Sonadow
SonicXShadow
He Is My Master by Taranea

Chapter 58: Open Your Heart

It was a complete Chaos overload. Sonic had no idea how to handle it. Even screaming seemed pointless by now, because the energy was roaring so loudly in his ears he wouldn't have been able to hear his own voice anyway. The force of the Emerald, the Master, was utter oblivion, completely uncontrollable, threatening to simply incinerate him if he couldn't rein it in – but then Sonic would have gasped if he'd still had air to do so, because suddenly there was a new influence in the power struggle, like a firm hand reaching inside him and taking hold of the Chaos, calming it and gaining control of it effortlessly. The blue hedgehog managed to turn his head and saw that Shadow hanging from his hand was suddenly wide awake again, his red eyes suffused with the glow of Chaos inside them and utterly focused.

He's...he's doing it again, manipulating the Chaos energy inside you...drifted through Sonic's head, but really, holding onto even one definite thought was a struggle at the moment. From the outside, Sonic mused, they must have looked like a strange hedgehog chain connected to the Master Emerald, his left hand still pressed against the glowing surface while his right had caught Shadow hanging off the altar. And Sonic could feel the energy from the Emerald flowing right through him, passing into Shadow whose second nature was to control Chaos, channelling it, playing with it, taming it to make it into something they could both use, and then, before Sonic knew it, suddenly everything fit and - !

Chaos was power and lightning and sound and fury, and when it suddenly aligned with you it felt as if you were the center of the universe and burning in the heart of the sun.

It was like a madcap ride on a merry-go-round inside a caleidoscope as Sonic could feel the energy bursting into and overloading every single cell until they felt like exploding popcorn, the Chaos changing it, changing him, turning green eyes into red, bending his quills toward the sky and transmuting simple blue fur into gleaming gold...

"It's been a while, hasn't it?"

Super Sonic opened his eyes.

And smiled. Shadow's super form looked just like he remembered it, red stripes in silvery-golden fur slightly lighter than his own, and shining just as brightly.

"Yeah," Sonic replied, his voice somewhat hoarse. Even if he knew he looked very similar now, the sight of his partner in this state was awe-inspiring. The golden hedgehog could feel his lips stretch into a grin. "Let's make this a revival to remember."

"Are you...are you gods?!" The voice interrupting them belonged to Knuckles, the echidna staring at the floating hedgehogs wide-eyed and completely shell-shocked.

"Uh...not exactly," Sonic said. "We're..." he frowned. "You're not at all familiar with Super Saiyajin, right?" he asked hopefully. "'cause that usually works really well for an explanation."

"What?!" The echidna now looked even more lost. Shadow resisted the urge to head-desk on the Master Emerald, which wouldn't be a very dignified gesture for a Super form.

"We're not gods," he said instead. "The Emeralds grant us strength, speed, flight and invulnerability, but it's only temporary. It's what we do when we have to fight creatures far stronger than us."

Knuckles nodded, slowly, his eyes still wide, but he was swallowing now and seemed to have found his speech again. "I...see..." he croaked, and then he drew a gasp as he seemed to suddenly realize something.

"Of course!" he exclaimed. "The prayer, it all makes sense now-!" He looked from hedgehog to hedgehog and back, "'The controller who serves to unify the Chaos..." he quoted, gazing at Shadow, before then turning to Sonic, "...and the heart who enriches it. I'd never have guessed," he marveled.

Shadow cleared his throat. "Well, technically, I'd say that it's more like I'm an artificial lifeform bioengineered to be a finely tuned specialist instrument only receptive to certain kinds of Chaos energy - but in exchange highly effective in manipulating those - and Sonic is a natural-born generalist, whose cells can respond to all types of Chaos and adapt themselves when needed; only that this means in turn he doesn't tend to be as effective when it comes to controlling it, but acts rather admirably as a filter for me to do so...but in essence, yes," Shadow nodded. "That is what it means."

Knuckles blinked. Then he looked at Super Sonic and tried to voice his problems with Shadow's statement.

"Er. Uh."

"What?" Sonic looked at him, saw the slightly dazed expression on the echidna's face, and then waved a hand. "Oh. Yeah, no idea what he just said either, but I'd like to record that I object to being 'heart'. That's the lamest of all the Captain Planet elements, and everyone knows it."

Knuckles blinked again. There seemed to be a few seconds where he tried to make sense of anything either of the two had just said, but then he merely shook his head and apparently made use of the ancient echidna philosophy of 'When In Doubt, Whack It, When At A Loss, Ignore', and his expression hardened into determination again instead.

"...okay. You said this was temporary. That means we need to get back to the battlefield at once." He looked to the entrance of the cavern. "Or we may be too late..."

"No worries. Sonic looked up. Going back, we're gonna take the straight route."He looked at Shadow. "This time we have the same place in mind, I figure?"

"Yes," Shadow said, at the same time reaching out to grab Knuckles' upper arm and joining his other hand with Sonic's.

"You ready?"

"You betcha."

"Wait, what-?" Knuckles began to ask, but then, of course he was already drowned out by two voices shouting two words in unison.

"Chaos Control!"

xxx

It was a good thing Knuckles could glide, because the next second, all three of them had materialized right in front of Devil Doom, and also several hundred feet in the air.

"Aaaaaaagha!"

Which of course didn't stop him from screaming and flailing for the first dozen metres of his fall as Shadow had released him to plummet down through what could only be described as an eldritch horrorscape designed entirely by Lovecraft.

The sky had turned near black now, as if tainted energy seeping out from the rift really had poisoned the entire atmosphere. In front of them, Devil Doom's massive, misshapen body hovered like an apocalyptic beast, his fin-like, fleshy wings impossibly keeping his bulk aloft. It was a grotesque form, a gargoyle consisting only of a torso ending in two elongated, bi-pronged heads at both ends, multiple, clawed arms dangling down from its underside like wiry tentacles. With the hellish light from the rift burning above them, he cast a shadow upon the plain below, like a monstrous moon eclipsing a mad sun. By contrast, their superforms were burning like starfire, golden and silver radiance turning this artificial night into day, and Shadow privately thought that if there had been any rennaissance thinking already going on in this world, this display of apocalypse just now probably would have it thrown right back into the middle ages.

"Yo! Devil Dud! Great that you have two heads now, 'cause that makes it easier to bash them together!"

...not that Sonic's vernacular would have been appropriate for any historical time period, ever.

"What?!" Devil Doom roared. "What is this?! What did you-?"

"Same as you, 'father'," Shadow replied easily. "Am I not a good son?"

And Devil Doom screamed like a vulture with its wings torn off as Shadow's Chaos Spear hit him straight into his front head.

"YES! Great going, Shads!" Super Sonic punched the air as Devil Doom tumbled backwards, screeching, before teleporting away and re-appearing at another location above the battlefield.

"Okay," Super Shadow nodded at him. "I'll soften him up, you take care of his minions on the field. I'll get you for the final strike. If he engages you alone," he said, pointing at his own forehead, "Go for the eye. It can move on its own and it's his only weakpoint."

Sonic's lips twitched. "Wow. The eye? Really? I mean, c'mon, in comparison to that, Eggman's contraptions are original-"

"Hush. Go!" Shadow shouted, at the same time taking off toward the bulk off the alien overlord, perching in the air above a war zone that had long since descended into total chaos. Sonic grinned and dove down. The last time, he hadn't been able to play nearly enough with the Black Arms...

xxx

"Shadow! Why can't you see that the slaves are the parasites of this world?! Absolute control is the only way to save them! Open your eyes and see that befriending them was a MISTAKE!"

"The only mistake around here is your idea that you ever had a chance!" Shadow shouted back, easily weaving through the beams of light Devil Doom was shooting his way, having memorized their tell-tale signs and patterns oh so long ago when he had beaten him before. He retaliated with Chaos Spears of his own, revelling in the power he wielded, defying gravity in their celestial battlefield.

"Have it your way, Shadow," Devil Doom hissed, "Be prepared to meet your maker! Your past, present and future ends here, today!" Parts of the alien overlord detached themselves from the main body and began to rise, as he spoke, but for the silver hedgehog, this also was simply part of a deadly dance he already knew and he could follow its steps so much better than the enemy king.

"Sorry!" he called out. "But my maker was Professor Gerald Robotnik, and I gave both his granddaughter and Sonic a promise I intend to keep before meeting him again!"

The air around them was charged so thickly with Chaos energy that Shadow could feel how natural laws were warped around them, the firmament discoloured and bleeding out into a dirty brown around the tear in the sky. Debris and rocks and...bodies?...were whirling around them in a mad vortex, gravity a mere option in this realm of pure energy and lightning.

"I was the one that gave you life!" Devil Doom howled over the storm as his detached body parts soared forth, the small, bulbous cells beginning to circle overhead Shadow like a murder of crows above carrion, before they opened and erupted into laser beams shooting down at the hedgehog like drones hunting a sparrow, "Now I will take it back."

"Try, you fool." Super Shadow flashed his teeth in what only an idiot would have called a smile, and dodged the rays with miniature Chaos Controls that came as easy to him in this form as breathing. This was his realm, the eye of a storm of Chaos, unbound by anyone or anything, heedless of any insignificant battles below. He laughed as he charged through the flying fragments of rocks and trees and other things, blasting them aside like the breakable toys they were.

"I am the supreme being that rules this world!" the alien king was thundering, "Witness my true-!"

But before he could ever finish that sentence, Devil Doom's fused, singular eye widened as Shadow all but exploded out of the cloud of floating shards and splinters, the shockwave of his charge sending them flying into all directions and announcing his arrival straight in front of the monster like a fanfare.

"Chaos-!"

Shadow could feel it now, so close. Currently he was running on the Master Emerald's power, a searing and raw sensation coursing through his veins like liquid fire that would have let him pass out back in the cavern if Sonic hadn't caught him in time. Now, tempered, it was adequate, but...

No. Inside Devil Doom there was what Shadow really wanted, needed -

"- Spear!"

The lance of lightning struck the eye with the pin point prescision of a syringe shot straight into a cornea. Devil Doom screamed again, rage, pain and emotions that weren't even sentient any more tearing from his spasming mouth hole. As Doom writhed, the hurt eye peeled from his face like a band aid torn off a bloody wound, the orange orb surrounded by black tentacles flailing through the air akin a lovecraftian comet. Shadow's eyes narrowed, focusing on his target so as not to lose it. He knew it would embed itself in the other head again next, they had played this body horror game of musical chairs already back home, when Devil Doom had fought him across a destroyed sky above Westopolis. Tracking the eye was essential. Any Chaos Spears fired at any point of the alien monstrosity's hide were energy wasted, its skin impenetrable to attacks. Shadow rushed after it now, evading the blind, furious swipes of Devil Doom's arms, rising above the other head like a terrible morning star, waiting for the vulnerable, already bleeding orb to show itself, raising a hand with a charged Spear to strike...

….and then was abruptly brought up short when next, the mouth of Devil Doom's second head simply swallowed his own eye up whole.

xxx

This is fantastic.

Super Sonic was tearing through the battlefield as if he had gotten the Smash Ball in a Brawl tournament, dashing, rolling, unleashing Sonic Winds (which, to be fair, were basically a whirlier and bluish version of Shadow's Chaos Spears, but Sonic thought the name sounded far cooler) upon the wreathing masses of the Black Arms. There had been one of them that had seemed larger than the others, a huge, black and bloated round thing keeping itself impossibly aloft with stubbly, blood-coloured wings, resembling a giant mosquito with its stomach swollen like a fluid-filled cyst. Even its own soldiers had given it a wide berth, and any attempts to fire at it with the catapults of queen Aleena's army had been utterly fruitless, rocks reflected from its hide like grains of sand. It was an unstoppable, giant behemoth, lumbering across the battlefield and leaving a swathe of destruction in its wake that sent even echidna warriors retreating when their hurled spears could not do anything to harm it.

Super Sonic had killed it in two strokes.

"I fought Chaos, the God of Destruction!" the golden hedgehog laughed, swerving downwards again after having hit it in the head for the first time, the creature falling to the ground and trying to snap at him like a pesky fly. "You think you ever had a chance while I'm around?!"

The wind was a lover that embraced him as he swooped, going into a dive like an eagle for his prey and then barely swerved to avoid hitting the ground. Instead, he was now barreling along it like he had surfed across the water surface during his battle for Station Square, picking up another abandoned sword with ease and using it to slice Black Bull in two perfect halves before the monster had even been able to react.

This was all too easy! Sonic felt like laughing again, the Chaos energy of the Master having given him a high that was stronger than anything the normal Emeralds had ever made him feel. It was dangerous, a part of him warned as the halves of the Black Arms' titan fell apart, dissolving into black slime and smoke now that the magic holding it together had gone, it was dangerous to get carried away, but Super Sonic found he could hardly care. It was always like this. The destruction he had wreaked upon Station Square in his fight with Perfect Chaos had felt utterly unimportant, the danger of where the Death Egg would crash after he had wrecked it had not interested him in the least, the fact of what would happen after he destroyed Merlina who was his only ticket out of the storybook of King Arthur was secondary to relishing the sheer power he had in this form.

Up above, Shadow's super-powered Chaos Spears split the sky and Devil Doom's howls crashed across the din of the battlefield like accompanying thunder, and Sonic grinned. Sounds like up there it's going alright. Time for clean-up down here, then.

He could mop up Black Arms by the dozen, he could cross the plain at light speed, random spears or arrows hitting him weren't even noticeable, there was nothing that could hurt him in this form!

And then, Super Sonic froze, because up ahead, he could suddenly see another familiar figure, and she was fighting for her life.

"Sally!" Sonic yelled the name of the princess, but of course, she couldn't hear him over the cacophony of the battle. She seemed to have gotten separated from her warriors, and was currently cornered by another one of the Black Arms' heavy hitters, the ones that to Sonic had always seemed like a crossbreed from a gorilla and a reptile in a rubbersuit and had taken ages to take apart. She was standing on the ground, her horse seemingly already lost or dead, already bleeding from several cuts on her face and her arms, but there was no sign of that in her stance. She seemed to be trying to aim a crossbow at the monster bearing down on her, trying to get in a clear shot, hands steady and expression grim as she was obviously prepared to fight until the end.

Hah. Not on my watch.

Sonic rushed forward, destroying a few more Black arms soldiers in his way, barely even caring or feeling it, no, he would save her, because there was nothing that could harm him-

"INCOMING!"

And then, Super Sonic was hit by one of the few things that indeed could hurt him in this form, which was in this case another sparkly hedgehog, barreling into him with the force of a wrecking ball.

"AGH!"

They tumbled, one over the other in the dirt, coming to lie with Sonic on his front underneath and Shadow draped across him belly-side up in a very undignified pile. In fact, the collared hedgehog at this point wouldn't have been surprised if there had been little winged Master Emeralds fluttering and tweeting around their heads.

"Shadow?! What the-?" Sonic began, as his partner groaned on top of him, at least indicating that he was still alive. Belatedly, Sonic also realized that the most powerful beings of Mobius at least had managed to vanquish the foe previously beleaguering Princess Sally, mostly by crashing on top of it and crushing it to death. The collared hero did notice this because he was currently lying belly-side down in absolutely disgusting black goo.

"Devil Doom swallowed his own eye. His only weak point," Shadow grunted. "His skin is virtually impenetrable, and when I tried to attack him, he swatted me clear out of the sky."

"Uh. Right. You know, I don't think that's playing fair," Sonic felt like he needed to point out, but before Shadow could reply, there was already a cry of

"Sonic?!"

The collared hero looked up to see Sally, eyes wide and uncomprehending. He then realized that since they were still in their superform, this was probably because she was now staring at a hog pile that was still lit up like an upside down christmas tree.

Which was a good thing, because the next thing that happened was the bolt still lodged in Sally's crossbow abruptly flying loose and bouncing off Super Shadow's head.

"Ow. What was that? I think something just hit me."

"Is...is that you?!" Sally stammered, apparently not even having noticed it. Her gaze wandered over to the second form, inconveniently lodged in Sonic's spikes. "And prince Shadow?!"

"This is not very conducive to my self esteem," the Ultimate Lifeform groaned. Sonic thought he was currently trying to wriggle free a leg that seemed to be stuck in Sonic's quills.

"Look at the bright side, Shads," he replied. "After this display at least we won't have to deal with them afterwards thinking we're gods or something."

"Oh goody," Shadow replied, his voice just this side of arctic. Then there was a yelp as Sonic finally managed to raise himself onto his hands an knees, and dislodged the red-streaked hedgehog on top of him. He smiled and nodded at Sally as Shadow hit the floor.

"Hey, Sal. Yeah, it's us. No worries, the situation is under control."

Up above, Devil Doom screamed and, currently a bit visually disabled, destroyed a mid-sized mountain.

"Er. Make that mostly under control. Don't you worry, Shadow and me'll fix it!"

Sally still stared.

"Uh...everything okay?" Sonic asked, now actually a bit tempted to wave a hand in front of her face.

"Um...you're floating," the squirrel finally pointed out, eyes still as wide.

"Oh. Yeah, we do that in this form," Super Sonic replied with a grin, briefly rubbing the back of his quills with one hand. He had indeed started to hover without meaning to, and he could see from the corner of his eye how Shadow had shaken off the last of the ground dirt and also rose into the air again.

"Sonic. We need to get back up there."

"Right. Yeah. Anyway, you take care of your troops here. Don't let yourself get cornered again," Sonic smiled and winked. "Nice to have met ya, Princess."

"Oh no, the pleasure was all mine..." was all a slightly shell-shocked Sally could say, a response that was obviously completely running on automatic while her brain was trying to play catch-up. But Sonic's eyes had lit up anyway, and then his owner had already grabbed his now apparently magic slave by the arm and hauled them both up into the chaotic sky again to face their king gone mad.

Sally blinked.

"...no one is going to believe this story, ever."

xxx

"Oh no..." Silver muttered under his breath. "Something is going wrong..."

"Yes, Master, the sky is falling down!"a panicked Manic called out where he was trying to hide under a table. "Can we please seek shelter in the dungeons? This slave is really scared..." he stammered, apparently easily falling back into old speech patterns when he wasn't thinking about it.

"No..." Silver replied, almost like in a trance, still staring out of the window of the throne room they had retired to again at the discoloured heaven above. "That won't help."

"Ma-Master?" Manic asked timidly, staring at the backside of the slave trainer and then almost jumping to his feet when Silver dangerously swayed and only through sheer luck caught himself on the armrest of the throne.

The throne that then promptly began to rise, as well as curtains, the carpet and the table Manic had been trying to cower under.

Manic reflexively wanted to scream, but when Silver turned around fully, his expression so scared that his metallic-hued fur looked almost white, the breath stayed stuck in the green hedgehog's throat.

"Hiding won't help," Silver forced out again. "There is too much power...an imbalance that I can't control..." More furniture began to rise into the air, turqoise glow around it fighting for dominace with the otherworldly light falling in from the window. And Silver looked at Manic with an expression that hinted at sheer terror.

"Manic...I think there's something far deeper wrong with the world than just the sky!"

xxx

"Wait, what happened?"

"His eye disappeared inside," Shadow replied tersely as both hedgehogs were flying upwards again, toward the hulking mass of Devil Doom beneath the swirling sky. "I think the entire body is more of a shield, a hull, than an actual organism. The actual entity is just the eye."

Sonic frowned. "What, like the body is like a Gundam, and the eye is the pilot?"

Shadow threw him a look. "I'm going to pretend whatever you just said made sense and say 'yes'. But anyway, it means..."

They stopped as they had reached the same altitude as the mutated king. Devil Doom was still roaring, blindly swiping, flailing and shooting blasts and light lances in every direction, making it impossible to even have a prayer of approaching him. Shadow narrowed his eyes.

"We've got to attack from the inside."

Sonic pulled a face. "Oh, gross."

xxx

In his house on top of a cliff ravaged by waves higher than they had ever been, Tails wondered whether this was like someone on the Titanic must have felt. The winds were howling now, shaking and bending the palm trees lining the plane runway outside as if even nature itself was afraid of this unnatural storm. The status bar on his monitor was filling only with agonizing slowness, making it pure torture to just sit there, waiting and hoping not to die in the next hour, and the worst thing was that you couldn't even run, or fight, because there was nothing that you could fight against and nowhere to run to.

This isn't fair! Why does Sonic never get into these situations where there is nothing that he can do at all? Tails wanted to shout that question, to demand an answer from the universe, to fly up into the sky and scream at the wind until it gave him a logical answer.

But of course Tails knew that Sonic had been in that situation. Once. And it had been all Tails' fault.

More than two years ago now and high up in space, it had been when Robotnik had tricked him, had made Sonic step into a capsule that had been rigged to be shot out and explode in space. Tails still remembered that moment with instant clarity. Remembered Sonic's expression the moment when the doctor had told him he would die – in a way just as cruel and unfair and as swiftly approaching as their end looked like now.

Tails squeezed his eyes shut and curled his hands into tight fists as he remembered the pure serenity on his brother's face.

Maybe he was just as afraid and he just didn't show it because I was there, he had later thought often, but never asked. But whatever the reason, Sonic had kept it together and never fallen apart even when death was staring him in the face.

Tails drew a breath again, trying to steady himself.

Even if I can't manage to save the world on my own...this is the least I can do to make you proud, Sonic. The small fox lifted his head, raising his gaze to stare out at the now ominously swirling green sky outside, hoping his face looked at least as composed as his big brother's had when facing his final moments.

And that it wasn't as hopelessly obvious how much he wished that Sonic would simply hold him instead.

xxx

"You ready?" Shadow asked.

"Happy? No. Ready? Yes. Let's do this," Sonic replied, reaching out a hand. Shadow took it, at the same time drawing a breath.

"Chaos Control!"

xxx

There was silence around the altar as Knuckles stood in front of it, staring hard, as if sheer willpower could command the Master Emerald to do anything it hadn't yet done previously. The soft, emerald glow from the massive gem stone of his ancestors eclipsed by the green light emitted from the sky, the eerie celestial radiance glazing over the shine of the Emerald, letting it appear dull and as sick as the planet itself. It felt that way to the Guardian, too, like the Chaos field of the stone was weaker, more imbalanced, the Master influenced by his broken circle of Servants. The echidna's lips were pressed into a thin line. There was nothing he could do here, he knew that himself. Nothing for him but to return to Tails' house beneath the island and to wait. He turned around to leave, to stride over to the edge of the peninsula to jump down and glide earthwards again.

He made it all of ten steps before everything, suddenly, irreverably lurched. Downwards.

"Wh-what?!" Knuckles had nearly lost his balance. Something was terribly wrong with the Master Emerald, he had felt that shift in the Chaos, the sudden broken flow of energy himself. And then he almost fell over when the island dropped another foot.

Another foot downwards.

When it was hovering straight over his friend's house.

Knuckles turned and ran straight toward the edge.

"TAILS!"

xxx

"...okay, this is officially the most disgusting thing ever," Sonic commented not seconds later. "Where are we, anyway, is this his ar-?"

"Sonic," Shadow tried to cut the blue hedgehog off. They had indeed reappared inside Devil Doom, black slime pressing against the shields of their super forms from all sides. Normal sensations were muted, as if they were stuck beneath oily water, but Shadow could feel how he was surrounded by polluted, twisted Chaos, threatening to poison the pure energy of the Master still coursing through him, and it made him feel sick. Somewhere in here, there had to be the white Emerald, but he couldn't even sense it. He wanted to be out of here as fast as possible.

"...plus, there are things glooping past here," Sonic's voice cut through his thoughts, "I think that one there just was his spleen. Shadow, this is the most terrible date ever."

"My pet, if we lose our Super forms inside of Devil Doom because of your nonsense babbling, I swear I will personally shove you inside his lower digestive tract before I die," Shadow informed the collared hedgehog pleasantly. "Now give me your hands."

Sonic threw him a look. "Dude, don't get on my case for complaining. This is like Bowser's Inside Story, only horrible." Nevertheless, the golden hedgehog still moved gingerly through the muck surrounding him to reach out to Shadow. In truth, Sonic could also already feel the first fluctuations in the flow of Chaos inside his body, telling him that they might not have that much time left in this state without finding more power rings which were somehow sorely missing from this universe. He also knew that technically, somewhere inside this revolting world of black slime, there had to be Doom's Eye moving around like a tapeworm, perhaps only waiting to sling a tentacle around his ankle -

Sonic grabbed Shadow's hand with slightly more force than necessary.

"Okay. Let's end this"

"Alright," Shadow nodded, exchanging one last look with Sonic before closing his eyes, preparing to summon every remaining bit of strength he had left. Just like their combined Chaos Control years ago had been so much stronger than a single one, enough to lift the ARK back into orbit, and his Chaos Spears so much more powerful when combined with Sonic's sword, Shadow hoped that this same idea would also work in their favour now, for one last time.

"Ready?" he asked Sonic.

"When you are," the other replied next to him, squeezing Shadow's hand briefly. "If this doesn't work..." and then there was a bit of a pause, until Shadow quirked an eye just slightly open, and found Sonic looking back at him, as calm as someone who had found exactly what it was they wanted to be fighting for.

"...well," Sonic said with a small, slightly weary smile. "I already told you back then at the gallows, didn't I?."

Shadow nodded. "You did."

"Good," Sonic simply said, and then they both closed their eyes, focused on the flow of Chaos around and inside them, before drawing one last breath together.

"CHAOS BLAST!"

xxx

Tails was staring at the instruments, hoping, pleading in his mind to anyone who was listening for the experiment to just progress a little bit faster, finish the creation of the fake Emerald in time to save the world. The quakes had gotten stronger now, even noticeable in his insulated underground lab where he was currently digging his fingernails into the surface of the desk his pc stood on. Behind him, Sonic and Shadow were still in their containment tank, still caught in their strange dreamworld. In truth, in one of his more paranoid moments the two-tail had even felt jealous of his older brother, wishing he was out of his mind too, just so he wouldn't have to deal with the impending death of the planet. But now even the two fantasizing hedgehogs seemed to have caught on that something had gone badly wrong.

"...master?" Sonic whispered as Tails had his back turned to them, only seeing their vague outlines reflected in the screen of his computer. The black hedgehog was leaning against the wall, Sonic on his hands and knees at his feet, occasionally looking up when Shadow deigned to run a hand through his headfur.

"Yes? You're allowed to speak," Shadow said, and to Tails' ears, his voice sounded a lot less imperious than before and more unsteady now.

"Master...please...forgive this slave, but...you seem to be unwell," Sonic said, and then immediately cringed underneath the twitching hand of the other as if prepared for a blow. He bent his head even further toward the floor. "Please forgive this speaking out of turn!"

Tails began to turn around, irritated and anxious and secretly wishing to let it all out as an angry snarl directed at Shadow if he should have any ideas to hurt Sonic – but then, it turned out, even that did not seem to be necessary at all.

"N...no," Shadow said, "You are right. I am not well. Something is...wrong. Very wrong." He looked down at Sonic, who was glancing up at him, fearfully. "The world is falling apart," was the last thing he whispered, before simply collapsing onto the floor.

But before Tails could even take a step toward their glass cage, another tremor shook them all so fiercely that neither could stay upright any more, and even the sounds of things crashing down from the shelves in the laboratory could not drown out Sonic's cry so desperate it sounded as if the world had already ended for him.

xxx

The explosion was more powerful than anything Sonic could ever have imagined. The Chaos Blast had formed between their hands like a miniature supernova, for a second a sphere of light even brighter than the sun that would have blinded anyone but their superforms. Sonic stared at it, awestruck, but only for a moment, because then it already surged outward in a deadly bloom of Chaos. Burning through everything in its path with indescribable heat, it ripped apart matter with the ferocity of a black hole, obliterating everything around them in the brightest flash of a second. Sonic could feel it tearing at his superform, had to close his eyes and shield his face with his arms as it blasted into him like a solid wall of fire, tearing him apart from Shadow with a scream. It felt like being hit by a boiling tsunami, overloaded his senses as it smashed him backwards through the mutated king's body, shoved him out through bursting skin, tumbled him breathlessly through the air at last. As soon as he could, Sonic curled up instinctively as a last resort to protect himself against their own attack.

It didn't stop him from hearing Devil Doom's scream, sounding less sapient than ever, tearing across his ear drums before the thunder of the explosion followed and drowned everything in the world out.

A moment passed.

Sonic carefully uncurled. He was still in his super form, still floating high above a battle-soaked plain, beneath a destroyed sky. But now it was...raining.

"...Sonic?"

The golden hedgehog's gaze snapped around. And there, just a few metres behind and below him, was Shadow, also still whole, still silver-gold, hovering in the air a bit uncertainly. Everywhere around them, flakes that could have been mistaken for ash were gently raining downward, and another charred lump that was barely recognizable as anything any more fell down to earth. When it hit the ground, too far below them to hear the impact, Sonic thought he briefly saw something shine inside of it.

He looked at Shadow and smiled.

"Hey."

Beneath them, the first drops of rain were now mixing with the black liquid the Black Arms had turned into as their king had fallen, the water washing it back into the ground. Soldiers everywhere had been rendered stunned and shell-shocked by the crushing shockwave of the explosion that had mowed across the battlefield and knocked them over like chess pieces on a board smashed into by a furious loser. But already, red-furred warriors in particular were starting to rise again and at the far edges where the explosion hadn't fully hit, the first banners were re-erected, and they were flowing in the air a brilliant green and gold and purple, the colours of the Acorn King and Queen Aleena.

Super Sonic let himself gently drift downwards to his partner.

"What do you say. Looks like we did it at last."

He could feel the Chaos Energy leaving his body like water flowing out of a sieve now, knew that soon they would be falling to to earth, too, their bodies returning to their mortal state instead of feeling like they were hewn from burning crystal and starlight.

But for now, they still had just a few seconds left when they could still touch the sky.

"Yes," was all Shadow said as he reached up and took Sonic's hand as the golden hedgehog floated closer and closed the gap between them. Their gazes met, two pairs of eyes as red as each other, silver light reflecting off gold and vice versa so brightly it would have hurt...if anything had been able to hurt them right now.

Sonic felt his lips twitch into a weak grin as he gripped Shadow's hand tighter.

"Like old times, huh?"

It had been years since they had seen each other like this. All the other transformations that had happened since their fight against the Biolizard aboard the ARK, had only ever been for one of them at a time. But now, the connection of Chaos Energy flowing freely from one aura to the other was exactly the same as it had been all those years ago.

And finally, Shadow returned the smile with one of his own, red eyes turning only marginally softer as he spoke. "Like old times."

You look beautiful, was what he didn't say, but because souls connected with a bond of Chaos share everything anyway, the golden hedgehog's resulting answering grin was just as wide as if he'd voiced it aloud.

"You know," Shadow then said conversationally, also reaching out for Sonic's other hand with his second, "It occurs to me that we simply should have done this right at the beginning."

Super Sonic gave a snort. "Yeah, right. As if Knuckles would have let us lay one paw on the Master Emerald for anything less than the fate of the entire free world in the balance."

The silvery-golden hedgehog cocked his head in contemplation.

"Point."

And then, when the resulting kiss lasted so long they nearly broke both of their necks before they remembered to make a very hurried descent before the absolute last remnact of Chaos Energy had disappeared, none of them even regretted it even a bit.

To be continued...

You must login (register) to review.

Sonic and Shadow (c) and TM SEGA - Sonic Team

Sonadow Online
http://www.sonadow.com
2003-2009