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Flux

Chaos Never Repeats Itself.

By K. M. Hollar

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Copyright info: Sonic and all related characters copyrighted by Sega. Slasher, Zephyer and other fan characters copyrighted by K. M. Hollar. Tachyon copyrighted by Murr-Quan Lord #2, used with permission. This story and all ideas in it are copyrighted by the author.

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WARNING! This fic contains spoilers for Shadows of Chaos, my adaption of Sonic Adventure 2.

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Chapter 1: Subtle Warning

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On Earth it was called a black hole. In space, it was called a collapsed supernova, burning by itself in the arm of a spiral galaxy. But in reality, no one knew what it was, for no one had ever gone near it.
From ten lightyears, it was a black mass that blotted out the light of the stars around it.
From five lightyears, it was a shapeless shadow like a gas cloud, and it emitted no light.
From one lightyear, which was the point where the thing's gravity ought to have crushed an observer, one could begin to see flashes of light that escaped at random from inside the cloud. If someone had sat there on the fringe of this astronomical anomaly, they would begin to make out shapes within this cloud; a star, in fact, burning placidly inside the 'black hole'. Circling this star were several planets.
One of these planets was populated. And only one inhabitant of this planet knew about the thing encircling their solar system.
He called it a Chaos Field.

*

Black gloved fingers typed on a black keyboard, accurate, certain. Words glowed on the screen of a minuscule computer, casting a diffuse glow into the night. The darkness swallowed it up, but two things reflected the green light; a smile and a pair of eyes.
"Dear Sonic."
The fingers hovered in thought, then fell to work like the heads of ten predatory birds.
"It strikes me as funny to refer to you as 'dear'. In some ways you are as dear to me as my very breath, and in others you are nothing but a loathsome insect to crush underfoot. Surely you know who I am. I imagine there are few people whom you have let die. Possibly even arranged their death. But whatever your plan, I have survived, due to the miracles of modern science. I will not trouble you long, but I wanted to inform you that I live.
Love?
Hate?
Twilight."

*

Sonic awoke with his heart hammering against his ribs. What was that horrible sound? It was like a million demented roosters screaming at once. Or was it a crowd of people laughing through a synthesizer?
"Knuckles, what's that?" he said. No answer. Knuckles' sleeping bag was empty. "Great." The blue hedgehog scrambled out of his blankets and pulled on his shoes. There were no windows in the cabin, and the only light came from a crack under the door, and thus Sonic was blinded when he opened it and let in the morning sunlight. As his eyes adjusted, he made out the path they had followed the night before, which curved over the hill country of the Floating Island.
The weird sound was louder now. "What in the world is it?" Sonic wondered as he peered around the corner of the cabin. He had never heard anything like it. He slunk toward it, alert for danger.
As he arrived at the rear of the cabin, he saw a small wire pen under a stunted palm tree. Knuckles was inside it, collecting eggs from several boxes stacked on end, and surrounding him were a flock of chicken-like birds. They were grey with white heads, and were making the loudest, most horrible sounds Sonic had ever heard.
He stood with his hands over his ears until Knuckles left the pen, carrying eggs in a blanket. The birds quieted as soon as he left, but they watched him with indignant obsidian eyes. "Good grief, what are those?" Sonic demanded, dropping his hands to his sides.
Knuckles grinned at him. "Nice to see you up early for a change." He walked toward their campfire in front of the cabin.
Sonic jogged after him, peeved. "But what are they?"
"Tinueas," Knuckles replied. "Kind of an exotic chicken. Mighty raises them up here, and we eat their eggs." He opened the folded blanket and showed Sonic a collection of small brown spheres.
Sonic watched Knuckles set them down and poke up the smouldering fire. "They woke me up."
"Good for your reflexes," said the echidna. "Get me the spider and the skillet, will you?"
Sonic entered the dark cabin and felt his way toward Knuckles' backpack. The cabin was a rough building made of whole palm trees, driftwood, boulders, and whatever else Knuckles could find at the time. The result was a lopsided shelter with no windows and little headroom, but it kept the weather out and could probably withstand a hurricane. Many of their kind were scattered around the Floating Island, and Knuckles had been taking Sonic on a walking tour of all of them.
After being in the bright sun, Sonic could see nothing. He groped among his own blankets, pulled out the green Chaos Emerald and held it up. By its glow he found the cooking utensils and carried them outside.
"Thanks," said Knuckles. He set the spider's four wire legs on the edges of the campfire, and hung the skillet in the center, over the heat. "Count yourself lucky, grasshopper. You get fried eggs for breakfast."
"Call me grasshopper again and you'll be wearing fried eggs," said Sonic, sitting on a rock. "But if I had to have dates and bananas one more meal, I'd nut up."
"You need the vitamins," said Knuckles, without looking up from the skillet.
"I thought people who walk a thousand miles a day needed protein," said Sonic, also watching the eggs and feeling his mouth begin to water.
"The trouble with you is protein was all you were eating," said Knuckles. "I put you on an echidna apprentice diet."
"I'm not your apprentice."
"Oh yes you are. Teleport out to the tinuea coop and back. See if I got all the eggs."
Sonic looked down at the chaos emerald in his hand. He had used it so much in the past two weeks that his brain was tired. He forced himself to concentrate on the tinuea coop and muttered, "Chaos relocate."
The world shifted and rearranged itself, and he was fifty feet from his target spot, up the hill behind the cabin. "Great shot, Sonic," he muttered. He forced his weary brain to concentrate on a spot beside the campfire and said, "Chaos relocate." He teleported onto the path leading up to the cabin, ten feet from where he meant to land.
Knuckles watched him as he walked up the hill and flopped on the ground. "I quit," said Sonic, throwing the emerald at the cabin wall and folding his arms around his knees. "That was humiliating."
Knuckles said nothing for several minutes. He flipped three eggs onto a chipped plate and handed it to Sonic before he said, "Maybe we should do something else for a while."
"I'm game," said the hedgehog, wolfing the hot food with his fingers. "Could I go Super like normal? Just for a while?"
"I was thinking of something different," said Knuckles, also eating with his fingers. "See that valley down there? That's the Marble Garden ruins. Outside of it is a hovertop station."
"Dude!" exclaimed Sonic, straightening up. "You'd actually let me? You got mad last time I used it!"
"That's because last time you used it you ran me over," said the echidna. "Go down there, spend the day. I'm going to do some more research."
"The great guru needs to stay ahead of his pupil," said Sonic, helping himself to more eggs. His spirits had improved wonderfully. A hovertop was a round disk that travelled at fantastic speeds while spinning, a relic of the ancient echidnas. Knuckles and the Chaotix used it sometimes, but only Sonic could put the top through its paces.
Fifteen minutes later Sonic had vanished, breakfast was cleaned up, and Knuckles was rummaging through his backpack. Hidden in a padded pocket was a tiny computer, a piece of technology the entertainment-starved Sonic would have killed him for. Knuckles flipped it on and picked up several messages. There were some reports from the Chaotix, who were supposed to look after things while Knuckles was off with Sonic. In reality, they amused themselves by sending Knuckles lies about the bizarre things they had done. Today they were bungee-jumping from the edge of the island. There was a letter from Tails to Sonic, full of news from Knothole. And there was a message from Sally with an attached document. She said that an unsolicited letter had arrived for Sonic, from someone named Twilight.
Knuckles hesitated, his finger on the Open button. He shouldn't read Sonic's mail ... but 'Twilight' ... maybe it was something about Shadow ... Sonic had taken his death so hard, a sick joke like this might send him into depression, right when his Chaos Emerald training was getting somewhere ...
Knuckles opened it.
After he read it he sat for a while, gazing at the mountains in the distance without seeing them.

*

Sonic leaned hard to the left, then the right, guiding the spinning disk in a zigzag path through the ruins. It moved with minute precision, changing directions whenever the hedgehog shifted his weight. He rode it around pillars, over moss-grown floors, up collapsed walls and under stone arches, quick as breath.
"Has it only been two weeks?" he wondered as he played. Two long weeks alone with Knuckles and the Chaos Emeralds. A month before that, Sonic had been in space, trying to keep an old space station from falling from orbit and punching a hole in Mobius. Shadow, a black hedgehog with a death wish, had gone from bitter enemy to a close friend in a matter of minutes, as the pair joined forces to attack a monster that inhabited the space station. They had defeated the monster, and Sonic had nearly convinced Shadow to return to Mobius, when a freak accident had snapped Shadow's fragile hold on life ...
Sonic circled a pillar too closely, clipped it and bounced off. It took him a few seconds to regain control, but his little escapade did not erase the memory of watching the life leave the other hedgehog's broken body, even as Shadow's chao flew out to them, its mind split with grief ...
It hurt. Sonic reacted to pain like he did everything else--with fierce physical action. He ran faster, spinning the disk into a blur, sending it zipping over the landscape, weaving around obstacles, shooting up hillsides and down again. "Shadow's gone," he told himself. "You can't bring him back. Deal with it."
Sonic had welcomed Knuckles' offer to train him in Chaos Emerald usage as a diversion, something to make him forget his grief. But Shadow's death haunted him, as well as the guilty feeling that if not for him, Shadow would be alive. If he had only noticed the extra emerald--if he had only marked it--if he had only left it with his chao--if only--if only--
The pointed tip of the disk struck a jagged stone and stopped dead, flinging Sonic fifteen feet. He landed in a ball, bounced to a halt, uncurled and hurled verbal abuse at the offending hovertop. It felt good to yell at something, even if it was only an inanimate object.
His rage vented, Sonic lay where he had landed, enjoying the stillness. Now that he had stopped moving, he could hear the tiny sounds that made up the quiet of Marble Gardens: the tick of sunwarmed stone, the tumble of a pebble, the whisper of wind in the grass. "I wish Tails were here," he thought suddenly. He remembered their exploration of the Floating Island with an irritated Knuckles pursuing them. He also thought of the prophetic wall painting he and Tails had seen, a copy of which Robotnik had destroyed.
Sonic got up and trotted off to look for it, tossing a last glare at the hovertop as he went.

*

It was late afternoon when Sonic galloped up the trail to their camp, tired and cheerful. Knuckles was sitting under a tree with scrolls, ancient parchments and dusty books open on the grass around him. He looked up as Sonic approached. "What are you doing here? Get lost, you're too early."
"The hedgehog is hungry," Sonic replied. "You would be, too, if you'd rode that hovertop all day instead of ... reading." He pronounced the last word on a note of disgust.
Knuckles shook a spiked fist at him. "If not for this reading, you'd never learn to Chaos Control, let alone Chaos See or Chaos Shift."
"Why not Chaos Jump or Chaos Speed or Chaos Pull?" said Sonic. He bent and looked at the indecipherable scrawl on a nearby scroll. "What language is this?"
"Obviously not yours," said Knuckles, returning his gaze to the parchment he was translating. "If you're hungry, our packs are inside the cabin."
"All right!" said Sonic, and dashed away, scattering earth and torn grass all over Knuckles' research.
"Hey!" the echidna yelled, then returned to his work, unperturbed.
A few minutes later, a yell from the hedgehog drew his attention. Knuckles glanced up and saw the campfire leap ten feet high, as if Sonic had poured gasoline on it. Startled, Knuckles leaped over his papers and ran up the hill.
The flames died down as Knuckles approached. Sonic was standing well back, watching the fire with a look of shock. He looked around as Knuckles jogged up. "I didn't do anything."
"You had to do something," said the echidna, watching the fire. "I put it out this morning."
"All I did was stir it with a stick," said Sonic, holding up the stick in his hand as evidence. "Then it exploded. What is this, dynamite?"
Knuckles took the stick and inspected it. "No, it's just pine. That doesn't explode."
The two gazed at the campfire, which was now the proper size for a campfire and burning merrily. Sonic pointed a finger at it and exclaimed, "Chaos Fire!" Nothing happened.
Knuckles sideyed him. "Right. Why don't you let me light the fire from now on?"
"You got it," said Sonic, backing away a step. "We don't start on the red emerald yet, do we?"
"No," said Knuckles, although he was thinking the same thing himself--the red emerald's elemental power was fire. He cautiously approached the fire, circled it, and tossed a log on it from their small pile of firewood. The fire did not explode.
At any rate, after supper that night, Sonic and Knuckles took turns pouring water on it before retiring to the cabin for the night.
Sonic curled up in his sleeping bag and was dozing off when Knuckles said, "Know anyone named Twilight?"
Sonic shook himself awake and turned his head toward where he knew the echidna lay. "No, don't think so. That's a pretty common name, though."
There was a short silence, and Sonic was drifting to sleep again when Knuckles said, "Shadow didn't go by a nickname, did he?"
"No." Then Sonic's brain snapped awake. "Why?"
Knuckles said nothing.
Sonic sat up. "Why, Knux? Is there somebody like Shadow going by Twilight?"
Knuckles said quietly, "He's dead, Sonic."
"I know, I know, but Twilight and Shadow--what have you heard? Spill, man!"
Knuckles' sleeping bag rustled, and Sonic heard him unzip his pack. A moment later there was a click, and a small green screen lit up. Sonic's eyes narrowed. "You brought a palmtop?"
Knuckles handed it to him. "For communication purposes only. And don't ask to play Caterpillar."
But Sonic's eyes were glued to the words on the little screen. Knuckles watched his face, illuminated in shades of green, as Sonic's eyes grew round and his mouth fell open. Several minutes passed. At last he handed the computer back to the echidna and sat staring blindly into the darkness. "He survived."
Knuckles turned off the computer and tucked it into his bag, heart sinking. He knew Sonic would react this way.
"He survived," Sonic repeated, an odd note in his voice. "And he thinks I tried to kill him."
"Hold on," said Knuckles. "Is there anyone else you might have nearly killed?"
"No," said Sonic automatically. "Yes," he added. "One of the Mecha bots. I've almost killed them loads of times."
"It didn't sound like Metal Sonic," said Knuckles, resting his chin in one hand. "You aren't dear to him at all."
"And Robo Knux wouldn't bother to act mysterious," said Sonic. "He'd come right out and tell me he hated me." He hesitated. "It sounds like Shadow to me."
"Sonic ..."
"He could have survived, Knuckles!" snapped Sonic. "Nox might have revived him! You know he carried him toward Mobius!"
"You told me Shadow was aging," replied Knuckles, trying to control his temper. "Even if he somehow survived becoming un-invincible in outer space--the emeralds stopped, remember--he would continue to age until he died."
"Then I'm going to find him before he does," replied the hedgehog, crawling out of bed.
"Where are you going?"
"To find him!"
Knuckles smirked. "The Floating Island is hovering at five thousand feet, we're miles from a teleporter, and even if you could control your Chaos Relocates, you have no idea where he's writing from."
Sonic had wrenched the door open and was standing in the moonlight, looking sheepish. "I'm going for a run anyway." He whisked outside, and a moment later a sonic boom echoed over the hills.
Knuckles crawled out of his sleeping bag and stood in the doorway, looking out at the moonlit landscape. Sonic was probably miles away by now. The echidna hammered a fist into the doorway. He knew Sonic would react this way. He shouldn't have shown him that letter.
The moons had risen an hour ago, and hung side by side, a tiny half disk and a large half disk. While they were at half phase, one could not see the monstrous crater in the large moon that both startled and grieved all of planet Mobius every night. The two disks were quite close together tonight, closer than he had ever seen them. In fact ...
Knuckles straightened. They could only move so close if they were going to eclipse. He was no astronomer, but he knew the moons had not lined up in more than a thousand years. Their orbits were too different. He also knew that the combined pull of both moons would have disastrous effects on Mobius.
"Darn you Robotnik," Knuckles muttered through his teeth. "I hope this hurts you the worst." After a moment he returned inside, flicked on his palmtop, and typed a message to Sally with his thumbs. "Moons might eclipse. Look it up and see whats wrong. K."
He tucked the gadget back into his pack and crawled back into his sleeping bag. He didn't want to worry about Sonic anymore.