Capítulo 114: Feel My Fear
"It really is gone, huh?"
The real Sonic, now on Team Rose's side, overlooked a ravine that delved deep into the core of Erius. The ruins of Kerosen in the country of Veinia. "Yeah, it's hard to believe this used to be our home…" Amy followed up. On the other side of the gargantuan hole in the planet, a mansion sat under the full orange moon. Mystic Mansion, Bloodingham.
"Which way do we go?" Cream asked. "I'm sorry, but I'm NOT flying us across." Cream looked both ways. "The only way forward is through Illedence. Ms. Roses, are we really going to…?"
Amy took a deep breath. "If it's the way to the Silent Celesta like Professor Pickle said yesterday, then yeah! We'll need to go through the city," Amy replied. "C'mon, guys! Mayor Cleave is dead, Illedence should be safer than ever now!"
The Pink Cabriolet drove through Blur Speedway, a strange road resembling a nervous system. It lead straight into the genocide city of Illedence. "Amy, we don't have a GPS…" Sonic mumbled, looking over her shoulder. "How do you know where we're going in this crazy maze?"
"I've been down this road before, Sonic," Amy replied.
"So this is where you were the morning you prank-called me from a payphone," Sonic sighed. He looked to Cream for confirmation. She shook her head.
"Actually, she was in Avalon, Mr. Sonic. And that wasn't a prank call!" Cream corrected him. "This is where that adventure all started, though." Sonic looked out at the sidewalk, feeling the frigid air against his pale skin. Since his Midnight form was harmed by the sun, it was nice to at least feel the fresh air each night.
As they continued to drive, Sonic noticed a series of odd… deformities… in certain people walking through Illedence. Features that couldn't have resulted from the most common cause of mutation on Erius (nuclear fallouts). They weren't too pronounced, he only really registered them while waiting at red lights. Tar-like saliva, monstrous qualities, even shortened limbs. Most concerning of all was the realization that everyone displaying these quirks were looking right at the cabriolet. Specifically, Amy.
"Amy? They're staring at you…" Sonic whispered. The people looked to him strangely, then continued their commutes.
"Yeah, don't pay attention to those creeps. They worship me here. I was going to tell you about it after we got back to Obuericos from the ARK, but I thought I'd say it later when I saw how mad you got at Tails being a god too," Amy groaned, holding her head in one hand. Sonic looked to the car floor and exhaled. "You're… not fazed? Not in the slightest?" Amy asked. "... Dang…"
"I was really hard on Tails, I should've tried to listen to him," Sonic said. "A few days after I left, I turned into THIS because of all the Dark Gaia Force I inhaled on Lost Hex. It took me a while to start controlling my thoughts again, but even when I was safe to be around, I couldn't stand the thought of coming back like this." Sonic set his sights on the city as it crawled by. He scowled. "My Tails Electric got stolen while I was sleeping in a bad area. Mind letting me call Tails? I… want to apologize."
"I don't know if it's safe, I think he's still with Metal Sonic," Amy replied, driving on the bridge between Illedence and Bloodingham. The sky turned from a starless pitch black to a festive autumn brown. "If either of them catch on, Metal will DEFINITELY kill them," Amy muttered. Her arms began to shake, the straight line she was driving in became a zigzag. Just then, she saw a car in the rearview mirror. A worn-down wreck of a blue buggy. She sped up gradually, the buggy doing the same. Its filthy, worn tires left red, rusty, bloody streaks on the asphalt behind it. Its headlights were like eyes.
"Ms. Roses, you're breaking the speed limit!" Cream cried, as the cabriolet bounced off of speed bumps like they were Trick Jump Panels. "Slow down, pretty please!"
Sonic howled in ecstasy, the influence of Dark Gaia turning what was meant to be an excited and innocent laugh into a deranged cackle. Cream nearly jumped out of her seat, squeezing Cheese tightly. Sonic put a hand over his mouth.
"Aw, don't be scared, Cream! We're not going THAT fast," Sonic chuckled, a bead of sweat rolling down his face. He looked to the rearview mirror. He didn't have a reflection. In fact, there was nothing in the mirror but the bridge and the far-off Genocide City. "Amy, you all good?" He whispered. "I'm all for this whole 'going fast' thing, but you're scaring that poor kid." Amy gripped the steering wheel until her hands began to hurt. She pressed the pedal to the floor so hard that it could have sunk in. "Amy…?"
"I CAN'T SLOW DOWN!" Amy screamed at him. "Breeze is right behind us!"
"Breeze? Who's that?" Sonic asked. He took one last look into the mirror. "Never mind! Nobody's even there. You should lay off the Party Punch before you hop into the driver's seat." Amy looked back, and saw that there was nothing following them. At all. Just as Sonic had said. "Hey Amy, watch out! You're gonna crash! AHH!" Amy looked straight ahead at a toll gate. She hit the brakes, and the cabriolet screeched as it slowed down. The cabriolet stopped just in time to avoid a crash.
"What just happened…?" Amy asked, looking back at the vast bridge they had just crossed. "I could have sworn that was Breeze just now!"
"That's okay. I talk to Froggy when he's not around, sometimes…" Big said. He looked to his vacant shoulder. "Hello, Froggy. I miss you." Cream hid her face with her ears.
"Is everybody in this car out of their minds?" She whispered to Cheese, who was tucked away under her ears. She looked to the tollbooth. She tuned out the sound of Amy profusely apologizing to everybody in the car. "Ms. Roses, there's nobody inside to let us in. What should we do?" Sonic hopped out of the cabriolet. He then ducked under the gate, stepping foot into Bloodingham. Cream and Cheese looked on in bewilderment. Sonic turned back around. "Mr. Sonic? You're… breaking the law again."
"So what? C'mon everyone, get out of the car," Sonic called, slapping the sign displaying a crossed out Eternalist symbol and watching it spin. Amy dismissed the Pink Cabriolet, having it disappear into a tarot card. Everybody felt an uneasy chill as they approached Mystic Mansion.
…
"You're WHAT?!" Tails cried into the Tails Electric, as Team Sonic flew above the country of Veinia. "I'm sorry Ata, you're breaking up. I'll need to call you back. We just arrived at Bloodingham, it's a total deadzone—!" Tails lost the signal. He sighed in irritation.
"Eyes on the skies, Tails!" Knuckles shouted. Tails looked ahead just in time to see a pendulum saw swinging at them. Zavok held it back with her EM-manipulation. As soon as the Cyclone passed by, the saw cut deep into the bloodstained brick wall of one of the many skyscraping towers surrounding a huge fortress. There was a message engraved onto the pendulum saw…
"Welcome to Hang Castle!"
The Cyclone was enveloped in a thick white mist. "There's some… negative energy here," Knuckles swatted at the mist. With every swing of Knuckles' hand, Tails heard strange laughter. Tails then saw eyes staring back at them from the fog itself.
"Aah! Ghosts!" Tails cried, panicking as he lost control of the plane to mischievous paranormal forces. A gust of blue wind then swept away the specters, Sonic summoning a tornado that cut away at the fog and sent the remaining Boos into a whirlwind. Everyone took deep breaths, as Tails landed on an abandoned road at the foot of Hang Castle. "Is everyone okay?" Tails asked. Everyone looked at him, seeming a little irritated. "Nobody told me this place was haunted!"
"Haha, what?" Sonic asked, hopping off the wing with Zavok. "That was just a cloud we flew through. There's no ghosts… except for the one right behind you!" Knuckles placed a hand on Tails' shoulder. Tails screamed and flew out of his seat quickly. Sonic laughed as Tails pouted midair.
"Not funny, you guys!" Tails shouted, hovering back down into the Cyclone and transforming it into a mech. Knuckles was squeezed out of his seat as it folded back into the machine. He landed on his face. "Fog or not, it's risky to be flying here. We need to find our way forward on foot!"
"That I can do," Sonic said, stretching. He blasted off into Hang Castle, everyone following in his lead. As he ran, he pulled up the SoniCam. A program that let him read the original Sonic's data. "Just as I thought…" Metal Sonic signaled to Metal Ata. "Team Rose and my loathsome copy have come to this accursed place to collect the Silent Celesta."
"Right. They got that information from the man who was with the real me, right?" Metal Ata asked. "What was his name…? I can't remember."
"According to my research, some kind of hex cast on this property long ago seems to bring its visitors' fears to life right in front of their eyes during the night. The curse even bled into the surrounding county, causing a blanket of darkness and regular electrical outages. This resulted in fire and magic remaining common light sources even after all these centuries."
"Sonic?" Metal Ata asked.
"The security measure of a madman only trying to protect his land, no doubt. I wonder if he knows that this place was turned into a tourist hotspot for the whole country?" Metal Sonic clenched his fists, shying away from his personal demons given mass and form. Though as always, they were burned into his peripheral vision. He closed his eyes. "The worst part is, these fears can only be seen by the individual they haunt."
"Sonic…" Metal Ata mumbled and nagged.
"The people foolish enough to come here after sundown, provided their fears are tame enough for them to survive, are doomed to have their horrific encounters in this place be reduced to campfire tales or footnotes in a psychological assessment. I will not fall victim to this like the rest. I. Will. Be HEARD!"
"SONIC!" Knuckles shouted. Sonic made a last-minute U-turn on the invisible trail only made apparent by the walls of flame surrounding it. "You're always so distracted, sometimes it feels like I could PUNCH you and you wouldn't react. What are you even mumbling about?"
"Oh? Uh… nothin'! Must be a certain bat we all know and love coming to steal the Master Emerald… AaaaAAaaaAAAaaAA so scary!" Sonic exclaimed, severing Metal Ata's signal for the moment but keeping the SoniCam open.
"Good. Cuz in case you go insane and try to get near MY emerald again, I have a box full of water back home," Knuckles warned.
"I thought we were FRIENDS now!" Sonic shouted, fearing for his circuits.
"Keep your friends close, close enough to drown them," Knuckles said.
…
Team Rose wandered through Mystic Mansion. "Ms. Roses? I know I agreed to come along, but… I also want to find Chocola-Chao soon! I don't think he'd come here," Cream said meekly. Cheese whined.
"Hmm… I dunno about Chocola, but I smell Froggy nearby!" Big looked all around at yet another dilapidated room. Amy and Sonic kept walking along, the spooky frights and thrills of the house now pushed to the back of their minds as a greater fear took over.
"Sonic, you don't think Metal Sonic is nearby, right?" Amy asked, shuddering. "He's DEFINITELY the one who has Chocola and Froggy, and-and he framed you for kidnapping them!"
Sonic fiddled with a jammed doorknob. "Hmm… hard to say. I can't ever tell where that guy is 'til he pops right out of nowhere! He always seems to know where to find me each time, but the only info I ever had on him was what he chose to share," Sonic broke down the door to a staircase that descended into an eerie darkness. "Which was never much." Sonic ran down the stairs.
When he reached the bottom of the flight, he found himself in a cold pitch black room. Sonic adjusted his showy golden mask, and his eye whites turned purple. He could now see a little more of Mystic Mansion's deepest corridor. He put his arms out to the side, and found the wooden walls were only a few feet apart from each other. Without further hesitation, he ran across the stone floor.
"You and I aren't so different, you know," a voice whispered to him. Sonic almost stopped in his tracks, before he realized it was probably a bad idea to let whoever was talking to him catch up. He then realized he couldn't tell if the voice was even coming from behind him. "I once thought of you as my end goal. As my ideal self. Not anymore." Sonic glanced back at the darkness behind him. Nothing. He looked back ahead.
"Amy?!" Sonic exclaimed, skidding to a stop. Amy turned to him. "How'd you get here?"
"Sonic! I… don't know!" Amy replied with a smile, teetering back and forth. "Wasn't I just behind you?"
"Huh… I guess you must have zipped by me in the dark," Sonic sighed, a feeling of uncertainty wriggling around in the back of his brain. "Whatever. Let's keep going. Stay closer this time."
"I would have thought MY Sonic would be faster than me," Amy placed a fist on her mouth. She turned to Sonic, staring into his eyes. For some reason, she felt… TOO close. It was a feeling Sonic hadn't felt from her in a long time.
"Something the matter, Amy?" Sonic asked, walking up to the two of them. The color drained from his face. "Amy, who is that?" Amy looked between both Sonics.
"Who are YOU?" Amy asked. Sonic grabbed her by the wrist and ran away, she didn't so much as look back. She disappeared into the darkness. Leaving only a gloved hand reaching for them.
"There once was a man named Sonic. One by one, those around Sonic forgot who he was in favor of an imposter. It happened slowly, and he didn't even know what happened until he was lost in a dark alley, intoxicated by a sense of betrayal and mourning his own death alone," the same voice whispered to Sonic as he continued to try and outrun it. "Sonic's story should sound familiar to you. This is a story we've both gone through ourselves one way or another. Wish I thought of it first."
"Shut up!" Sonic shouted, clutching his head and shielding his eyes from the room as it flashed red, blue and yellow. Lighting up an endless space full of all his fears.
"Such witty banter. This is exactly what I mean. You have lost your way, Sonic." The voice replied. "I saw your mind as you ran through my prison." … "I felt it deteriorate from an unstoppable force of pure rebellious energy into a broken, confused man about to lose everything that once gave him meaning in this world. I see now the complacency of it all. You intend to let Tails effectively commit an act of self-sacrifice in order to fulfill an old story carved into dated relics. Repulsive, absolutely repugnantly abhorrent. The old Sonic wouldn't have done this." The voice grew louder and angrier. "I will atone for your sins, my loathsome copy! Do you hear me? I will not stop fighting until I replace what you once were and destroy all that you have become. You have mere hours before dawn AND before my master plan is completed. The sun rises and sets. You run and rest… and you chase tomorrow's dawn like those before, only this time with all the intent of a moth drawn to a burning flame. Do you think you can stop me, Sonic?!" Sonic tripped and fell. The voice laughed. "Do YOU think you can stop ME?! HAHAHAHAHA! You wouldn't dare!"
Sonic then ran into something warm. Something soft. He flew back.
"Sonic!" Amy cried out. Sonic opened his eyes to see Amy standing there with the rest of her team. "Uhh… maybe not in front of Cream!" Amy covered her chest.
"Yowch… Sorry, Amy. I just had one heck of a nightmare…" Sonic sniffled, holding his head. "And you were in it!"
"I'm sorry, darling," Amy mumbled. Sonic gave her a big smile to dismiss her worry. "We should have a sleepover in Professor Pickle's study the second this is all over!" Her eyes lit up like they used to. "We can't have you speed-napping in a place like this."
"Yeah, sure…" Sonic mumbled, the smile gradually falling from his face as he turned to look at a grand, intimidating door. It was ajar. "Hey… is this an exit?" Cream pressed her ear up to the door. "What are you doing, kid? It could be a—!"
"I hear music!" Cream exclaimed, looking back at them with a big smile. "Ms. Roses, we came here to find the World Instrument, right?"
"Yeah, but… who could be playing it?" Amy asked.
"We should go see. I like listening to songs," Big opened the heavy door, and everybody followed him through into a grand theater with a single celesta atop the stage. They looked up at the dusty glass dome, the sky was clear in this one spot of Glace County. The sun rose over the distant mountains and trees. Sonic's heart sunk.
"That has to be it!" Amy exclaimed, running towards the Silent Celesta. Sonic reached for her. She looked at it from all sides, wiping dust from its keys. She pressed one of them, and it made no sound.
Cream looked all around, keeping an ear out for any sound. Cheese whined. "I guess it really IS a Silent Celesta… but then… where was the music coming from before?" The rabbit pondered. A hundred dark shadows blotted out the sun.
"Hey, nobody said there would be an eclipse today!" Amy exclaimed, looking all around.
Suddenly, an anchor shot through the glass and down onto the Silent Celesta, piercing it perfectly through the rear and reeling it up to a huge whale shark-like airship. "Hey! Everyone, grab on!" Sonic shouted. He lunged for the rope and caught onto it.
"Big! I'm going to cut this rope, I want you to catch the…" Sonic felt a burning sensation. "Oh no! The sun!" Sonic tried to curl into a Spinball, but before he could, his body dematerialized into a swarm of bats from the sunlight. The Silent Celesta was pulled away through the swarm, and Sonic reappeared on the floor. "Alright… what's the game plan?"
"We'll have to go without Sonic…" Amy mumbled sadly.
"Just get the instrument! I'll catch up… I think," Sonic grunted. Everyone looked at him, he was burnt all over by the sunrays.
"Okay… I love you," Amy sighed. She hugged Sonic, before linking up with Cream and Big to fly after the armada.
"I'll catch up… don't… worry…" Sonic collapsed onto the ground, waiting for the pain to subside.
PENSAMENTOS DOS CRIADORES 
NatQuin
NatQuin Hey there! Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I've been working hard for many years to create a video game adaptation of my other novel, "Super Mario Continuance (REITERATED)." And now, I finally have it released! It's all written, drawn, and programmed by me. It is about an hour long depending on how you play and I would appreciate if you could check it out. If we can get the game to 100 downloads I'll reveal more about the future of Sonic Runaways, and probably be able to dedicate a lot more time to it.
Link to the game here! It is currently on its first chapter: https://gamejolt.com/games/supermariocontinuance/530717
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