimes, but clearly the wrong people were making the wrong decisions.

The points of failure on something like this are vast and complex and without someone from the inside specifically having proof on where to point the fingers, it's hard to make accurate assumptions.

[seizethecringeofproduction]

Flashpoint 2: Advent Solaris - Chapter 5

Author’s Note: Contains Damirae, but not how you’d expect or want to see them in the “new timeline”.

I still don't know if any of this is really happening…

Part of me thinks that any second now, I'll wake up at my desk back at the station, finding out that the whole time travel thing was just a really super long dream and the original timeline never left at all…

However, I know that if that was the case, I'd have definitely woken up by now…

Barry still was not fully latched to the fact that all that was happening around him was actually real. Every second felt like an intense fever dream of sorts - and the brief migraines and flashing purple vision did not help either. Nor did the fact that his lungs were now receiving a constant influx of smoke and ash from the heated apocalyptic air around him - forcing various coughs out of him. He received a look from Shadow as he did, silently telling him to just keep his mouth closed.

Barry was sure to obey the suggestion.

The air only got worse the farther Barry, Shadow and Rouge were from the remains of the 'future' city. Miles away were the ruins of what once had been a bustling metropolis, and close where dark, blackened mountain ranges accompanied by volcanoes which seemed to be in a constant state of eruption, their lava flows forming entire river systems, their smoke replacing the clouds in the sky, and their flaming rocks taking the place of rain. The ground, for it's part, matched the dark, blackened skies. Patches of dead grass were present, though rare. In the two centuries since the destruction of the world most of what had once been lush grass not only died, but was then stained and replaced by the ash and flaming rock raining down upon it, turning virtually all of the ground to dry, blackened rock and volcanic earth. As Barry traveled with Shadow and Rouge into this bleak realm, he only had one description for all of it:

Are we still on earth?

Or are we in Hell…

The only break from the otherwise dark, dismal lights of the blackened sky and air came from the banks of the lava streams which illuminated the immediate area with auras of heated red light. Even so though, it did not help Barry with telling the time, though considering things were still visible enough to traverse the landscape he assumed that it was at the very least late afternoon.

From what Barry could tell, both Shadow and Rouge were focused on whatever destination they were heading towards, and with how fast the three were going there was no telling how far they had already traveled from the city.

Within a matter of minutes however, their destination was reached.

Overlooking a long canyon itself overlooked by one of the larger volcanoes, their destination was a small rocky, ash-stained cliffside with only two notable pieces of vegetation in the area - specifically two dead, dried out trees that remained standing in a permanent state of silent death. As Barry, Shadow and Rouge stopped the human man could only continue to ponder if this truly was an earthly realm or some far more demonic dimension.

At the very least, the lava that supplied most of the lighting was a distance from the steep cliff that they were on top of - making their bodies less heated by the reddened molten rock.

Waiting for the three was another trio who had already arrived before them - Sonic, Tails and Knuckles. Barry recognized the green-eyed blue hedgehog and the blue-eyed two-tailed fox of orange-yellow fur, though to him the purple-eyed red echidna with the almost lego-like silver plate on his shoes and the white crescent mark on his chest was a brand new sight.

I'm assuming this is that Knuckles guy they mentioned before….

At the very least, I'm not surprised by this anymore...maybe the memories are finally kicking in, though I'm not losing the old ones...

In a fitting fashion, it was Sonic who spoke first as Barry, Shadow and Rouge approached him, Knuckles and Tails:

"Wow" he snarked, "You guys sure showed up fashionably late. What took so long?"

"Oh, us?" Rouge remarked, "We just had a bit of a detour, nothing major though."

It was then that attention went over to Barry, who was in many more ways than one the odd one out of the group. Even though he was in his complete Flash costume, the first thing out of Tails' mouth once he looked the Flash up and down was nothing else but:

"Barry?"

"Huh?" Barry was shocked to hear that, not used to people just figuring out secret identities like that, still, he had to address it: "What, what are you talking about?"

"Oh, now I see it!" Sonic exclaimed with a snap of his fingers, "You're that guy me and Tails ran into back in Soleanna! Surprised to see you here! I'm assuming you got sent to this future with the rest of us, huh?"

"Firstly, yeah, I did" Barry answered, "Secondly, how'd you figure out who I was?"

"Hahaha" Tails childishly laughed, "It'll take more than to fool me! Got an I.Q. of 300!"

"Yep!" Sonic exclaimed, "Tails is quite the child prodigy!" - Tails continued to chuckle as Sonic ruffled the top of his head, with smiles on both their faces. It reminded Barry of himself and his nephews, though in a manner which made him softly smile.

"Ahem" with that sound, the sound of Knuckles clearing his throat, everyone's attention was driven over to him instead: "Guys, I think we can save this chat for later, in favor of ya know, getting back to where we came from?"

"Luckily" Rouge interjected, "We found just the thing to help us do that!"

It was then that Sonic, Tails and Knuckles saw in Shadow's hands the green chaos emerald achieved from the city prior to encountering Barry. Tails himself was pleasantly surprised, and exclaimed appropriately:

"You guys found a chaos emerald!"

"Of course we did" Rouge said as she snarked, "I'm a real treasure hunter, after all" and it was with a smirk that she added, "unlike a certain echidna I know."

Hearing that, Knuckles quickly stormed towards the gloating bat - Shadow silently following him with his eyes with arms folding him. All Knuckles did was say a slightly angered:

"What?", before he stormed back to where he was after a huff, with Shadow's eyes still silently following him. Rouge just kept the smirk on her face. With that small exchange over as quickly as it started, Shadow was quick to resume discussion of business and asked Sonic, Tails and Knuckles but a simple question:

"Have you guys discovered anything?"

"Yeah, actually" Tails explained with a nod of his head, "We discovered a lab in the city, and on one of the computers there I was able to discover a signal indicating there was a chaos emerald around here, possibly in that huge volcano over there!"

Rouge, surprised at the nation of traversing the vast, volcanic canyon before them, could only complain in surprise at the notion:

"You mean we have to go through there?"

Knuckles, with Shadow's eyes following him, yet again turned and faced Rouge directly as she said in a confrontational tone:

"If you don't like it, you can stay here."

"You've got to be kidding."

Once Knuckles huffed back to his place, that was when Barry finally had enough of observing and interjected his own words into the conversation as he was still having quite the struggle with processing all of the information his brain was receiving:

"Okay, okay, can someone just explain to me ho-"

"No time!" Shadow exclaimed, marching forward to be ahead of the others as he interrupted Barry's words, "Let's move!"

With Shadow, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Rouge rushing on into the volcanic, hellish canyon it was Barry who found himself left to shrug. He still had barely any idea of what was going on or what it was that needed to be done, but he followed his new allies regardless - at the very least they all seemed to be heroes like himself. Thankfully, he caught up to them all within a matter of seconds - a speed at which even Sonic was impressed:

"Wow Barry!" the blue hedgehog exclaimed as he and the blonde were virtually side by side rushing forward into the dark landscape, "You're really fast! Almost as fast as me!"

"Heh" Barry smirked, "Call me the Flash, and we'll be seeing about that 'almost' part."

"So we shall", Sonic was smirking in precisely the same way.

Sonic, Shadow and the Flash naturally led the charge into the canyon, finding themselves speeding down what appeared to be a flat highway of black earth with the heated air flowing past them as during any regular high speed run. There were brief appearances by what appeared to be lizard beasts made out of the molten rock and flames - though their entire forms were easily dispersed by being rammed by either of them ramming into the beasts at such high velocities of sheer speed.

Barry could hardly believe the geography of the place: one second he and the two hedgehogs were careening down a long, winding path faster than a speeding sports car. The next that same path turned into a loop made of darkened earth, before their speed sent them into the air to briefly overlook the lands before landing onto yet another winding pathway. All the while avoiding seemingly random pillars of fire that would sprout from the ground like geysers, requiring nigh perfect timing in order to avoid being scorched.

This is hellish, but exhilarating

Though, hopefully I don't fall into the lava…

He couldn't have thought that at a better time. Within moments it was apparent that the roads of rock they were racing down were descending, and soon they were mere feet if not inches away from a stream of the red molten rock that fed directly into a small lake of it complete with spires and even platforms of rock emerging from the top of it.

Luckily, all of this proved surprisingly easy to traverse with a good usage of momentum and acrobatics - though Barry could still feel sweat pouring from his body due to his proximity to the heat. He only hoped his suit would not glue itself to his skin.

Jumping from rock spire to rock spire and from platform to platform - making quick work of any lizard or 'bat' lava monster that manifested in their way, the group quickly found a steep wall that headed to a plateau, and headed there. The flat plateau was not very large, but did overlook a sea of lava as well as feature a closed off cave connection to it. The only trouble was the geysers of fire and the emergence of various bat and lizard demons as soon as their feet touched the ground.

What are these things…

The lizard and bat-like beasts were joined by other fiery faces however - large worm-like beasts that casme up from the ground with large flaming mouths that almost looked like two pairs of hooked tweezers, and one large, golem like beast that was humanoid in stance but incredibly large - about as large as that Doomsday beast had been. Though it was not as threatening since it's head was but a pure circle of bright, heated lava.

Still, seeing it triggered a small bout of Barry's headaches as well as purple vision. Though he avoided an outright hallucination, for a few brief moments the beast flashed into a screeching, growling paradoom while Barry himself grabbed his head and hissed due to the migraine.

This was not unnoticed by Shadow, who looked at the struggling Barry curiously while he was destroying one of the lizard beasts with a single chaos spear - alongside all of the others who also managed to take care of the monsters with relative ease. Tails, Knuckles and Rouge all had just as much ease defeating them as Sonic and Shadow: Knuckles' punches, Tails' tail whips, and even Rouge's martial arts kicks all managed to disperse the lava monsters in but a few hits - reducing them to nothing as though they hadn't even existed at all.

The only exception was the golem-like beast, which had enough blackened, heated rock to serve as armor that it seemed virtually impenetrable. It managed to disperse Shadow, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Rouge from getting too close to it by tossing explosive fireballs at them - evidently trying to lead them towards the geysers and their regular blasts of fire.

It did not take any account of Barry, however.

Once Barry recovered from the headache, he was quick to notice the predicament that the others were in - and just as quickly he knew what to do. It was actually rather simple really, a mad dash for the mountainous 'wall' behind it followed by a jump off allowed Barry to punch the creature's 'eye' with enough sheer momentum that it dispersed to nothing within a matter of seconds. Barry landed back to the ground as the cave behind them opened up, revealing a short caven illuminated by glowing purple gemstones as it led to another section of the canyon.

"Way to go, Flash!" Sonic congratulated. Barry responded with a smirk and a nod of his head, before the group pressed on to the rest of the canyon.

Hopefully we get back to the wonderful world of air conditioning soon enough.

The rest of the canyon proved rather easy to traverse through once all of the demons within it were proven to be rather physically weak. They continued emerging to attack the group, though just as quickly they were reduced to nothing once more.

The next major section of their journey was as beautiful as it was haunting: a deep waterfall made of lava, dropping down into a small lake miles beneath their feet, though platforms of stone stuck out from the lava flow along with other platforms and even weakened 'bridges' of rock to help them get over to the waterfall. Tails, Rouge and Knuckles easily flew or glided across the chasm, though the three speedsters had to use the platforms.

The entire time, it couldn't be stated enough how both haunting and gorgeous seeing such a large waterfall of lava was. With everything else around it being increasingly darkened by just how bleak this future world was, it served as both the largest source of light as well as a reminder of the doom that occurred many years before.

It also of course, served as a threat due to the heat it gave off. The heroes had no choice but to be up close and personal with it's radiating warmth, making many of them feel as though they were being slowly cooked alive. Having to keep moving at a fast pace did not help.

Nor did the fact that the bridges they tried to cross over began to collapse the moment they were stepped on. Had Sonic, Shadow and the Flash not been speedsters they would have fallen directly into the lake of lava beneath them. They would not have been able to properly jump up the 'lavafall' via the platforms jutting out from it, and from there navigate the small platforms being sent down it's current while land bridges turned red by it's heated light overlooked them from above, forming a pseudo cave-like area.

Beyond that, they reached another plateau where they had to face off with another small team of fire beasts before proceeding. There was little time paid to them, as all of the monsters were virtually now incapable of putting up any serious resistance to the team's attacks. Within a matter of seconds they were already rushing through a second short cave towards what would be their final segment of the outside volcanic canyons:

With the massive canyon that served as their destination now looming over them in plain view of their eyes, they now only had to avoid a steep drop into the wide volcanic river that rested miles beneath them. They had various bridges, platforms and spires of volcanic rock to help them from doing just that. Due to them having to avoid flaming chunks of molten rock raining down onto them like the polar opposite of a rough hail storm in addition to not wanting to breathe in any toxic fumes, there was not much talking between them at this stage. Though there remained easy defeatings of the various fire-based demons that sprung out to attack them.

Before they even knew it, they were all blazing through the air towards the massive volcano before them - on a direct collision course with whatever existed on the inside of it.

As they approached it, it dawned on them all just how large it was. It was the size of yellowstone's grand caldera from what Barry could see, except in the shape of a traditional volcano. Though he gulped as he descended towards it alongside his newfound allies, he had hoped that soon it would all be alright.

That would prove to take quite a while, however.

The descent into the massive volcano was hectic for all of them as they dropped down for what had to be miles upon miles of heated, dark air. They held their mouths shut so as to not take in any of the toxic fumes from the stacks of smoke emitting from the large triangular mountain - though their eyes were forced to struggle.

The stacks of fumes soon were behind them though, only to be replaced by another, arguably more pressing threat. Soon surrounded on all sides by circular walls of rock, the large team was left at the mercy of fire geysers lining the side of the chasm they were falling down. Once he realized what was coming, Shadow was sure to exclaim to the others:

"Watch for the fire!"

"Here it comes!" Knuckles' own exclamation came with him and Rouge having to latch themselves onto the wall around them to steer clear of at least four different blasts of fire that came from the wall-perched geysers. They managed to just barely dodge getting burned alive by the vicious streams. Thankfully, so did the others. Tails managed to grab hold of Sonic, and lifted him to a spot not being occupied by the streams of flame. Shadow managed to grab hold of one of Rouge's ankles, and for good measure sank one of his hands deep within the walls of rock so that neither of them would fall. Barry had to push himself to the wall and with his sheer momentum sank both his hands and his feet into the wall.

"Heh" Sonic chuckled, "This place sure doesn't hold back!"

"You can say that again." Barry muttered in response, agreeing with Sonic's cocky statement. The conversation was then taken over by Tails:

"According to the signal I found, the chaos emerald is in the deeper regions of this volcano, so we're really only half way there now!"

"Assuming we don't get cooked alive down here" Knuckles added in, there was little argument to his statement - since there wasn't much of one to make. Thankfully though, the streams of flame receded and allowed the group to press on for the remainder of the chasm - there were other geysers on the way down though thanks to their timing all of them to the groups' relief only went off after they had already passed by.

Landing on a large circular platform surrounded by a small stream of lava, the six looked around and saw that the cave immediately in front of them was their only way of continued travelling, and so proceeded to rush down the winding pathway connected to their landing sight. At the very least, the cave was well illuminated by the red-yellow-orange magma beneath them - turning all of the cave walls, stalagmites, stalactites and ceiling alike into a red color just like itself.

The pathway did not last long, courtesy of the six's sheer speed. Soon enough of the winding path led them to a much larger chamber of the volcano, one where the light was not nearly as strong as it was in the previous 'hallway' they had just gotten out of.

Almost immediately did they all find themselves struggling to see, the rock pathways they stood on becoming even darker, as did the lava and magma all around them - turning a much darker shade of red in conjunction with the rest of the room. They could tell that the room increased in height on one side due to the small lavafall before them, but they could no longer properly make out what path was safest to go down due to the sudden shift in lighting.

However, Sonic took quick notice of mysterious, levitating purple spheres of rock that were present. Without much in the way of hesitation, he impulsively curled into his ball state and homed in on them - his striking of one causing it to light up and provide a source of visibility for himself and the rest of the group in the immediate area.

"If we just hit these purple ball things, we should be able to find our way through this chamber!" Sonic exclaimed to the rest of the group, though Shadow was quick to remark back:

"Thank you for stating the obvious."

"Heh" Sonic snarked back, "You're welcome too, Shadow."

"Hmph."

The group quickly continued their journey through the cavernous chamber, with each of them making sure to make impact with any purple spherical rock they found levitating in the air once they were outside inside of any generated source of light.

With all of their speed combined, it was only a matter of seconds before they all found themselves out of that dimly lit chamber and in a section of the volcano's insides, one where at the very least proper visibility was a thing. Yet again were they hit with a sight that was haunting, yet at the same time strangely beautiful for their eyes to behold:

They were inside a tall, spacious, hallway-esque cavern, standing on yet another winding pathway of blackened rock, surrounded on virtually all sides by scorching hot, red, glowing and flowing magma. Yet, there was a strange beauty to the fact that out of many large holes within the cavernous walls, flowed large and seemingly endless streams of magma into the one beneath and around their only 'road'. Rather than the sounds of streaming water, was the sound bubbling molten rock and the fire that would occasionally spit out from it. Their flows actually fed into a large, incredibly steep lavafall situated behind them, though they did not venture to see what was beyond that. As horrifying as it was, it was just as mystifying in it's own hellish way. Rouge in particular made note of this:

"You know, as horrifying as this place is, some of these sights actually are strangely beautiful too."

"Yes" Shadow admitted, looking to Rouge with a blank yet agreeing expression, "In a way, they are….but let's keep moving."

As the group pressed on down the winding path through the boiling hot cave, all Barry could focus on was thinking ever fastly to himself:

She's not wrong, this place is kind of beautiful…

In the same kind of way Hell is, I imagine, but still...

Would much prefer a honeymoon in Niagara Falls to a honeymoon in whatever 'Falls' these are called, though, not gonna lie.

Maybe Robin and Raven would prefer this place, though. Maybe.

The winding path ultimately did not last long with how fast the group moved through it - and neither did their ability to properly see where they were headed. Soon enough the group found themselves in yet another chamber that was incredibly poorly lit - quickly forcing their vision to dim down along with it. The difference this time however was that the chamber had winding pathways of its own, ascending up the chamber's lavafall and beyond - along with various platforms and miniature plateaus situated around it at various heights.

There were however two glaring differences between this darkened chamber and the previous one they had been in: one was that there were no levitating pieces of rock, but instead more widely spread out purple-ish orbs of light that were currently turned 'off' from what it seemed. Second, was that the fire-and-rock demons were emerging in full force when it came to this chamber with all currently revealed types of them appearing as though they were adamant about preventing the six from progressing any further inside of the volcano.

It was evident to all of the six that the way to press on likely had to do with those spread out orbs, though with squadrons of fire demons guarding each one in addition to being present along the pathway itself it was evident the group would not be able to deal with this chamber as a single cohesive unit, as such Rouge did not waste much time in coming up with a simple solution for their problem:

"Looks like me and the echidna are gonna have to check out those light orbs while the rest of you guys handle these monsters down here!"

Pounding his fists together, Knuckles remarked:

"Works for me!"

"Just be careful" Shadow spoke to Rouge, "Don't fall into the lava."

"Shadow" Rouge winked, "You don't need to worry about me so much!"

"Hmph."

"Alright, that's enough talkin' for the moment!" Sonic exclaimed, his own loud-mouth self smirking up a storm, "Let's kick some monster butt!"

"You're speaking my language!" - Knuckles couldn't help but add that.

With those things all having been said, the group did as Rouge had suggested - herself and Knuckles took to the air and used the parts of rock that weren't too overly heated or fading slowly into flowing lava in order to climb to greater heights in order to more easily reach the orbs while the remaining four continued on the path and engaged in battle with the monsters before them.

Of course, small groups still attacked Knuckles and Rouge as well. However, they yet again did not prove to be much of a threat.

The lizard beasts proved that they could breathe fire, but being stationary while they did so left them open to drop kicks from Rouge or near kryptonian-strength punches on the side of their heads from Knuckles. They were dispersed to nothing without burning their foes at all. The bat-like creatures generated and dropped fireballs like miniature bombs, though with Rouge's skill at aerial maneuvers, Tails' own similar abilities, and Sonic & Shadow's jumping height they were just as easily reduced to a non-entity within moments.

The large, worm-like beasts along with the tall and armored golem-like ones were slightly more of a threat, though the worms could only take a bit more punishment before fading into oblivion while the golems having their weak point exposed usually only got one strike in before said weak spot was exploited by any one of the six and they were promptly defeated. A well placed chaos spear or even just an aerial punch or kick from Shadow made short work of them - let alone one from Knuckles or Rouge.

Getting beyond this chamber was little more than a matter of Knuckles and Rouge smacking the levitating orbs on either side of the chamber - getting them to light up with bright and almost blinding light, while the others slew the monsters down below with their various powers.

At times, entire circles of the worm-like beasts would emerge, only to be taken down by a stream of kicks to the head from Rouge from the air. Knuckles with a few combined punches made short-work of one ambitious golem demon that emerged in front of him at one point.

The lizard demons tried to burn the others with their fire breath, though more often than not they were taken out from behind as quickly as they started their attack. Lunging at the heroes proved even more fatal for them.

After what we went through with those Paradooms… - Barry thought - This is practically therapy!

Before long, all of the orbs were glowing brightly thanks to Knuckles and Rouge, and equally so all of the monsters that had emerged were reduced to those two objectives being accomplished, the six saw that their way to the next section of the volcano had opened up - like a sliding door, a portion of the cavern had sunk itself into the ground below to expose the way to them. Without any hesitation, the six continued on as a group of one.

What they found once they exited the cavern was the massive, spacious core of the volcano, complete with but one circular platform for them to stay on while a massive sea of lava virtually surrounded them. There were pathways leading other caverns within the volcano, though the sheer size of this chamber pointed to this being where the entire system led to. Behind them was not only the cave they had just left, but also the jagged, rugged volcanic rock that encompassed the outer walls of the chamber itself.

Far above them was the hole, the 'eye' of the volcano, with large towers of billowing smoke and sparks of fire floating up into and out of it into the dark world on the outside.

Most important of all though, was the glowing diamond-cut gemstone levitating in the air before them - spotted just as they looked upwards towards the hole far above them. It's color and glow gave off either a turquoise or cyan coloration, depending on which way one looked at it. Naturally, it was Rouge who with a smirk was the first to take notice of the emerald:

"There's the chaos emerald you guys were talking about earlier!" she said as she took off into the air, flying towards it, saying to it and herself in an almost greedy fashion: "Come to mama!"

However, it was not long before Shadow unfolded his arms as the realization that this was far too easy dawned on him. He quickly shouted to Rouge as loud as he possibly could:

"DON'T TOUCH IT!"

Luckily, Rouge managed to fly back onto the platform with a gasp as well as a flip - as within seconds of Shadow shouting that a massive eruption of flame occurred that completely shrouded and seemingly took the chaos emerald with it. Rouge would have been charred had she not gotten out of the way. Shadow instinctively stood in front of the group in a protective, battle stance as the others got into their own fighting stances - for once the flames and lava cleared, a true monster was revealed. With his eyes widened, Barry knew immediately what it was:

Iblis…

Iblis was certainly quite the beast. Barry was sure this was not his only form, though he did not want to wait around to see any others.

Iblis in the form he appeared to the six was similar to the weak worm-like demons that he spawned around the volcano, though extended to truly massive proportions, his head alone being virtually the size of a moderately sized building while his body was akin to the trailer one would attach to a eighteen wheeled truck - perhaps two lined up beside each other even. The entirety of the beast's body appeared to be made out of concentrated lava, from the massive snake-like body to the massive, armored head. The only exceptions appeared to be it's sharp teeth and the armor protruding from the body - the latter of which appeared to be made of black, volcanic rock. The armor around the hard was complete by the presence of three large, sharpened horns. One located between Iblis' prominent, dark green, triangular pupil eyes. The others were on either side of the beast's jaw.

Looking at the beast for the first time triggered yet another splitting migraine and flash of purple vision for Barry. He gritted his teeth and groaned in pain for another few moments as the beast's horrific roar bellowed throughout the volcano. He recovered once more, but still the creature did not go away.

To him, there was something strangely familiar about this beast once he looked at its eyes. It's green, yet soulless eyes. There was as much familiar as there was new, yet at the same time his brain was incapable of piecing it together.

Nor did it have the time to do so, as defeating Iblis was now top priority for the lot of them.

Before any of the six could even speak at all, Iblis let out it's booming roar and from it's smouth a massive stream of fire was unleashed upon the group. All of them gasped, some of them shouted, though all of them immediately jumped, glided or flew out of the way of the fire's radius.

"Heh!" Sonic snarked, "This must be the origin for those monsters from before! Guess 'mama's' come out to play!"

"Sonic, take this seriously!" Shadow exclaimed to the blue hedgehog, though Sonic was ever the cocky creature:

"Relax Shadow, I think we've got this one easy!"

With that having been said, Sonic rushed in the direction that the six had just recently come from - just barely grazing the large continuous stream of fire as he did so. With a slight grumble, Shadow did the same along the opposite side of the flame, until the two were racing along the mountainous walls of the dark chamber's exteriors. Practically in sync with each other as Shadow realized what Sonic's plan of attack was, they waited until they had just the right amount of height before launching themselves directly at the creature.

Iblis attempted to raise it's head to aim at them, but their sheer momentum more than outpaced it - their fists soon landed onto it's eyes, and their feet kicked said eyes as they bounced off of the creature once it's closed its eyes and writhed in pain from the blows, even being knocked back a bit from it's position due to the strength of both combined blows.

Luckily, Sonic and Shadow landed on two small pillars of rock that spared them from falling directly into the sea of lava beneath them. However, the snake-like demon lord was not finished with them quite yet. As it recovered from the first strike made to it, it attempted to swing the lower half of its body at all of them - first Sonic, then the four on the large platform, and then shadow. All managed to dodge it. Once it had completely flipped its body around, it submerged itself into the lava beneath itself - seemingly having retreated from the battle.

"Is that all?" Sonic questioned, before chuckling a bit, "Wow, what a coward!"

Shadow however, was not so easily convinced: his eyes were locked in battle-ready suspicion, looking around the massive caldera for any sign of the monster.

When Sonic was inevitably proven wrong, he was not surprised at all.

Crawling from the lava around the platform were hordes of Iblis' various relatively weak minions. The lizard demons crawled onto the platform itself, while the more worm-like beasts surrounded it best that they could and fired balls of flame at the grounded four while the lizard beasts attempted to lunge at them. Seemingly endless were their numbers, even if all of them were excessively weak to strikes upon their bodies.

Sonic gasped as he watch this occur, not wanting his friends to be hurt:

"Guys! Hold on!"

However, his panic was soon replaced by further shock as a massive stream of lava shot up at him - forcing him to gasp and jump out of the way immediately. He ultimately had to use aerial momentum to just barely latch onto the rock that Shadow was held up on. Shadow did have to slide himself down to the lower end of the rock in order to catch Sonic's hand though, lest the blue hedgehog fall directly into the lava.

Sonic gratefully looked back up to Shadow, using his free hand to give the black hedgehog a thumbs up:

"Thanks, Shadow!"

"Don't mention it." Shadow wasted no time pulling himself and Sonic back up, though naturally the moment they were on more steady ground was also the moment that Iblis re-emerged from beneath the surface of the lava surrounding them.

Lunging it's entire body high into the air, the beast with one more growl charged directly at them from above.

However, both Hedgehogs stood their ground. Only once the creature was just about to make impact with the rock did Shadow break his brave stance and make his move against it:

"Chaos Spear!"

One well timed blast of a chaos spear struck the base of the creature's center horn, which alone caused enough of a blast to knock the beast off it's collision course with the rock, though as if that wasn't enough Sonic himself spun himself into his ball form and quickly rammed the creature in the spot of impact as hard as he possibly could. Not only did it get one final shriek from the creature before it was once again submerged, though it visibly caused enough damage to the horn to make it start becoming looser as though it was now beginning to come off.

It should also be stressed that by running up the length of the creature's body as it descended into the lava and then jumping back onto the rock formation with Shadow on it, Sonic was able to save himself from falling into the molten liquid rock.

With Iblis once again submerged, Sonic and Shadow turned back to the remaining four of the group to make sure that they were doing well as well. Luckily, they were.

They were gathered in the center of the platform, focused entirely on not letting the endless horde of lava beasts get too much time to strike. While single punches, kicks or tail swipes took each individual out easily it was still apparent that their bodies were deadly to touch for long periods of time and that with enough numbers even these beasts could cause serious damage.

Thankfully, Barry's ability to create miniature vortexes of fast-moving wind using the momentum generated by vibrating & twirling his arms around proved too much for the creatures to handle as well as an effective strategy against the worm-like minions providing support for the lizards - who were mercilessly being picked up and tossed at the former as though they were nothing, and thus causing both types of creatures to meet their demise.

Both Sonic and Shadow were happy to know that for the time being, their allies were holding their own against the weaker minions. However, they still had to deal with the progenitor.

Speaking of which, Iblis wasted little time in yet again breaching the surface - though this time he paused right in front of the two small hedgehogs. Just as the two prepared for another round of their battle against him, Iblis tilted his head back to let out a deep roar before lifting it back in their direction to let out another stream of fire from its mouth.

However, as with the first time it attempted this, they avoided it by jumping into the air.

Instead of striking the monster's eyes this time, Sonic instead landed a ball-form strike to the scar at the base of the loosening horn, before also striking one of the eyes yet again for good measure. Sonic grabbed onto one of the jawline horns as the beast tilted it's head and roared in pain - thrashing it's head from side to side.

That was Shadow's opportunity to strike.

With a single, well placed punch to the scar created by his previous attack, the sheer force of the ultimate lifeform's strength was enough to get the horn to actually break off from the beast's head - complete with a loud, echoing cracking sound as it did so and promptly fell into the lava below. As Iblis yet again shrieked in absolute pain, it was revealed that a third eye had been hidden within the horn.

"Chaos Spear!" - Shadow wasted no time in unleashing a mid-air strike to the creature's now exposed third eye. Once the chaos spear struck the beast and caused it's third eye to erupt into an intense explosion across its face, Iblis virtually screamed in absolute agony. It thrashed itself around more violently than ever, eventually forcing Sonic to jump off of it before it yet again descended itself into the depths of the lava below.

Thankfully, Sonic and Shadow both maintained enough momentum be it from Sonic's speed or Shadow's rocket shoes in order to land on the platform with their four companions as well as a few remaining stragglers of Iblis' minions.

The remaining worm-like creatures were taken out quickly by Sonic bouncing off of their heads like he was a pinball ball, maintaining enough force to destroy all of them before landing back on the platform. Shadow took out the remaining lizard beasts by stomping on one's head and using that same foot to sideswipe one that was preparing to breathe it's fire onto him from behind. Knuckles gave a third straggling lizard beast an uppercut before it could sneak up on Barry.

With the last of the minions dispersed into nothing and Iblis submerged in the lava, the six heroes were all reunited in the form of their battle stances.

They all knew that it wasn't quite over yet. Though the chamber returned to silence for a few moments more, there was a sense amongst all of them that Iblis was not finished 'playing' just yet.

Their hunches were quickly proven correct.

Iblis emerged from the lava one more time, determined to finally finish off it's six enemies once and for all - in the form of making a final charge directly towards the platform that all of them were gathered on, displacing waves of lava in his wake as he roared angrily at his incoming prey.

However, it had underestimated the arsenal of the three speedsters that it was fighting.

Shadow, Sonic and Barry did not waste any time as it approached from the far end of the caldera. Following Sonic's strategy from the beginning of the battle, the three of them rushed at their top speeds up the rock walls behind them until they were at just the right height before launching themselves directly at the creature as it approached the platform like a freight train. Just as it opened it's jaws to roar did they make their impact.

Barry struck the left eye with a maximum momentum punch, and Shadow struck the right eye with a maximum momentum kick powered by his own personal strength. Sonic, in ball form, struck the center eye with maximum ball-state momentum.

A shockwave emitted from the impacts as the three speedsters successfully navigated themselves back to the platform with their four allies - watching as Iblis screamed in agony one last time as he was sent back to the wall on the other side of the caldera by the sheer might of their combined strikes. Not only that, but the collision that the beast made with the wall was strong enough to create a hole in the wall of rocks - the sound of crumbling rock and splashing lava echoing throughout the massive chamber as the creature tumbled out of it along with a newly created lava flow and also with one final cry, this time one of defeat.

With Iblis now forced into a different chamber of the volcano, it seemingly lost interest in the group and fled to deeper depths of the lava and magma in order to lick its wounds.

As silence returned to the group of six, the heroes turned to each other; all of them had but one issue on their mind:

"Does that thing still have the chaos emerald?!" Tails exclaimed, being the first to bring up the issue. To the happiness of all, Shadow quickly revealed that he had the cyan-turquoise emerald in his hands, having grabbed it from the creature during the final phases of the battle.

Everyone nearly sighed with relief after seeing it.

"What was that thing?!" Tails exclaimed after that had been settled, the second thing on his mind.

"I'm assuming that thing was Iblis" Barry remarked, remembering exactly what he had been told about this future, "The being that ends up destroying the world, and making all of this happen."

"Oh yeah?" Knuckles snarked, "Well for a destroyer of the world, he wasn't so tough!"

"More than likely, that was some kind of larval or transitional stage." Shadow was swift to explain, "It's almost certain that we did not fight that beast in its most powerful state, and I for one would rather get back to the present time before we actually do."

There was a nod of agreement from the others in response to his words. Absolutely none of the group wanted to stick around for that.

"So" Barry spoke once more, "How are we going to get back to the present, again? Are we just going to like, use the chaos emeralds or something?"

"Well, yeah" Sonic nodded, "Unless you got any better ideas?"

Barry thought about it, though he was hard-pressed to come up with any other idea on how to get back to the present. He knew he could theoretically create a fourth flashpoint, though knew that would change everything - if there was a method that would get them back to the present without causing yet another massive rift throughout the universe, he would certainly prefer it to another flashpoint. However, as he still needed an explanation on what the chaos emeralds were, he worded his response accordingly:

"Well, no," he admitted, "I don't have a single idea on how else to get back to the present. But, how exactly would the chaos emeralds help with that?"

"Simple" Tails exclaimed, "The seven chaos emeralds are each, essentially, generators of unlimited chaos energy - with each individual emerald giving off a different type of chaos energy. I can create fake emeralds with the same wavelength and overall properties, though my fake emeralds can only have a limited supply of energy while the real ones can both store and generate energy near endlessly! The chaos emeralds are a source of truly unlimited power, hence why it's always most important that they are kept out of the wrong hands! The only thing more powerful than them is the Master Emerald."

"Which" Knuckles interjected, "I am usually guarding, but since I had to come in and help you guys again I phoned in the Chaotix to substitute."

As he stood by and listened to every word that the young fox said, all he could picture in his mind was the idea of these emeralds existing on earth in his previous timeline. The things that people like Luthor and the innumerous other villains would do to get their hands on those emeralds was about as unlimited as the power they would give to them. He almost shivered at the thought of what Darkseid would be willing to do to get his hands on them, or what he would do if he did acquire them.

His thoughts were interrupted by Tails continuing to speak:

"For the most part though, the emeralds are only most useful if one acquires all seven of them. So I'm not entirely sure myself if two will be enough to take us back to the present, but I know that with one chaos emerald, chaos control does have the ability to temporarily freeze time in the immediate area around the emerald!"

Shadow nodded at that point, speaking out an explanation of his own:

"That's correct" he said, "In addition, the sensation I felt when I was sent to this time period felt very similar to my own chaos control, only transporting me through time instead of freezing it."

It was then that Barry remembered that certain something which was told to him earlier; regarding what chaos energy had similar properties too:

"I think trying with the two we have right now is at least worth a shot" Barry said with a nod, not bothering to explain why it was that he suddenly felt this way, "We might as well try it while we're here."

Sonic and Shadow turned to each other, and as Shadow pulled out his green chaos emerald he tossed the cyan one over to Sonic - who perfectly caught it in his hand. With one more exchange of nods between the two, they approached each other with the emeralds in-hand. Holding their emeralds close to each other as they held out their hands into the air, the two said in near unison:

"Chaos Control!"

And like that, the emeralds flashed a surge of bright light before within an instant a mysterious portal was opened through the sheer power of their combined energies, starting as a small white light that travelled upwards into the air before turning into the larger portal itself. The emeralds themselves seemed to disappear, being sucked into the rift that they themselves created - presumably to be found on the other side. Barry was stunned as it appeared like a ripple in both space and time had just occurred before his eyes within a matter of seconds, a swirling vortex of blue and white that had just materialized out of thin air. Or, out of the power of 'chaos energy'.

I definitely need to do more research on these things…

Before any of the others could even speak, Sonic, Tails and Knuckles rushed into the portal and disappeared into it - travelling to whatever was on the receiving end of it. Rouge took flight and was prepared to enter it, turning back only to see what Shadow and Barry were going to do.

Barry and Shadow both were about to follow Rouge as she flew into the portal and disappeared to wherever it led, though both were stopped by the sound of something behind them.

The sound of crackling fire.

Turning around, the two saw a small stack of fire burning beside a cloud of pitch black darkness. Peering their eyes, they were able to see movement within the darkness - Mephiles. Emerging from the darkness in a manner impossible to decipher whether or not he was coming from the darkness or the ground, he was fixated entirely on the fire in front of him as it burned and crackled with each passing second.

Only when he looked directly at the two did the fire intensify, suddenly growing larger and wider within a single instant as though the flame itself was inherently enraged with their presence.

Allowing Rouge to vanish into the portal and for the portal to vanish after her, Shadow and Barry silently opted to instead chase after their common enemy. While Shadow gracefully skated and Barry quickly ran, Mephiles seemed to not move his legs what-so-ever as he moved across the ground.

Nor did he or either of them say a single word.

He was quickly leading them somewhere, and even more clearly challenging them, though neither of them had any idea as to where they were being led other than the fact it was yet another chamber of the volcano.

Soon enough, Mephiles seemingly vanished from their sights just as they reached whatever section of the volcano that he had been leading them towards - yet another circular platform surrounded by lava within the area of the massive caldera itself. Above them was only pitch, black darkness though around them the flowing lava provided enough lighting for moderately decent visibility. A small wall of volcanic rock provided small lava falls which fed into the greater stream surrounding the platform they were on.

However, there was the matter of where Mephiles had gone.

The answer was that he was in this section with them, though was standing above them - looking down on them from a single spire of rock, directly above a mysterious purple orb that rested in the 'claws' of this spire.

He made sure to point out how 'comedic' he found their choices of actions:

"So, decided to void your return tickets, did you?"

"Mephiles!" Barry exclaimed as he glared at the demon standing above him, "You lied to me! You're the one who ruined this world, aren't you?!"

Mephiles softly and coldly chuckled in response, finding the human quite amusing so it seemed. This only response was a dry:

"The answer's yes, and no...perhaps it's better to show you two."

With a snap of his finger, something appeared before the two - something which shocked both of them, but Shadow far more than Barry. It appeared to be Shadow himself, trapped in a rhombus-like stasis pod, bright pink lights surrounding him as he appeared to be permanently stuck in some form of deep sleep with his arms and legs both restrained on the inside - as though he were nothing more than a prisoner. Looking at this sight brought back deep memories Shadow had from his past, not a single one of them present. The sight also made his eyes widen, almost as though he was having a hard time believing what he was seeing to be real.

Mephiles was quick to confirm:

"Yes" he said to the stunned Shadow, "That's you."

The demonic being was quick to continue his explanation while the two's eyes were locked on the apparition he was presenting to them:

"After the world was devastated by Iblis' flames, what do you think happened? A search for the guilty. Who did this you may ask? Society wasn't just jealous of your power, they feared it. They used this incident as an excuse, to hunt you down."

Shadow couldn't help but bow his head and turn away from the sight of himself as a prisoner of the very people he was created to protect. The very people who employed him. It was always in the background of his mind that something like this would happen, though actually seeing and being told that it was in store for him in the future, it was all too real even for him to take.

"Shadow…" Barry softly spoke as he saw the Hedgehog's response. He felt sympathy for his newfound ally, though of course his presence was not forgotten by Mephiles:

"And do you honestly think this would not befall yourself, Barry?" the entity said to the human, "Now that your powers have been restored, do you not think that eventually society shall turn it's back on you as well? The story is all the same. Today's heroes can just as easily become tomorrow's villains. Who's to say that this event would not have happened in the previous timeline you were in, following such devastation of your world? If it can happen to someone like Shadow, surely it can happen to someone such as yourself. "

Soon, Barry was reduced to a similar response as Shadow. Reduced to at the very least silence. The fact that memories of the previous timeline were yet again triggered in his brain did not help him either.

Seeing as how both Shadow and Barry were successfully silenced, Mephiles took the opportunity to continue speaking to the two of them:

"Come with me" he said, holding out a single hand, "Let the three of us punish this world and it's foolish society. It's only fair to give back what was intended for you! You have every right to want justice!"

Thankfully for all of existence, Shadow was not so easily manipulated. Lifting his head back up and turning to Mephiles he spoke defiantly:

"That's absurd!" he exclaimed as he glared at the evil being, "Whatever it is you want to do, you can do it alone."

Barry, with Shadow saying everything he wanted to say, nodded in response while glaring at Mephiles himself. Mephiles, for his part, seemed to be processing his next words. Whether he expected Shadow and Barry to reject his offer or not was difficult to decipher, though response presented the latter:

"You forgive this folly then?" he asked while gesturing a hand towards the apparition of the imprisoned Shadow of the future. Shadow only had one, defiant thing to say in response to that:

"I determine my own destiny."

Mephiles was silent in response to what was said to him. At first, it was as though he had completely been surprised by what was said to him. Within moments however, the look in his soulless eyes gave off the sense that he had accepted Shadow and Barry's responses - though he was far from being willing to simply let them leave. Most certainly not alive. Extending his arms out to either side of his body, soon he, Barry, Shadow and seemingly all that surrounded them were enveloped in a black flash - as though all of the light that there was in the world had suddenly gone out, though just as quickly that flash of black turned into a flash of blinding white as the light had returned before anyone could possibly comprehend it's prior absence. Once the bright light faded, Shadow and Barry could both now see what Mephiles truly was; for he had finally revealed what was undoubtedly his 'true' form to them.

While he still resembled Shadow's form, he was now far more demonic in appearance. Any resemblance to a pale flesh color was replaced with a pale, almost rock-like blue appearance. In fact, his entire body now appeared as though it was made of some mixture of both leather and rock, with his stripes appearing to be bright, almost blue yet also almost white crystals. The sclera of his eyes turned a deep, piercing red though the reptilian green pupils remained. His hands and feet no longer resembled Shadow's, only vaguely in shape. There were no rings or gloves, only a black hand with crystalline claws for tips. His feet had no shoes either, instead only some twisted mass of crystalline features that vaguely resembled some type of foot and had the same function as them. As if these details were not enough, the demon's face was now even more unnatural, as he neither had a mouth nor a nose any longer. For that matter, even his 'ears' now seemed to be curled in a manner somewhat reminiscent of demonic horns. All of this while an aura of darkness, a flame of black, purple and blue, was surrounding him - further bringing him into an appearance that seemed far more unnatural, even more so than the appearance he had been using up to this point.

Despite all of this, neither Shadow nor Barry dare showed Mephiles any fear. They readied their battle stances, knowing full well that they were in for a fight.

That said, Mephiles' attitude came off as though he hardly viewed this as an honest battle at all.

"Such foolishness" he commented as he gazed down upon the two from his perch, "Very well, let's see how long the two of you can entertain me."

Mephiles made sure that he made the first strike in the battle, and leaped from his perch in an aerial charge directly towards Barry and Shadow with speed nearly comparable to their own. Assuming that he was intending to strike them, the two swiftly jumped out of the way - only to watch as Mephiles vanished into the ground with yet another black cloud of darkness, accompanied by the entity's demonic laughter.

It didn't take long for them to realize what he was actually intending to do.

Within moments, a pulsing surge of darkness came over Shadow, Barry and the entire area around them. While it made a shiver run down the two's spine, it did not give them any real pain. What it did accomplish however was turning the flames and flowing lava around them from their natural red color to a more unnatural blue color - by extension changing the lighting around the area as well, to a point where things appeared to be darker yet at the same time neither Shadow nor Barry suffered from impaired visibility. Though this gave off the appearance that the area was now cooler, in reality this blue lava was actually notably more heated than the prior red, with both Shadow and Barry feeling it all too well.

Just as Shadow and Barry began to ponder where the demon himself had gone to, he materialized. Under Shadow's feet, as though he was part of the ground beneath him. Not only that, but it was as though he was Shadow's very own shadow himself - moving with any stance or movement that Shadow made, mimicking him flawlessly.

The moment Shadow looked down and saw that, his eyes widened in shock before turning into an angry glare. All he could hiss out of his mouth was:

"Your tricks won't work on me, I know who I am!"

Mephiles only laughed maniacally in response as he mimicked every movement Shadow made in flawless synchronicity. Though Shadow kicked and punched at the ground, even fired chaos spears and other projectiles or beams of chaos energy all he accomplished was creating craters in the ground. Mephiles remained his shadow. Barry could only watch, not knowing what to do.

Of course, Mephiles did not forget about him.

Distracting both Shadow and Barry, suddenly the blue lava surrounding them erupted into a tall wall of intense blue flame with an echoing roar throughout the area. From this fire materialized dark silhouettes - each humanoid in shape though of varying heights and proportions. As these silhouettes exited the wall of flame and became figures standing on the circular platform with Shadow and Barry, the latter's eyes widened as another shiver ran down his entire spine.

"No..."

He was virtually reduced to tears, though they were unrecognizable due to how much his body was sweating with the heat surrounding him.

"No" he repeated, "This...this can't be…"

Surrounding him and Shadow, was the Justice League as well as the Teen Titans. Barry recognized every single one of them. Superman, Hal Jordan, Batman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Shazam, Hawkman, Cyborg, Mera, Aquaman, John Constantine, Zatanna, Nightwing, Starfire, Robin, Raven, Beast Boy, Blue Beetle, Wonder Girl, Superboy, Kid Flash I, Kid Flash II, Speedy, Bumblebee, Batwoman, Batgirl, and even Lex Luthor.

Every single one of them was just as Barry remembered, including Damian being the older and more handsome teenager that Barry last saw him as - though these were not the same figures that he remembered. All of them appeared to be without color, reduced to nothing but shades of black and grey - a look that made even Batman and Raven seem unnatural due to the complete absence of their natural skin colors as well as any color that their suits had. Of course, Hal and Beast Boy certainly looked the most unnatural, with their green being exchanged for a lifeless grey, and Beast Boy's suit now being a dark black.

That's not to mention the fact that none of them had their pupils, only pure red scleras that present not souls, but only lifeless and evil and obedience to the demonic being that summoned them to the playing field. Gone were Superboy's beautiful crystal eyes, Batman and Robin's white mask 'holes' and even the two Wallys' own innocent appearances as Barry's own nephews.

Barry quivered as he saw them, his guard being forcibly let down by the sight thrusted upon his eyes. All of his friends. Members of his family. They looked just as he remembered them previously looking, yet now were gazing upon him with soulless, emotionless looks to their faces - reduced to being nothing but pawns of a demonic entity. He didn't even know if these were really them, or just apparitions.

Only Shadow, who did not recognize these people at all, remained in a battle stance as these figures surrounded him and the Flash. He could see the Flash was emotionally distraught, though knew full well that it was important for his ally to remain focused:

"Flash!" he shouted, "These aren't the people you remember them to be! You need to focus yourself, let go of your past!"

Barry shook his head of the tears joining with his sweat, and responded with a nod. Though it pained him to no end, he knew that Shadow was right. He had to battle his mind, even though the more he looked at these 'nega' apparitions of his friends, family and allies the more his mind flashed with visions of them in their colored, lively states.

Mephiles only laughed in response once more, saying to the two of them in an almost mocking tone of voice:

"Try to forget all you want" he mocked, "There's nothing you can do to change the fact that you are why they are no longer part of this world."

"No!" Barry yelled, now more angry and distraught than ever before, "I didn't kill them! Darkseid did! The Paradooms did! I didn't kill them!"

"Ha" Mephiles almost chuckled, "Perhaps that is true when speaking of the literal sense, but let's see if they feel that way, shall we?"

With those words having been exchanged, the true battle began. The soulless copies of the Justice League, Titans and Luthor approached Shadow and Barry with full intent of causing harm to them, though the two living heroes were not going to go down easily. Superman, Superboy, Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl immediately charged at Shadow - with Superboy being one to strike Shadow first with a bunch. Though he was able to push Shadow to the edge of the platform with but one punch, Shadow did manage to use his reflexes and block the punch from striking his face, allowing him to keep his feet planted on the ground. Still, that didn't stop the much larger Superman from getting a direct blow from the side which did successfully knock Shadow to the ground as well as generate a good sized crater.

That said however, Superman was kept from flying upwards and landing on Shadow when Shadow used two beams of chaos energy from his hands to successfully disrupt Superman's planned attack. He later had to deal with Wonderwoman as well as Wonder Girl though, with Superboy flying overhead like some form of support.

With Superboy using his heat vision while Wonder Girl and Wonderwoman lunged at Shadow to kick and punch at the smaller target, it was a testament to Shadow's strength that he was able to hold his own at all against them. Whenever a hit was landed upon him, it was far stronger than any opponent he'd ever faced before, though only the ultimate lifeform would be able to withstand this kind of battle. Any normal mortal would have had their bones long destroyed by this point.

Shadow's own retaliation strikes were just as hard, as he was no longer holding anything back. Many times each of them would take turns sending the other barreling to the other end of the platform, only to charge at each other once more for a few more strikes. Even when Superman rejoined the battle, using his heat vision in tandem with Superboy's to send an airborne Shadow back to the ground, it only seemed to moderately harm Shadow rather than render him unable to fight further. However, scratches and signs of battle were increasingly present on all of their bodies, showing that the ultimate life was in fact fighting his matches.

Even so, he was going to press on until the bitter end.

While Shadow did his best to hold his own against the most powerful members of the minions, Barry was left with the rest. He had to use all of his speed to dodge the charge that Shazam made at him, and was equally lucky to evade a dropkick attempted by Batman. He had to swiftly jump to avoid his neck being cut open by Robin's own use of a sword afterwards - though unfortunately for him he was then swiftly brought down by both of his nephews slamming into him from either side with their own super speed.

"I didn't kill you! It's not my fault!" Barry exclaimed as he recovered, in just enough time to avoid the white noise blast of cyborg's arm cannon, managing to race ahead of it's blast until he gave up on trying, allowing the Kid Flashes to resume focus on Barry for a while as they quickly used their speed to race their uncle allowed the perimeter of the platform - the three all going in a circle while the younger two attempted to repeatedly ram into their uncle, with Barry having to speed up or slow down to successfully dodge either of them.

He did not want to hurt either of them. To his brain, this was perhaps the highest form of torture that any being could force upon him.

"Kids" he said to them, "I don't want to hurt you! Just, snap out of it, if it's really you! If it's really you, I know you're in there somewhere!"

"That's too bad!" Wally II remarked, his voice echoing as though multiple versions of him were speaking at once through his own mouth.

"Because we do want to hurt you!" Wally I added in, both him and his cousin now grinning almost ear to ear in the most sadistic of fashions, before they grabbed each other's hands and charged at their uncle. Barry managed to jump over them and was then behind them, but he did not seem to realize what their strategy was, as Wally I carried Wally II into a small impromptu tornado and soon enough threw him at Barry, with Wally II kicking his uncle in the face and to the ground before the former had even realized what was going on.

As he slowly recovered to his feet, Barry could only force himself to ask but one question:

"W-w-why?"

"Because" Raven said as she approached him from behind, holding hands with Robin who approached Barry along with her, "You did this to us" she coldly said as she used one of her black beam attacks aimed for Barry's head. Barry managed to dodge it, though was yet again knocked to the ground when Wally I rammed into him with his own speedster speed.

"Ugh" Barry once more groaned as he got up from the blow, but he continued to plead to those attacking him in a hope that their true selves were still underneath their soulless appearances, "I, I didn't do anything to you! It was Darkseid! It was his Paradooms! I didn't do anything!"

"If you hadn't travelled through time in the first place" Damian explained as he embraced Raven's hands with both of his own, the two gazing into each other's now reddened, soulless eyes, "Me and Raven would be together in happiness."

"Rather", Raven added just as coldly, "Than in misery."

Barry was speechless upon hearing the two's words, and was further rendered speechless as the two almost disturbingly kissed in front of him. Normally, such a sight would be beautiful - true love expressing itself. However here it was unnatural and not helped by the fact their tongues were elongated, forked and snake-like as they entangled and danced with one another even after the lips had already separated - causing saliva to drool from both of the two as they remained inhumanly embracing each other.

Barry attempted to use their distraction to his own advantage, though before he could speed away he was surrounded by a purple-black aura that lifted him above the ground and effectively stopped him in his tracks - Raven using her powers to stop him without breaking her 'kiss' with Robin.

Before Barry could even think about finding a way to escape Raven's grasp, the black aura dispersed - but only because he had been tackled by a grey colored Tiger: Beast Boy. Once the two were on the ground, the soulless version of the boy turned into a massive anaconda snake and wrapped himself around Barry with full intent of suffocating him to his demise, while others such as Batman, Blue Beetle, Hawkman, Lex Luthor, John Constantine and Zatanna gathered as if to ensure that if he escaped the snake's grip that they would ensure said escape would be futile.

As the choking, barely able to struggle Barry looked into Beast Boy's eyes, he still only saw that pure red, soulless, lifeless sclera. No pupils or irises. Not even those of the reptile he had turned into. Only pure red, glowing eyes. Just as with all of the others. He wanted to believe the boy he once knew was still in there, but another part of him feared the absolute worst.

It wouldn't be long before his rib cage would begin to shatter. It didn't help that as he was facing his potential end at the hands of what was once a titan, all he could hear in his ears were repeated words from the others, their voices sounding like a symphony of judgement, blame and scorn as they spoke at him:

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

Those words, repeating from the mouths of his former friends. In their voices, though each one sounded as though an army of them was speaking at once, thus creating a true orchestra of echoing words once the lot of them spoke these condemnations at once.

It was enough to make his mind begin to break, in addition to the rest of his body from the mounting pressure of a long, thick cylinder of muscle slowly crushing him.

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

Repeating on and on...

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

It was enough to get to him. As he gritted his teeth, as he closed his eyes tightly. It got to him. It did not take much longer at all before finally he snapped. The migraines kicked in. The purple vision yet again began to flash rapidly in his eyes, until the stress of all that was going on around him was too much for him to take anymore.

With one loud, enraged scream, a surge of purple electricity coursed over his body, making Beast Boy scream in pain as he felt the full force of it's electric shock. With his coils weakening, Barry was able to vibrate his body out of Beast Boy's grasp as the titan slithered away from him to allow the others to have their turn. However, even they took a few steps back from Barry - at least until he found the nagging headache too much to handle. Just looking at his former allies was enough to send it into overdrive, forcing him to his knees while he held his head in agony.

His so-called allies showed him no mercy, however. Not even 'Batman' - who in fact made the first strike. Batman first used some of the smoke bombs from inside of his utility belt, surrounding Barry with vision-impairing smoke while Batman himself leaped into the air and descended upon the Flash with his cape extended almost as though it was a side of wings. Barry successfully kicked to the ground and pinned by the man's feet - though of course he had enough sense to quickly vibrate before Batman could take out one of his sharp Batarangs and use it to slit Barry's neck wide open. Had he not vibrated out of Bruce's grasp, that would indeed have been his fate. Batman did jump out of Barry's way before he could be kicked from behind, though at the very least Barry had saved his own life.

For the time being, anyway.

Having a standoff with Batman wasn't precisely the best career choice for him. Nor did he ever want to have one. Yet here the two, standing before each other in their battle stances - even if it was an evil, soulless version of the man he came to view as a friend and an ally.

However, in focusing so much on Batman he neglected the various other fighters on the playing field. It was only mere seconds before Batman was standing idly by when Barry was suddenly grabbed from behind, flipped onto the ground, and seemingly dragged by invisible force into the same rock spire that Mephiles himself had been standing on prior to the battle. It was not an invisible force of course, Barry could see just barely that it was a strong grip of Martian Manhunter that had grabbed onto him. He was intangible and so appeared transparent, though his shape could just barely be seen by Barry's eyes. Still, his grip was strong - and his powerful mind worked fast, fast enough that he began relentlessly bashing Barry's head brutally against the rock, even managing to draw blood from the back of the blonde's head, at least four times before lifting him by the neck and beginning to suffocate him as he struggled to break free from the martian's grasp. The usually green though now grayscale martian did phase himself out of his intangibility, though it was perhaps only so that Barry would have a face to properly look at during his end.

J'onn was soon joined by Hawkman, who also without saying any words pulled out his nth mace and with as much strength as he could muster smashed Barry's right knee with it - making Barry let out a piercing whine as he could feel his bone actually crack wide open from the strike, let alone the mace's electric stunning effect and the spikes stabbing into his skin - yet again drawing blood from the speedster.

With how hard the hand of what once was his friend held down on his throat, the speedster couldn't even speak. All he could muster up the strength to do was gaze into his former ally's silent, soulless eyes.

There was not even a semblance of the martian man he recognized - and the same could be said for Hawkman, Katar. He began to doubt that there was any chance that the people he remembered and missed were actually still present in any sense of the word.

Though he wanted to keep up the fight, the fact that it seemed as though all of who were once his friends wanted him dead - blaming him for their horrible fates even, proved enough to break him. Slowly he allowed his eyes to close, silently accepting his fate.

At the very least, he thought as blackness took over his vision, this will all be over soon.

And, fortunately for the Flash, it was.

With the sound of a single blast followed by a familiar screech of alien pain, Barry opened his eyes to find that he was released from J'onn's grasp, and now the Martian Manhunter seemed to be screaming and writhing in pain - the arm that had been strangling Barry having just been severed at the elbow, with the Martian himself primarily screaming from the fact that the part of that arm still connected him appeared to be now on fire.

Both Flash and Hawkman looked to see Shadow glaring in their direction. He had scratches, cuts and bruises all over him as well as blood on some parts of fur let alone the fact he was panting as though he was heavily exhausted, but the smoke from his hand revealed he had done a chaos spear in order to save Barry. Knowing this, Barry and Shadow exchanged nods to one another mere seconds before Barry had to evade a swing of Hawkman's nth hammer.

Shadow motioned to join in Barry's fight, but was distracted when he caught the sight of Superboy charging at him from the air. Having the time to anticipate this, he grabbed the 'Nega' Superboy just before impact and with a twirl tossed him directly at Wonder Girl before she could use her lasso on the hedgehog - the two nega titans collided with each other, with a strong enough impact to send both of them back into the blue fire wall that spawned them.

"It doesn't matter how many of them you defeat, you know" Mephiles mocked from his position as Shadow's literal shadow, "I'm still your shadow, you can't even touch me."

"Whatever it is you're trying to do, it's not working on me!" Shadow barked back at Mephiles, though he had hardly any time to confront the demon directly - as within a matter of seconds he was met with Superman.

Having been able to see Superman charging at him, he was able to block the man's fists from punching him by grabbing hold of them. However, the sheer power of Superman was enough to push Shadow back complete with a shockwave from the impact of their hands meeting - though he hissed and grunted, Shadow planted his feet hard onto the ground and with enough straining was able to actually hold his ground against the kryptonian.

Just as their hands were liked in trying to shove the other, so were their eyes - locked permanently in a glare directed at one another. Both of them standing their ground. Both of them seemingly testing their muscles to the limit.

Barry would have been astonished at Shadow's ability to hold his own against the full grown kryptonian if he didn't have a battle of his own to focus on.

As he waited for his healing factor to kick in regarding his injured knee, he had to worry about the Hawkman still being fixated on him. With this speed impaired by his wounded knee, he could just barely dodge Hawkman's several attempts at swinging the nth mace at him, having an easier time ducking his head and body than jumping or moving from side to side to evade each swing.

Eventually, Hawkman did attempt to stomp his foot down on Barry, taking advantage of the man still having a weakened knee by stomping down on that same leg's foot. With a pained groan, Barry fell to the ground. Having to look back on what looked like his former ally as Hawkman lifted his mace into the air, Barry could only mutter out but one phrase in an almost grieving tone of voice:

"Forgive me…"

With one well timed creation of a wind vertex, Barry was able to blast Hawkman into the air just moments before the mace made contact with his head - giving Barry a few moments to recover his breath.

Hawkman managed to break his forced ascent by extending his wings, before immediately diving down from the air directly at Barry - still brandishing his mace. Barry closed his eyes and prepared for impact - not with his friend, but rather with a charged up momentum-propelled punch to Hawkman's face just prior to impact. Combined with the force Hawkman was flying, it was enough to send the thanagarian flying into the wall of blue fire from once he spawned - his nega form seemingly defeated.

Barry took no pleasure in having to do this. In fact, as he saw Hawkman disappear into the ghostly blue flames a vision of the man's brutal demise from the previous timeline flashed before his eyes - as vivid as though he was witnessing it in life. It was only for half of a second, but was enough to make Barry grimace in pain as he struggled to stand him. His knee would heal, but it needed to heal faster than it was - as the remaining combatants had no intentions of showing the slightly limping speedster any mercy.

He was first approached by his nephews, who were yet again rushing him virtually in tandem with one another. Just as quickly as he finally stood up on both of his feet, Wally II jabbed him right in the wounded knee, forcing him back to the ground with a loud hiss. Before he could even comprehend that, he was struck in the face and nearly fully onto the ground by a punch in the face from Wally I.

Having to do this was going to hurt the most. He couldn't even spare the time to take in a deep breath.

Never in a million years did I picture myself doing this…

But you leave me no choice…

Once he saw that both Wallys were running in opposite directions to one another, Barry swiftly formulated a plan. He could feel that his knee was healing just enough so that he could properly run again, and with a determined face waited until the last possible second to rush - causing both of his nephews to punch each other in the face rather than collide with him. The momentum of their punches both sent the two back a good distance, and gave Barry enough time to get his proper speed going well before the two got back up to their feet and rushed to fight with him once more.

He first slowed down so that he could dodge a direct ramming attack from Wally I, though this left him vulnerable to a rear strike from Wally II. Seeing this coming though, Barry easily turned the tables on his darker skinned nephew by turning himself to the ground and grabbing the boys first before he could properly land the strike. Before Wally II even had the chance to vibrate his way out of his uncle's grip, the older male flipped him over onto the ground with as much strength as his upper body could muster.

It brought tears to Barry's eyes, but he wanted and needed this to end.

To his surprise though, he did not see Wally II when he opened his eyes. Only the black ground of the rock he stood on, surrounded by the roaring wall of blue flames. There was no sign of Wally II either in the form of a speedster blur or even a body - as though the boy had suddenly vanished the moment he made contact with the ground.

There was unfortunately little time for Barry to properly comprehend this, for within moments his other nephew punched him directly in the gut and yet again nearly to the ground before speeding off in an effort to make another hit-and-run strike.

Before the original Kid Flash could land his next strike though, Barry's quick thinking mind successfully deduced what direction he was charging from, and Barry charged in that same direction at his own top speed. Colliding with Wally I within a matter of moments, with all of his superior physical strength and maximum momentum, Wally grabbed his nephew by his upper arms, headbutted him and then proceeded to throw him towards the lone rock spire on the platform - Wally I letting out but a whimper of agony as his body made enough of impact on the rock to not only get him to cough up blood but also make a notable dent in the rock itself.

What stopped Barry in his tracks however was the fact that his body did not vanish as his cousins did. Instead, it appeared as though color had actually returned to it. His costume returned to its yellow-and-red coloring. His hair returned to it's light brown coloration. His eyes were closed, though likely regained their blue irises and black pupils.

Tears streamed Barry's face as he saw this - his nephew, returned to a normal, living state. Only to be coughing up blood and whimpering in pain before falling to the ground with scarcely any movement at all.

Barry feared the worst. The absolute worst.

No...no...no no no no no no...

He instinctively wanted to rush over to Wally to ensure he was okay, but was denied that act of compassion when he was suddenly trapped inside of a black sphere of pure energy - courtesy of the colorless, soulless Hal Jordan. With his emotionless face and soulless red eyes, he denied Barry the ability to investigate Wally's sudden 'rebirth' any further and instead swung him around in a circle multiple times before releasing him into the air as though he were a slingshot - only for John Steward to use his ring to form a massive baseball bat which promptly smacked Barry back down to the impromptu arena, an impact crater forming on the ground when Barry landed.

Barry got up, though was attacked by Hal from behind - kicked brutally in the back, causing him to slide into the knees of Shazam, only to be got by a bubble generated by John Stewart, and from there only transferred to to be smacked around by a giant hand crafted by Hal Jordan, with the speedster making groans, hisses and shouts of agony with each hit landed upon him until he was again tossed towards Shazam, who this time restrained him grappling both of his arms.

Seeing Cyborg approach him with intent of taking advantage of Barry's restrained status, Barry knew he had to break from Shazam's grasp quickly.

Barry vibrated his way out of Shazam's grasp the best that he could, at just the right time so that Cyborg blasted Shazam into the wall of blue flame instead of the speedster himself. Of course, Barry had to yet again keep his pace ahead of Cyborg's blasts afterwards, only this time he performed a turn directly towards the half-robotic man. Though he swayed from side to side in order to evade Cyborg's attempts to attack him, he ultimately did make a direct hit to Cyborg's chest with enough force to send Cyborg flying back into the blue wall of flame from which he came - seemingly defeating him for the time being.

Just Barry recovered his breath from his run-ins with the nega of versions of those previous three, he was met with several figures approaching him in order to challenge him to the most unfair of battles.

Lex Luthor, John Constantine, Zatanna, Mera and Aquaman now stood before him with Hal Jordan and John Steward circling the group overhead. With Shadow still preoccupied with both Superman and Wonder Woman - Barry seeing the three still violently tossing each other around - only Barry was there to deal with these individuals.

"John" Barry said to John, remembering that he was the one who told him to create the flashpoint in the first place, "John, I know you're in there! You were the one who told me to 'clear the board'! This was your idea! You should know that more than anyone! If you're in there, you should be able to fight this demonic asshole! What kind of occult investigator are you if you let a four foot tall hedgehog enslave you like this?! The real John Constantine would have broken free of his control by now!"

The sound of Mephiles' laughter echoed through the 'arena' in response to that, and even the minions smirked and smiled as though they found amusement in what Barry had yelled out.

"Choosing the pen rather than the sword?" Mephiles yet again mocked despite not being truly present on the field though speaking as if he were, "I must admit, I am impressed by your attempt at diplomacy. However, fighting fire with words is rather, shall I say, ineffective."

With any words being said, John Constantine did as his master suggested and conjured up balls of fire which he swiftly launched in Barry's direction. Barry could only gasp as he used his feet to swiftly avoid the balls of flame, though his evasion of Constantine's magic made him distracted enough to be struck by several small rocks from the ground that were telekinetically thrown at him by Zatanna.

It was within seconds afterwards that he was yet again struck by the lanterns, both of them spawning enlarged fists from their rings, punching Barry from the back to send him through the air towards the wall of room - only to be grabbed by a black tentacle, which proceeded to wrap around his body briefly before slamming him to the ground.

Barry didn't even have the time to recover before he had the black boot of a certain Batman crushing down on his neck, the darkly dressed caped crusader yet again looming over him with only the light of the flames around them illuminating him. Damian, Raven, Batgirl and Batwoman were there soon enough, with the others following suit.

"Bruce" Barry pleaded with what little ability to speak that he had, "Please...are….are you in there?"

He received no response, other than the dark knight's boot crushing down further on his throat - slowly cutting off the speedster's air supply and making it harder for him to speak. It was just like his battle with Shadow, only without the opponent holding back.

Barry had many things he wanted to say, but he couldn't. Instead he could only think.

Bruce...please…

I know, deep down, you're not just his slave.

You were able to free yourself from Darkseid, you can free yourself from this asshole!

Can't you?

Are….are you even there?

Batman did not speak. He only did. Once it was evident that Barry had effectively been worn out of energy for the time being, Batman lifted his foot off of the man's throat, picked him up by the neck of his uniform, and shoved him back to the ground so that he was properly facing the others. Or, more accurate, he for whom the others had parted.

Mephiles.

Mephiles had re-emerged from the ground at the front of two separate rows of his apparition minions. Shadow was still occupied with Superman and Wonder Woman, leaving the exhausted Barry without any allies as Mephiles looked upon him with his emotionless demonic face. Looking up at his newfound nemesis, Barry glared angrily. There were many choice words he had for the entity standing before him, but the only ones he could muster the power to speak out were:

"What...what are you?"

"What I am does not matter to you" Mephiles shook his head in a condescending manner, "Not only would you not be able to truly comprehend it, but you will not be around long enough for it to be relevant to your feeble mortal mind. Be grateful that I am giving you the mercy of oblivion, the least that I can do."

Barry bowed his head in defeat at that point, accepting his defeat. He was outnumbered, outmatched, and exhausted. It was a miracle he had even lasted as long as he did.

As Barry looked up only to see how Mephiles intended to kill him - he saw a horrifyingly familiar sight. Two bright, red lights were forming on Mephiles' eyes. Piercing red lights, matching with his pure red scleras. It was the same type of light that emitted from Darkseid's eyes:

He...he can use Omega Beams?...

He closed his eyes the second he realized what was about to befall him, bracing himself for the intense burning that was surely awaiting him.

He was not the only one seeing this however. Having seen Mephiles emerge from the ground, Shadow was just freeing himself from the grip of Wonder Woman's lasso through his sheer will alone, and once he saw what Mephiles was about to do to Barry he prepared to charge at the demon, though was briefly stopped by Superman attempting to grapple him from behind. Curling into his ball form and effectively uppercutting the nega kryptonian was enough to free himself from his grasp however, and the ultimate lifeform broke from his fight in an effort to interrupt the execution of the Flash.

All of this happened in a matter of mere seconds.

When Mephiles fired his piercing red omega beams directly at Barry, Shadow successfully intercepted them - jumping in front of Barry just before they could have made contact with the flash. Barry watched as Shadow took the full force of the Omega Beams, but instead of being incinerated like a lantern or singed like a boy wonder the ultimate lifeform only grunted - feeling some form of pain, though not a single part of him seemed burned at all.

Mephiles himself for once seemed shocked as he saw it with his own eyes. Shadow had managed to not only withstand the omega effect energy, but was absorbing it. No mortal being outside of Apokolips or evidently Mephiles himself could do such a thing, yet in a most defiant manner Shadow now had a deep red aura surrounding himself - the power of omega energy enhancing him.

Barry, even the nega minions for that matter, were all speechless. Shadow himself however was fixated solely on Mephiles, glaring at the demonic being with the full force of his rage.

Only one thought crossed Barry's mind as his mind processed all of this:

He wasn't kidding when he said he was the ultimate lifeform...

The first one to make a move was Batman. Several batarangs were thrown at Shadow from behind to prevent him from making a move on Mephiles - however the omega aura surrounding Shadow caused them all to explode before their sharp wings could even graze Shadow's skin. From the black smoke came Shadow, speeding through the air in his own black ball-like state, barreling through Batman's very own chest and out his back with enough speed so that the dark knight couldn't even properly respond.

Barry was mortified as he saw this, unable to comprehend the sight. There was no blood. No gore whatsoever. It looked as though a hole had been burned clear through the world's greatest detective, and on the inside was only pure darkness. Batman soon vanished afterwards, a cloud of darkness remaining of him for only a few seconds. As though he wasn't even a true living being at all.

Still, Barry was able to use this distraction to rush to his fallen nephew's side.

Shadow had no time to waste on sights however, as he immediately fixated himself on the opponents surrounding him - with all of Mephiles' minions wanting a piece of him. Hal Jordan and John Stewart attempted to trap him inside of a bubble shield, though with one concentrated pulse of energy it was shattered as though it were an incredibly weak glass. The hedgehog then sent himself into the air with his rocket shoes and grabbed hold of Hal Jordan's hand by the wrist - the omega energy coursing around him having an incinerating effect on the lantern which ultimately caused the hand to be burned clean off. As it was the hand with the ring on it, this caused Hal Jordan to be reduced to a powerless state and fall to the ground - vanishing just as Batman did upon hitting the ground.

John Stewart followed not long after. The large fists he desperately generated from his ring were repeatedly destroyed effortlessly as Shadow charged at him - eventually burning directly through the lantern's body, causing him to vanish in mid-air not long after his entire torso had been destroyed.

Shadow then returned to the ground, making short work of Batwoman with a kick directly to her chest and Batgirl by grabbing her by her shoulders and viciously headbutting her with a full force impact. Lex Luthor was handled by a solid punch directly through his heart, while Aquaman, Mera, Blue Beetle and Cyborg were finished off by four chaos spears being unleashed at once by Shadow merely extending his arm out. With the spears also being endowed with omega effect energy, their forms were easily destroyed with a single set of four small explosions, vaporizing their darkness.

Bumblebee changed to her insect size to charge at Shadow from the air, while Speedy supported her by firing a stream of explosives at the black hedgehog. However, a single shield forged from omega chaos energy made every single arrow prove meaningless. A well timed charge from Shadow's spin dash easily turned Bumblebee into a dissipating puff of darkness - and decapitated Speedy, with him meeting the same fate once he fell completely to the ground.

The next challenger for the ultimate lifeform was Damian, who charged at him with his sword. Only for said sword to be caught by a clap of Shadow's hands - the omega energy turning it to useless stub of melted metal within seconds. Damian managed to evade Shadow's first attempt to strike him, managing to jump over Shadow and get behind him. However, before he could even pull out another piece of equipment the boy was slapped across the face by the back of Shadow's hand - his face disintegrating to darkness as he fell, before his body followed afterwards.

"DAMIAN!" The 'nega' Raven screamed with as much horror and emotion as her colored counterpart, before charging at Shadow with pure absolute rage at what she had just witnessed. With Shadow's omega aura making him resistant to telekinesis, she restored to her other abilities. Conjuring massive boulders, tentacles and even sharp shards of darkness to throw at Shadow - though the hedgehog tore through every last one as though he was super heated enough cutting through a mere stick of butter.

Raven herself eventually lunged at him soon after, though the rage she felt towards him blinded her. Though she had a black mass of tentacles and great power accompanying her, Shadow's unleashed power tore through everything she tried - and even herself as well. With Shadow slicing through her in her ball form as she tried to envelop him in her own darkness, she was soon reduced to nothing but the latter before even that dissipated into absolute nothingness.

John Constantine and Zatanna stepped up to the task next - with their magic shields successfully deflecting Shadow's spin dashes, allowing Constantine to fire a series of fireballs at Shadow once he was briefly sent back. Zatanna attempted to use her telekinesis magic though she could only find rocks to throw at Shadow - to little effect. Unfortunately for the two magical minions, they were soon destroyed when Shadow unleashed two chaos spears at them - shattering the shields they put up and destroying their bodies entirely.

With all of those individuals vanquished, all that remained to surround Shadow as he stood on the volcanic ground were Superman, Wonder Woman, Shazam, Nightwing and Starfire. Though they were glaring and snarling angrily at Shadow, it was difficult to truly discern if they were mourning those whom Shadow had just defeated or not.

They wouldn't have enough time to do so anyway.

The moment that all of them charged Shadow at once, Shadow jumped himself into the air and curled himself up as energy pulsated and electrified around him. Just before impact could be made he let out one mighty battle cry as he extended his body back out:

"Chaos…..BLAST!"

With those two words, a massive blast of pure omega chaos energy was unleashed from the hedgehog's body - completely incinerating the five beings charging at him within a matter of seconds as it's radius soon encompassed the entire stone platform - even managing to disperse the wall of blue flame surrounding the platform.

Barry watched as this bright red light emitted from Shadow's body and the burning explosion came in his direction. Grabbing Wally's body he rushed to the other side of the rock spire and shielded Wally as tightly as he could. Though his body was spared certain incineration thanks to the energy primarily eating away at the rock, Barry still screamed and hissed due to the searing heat all around him. Parts of his clothes and even skin that just barely grazed the energy were still singed as though he had touched an extremely hot stove.

Thankfully, it was all over within seconds. Once Barry, carrying Wally in his arms, emerged from behind the rock all he could see was Shadow standing on the ground with stacks of smoke surrounding him. The chaos blast had released all of the omega energy from Shadow, meaning he was back to his usual form - though still panted heavily after exerting so much power.

Still amazed and horrified, Barry addressed what had just happened:

"Did...did you?"

"It wasn't them" Shadow swiftly reminded Barry, "Whatever those things were, they weren't the people you remember them to be."

Barry looked down at Wally whom he held in his arms, the only one who returned to his living from out of the group. He didn't know what that meant, if the others were really themselves or not, but all he knew was that at the very least he had one of his nephews back. Or at least he hoped so, as Wally still had his eyes closed. Shadow, seeing the boy in Barry's arms:

"Is he?"

"My nephew" Barry explained without looking away from the boy, "And he's alive...only barely.." looking back up at Shadow hee said to his ally, "We need to get out of here."

Shadow nodded in agreement to those words, though it was at that moment which they were greeted with the return of Mephiles' diabolical echoing laugh. As Shadow readied his battle stance and looked around the ghostly blue volcanic field for where the demon was, Barry made sure to place the vulnerable Wally down by the rock spire out of the way before doing the same.

"Where are you?!" Shadow exclaimed angrily to the laughing entity, "Show yourself!"

Mephiles coldly chuckled:

"Since you so cordially insist…"

Emerging from behind Shadow as though he had been there the entire time, Mephiles folded his arms and swiftly extended them back out - releasing in the process a powerful concussive blast that sent both Barry and Shadow into the air - Shadow's spine smashing into the rock spire and proceeding to slide down to the ground, while Barry slid painfully on the ground until being stopped by one of the various impact craters created from the previous battle.

As the two recovered from the blast, Mephiles promptly addressed them in as menacing a tone that he could muster:

"You two have not the faintest idea of the sheer power you are up against."

Before Mephiles could approach the two any further however, all three had their attention taken by a sudden stream of machine gun bullets that fired at the ground in a line between them. Turning to the direction of these bullets, Shadow was astonished at where the bullets had come from:

E-123 Omega, the bulky, 'muscular' robot of red, golden yellow and black that he had no choice but to abandon back in crisis city, as much as it pained him internally to abandon one of the only two beings he considers a true friend. Now he was standing before him, at last fully activated and without any dust on his glossy metallic body at all. One of his clawed hands had shifted into the form of a machine gun, which had of course been the weapon used to gain Mephiles, Shadow and Barry's attention.

As he turned the gun back into one of his clawed hands, his robotic voice explained his presence:

"Now is designated time" he said to Shadow, "I shall assist."

While Shadow came closer than ever to smiling, Mephiles was more amused than anything else as he coldly remarked:

"You are nothing but a nuisance, robot."

Mephiles' first attempted attack against Omega was to generate a large, piercing bright beam of pure, concentrated energy from the palm of one of his hands - though Omega was able to jump out of the way and retaliated by turning one of his hands into an RPG launcher, firing a missile directly at the demonic being.

The missile did not get to make impact however, as Mephiles had managed to grab it telekinetically, surrounding it in a black aura akin to Raven's own powers, and then promptly sent it back on course to Omega himself. However, Omega destroyed it with a second missile anyway.

This moment may have been small, but did distract Mephiles just enough so that Shadow was able to strike him in the back of the head with a sweeping mid-air kick. It managed to knock Mephiles to the ground, though only because Shadow was not holding back any of his physical strength against the demonic being. Landing in between Mephiles and Omega, Shadow readied his battle stance - not daring to break eye contact with the demon as he waited to see what he was going to unleash next.

Though his face was virtually emotionless, it could easily be inferred that Mephiles was not precisely amused with this battle any longer. Or, perhaps in his own sadistic way he actually still was. Without any expressive facial features, his emotions were hard to decipher.

"You are quite the persistent annoyance, Shadow" Mephiles remarked, "But no matter, sooner or later, you will fall!"

Mephiles did not hesitate. Extending out his arms he began to command the lava surrounding the platform release nigh endless streams of piercing hot blue flames into the air, before the demon showed complete control over them; with the sheer power of his mind these streams curved towards Shadow and Omega as though they were flaming tentacles of some creature, proceeding to come at the two as though they were burning whips.

As it was futile to fire weapons at fire, Shadow and Omega settled for dodging and evading the literal whips of flame, though while it was easy to dodge the initial strikes - eventually massive blasts of blue fire came at them from behind while other streams of it rained down on them from above - forcing Shadow to do various acrobatic moves in order to avoid being burned. Flips both front and back, somersaults, he even narrowly avoided a stream that nearly struck him in his groin area. Omega was durable enough to stand a single blast - though even he knew the metal compromising his body had a limit at some point and so made a point to avoid the flames as well. He attempted to fire his missiles and even machine gun fire at Mephiles, though the demon often just used a single wave of blue flame to either melt the bullets or destroy the missiles before they could strike him.

Watching the battle unfold from the sidelines, Barry was lucky to seemingly be getting no attention from the demon. He decided it was best to use that fact to his advantage, and naturally rushed at Mephiles with the full force of his speed.

It didn't last long, unfortunately.

It was as though his speed had just stopped. As though he was frozen in place, moments he could land a punch to Mephiles' demonic face. As though he was parlyzed. Looking down he could see that underneath him was a puddle of pure darkness extending out from Mephiles - with the darkness latching onto the speedster's feet as though it was engulfing him from the bottom-up, some of it looking as though black tentacles were wrapping around his muscular legs and thighs while moving slowly upwards to do the same with the rest of him.

The worst parts were both that he couldn't vibrate himself out of their grasp, and that whatever this was it made it feel as though whatever they touched was numb - not hot or cold, only numb as though the limbs were asleep yet forced to be standing upright.

Barry could only struggle with his upper body as the lower half was slowly taken over by the darkness. Try as he did, he seemingly was fully unable to break free.

Without breaking from his fight against Shadow and Omega, Mephiles turned to Barry solely to mock him for his evidently failed attempt:

"Foolish mortal" the entity chuckled, "Did you honestly think that was going to work?"

Barry did not give Mephiles the dignity of a response. He only gritted his teeth, scowling, practically snarling even, at the demon who has put him through far more mental and emotional torment than Darkseid himself ever could have accomplished.

"No matter" the being continued on, "Soon it will be as though you had never even existed. It's no use resisting, you can't fight eternal darkness forever."

With the darkness increasingly engulfing his body, now passing over his upper half, Barry only had one thing to tell the demonic entity:

"Go fuck yourself."

Mephiles only laughed in response to that petty insult.

No longer willing to give himself up to the evil being, Barry continued to do all he could to struggle and fight the darkness consuming him - even though it's continued engulfing of his body told him that it was in fact futile. Even as Mephiles' mocking laughter was about all his ears actually heard.

At least until two other voices entered the fray:

"Initiating Zeta Energy Cannons!"

"Chaos Spear!"

In an instant, a single chaos spear managed to cut off the darkness engulfing Barry from Mephiles' shadow, weakening it enough for Barry to finally break free of it as it dissipated from his body. Before Mephiles could even conjure up a counter-attack however, a duet of two massive, bright purple beams of weaponized energy fired onto him with enough force to actually send him back to the edge of the platform.

Once the beams stopped firing, Shadow and Omega rejoined Barry's side - having freed themselves from the onslaught of blue flames.

"Thanks, guys" Barry said to the two during this brief moment he had, "He almost had me there, for a moment."

"Sensors indicate the target has not yet been neutralized, now is not time for idle chatter." - Omega was swiftly proven rather correct.

Within an instant the ground shook in a line extending out from Mephiles as though a small earthquake was suddenly occurring before their eyes, making the three jump out of the way as tendrils made of darkness emerged from the cracks in the rock to violently attempt in grappling the three - though well timed chaos spears and missiles managed to keep the darkness at bay.

A large mass of darkness attempted to ensnarl Omega before long, though with a swipe of his arms with his flamethrowers initiated the robot was able to disperse the darkness before it could get a proper hold of him - he also continued supporting Shadow and Barry by using his missiles to disperse any of the black tentacles before they could grapple either of them.

As to be expected, that wasn't the only hazard that Mephiles conjured for the trio as before long he spawned before him a series of telekinetically levitating spiked rocks with each encased in an aura of darkness, sending it at the three within a matter of moments to emulate Omega's own missiles.

With Omega handling the stream of darkness, Barry and Shadow had to divert their attention to these rock missiles - Barry was fast enough to evade them, though Mephiles conjured a thick wall of piercing blue flame and would send violent streams of it towards the speedster if he dared to try anything with his speed. Shadow was strong enough to home in on each in his ball form and shatter them to pieces, though the stream of them seemed to be endless.

Eventually however, Barry's quick thinking mind came up with an idea: with Shadow taking the majority of the rock towers, he decided to use the wind vortexes created from his arm to blow away the blue fire protecting Mephiles. Just as Mephiles taken aback by this and hissed angrily at Barry upon being exposed, Barry shouted to his ally:

"Shadow! Opening! Now!"

Seeing as Mephiles was getting ready to unleash a stream of darkness on Barry, Shadow yet again no time to waste. He diverted his attention to diving from a mid-air position directly to Mephiles - who naturally realized what was going on and abandoned his attack on Barry to charge at Shadow, the two colliding in mid-air within a matter of seconds.

Mephiles quickly slashed at Shadow's chest with his claws, drawing blood as well as making Shadow actually hiss in pain, though his other hand was caught by Shadow's own before he could do the same to the ultimate lifeform's face. Holding said hand by the wrist, Shadow did not give Mephiles any time to retaliate before punching the demon in his own chest at maximum strength - enough to send Mephiles barreling back to the ground below them.

The fact that punching Mephiles felt nearly like slamming his fist into a steel wall was not lost on Shadow.

With the stream of darkness dissipating, all three allies were able to surround Mephiles as he stood up to face them. Ever difficult to read, Mephiles grunted as he got up to face his adversaries - though it was hard to know if he felt defeated by them or not. Nevertheless, he did generate from one of his hands a large orb of dark energy - swirling vortex of black, blue and purple. At first the three assumed it was a final attack, though without saying a single word Mephiles leaped himself into it and vanished, just as the area all around them began to shake.

With the ground cracking and crumbling apart at the seams, the light of the blued magma shining from underneath as it bubbled up to the surface, Omega's words were readily apparent well before he spoke them:

"I am indicating an eruption of this volcano is imminent, we must leave this area at once!"

Shadow nodded, and looking towards the portal Mephiles had generated he could see that as massive stacks of steam lava erupted from the floor that it was still there, yet diminishing in size quickly.

"INTO THE PORTAL, NOW!" he yelled, himself Omega charging for it immediately. Barry was about to, but swiftly remembered Wally.

Just as Shadow and Omega jumped into the portal to follow Mephiles and escape the impending eruption, Barry swiftly rushed to Wally's still unconscious body. Scooping his nephew up into his arms, he just as swiftly rushed into the portal mere moments before it vanished completely - just narrowly avoiding being caught in the volcano's eruption, hearing the first few seconds of the final roar as the white flash of travelling through the portal took over his eyes.

When the bright lights of portal travel left him, Barry could see that he, Shadow, Omega and Wally had been transported back to Soleanna's New City district, evidently the present time from which they left. They landed on a tiled plaza, with a large clock tower behind them and the various brick-and-mortar buildings that blended in with one another surrounding them. The solace in all of this was that the sky was yet again blue as they reflected the beauty of the ocean, and the clouds were white, joining the sun in the sky as it yet again shined down upon the world - though Barry did have to adjust to seeing sunlight again after spending so much time in darkness.

Speaking of which, there was no sign of Mephiles. Shadow looked around for the demon, but shook his head in frustration once it was apparent the dark entity was nowhere to be found. Omega summarized their situation as such:

"It appears that we have been transported back to the present, though Mephiles managed to transport himself to a different location. I will assist in pursuing him."

Shadow nodded in response to that, though Omega was not the only one desiring to join the quest:

"So will I." Barry proudly declared, wanting more than anything else to track down Mephiles and see him defeated. Though Shadow did not seem to disagree with the sentiment, he was swift to point out one glaring thing:

"First, you need to get your nephew proper medical treatment."

Looking down at the unconscious boy in his arms, Barry closed his eyes and yet again shed a small tear from his eyes. Seeing Wally like that, fighting for his life, and the guilt that he was potentially who caused it, was almost too much for him. Turning to Shadow and Omega, Barry said:

"Where's the nearest hospital?"

The voice Rouge descending into the conversation was ultimately what responded to that statement:

"Unfortunately, the Duke Arturo Memorial Hospital is already filled to maximum capacity" she stated as she landed with the rest of the group, "However, G.U.N. has finally been able to institute both a blockade and a no-fly-zone, thanks to a recent change in Soleanna's leadership. We can take him to a med-bay on one of the ships, hopefully that will be enough."

As Rouge talked to her communicator device to get G.U.N. clearance to one of the vessels now surrounding the border of Soleanna's waters, Barry looked down onto his nephew and spoke softly to him in the vain hope that the boy could hear what he was being told:

"It's alright Wally, we're gonna get you help. You're gonna be back up and running in no time, just trust me, alright bud? We're gonna get you back up faster than I can even run! Promise!"

Of course, Barry knew that Wally was not the only one who needed some form of medical help. Though, he wasn't sure if there was anything that could be done to fix all of his problems at this point.

Not after what he had just been through.

[dustedmagazine]

John Vanderslice — I can't believe civilization is still going here in 2021! Congratulations to all of us, Love, DCB (self-released)

Photo by Andrea DeSouto

I get a strange kind of pleasure from just hanging on by John Vanderslice

John Vanderslice has never been a regular songwriter. The indie-rocker's earlier albums featured strange characters, Romantic poetry, narrative possibilities. He somehow recorded the songs with a meticulous recklessness. Anything he released on his own immediately sounded like a Vanderslice record, even while his production work for other bands (like Death Cab for Cutie or the Mountain Goats) brought out their best. In 2014, after almost flipping a tour van, he decided to step away from recording his own music. He continued his production work at his studio, but for about five years, he was done.

He couldn't stay away, though, and when he returned with Cedars in 2019, it marked a shift in his sound, as he moved away from his rock work toward something more abrasive and experimental. The changes had more to do with developing certain elements of his art rather than jumping into a new genre. Vanderslice didn't come back from retirement reborn, but he did seem more confident in embracing the more irregular aspects of his work. 

That album might not have been a full departure, but what followed largely has been (making a revisit to Cedars worthwhile). Having moved on from Tiny Telephone and its analog equipment, Vanderslice has embraced synthesizes and stranger effects. He's cited some odd hip-hop influences, but his recent releases have also touched on glitch-pop and broadly considered electronica, all while maintaining an idiosyncratic vision. The last few releases (Eeeeeeep! and Dollar Hits) saw Vanderslice finding his way, but new EP I can't believe civilization is still going here in 2021! Congratulations to all of us, Love, DCB shows the maturation of his aesthetic movement. 

The DCB of the title is David Berman, a friend of Vanderslice's, and the title comes from a postcard that the Silver Jews frontman sent to his pal. The EP carries a dark undercurrent, as it comes in tribute to Berman but in the shadow of that artist's death. Vanderslice's own mental health issues come into play, too, and a record described as an “anti-suicide pact” that came out of the COVID lockdown can't exactly be chipper. 

Even so, there's hope here. Single "I Get A Strange Kind Of Pleasure From Just Hanging On" comes closest to pop and, for all its strange sonics, it connects more cleanly to Vanderslice's past records. Lyrically, he encourages listeners (and, presumably, himself) to get out of their own heads and do what they need to do to preserve their emotional well-being. The chords and structures make sense here even as the instructions are a little ambiguous. Vanderslice wants to escape desire and escape dark thoughts, but he knows we're “hanging by a thread” and can't fully relax. 

In that sense, the song relieves some of the darkness of the rest of the EP, but, early in the record, it also suggests the nearness of the abyss. The other songs experiment considerably more, rare moments of pop being undercut by glitch or structural surprises (“Don't Forget About Me” does this interplay the best). When “White Chalk” brings the record to a close, we've both simulated and escaped a bleak psychological time. 

As a bonus, Vanderslice looks back as he pushes forward, including a second disc. Ethical Jute Mouse compiles rarities from 2001-2020. The set includes all sorts of materials, most of it fairly random, like the set of “8 second songs” he did for Kickstarter supporters (they're longer than eight seconds but still very short). Fans will find plenty to dig here, with the need to play archaeologist relieved. The quality varies, of course, but it's a highly listenable disc of outtakes and oddities. A cover of Jason Molina's “Long Dark Blues” works particularly well, as does Vanderslice's take on “Karma Police” (particularly fitting given the way the new EP would fit in with the music Radiohead would make immediately after OK Computer). To no surprise, the high point comes with “Time Travel Is Lonely,” performed here with Spoon, with the memorable opening drum part switched to a guitar part. 

The rarities comp feels a little like Vanderslice deliberately closing the door on a personal era. As he does that, he takes an important step forward in the new one. The EP might not be the full realization of what he's heading toward, but it's a noteworthy release in its own right as well as a visible part of the process. It's nice to see he's still going in 2021, and – all things considered – it does feel like congratulations are in order.  

Justin Cober-Lake

[writingsbychlo]

feels like loneliness (12)

word count; 8976

summary; you make a last minute decision to save your friend, even f it means risking your own life, and thomas can’t accept it.

notes; I sobbed while writing this, y’all don’t stand a chance.

warnings; character death, injury, gore, violence, explosions, gun use, bombs, near-death experience, angst.

“this is the last time I play this game”

You had barely made it three streets over before the screaming of the kids caught your ear, stonework crumbling and metal screeching behind you and you shook your head, a small smile on your lips as you watched the bus roll awkwardly along the side of a building as it gained more and more height. “I’m so glad that’s not me.”

It was soon lifted over your head, and you stopped your movements for a second in order to watch it go, the crane twisting as it made it safely over the wall, and you squeezed your eyes shut, your heart lifting a little at knowing at least the busload of kids were safe, as was Brenda. Now, you only had to worry about the rest of your friends.

Spinning, you ran forward through the cities you knew, being careful to stick to shadows as you navigated the buildings, more and more guards flying past on foot and in cars, but they were all too preoccupied to notice your lonesome presence sneaking back towards the tower. After all, why would anyone still be trying to sneak in?

You were almost there, you could see the building before you, the entrance to it, the pool at the bottom, and the guards still laying unconscious on the floor. Before you could take another step, the ground shook, an explosion booming loudly and your eyes tore to the suddenly formed hole in the wall, the glass on the building shattering from the sonic boom and you stumbled from the impact.

You weren’t sure what had happened, you were staring at the gap, before suddenly it had clicked with you.

The group beyond the wall, the freedom fighters who had been determined to take down WCKD, now with their defences down as you all fought to save Minho, they had the chance to fight, and they’d taken it. The sweeping realisation of why Lawrence hadn’t wanted anything in return for the equipment you had needed came flooding over you like a tidal wave and you gripped at your stomach as crushing emotions poured in.

The man had never needed time to get more cure, he had needed time to take down the organisation that took everything from him, and unknowingly, you had given him just that. With a small smile, you nodded your thanks towards the explosion, knowing he may be out there somewhere, or perhaps already dead, but he wouldn’t make it to the end of the night no matter what. 

After taking a moment, you were quickly on your feet again, bolting across the roads to stand outside of the building, peering up at it carefully, just to realise how high up you were going to have to go. At your feet, a guard lay unconscious, twitching and jumping as electricity still jumped over his body occasionally and you grimaced, leaning down to pluck the keycard from him carefully, before making your way cautiously towards the entrance. 

Lawrence’s distractions had surprisingly done wonders for you, with the level of people fleeing and darting around the building in pure terror, you were able to navigate your way through the lobby easily, nobody even casting you a second glance as you walked right through the crowd, shouldering past people aggressively. 

Kicking your way into a stairwell, you panted as the door shut behind you, the muffled sounds of continued explosions and gunfire picking up outside as the city was raided and reclaimed by the outsiders. Your breath was the only thing you could hear clearly, the sharp and crisp sounds as you tried to pull breath into your lungs rung out and echoed loudly as you began dashing up the steps, checking the signs at each level for ones that read labs. 

Your body was aching, muscles sore and you were you had climbed so high that you could no longer see the floor at the bottom of the winding staircase when you looked down, your vision blurring as you dizzied and you had to drag your feet up to the next level.

You checked the sign, reading it twice as the likelihood of finding the words you were looking for had felt like they had become impossible, but there they were, written clear as day on a sign and you dropped your head back for a second, a small cheer leaving your lips as you found the level you were looking for. 

With a renewed sense of hope, you could finally enter the corridor, and the second you opened it, the peaceful silence of the staircase was blasted away, your eyes widening and adrenaline flooding your system as alarms blared and workers screamed while they ran, the fight outside much louder now as broken windows allowed the amplified sounds to travel into the building with ease. 

Dropping your bag at your feet, you rifled through it, pulling out your notebook and gripping it tightly as you swung the pack back up onto your arm, only bothering with the one strap, your fingers drumming against the worn leather as you stepped from the gentle ease of the staircase and into the panicked ess of the corridors.

You followed along, your body constantly being shoved and rammed by those who were desperately fleeing but you pushed on, checking inside each window for the room you were looking for along the vacating floor, and you beamed when you found it. Sliding the card through the scanner on the door, the light flashed from red to green in a split second, and you quickly made your way into the room, stopping in your tracks as you saw who was still sitting at the desk, her head lifting to look at you and shock covered her own features when she registered your presence.

Her gaze flicked from your eyes, to the notebook clenched in your hands, and she was still for a moment as the cogs turned in her head before she gasped loudly, spinning in her chair to face you. “You know, don’t you? You worked it out, you know how to make the cure!” You licked over your lips, your hand flying to the gun on your thigh and she held her hands up quickly, shaking her head as her jaw hung open. “No! No, wait! I can help you!”

“And why the fuck would I trust you, Teresa?” 

“I can get you access to the equipment you need, to save Newt. To save everyone!” You hesitated, before swallowing thickly, your head dipping in a nod. 

“I see one dodgy thing I don’t like, I will shoot you, with zero hesitation, you got that?” She kept her lips pursed shut, nodding her head as she stood up and you made your way towards her, placing your book down on the desk and flicking through it to find the pages you needed. 

You yelled out equipment to her, and she dashed around the room, setting up your workspace as you grabbed at the different chemicals, your hands shaking with your nerves as your heart raced in your ear, so fast you thought you may hyperventilate, and you pushed down the panic attack you could feel beginning to rear its head.

The door hissed open as you were stirring chemicals and you froze as you looked at the woman who had walked in, your hand flying to your thigh as she looked between you both in shock. “Teresa, and.. (Y/N)?” Your eyes narrowed as she said your name, and she was almost taken aback by seeing your presence. “What are you doing here? You need to leave!”

The war around you continued to rage on, the lights in the room flickering as the screaming and fighting outside never ceased, the situation only growing more dangerous every second you were here, and you flashed her the dirtiest look you could muster, a growl on your lips as you did. “Not without my goddamn cure!”

“Cure? Wh- No, the city is falling apart! It’s too late for that!”

“No!” You snapped your gaze to her, leaving the work you were doing alone and she flinched at the volume of your voice, you were seething, and you were sure she could see the fire in your eyes as you glared at her. “It’s not! Look, just look!” You dripped some of the blue mixture you had made onto the slide carefully, placing it under the microscope as the tentatively made her way across the room, cautious of your borderline hysterical state. 

Looking around the room, you caught sight of the cabinet you were looking for, and you had given up bothering with scanners and keys, instead, you used your elbow to smash the glass on the door, cold air and mist seeping out into the room from the chilled cabinet as you scanned your fingers over the vials, only to curse when they weren’t sorted by name, but by code.

“What serial code was Thomas?” You waited a few seconds as you looked at the samples, before spinning on your heel as you looked at the two confused women behind you, Ava Paige with her fingers brushing against the pages of your book, her jaw dropped. “Serial code! Which damn serial code was Thomas?”

She snapped out of it, fumbling over her words as she tried to string them together; “H-He was.. was.. A-Two! Thomas is subject A-Two!”

“He was A-Two.” You muttered to her, quickly plucking his blood sample from where it was stored as you made your way across the room. She glanced down at your slide, brows raised at the liquid sitting on it.

“What is that?”

“The Flare virus.” She stepped back suddenly, eyes wide and you smirked slightly, taking seat before it uncaringly, knowing you were immune. You lifted the vial carefully, using a needle to extract some of the blood from Thomas’ sample and drip it gently onto the slide, before peering through the lens and adjusting it, a loud and happy cry leaving your lips in shock that it had worked. “Holy shit!”

You backed away, your hand flying up to cover your mouth suddenly and Teresa moved forward, peering through the lens to look, a gasp leaving her own lips as she checked, checking again before pulling back to look at you. “It’s not just slowing down the virus, it’s destroying it.” The woman who was the source of all your torture stepped forwards, curiously looking into the microscope as she took in the sight before her, and you shot back up, searching the shelf, snatching a few others before you searched for clean slides. “What are you doing?”

“Seeing who else has the genes. Who else is the cure, not just an immune.” You began mixing at the vials, turning to look at her carefully. “We need Thomas back here, we need more blood if we’re going to save Newt.” She paused, before nodding her head carefully, taking off with Doctor Paige as the two ran to find him and you only hoped you could trust her to come back.

Alone, you began to work on all of the vials. You would test and note who else was immune, as you began mixing for a cure quickly. You were stopped, however, when the door hissed open, and Jansen stood before you, a wicked grin on his lips and your hand flew to your thigh, but the barrel was pointed on you before you could and you dropped the vial in your hands, blood spilling across the floor and ruining the cure-sample as you stood, hands raised in the air.

He advanced into the room, tutting quietly as he looked around, mumbling insults about how you should never have returned. Upon his instructions, you were backed into the wall, pressed to it as you held your hands above your head, and before you knew it, the base of his gun was colliding with the front of your skull, the world around you going back as you dropped from consciousness.

Newt slumped against the wall, his body weight becoming too much for them all to run with and Thomas panicked as the had to stop, leaning him down gently. The second he was on the floor, he keeled over, coughing up thick mouthfuls of black blood onto the floor beside him, the residue dribbling down along his skin as he was too weak to even wipe it away. 

Thomas had no idea what to say to his friend, his eyes finding Minho’s and clearly the other runner had no idea either, because the look on his face was certainly reflected in his own, Thomas was sure of it, utter hopelessness seeping in. Light suddenly seemed to find them as Thomas looked up at the humming sound he recognised overhead, and like a lightbulb going off, Brenda’s words made sense as he watched the Berg they had used barely two weeks ago in an attempt to save Minho showed up again, cruising slowly over the skies towards the tunnels they had designated as their meeting point.

The second he tried to pull the infected blond to his feet, the wheezing and rasping in his lungs only picked up, increasing tenfold as he could barely catch a breath, coughing up more of the black substance as it filled his lungs and his body slumped down even further.

“Minho, you gotta run ahead and grab the serum, get back to us as soon as you can.” Minho looked at Thomas lie he was insane, but from the reaction to simply trying to stand up, Newt was definitely not going to be able to make it himself.

“He’s right! I can cover.” Before he could leave fully, Newt grasped onto his arm, meaningful thank you’s falling from his lips to his friend and Thomas’ heart broke as he heard the emotion in them, knowing he wasn’t just referring to the serum, but to their entire friendship altogether. 

He watched the two go, monitoring them to make sure they made it through, and the second he looked back down, fear spiked in his system as he looked at his friend’s head, lolled to the side as he rasped for breath. “Newt! Hey, Newt!” Grabbing the edges of the boy’s jacket, Thomas shook him roughly. If they were going to make it, they needed to meet Minho half-way, because Newt was quickly running out of time, the virus catching up to him quicker than expected. “We’re gonna try this, okay? We gotta move, now. Let’s get you up, come on! Let’s go, come on.”

“No Thomas..” He seemed to become coherent again, all his strength going into tugging at the string sitting around his neck as Thomas tried to scoop him up, and Newt wriggled in his grasp, holding it out to him. “Take it!”

He held the bundle out to him, and Thomas shook his head, “Later! Really got to go, right now! Come on!” This only caused Newt to struggle more, pushing against him as he pushed the necklace in his direction once again.

“Take it!” He had never heard Newt scream in such a way, and Thomas stilled, nodding his head and wrapping his hand around the charm on the end of the string, the metal cylinder sitting in his closed fist. “Please. Please Tommy, please.”

“Alright.” He shoved it into his pocket securely, watching as the life seemed to drain from his friend even more. It was like everything in Newt had given up, and Thomas realised if he was doing this, he was doing it alone now. “I need you to give me everything you got you hear me? One, two, three!” On the final number, he hauled the boy to his feet, receiving very little assistance and he grunted as he lifted him up, Newt’s arm settling over his shoulder as he grasped at Thomas weakly for support, his feet dragging in what could barely be classed as steps and the two stumbled their way out into the crossfire, following the trail Minho and Gally had just taken moments ago.

They had stumbled across the road, dodging bullets and explosions as Thomas tried to take the fastest route, no longer taking the roads, just weaving through broken buildings to get there as fast as possible, and the fight was soon fading away behind them. 

The tunnels were in sight, he could see the Berg sitting across the building and it was only a few more streets to go, but as Newt’s legs finally gave out, his toes caught on the edge of the concrete, dragging him backwards as the pair tumbled to the floor. Sprawling out, Newt jerked violently, his eyes fading out as he lost focus, staring over Thomas’ shoulder and into the sky as he gurgled and coughed on his own blood the substance spattering out with each breath.

Gripping at his side, Thomas tried to pull his jacket out from under him where it had gotten trapped under the boy’s body, grabbing handfuls of the material to pull him back to his feet and a sharp sensation stabbed at his hand, and he was quick to recoil in shock. He couldn't see anything, but as Newt twitched and jerked, Thomas felt around on the inner pocket, finding the weapon that had injured him as he pulled out the exposed and empty needle.

His eyebrows were furrowed for a second, before realisation flooded him and he plunged his hand back into the storage flap, feeling around before his fingers found the little container he was looking for. Pulling it out, he lifted it to his eyes, the clear liquid you had given Newt being revealed and he dropped his head in relief, a tired grin on his lips as he looked at his almost unconscious friend.

Lifting it with shaky hands, he turned towards the flickering lights of the streetlamps around him, leaving Newt unattended for only a moment, as he tipped the liquid gently into the needle, watching what he was doing. “Thomas?” 

His head snapped up as Teresa’s voice rang out over the com-system, his eyebrows furrowing as she called out to him, and he momentarily forgot about the serum he held in his confusion. 

“Can you hear me?” She paused again as he spoke, his head whipping around as if he would find any answers, anywhere. “I need you to listen to me. I know you have no reason to trust me, but you can trust (Y/N), and the work she did. I need you to come back.” He reeled at the sound of your name on her lips, his head spinning. “You can save Newt, there’s still time for him!” He glanced back at his friend, laying unconscious on the floor where he had been dropped, and his thoughts were racing, head too busy to be able to do anything as he tried to think straight. “There’s a reason Brenda isn’t sick anymore, it’s your blood! You cured her! She doesn’t have to be the only one, all you have to do is come back, and this will all finally be over. Just come back to us, I know you’ll do the right-”

She was suddenly cut off, and Thomas’ stomach twisted at the word us, his brows furrowing and he shook it off, trying to think about his options, trying to decide what needed to be done. When he turned around, Newt was stood back to his feet, head tipped to the side as his body twitched and spasmed, no recognition showing on his face as he stared at Thomas. “Newt?” 

The boy growled, lunging for him and Thomas dropped the needle in his hand, pushing his friend to the floor in shock as the boy tried to attack him. “Newt! It’s me, it’s me!” He reached down to find the needle, before Newt’s arms wrapped around his middle, tackling him to the ground and the two rolled across the floor as Newt scratched and bit, trying to tear at Thomas, and he barely kicked the half-crank off him 

Rolling onto his knees the boy gasped for breath, holding himself up shakily before looking at Thomas. “Tommy, kill me!” As fast as the recognition had come about, it had gone, the infection taking over his mind once again and he snarled, rasping and growling as he threw himself against Thomas again, taking him to the floor. Newt’s hands wrapped around his throat, choking him as his body was straddled and he fought to try and push the blond boy off from on top of him, oxygen no longer making it into his lungs and he reached out to his side, searching, but the needle was too far away, laying idly on the concrete. Again, his friend peeked back through the haze, his eyes widening as his hands left Thomas’ neck “I’m sorry, Tommy!”

“It’s okay..” He took ragged breaths, panicking as Newt’s hand fell to his thigh, lifting the gun from its holster and pressing it to his temple. Swinging his hand forward, Thomas screamed as he knocked the weapon from his friend’s hand, and he pushed the boy off of him, crawling rapidly towards the needle lying on the floor and grasping it between his fingers, lifting it up triumphantly. “Just let me give yo-”

A laboured scream cut him off and Newt was lost to them once again, but he now had a knife clutched in his hands as the crank version of his friend stared him down menacingly. Swinging the blade at him, it sliced through the air as the boy advanced on him and Thomas backed away desperately. There was no rhythm or flow to his swings, he was just chopping madly at the air as he ran forward, gaining on Thomas quickly. With a deep breath, Thomas stopped backing away, raising the hand with the needle as Newt aimed the blade towards him once again. Plunging the needle into his neck, he pushed the serum into his skin, feeling the boy go limp in his grasp and relief flooded his body. 

The feeling was quickly pushed away when a hot and sticky substance began to leak out against his fingers, no pain following it and Thomas knew it wasn’t his own blood. Pulling back in fear, he found the blade buried deep in Newt’s own flesh, fondness once again showing in his eyes as he looked up to meet his friend’s glance and Thomas panicked as the boy collapsed to the floor.

Cupping his head softly, Thomas laid him down, tears filling his eyes as he looked at his friend, blood dripping along his shoulder and beginning to pool on the concrete below, and Thomas assessed the severity of the wound, his hands holding down around the knife to put pressure on it as he mumbled to his friend to hold on.

He held the boy with fondness as he watched his consciousness begin to drip away from his eyes, before his head snapped up at the sound of footsteps approaching, Minho and Brenda slowing to a rapid halt as they took in the scene before them, Thomas on his knees sniffling as he held a bloodied Newt, and his mouth dropped open to speak.

“I-It’s okay! It's his shoulder! Just get him t-to the ship, put the serum in him! H-He’ll be okay!” His words were shaky as he spoke, and Minho approached carefully, hiking his unconscious friend up into his arms as the boy’s chest rose and fell slowly and weakly, but the breaths were still being sucked into his lungs, and the veins on his neck were already beginning to recede.

Looking around, Brenda offered a hand to a weak Thomas to pull him from his knees, and he followed her gaze as she looked out at the empty space. “Where’s (Y/N)?”

“..With you?” Thomas questioned, the plan having been that the two of them would go together, get a bus, get the kids, get safely outside the wall. He felt bile rise in his throat as he watched Brenda shake her head, his heart skipping a beat as her worried eyes found his. 

“No, she left the bus. She came back. She said she had to save Newt a-”

“She what?”

Thomas’ body physically wretched with dry-heaves as he tried to calm the pure terror swimming in his veins at knowing you weren’t safe, and suddenly, the plurals Teresa had used made sense, he knew exactly where you were, and both of them turned to look at the building in the centre of the city, the crowds already making their way toward the main base of operations to take it down.

“She went back to make a damn cure.” He shook his head, the fight or flight instinct kicking in so hard that Thomas was sure in this moment he could’ve wrestled a griever and won, the spikes of adrenaline in his system powered by his crushing fear were overwhelming. “I have to go and get her!”

“You’ll never make it back in time!” He turned to look at Minho, who shook his head aggressively at Thomas’ actions in order tot alk him down form the path he was about to take. 

“I have to try! I-”

“She wouldn’t want you to risk your shucking life! There’s a reason she didn’t tell you she was doing this! She’d want you to live!” Minho insisted, and Thomas bit his lip, bouncing on the balls of his feet at the newfound energy drowning everything else out.

“I don’t want to live without her! Not again!” His friend opened his mouth to speak, but Thomas wasn’t having any of it, and both Brenda and Minho knew it. There was nothing for him if there wasn’t you. “Get back, take Newt. I’ll be okay!”

Before either could protest, he was bursting out in a sprint, heading back toward you as his eyes fixed on the upper levels, knowing exactly where he would find you now.

When you finally came to, your head was throbbing, and you could feel the cool air in the room and the breeze that was carrying through smashed windows catching on the exposed wound on the back of your head, sticky blood still dripping along your neck. Your vision was blurry, the lights above you making it hard to open your eyes but when you finally did, you realised you were still inside the WCKD labs, staring up at the ceiling. 

It took a second, before suddenly, the recollections of what had happened came crashing back down on you and you tried to sit up, your arms and legs bound to the surgical chair you were in as pure fear flooded your system. Whipping your head to the side, you caught sight of Thomas, his worried eyes on you in the same position as you were, fists clenched as Teresa drew blood from his arm slowly. 

Your eyes narrowed on her as you looked up to her, and her sights were already set on you, eyes wide as she ducked her head to cover herself slightly, nodding further into the corner. Tipping your head back, you strained against the seat, a hiss falling from you as the cut on your skull throbbed, but then you remembered what had happened; Jansen. 

Teresa had gone to call out for Thomas with Ava Paige, and then Jansen had found you.

Looking around for the other woman, you found her nowhere to be seen, your brows furrowing and you let your gaze roam back to Thomas’, his eyes looking over your face carefully. Jansen was watching out of the window, and even from your restrained position, you could see the orange glows of the fires that had taken over, the darkness the smoke was causing in the sky, and you could hear the tremendous crashing of buildings crumbling and falling to rubble on the ground, as they always should have been.

“Do you know what this place is?” His voice was eerily calm, more at ease than you had ever heard Jansen speak before, and you tipped your head to look at him, watching as he finally turned to face you both, directing his attention from the scene outside to instead assess Teresa’s work with the two of you. “It’s a lifeboat. The whole world might be sinking, but that doesn’t mean we have to go down with it.”

You struggled in your restraints, your arms thrashing as you tried to sit up, and the man merely chuckled at your futile attempts, making his way between the chairs to lean over you. He raised a hand, smirking as you flinched, before he gently brought his fingers up to brush some hair away from your face, and Thomas thrashed in his own seat the second Jansen had touched you, shouting threats behind him, to which the man simply ignored. 

“How much longer?” He waited for Teresa’s answer, the girl mumbling as steadily as possible that it wouldn’t be much longer, and with his back turned to her, he missed watching her slowly packing your back with equipment, your eyes focusing on it as she tucked needles and syringes into your pack and hid them. “It’s some good work you did there, (Y/N). You were so close to a cure before, that little notebook you had always had on you, who knew the secrets to saving the world would be in there. You were days away, perhaps even less had you just shared your work, and instead, you let your emotions get in the way. You had yourself sent up into the trials instead.” 

You scoffed at his words, trying to lean away from his touch on your face and he tutted, shaking his head, before slipping his hand to your head, pressing down on the cut from the gun he had hit you with as you cried out, sharp pains shooting through you from the injured patch on your scalp. “Get your fucking hands away from her!” Thomas screamed, thrashing in the surgical bed beside you and his hands retracted, your whimpers sounding lowly as the stinging began to subside. 

“Why don’t you just kill us?” You mumbled, and he grinned, turning to walk away from you as he headed over to check on Teresa’s progress. 

“Kill you? No, no, we couldn't do that.” He seemed to stop, contemplating his words as his head tipped to the side. “Well, we can now we have your notes. You are going to die, but Thomas here, we have to take special care of him.” Jansen promised, and you fell still in your bed, your eyes darting over to your notebook. “You are just here to break his will. Once he’s watched you die before his eyes, he’ll have nothing left to fight for, and I will have a living, breathing, cure.”

“So, do it, you fucking coward! You’ll never be able to read those notes! You’ll never understand them!” He grinned at your bravery, unholstering the handgun sitting on his hip and nodding in agreement with your words.

“You’re right, I was never much one for science, I’ve always had stronger passions, made the hard choices, not the difficult theories, but Teresa here, she understands them perfectly.” He hummed, and your eyes flicked to look at the girl behind him, in her hands, a dark blue swilling in the needle as the injected it into tubes for safety, and your eyes found hers, a subtle nod being cast in your direction as she placed them down silently. 

Your eyes moved to the side, Thomas shaking his head rapidly as his he looked at you, fighting and tugging on the restraints, his skin red and raw as he tried to wiggle out of their tight hold, tears lining his eyes and spilling down his cheeks as he looked at you. Giving him a soft smile, you nodded, swallowing thickly as the barrel of the gun pressed to your temple. “Don’t let them break you, Tommy.”

“He’s already broken.” Jansen scoffed his thumb flicking the safety off as he curled his finger around the trigger, and your eyes closed tightly, your breath held and Thomas’ pleading and shouting fell silent, everything drowning away as the sound of your own steady heart rate filled your eyes, relaxing you and easing your mind to go.

The sound of shattering glass filled your ears, a grunt, followed by a thud and your eyes snapped open, finding Jansen laying on the floor as Teresa held the bottom of a large glass container, dropping it to the floor as she dived forward, fingers shaking as she tried to undo the straps on your hand and you took deep breaths, your head practically spinning as nothing but complete relief flooded your system, the joy making you feel high as you collapsed back into the chair, bringing your wrists up to rub at the raw skin as soon as they were free. 

She had barely freed one of your feet, when you looked back up at her, your eyes opening in a scream as Jansen rose from the ground and Thomas shouted out to warn her, but before she could move, the man had a fistful of her hair and a hand on her shoulder, pulling her back and throwing her into the table she’d been operating at. Her body flew right over it as she knocked everything with her, glass shattering as liquid spilt out across the floor, your notebook sliding towards the window as it left the table and you shot up, struggling to free your other foot. 

He followed her, a tube ready to use for the injection in his hand and she crawled under tables, trying to escape, and Thomas called out her name frantically, trying to tear himself from the chair as you stood over him. You pulled at the leather locked around his wrists, freeing one of his hands and he immediately moved to free his other as you worked on free the straps around his feet.

The second he was no longer bound, he was rolling from the chair, leaving your side as he dashed to help her, and Jansen held onto her head tightly, slamming it down against the edge of a metal table and her body fell limp. Pushing one of the cartridges of blue liquid into the device, he rolled up his sleeve, exposing his own Flare covered arm, but before he could administer the injection, Thomas’ arms wrapped around his waist, tackling the man straight through one of the glass walls. You were stopped for a second, the complete catastrophe of what had happened in the last few hours just beginning to hit you. The two were fighting, and you snapped away from the scene outside, glancing between your bag on the other side of the room and Teresa laying unconscious on the other, a curse falling from your lips as you dashed towards her and dropped to your knees. 

Casting a glance out into the corridor, you watched the two men fight, punches being thrown and grunts sounding out as the swung at one another and you held the girls face gently, tapping her cheeks as you mumbled her name, eventually just resorting to shaking her roughly. She stirred in your arms and you cried out in relief, turning to watch as Thomas landed blow after blow on the man attacking you, before his fist was blocked, worry replacing how proud you felt and you turned away as you watched Thomas be thrown to the floor, your hands grabbing onto Teresa’s as you helped her get to her feet shakily. 

When the two of you stumbled to the doorway, your eyes widened, a scream falling from your lips as the same gun that had been aimed at you was now aimed at Thomas pointed directly at him and you shook, Teresa now being the one to hold you upright as you desperately tried to find a way out of this, to figure something out, to be able to save the man you loved. 

Before you could process it, the corridor lit up so brightly you could barely see and a second later, the building shook, metal support beams and walls crumbling at the impact as your body launched forwards, the glass along the entire side of the building shattering, but it gave you enough time for a distraction as Jansen hit the floor, the gun sliding away from him. 

It soon sounded again, more chunks of building falling and Thomas dashed over to you, his hands finding your face as he cupped your cheeks, his hands trembling so violently in fear he could barely hold on and his body was sagging. “Let’s go, come one, let’s go!”

He began to drag you away, Teresa swiping the device Jansen had been planning to use to inject himself from the floor and you hesitated, the villain groaning as he pushed himself out from under the rubble. “Wait! I have to get the bag! Go!” Thomas looked like he was ready to argue and you pushed him away from you, nodding your head as your eyes stayed locked with his. “I’ll be there, just go!”

With a moment's pause, he left, bolting away from you with Teresa as Jansen began to free himself and you ducked back into the room quietly, the building wobbling as fire took over the lab, plumes of smoke filling the air, dust causing you to cough loudly. Gunshots sounded behind you, the shadow of the man chasing your friends retreating down the corridor and you waved a hand in front of your face, you pushed around in broken furniture and equipment, before spotting the strap of your bag, layered with dust but it was there. 

Lifting up the table that had fallen over it, you smiled victoriously, searching about on the floor until your fingers brushed the worn leather of your notebook, the keys to the cure sealed safely inside and you pushed it into the heavy pack, sealing it tightly and securing it on your back. As you made to stand, more missiles and bombs hit against the side of the building and it jerked violently, beginning to tip heavily to one side and the room around you began to collapse in on itself, the corridor falling in as debris, concrete and rubble blocked off any chance you had of leaving.

Your eyes narrowed and you stared at it, a loud scream falling from your lips in anger. Your throat was raw as you let out the sound, your own ears aching as you cursed and screamed. “No! No fucking way!” You stood up, fists clenched so tightly by your sides that you were sure your nails would draw blood from your palms and you stared at the blocked exit, the room sealed around you as it began to crumble. “I have not come this fucking far! I will not die at a goddamn WCKD facility!”

You heaved in ragged breaths searching the room. There was no way you were going to be able to move all the chunks of concrete and metal blocking the doors. Looking above yourself, you found no access to vents, the support beams giving way in the roof anyway, and you were left with the open window. As you peered out, you found nothing but concrete below, the flames of the lower floors twisting up and roaring in the air, the heat reaching you simply from looking down and you took a moment to calm yourself.

You watched the Berg in the distance, seeing its rotors slowly begin to move as it prepared to lift itself off the ground and you dropped your head with a smile, cheering to yourself among the burning building. “Okay, guess we’re going up.” Peering out, you plotted your route carefully. You were close to the top of the building, and it was only five floors. You could do this. 

Your hand shot out, grabbing onto rolls of bandages as you wrapped up your hands as much as possible, covering your palms and your knuckles, tightening the laces on your boots and tucking them in as you prepared yourself, shaking your body down and hoping it would help dissipate the fear filling every inch of you. Leaning out of the tilted building, you grasped onto a chunk of loose rock, tugging on it to check it was still secure before holding onto it tightly. 

Your foot followed, finding a gap in the framework and with a deep breath, you swung your body out from the relative safety of the floor you had been stood on, your free hand reaching out to grab onto the rock, fingers digging into cracks as your toes did the same, and you huffed out an unbelieving laugh as you successfully clung to the side of the building. 

Lifting one hand, as far as it could reach, you grasped onto a metal support beam, testing its stability before raising a foot, pushing off as you climbed higher. You had soon set a rhythm, your eyes searching for things to grab onto and stand on, and before you knew it, the room you had left was now pouring with fire, two floors behind as the edge of the roof only got closer and closer to you. 

Your head was throbbing, the cut at your hairline was spewing blood from your exertion, and you could feel the trail of it trickling own your temple and along your cheek, blood dripping from your jaw but you couldn’t waste time focusing on it now. Ash, dust and crumbled building covered your sweaty skin, sticking to you, and as it burned, it made it easier to climb, your dirtied skin making your grip dry and strong, and you panted, looking up at the distance you still had to go.

“This is the last time I climb a broken building for the rest of my life, I swear to shuck.” You whispered, taking a laboured breath and groaning as you pushed yourself further up. “Damn tunnels and damn skyscrapers, never again will I go near either. I refuse it.” You huffed, your own audible complaining being the only thing keeping you going.

Three floors up, and you found a hole in the side of the building, dragging yourself into it carefully as your exhausted body lay out on the concrete, your legs still hanging over the ledge as you secure yourself on the floor for a few seconds breather. You could hear the Berg now, getting closer and closer to you, only minutes away and you heaved yourself up into a sitting position, a cry on your lips as your muscles screamed out in agony. 

Looking around yourself, you identified the broken and partially collapsed stairs before you. The sign reading ‘roof access’ was barely hanging onto the wall and you looked between the outside of the building you had been climbing and the broken stairs. Both were dangerous, and both would probably result in your death, but as you looked down at your hands, you made your decision. 

Your nails were ripped and torn short, the tips of your fingers burned, scraped and bleeding from all the hot debris and jagged rock you had needed to cling to in order to climb, you made your decision. Using the metal railing to pull yourself to your feet, your body leaned heavily against the quickly warming metal for support as you inched your way up the stairs. 

You had narrowly avoided holes and gaps, the rock simply crumbling beneath your feet in patches as your foot pushed straight through and you had to catch yourself from dropping, but soon, you were finding the door that read ‘roof’, already gaping and flapping in the wind as you pulled it open. 

Tears lined your eyes as you coughed, the smoke thicker up here, as the fire reached where you were, and you waved a hand in front of your face, stepping out onto the shaky metal platforms as you stumbled forwards. By the time you could see straight, you made out the forms on the floor, Thomas sprawled out on the ground as Teresa sat behind him, supporting him as much as he could and his hand was gripped to his stomach, blood pumping between his fingers violently each time he coughed and spluttered.

You moved forward, stumbling as quickly as you could before dropping to your knees before the boy on the floor, the hot tears in your eyes beginning spill down your cheeks as you sobbed on a sore throat. His free hand rose, wiping the blood away from your cheeks carefully as your tears mixed with the dirt smeared across your skin. “I told you to drop your hero-complex, look at you.” He wheezed, his hand settled over your cheek delicately as his thumb stroked at your face, his eyes locked with yours as he stared at you, like you were the only thing in the world that mattered. 

You let out a choked laugh at his words, more tears spilling down your cheeks as you brushed hair away from his forehead carefully, your hands resting over his on his stomach and his blood spilled out and covered your own fingers, as his separated slightly, yours sliding between them as together the two of you held pressure on his wound with your linked hands. “What? And let you have all the fun?”

He shook his head with a smile, his eyes closing gently as he clung onto you, and you looked up to Teresa, trying to blink away your tears as she cried desperately herself. “I-I’m sorry, I tried!” She whimpered, her shaky hand holding out the last vial of the cure and you took it, wiping as your eyes and tucking the blue vial into the pocket of your bag, because it didn’t matter now. 

“I know, T.” You took a hand away from Thomas’ face to hold hers, squeezing it reassuringly before letting it return to Thomas’ face, holding him in a soft grip. “I forgive you.” As soon as you said those words, she seemed to break, a loud cry leaving her as she leaned over and you looked down at Thomas, a small smile on his face as he watched you.

“I need to tell you something.” You shook your head, biting on your lip as you pressed a tender kiss to his forehead and he whined, insisting you listen to him. “I have to say it now, so you can remember hearing it at least once!” He groaned, and a fresh set of tears began to find a place along your eyes as they glazed over and you willed them back as you looked at him. “You need to know! You need to know just how much I care, how much I truly, irrevocably, lov-”

He was cut off as a wind swept over you all, violent coughs leaving you and you looked up to the source, the Berg skimming up the side of the building just in time, lights shining into your eyes brightly and you covered them, the machine spinning around to face away from you and the back dropped open as it swayed, trying to hold itself steady next to the building. 

With a happy cry, you looked down at him, both of your hands coming to cup his cheeks as you looked at him intently, neither of you caring about the blood smearing across his skin as you stared at one another. 

“You’re not telling me here. Okay?” He nodded weakly as he looked at you. “You’re going to get up, and you’re going to fight, you hear me? One last time, and then you can tell me when we’re safe, and happy.”

“When we’re safe and happy.” He confirmed, his words wheezed as both you and Teresa reached under his arms, pulling him to his feet as he cried out in pain, but you ignored it, dragging him towards the ledge. The gap was too far, and no matter how many times Teresa shouted at them to get closer, you knew they couldn't, the building was teetering dangerously as it began to give way under its own weight, not to mention the flames that were rising higher and higher around the edge of the building, and you knew you’d have to throw him. 

Putting all his weight on Teresa, you took off your bag, placing the straps around his dropped head to hand from his neck as you lopped your fingers into his belt, motioning for Teresa to do the same. The building beside you collapsed, the entire front side of it falling away as a loud explosion sounded and your eyes widened. The metal on the opposite side began to buckle under the weight of the top chunk, and in only a few seconds, it would be falling towards you, and it would take out the rest of the platform you stood on with it. 

There was only once chance to save Thomas’ life, and you knew you had to take it, now.

You nodded to her, counting down carefully before you both put all your effort into it, your muscles aching under his weight but he flew forwards, just enough across the gap for his torso to land roughly on the lowered platform and immediately Vince was able to pull him inside. The second they had him inside, they were reaching out again to the two of you, but the deafening and crashing sounds of the building beside finally giving out were ringing out and all of your attention snapped towards it as it fell. 

It hit the roof of the building you were on, jolting it to aggressively that you stumbled in place, but your eyes turned to Thomas, the building trembling beneath your feet and his eyes were wide as you gave him a small smile, nodding to him. “(Y/N)! Teresa!” His voice was laboured and you shook your head with a smile, choking back the tears you wanted to release as you raised a hand, gripping at the charm that hung around your neck. 

“Happy and safe, Tommy.” You whispered, and he shook his head, his hand stretching out to you as the building fell away, and with it, the platform you were beginning to crumble beneath your feet as it’s support was lost. The ground beneath your feet slipped away, your body falling as your eyes stayed locked on Thomas’, a scream leaving his lips as you began to fall away from him. 

Your shoulder jolted, the skin of your wrist stinging as nails scraped at your skin, your body swinging in the air and Minho peered down at you, shaking his head from where he hung from the aircraft, his hands wrapped tightly around a rope, a grimace on his lips as Gally held the other end, pulling it taut as he supported both you and Minho hanging from the craft. Looking down, you watched as Teresa’s body fell away into the smoke, the floors collapsing around her as debris and shrapnel flew up, sarks and flames filling the air. 

You were limp in his grasp, your body being slowly pulled back up towards the edge as Gally and Vince pulled Minho inside, all three men tugging you into the craft as the ramp finally slid shit and Minho swept you up into his arms, holding onto you tightly. “I’m not losing any more friends to WCKD.” He whispered, mumbled by your hair and your legs gave way beneath you as you collapsed, and he slowly sunk the two of you down to your knees. 

The second you were released, you struggled for air, the panic attack you had been pushing off had finally had its chance to shine and you clawed at your throat, Tears falling down your face and the only sound was that of your shaking sobs and the humming of the engine. Brenda placed a hand on your back, pulling your hair out of your face as you fell forward, your hands holding you up as your body wracked with dry heaves. Your heart was pounding, and Vince fell to the floor before you, his hands finding your shoulders as he rolled you to the side, sitting carefully on the floor. “You’re okay, kid. You did good, you can rest now.” 

You nodded at his words, the fatigue in every inch of you was taking over, and you slumped back against the wall. “Where’s my bag?” Your voice was croaky and hoarse, and Brenda rushed to lift it from Thomas’ head, ringing it over to you carefully as you dug into the pocket, holding the vial of blue liquid between your fingers and you pressed it into her palm. “Make sure Newt gets his cure, Bren.”

Her eyes were wide and teary as she looked at you, gripping onto it tightly and you gave her the strongest smile your tired body would allow. You could feel everything in your body beginning to shut down from the stress and exhaustion, and you rolled to the side, Thomas’ head lolled towards you, eyes closed as Minho and Gally worked on patching up his bullet wound, fresh bandages being pressed to it and you reached over, your fingers lacing through his limply.

With a final nod at your friend, you let your eyes slide closed, calmness and serenity taking over your body as you slipped away into the peaceful darkness, smiling as you drifted off, safe and happy, among your friends.

[mistarcat]

Tabletop Tuesday- 10/15/2019

With the permission of the group playing in this campaign, I will be chronicling our pathfinder journey through the viewpoint of my character, Dimas. It is based on the Wrath of the Righteous campaign. Pathfinder and its campaigns are owned by Paizo, and I claim no ownership of the story or its non-playing characters [NPCs]. I’m just doing this as a writing exercise and for the entertainment of others, not for any kind of monetary gain. And without further adieu, please enjoy the first installment of Tabletop Tuesday!

The bells were going to ring at any second, and Lord Hulrun was about to give the blessing. Dimas could feel the vibration of excitement throughout Clydewell Plaza. The silence that fell over the crowd was almost unnerving- he folded his wings in tighter and shifted closer to his brother, Dion. As the inquisitor was about to speak, Dimas noticed a reflective glare in his shining armor and many of the heads around him turned to the west. Before he could look, a sonic boom shook the plaza and his ears began to ring. The air was now buzzing with electricity rather than the excitement from a few moments ago. Dimas nodded to Dion and attempted to maneuver through the panicked crowd. Faces of frightened festival goers were everywhere he looked. Lord Hulrun had such a look.

“It’s gone!”

“Not the Kite!”

“The Wardstone!”

All of the different calls pierced his ringing ears, and he didn’t want to believe them. If the Wardstone of Kenabres fell, that would invite demons into the city he called home. Those cries were suddenly drowned out by a thunderous roar, and Dimas felt himself cast into a shadow. It was a sight to behold, the dragon Tendelev flew above him, his silver scales glittering as his wings flapped.

A line of flames whipped into view, and Dimas traced it back to another enormous presence in the sky. Flames and bolts of lightning covered the being's skin as his fiery whip cracked again, this time hitting the great guardian of Kenabres. The storm king Khorramzadeh had arrived on Dimas’ doorstep, a vision even his greatest nightmares could never conjure. Dimas turned away from the battle above, trying again to venture toward the stage, to make sure Lord Hulrun was safe when the ground started to shake again. He hit the plaza’s cobblestones as the tremor knocked him off balance, his arms failing to brace his fall.

Before he could try and stand back up, Dimas saw a building crumble down as a demon emerged. Despite living in a city so close to the Worldwound, he had only heard about them. He had seen two this day, and he would never forget the destruction he saw right before the ground beneath him gave way. As he began to plunge into the chasm that formed beneath him, he unfurled his black feathery wings. Using the momentum, he flipped over to look at the sky one last time. An argent talon jutted into the rift as metallic runes spiraled around him. The sensation of magic radiated through his veins. Dimas’s descent slowed as he looked up and saw the Storm King raise his sword. The sword swung toward Tendelev and Dimas turned his head away from witnessing the inevitable demise of the guardian dragon.

The fissure was closing, and soon Dimas knew only darkness as he continued to fall. His darkvision was no good to him among the flying dust and falling debris.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When he met solid ground with a thud, he heard echoes of moaning and cries of mourning. There was nothing but darkness- Dimas silently thanked his obscure heritage for his ability to see in the lightlessness. He turned and saw unmistakable white leathery wings.

“Dion, are you okay?” he called out as he moved to stand up.

He heard in reply, “Y-yeah, I think so.”

Dimas sighed in relief and looked around. His violet eyes confirmed sight of his brother, along with a crowd of other figures amongst the fallen rubble. One of the figures was a man Dimas recognized as Horgus Gwerm, a minor noble of Kenabres. The familiar woman next to him was pinned by her leg under a rock. Before Dimas could react, a peculiar figure with hair as platinum as his own lifted the boulder. A cry of pain rang through the cavern.

“Who’s there?”

Squinting as the cavern became illuminated, Dimas witnessed a blonde aasimar wielding a morningstar approach the injured woman. 

“Does anyone need healing?” His voice echoed. Dimas furrowed his brow at the question. The man’s question would do little to alleviate the anxiety that was palpable in the air.

“Thank you for the light,” Dimas could see the questions still illuminated on her face as she spoke, “now that I can see we are all in this situation together--” her voice trailed off. She pushed herself to sit up and look around, “yes. I do need some healing. My leg appears to be broken.”

Dimas watched as the man scoured the cave for supplies and began to splint her leg. Having no training in any kind of healing, he felt useless. He looked to his brother, who he knew had to be feeling the same. Reaching out his hand, he felt his brother squeeze his hand in reassurance.

“My name is Anevia Tirabade,” the injured woman introduced herself. Dimas glanced at Dion in recognition. Tirabade was the surname of the leader of the Eagle Watch, one of their mother’s boss. “It is nice to meet you. Do any of you have any form of healing potion?”

Dion smoothed his dark hair back over his white horns. Dimas sensed his discomfort, “We sadly do not have any such potions, milady.”

As the aasimar began to answer for himself, Dimas was struck by a curious site. A halfling with plant-like features sitting atop a tumble pig. Dimas figured that he must be some sort of fey, as was the bark-skinned blond who moved the stone. He could also discern a quiet clacking sound but was unsure of its origin.

When Anevia confirmed that she could walk with the make-shift crutch, another voice piped in, “I am Aravashnial.” his voice was distinguished and patronizing, “It seems I am no longer able to see. The balor’s whip caught me across the face”

Dimas winced at the thought.

“Thankfully it was nothing more than a glancing blow. Though now I seem to be in need of healing. Who am I currently with, and what is your experience battling demons or other fearsome creatures?”

It was unsurprising to Dimas that the aasimar answered first, “I am Mikael, and I have very little experience. I had come to Kenabres to begin taking on such matters.”

Dimas couldn’t help but wonder what this group would make of himself and Dion and their demonic ancestry. It had always been strange to grow up in a town with an aversion to demons.

The haughty elf said, “I see, well I suppose one must start somewhere.”

Before any other could answer the elf’s question, the noble Dimas recognized spoke up, “Yes, yes, whatever. How are you going to get me out of here?”

Dimas rolled his eyes toward Dion, who whispered at him, “Do you know where you are?”

Horgus continued, “If you do, I promise I’ll give you a total of a thousand gold!”

“I have no idea,” he shook his head at his brother, “some sort of cave below the city, I guess.”

As he shook his head, he noticed the pair of fey looking disinterested at the prospect of gold. He was unsure of their reasoning, but instead focused on the amplifying ticking noise.

Across the cavernous room, among the rubble, a pair of giant maggots crawled out from a corpse of a large black spider.

“Little prince, get behind me!” the fey halfling declared from atop his pig.

“No!” Before anyone else could act, the silver skinned fey lept into action, wielding his strange looking spear.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In part two, Dimas, Dion and their new found compatriots fight the maggots. Will they succeed? And what lies further in this cavern? Will they be able to find a way out? And what became of Kenabres? Find out next time on Tabletop Tuesday.