literature

Teaching Darkness: Memories C6

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Mephiles was in such shock. His world seemed to come to a complete stop as there was a dead silence in the room.

Easing his hands to his head, he twisted his fingers in his quills, pulling a few loose…

He had been the only one to get out before the accident.

He left his family behind and now he could see what had happened to them.

“… Mephiles..?” Rouge said, stopping at only his name, at a loss of anything to say.

“… They didn’t get out…” The crystal hedgehog said softly, shaking his head as if hoping to erase it all and start all over. “… Th-they d-didn’t f-follow me… and… h-he k-killed them…”

“… Mephiles… I’m so sorry…” Shadow said, clenching his fists together as he shook his head.

Mephiles clenched his teeth together as more of the memories came to mind. Panting, he could just grasp more of what had happened that day. Holding back a sob, he clenched a hand into a fist and slammed it into the ground, exhaling through his teeth.

… You should be…” He growled, lifting his head to stare at the wall. Shuddering as if he suddenly caught a chill, his fur and quills began standing on end.

What?

“This is all your fault!” Mephiles snapped and turned his head quickly to look at him, his eyes narrowed with anger. “I just wanted to find them, and you scared me into a corner!”

Shadow took a step back, completely caught off guard by this.

“Wait! I just-”

“While you stuffed me into that stupid scepter, they were being burned alive!” Mephiles got to his feet and stared at Shadow furiously. “My family was murdered while you tracked me down, calling me a demon!

Shadow and Rouge were shocked. Shadow had had no idea of that while he was following what he was supposedly supposed to be doing, according to time itself.

Shadow tried to regain his composure and tried to calm down the now distraught hedgehog.

“Meph… I had no idea… I’m-”

Before anything else could be said, Mephiles shoved passed Shadow and back into the hallway, taking off opposite of the entrance and into the labyrinth of hallways before them. Shadow managed to catch up to him before he got far and caught him by the wrist to try to get him to stop running.

“Let me go!” Mephiles hissed, trying to pull his hand away, prying at Shadow’s fingers frantically. “Get away from me! Let go!”

“What are you running for?”

“I’m trying to get away from you!” Mephiles bared his teeth as a warning. “If you had just gone after that flame, you might have been able to save their lives!”

“Mephiles! What good would that have done?! They were Earth hedgehogs… they would have been dead after eleven years anyway!”

This made Mephiles scream loudly, and he bit Shadow on the arm hard enough to draw blood, which caused Shadow to let go as he clamped a hand over the bite.

Mephiles shoved him to the ground and continued running just as Rouge looked over the bite.

“That’s not good…”

“Not worried about it getting bad, or anything…” Shadow said, shaking his head. “I’ve never really had an infection from his bites, but we need to catch up to him…”

“But it’s bleeding…”

“It should let up in a few minutes…” Shadow nodded. “We better find him before he gets lost…”
------------------------------
Mephiles darted down the halls, not bothering to look back as he panted between each step…

All this time, he had been friends with the very reason he wasn’t with his family…

His best friend…

If Shadow had left him alone…

Then…







Mephiles stopped for a moment to catch his breath and take in where he was.

More hallways…

Growling under is breath, he decided to start walking, figuring that he was far enough away from Shadow to buy some time to walk and to pause to think…





A chill ran through him. Something about this particular hallway was beginning to make his fur stand on end again, his legs starting to quiver as the air started to seem too thin to him.

He shook his head to clear it. It was probably nothing…

Then he stopped, before breaking out in a sprint again.

Something in here was scaring him, and he couldn’t place his finger on it…

He slipped and fell to the ground with a THUMP, groaning for a moment while he took a bit of time to reorient himself.

“… Need to work on my balance a bit…” He murmured, shaking his head as he got to his feet slowly, almost regretting it when he started to feel a little dizzy. “Urgh…”

He took a few more steps and stopped when his ears perked up as they picked up the sound of broken glass crunching under his feet.

Feeling his stomach drop what felt several feet, he hesitantly opened his eyes and almost screamed.

He had wandered into the very laboratory that the explosion happened.

Eyes widening to their greatest point, Mephiles tried hard not to vomit as he saw the remains of everything around him, the air still smelling of death, which was making his stomach hurt as it started churning.

He backed away slowly and tripped over one of the scientists, landing flat on his back and looking up only to find to his horror that he fell between two of them.

His dizzy feeling hit over the top and a sharp pain struck him in both his head and chest, causing him to screech as he gasped for air and clutched at his chest, now regretting having run off like he did.

He managed a strangled cry of fright before he could do nothing more than whimper…
----------------------
“Did you hear that?” Rouge perked her ears.

“Yeah… That was Mephiles…”

“He sounds scared…”

“Oh, God… if he is…” Shadow said, quickening his pace. “He might end up having a panic attack… and the air as a bad as it is here…”

“He won’t be able to breathe right!” Rouge said as they stopped at a fork in the paths. She cursed. “Which way?”

“Have your communicator with you?”

“Yes…”

“Let’s split up, and we’ll contact each other when we find him…”

Rouge nodded and took the left path while Shadow took right.

Not long on her way down the halls, she found the laboratory room where Mephiles was curled up, shaking with fright, gasping in wheezy breaths and half conscious as he clutched at his chest.

“Mephiles!” Rouge hurried over to him and pulled him away from the bones of two scientists, Mephiles kicking his feet weakly, whimpering and moaning as he did. “Calm down… just hold on and we’ll get you out of here…”

“… Sh-shouldn’t… have… run off…”

“Mephiles… stop talking right now…”

“… I’m… s-sorry… I…” He whispered faintly before suddenly clutching his head and screaming. “AHHH!

Mephiles!

Before anything else could be done, he fainted and fell limp with a yelp.

Panicking, she pulled him out of the room and into the hallway, getting a hold of Shadow on the communicator.

“Shadow?”

“Yes?”

“I found him… he’s down this hall…”

“How is he?”

“He just fainted… the laboratory is down this way and…” Rouge paused. How was she supposed to describe all this? “… Well… he wandered in and was… overwhelmed…”

“I heard a scream…”

“… I don’t know… He clutched his head, screamed and fainted…”

“How is he right now?”

“He’s breathing… and he just looks like he passed out…”

“Hang on… I’m on my way…”

Rouge nodded and hung up, taking a look at Mephiles again. He seemed to have paled in a shade on his muzzle, and he twitched occasionally, as if something was still plaguing his mind…
----------------------------------
“Look, I don’t care what you think!” Shadow growled at the hotel clerk, lamming his hands onto the desk and leaning forward to show that he was serious. “I don’t care if you people hate him… we need a room!”

“As long as you have that monster with you… no…”

“Look at him!” Shadow waved a hand at the hedgehog in question, who was in Rouge’s arms and still unconscious. “Does that look like a monster to you?”

“They come in many forms, Mr. Hedgehog…”

Shadow growled frustratedly and paused for a moment to take a breath before this got out of hand.

“Need I remind you that my friends and I are on official GUN business?” He tried a bit calmer, but with an edge still underlying his tone. “And since GUN has been coming in and out of Soleanna for the past year now… If I were to leave an unpleasant report of this place…” Shadow added a bit of a questioning tone to his statement, grinning slightly.

The clerk got the hint.

“Room 13B is a nice one…” He said quickly, handing Shadow the key, who nodded.

“Thank you, and have a nice day…”

“Nice work, Shadow…” Rouge added as they made their way to the room, Shadow pulling their bags along, which had finally showed up about an hour after their arrival. “I was almost worried that they wouldn’t allow him in…”

“Me, too…” Shadow nodded. “I’m glad that he didn’t have too badly of a panic attack… It looks like even the hospital here won’t take him in… and Thizon is too far away right now… So what happened exactly?”

“My guess is that he freaked out when he saw the laboratory room… It hasn’t been touched in years, so it’s about eleven years worth of decay in there…”

“Yeesh… I wouldn’t blame him…” Shadow set the bags down once they got inside the room. It was about as cliché of a hotel room as one could be, but no one was complaining. There were two beds however.

“Crud… how are we gonna do this?”

“I could take the floor again…” Shadow offered. “I’m used to it anyway… Mephiles is out of it, so he should get a bed right now…” Shadow gestured for her to set the hedgehog down as he started going through his bags. “I hope he’s not really that mad at me, though… he looked almost half ready to kill me…”

Rouge sighed.

She had figured he was anyway, since he had come to the realization that Shadow had stopped him from getting to his family.

Urgh… with time travel… it was just one big mess after another…

“To be honest, Shadow, this whole time travel thing seems to be a root to this whole problem…”

“But, I wouldn’t have had to go back in time, if Dark hadn’t tricked Silver into thinking that he needed to kill Sonic… so… Dark is the root of this… but, Dark exists because I went back in time..?” Shadow ended that with a question, realizing that this was an infinite loop.

“Shadow, it’s a paradox…” Rouge rolled her eyes. “It’s suppose to exist because of something that exists because of what that something did to it…”

“I know what a paradox is, Rouge…” Shadow rolled his eyes as well. “I’m just wondering who started this to begin with… Me or Dark?”

“I don’t have the answer to that!” Rouge snapped, starting to get tired of the constant wondering. “You both did! How’s that!”

“But… that doesn’t really…” He trailed off when he figured he shouldn’t push it. He shook his head. “So, how long do you think he’ll be out?”

“I’d give it a few hours before we should just consider heading home…” Rouge pulled a book out of her bag and sat down on her bed to read it. “If it wasn’t too bad, he should be waking up before it gets dark.”

Almost as if they spoke too soon, Mephiles began stirring, and groaned, bringing his hand to his forehead.

“… Ungh… what happened?” He sat up with a bit of effort, and looked around, before his eyes rested on Shadow. He narrowed them, and turned away, folding his arms, and flipping his ears back. “Rouge… can you tell Shadow I’m not speaking to him right now?”

“Are you kidding me?!” Shadow said loudly. “It wasn’t my fault!

“Rouge… can you tell Shadow that knowing my family died while I was being chased by him just-”

“Tell him yourself!” Rouge raised an eyebrow. “I am not going to get in the middle of this.”

Mephiles took a look a Shadow and clenched his teeth.

“No…”

“Okay, now you’re just being childish…” Shadow said.

Mephiles hissed and puffed his quills.

“Maybe because I was a child when that all happened! And thanks to Dark, I was put in some kind of coma for ten years! I should have never left that cage!”

“Meph! Did you not see what had happened? You would have been burned alive too!”

“If I was made the second half of that artificial Solaris, then if I hadn’t been there, Iblis wouldn’t have been made! And they would have been okay!” Mephiles grabbed the pillow on the bed and threw it as hard as he could at Shadow. He then grabbed the alarm clock and got ready to throw that as well. He was so worked up now; angry, upset and scared at the same time… and he just wanted to vent it all out on Shadow.

Shadow snapped his fingers and Chaos Snapped behind Mephiles, catching him by the wrist and taking the clock from his hand. Mephiles growled and pulled at his arm to try to free himself.

“Let me go!”

“Not until you stop trying to kill me…” Shadow shook his head. “I’m starting to think that that remote you threw at me last week was on purpose…”

“It should have been if I had known that you were the reason I don’t have any relatives!”

“Just stop it! It wasn’t my fault! I’m sorry! I’m so very sorry! Is that what you wanted to hear?!”

“It’s not going to bring them back! They’re gone! They’re gone, Shadow!” Mephiles screamed as tears started filling his eyes. “Let me go! You’re holding my wrist too hard!” He tried to pull his wrist away, the look on his face telling Shadow that he was in some amount of pain.

Before Shadow could let him go, Mephiles quickly grabbed the hybrid hedgehog’s arm unintentionally and almost immediately, his expression changed to his daydreaming stare.

“Not again!” Shadow exclaimed and let go of the wrist he was holding, and pulled Mephiles’ hand off of his arm, Mephiles gasping for a moment.

“I just figured out why these memories are being triggered to begin with!” Mephiles looked up at Shadow with wide eyes. “There’s connections between you and me!”

“That’s really out there…”

“No, hear me out!” Mephiles shook his head. “The first connection is ‘hallways’! It’s in your head! It’s in my head! Your memories! My memories! It makes sense now!”

“Weren’t you just trying to kill me?”

“Not if I need you to figure things out…”

“You’re a headache sometimes…” Shadow frowned and shook his head. “I can never really keep up with you…”

“Anyway, I need Shadow to help me with-”

“No!” Shadow barked. “No way! Nuh-uh! Not after what happened at the lab today!”

“Why not?!”

“Because…” Rouge said calmly, looking up from her book. “Too much of this all at once could do bad stuff to you… And you haven’t told us what made you scream and hold your head yet…”

“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about…” Mephiles blushed a bit, which contradicted what he was saying.

“Well, if that is that case…” Shadow said. “Then tomorrow is a day off from your search…”

“What!?” Mephiles barked. “Are you serious!?”

“You’re already on edge… you need to calm down, and take a break from this…”

“It was only one day of searching!”

“One day that was a bit too much…” Rouge said, turning a page.

Mephiles heaved a sigh through his teeth in response.

“I think I’ll decide when something is too much for me…” He growled.

“As your friends, we just don’t want to see you get hurt…”

Mephiles couldn’t say anything to that, and muttered to himself, shaking his head and biting down on his thumb.

“I heard that…” Rouge flicked an ear at him.

Mephiles bit harder.
-----------------------------
When night came, the trio decided to turn in for the night, Mephiles still protesting about the idea of having to take a break.

As much as he denied it though, it was evident that he needed it when his night became troubled.

Shadow flickered an ear at the sound of rustling on the bed Mephiles was sleeping on. A whisper of a light moan met his ears as he looked up to find Mephiles shifting around on the bed uncomfortably, his breathing pattern getting faster and faster as the second passed, his chest heaving up and down as he eased a hand to it to clutch at his patch of white fur.

Shadow got to his feet and placed a hand to Mephiles’ shoulder and gave him a light shake to try to rouse him. Mephiles clenched his teeth and rolled over, now whimpering as a shiver started to run through him, sweat starting to bead up on his face.

“Meph, wake up…”

The whimpering got louder as Mephiles shook his head, still caught in his bad dream, rolling over again, the blankets getting wrapped around him.

“Mephiles… you’re having a dream again…” Shadow said a bit louder, trying to get him to wake up.

Mephiles grunted and rolled off the bed with a yelp, now half awake when he had hit the ground.

For a few moments, he didn’t register that he had still been asleep, and started to panic when he realized that he wasn’t able to move very will, unaware that he was now tangled up in the blankets.

Mephiles yelled almost detachedly as he thrashed about, trying hard to free himself from what he perceived at moment as being caught in a trap.

By this point, Rouge was already awake and was peering over the edge of her bed as Shadow pinned him to the ground and snapped his fingers few times to get Mephiles to wake up completely. With a snort, his eyes opened wider and he looked around in total confusion.

“Wh-where… am I..? Wh-whajust… happened..?” Mephiles muttered, parts of his words slurring together as he slowly regained the use of his tongue.

“You were having a nightmare… I think…” Shadow said.

“If I was… I d-don’t remember it…”

“Then it was a night terror again…”

“I th-thought I was... over them…”

“It takes more than a month or so for them to go away…” Shadow helped him get loose. “Sometimes, they never do…”

“Are you kidding me..?”

“No…”

Mephiles sighed, sitting up as he rubbed his temples. “Urgh… I’m getting such a headache from all of this…”

“Maybe if we went home..?” Rouge suggested before Mephiles perked an ear quickly and cut across her.

“No! Not until I’ve learned all I can about all of this!” He shook his head carefully, not wanting to aggravate his headache any more that it was. “Today was just a bad start…”

“You’re still taking the day off…” Shadow reminded him.

“Don’t see what good it’ll do…” Mephiles growled, still a bit peeved at Shadow. “If everyone in the city hates me… I won’t be able to go anywhere without you two…”

“We’ll come with you then…”







“Sure… why not?” Mephiles heaved a sigh and twisted his frown into half a smile, his voice carrying a tone that indicated that he was being sarcastic.
Okay... so, Meph seems to have some kind of attitude problem going on here... Then again, who can blame him?

See ya next time!
© 2008 - 2024 RaeLogan
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ShadowBunny698's avatar
awesome job i can't wait to see what happens next and poor mephiles and i feel sorry for Shadow now being blamed