Teaching Darkness Chapter 12

Rouge stared at the Emerald in her hands. The sun’s light hit it at just the right angle to cause a rainbow of indigo shades on her gloves. Such a beautiful gem, and for it and its brothers to have caused so much strife… it seemed truly a shame…

Mephiles felt the ache in his head subside some, and was reminded painfully of his shoulder injury. Had he had teeth, he would have gritted them. He made a mental note that if he lived through this; he was going to alter his look a bit, as he had actually grown used to the concept of teeth, tongue and mouth when he had managed to possess Shadow, and wondered vaguely, as his stomach gave a uncomfortable twist when his shoulder twinged with pain from Shadow’s strike earlier…. What would have happened if he felt the need to vomit?

He looked up at Rouge, waiting for her to make her move. She hesitated, and then looked down at him questioningly.

“… Chaos Emeralds transform thought into power…” He answered her unspoken question. “… If you really want it to happen… it will…”

Rouge stared at him for a moment before shaking her head dejectedly.

“I tired that already… and look what happened…” She gestured at his shoulder as Mephiles shifted his gaze to take in his surroundings, searching for a solution. He seemed to have found it in a tree.

“… Maybe you didn’t focus all your thoughts into it…” He said, half in his own thoughts, rocking his head from side to side, almost like a metronome, in his own slow and steady rhythm. “… I believe… it takes…” He trailed off for a moment, immersing himself into his own mind briefly, before he came up with the rest of his sentence.

Opening his good eye swiftly, he stared up at Rouge and said: “… A lot of… concentration and… determination…”

Rouge nodded slowly before saying: “… Are you okay? You seemed like you lost your train of thought for a moment.”

Mephiles let out a shaky sigh before murmuring breathlessly: “… I may have lost too much blood in that fight… It’s getting harder… to think as the time passes… as well as I seemed to have developed… a spell of vertigo… I’m having some trouble just sitting up…”

When he saw Rouge’s concern, he lowered his head and dug his claws into the grass in front of him, feeling heat rise to his face.

“… Please… don’t waste your concern on me…” He whispered lowly. “… Had it not been for my actions… earlier this week… none of this would be happening… I do not deserve your apprehension…”

His blue crystal shard tipped ears swiveled and folded back, nearly disappearing into his quills as he sank lower, half tempted to melt into the ground and disappear into nothingness as well.

“… I don’t deserve sympathy…” He mumbled dismally.

Rouge couldn’t help but actually feel sorry for the shade. True… this was his fault, and, yes… he did possess her friend, and was the source of numerous injuries Team Dark would carry for a while, both physical and mental… but… if one thought about it… Mephiles didn’t really know any better.

No more than thirty minutes after his first conscious thought, Mephiles had been forced into the Scepter of Darkness when he had only wanted nothing more than to escape the icy and frightening environment of the laboratory that was his birthplace. When he wasn’t concentrating on his revenge during his decade in the Scepter, he would often find his mind plagued with the first things he had seen: several unmoving bodies and glass littering the floor he was pooling on before he dissolved into a dark mist-like vapor and fled, a red streaked spiky quilled hedgehog hot on his trail. The memory of this during his time inside the Scepter had hardened his heart and soul, until he found himself consumed with the very darkness that had surrounded him, and he became a newfound entity of Darkness.

Hardly given a proper start, he was really no more than a failure in a lab experiment to create an artificial sun god with the ability to travel through time, so people could correct past mistakes and sins. His creation was merely accidental, and was, therefore, not meant to exist.

Mephiles was wrong. He did deserve sympathy, pity, and apprehension. He was merely caught up in a series of events that took a wrong turn.

Standing between a “frozen” Shadow, and a distraught Mephiles, Rouge shifted her gaze back and forth between the two, trying to find the best outcome for them all.

Shifting the Emerald back and forth between her hands, she took a step back to where she could see the two hedgehogs in front of her. For a while, she remained silent, afraid that she was going to botch this up as well.

She glanced at her left wrist, and saw the mark from Shadow the other day. She remembered how he had been horrified at the thought of causing her harm, so much to the point that he had fled in terror, and ran until he just collapsed. Granted… he didn’t get very far, and he was promptly found within the hour, curled up on the streets, whispering apologies in his unconscious daze. He had only run away to protect her from Mephiles.

Her right wing hung limply as she remembered that this injury happened because Shadow was not himself and had not recognized her as his friend, but more as a bothersome obstacle.

She also remembered how Mephiles had not only returned her favor of rescuing him from drowning, but had also forced Shadow down, to rescue her again, despite Shadow’s physical force of a head attack.

She lowered her eyebrows with determination and nodded to no one in particular. Then, with inexplicable reason, tossed the Emerald into the air, only slightly surprised that it began to glow and hover before her.

Both hedgehogs began glowing with a colored aura; Shadow with blue, Mephiles with red. Shadow’s purple blanket of energy dissipated as a glazed expression graced not only his, but Mephiles’ face as well. Mephiles leaned back limply into Omega as all emotion drained from his features, Shadow doing likewise against the boulder behind him.

“… The servers are the seven Chaos…” Rouge said, knowing from first hand account that this saying somehow amplified the power of the Emeralds. “… Chaos is power enriched by the heart…”

She knew that that was only the start of things. She needed to state her purpose for tapping into the Emerald’s power, if she wanted this to work right.

“… Precious Chaos Emerald…” She began, hoping she worded it right. “… Hear me, now… I wish nothing more than to make this right and return Shadow and Mephiles to who they really are… I wish to correct the previous mistakes, and right the wrong that was made…”

She focused one last thought on one other thing, and called her last request to the Emerald, hoping that she would be thanked for this.

The auras around the hedgehogs began to lift upward, and spiky quilled forms could be made out in them. The blue one drifted over to the red one, running several circles around it before giving it a harsh nudge, the red aura peeling from Mephiles and floating over to Shadow. The blue aura orbited around the crystalline hedge-beast in a fashion similar to how Mephiles had one he had first broken free from the Scepter, and it struck itself into Mephiles’ chest, causing the shade to gasp only faintly before he blinked wearily. He lifted his head only a little, before his eyes rolled back and he collapsed on his side with a weakened moan and a muffled thud, breathing shallowly; exhausted, but otherwise okay.

Shadow’s aura tried a different approach, and simply seemingly melted into Shadow’s fur, just as Mephiles had done to fuse them together. Shadow’s eyes regained focus for a moment, before he too, passed out, falling on his back coughing, one arm laying across his stomach, the other laying on the ground to where his hand was beside his head.

The Emerald dropped and hit the ground at Rouge’s feet. The white bat smiled smugly before reaching down to pick it up, then walking her way to the shade of the large tree, and sat down in the grass to wait for the hedgehogs to wake up.
----------------------
Omega’s system rebooted on its own. The robot waited for the startup screen to pass, cursing inwardly to himself for being run on Windows ME, and greatly considered taking the next upgrade that comes his way. Getting past the login screen, his system was fully functional, and his HUD was greeted with the sight of the well lit forest.

He swiveled his head to the side and spotted Rouge, who was tossing the purple Emerald up and down in the air out of sheer boredom.

It didn’t take him long for him to realize that very battle worn looking Mephiles was asleep next to him; his hands folded on his chest, his head propped up against Omega’s metal body, and was breathing in a rhythm to suggest he was deeply out of it.

Instantly, Omega jumped up, Mephiles sliding to the ground and striking his head on a small rock, causing him to mutter involuntarily as he broke free from his sleep paralysis slowly, bringing his hands up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes to see better. He almost immediately wished he hadn’t woken up.

Omega was pointing his guns at the shade.

Mephiles flattened himself against the ground out of instinct, and closed his eyes. He heard Rouge yell at the robot, and opened his eyes to watch Omega lower his guns in total bewilderment. Rouge telling him to not attack Mephiles when it was obvious to the robot that the shade and Shadow had been split apart? Omega wondered what kind of robot purgatory he’d just woken up to, and figured he should just blame his stupid operating system.

Now completely awake, Mephiles sat up slowly and looked at Rouge, who had pulled Shadow out of the sun, who groaned lightly, and rolled on his side and curled up. She now had her injured wing set with a makeshift splint made of sticks and her torn glove. Rouge saw him staring, and returned his gesture before smiling brightly.

“How are you feeling?” She asked him.

Mephiles stared for a moment before letting the question run through his mind. He shrugged and ran his tongue over his teeth and…

And stopped.

He brought his quivering hands to his muzzle and his fingers touched against a mouth with teeth like Shadow’s. His eyes widened in astonishment as he moved his hand upward and felt a small nose much like Rouge’s. He also noticed that his “feet” were no longer masses of mist… but… feet…

“But… how?” He managed to choke out once he found his voice, which had died for a moment at his discovery. “I-I-I… It… How can this be?!”

Rouge kept smiling slyly as she balanced the Emerald on the tips of her fingers.

“I made another wish on the Emerald…” She said. “… This one was for you. I wished that you would be able to start over with your life and live it the way you want…”

“… and the mouth, nose and feet?”

“Its part of what you wanted…”

Mephiles didn’t know what to say. No set of words could even begin to express what he was feeling right now. He clenched his new teeth together as his eyes began to water. He flattened his ears, took a deep breath…

And cried.

He couldn’t explain to himself why. He wasn’t feeling upset, or hurt, or depressed. In fact, he felt quite the opposite.

He wiped the tears from his eyes with the backs of his hands, only to have more replace them as fast as he had banished them. He wondered if this was a normal reaction to overwhelming joy, and decided to just contemplate it later when he found that he didn’t really care at the moment of it was.

As Rouge came over to check on him, a little startled by his reaction, Mephiles picked himself up from the ground, stumbling only a few feet before he launched himself into her arms, wrapping his own around her in a tremendously grateful embrace, careful to avoid her hurt wing as his body shuddered with his tears of happiness.

“… Thank you… Oh, thank you…” He paused awkwardly when he suddenly became aware that he did not know her name. He pulled away just enough to stare at her with his question radiating from his eyes.

“Rouge…” She answered. “My name is Rouge the Bat…”

Mephiles nodded before returning back to his hug, enjoying how it made him feel inside. “…Thank you… Rouge the Bat…” He whispered in her ear. “Thank you so much…”