#also knuckles had to shatter the master emerald again

[phasesgurl]

Sonic: Shattered

So basically, Eggman gets the prism again. Sonic and Tails and everyone come to fight him, and Eggman hits Sonic with the prism. If it were any other rock this wouldn’t be a huge problem, but this leaves what looks like a large glowing crack in Sonic’s chest.

the others continue to fight. As the cracks start to grow and new ones form in his face, arms and legs, the prism starts glowing brighter.

then, all of a sudden, Sonic screams out in pain and he and the crystal sort of… explode.

Shadow is the first one to come to. Everything looks more or less normal, other than the fact that everyone’s unconscious and the prism has turned into a swirly rainbowy portal-looking thing.

Tails is next to wake up. He realizes Sonic is gone and flies into a panic. He runs off, Shadow goes after him to make sure he doesn’t do anything too impulsive.

after a while, they sort of find Sonic. He looks like a hologram, pays no attention to anything, and keeps repeating the phrase “What you see is what you get—just a guy who loves adventure!”

Tails is confused and alarmed, but Shadow knows what’s going on. It’s a repeat of Sonic Prime, sort of. But Sonic seems to be the only thing that was shattered—Big and Froggy are normal, Eggman’s normal, almost everything is normal. Not even the prism was shattered this time, it was more blended together.

Shadow tries to comfort Tails, and they decide the solution is to go into the void and see what they can see.

of course, they have no way to get into the void because no one has any prism energy inside. They decide to go talk to Knuckles, Amy and Rouge (who have tied up the still unconscious Eggman.)

They don’t have any ideas either. While they’re talking, Tails’ eyes drift to the swirling light that used to be the prism. He stares for a while, thinking. Wondering.

then surprises everyone by jumping into it.

The others panic and end up going into it themselves. It turns out, the prism has turned into a portal into the void, complete with a rainbowy gateway to their world. Tails is standing on a crystal, awestruck.

After a brief explanation from Shadow on where the heck they are, they run off toward a random gateway to hopefully find sort of clue.

Also Tails is going to feel really guilty about what happened to Sonic.

they end up finding these guys, who were written in by the prism in a way that they wouldn’t change what happened with the original Sonic when he broke the prism:

More info on them and their friends:

The New Yolk City Sonic I think has the best backstory. He was friends with that world’s Amy before the Chaos Council took over. When they did, the two hedgehogs tried to fight back, but both were captured and turned into cyborgs. For a while, he and her were a matching set of enforcers, Rusty Rose and Scrappy Sonic. Then, he found a chaos emerald while patrolling and it restored his free will. He panicked when he saw his robotic body and ran off to look for Amy. When he found her, however, she recognized that he was no longer under the Council’s control and ordered some robots to terminate him. He survived, but did take some damage.

Ghost, Zip and Crash were a second resistance group with no knowledge of the existence of the first. They operated on Angel Island and protected the Master Emerald. They would also sneak down and cause trouble the council in new yolk.

They were sneaking in the sewers when they came across an unconscious blue cyborg. They decided to wake him up. Half asleep, he said “Amy-bzzrt-Rose…” they asked what that meant, but he found himself unable to say anything after that.

Since he couldn’t tell them his name, the Chaotix nicknamed him “Lucky” because he was very lucky to get free of the council’s control.

He still can’t talk, but his new friends have gotten very good at understanding his charades. Especially Ghost, who can practically read his mind.

Nine was overjoyed when he met Lucky, although didn’t show it. This was a guy who was just like the hedgehog who had tried to be his friend, who was nice to him when no one else was, almost identical in body and in personality! And his home was right here. He could stay with him. He was mute, but Nine felt like Sonic talked too much anyway.

In Boscage Maze, there was another group of scavengers that was more mindful of the jungle, so Thorn let them stay. They had their own version of her, named Briar. He was also a protector of the forest, and even had the power to control the plants. Imagine Gnarly’s confusion when a vine grabs his ankles and lifts him upside down. Poor echidna nearly has a heart attack.

Briar means well, though. He just likes to put newcomers through their paces.

Poison Ivy does have her fire powers, but being in the middle of a bunch of trees rarely uses them. Most people don’t even know she has them, so that comes as a shock when she comes to the void and fights the Eggforcers.

And finally, No Place. These three sail on a ship called The Chaos. Just them. Polly is a flicky that refuses to leave the ship.

One day, the Chaos is attacked by what the crew thinks is a kraken. Shipwrecker recognizes it as a version of iblis that is made of water rather than fire, and that flooded the planet years ago. Shadow gets knocked overboard and sees a chaos emerald underwater. He tries to get it, but is knocked unconscious by a rock to thrown by iblis. Sapphire panics, since he is terrified of water, but summons the courage to dive in and pull his captain back onto the ship. He sees the emerald, and thinking that Shipwrecker was trying to get it grabs that too before returning to the surface.

When the captain comes to, he reveals to his crewmates that he now has all of the chaos emeralds, and he and his crew go into super form and defeat iblis, restoring the water to its original level. As they explore their new surroundings, they see hedgehog's pass and the loop-de-loop. Sapphire ends up falling flat on his face because the loop was damaged by Dread's submarine. They fix it by making a replacement section with wood. It's like a bridge that curves.

then, they race. The starting line is drawn, the route is set, and they're all determined to prove they're the fastest of the bunch.

3..2..1.. GO!

Shiver falls behind pretty quickly. For the rest of the race, it seems like it's going to be a photo finish between Sapphire and Shipwrecker. Then, the captain stumbles over something. allowing sapphire to take the lead. He's about to win when he sees Amy, then same way Sonic sees Shadow when he's running really fast in prime. She grabs him and pulls him through the gateway.

From Shiver and Shipwrecker's perspective, Sapphire just sort of popped out of existence, so they're confused and angry. This group is for this au what Nine was for prime. Sapphire is also being really uncooperative and slowing their progress to get the original Sonic back.

Which they still have no idea how to do, by the way. Wait a little longer to find that out, I'm still deciding weather to write this story as a comic or a fanfic.

[mama-qwerty]

Overload

Knuckles lay on his back, eyes closed as the sun warmed his body. He absently chewed on a piece of grass as the others chatted nearby.

Amy had cajoled him into coming down to the surface for a picnic, a kind of "let's have a nice afternoon where we're NOT trying to stop the planet from blowing up" kind of get-together.

This was nice. The weather was nice, the company was nice—even if Sonic kept telling bad jokes with the intent of annoying everyone within earshot—and it was nice to just slow down and not have anything going on. He felt the Master Emerald (she was fine) and chaos levels were pretty normal.

He should have known something was coming. Murphy's Law and all that.

As he lay there, a feeling crept up on him. He wasn't sure what it was at first, and mostly ignored it as a sense of guilt for delayed duty, or nerves, or simply a feeling of 'being vulnerable' or any number of other vague anxieties. There were a lot of those in the back of his mind. When you're the last of your kind, and the guardian to what amounts to a literal god, you tend to have a lot of pressure on your shoulders.

But he tried to ignore it.

Even when it made his stomach churn.

Even when it made his fur stand on end.

Even when it caused his quills to bristle.

He opened his eyes, squinting against the blinding light of the sun.

And then all hell broke loose.

That feeling was no longer a vague feeling, but a physical slam of an unimaginable amount of chaos energy. Somewhere, somewhen, chaos was thrown completely out of balance, in a way he had never experienced before. It was as if chaos itself was usually calm pool of water, and someone had thrown a boulder the size of a house in the center. Ripples of energy flowed over him, through him, and he uttered a pained grunt as he rolled onto his hands and knees.

He couldn't breathe. He tried to pull air into his lungs, but the colors of chaos swirled and writhed around him, and it felt like he was inhaling paint. It slipped down his throat, sliding with a sickening thickness, and he coughed, choking on that which had been a comforting essence since he hatched.

His friends called out to him, reached for him, but if their hands came into contact with him, it felt like he was absorbing them. They withdrew with cries of their own, and he tried to move away, to tell them to get away from him. But the words wouldn't come. They were stuck in his throat, held back by the chaos energy filling his chest.

He coughed again and again, trying to dislodge the thickness in his lungs, but more flowed in to take its place. Somehow he was screaming, but there were words mixed in with the screams, foreign words in a tongue he didn't know.

Opening his eyes, he saw the colors of chaos, but also . . . other things. The world around him, the ground beneath him, the trees, the sky . . . they were changing. Twisting and melting and morphing into something . . . somewhen else. He saw tiny saplings and mighty oaks in the blink of an eye, and then a stump and torn up ground in the next blink. The sky turned dark as pitch, then blood red, then blue. The air filled with smoke, and fire, and cleared.

He was seeing all. Everything, every time, at once.

Still the words he spoke, the words he screamed and vomited with the chaos inside him, came. In a fit of panic he reached out to the Master Emerald, and saw her whole, saw her shattered, saw her turn black as the darkest night he'd ever seen, and crumble to dust. His heart hammered in his chest, and he cried out, his scream high-pitched and painful, tearing at his throat.

And as he stared down at his hands, holding himself up off the ground, they changed.

The leather of his mitts split, the spurs on the backs of his hands growing longer and sharper. His claws elongated as well, becoming barbed and jagged. The hands of a monster, ready to rend its prey limb from limb with ease. His back bowed, and pain radiated down his spine. The red fur of his kind turned black, and white markings swirled up and down his arms and legs in strange patterns.

Changing, he was changing, chaos was changing him into something new, something different, something terrible—

oh Gaia oh great Gaia please help I don't want to be a monster I don't want to hurt anyone please please please Master Emerald please Mother please help me

—and he couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t control it.

His claws dug unto the ground beneath him, gouging long, thick wounds that bled dark soil. He hoped this overload of chaos would kill him, because he didn't want to be someone else, didn't want to become a monster his friends would have to take down, he didn't want to do that to them.

Just as he was ready to turn his own claws on himself, a whisper in the back of his mind. A soothing tone, a calming feeling.

The Master Emerald. She reached for him, wrapping him in light and comfort as only she could.

And slowly, the excess chaos drained away. He felt it drawn away from him, leaving him feeling sore and sick and weak.

His fur returned to red. His claws and knuckle spurs shrank back to normal. He could breathe again, and he coughed as though coming up for air from a lifetime submerged.

And then Knuckles keeled to the side, his eyes closing as he passed out.

(this can also be found on my ao3 account)

[estellardreams]

Okay so... On the topic of this post, I'm going to provide my reasoning for each pony species and design attribute because I wanna talk about them. If you got any questions, just ask.

For starters, their ears are obviously a blend between their original Mobian ones and the pony ears... But in Rouge's case they're just Bat ears because for whatever reason people forget Bat ponies exist when they turn these characters into ponies!

Anyway, another detail was trying to match pony species to each Mobian's main attribute. And it led to quite a few plot changes and alterations to their designs in general. So let's just start...

Sonic: Pegasus. This one I had directly based off of a legitimate MLP G5 Cover where the artist themselves showed the unshaded version and it was LITERALLY SONIC. So I made it as close as I could but added my own flair to it such as the peach muzzle and a fluffier physique (bc I draw all of my characters like that). If you don't know what I'm referring to for "Pony Sonic" look at these.

As for lore reasons, I took it as a direct competition with Rainbow Dash, his free lifestyle, and because Pegasi are naturally the fastest pony type.

Now there still might be the question on... Will Sonic become an alicorn if he goes super? My answer: No. I doubt he would, and if anything super forms were traded out for rainbow forms instead since during this timeline the elements of Harmony became the core magic relics, and the crystal heart itself is now the Master Emerald.

Tails/Miles: Pegasus. A bit of a lore explanation on this one, so buckle in. Have you noticed that Tails' wings are more fluffy and round, like Pipp's? Despite that most likely being a design choice, I've decided to twist this attribute into something more like a disability.

Wings that fluffy and not aerodynamic make those having them struggle to fly, as such it's a genetic mutation. See where this is going? Miles was bullied a lot for being unable to fly, just like Fluttershy. Then Sonic came around, got the bullies to back off, and Miles wanted to catch up to Sonic and thank him. And despite the blue blur already being far away, he tried to fly... And managed to! His flying style is actually quite different from the usual pegasus, focusing more on long strides than fast and quick flapping. He also figured out gliding in the air to conserve energy, too!

Knuckles: Earth Pony. Do I need to state the obvious that earth ponies are naturally stronger than the others? Besides, being the sole guardian of a powerful relic and seperated during the three tribe's conflict entirely made him completely unaware of the other races. In a way, his kind is similar to the crystal ponies who are all earth ponies with a special gimmick.

Knuckles did guard the Crystal Heart his entire life, so when the empire itself was about to lose itself to the storm he gave some of the Crystal's energy to create an identical replica to restore it.

However, he's had to repeatedly replace it because once the energy exhausts itself, it just kept shattering and threatening the storms again. Eventually though, pure love from the empire stabilized one of the replicated hearts, leading to them not needing the replacement unless for emergencies.

Amy Rose: Unicorn. So... You know how unicorns are known to be more magically competent? Well, what if I told you I placed certain strengths between the species and enforced Amy's character that way. She was originally seen as weak, but built up her strength and speed to keep up with everyone else. Although she's still a fortune teller at heart, she's incredibly skilled with her hammer and is surprisingly faster and stronger than the average unicorn, who are by comparison the weaker race physically.

Shadow: Alicorn. Now you might be asking... Why an alicorn? Two things: One; Ultimate Lifeform's gotta keep up his title and Two; If they wanted a pony who is both immortal and immune to all diseases besides being a bio-weapon, wouldn't you design them to be the strongest race out there?

The story here is rather simple; Shadow was created in a space colony to help cure his friend/older sister Maria, who had an incurable disease. Eventually, the royal guards caught wind of this and alerted the princesses, who ordered for them to storm the space colony and arrest EVERYONE who was involved. However, because Maria was so weak during the escape she unfortunately died before Shadow and her could've reached the pod together. Shadow was ejected out and sent down to Equestria before he could save her.

Eventually he was imprisoned as well after getting captured and remained locked away for 50 years before eventually getting released, but told to never speak of the incident nor interact with anyone else... Guess what happened afterwards.

Detour real quick because small rant... Why do people make Shadow an earth pony, unicorn, or pegasus but not an alicorn in general?! It's legitimately so fitting and it kinda frustrates me. And also... I understand the appeal of an earth pony Sonic because, well... He runs. He's the fastest thing alive and would make him direct competition with Rainbow because they're both fast. But also... Aren't earth ponies the most physically strong out of everyone? Pegasi are known to be the fastest, and even then this would make him even more tight locked with a Rainbow Dash rivalry. Think about it!

Anyway, back to Shadow. I don't get the earth pony take but I understand why because A. Sonic's rival and B. Being the exact same like Sonic in every way except speed which no it doesn't work like that. If anything, I think Sonic could hold up rather well against Shadow through quick thinking and movement while he relied on pure strength and power. Opposites by design, too. As for the unicorn take... What part of that screams "Ultimate Lifeform"?

Anyway. I rest my case.

#ShadowAlicornSupremacy

Now, back to the other pony designs.

Rouge: Bat pony. Do I even need to explain?

Silver: Unicorn. Similar reason to Amy, except he didn't build up his physical strength or speed that much. He did still come from the future, however occasionally got stuck in the past due to the time travel schenagains. Also he was probably oen of the harder ponies to design because, well... Have you seen how little color his fur is? It's practically all white! I had to compensate by adding more cyan and yellow to make him more recognizeable than just eye color and cutie mark.

Also fluffy hair Silver... I love it when Silver's hair in human versions is soft and fluffy. It's adorable! :D

Now, how would this change the original MLP canon? Not too much, actually. If anything, these stories go on in the background during the Mane 6's adventures. But some things definitely intrude on some seasons and force the six to act and get involved, leading to them to meeting with the Sonic characters. Generally, depends on the threat at hand. Think of Dark Gaia being their first instigator to meeting, then the plunderseeds coming after because Harmony magic accidentally went haywire due to the Dark Gaia incident, leading to the plunderseeds finally being able to sprout, and they snag whoever has a ton of Harmony magic inside of them... Celestia, Luna, Shadow, and Sonic included.

Then Tirek comes around, leading to Sonic's squad to work together to distract him long enough so Twilight and her friends could figure out what to do, get everyone to safety, and avoid capture themselves.

Eventually their group falls, leading to a fight breaking out as Twilight's group goes Rainbow and begins to fight Tirek. But during this, one by one their own power-up disperses until Twilight is left, forced to choose to give up her stored alicorn magic in exchange for rescuing all of her friends, including Sonic's group. Then the final key, magic chest, yadda yadda.

Twilight's castle still has the original seven seats, though. Sonic's group functions more like a support friend group than part of the major group, and after this they went back to their normal adventures on the side.

The War still happened. Along with the Metal Virus. They don't talk about those.

[flingmetothemoon]

Tikal is a strong female Sonic character

The scene is set. The echidna world is literally falling to pieces. Everything is being consumed by fire, the helpless blue creatures are slaughtered to death, the once gentle guardian of the emerald altar is provoked. His anger becomes so strong he transforms into a violent monster and kills Pachacamac and his army. Now the whole world is on the line. Everything seems hopeless. Who will save the day? You can feel goosebumps on your neck just thinking about it.

Pachacamac's daughter, Tikal can't do anything about it can she? Why would she? She doesn't have a robot-smashing hammer like Amy, stealth and rock-shattering gymnastics like Rouge or pyrokinesis like Blaze. She's also injured from getting trampled on by her own father and his men. Wouldn't it be easier for her to hide and heal her wounds? Wouldn't it be easier for her to just sit here and cry as the world around her slowly crumbles into destruction? We probably would if we were her.

Despite all this, Tikal did the unexpected: She used the mantra to activate the Master Emerald's power and sealed herself and the monstrous Chaos into the Master Emerald, risking possibly being frozen forever so that the world can be saved and have peace again.

And yet she's still not given nearly enough credit for what she did compared to the other characters? The heck?!

There is a notion that to be strong, you have to fight back with fists and kicks, talk back and be independent. But like life, strength isn't always black and white. Strength can come in different shapes and forms. Some are physical, some are mental. Strength can be unique to women as well since they're usually physically not as strong as men. So what kind of strengths do Sonic girls have?

Amy wields a powerful Piko Piko hammer and a temper and these two are so strong they scare even the toughest guys such as Sonic and Knuckles. Rouge has stealth, great hearing, manipulation, bombs, flexibility and physical strength that rivals Knuckles. Blaze has speed, a fiery temper, a connection to the Sol Emeralds and pyrokinesis.

Tikal's strength however is a little different.

Sure Tikal has spiritual powers, but the thing is… She wasn't born with them, she gained them after being released from the Master Emerald and thanks to her main strength: Mental.

3000 years ago in the Mystic Ruins, the people at that time didn't have modern conveniences to live with. They couldn't pull out a phone to look up information about the Altar of the Emeralds. Their only education sources were written papers and scrolls. They also didn't have cars or airplanes, so they just have to walk and exercise throughout the day. But it didn't mean they weren't happy without modern conveniences. In fact, Tikal respected her grandmother and held her teachings and peaceful way of life dear to her heart. As a daughter of a powerful chief, Tikal also most likely had to learn responsibilities such as knitting, cooking, cleaning and caretaking so she can care for herself and others.

If Tikal's grandmother was the one who taught her survival skills, she was wise in doing so before her son took over her reign. When Pachacamac became chief, he turns his once calm and peaceful tribe into a warlike and power-hungry nation, attacking other countries, stealing and killing. Tikal did not like the changes her father made to the clan. Tikal obviously does not enjoy being in changed circumstances. Despite it however, there is one thing about her that didn't change: Mental strength.

Tikal was still kind and encourages peace. She earns the trust of Chaos and the Chao with her kindness and unprejudicedness. She showed her concern for their lives and did the best she could to protect them. Even after being released from the M.E, she still didn't turn into a brooding revenge-seeker like Shadow. She seeked help instead of relying on her own strength. She gently guided others to learn about Chaos and what happened to him. Because of that, Sonic and his friends found a way to heal Chaos from negative energy, bring him back to his gentle self and save the world. This would not have happened if it weren't for Tikal.

Tikal truly is a remarkable young lady and we need more people like her in the world full of selfishness and chaos.🧡

This is part 1 of my essay series on how Tikal is a strong female character, I plan on making more to go further into depth on her trauma and strength some time. This post is also on DeviantART if you wanna check it out there. C:

[party-time]

Don't feel like drawing lately, but i did watched Sonic Prime yesterday and my mind won't stop thinking about it.

So i'm gonna just ramble about it under the cut, so warning for spoilers of Sonic Prime ahead.

For starters, there's stuff that other people have already said about the series that pretty much i totally agree with, so don't expect me to talk about most of the things we saw on the eps.

What i'm actually really thinking about is the whole situation with the shards and that cliffhanger they left in the final ep, none of which are going to be predictions but tather just things that are roaming in my mind.

Like what about the Chaos Emeralds?

So far the only chaos emerald we saw during the series is the green one, that is currently in Shadow's possesion, we know that because he used chaos control he wasn't affected by the Paradox Prism shattering. So it makes me think that the other emeralds might as well weren't affected by the situation at all, but if that's true and the prime universe dosen't exists then they could also be scattered between the shatterspaces; or at least that's ONE of the many posibilities.

They could have ALSO been affected by the Paradox Prism, because the only emerald we have seen so far has been used by Shadow and is still on his possesion, so could have been that the reason why it didn't affect him is because the emerald was being USED; unlike the others who's location are still unknown.

In any case, if the chaos emeralds can still be used, then there is a posibility that the Master Emerald could also still be around somewhere. Because we only see Knuckles on the series, never Angel Island or the Master Emerald itself, is not even mentioned by Knux; the only time we see mention of the Master Emerald is when Sonic remembers about the first time he meet Knuckles.

If the Master Emerald is around just like the chaos emeralds, then who's guarding them? Much better: WHERE are them?

No one seems to remember or know about them, yet there you have Shadow, the only one who seems to have realised and remember how usefull the emeralds are. So far the worlds Sonic has been and we saw they all circulate around the shards, and 0 trace of emeralds, something that makes me think that either: They're on the void, but far away from each other oooor they're on entirely different worlds. Maybe those worlds focus more on the Chaos Emeralds due to not having shards.

We saw a world where there is NO ONE, thanks to Nine, so maybe there are more little worlds like that and might be the location of the emeralds. Maybe those places are just mini fragments of what little is left of the prime universe, all protected by the energy of the emeralds who wheren't affected at all by the Paradox Prism. Heck even the Master Emerald could STILL be on Angel Island, but separated and far away from all the others.

(And talking about the Master Emerald, dosen't anyone see a bit of parallels with Sonic shattering the Paradox Prism to stop Eggman from taking it, with how Knuckles had to shatter the Master Emerald in SA2 to ALSO stop Eggman from taking it?)

I also feel in the obligation to point out:

The rings

The first episodes —and any episode that show's the prime universe pre-Paradox Prism incident— we are shown that rings are a part of the prime universe, in a way they make us undertand that the rings work the same way they do in the games, but when the whole situation with the shatterspaces begin we never see even one ring again.

Even Sonic is caught off guard by this, but then forgets about it inmediately.

If the rings DO work the same as in the games, then maybe now that they're gone everybody is basically either in absolute danger of dying or inmortal; because with the amount of times Sonic got his ass beat in other worlds, is impressive he only has a few contusions here and there sometimes.

In New Yolk City everyone is still alive, in terrible conditions, but alive even if they are robotized or something. In the other worlds most mobians that we see are also still alive, so it might be safe to asume that without the rings everyone is basically inmortal.

(And before anyone says anything, the whole "the series has to be kidfriendly" is a terrible excuse and with the batantly amount of stuff we have seen from the series, it won't surprise me if a character died.)

And i am also pointing this, because i haven't seen anyone do it so far: but Eggman got fucking divided, and not in the same specific way the rest of the main cast did. All of Eggman's versions are in ONE shatterspace, we don't see any other Eggman's in the other worlds; yet we see more than one version of Amy, Knux, Rouge, Tails and Big.

On more specific terms he got his OWN world, one where he's not alone and has a family —that ironicaly they are all him, so he did and didn't got a family—, yeah Sonic's friends are there too BUT they also have worlds that center around each one of them, but so far they didn't contain any Eggman's in them.

Something tells me Eggman while did want to reform everything, he also MIGHT have wanted to have a family, people like him; and let's remember he's the only one left of his family, so that could have also played it's part on the whole thing.

Just something i realised while watching, it's curious to me that New Yolk had different Eggman's and the other worlds didn't.

That's all.

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80’s/90’s syndicated cartoon? Episode 64 - 65: Two Multi-part Finale (part 12: Panic in the Skies parts 1 and 2)

Welcome back to my investigation of how Archie Comics’ Sonic the Hedgehog series was actually a syndicated cartoon from the 80’s and 90’s! Alright everyone, it’s finally time to talk about how ArchieSonic’s main plot wrapped up. After almost three years of setting up and adapting the story of Sonic Unleashed, the arc came to a close with the four part story, Panic in the Skies. 

I love it when an arc has one big picture when you put all the covers together. It was one of the coolest things about the Knuckles comics, and it gives this arc a little extra gravitas as the proper finale for ArchieSonic. This arc was also drawn by the fantastic Diana Skelly, the same artist responsible for the "Champions" arc that adapted Sonic the Fighters, so you know you're in for a good time reading this. :)

I first talked about Sonic #183, the set-up story for this final Unleashed arc… woof, six months ago. So if you don’t remember what that was about, I don’t blame you in the slightest. So, quick recap: after Sonic’s world got a soft reboot and the planet shattered, the Freedom Fighters were working hard to put the pieces back together. They’d managed to gather the seven Chaos Emeralds, and had also gotten the seven keys that would give them access to the Gaia temples. All they had to do now was use the Gaia Gate to take a Chaos Emerald to each of the temples, but with Eggman’s forces searching for (and in some cases occupying some of) the temples, that was going to be a challenge. So they sent the emeralds and keys to the royal vault of Mobotropolis for safekeeping until they were ready to make their move, and put out a call to their allies worldwide asking for them to take part in a coordinated distraction effort when the Freedom Fighters were ready to make their move. Should be easy enough, right? Well under other circumstances it might have been, but the Tails Doll had hidden itself onboard the Sky Patrol and spied on Sonic and Sally’s conference call, transmitting their entire plan to Eggman.

Eggman gleefully decided to counter the Freedom Fighters with a coordinated strike from his own forces and hired mercenaries, including Metal Sonic, the Battle Bird Armada, the Witchcarters, and the Hooligans. 

On a side note, there was also the problem that Amy and Knuckles were currently searching for the missing shards of the Master Emerald, which Knuckles had had to shatter again after it was nearly stolen by Eclipse (and also Team Dark).

If they were unable to get the Master Emerald back where it belonged before the Freedom Fighters put the planet back together, Angel Island would fall out of the sky. But that was the focus of the Shattered arc that was happening in Sonic Universe at the same time, and I’m not going to be focusing on that today. It’s a good arc though, I recommend it if you can find a copy.

So, what happened next?

Well, Sonic and the Freedom Fighters started preparing for a kick-ass victory party, of course! Sally was concerned that they might be celebrating a bit too early, and sadly she never got the chance to say, “I told you so,” because the Sky Patrol came under attack. 

With Phage and the Tails Doll working together to sabotage the Sky Patrol’s systems and take them offline, the Battle Bird Armada were able to sneak up and launch a surprise attack on the Freedom Fighters quite easily. At the same time in New Mobotropolis, Metal Sonic, the Witchcarters, and Team Hooligan were launching a coordinated assault on the city.

The local guards didn’t really put up much of a fight, but Gemerl quickly showed up to put the resistance down. But Eggman had planned for that, and Gemerl found himself having to concentrate his entire efforts against fighting Metal Sonic. With no one else able to stop them, the Hooligans were able to enter Castle Acorn and make their way to the vault… only to find it guarded by none other than King Nigel Acorn himself.

Man, that was badass. Hey Ian, where was our Sonic Universe arc about King Nigel taking names and kicking ass? I’d have totally read that. But alas, Nigel’s valiant efforts were stopped by the two fists of Bark the Polar Bear.

Bark did at least look like he had some regrets though.

With the Chaos Emeralds and Gaia Keys obtained, the Hooligans passed them off to Metal Sonic while they and the Witchcarters prevented Gemerl from stopping Metal escaping with the goods.

Back on the Sky Patrol, Sonic, Bunnie and Antoine were struggling with the sheer number of Battle Birds they’d come up against. Sonic also happened to notice that Speedy wasn’t leading the attack, but with the comms still down he wasn’t able to warn any of the other Freedom Fighters he might be coming. And sure enough, Speedy was leading some of his best troops into the Sky Patrol to grab Chip. Sally was there to make sure that didn’t happen, but Speedy had new battle armour (no more extreme undies for him!) and was able to get her on the ropes.

Chip tried to intervene and help her, but Speedy grabbed him and made a run for it.

Tails and Rotor were doing better, as they managed to find and disable the Tails Doll with some help from T-Pup. Nicole was struggling against Phage in the digital servers though, and asked Tails to give her the red star ring so she could go super overclocked again.

Hmmm. Kind of seems like that was exactly what Phage wanted to happen, doesn't it?

Nicole was able to get comms up again and Sally was able to get the word out about Chip’s abduction. The Battle Lord was ready to cover his son’s escape though - he’d had another team wiring the Sky Patrol’s engines with explosives, and gave the order to detonate them.

With the Sky Patrol falling out of the sky, Sonic asked Bunnie to throw him in a desperate attempt to get to Speedy.

It didn’t work.

Nicole was having problems of her own - rather than fighting, Phage had led her on a wild goose chase through the servers to stall her, and Nicole’s systems became overwhelmed by the massive power of the red star ring.

Bunnie managed to save Sonic from falling into the lava of the planet’s exposed mantle, landing him and Antoine back on top of the Sky Patrol just as Rotor got the backup engines online. The team and the Sky Patrol were in rough shape though, especially Nicole.

Ian Flynn actually let us believe Nicole might be dead for a few seconds. That monster. >:(

But only a few seconds though, because as soon as we turned the page Nicole alerted Tails through his Miles Electric that she was still in the Sky Patrol’s servers and trying her best to fix the damage. With so many systems damaged Rotor didn’t know where to start repairs, but Sally told him to concentrate on the long range comms. She figured that with Tails Doll spying on them that Eggman knew exactly where to find the Chaos Emeralds, and even though it may already be too late, she wanted to warn her father.

Sure enough, back in Mobotropolis things weren’t exactly going well. While Gemerl was doing a valiant effort of fighting the Hooligans and the Witchcarters all by himself, it wasn’t looking that great for him.

But just in the nick of time Big and Cream showed up to give him backup, and Nack, who had zero interest in a fair fight, gave the order for the badnik horde to attack the city while everyone else retreated. Cream wanted to go after them, but Gemerl convinced her that their first priority should be to protect the city and the people. 

On the other side of the world, Metal Sonic and Speedy arrived in Apotos to hand over their prizes to Eggman.

Assigning Speedy and the Armada the task of fighting off the GUN airship that was incoming, Eggman went about activating the seven Gaia Temples, summoning them all to him and forming them into the Gaia Colossus.

Back aboard the Sky Patrol, Rotor had been able to repair the engines enough to get them one last trip to wherever they needed to go. Sally had interrogated Tails Doll and learned of Eggman’s plans to give the Death Egg infinite fuel with the Dark Gaia energy he’d collected from all over the world and now had housed in Eggmanland.

And so Sally divided the Freedom Fighters into three teams. She, Bunnie and Antoine would sabotage the Dark Gaia collection tower so that the energy would be released and Eggman couldn’t use it. Unfortunately several E-100 units were waiting for them - the same ones that had kicked their collective butts on a previous adventure.

Rotor and Nicole were to fly the Sky Patrol into battle against the Death Egg before it could reach Eggmanland and refuel.

And Sonic of course was sent to rescue Chip from Eggman, only to find himself up against an iconic boss fight.

Dun-dun-dun! Quite a dramatic cliffhanger!

Alas, once again I find myself falling victim to Tumblr's maximum number of images per post. I'll finish this review off next time when I look at parts 3 and 4 from Sonic the Hedgehog #286 and #287. Stay tuned!

[sonknuxadow]

MORE KNUCKLES AND CHIP IMAGES !!!!

[diffractor]

I was thinking back to childhood memories, and just realized that the gba game “Sonic Battle” I played a very long time ago was plausibly a subconscious motivating factor for finding AI safety to be an important thing to work on. Said game is a Sonic fighting game, with a hell of a story, though it only really clicks once you do a second playthrough with enough context to see what’s actually going on there. So, this is the plot with full context (and filling in tidbits of info that you only get on the second playthrough), and I’m doing it from memory so there may be some inaccuracies. Once upon a time there was the 4th great Civilization. Key word, “was”. The thing that wiped them out was that they made a very specific robot, as a weapon of war, named Emerl (though that isn’t the original name), and... it didn’t go so well. Emerl’s ability was to be able to copy any attack or weapon used against it, or that it observes. This manifests in the game as Emerl not having a fixed moveset, you can splice together whichever moveset you want from the moves of all the other characters you’ve fought against. Just stitch the best healing and the best movement speed and the best attacks and best projectiles and a “self-destruct after you die” special ability together from all the different characters, and plow through the rest of the cast. Anyways, it was built as a weapon of war, and the creators didn’t last too long after that, though it isn’t specified precisely what happened. Eggman’s father (or grandpa, maybe?) is tasked by the military with creating weapons of war. He doesn’t really want to do this, and so tends to make freely willed things that can reject being a weapon. One of which was Shadow the hedgehog, and also, as his logs show, he found Emerl on an archeology trip too, and kinda freaked out when he realized exactly what that particular robot was. He wasn’t able to completely override the original programming, just put in some modifications. Later, Eggman gets a hold of Emerl somehow, and after a bit of testing and using it to make crappy knockoff robots, deems it a useless pile of trash and certainly not the civilization-ending weapon it’s supposed to be and throws it away on the beach. Sonic finds the abandoned robot, and shows off his moves. Emerl bonds with him (read: follows Sonic around and obeys commands and if Sonic tells Emerl to obey someone else then Emerl has a new master), because one of the things it’s programmed to do is to obey someone who displays sufficient power. It can barely talk, isn’t that good at fighting, and Tails is trying to figure out what the deal with it is. It seems to be attracted to Chaos Emeralds, and after getting the first one, there’s a notable boost in its ability to copy things, fight, and talk, going from “barely able to talk” to “low-quality chatbot trained on a corpus of sonic and tails talking” to “gpt-2 trained on sonic, tails, knuckles, and amy” to “gpt-3 trained on the whole sonic cast” as the game progresses and you acquire more. There’s a bunch of adventures which are mostly pointless, by my estimation, with a bunch of characters trying to use Emerl for their own ends, and getting into shenanigans, and fighting off Eggman, while nobody seems to realize they’ve got a civilization-destroying weapon on their hands. The only sane character worthy of any respect in this entire shitshow is Shadow the Hedgehog, who knows what Emerl actually is and is trying his best to kill the damn thing, while everyone else unreasonably insists on getting in his way and feeding Emerl more Chaos Emeralds because he’s their friend. Idiots. We get to the Shadow arc. Apparently Shadow and Rouge have found Eggman’s (dad’s? grandpa’s?) logs, and apparently when it gets all 7 Chaos Emeralds, it will awaken to its original form. And he managed to set things up so if you say the password “bring hope to humanity” upon Emerl fully waking up... it gets sealed again, and acts as just a friendly Sonic character with free will again, having fun with the rest of the cast. Shadow gives Emerl the last Chaos Emerald and does that, after some meaningful chats. And then the Emerl arc, the final one. Eggman has apparently made some villainous spaceship floating in the sky and being ominous, and the sonic crew sends Emerl up to give Eggman an ass-whooping, which he does. And then Eggman reveals that it was a trap, fires the big spaceship gun (which apparently wipes out some stars, but I reject this because physics and my headcanon is that it just made a big new crater on the moon), and reveals that there’s one last bit of knowledge that nobody knew about. Emerl will always make a bond with anyone that displays overwhelming power, far in excess of what has previously been shown. And all the happy-go-lucky friendly robot nonsense is wiped away, and the ancient weapon of war (which Emerl always was, Shadow should have turned it into scrap) awakens at full power, and starts gathering energy. Eggman tries to direct it (and fails). It aims the big spaceship gun at earth, and Eggman is quite put out by this, because he just wants to rule the world, not destroy it. But, y’know, if you play around with civilization-destroying robots, your civilization might end up destroyed, who would have thought. Emerl beats Eggman up. Sonic takes the Master Emerald (capable of controlling the Chaos Emeralds) and teleports onto the ship to try to use it to reign Emerl in, as their last hope. The heroic victory at the last moment. Emerl unceremoniously smashes it before it can be used. 30 seconds until end of earth. Shadow chooses to go out with a few edgy lines about “the final voice of the last war machine” and “natural result of ignorant human desires” Cream chooses to go out with “are we all... going to die? :(” Tails chooses to go out frantically advising Sonic on how, if he can inflict massive damage on Emerl, since Emerl has too much power stored up and is highly unstable, it should be able to take him out. Sonic chooses to go out fighting Full Power Emerl entirely equipped with blink-fast 2-hit-ko attacks. And then you defeat Emerl and he suffers but shuts down back to normal and looks like he’s gonna live... And then beeping. Apparently Eggman’s grandpa put in a self-destruct safeguard. Emerl dies via self-destruct, and everyone is sad, and I cried a bit as a kid, and they talk about making a better world... And (it may just be me), there’s one last note of discontent in your mind after beating the game. You didn’t beat Emerl in 30 seconds. In fact, I don’t think it’s even possible to beat that final battle in 30 seconds. If the situation had actually happened, there wouldn’t have been a heroic final victory after Emerl shattered the Master Emerald. Sonic would have had his ass handed to him, or not won in 30 seconds, and the Earth would be destroyed thanks to Dr. Eggman and everyone involved in waking Emerl up and thinking they were helping, and Shadow failing at killing the robot early on, and that would be that. You now probably see why this old gba game could be a subconscious motivator.

[mobius-prime]

269. Sonic Universe #2

The Shadow Saga (Part 2 of 4): Time & Again

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Jason Jensen

So, do you remember how way back when we got the single-issue incomplete "adaption" of Sonic Adventure 2, I mentioned that the events of the incident would be clarified by Ian Flynn in a later issue? Well, this is the one! Interspersed within the events of the modern story are flashbacks to what happened during Sonic Adventure 2, heavily modified to fit within the comic's world. However, I've elected to tackle the modern half of the story first, and explore Sonic Adventure 2 afterward, mostly because though Ian seems to be trying to draw parallels between the latter story and the former, they don't really… work all that well, nowhere near the level that they did in the first arc of KtE anyway.

The modern story opens with Shadow approaching the Freedom Fighters' camp not far from the Eggdome in the middle of the night, waking Sonic up to invite him along to a little bonus mission.

I mean, while I can understand wanting to invite Sonic on a mission against Eggman, 1. he's already on one, and 2. you'd think Shadow would realize he'd need some sleep before the final battle against his arch-nemesis. What, you can't handle this alone, Shadow? Well, as it turns out he's not actually alone, as Sonic reaches the rendezvous point first (zooming off ahead of Shadow, of course), and finds Rouge waiting for him. Apparently, Eggman's been working on a sneaky plan to turn a telescope in the city into a massive laser capable of wiping the Freedom Fighters' little camp off the map, shield or no… as well as half of the rest of the city. Sonic thinks this is overkill even for someone like Eggman, but as Shadow catches up he explains that GUN doesn't quite think so.

To be fair, Sonic, you haven't been seeing the behind-the-scenes insane ramblings of his that Snively's been subject to recently. They break into the laser control room, and Sonic and Shadow deal with the smaller security lasers while Rouge hacks into the control system, trying to disable the thing. The cannon is already moving into position to fire, and worse still, the console then fries itself, Rouge having accidentally triggered a self-destruct command. Sonic and Shadow try to destroy the cannon directly, but no amount of spindashing or Chaos Spear-ing will pierce its armor, so Rouge suggests going for the bolts holding it in place, hoping it might throw off the shot.

Brilliant job, guys! Shadow, seeing no other choice, removes his inhibitor rings and climbs onto the top of the cannon just as it begins to fire. He uses all of his power to force the shot to misfire outwards instead of straight ahead, wrecking the barrel but saving the Freedom Fighters. This is really the only place where the parallels Ian tries to draw make sense, as then we see a flashback of him using his power a year ago to force the ARK back into orbit, and subsequently falling back into the atmosphere.

Aww, look at 'em! As the sun begins to rise, the three walk back towards the camp, and Sonic asks if they want in on the invasion. Shadow refuses, saying that he believes this is Sonic's fight considering how long he's been fighting against Eggman. As Sonic leaves, Rouge smirks at Shadow, and remarks on how far their relationship has come from before. Shadow, of course, has to defend his ego and insists he merely respects Sonic, to which Rouge teases him even more about how of course he can't admit he's made a friend.

Now, time to take a look at what their relationship used to be like, in the very-condensed Adaption 2.0 of Sonic Adventure 2! Instead of following exactly how it's portrayed in this issue, I'm just going to explain how exactly everything went down starting from the beginning, relying on context clues from this issue and previous ones. In case you've forgotten, during the events of the incident, both Tails and Knuckles were otherwise occupied, Amy was chilling in Mercia with Rob, and basically no one was even aware of where Sonic was at the time, as he was apprehended while sneaking back into Knothole while he was still supposed to be confined there. StH#98 covered what happened leading up to his arrest and subsequent breakout, but naturally, after the GUN truck chase he was rearrested and taken to Prison Island. Meanwhile, of course, Shadow had been released from his pod by Eggman, stolen a Chaos Emerald from Station Square, and presumably explained how the ARK's Eclipse Cannon worked to Eggman. Like in the game, Rouge also showed up at this point to offer her support in procuring more Chaos Emeralds - though as you might remember, at this point in the comic's history the emeralds still hadn't been combined into their distinct seven forms yet, so the Eclipse Cannon only required seven random emeralds to fire. Conspicuously missing is the entire plot point about Rouge stealing the Master Emerald from Knuckles, and the both of them subsequently searching for its shattered remnants all over the world, but if we're being quite honest the entire story still makes perfect sense without Knuckles and the Master Emerald, which I suppose is lucky for Ian trying to make sense out of all of this.

The point at which this issue actually starts recapping prior events begins on Prison Island after Sonic had broken out of prison once again - without the help of Amy or anyone else, mind you, since once again, they were all elsewhere at time. Really, this version of events is so stripped-down precisely because half of the game cast is missing, which is why the events of the game were able to fit into a single day despite several days passing in the game itself. Sonic and Shadow had their famous "faker" exchange in the forest and began fighting each other, with Rouge's voice coming over Shadow's communicator and informing them she'd found the remaining six Chaos Emeralds they'd need. At that point, Eggman reminded Shadow the whole island was about to blow, and at the same time Rouge called for help as she'd found herself stuck inside the vault. When Sonic heard Eggman tell Shadow to leave her and that they'd come back later to "dig the emeralds out of the ashes," he was outraged and offered Shadow a truce so they could rescue Rouge together. Shadow accepted, and they raced back to the facility as the timer counted down, with Shadow Chaos Control-ing them off the island and into the desert just before the place exploded.

See, while I understand where Ian is going with this, I really don't like his rewrite of Shadow's motivations here. For those not familiar, in the game, Shadow makes the decision to go back for Rouge entirely on his own, because the thought of her dying alone in the facility made him flash back to Maria's death. Later on, when she tries to talk to him about how he saved her, he avoids her questions, giving a similar excuse to this one, but with it being pretty obvious that that's not the case, as he hasn't stopped thinking about Maria since the mission. Here, Ian makes it seem like Shadow actually didn't care and indeed was only after the Chaos Emeralds, and he only went to the trouble of rescuing her thanks to Sonic's suggestion. However, I understand why this was kind of necessary - with his main allies elsewhere, Sonic needed someone to ally with for the next part of the plot. He ended up teaming up with Rouge, who was quite offended at Shadow's attitude, to break into the pyramid containing Eggman's base, and she piloted the space shuttle within up to the ARK. As I've pointed out before, at no point in the comic is it even slightly hinted that Eggman broke the moon in half as he does in the game - the only indication we have of such an event would be in StH#197, when Sonic recognizes Mobius from orbit by its half-destroyed moon, but in all fairness, the issue doesn't actually state the reason why the moon is broken. Remember, it's canon that Mobius has one hundred moons - that wasn't even retconned! Ian just made up a story behind it and put it in the Complete Sonic Comic Encyclopedia afterwards, but with one hundred whole-ass moons, it's entirely probable that at least one got bodied at some point in the planet's history, and Sonic just happened to recognize that particular one as he was reentering the planet's atmosphere. But anyway, once Sonic and Rouge made it up to the ARK, Sonic and Shadow quickly got into a fight on the catwalks outside the station, presumably while Eggman slotted the emeralds into their positions in the cannon.

*sigh* One of the biggest problems I have with the preboot is its handling of Shadow's entire story. I don't think Shadow ever got an actual chance to shine from his initial appearance until StH#171, when he had his whole "This is who I am" moment after exploring Gerald's digital diary. Everything about him, his entire backstory, was horribly neglected compared to his actually very rich and deep character arc from the games. This, above, is exactly what I'm talking about. In the game, it's implied that Shadow actually wins his final fight against Sonic (though Sonic obviously doesn't die from it), and then once the Eclipse Cannon is up and running, he moves into one of the ARK's observation rooms to quietly reflect on the past and watch the station crash into the planet. He doesn't snap out of it until Amy enters the room and her subsequent words trigger a flashback of Maria's real final wish. Furthermore, he's the only person in the cast who doesn't actually see the video of Gerald's execution or read his final diary entry. In other words, in the game, he comes back to his right mind organically, by remembering what his purpose is, while in the comic he apparently just got to watch a video telling him outright why he's wrong without him actually having to do the thinking that brings him back to reality. Seeing as Shadow is my favorite character in the entire franchise, this brushing-aside of one of the most important moments in his character arc irks me a little. But then again, I will still acknowledge that Ian wasn't really left a lot to work with here, and if anything the fault lies more with Karl Bollers and Kenders carelessly brushing past Sonic Adventure 2 in favor of their ongoing story about Robotropolis getting nuked or whatever.

Anyway, in the end, Shadow and Sonic went to the ARK's internal chamber that housed the Biolizard, and when it fused with the ARK to bring it crashing down to earth anyway, he and Sonic went Super and defeated it out in space, just like in the game. The game actually doesn't give a very clear reason why Shadow fell from orbit while Sonic was fine, but in the comic, it's shown that the act of teleporting the ARK back into orbit exhausted all his energy, resulting in the loss of his Super form early. As one of the above images shows, Sonic actually reached for him but was unable to catch him in time, hence his remark of not wanting to go through that again (even though realistically a fall from a five-story cannon is hardly going to do the same damage to Shadow as a fall from orbit). And that's it! As I said, the comic's adaption is incredibly stripped-down from the events of the game, but with so much of the cast missing, it kind of had to be. While I don't agree with all of Ian's decisions on how to adapt the circumstances while still retaining the basic gist of the story, I understand his ultimate conclusions, and in the end, they do work pretty well given how different the history of the world is in the comics versus the game. And despite Shadow not having a clear history with Rouge in the comics as he does in the games, Ian's finally saw fit to bring them together as a team in this issue, and they remain as such for the rest of the comic, including through the reboot.

But - hey, speaking of which, remember another adaption that was missing a few key plot points? Say… the first Sonic Adventure? Remember how the conclusion of Gamma's entire character arc was totally forgotten about and ignored? That would seem to imply that he's still out there somewhere… I wonder what he's up to nowadays. And for that matter, with the entirety of Sonic Heroes missing from the comics' timeline, where the heck is Omega in all this? Does he even exist? Gee, I wonder if we'll ever get to see these two important robot characters in the comic - like, say, next issue?

[sonic-chronicles-fanfic-sequel]

Chapter One: Sonic

Sonic the Hedgehog, hero not only to Earth but to several alien races due to his recent adventure into a dimension called the Twilight Cage. He made a new friend in the form of Shade the Echidna; they got the Master Emerald and the Chaos Emeralds back from the Nocturnus Clan and now everyone was on their way home. He should be celebrating, relaxing at the very least! So why was he feeling so uneasy? Even Tails was looking uneasy as he piloted the ship through the wormhole; then again, he was trying to not crash land like when they went through the first time, but he knew his little bro could do it!

His heart dropped as the first sight of home that he and his friends saw was that Metropolis was up and running again. There was no way, they were only gone for a few hours, a few days at most! How did Eggman build all of this up?! It was in ruins last time they saw the city!

“Welcome back team. You’ve been gone a long time...” Eggman’s voice crackled as his face appeared on the screen. Sonic snarled as he could practically hear the mad scientist ooze with twisted delight in his voice; can’t any of them catch a freaking break?! “Might have been better if you hadn’t returned. But I was hoping you would.”

And that’s when they felt the first blast from one of the many anti-aircraft missiles, everyone staggering to get their balance. “Tails!” he shouted as the fox snapped out of whatever he was in before grabbing the controls. This wasn’t good; they were too high up and there wasn’t a weapon attached to this ship to fight back. “Tails, I’d like some options before we’re blown up skyhigh!!” he shouted again as they got hit with another blast.

Tails grimaced before looking at a large green button that was on the dash panel. “If there’s one thing I’m glad I installed, it’s this!” he announced, slamming his fist onto the button. Ten tubes surrounded the group including the fox. “I hate to lose this ship, but get ready to be ejected, team! We’re taking the escape pods!”

“When did you install escape pods?!” Amy asked, startled by the sudden appearance of the device. Sonic peered out of the small window to see that almost everyone else was equally startled by the escape pods.

The red echidna was less than pleased as he was trying to bust out of his containment. “Hey! The Emeralds!” he shouted, the speedster looking around. Oh right, the Emeralds! They could use that to try and stop Eggman.

Or at least that would be the plan if Sonic hadn’t used them to fight Ix in the last hour and drained them of their power. And of course the moment the gang has looked at the Chaos Emeralds and Master Emerald, the escape pods had ejected from the space ship, the speedster peering up to watch as their ride was engulfed in flames as it made its destructive descent to earth. He squinted, but he could’ve sworn he saw something else fall out of the ship as well. The Emeralds...?

The pod shook as there were two more explosions from outside that rocked the container. “Whoa!” he cried out, struggling to get his footing before the third one caused him to hit the back of his head against the hard metal surface behind him, sending his world into darkness.

--

He groaned as a bright light came over his closed eyes, reaching a hand up to block the light. “What-?” he muttered.

A red figure came into view, the hedgehog blinking as his vision cleared to see that it was Knuckles offering a hand. “Sonic, you alright?” he asked, Sonic accepting the help up to his feet. “Tails and I just found your pod; we weren’t sure who was inside it though.”

“Besides getting knocked out after that bumpy ride, I’ll live,” Sonic replied. He took a look around, noticing that it was a bit of a dense forest, wondering if they weren’t somewhere by Blue Ridge. Well, ‘a bit dense’ was an understatement as the hedgehog was noticing some fallen pine trees a few yards away. Guess Knuckles had to unleash his frustrations somehow... But Blue Ridge was covered in snow last time they were there. Where were they then? He shook his head, needing to focus on what’s going on right now. “You and Tails doin’ good?” he asked.

Knuckles sighed and shook his head. “Physically yes, but emotionally...look, we just got the Emeralds back and now they’re gonna end up back in Eggman’s hands! Just all that time and effort wasted!!” he groaned. He sighed as he pulled out a couple of small green shards from the cuffs of his gloves. “At least he won’t be able to get to the Master Emerald easily…just wish it didn’t shatter in the crash.” Sonic sympathetically patted his shoulder, knowing how annoying finding the Chaos Emeralds can be, figuring it was equally annoying to try and find smaller pieces of the Master Emerald. Knuckles hid the shard back where he had it, then he cupped his hands and called over to Tails, “hey! I got Sonic out of that pod!”

The fox looked up from his spot on the ground, his ears going up before fluctuating between drooping and staying up. “Oh, uh, great! Awesome!” he stated before going back to whatever he was looking at before, making some scratches on the ground with a stick.

Sonic looked confused as he looked towards Knuckles, hoping the echidna could explain Tails’ dismal attitude. It wasn’t just because of the ‘warm reception’ they received, right? The echidna sighed and explained, “Tails has been trying to figure out where we landed. Both the others and where we even are. This has to be close to Metropolis but it seems...bigger.”

“We were also a few thousand feet in the air trying not to die via crashing; of course it would look bigger from a distance,” Sonic retorted, Knuckles rolling his eyes at that.

“You know what I meant, Sonic...we all know that Metropolis was practically destroyed when we left; how did it get rebuilt that fast while we were gone??”

The hedgehog frowned at that because...yeah, there was no way that Eggman got this all up and running after a few days. Not unless he had a second base the size of a city, but what happened?

His thoughts were interrupted as Tails stumbled back into him as some nearby bushes rustled. How original. The trio got ready for a fight when a cerulean German Shepard in a black and grey jumpsuit with red stars on the tips of his shoes came stumbling out of said bushes. At least….Sonic thought it was a German Shepard? It was definitely a canine with pointy ears who was struggling to keep his balance after that stunning entrance.

“...ya good there?” Sonic asked as the kid got up to his feet and dusted off his legs. He seemed...relatively harmless. No weapons or robots at his disposal at least. “Also, who are you? Like, you work for Eggman or just...a random hobo?”

“Sonic!” Tails scolded, the hedgehog wincing. Yeah, his lil buddy was right, that was uncalled for.

Before he could apologize, the canine gestured to himself with a thumb. “The name’s Dexter and I’m here to get you to the rebellion!”

The trio glanced at each other before looking back at Dexter, Tails clapping his hands together. “Ok, uh, one, rebellion? Two, Dexter? As in...Amy’s...boyfriend, Dexter?”

The canine’s tail started wagging as he was practically gushing, “you’re Amy’s friends! Isn’t she pretty and funny and cute and she’s totally my real girlfriend and I can’t believe we’re dating! How is she, is she alright??”

Tails and Knuckles looked over at each other, confused by this...weird turn of events as Sonic just strolled on over to the kid. “Wait, Sonic-”

“We got separated in the blast overhead, but, uh, what’s this rebellion you were talking about?” the hedgehog asked, slinging an arm around Dexter’s shoulder.

“Oh my gosh, Sonic the Hedgehog is touching me-OH RIGHT, uh, rebellion! Uh, my orders from my boss were ‘hey those guys got hit by Eggman, let’s get them on our side before Eggman does or kills them or whatever.” He got out a compass from one of his pockets and checked it. “My partner went to check out some other pods that way!” he explained, pointing west. “Honestly seeing you guys is like...the best news we had in a long time.”

Sonic glanced back at the others before shrugging. “Sounds legit to me; Dex, lead the way!” he said, the canine giving a salute.

“Yes sir!”

“Wait, Sonic, are you sure this is a good idea??” Tails asked, hesitantly starting to follow the gang. “What if this is a trap?” he quietly added.

“It might be, but what other options do we have? Wait for Eggman to capture us and monologue us to death?” he teased.

Knuckles gave a weak shrug. “We might be able to figure out what’s even going on,” he suggested, Tails’ ears going low as he trudged after them.

“Yeah...doesn’t mean I have to like it though…”

[sonic-bros]

Just found your blog and saw you were taking requests. I'd honestly love to see a sonknuckles story where sonic and knuckles are sparring and trying out new powers while also flirting!! I'd love to see a dominant flirty sonic and an embarrassed knuckles. And then I'd love to see the same concept but with sonic and shadow racing each other as a workout and sonic flirting with shadow and idk maybe complimenting shadow's legs or how he can keep up with sonic. Just bold, dominant flirty sonic!!!!

[Read it on AO3!]

It had taken Knuckles some time to procure some items he’d lost long ago. These items, which he had found just around the time he had met Rouge and Shadow, during the events of the ARK incident, had been lost because of how often he moved around and his lack of a home. He didn’t have a place to store them, so he had normally left them around the Master Emerald, as bringing them with him wasn’t always a viable option.

Rouge had found information that Eggman had acquired all three of the items, and Knuckles decided they were useful enough to go after. It had been easy enough, as they were stored in a base Eggman hadn’t been at himself.

On his way back to Angel Island, he had come across a lake he had seen once or twice before but never truly taken in. It was beautiful, surrounded by a lush forest, and there was a double-track trail that led to a small, abandoned cabin on the West side of the body of water. Some forgotten, large steel containers were scattered around the cabin, which was also located by a small dock that extended about twenty feet over the water. Normally, humans disrupting nature would’ve bugged Knuckles, but this was exactly what he was looking for.

He walked over to the cabin as he contemplated how long ago he had last used the items that he now wore—the Hammer Gloves, the Air Necklace, and a pair of Sunglasses—deciding it would be best to test them out, since it had been years. After adjusting his items, he moved onto the dock, looking down at the clear, blue water once he reached the end of the wooden platform, before diving into it. He swam close to the surface, looking at the rocks that lined the lake bottom, watching distant trout swim away, out of sight. Once he dove down deeper, he watched the minnows do the same thing, retreating to the safety of rocks.

He had no need to hold his breath, thanks to the Air Necklace, so he let himself enjoy the lake for upwards of fifteen minutes. When he reemerged, he turned to look for the dock he had come from, and then sighed when he saw Sonic standing on it. The blue hedgehog gave him a big wave, once he was spotted.

Knuckles swam over, grabbing the edge of the dock. “What are you doing here, Sonic?” he asked, pulling himself up and shaking off any access water as he got to his feet.

“Wow, you know you’re really graceful in the water?” Sonic asked rhetorically, giving him a handsome little smile.

Knuckles blinked and then simply gave him a look, wanting an answer as he moved to walk back to the cabin.

Sonic turned and walked with him. “Rouge told me you’d gotten those old items you had back in the day, so I wanted to come visit you to see them,” he explained. “I always stop at this lake on my way.”

“Why? You don’t even swim,” Knuckles said.

Sonic eyed him a little bit, openly. “Sometimes I just like to admire things,” he hummed with a fake innocence to his tone.

Knuckles blinked once and looked over at him, warmth spreading across his cheeks, despite the cool water he’d just been in. “Whatever,” he breathed, waving his comment off.

“Hey! I remember these!” Sonic exclaimed when Knuckles had lifted his hand, grabbing the echidna’s wrist gently and pulling his arm closer, to get a better look at his gloves. “You were always so cool with them.”

Knuckles huffed, tugging his arm away. “I want to make sure they still work,” he said, gesturing over to the steel boxes they were walking up to.

Sonic smirked. “Oh, right, go ahead,” he said, stopping to let Knuckles go the rest of the way by himself, not wanting to get in the way.

“Are you going to watch me?” he asked with confusion.

Sonic smirked at him. “Like I said, sometimes I just like to admire beautiful things.”

Knuckles blinked again, huffing again and quickly turning to the boxes. “You said nothing about ‘beautiful’ things.”

“Well, I’m saying it now,” Sonic said.

Knuckles just grumbled a little bit, before raising his fist and smashing one of the boxes in front of him, then using his other hand to destroy another one.

“I have no idea how you’re that strong,” Sonic commented, before the next punch. Knuckles chose to ignore him, just busting another container. “Seriously, I’m pretty sure you could completely demolish me.”

Knuckles nearly choked, that time, turning and looking over at Sonic, who had a fist on his hip, smirking. “Chaos, Sonic,” he breathed, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

Sonic laughed softly. “Sorry, too much?” he asked, sounding very amused.

Knuckles sighed, eyeing him, his cheeks flushed bright with blush. He didn’t say anything, just turned back to the last couple of crates, the steel shattering under his final blows, however his confidence was a little thrown, and he felt as if Sonic’s gaze was burning a hole in his back. He moved forward to inspect the steel scraps, pretending to search for anything that had been inside, even though that really wasn’t the point.

“Now the Sunglasses?” Sonic asked, still watching him.

The red echidna nodded, straightening up to glanced over at him. “I doubt there are any invisible items around here. That tech hasn’t been used in years,” he said with a shake of his head.

“Yeah, but I’d like to see you with them on. They’re hot,” he said, rubbing his nose and grinning at him still.

Knuckles blushed even more, giving a little embarrassed chuckle as he brought up his hand to lower the Sunglasses on his head. He glanced around, not seeing anything in the vicinity, as he had predicted. “Yeah, nothing here,” he breathed.

Sonic paused a second, before walking over. “There’s something here,” he said, reaching up to pushing up his Sunglasses, to look into his purple eyes.

Knuckles blushed deeply, blinking at him. “Is— Is there?” he stuttered.

Sonic nodding, unabashedly checking him out now as he lowered his hands to cup each side of his muzzle. The two of them looked at each other for a moment, and when Sonic leaned in and kissed Knuckles, the echidna sighed through his nose, sliding his hands to Sonic’s waist and closing his eyes. He let the hedgehog lead the kiss, relaxing as they finally crossed the fragile line that they’d been playing with for the past few years.

When they broke away from each other, Sonic smiled at him. “This is why I wanted to visit you, in case you didn’t catch that.”

“I got it,” Knuckles chuckled, even though he hadn’t been expecting this when he had first caught sight of the hedgehog.

Sonic chuckled with him, moving to take both of his hands with his own, careful of the special gloves. “Then can I come with you back to Angel Island?” he asked, quirking a brow.

Knuckles contemplated, before giving a small nod, smiling when Sonic’s expression lit up. They leaned in together, to kiss for another moment. When they pulled away, Sonic let go of one of his hands. “Alright, let’s go.”

[aweebwrites]

Papa Wu

(For you anon!)

_________________

Wu kept a hand folded behind his back, walking along the path to his long time friends' home. It had been years since his last visit and he had the urge to visit them. Ray and Maya have always been great people and it grieved him that he waited so long. But he had recently acquired a small boy he was now raising, Morro. He was a very spirited and gifted boy indeed. A smile lifted his face as he throught of the child he now called son. Said son who got distracted by a dragon fly hovering near by.

"Don't run off son." He called after him and Morro who was no more than 7 years old nodded at his new father.

"I won't!" He called back, watching the insect fly around.

Wu smiled then stopped in front of the shop and frowned once he saw no-one there. Most of the armor and weapons Ray had made was gone as well. There was hardly anything left.

Wu frowned, alarm bells going off. He looked around keenly, making sure there was no threats outside before making his way to the back of the shop where their home was. He stopped by the door and placed his hand by the lock, his golden power sparking and creating a key. He turned it, opening the door slowly and peering into the room. It appeared to be in a sort of order.

There were pieces of metal stuck away in a corner and clothes peaking out from between the cushions of their couch. He walked in, Nin-Jō held defensively as he scanned the room he heard footsteps in the next and made his way there. Once he was in the room- prepared for an attack, he discovered that there was no-one there to attack him.

"Who 're you?" The young boy with spiky hair asked Wu, his eyes narrowed at him as who appears to be his sister ate the last of what appears to be dried apricots.

"I..." Wu found himself at a loss for words.

These children. They looked so much like Maya and Ray. There was no doubt in his mind.

"Papa?" Wu turned around to see Morro walk up to him. "What are you doing?" He asked him, holding onto his hand like he always does when he felt unsure or frightened.

"Who's he?" The young girl asked, tilting her head at Morro.

"He is my son." Wu explained to her. "Your mother and father were friends of mine. Have you seen them?" He asked both children quietly, having a strong feeling he wouldn't like the answer.

The young girl's eyes filled with tears that quickly fell down her cheeks and so did the boy's. He however tried to keep a brave face.

"Mom n' dad left with people 'long time ago. They aren't coming back." He says as tears rolled down his freckled cheeks despite his fighting it.

Wu's heart shattered. What has happened to his friends? More importantly, how long have these two been on their own?

"Papa... Are you going to take them in too?" Morro asked, looking up at him with large deep green eyes.

"Yes." Wu says then walked over to the two and knelt before them. "I will do my best to find your parents but until then, would you like to live with me and my son? We would take care of you from now on." He offered the small children.

"My papa can teach you how to fight!" Morro added, excited to have company his age.

Both siblings looked at each other before nodding. He was friends with their father after all and he said he would try and find them. They walked over into Wu's opened arms while Morro bounced on his heels excitedly. He had friends!

_________

Morro decided having friends wasn't as fun when his papa made him take naps with them. He was a big kid! He didn't need naps or sippy cups (even though he asked for it) or bedtimes! They were lucky they were fun to play with! Right now, he and Kai were sword fighting with the wooden canes, grinning as they ran around the training yard.

"Be careful not to hurt your brother Morro." Wu says as Nya napped on his shoulder.

He's only had them for a year but he knew he would do anything for them. Sadly, he hasn't been able to find out what happened to their parents or who took them but in their honour, he would take care of their children.

"Ok papa!" Morro called out, as he chased down Kai who was laughing madly as he ran away.

"I am the master samurai! You cannot defeat me!" Kai yelled, running still.

"I can't if you keep running so fast!" Morro panted out, getting tired.

"That's the point!" Kai laughed and Morro growled, growing frustrated.

"Stop!" He yelled at Kai, reaching out for him.

There was a moment of shock when a strong gust of wind, swept Kai off his feet and up in the air. He fell with a thud, face first and Wu felt his heart leap out of his chest as he tugged over to the now crying boy, waking Nya on the way.

"Kai." He says, lifting him up with one hand and his eyes widened at the blood starting to run down the right side of his eye.

"Wha- wha happen to Kai?" Nay asked, her eyes welling up with tears.

"I'm sorry Papa! I didn't mean to!" Morro hiccuped and Wu took calming breaths as all three of them cried.

"Don't worry. Kai will be ok. Let's go inside to clean him up." Wu says as Morro walked in behind him, rubbing his eyes as he sobbed still.

_____________

After that day, Kai had a scar cut into his eyebrow that Morro felt guilty about every time. He also discovered he had control over the wind and while Kai and Nya found it infinitely cool, Morro was always wary of it. He could hurt someone again. He was happy to train his papa to control it better but only when Nya and Kai were safely out of range. He wouldn't use it when they trained together too.

"Where're you going pops?" Kai asked as he watched Morro and Nya spar, waiting for one of them to lose so he could spar with them.

They were all teenagers now with Morro being the eldest at 16, Kai being 15 and Nya at 13.

"I'm going to find allies. New friends even. Then a new chapter to your training will begin." He told them, slipping his rice hat on.

"Does this have to do with the prophecy of your brother papa?" Nya asked as they all turned to him.

"Yes. I fear my brother is taking action." Wu spoke quietly and they all shared a worried look. "Worry not. We won't let him succeed." He says and all three siblings grinned.

"Heck no we won't!" Kai whooped and Wu chuckled.

"I will be back soon. Nya, you're in charge." Wu says, heading towards the gate.

"Nya?" Both Kai and Morro sputtered as Nya smirked.

"Do not deny it. She's the most levelheaded of all of you." He says, opening the gates and they made to protest then pause.

"Don't worry papa! I'll keep this place in one piece!" She called out and Wu smiled back at them before closing the gates behind himself.

"I don't know about you two but I've been eyeing the cookie jar all day." Nya says, running inside and Kai and Morro looked at each other.

"Well if you're taking I want one too!" Kai yelled, running after her.

"I'm the oldest so I should get two!" Morro yelled, following behind.

___________

"You guys know your dad is crazy to think I can get through this entire course while he drinks that itty bitty cup of tea... Right?" Cole says after Sensei Wu went inside.

"Pops wouldn't give us a task he didn't think we could handle." Kai says as he cracked his knuckles, about to give it a shot.

He, Nya and Morro were used to the course but not at the speed that their father was requesting.

"You can do it bro!" Nya cheered and Kai grinned at her and a smirking Morro before darting ahead.

He jumped, kicked, flipped and twisted his way through but knew once he made it to the end that he was too slow.

"Dammit. Too slow." Kai sighed, walking past Cole who was watching him in shock.

"All you need is practise brother." Morro says, patting his shoulder.

'There's no hope for me.' Cole thought, looking at the course miserably.

____________

"You are all well versed in the course." Zane complimented, watching Nya run through next. "How long have you a been living with Sensei Wu?" He asked them.

"10 years. Nya and Kai have been with him for 9." Morro told him, watching Nya almost trip tersely.

"So you truly are adopted?" He questions.

"Yes. We were." Morro says, distractedly.

He relaxed once she cleared the course.

"Faster!" She yelled in outrage and Morro chuckled.

Zane watched them curiously.

They may as well be blood siblings.

___________

"Um- hi..." Jay says nervously as Nya drank some water after struggling through the training course.

"No." Morro says flatly and Jay yelped once he was blown back, rolling to a stop at Zane and Cole's feet.

"Try anything with our sister and I'll break your face." Kai says with a growl, standing before her protectively.

"Guys, please." Nya says and Jay looked hopeful as he stood. "I can break his face on my own if I need to thank you very much." She huffed and Jay's smile fell and broke.

"You're right sis." Morro smirked, wrapping an arm around her neck.

__________________

"Kai, master of fire. It burns bright in you." He says, tapping his son, the red ninja on his shoulder with his staff. "Jay is blue, master of lightning." He says, doing the same for the blue ninja.

"That's not all I'm the master of." Jay says from behind his mask. "I do a little inventing, dabble in model building, a touch of cooking, a little poetry-"

"More like mouth of lightning." Cole says with an exasperated sigh.

"Black ninja is Cole who summons rock, master of Earth." Wu says, tapping his shoulder with his staff. "White ninja is Zane, master of ice." Master Wu says, tapping his shoulder with the staff as well. "And seer with sixth sense." He added and Zane bows.

"You 4 are the chosen ones who will protect the five weapons of spinjitzu from Lord Garmadon." Wu says and while Zane, Cole and Jay seemed happy about that, Kai couldn't imagine being some chosen one without his brother and sister by his side.

Wu turned to a disappointed Morro and Nya before using hus Spinjitzu again to change their clothes.

"Emerald ninja is Morro, master of wind. A trickster but loyal, an ally." He says and Morro bowed with a smirk on his face, a glaive in hand.

"Maroon ninja is Nya, master of water. You will be able to control as small as a single drop to as large as the sea." He told her and she grinned proudly, twirling her sais.

She hadn't unlocked her powers like Morro did but she was getting there.

"They will be your support but no less apart of the team. Each and every one of you are intune with elemental properties." He told them all, awing them. "Come! It is time! We must find the first weapon." Wu says then tapped his staff against the ground.

"Woah, hold on a minute. You said you were going to teach us spinjitzu." Cole says, stepping forward.

"Yeah pops, I'm certainly not doing any spinjitzu over here." Kai says with a frown.

"Spinjitzu is already inside each and every one of you. The door will only be unlocked when the key is ready to be found." Wu says and they all looked at him. "Come! My feet are tired. We will take the horse carriage." He says, turning back into the monastery.

_________________

"I won't lie, I'm a little jealous you guys get epic golden weapons and we don't." Nya says, lifting an orb of soda from her bottle without taking her hands off of the controls.

"Eh, they're pretty cool." Kai shrugged, keeping his eyes on the screen.

"What I'm jealous about is that they get dragons. Dragons!" Morro emphasized then stole the orb of soda, using his wind and slurped it down.

"We're the ones who should be jealous. You guys actually have powers." Cole huffed, grabbing a slice of pizza.

"If we have em, I bet you guys do too." Morro shrugged, decimating all the enemy players.

"Huh?" "What?" "Aw man!" "Papa!" "Pops!" All 6 ninja exclaimed once the television was suddenly turned off.

"Just because Lord Garmadon escaped through a vortex doesn't mean that he won't return one day for the Golden Weapons of Spinjitzu!" He snapped at them, irritated as they lazed around- even his three children who knew better!

"But Sensei-"

"No buts Zane. I did not come to argue. Lord Garmadon has returned and was spotted approaching Jamanakai Village." He told them and they all flared up in panic.

Just like that, the six of them struggled to prepare for the mission, their weapons spread all over as they fell over each other. They managed to grab them then rush out to the dragon stables to mount their dragons. Nya rode with Kai while Morro rode with Jay for the sole purpose of intimidating him not to flirt with his sister. Jay gave a nervous yet terrified laugh before they all took air after some fumbling.

Despite it all, they were all eager to fight Garmadon again.

____________

They didn't get Lord Garmadon, rather Lloyd Garmadon, his son. Kai, Nya and Morro would blame how they treated Lloyd on both their irritation and their inability to look past their personal feelings. But when Lloyd began releasing the serpentine, they all agreed on one thing: it was their fault. So when they finally cornered Lloyd on the roof of Darkly's, the first thing they did was apologize, confusing the poor boy.

He did eventually warm up to them since anytime the other ninja tried to call him a brat or a variant of such, they were met by three powerful forces of protection. Lloyd wasn't used to being defended- or even protected- but he grew used to it quickly.

Especially when they snuck him candy and comics.

Kai was the one who showed him cool ninja moves, Nya eas the one making sure he was always fed (and always had some form of sweets to offer, even if it's the healthier kind when he's had too much) and Morro would always read comics and play video games with him.

To Nya, Morro and Kai, he was the little brother they didn't know they needed.

"Guess who's dropping in on Mega Monster Amusement Park today?" Nya says on she popped her head in to see Lloyd busy playing a video game against Kai while Morro tutored him on how to defeat Kai.

"Papa wouldn't let us just drop in out of nowhere with Serpentine causing a menace." Morro pointed out as Kai let Lloyd win.

"No. Not unless there's serpentine on the loose." Nya grinned then placed her hand on her hip. "We should have enough time for a ride or two after we kick serpentine butt..." She pointed out and Lloyd beamed.

"Can we?! Can we please?!" He asked eagerly.

"I don't see why not." Kai says with a smirk, setting his controller aside.

"To the mechs?" Morro questioned Nya.

"To the mechs." She grinned.

________________

Part 2

________________

(So! First things first: Nya and Morro automatically believe that one of the og4 will be the green ninja so thry don't even get their hopes up. Also, there is zero hesitation from Kai to save Lloyd in the volcano. Whole everyone else is fighting over thr title, Nya and Morro are building mechs since they don't have fancy golden weapons that double as vehicles. Nya is way better at it than he is though. He specialises in vehicles. I swear these fics feel so short and it's maddening. I hope you guys like it anyway!)

[typhonserpent]

Pause

Fandom: Dragon Age 2 Rating: Explicit, MAJOR trigger warnings for depictions of suicide, self harm, and death. Genre: Drama Pairing: Fenris/Anders Summary: Fenris catches on early to Anders’ suicidal plan. He’s seen so many slaves commit suicide before. He recognizes all the signs. Finally when Varric mentions Anders trying to give him his pillow, Fenris knows that there is little time left. He and Anders might not get on like the greatest of friends, but ten years does change people, and Fenris is set on rescuing Anders from himself.

It’s finally finished! Here’s my entry for Fill-a-Thon 2019. You can find the original prompt here.

✦ My Writing Tag ✦

✦ AO3 Link - Please leave me a comment! ✦

Fenris was 16 the first time he'd heard the word 'suicide' delicately danced around.

On hotter days, Danarius liked to dress him in a chain harness which looped around his chest several times and came together in a large emerald positioned over his heart. Danarius was, in fact, quite proud of the outfit, because the gem was enchanted to provide a barrier that made his usual chest plate unnecessary. Of course, the chest plate carried the added bonus of ensuring nobody thought Fenris was an easy target, and therefore was more practical to wear day-to-day. Nevertheless, private events sometimes called for different attire, preferably one that showed off the tattoos burned into Fenris' body. His best work of art, as he put it.

Fenris had been wearing that harness. The sweat dripping down his neck made his leather collar stick to his skin. Danarius was on the balcony, overlooking the Minrathos skyline. Sunlight bounced off of polished statues and brass roofs. Fenris poured more wine into his glass.

Pairian stepped out, and cleared his throat. He was an old elf, his hair all salt, no pepper. His collar was notably threadbare compared to Fenris', the leather's finish flaked and chipping along the edges. "Master?" Pairian said, stopping behind Danarius' chair, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm afraid I must inform you that we have lost Jamael."

Danarius heaved a sigh, rolled his eyes, and slammed his wine glass onto the table so hard that the base of it broke. Expensive liquid sloshed out as the body of the glass toppled and shattered on the balcony floor.

"How?" He growled without looking in Pairian's direction.

"We found him in the pantry when we realized he hadn't cleaned the banisters. He ..." Pairian paused with all the care of a man walking on eggshells. He knew the next words he spoke could be met with a whip, "He appears to have suffocated."

"Has the pantry been dug deeper? How in blazes did he suffocate?"

"The ... rope around his neck may have been the culprit. Master."

Danarius rolled his eyes again and stood, kicking aside some of the broken glass on the ground. "Fenris, fetch me another glass."

"Yes, Master." And without further ado, the obedient little wolf set down the wine bottle and bolted for the kitchen.

It had been only a few months since the lyrium ritual gave him his markings and stole his memories. He didn't know if he'd known Jamael before then. Perhaps they'd been friends. After all, Jamael had been friendly enough towards him. Sunlight bled through the windows and illuminated every other stride he took as he ran, barefoot, down the halls of Danarius' huge manor.

He reached the kitchen to be greeted by a small crowd at the entrance. A stretcher had been fashioned out of two poles and an old sheet, and two of the larger elven slaves carried away a man barely recognizable from the last Fenris had seen of him.

Fenris strained to remember the last time he'd seen Jamael.

They'd passed in the hall way. Jamael had smiled and said, "Hey, how are you feeling? Still itchy?"

Fenris shook his head. Jamael had seen the physical results of the lyrium ritual. The pain, the blood, the ache that lasted for weeks, and then the itch that persisted as the wounds healed.

"If you need more, don't be shy. If you can get away from the Master for five minutes, anyway. I can sweet talk Seri into more elfroot anytime you need it." Then, he'd grinned. He was always smiling. Always helping. A personality as bright as his red hair.

That smile was gone now. His tongue swollen and sticking out, cheeks and eyes puffy. His entire head was discolored dark shades of purple and blue, sharply cutting off where the rope was wrapped tightly around his neck. The end of the rope dangled off the stretcher.

"Never thought he was the type." Someone in the crowd muttered.

"He seemed so happy yesterday." Another whispered, "I almost thought he was turning around."

"That's how it starts." A nearby voice replied, "You remember Sheera? Same thing. Months of silence, three days of calm, and then her corpse gets dragged out of the wash room. Wrists all cut up."

"Such a shame."

Fenris moved his hands to his ears, fingers tangling with his hair. Why didn't anyone try to stop him? If they knew the signs they could have at least tried!

He had to push his way through the crowd to reach the kitchen, muttering apologies all along the way. He waited a few extra minutes with the glass in his hand and his back to the door, just to ensure that he wouldn’t see the corpse again when he left.

Danarius liked Fenris to sleep at the foot of his bed. After all, a body guard should be there to guard the master at all times. Fenris told himself he didn't mind it so much. It was comfier than the slaves cots, and warmer too. Danarius always afforded him a blanket and pillow. Sometimes they'd even share the same one.

Later that night, Fenris was curled up at the foot of Danarius' bed, blanket wrapped tight around him. Water trickled and splashed in the next room while Danarius washed himself, and eventually he returned to the bedroom, hair damp, body wrapped in a silk robe.

"I'm sorry in such a state as earlier, my pet. I despise slaves like Jamael. I thought I had rid myself of most of them."

The question danced on the tip of his tongue. After all, a slave who asked a question out of turn could very easily be answered with a whip. As Danarius sat on the bed and toed off his slippers, Fenris mulled over the question in his mind, and finally decided he could ask if only to find out what not to do in the future.

"Master," He whispered, his voice as small as a mouse, "What did Jamael do?"

"He committed suicide, Fenris. He killed himself."

Suicide.

Fenris turned the word over in his head. He'd never heard it before. Just hearing it made him want to squirm. It sounded sad. It sounded wrong.

"To kill oneself is a sin in the eyes of the Maker." Danarius continued, "You know that, don't you my pet?"

Fenris nodded, because despite his shattered memories, the words did sound familiar. The idea of killing himself had never even crossed his mind.

Danarius smiled, sending a wave of relief washing over him. He wasn't in trouble for asking the question. He wasn't going to be punished.

"Good boy," Danarius purred, "Now shed your armor and come here. I think I'd like to hold you tonight."

x - X - x

Danarius kept two whips in his office. One was a cat o'nine, a fairly standard punishment tool. A worn wood rod wrapped in leather that knotted at the end and then was sliced into several smaller strips. It stung the same no matter how worn it was, though it was occasionally replaced with one that bore stiff, fresh leather.

The other was a bullwhip, and it would be easy to assume that the whip with only one tail was kinder, but that would be a foolish assumption. At the end of the tail was a gold claw. Well, the slaves assumed it was gold. Nobody was ever facing it when it was out. It was as though he had cut off an eagle's toe at the first knuckle. It tore through flesh like a blade through paper, leaving deep gashes in it's wake.

It also made an unearthly hissing sound when it struck flesh, leaving Fenris to assume that Danarius dipped it in something before he used it.

Fenris, of course, had never even seen it. Danarius sent him to wait in the hallway when he had to use it, and he was left with the screams and cries of whatever poor soul was in there with him.

A year had passed since Jamael's death. Sometimes the image of the swollen, discolored face still made Fenris wake up in a cold sweat. If possible, he grew further away from the other slaves since then. Danarius no longer allowed him to dine in the servant's wing. He was to stay by Danarius' side at all times, even if it meant eating on the floor while guests were over. The few occasions where Fenris was sent away included especially confidential meetings (usually with other Magisters), evenings when he and his wife tried to consummate, and moments like these.

Whoosh-CRACK-hiss, and in the center of it all an ear-splitting cry that echoed through the hallways while the hiss gradually fizzled out.

"I said COUNT!" Came Danarius' voice, echoing in the same voice.

The slave girl sniffled, and in a weak, shaky voice, choked, "O-one."

Whoosh-CRACK-hiss. Fenris flinched. She didn't cry out this time.

"Two."

Whoosh-CRACK-hiss. Her cry was broken. Barely a sound audible above the whip's contact.

"... three."

Fenris closed his eyes, taking deep breaths to steady himself. He pressed his back against the wall. He counted the seconds in his head.

one ... two ... three ... four ...

If enough time passed that meant it was over.

five ... six ... seven

Whoosh-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK

Fenris put his hand over his mouth, listening to the stretched-out hiss so intently that he nearly missed Danarius' footsteps approaching. Danarius burst through the door and Fenris immediately straightened his stance, eyes open and forward. Icy eyes glanced at Fenris, then at the whip in his hands. He ran his fingers along the thinnest portion of the letter, sighing when he came back with a streak of blood on his hand.

"Get her out of my office." He commanded, "I'll find you when I need you again."

He was gone without another word, leaving the door open behind him. Fenris dared a glance inside, where the elven slave was crumpled in a limp heap on the floor. Six wicked, bleeding marks shone boldly on her upturned back.

Her face was pale. Wide eyes stared into space. She didn't move when Fenris knelt beside her. She was shaking, her breathing shallow and rapid.

"Can you walk?" Fenris asked.

She didn't respond. Fenris shook her shoulder.

"Come on, let's get you out of here." He continued.

She shook her head and turned her face towards the floor.

"If you don't leave he'll whip you again when he returns."

"Let him. Let me die." She choked, squeezing her eyes shut and letting her tears drip onto the marble tiles.

"You don't mean that."

"I do!" She was sobbing now, a hiccup on every breath. With a sigh, Fenris lifted her up by her shoulders.

He managed to hoist her over one shoulder so that her back was in the air, her arm wrapped across his other shoulder. In the kitchens, Seri was rifling through cupboards and emerged as soon as he entered, her face dropping.

"Maker, she must be bad if he sent you." Seri sighed, "Set her on the cot. I'll put the water on."

Unlike the other slaves, Seri had a tiny corner of the pantry to herself. All the better to wake up early to start breakfast, or to tend to the master's whims should he find himself hungry at night. It served double duty as the closest things the slaves had to a sick room.

As gently as possible, Fenris lowered her onto the cot, careful to lay her on her side. She winced as her weight left his shoulder.

"I apologize." He pulled up a crate and sat next to her.

Her eye were bloodshot. She replied with a sniffle, "Should've left me to die."

"To kill oneself is a sin in the eyes of the maker."

"I don't care!" She shouted, shakily propping herself up on one elbow, "I want out of this mess! I wanna be free! I don't care how I do it!"

Fenris felt the color drain from his cheeks. If ever there was a word that earned a slave six lashings, that was it. If anything that was generous. Some slaves had fingers and toes cut off for less.

He swallowed a lump in his throat, and chose his next words very carefully, "If you say things like that ... you'll be punished again."

"Oh what do you care? You don't even know me." She sniffled and flopped onto her stomach, chin buried in the pillow.

"What is your name then?"

Hugging the pillow close to her, she looked at him over the fabric. He held out his hand.

She wiped off her eyes, and shook his hand.

"M'name's Deveri." She said, her voice muffled, "I've heard Master call you Fenris."

"Yes."

"I wasn't always a slave, y'know. M'parents sold me to get out of debt. I don't care 'bout them, but I hate our Master."

Seri's voice popped in along with a pot of water in her arms, "As slaves go, we're actually quite lucky. We could be serving one of those magisters who cuts up every slave for experiments. At least under Master Danarius we get three hots and a cot. Decent food, too. Not rotten leftovers or table scraps."

She pressed a damp rag into Deveri's back, earning a hiss in response.

Fenris opened his mouth, then shut it again. There was something left unsaid between them, and he couldn’t put his finger on what. Seri poked his arm.

“You’d best get back to the master before he misses you.” She said.

Fenris never hesitated on an order. He immediately stood and left, barely catching Seri snapping, “Hush” while Deveri quietly sobbed.

Two weeks later he was fetching a bottle of wine from the cellar when he ran into Seri again. Burn-striped hands threw a glob of bread dough on the counter and started kneading deep caverns into it.

“Seri,” He began, pausing at the door to the cellar.

“Hm? What you need? You hurt?”

“No, I was ...” He shuffled his feet, eyes on the ground, “I was just wondering how Deveri was doing.”

“Heard the news, eh? I’m afraid she didn’t make it.”

His heart jumped to his throat. He looked up to see her kneading the bread as though she’d said nothing.

“What?” He breathed, “The whipping was harsh but … did her back get infected?”

Seri wiped her hands on her apron, “Her back was healing fine, she cut her wrists. That’s what did her in. Sorry I thought you heard.”

His jaw hung slack. He could feel the jolt from his heart spreading through his whole chest. He didn’t move until Seri set her hand on his arm and squeezed.

“Sorry, dear.” She said, “She did ask me to give you this.”

She pressed a purple ribbon into his hand.

“She says it’s from before she was a slave.” She continued, “Now you’d best get the master his wine. You know which one he likes.”

She went back to kneading the dough, and Fenris was still staring at the ribbon in his hand.

“To kill oneself is a sin in the eyes of the maker.” he muttered.

“I don’t think that helped her much, dear. It’s good if it works for you, but it ain’t for everyone.”

x – X – x

The sun rose through the fog in Par Vollen and cast a gradient smear of blue, pink, orange, and purple every morning.  It probably rose like this every morning, but few were so special as this one.

Fenris was bundled up in a knitted sweater and a scarf, both borrowed from the Fog Warriors. “Borrowed” was a loose term here, as they had thrust the items into his hands the first night they saw him shivering. Danarius never cared if he was cold. He was used to toughing it out.

A lot had been happening that he wasn’t used to.

When Danarius had been forced to evacuate Par Vollen, there wasn’t enough room for his beloved bodyguard. Fenris was left behind, alone for the first time he could ever remember, and was immediately taken by the very same soldiers who’d attacked and forced the evacuation in the first place.

He thought he’d be killed. Then he thought he’d be taken prisoner. More and more, though, it seemed like he was just staying here, and he liked it well enough he supposed. One morning he awoke in a panic, seeing that the sun was already set low in the sky and the others were already working. Oversleeping was not a luxury he was allowed in Danarius’ house.

Waking up early was nice, too. Never before had he perched on a hillside to watch the sunrise, simply because he wanted to. The Fog Warriors’ tents were to his back, and a few were already rising to greet the morning.

Gundat was a tal vashoth who had stripes of scars on both arms and short, curled horns. His jaw was crooked and so was his smile as he walked past Fenris while hiking up the hill.

“What are you doing up so early?” He asked.

Fenris shrank back, and Gundat knelt, signaling him to stop, “Hey, hey, don’t be like that, you’re not in trouble. I was just curious is all.”

Fenris didn’t look up, and muttered, “Watching the sunrise.”

Gundat gave him a tired smile and patted his shoulder, “That’s good, Fenris. That’s good. You should enjoy that stuff if you can.”

Gundat’s eyes were sunken in, dark circles lining them and an underlying exhaustion that he’d seen so many times before, in slaves worked to the bone for days without rest. Words got stuck in his throat while Gundat rose. He wanted to say something, but he wasn’t permitted.

Except Danarius wasn’t here, and nobody here ever stopped him from speaking. He watched Gundat walk away, and realized that he didn’t have to stay on the hill. There were a lot of sunrises, but there was only one Gundat.

He stood up, and asked, “Are you alright?”

Gundat stopped, “I’m fine. Just tired. I don’t really sleep at night, that’s why I take the night patrol.”

“You look so ...” Tired? Lifeless? Too calm to be normal?

"Fenris," Gundat set a hand on his shoulder, making him flinch, "You're on your own since your master left you here, right? You seem happy. You get to be happy. Treasure that. Not everyone has it."

Gundar turned again. Fenris watched him until he reached the top of the hill. His horns had just started to disappear over the curve when Fenris sprinted.

"Gundar!"

The tal-vashoth in question met Fenris as right as he caught up to him.

"I get to choose what I do every day, right?"

"Of course."

"Then I want to spend today with you."

Gundar huffed a laugh, "Why? You have better things to do. Watch the sunrise more. Be happy."

"I'll be happier watch...if you...I'll be happy..." Fenris stammered.

Suddenly, he couldn't breathe through his nose. He felt a teardrop run down his cheek, and sniffled.

Gundar brushed the tear away with his thumb.

Fenris knew what was happening. The Fog Warriors were masters of patience. Gundar was waiting for Fenris to continue, and would wait until the sun rose tomorrow if need be.

Finally, he whispered, "To kill oneself is a sin in the eyes of the Maker."

Gundar shrugged, "Sorry, I don't believe in the Maker. It's fine if that works for you, though."

"I...I don't want you to hurt yourself..." He choked, wiping his eyes with the sweaters' sleeve, "Please...if it helps...can I spend the day with you? Please...that would make me happy."

Gundar smiled, and although it was an exhausted, heavy smile, there was still a genuine sparkle behind his eyes.

"Alright, Fenris. If it makes you happy."

Fortunately, Gundar wasn't with Fenris when Danarius gave him the order to kill.

Unfortunately, Fenris would never be able to face Gundar again.

x - X - x

It was ten years before Fenris again heard the word 'suicide' delicately danced around.

He was in the hanged man like he had been so many other nights, though this time perhaps he'd had a bit too much to drink. He was finding a lot of amusement in teasing the others about how easy it was to read their tells. He'd attended enough high-class Tevinter parties as Danarius' bodyguard, after all. When you're not allowed to talk, you spend a lot of time listening.

"Looks like I have all of Hawkes coins~" He hummed, dropping a handful into a stack and delighting in the clink clink clink they made as they fell.

"Oh, I'm not out of this game yet. Ante up." Hawke pulled a coin purse out of her pocket and dropped it on the table. She gained a spark to her eye, one which Fenris had seen so many times. It meant she'd been taunted enough to push forward no matter how stupid it made her.

Not that it was hard to get her to that point.

"What's it mean when all the cards are different, again?" Merril asked.

Isabella answered, "It means Anders should have given me his hand back by now."

The mage in question had his head resting on his fist, cards lazily propped up with a limp hand. Isabella reached over and snatched them from him. Anders startled awake with a yelp that drew every eye at the table in his direction.

"You alright, Blondie?" Varric asked.

Anders rubbed his eyes and yawned, "Must have been one of Isabella's anecdotes. I think you should stick to the storytelling, Varric."

Isabella leafed the cards together, rolled her eyes, and passed the deck to Merril to cut. "Ha ha, very funny. Are you in this hand or are you going to doze off again?"

"Well as much as I love losing my life savings to Fenris, I can't be much fun when I'm like this." Anders pushed away from the table, leaving right as Isabella started dealing cards.

"What's gotten into him?" Hawke asked, jerking her head at the door.

Merril arranged the cards in her hand as she answered, "Maybe there's another outbreak in Dark Town. You know how he doesn't let himself sleep when the clinic is full."

Varric shook his head, "Nah, Hawke's right. He's been weird lately. Well, weirder than usual. You know the other day he tried to give me this pillow that his mom made. He said something about wanting me to have it. Don't get me wrong, we're close. He's a good friend. It just seems like the kind of thing you'd save for your brother or something, you know?"

Fenris felt a familiar jolt in his chest, the kind that made him want to stand up and follow Anders. He looked at his cards and couldn't focus on them. They were all red, which meant something, but words escaped him. He didn't want to be here. Hawke said something, and he didn't hear a word of it.

"I fold." He said, setting his cards down.

"Come on, don't be like that. You haven't even discarded anything yet." Isabella whined.

Fenris was already shoveling coins into his coinpurse, "Apologies. I remembered there was something I have to do." There wasn't a lot of time. Anders could already be out of sight by now. He'd only dug a trench into the pile of coins.

"Keep the rest for drinks." He added, straitening up. With a quick wave, he was out of the Hanged Man and into the seaside air.

Most of Kirkwall was protected from the wind by its own walls and buildings, so the chill was there but the moisture from the water's surface didn't settle in until early morning. Fenris could see his breath in the air. It was cold but not unbearably chilly, though it would be in a few hours. He looked left and right and was met only with empty streets.

His feet flew down the stairs that led to dark town. The clinic was the only place he could think to look. To his surprise the door was unlocked. He burst into an empty room. Looking wildly around revealed only empty beds and medicine shelves, with Anders' desk shoved off to one side.

"Shit." Fenris mumbled.

At the desk, there were piles and piles of papers all bearing Anders' handwriting. Perhaps he could have looked for a sign, a plan, a hint, anything if not for the fact that his reading lessons with Hawke had barely finished covering the alphabet. He was cursing - both mentally and literally - the fact that slaves weren't permitted to read, when the door by the desk creaked and Anders stepped out of his bedroom.

"Fenris?" Anders said. His hair hung loose and framed his face. His eyes were wide open, red, and shaded with dark circles underneath. "What are you doing here? Are you hurt?"

That was an excellent question, and it made Fenris freeze. Because really, what was he doing here?

For a brief second, he considered breaking his own arm. Then he’d have a reason to be here.

No, that would be silly.

Fenris cleared his throat, "You seemed troubled. I thought you could use some company."

"It's late. I'm surprised you care. I thought you hated me."

Fenris sighed. Maker, why was he making this so hard?

"No I don't hate you," He groaned, "I just think you're a misguided fool."

"And? If you're here to argue in favor of the Templar order imprisoning mages for the crime of being-"

"Maker, can we not talk about mages and Templars for one night?" Fenris snapped, "We can talk about something else! Literally anything else!"

Anders blinked, taken aback. There was silence for a second while the gears turned in Anders' head.

"Alright," Anders concluded, "What do you want to talk about?"

Which was another excellent question.

"Walk with me." Fenris decided. Because if they were walking, at the very least, he had something to do while he was thinking of what to say. And thankfully without question or comment, Anders took his staff and followed Fenris.

They left dark town, largely because dark town was a bad place to be when it was dark. Low town wasn't much better, and as they passed the Hanged Man they could hear Hawke loudly demanding another round of drinks. Their friends were great company, but crowds weren't needed right now.

"The sky's clear tonight." Anders said, "If it weren't for the buildings you could see the stars."

Which gave Fenris an excellent idea.

"Do you want to?"

"Want to what?"

"See the stars?"

"... I guess?"

They cut through high town to get to the abandoned manor Fenris claimed as his own. On the top floor in one of the guest bedrooms, a portion of the roof had collapsed and the accompanying chimney had crumbled into a slope of broken cobblestone. Moonlight was shining in beams through the hole when they entered. Fenris climbed up first, and offered his hand to help Anders up.

It was a sight to behold.

Kirwall stretched for miles from one end to the other, but as high up as they were, they could see the ocean in the distance as well as the gallows and every side of the wall that surrounded the city. Above them was a velvet blanket coated with dots of light that drew the eyes heaven bound. The ground and the sky fought for attention here. One a feat of man, the other a feat of the divine.

"It's beautiful." Anders breathed, "How long have you known about this spot?"

"I found it not long after I moved into the mansion." Fenris sat down next to a handful of empty wine bottles and dirty plates, "Sometimes I come up here to think."

"That's a laughable thought. Most nights I'd prefer to stay out of my own head." Anders sat down next to Fenris, "So, what was it you wanted to talk about."

"I don't know. Something. Anything. The stars?"

So they talked about the stars.

The constellations were different between the Marches and Tevinter, though they found a small handful had the same names. They both had a hobby of stargazing, it seemed. And when they grew bored of the stars, they watched the town below, and found they both enjoyed people watching as well. It seemed they had a lot in common, so long as they weren't talking about mages or Templars. They watched drunks stumble home and graveyard workers shuffle around on the streets. They swatted bugs and talked about how annoying mosquitoes and flies were. They talked about bugs that they didn't find annoying. They talked until the sky grew pale with morning twilight.

Anders had his arms crossed to hold in his warmth, his legs drawn up to his chest. They'd been silent the past few minutes, occupied with watching a gray-haired human man. He was on a long walk that started at the docks and went to low town, through through the market place, and stopped for a rest on the chantry steps, completely unaware that he was being watched. "Thank you, Fenris." He said, "I suppose I did need some company."

Fenris nodded, and a long silence stretched between them.

"You know ..." Anders continued, "I was considering doing something incredibly stupid tonight, and I'm glad I didn't do it now."

"I know."

Anders wouldn't meet Fenris' face. Instead his cheeks flushed, and he looked to the ground.

"'To kill oneself is a sin in the eyes of the Maker'." Fenris continued, "But you already knew that, and the Maker isn't going to stop you. I am. Because nobody ever says the word 'suicide' until it's already a regret. And if I had to choose I'd rather abolish that sin than the sin of being a mage."

Anders drew his knees closer to his chest and buried his chin in them. A breeze sent a chill all the way to his bones. He flinched when Fenris' hands brushed his skin. Gentle, patient hands pulled his bangs back into their usual ponytail.

When Fenris moved away and returned to his seat, Anders dared to look up again, and glimpsed a flash of purple fabric behind him. A ribbon.

"Slaves don't have any possessions, strictly speaking." Fenris said, "I've had that in my pocket for more than 15 years. I expect it back. Not from Varric, not from Hawke, but from you. So if you find no other reason to live, you can know I'll be expecting to get that ribbon back. It means a lot to me."

Anders wiped the tears from his eyes and smiled. Fenris returned to watching the skyline. Scooting a little closer, Anders leaned on him, and they watched the sunrise together.

[sage-nebula]

Thanks! So they've mentioned a war and Sonic being imprisoned for awhile? Also curious about Shadow's history, as it was alluded he was a villain in the past. And in one of the panels where Sonic was thinking about his infection, it showed outlines in the background suggesting comparable things had happened to him in the past. One seemed to be him turning into a monster, maybe?

So they’ve mentioned a war and Sonic being imprisoned for awhile?

That’s the plot of Sonic Forces. The long and short of it is that the game opens up with Eggman successfully taking over the world and, with the assistance of a jackal named Infinite who had the power of the Phantom Ruby (a gem which allowed him to warp reality), capturing Sonic (though many believed Sonic had died). Sonic was imprisoned and tortured for six months until he managed to escape, and during that time a Resistance was led by Knuckles and Amy against Eggman’s empire. As you can expect, the game ends with Eggman being overthrown (and Infinite being killed, we think).

Also curious about Shadow’s history, as it was alluded he was a villain in the past.

Shadow’s history is … complicated, to say the least, but I will explain it as best I can, haha.

So, fifty years ago, Eggman’s cousin, Maria Robotnik, was suffering from some kind of terminal illness. I think they said it was something along the lines of a degenerating immune system (neuro-immune system?), but the specifics aren’t really gone into very much. As a result of this, their grandfather Dr. Gerald Robotnik, started work on what was known as Project Shadow, a.k.a. the Ultimate Lifeform project. The goal was to create the Ultimate Lifeform, who was immune to all diseases, and then use that DNA to create a cure for Maria’s illness, which otherwise had no cure. Throughout the course of this project, two beings were created: the Biolizard, and the hedgehog we know as Shadow.

Now, I can’t remember if very much was said about the Biolizard’s DNA, only that at the end of Sonic Adventure 2 (the game where Shadow was introduced) it was kinda-sorta believed that the Biolizard may have been the true Ultimate Lifeform. Regardless, Shadow was created with the DNA from an alien known as Black Doom, who as it happens is also evil. But regardless of that, being created from Black Doom’s DNA is, I believe, what makes Shadow the Ultimate Lifeform. Although he has been alive for fifty years (in stasis for most of those years, to be fair), he is only sixteen years old. He’s not immortal (in the sense that he can be killed), but he doesn’t exactly age, either. He is immune to most diseases, and he can use Chaos Control, which allows him to teleport various places. The bracelets he wears on his wrists are inhibitor rings, which keep his power in check, but if he removes those he can also unleash a very powerful Chaos Blast. It takes a lot out of him, though.

Anyway, back when Shadow was created fifty years ago, he formed a very close friendship with Maria. It could be said, truthfully, that she was both his first friend and his only friend at that time. However—and my memory on this is a bit shaky since I haven’t played Sonic Adventure 2 in a long time, so bear with me—during the course of Gerald Robotnik’s research, I believe Project Shadow was defunded by the government, or something along those lines. Gerald was furious, because this of course meant that he wouldn’t be able to create a cure for Maria. So instead he set to work on creating the Eclipse Cannon on Space Colony ARK, which would allow him to decimate planet Earth as revenge, because of course that is the logical next step.

Unfortunately for him (and Maria, and Shadow), his hopes for revenge were in vain. The government found out about his plan and had their military force, G.U.N., storm Space Colony ARK, killing everyone on board … except Shadow, who was sent to safety by Maria, but including Maria herself. Shadow, trapped in an escape pod, could only watch as Maria was shot down by G.U.N. (and keep in mind, Maria was only about 12 - 14 herself, and had absolutely nothing to do with her grandfather’s plans). Right before this happened, Maria told Shadow was that her final wish was for him to protect the people of Earth—to give them a chance to be happy. Then she died, and Shadow was sent off in the capsule, though presumably at some point accosted by G.U.N. and put into stasis.

In any event, the trauma of seeing his first and only and best friend brutally murdered for literally no reason affected Shadow pretty deeply, including warping his memories of that event. As a result, Shadow remembered the promise he made to Maria being one of revenge, which incidentally is the exact opposite of what she actually wanted, but … he was a traumatized teenager who was then thrown into stasis by those very same soldiers, so you can’t really hold that against him too much. Anyway, fifty years after that event, Eggman (i.e. Gerald’s grandson, Dr. Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik) busted Shadow out of containment because he’d heard tell of the “Ultimate Lifeform” and wanted to see that himself. Shadow, seeing Eggman as a useful ally in terms of getting his revenge, agreed to help Eggman so long as Eggman could make it to the Space Colony ARK (I think that was the deal, anyway). Shadow himself went and procured a Chaos Emerald, framing Sonic for the deed along the way (since apparently G.U.N. is so incompetent they cannot tell Sonic or Shadow apart—but then again, neither can Amy later in the game, so), and eventually Shadow and Eggman strike a deal to work together officially. The deal, it should be said, is to gather all seven Chaos Emeralds to power the Eclipse Cannon, which they will then use to explode the planet. (Well, Eggman wants to rule the planet; he doesn’t realize that Shadow wants to explode it when they make the deal.) Unfortunately for them, they were spied on by Rouge the Bat, who followed Eggman to the Space Colony ARK after he tried to steal the Master Emerald (and failed because Knuckles shattered it to prevent it being stolen—mind you, Rouge had been in the process of trying to steal it herself). Rouge pretends to be a simple jewel thief to get in on the action, but in reality she’s a G.U.N. agent investigating the Ultimate Lifeform, a.k.a. Shadow. Neither of them realize it at the time.

All that said, the neat thing about Sonic Adventure 2 is that it initially has two story paths you can play: Hero Path, which lets you play as Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles; and Dark Path, which lets you play as Shadow, Eggman, and Rouge. The ending seems different on each, with Dark Path making it seem as though Shadow and Eggman’s plan will succeed, and Hero Path indicating the opposite. But if you beat both paths, a third path—True Path—opens, which shows you the true ending. The Biolizard is revealed, the plan to explode the planet (and the fact that this is now going to be accomplished by the Biolizard crashing Space Colony ARK into it) is revealed, and more importantly, during a time of quiet, Amy gets a chance to talk to Shadow. She inadvertently reminds him of what Maria truly wanted by talking about how everyone on Earth has different goals, but that ultimately they just want to be happy and deserve that chance. As I said, this unlocks the real memory of what happened that tragic night for Shadow, and he rushes off to go help the others stop the impending disaster so that he can do what Maria wanted. He kicks the Biolizard’s ass (which is his way of proving to himself which of them is truly the Ultimate LIfeform), but when the Biolizard transforms into the Final Hazard and starts to forcibly drag the Space Colony ARK toward Earth, he and Sonic use the Chaos Emeralds to activate their Super Forms to fight it in space. This battle results in Shadow sacrificing himself to finally defeat the Final Hazard once and for all, but also falling all the way to Earth from space in the process, his last thoughts being directed at Maria, telling her that he kept his promise to her. Sonic brings one of Shadow’s inhibitor bracelets back to the ARK and gives it to Rouge, and when everyone else has already left, stays in the room a moment long to deliver one final, “Sayonara, Shadow the Hedgehog.” (Yes, he says “sayonara” in the English version as well, just as Maria did; this is not me being a weeb lol.)

Anyway, Shadow was originally going to be Killed Off For Real there, but because of his immense popularity was revealed to have survived the fall to Earth, albeit he had amnesia as a result. Eggman also created some clones or robots of him as well, and that’s all explained in Sonic Heroes … but it’s not really relevant to the comics right now, lol. The important thing is, Shadow was an antagonist bent on the destruction of the world (and several brutal fights with Sonic, including at least one being intended to the death) in Sonic Adventure 2, but he realized the error of his ways at the end and sacrificed himself (everyone thought permanently) to help protect it. This leads to Sonic saying, in response to Rouge asking if Sonic thought Shadow really was the Ultimate Lifeform, “He was what he was—a brave and heroic hedgehog.” Which is part of why Sonic making his quip about how he didn’t think Shadow cared about innocent people in the most recent comic pretty ehhhh, even if it was a joke.

But yeah, those are the most important deals about Shadow. Note that Maria is still a very sensitive spot for him, to the point where, in a Twitter Takeover where the characters were voiced by their current voice actors in the games, Eggman refused to read a question asking Shadow how Maria was doing, and when Sonic started to read it, his response was, “Dear Shadow, how’s Mariauhhh, oh, oh yikes.”  It’s really not a good idea to invoke her name carelessly around him.

And in one of the panels where Sonic was thinking about his infection, it showed outlines in the background suggesting comparable things had happened to him in the past. One seemed to be him turning into a monster, maybe?

That would be the game Sonic Unleashed, where Sonic was turned into a “werehog” at night due to a … curse? Infection? I can’t exactly say for sure since I didn’t play that one, haha, but essentially throughout the game Sonic was himself during the day, and then was a werehog at night, though this was cured / reversed by the end of the game, obviously. I don’t think knowing too much about that particular adventure will be necessary going forward; that was more just a little allusion to game fans to let them know that the events of Unleashed are canon in the comic.

Let me know if there’s anything more you’d like clarified!

[sonicfanj]

A quickie AU concept Background for my Rosy redesign

So, on and off I've been juggling with coming up with a background for my Rosy redesign but never felt like anything really worked because I just constantly want to involve the whole franchise in some form or another. Even going for an AU approach it's proven a challenging task. Then there is also the fact that I seem to better at writing synopses than anything else really resulting in me not knowing the best approach to take. Well, getting tired of my indecisiveness I figured why not just put something out that's part story synopsis and outline and put this little piece together.

Hedgehog Circus

A History of Rosy

Her origins are unknown and she doesn’t ever bring it up herself so for most she first was noticed in the company of the treasure hunter/ mercenary Fang the Sniper. Though her actual name is still Amy Rose, Fang is the one who took to calling her Rosy as a nickname and her rascal title came from being in the company of the shifty jerboa/wolf. As for why she accompanied Fang is a matter of benefit for the both of them as her fortune telling abilities easily allowed Fang to sniff out treasure and she craved adventure being inspired by the stories of the most famous hedgehog in the world: Sonic. For the most part the two provided the other with what they wanted and despite Rosy’s title as a rascal Fang was still taken aback when he was one who was betrayed of all people.

Rosy’s betrayal was not out of spite to Fang in any regard but rather out of reverence to the powers that spoke to her through her fortune telling. For Rosy their commands were absolute so when her cards told her to travel to Never Lake for a fated encounter she questioned them not. Using her personal magic carpet Rosy promptly traveled to the lake and was greeted by the sight of none other than the Miracle Planet: Little Planet. Rosy was aware of the portals between worlds but was still astounded to see the dwarf planet that itself traveled once a month to her home world there before her eyes. While Fangs treasure hunts had taken her across three of the four worlds that were known to be connected by the powers of the legendary gems of Chaos, Sol, and Time, it was her first time seeing Little Planet. Lulled by her sense of adventure Rosy forgot her reasons for visiting Never Lake and ventured to Little Planet to satisfy herself. In short order she found herself in over her head as she became embroiled with the latest clash between Dr. Eggman and her hero, Sonic the Hedgehog. Experiencing the battle not just between Sonic and Eggman, but also the Time Stones and the Phantom Ruby, Eggman’s own unique gem of legend which could transform the world into his image, enamored Rosy beyond her wildest imaginings with Sonic. When it was all over though and she found herself alone at Never Lake as the rescued Little Planet warped back to whence it came it was almost as though it had all been a wild fever dream. Dream or no though she was positive that meeting Sonic was indeed the encounter that the powers that be desired her to experience and it would change her relationship with Fang forever.

Already feeling betrayed by Rosy her sudden desire to chase after Sonic and be a part of the hedgehog’s life was a major inconvenience to Fang beyond even whether he could trust her anymore. Disgusted he would eventually take a job from Eggman to try and off the blue hedgehog and secure the chaos emeralds for himself. When that failed he would later encounter the last echidna and guardian of the Master Emerald, Knuckles, and form an easy relationship that has persisted to this day. Rosy would not be a part of this new life partnership with Fang effectively handing her over claiming how she was beloved by the gods to the shrewd business woman, Breezie, who was the proprietor of the Hedgehog Circus.

For Rosy who wanted to chase after Sonic the Hedgehog Circus was pretty much a prison. Even so though she would make friends with the majority of the traveling circus’ members, including; Chuck, the hedgehog robotics engineer who also acted as the conscious to Breezie’s cold hearted business mindset; the pop superstar, twins Sonia and Manic and their mother Aleena whose compassion would encourage Rosy to keep dreaming big; and lastly the mail pilot turned stunt pilot Paulie and his wife Brenda, son Nicky, and daughter Anita. Of the various members of the Hedgehog Circus it was Paulie and his stories of adventure that most enamored Amy and the closeness between the two resulted in Rosy not just being the circus’ resident fortune teller but also an acrobatic wing walker for the main events.

Unfortunately for Rosy the amount of money she could make Breezie made her the traveling circus’ star attraction with the headline “the hedgehog girl who’ll become more famous than even Sonic” meant she had all of no freedom. With Fang’s warnings about Rosy’s willingness to just run off based on her fortunes even those were closely watched and Rosy had all of no chance to again pursue her love of adventure beyond the locals the circus visited. That did not mean she was totally trapped though as some adventures still awaited her such as a chance encounter with Sonic in Station Square and the short lived adventure that followed before Chaos, God of Destruction laid the city low before eventually being stopped by Sonic. Seeing the power of the gods first hand though and how Rosy was unharmed during the events by all but Eggman’s minions Breezie became even more greedy and though Rosy was known as a rascal began promoting the love struck hedgehog as beloved by the gods. With such a title it was of little surprise when Rosy was summoned by Lumina to Maginaryworld to restore the Precious Stone along with Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles resulting in Rosy learning that Fang was well. As a reward for her part in restoring the precious stone Rosy was returned to her world away from the Hedgehog Circus and finally had the chance to finally pursue her dream of chasing after Sonic and becoming a part of his life.

Freedom was not as easily obtained as Rosy believed though as her reputation with the Hedgehog Circus had spread well throughout the three worlds and she was recognized everywhere she went. It was only a matter of time before her whereabouts were discovered by the Hedgehog Circus. Her time in Maginaryworld had changed her though and her desires to chase after Sonic manifested in being able to achieve speeds that would allow her to do just that resulting in her being able to travel the world. Feeling mischievous and free both Rosy traveled to as many random and disparate places as she could in as short a time as she could to make it impossible for Breezie to track her down. However, as her speed and freedom were gifts of the powers that be, or the gods to be exact, Rosy still considered herself obligated to answer their commands and wasted no time in doing so when her fortune telling directed her to Soleanna.

Unsure of what to expect in Soleanna, Rosy convinced herself that if she was required to go that she would likely have another destined encounter with Sonic. What she found instead was Silver the Hedgehog and found herself entangled with his quest to stop the God of Time Solaris from laying waste to the world through its avatar Iblis. When it turned out that Sonic was the target of Silver’s quest Rosy defended Sonic based solely on her faith in him and his willingness to save the world no matter what he’s up against. Despite Rosy’s faith in Sonic though her decision seemed to backfire as she finds herself uninvolved with anything of note Eventually by the time Rosy decides to leave Soleanna before Breezie catches up with her she finally notices something major happen as she finds herself back in time to just before the start of the Festival of the Sun. Confused and unsure Rosy turns to her fortune telling and learns that her and another hedgehog have been granted a second chance. Guessing it is Silver who has been granted a second chance Rosy searches for the time displaced hedgehog and learns that he is trapped in the past with nowhere to go and no one to confide in after watching Sonic save Solaris. Feeling like she is supposed to be responsible for him Rosy decides to try and patch things up with him by inviting him to watch the Festival of the Sun. It is at this point that Breezie finally catches up with Rosy with the Jackal Squad in tow having suspected that one “beloved by the gods” would attend such a festival. Though not wanting to give up her freedom, Rosy also does not desire to endanger Silver and willingly returns to the Hedgehog Circus with the telekinetic hedgehog finding a home within.

With Silver’s telekinesis being a major draw and the stunts that it could allow Rosy to perform as a wing walker, Breezie has Silver trained as a stunt pilot by Paulie. Additionally, when she learns that Silver’s telekinesis can be used to prevent Rosy from running off she metaphorically twists the time displaced hedgehogs arm so that he acts as her personally assurance that Rosy won’t run off again. Feeling betrayed when she learns of Silver’s new role Rosy still surprises her fellow hedgehog when she casually blames herself and calls it karma for her own actions against Fang and Breezie and optimistically says they should just make the best of it. Despite her good intentions though, Rosy still considers herself beholden to the powers that be so when they portend of a world shattering disaster she naturally becomes most anxious.

When the human world is shattered by Eggman as he releases Dark Gaia, Rosy runs off in search of Sonic believing that he will likely already be embroiled in what’s going on and that her fortune telling foretold these events as she needed to be involved to some capacity. Feeling like he has no choice due to his debt to Breezie, Silver heads off in pursuit of Rosy but has little luck in finding her due to her not getting personally involved in the conflict. In truth, after being rescued by Sonic from Dark Gaia’s minions Rosy found herself teaming up with Professor Pickle, Tails, and a vixen named Zooey who works a junior member of an organization called Checkpoint in researching the Gaia Manuscripts to help Sonic restore the planet. Having a chance to help out by expanding her knowledge of the ancient world and legends Rosy develops a newfound passion that she had not experienced since her time traveling with Fang and gains a yearning to go adventuring again to discover what other wonders the world holds. Faithful that Sonic will save the world in the end Rosy is not even bothered when she doesn’t get to see him again afterward, instead desiring to go off on her own adventures so that way when she does encounter Sonic again she’ll have so much more to share and just might finally be able to get him to open up to her a little.

To pursue her new dream Rosy learns what she can about Checkpoint from Zooey. As it turns out, Checkpoint is an organization that adventurers, including Soinc, report their findings to from their adventures to make a living. Zooey herself was a history buff who after befriending Tails through their mutual association with Professor Pickle also got into machinery tinkering. Though she doesn’t personally explore she loves hearing the stories of adventurers, especially those related to whenever a new Warp Zone between worlds is discovered. Having befriended Zooey, Rosy promises to share stories of her adventures too and registers with Checkpoint. Meanwhile, Silver’s own journey to find Rosy persists unsuccessfully and Breezie growing impatient with her star attraction being out of her grip again once more hires the Jackal Squad to bring the errant hedgehog back to her.

----- Anyway, that's my little AU concept background for my Rosy redesign. Let me know what you think and whether or not I should go with it, or if you have any questions about the setting let me know. It's kind of all concept nonsense at this point though so I would appreciate any thoughts everyone has to share. Thanks ^_^

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IDW Sonic #9 review

                                          The final battle has begun!

Sonic #9 kickstarts a big gun story arc as the Master Emerald is in danger for the umpteenth time. When I first heard about this arc through the solicits there were two things I was hoping for in this arc. I’ll get to those later on (even though one of them already happened anyway.)

Having read the issue, it's proving to be a really promising start on delivering the big battle between the Resistance and Neo Metal Sonic. Tracy Yardley doing the art for this issue was overall alright, on one hand, there's double pages of Angel Island under Neo Metal's control, (that statue is giving me Eggmanland vibes) the Resistance and other characters from the past issues coming together, and some pretty good stances. Although it took me a while to notice that Silver's hands were drawn backwards in that resistance page.

    Tangle’s reaction mirrors the fans any time when Blaze becomes all badass.

This is one of my favourite panels of the issue. The way Blaze shows the Sol Emeralds and the shading by Matt Herms makes this look epic. The coloring and shading in this issue was nicely done as usual. Almost helps with the serious battle mood that is going on. Another neat thing about the issue is the character interactions, between old and new, and how they feel about the whole situation. These interactions once again reek with references, from past games to song references that sometimes come off as cheesy (looking at you Neo Metal) and possibly set off some theories about other characters.

First we have Knuckles, the leader of the Resistance, who's outraged that Neo has the Master Emerald with him (to the point of making hilarious angry faces) and at the same time blaming himself for not taking care of it properly. It was nice to see Amy trying to be the one to calm him down and assure him that they will get the emerald back. Speaking of Amy, it felt like it focused on her and the other characters in this issue (mainly because it's for setting up the plan before the big fight) but her using her commander skills makes me wonder how she isn't the leader of the Resistance in the first place.

The interactions in this issue were amusing or sometimes heartwarming. Such as Sonic and Tails' brief interaction (though for some reason the ship they were in gave me Sky Patrol vibes). Though my favourite has to be Amy and Blaze's interaction. It sort of shows how far Blaze has come since Sonic Rush and the way she speaks royally and assuring Amy not to worry was really nice. There's even a moment when Blaze comes full circle on the fact that she has friends she can count on, and won’t let them down.

Having the game cast interact with the new characters was pretty interesting to see. What was amusing was that one of the groups were playing cards to pass the time while heading for the battlefield. It was also really nice to see Sonic respecting Whisper’s decision to be on her own while assisting the group simultaneously. One interesting thing in the issue is Whisper looking at Shadow possibly not trusting him. Ever since reading Issue 8 I was more interested in Whisper’s backstory. What caused her to be so quiet and vengeful? Was there a Shadow illusion that affected her at some point?

As for Shadow, It’s pretty clear that he didn’t follow the orders as he’s not seen after this. My guess is that Shadow is gonna use the Master Emerald to combat Neo Metal Sonic and help Sonic and Knuckles for the fight. Speaking of Neo Metal...

Remember I mentioned I had expectations for this arc? This is one of them.

I was hoping that Neo Metal Sonic would use the Master Emerald for himself at some point in the battle but I didn’t think it would be a TRANSFORMATION for some reason. It got me pretty hyped for how the next issue would go. Here’s hoping that the fight scenes will be drawn well, and that Neo Metal will have some interesting abilities!

One thing I’m hoping this arc WON’T do is having the Master Emerald being shattered yet again. Granted that this is a new continuity but hunting for the Master Emerald pieces has been done in a recent arc back in Archie Sonic. That arc had some heartwarming interactions, but I’m hoping for something different, like the Emerald being intact this time.

So overall, Issue 9 was pretty good! Here’s hoping the next one brings some intense battles!