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Chapter Text

“ CHAOS CONTROL! ”

That wasn’t part of the script.

Pretzel’s eyes snapped open as the world, as reality twisted around her. The beach beneath her fell away, and Pretzel scrambled to her feet, claws scrabbling for purchase and wings flaring for balance. Heat. Heat like a fire, slamming against her. Where was it coming from? A moment before they’d been on the beach, the sun blistering overhead and the ocean cool at their back, but now they stood on jagged stone, far from the sun’s reach, illuminated only by the crackle and hiss of lava below their foothold.

It nearly fooled her. Perhaps it had worked; perhaps this was where they were meant to return to their centuries long rest. She’d expected worse, frankly. But no— Sonic was here. Twice . That couldn’t be right.

Instinctively Pretzel’s body wheeled to face Light Gaia even while her mind reached for Sonic. This had to be Light Gaia’s doing. It was supposed to be the honorable one, they’d had a deal —

Something was there. Some great and terrible presence crawled through Pretzel’s mind, cold and dark and cruel as the ocean’s abyss. Pretzel’s eyes snapped up, and her body shuddered to a halt.

It loomed over them, cold and cruel. Long, thin arms ( like Pretzel ), reptilian green eyes ( like Pretzel ), sleek scales reflecting the lava’s glow ( like Pretzel ), glowing blue claws ( like Pretzel ), reeking of dark energy and malice ( like Pretzel ). Light Gaia was recognizable: an eagle, a creature of sun and light. One look and you understood Light Gaia, and where you stood with it, perfectly. But this… this thing… It could be called snake-like, in that it was long and slender and scaly, but snakes didn’t have that many eyes, or teeth, or arms, or tentacles. Snakes weren’t monsters. And this thing was. There was nothing else for it; it was a manifestation of hate and darkness, and maybe it wasn’t so unlike Light Gaia after all, because when she looked at it Pretzel understood it immediately. It wanted to destroy the light. And it would drag the entire world down with it to do so.

Pretzel shuddered, folding her wings around herself. As if they could do anything to protect her from that thing . She wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t look away.

“You’re me,” she whispered.

The thing’s gaze snapped to her, and Pretzel felt in an instant what it meant to be ripped apart, dissected, recognized, known.

If only it would attack her, see her as a threat, the same as the blue hedgehog kneeling on the stone. But when it looked at her, it was only with mild interest. Why would it think of her as a threat? They were the same.

They were Dark Gaia.

To Pretzel it seemed an eternity, but it could only have been a few seconds. Then the world twisted again, the stone and magma falling away beneath her claws, and she was stumbling onto the sandy beach once more. The ocean lapped behind her, cool and soothing. She hardly noticed it.

Was that what she had been? Was that what she would be again, when time scoured away her memories of smiles, burnt pastries, dusty bottles and gentle waves? Was that what she was meant to be? She didn’t— she didn’t want to be that. If locking herself away again— if entering the cycle again— meant becoming that… she didn’t want it. She couldn’t do this.

Stomach churning, Pretzel took a shaky step away from Light Gaia. It didn’t notice, its eyes wide and startled and staring at nothing. So that hadn’t been its doing. Pretzel wanted to close her eyes again, shut out the sight of the blue sky and the gentle ocean, but if she did she feared she’d see that—that thing imprinted on her eyelids. She’d thought she could do it. She’d thought she could be brave, heroic even, give up to her fate to… not save the world, maybe, but at least postpone the end. But after seeing that monster , her momentary illusion of courage was dashed to pieces. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it. She was a coward, and selfish; she always had been. Why had she thought she could be anything else?

It shouldn’t be a problem. Light Gaia would see it through, even if she couldn’t. The noble one, she thought bitterly. Of course it would keep its word. Of course, were their positions reversed ( a monster of teeth and cruelty, a tiny glimmer of light and courage, a determined blue mortal who stood between them) , Light Gaia wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice itself. 

Fine then. Let it make the play.

Except it wasn’t doing anything.

Pretzel broke from her thoughts like a drowning man breaking the water’s surface. Sonic (of course it would be Sonic) and Blaze were climbing to their feet, while Shadow knelt on the sand nearby. They all looked exhausted, like they’d just swam across an ocean ( or opened a window to another reality ). But even so the determination was clear on their faces as Sonic and Blaze stood, facing down the Gaias hand in hand. Blaze was holding something in her free hand (a Chaos Emerald? No; this burned in a way the Chaos Emeralds didn’t), but Sonic’s was empty. What was he planning?

And then Light Gaia screamed.

Pretzel jumped back, wide-eyed. Light Gaia writhed in the sand, wings flapping and claws lashing in a blind, helpless frenzy. A swipe from one of those claws would be agony, yet for once Pretzel wasn’t afraid of it. It wasn’t attacking; it was in pain. She could feel it, the light energy draining from her opposite, pulled to…

Sonic. Of course. She could see the pain written on his face, the grit of his teeth as he resisted screaming. She could see the light flooding him, burning him, painting his fur, reshaping his body, scourging his mind. Just as it had happened each morning since she’d met him. But not this time.

Pretzel reached out. She’d done it before, once in a hotel room to bring rest, once in an abandoned laboratory to bring darkness ( and pain ), and once as an acceptance of offered help. But this would not be so simple as the first time, she refused to let it be as painful as the second, and unlike the third this wasn’t Sonic’s idea. Probably he’d tell her to save her energy, insist he had it handled. Certainly Pretzel wouldn’t listen.

Her shadow overlapped Sonic’s, darkening it, reinforcing it. She closed her eyes, forcing the image of the monster from her mind, all the uncertainty and fear that would only taint the process. Instead she thought of cool springs, gentle rains, the softness of dusk and the quiet of night, of beautiful snows and peaceful rest. Carefully; let nothing stir the waters. Let it flow, gently, not the fierce torrent of Light Gaia’s energy. She could feel it, the white energy burning inside Sonic, but she didn’t let it rush her. Predictably, Sonic (a known idiot) tried to bat her away, but she pushed back. She let the energy drain from her. It was exhausting, of course it was, but a strange relief came with it as well. She felt lighter; smaller, more vulnerable, but lighter.

The moment she was finished, her careful calm vanished. She spun—nearly tripping over her own, now much smaller form—, ready for Light Gaia’s raging screams and lashing claws, furious retaliation for what had just been stolen from it. Had Sonic’s little scheme worked? Because if it hadn’t , if Light Gaia was still—

She stopped short.

Where Light Gaia had once been was… a dog? A tiny thing with dark red and light cream fur, insect-like yellow wings, and wide, bewildered golden eyes. It was looking around, blinking innocently, like a child that had just woken from its nap. It looked much like the little creature she’d seen in that monster world, except this one had a longer tail, brighter fur, an additional pair of ears, and yellow and gold where the other had had green.

Naively Pretzel hoped she was wrong, she had to be wrong, but she reached out and— there it was. The light, pure white and burning, compacted into this… creature. This wide-eyed, innocent creature. It turned and blinked at her curiously. Pretzel backed away. She tried to hiss, but it came out more as a choked sound. The nausea was back in full force. She tugged her gaze away and tried to focus on something, anything else. Sonic. Was Sonic alright?

He was still standing there, right where he’d been before he’d made his stupidest decision yet, which was saying a lot. Unfortunately her energy had not, as she’d hoped, canceled out Light Gaia’s. Instead they’d both settled into an even mix within Sonic. Settled ; not volatile, not fighting. Light and Dark were supposed to be opposites , north and south poles, so how come Sonic could hold both their energies so comfortably?

Well, “comfortably”. He did have wings now. And significantly more fur.

Blaze and Shadow were also there, and alive, and unlike certain blue somebodies, they were both wholly un-mutated. They were all three of them staring at the— thing , which was making it a lot harder for Pretzel to ignore it. Sonic even sighed with relief. Reluctantly Pretzel looked at the creature, too. It still looked entirely too confused and nonthreatening. 

“Of course he’d be cute,” she muttered. Innocent as could be. Like the useless mascot characters in the cartoons Pretzel had seen on the hotel TV. It’d be a real hit with the kids.

Sonic glanced over at her, but thankfully Rouge burst into the clearing before he could say anything. What was there to say, anyway?

Rouge was probably talking abour something important, but Pretzel was struggling to focus on the words. The dog thing was sitting on the sand, looking small and confused. It— he didn’t remember anything, did he? A moment’s twist of fate and just like that, everything gone. And everyone was acting like it was nothing. Like this was fine, and normal, and she should feel fine and normal about it.

“What are we going to do with you two?” Sonic was saying. 

You two. Like they were a pair. A duo. The last in the box of free puppies, two kittens dumped in a river, bound and drowning together.

Stop. Stop that. Pretzel dug her claws into the sand, gritting her teeth. Stop thinking like that. If she didn’t get a handle on herself soon Sonic would pick up on it and then everyone would ask questions and look concerned when all Pretzel wanted to do was disappear into the ocean, escape those innocent questioning gazes and the whirlwind thoughts that kept stabbing into her skull.

An unnatural drone filled the air. It took her a moment to realize it was coming from above them, not inside her mind. Futilely she flattened her ears, but the sound only grew louder, drowning out Sonic’s enthusiastic yell and the pounding of the surf. The sound petered out as the plane rolled to a stop, and Amy and Tails jumped out. Alive. Thank the stars, they were alive. Not dead at the hands of Light Gaia’s mob. For once Pretzel had been right.

“Did you defeat Light Gaia?” Tails asked, proving he was the only one there with a brain in his skull.

Did we defeat Light Gaia? The dog thing was still there. Small. Harmless. 

“Yeah, he’s right over there.” How was Sonic so casual?

Did we defeat Light Gaia? He’s right there. We aren’t safe. Are we safe?

Tails was eyeing the thing warily. At least Pretzel wasn’t the only one.

“Better get a move on,” Rouge was saying, and suddenly there was a rush of movement as everyone scrambled onto the plane. 

Pretzel had definitely missed something. Where were they going? Was she supposed to go with them? Stay here? Slink into the ocean and disappear now that her purpose was fulfilled ( did we defeat Light Gaia? ). She hesitated, shifting on the sand, but then Sonic picked up the dog creature ( picked it up, he picked it up, doesn’t he know it’s—) , and impulse took over. She jumped onto Sonic’s shoulder, baring her teeth at the creature. It didn’t matter if he was small now, or if he’d forgotten what he’d done. She’d had the same thing happen to her, and she’d still been Dark Gaia. She’d still been a monster. She’d still been dangerous.  

(And Sonic had still tried to be her friend. Still trusted her. They all had.)

(If they were going to keep making the same mistake, then she’d just have to make sure they didn’t pay the price.)

There were more words said that Pretzel didn’t listen to, and then the world twisted and they were on a different beach. This one didn’t smell quite as much like ash and smoke. The dog creature jumped off Sonic’s shoulder to play in the sand, and the others followed suit, spreading out and stretching their legs. Sonic stayed where he was on the plane’s wing, kicking his feet idly as he watched the ocean. Pretzel could feel his exhaustion. It lay like a blanket, heavy and dull, yet reassuring in its own way. The exhaustion of someone who fought and lived. 

She stayed on his shoulder. He was surprised at that, she could tell, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave. The tired but certain thrum of his heartbeat soothed, if not entirely removed, the prickles of fear and resentment and uncertainty. There was something about Sonic that seemed to be constantly moving and changing, and yet at the same time wholly still and unchangeable. Like the wind. Ever moving, ever the same.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t be hurt. A lot of people seemed to make that assumption, even Sonic himself, but it was a lie. There were scars. There would be more scars, after all this. Some of them caused by her.

“I’m sorry for messing with your mind,” Pretzel said quietly, watching the others play in the sand.

Sonic sighed. “I get why you did it.”

“Shouldn’t have.”

“Maybe not,” Sonic agreed. “But I… I dunno. I probably would have done the same thing.”

Pretzel sincerely doubted that.

He glanced over at her. “That… what I saw. Did you…?”

“I don’t know what you saw, exactly,” Pretzel admitted. “I knew I had to make you feel… negative. The opposite of what Light Gaia makes people feel. Sad. Afraid. Guilty. Alone. So I put my shadow over you, focused on those feelings, and…” she shrugged. “I guess your mind filled in the gaps.”

Sonic nodded slowly. “I figured. And Shadow?”

“He was the one who pointed out I should be able to break you free, but I don’t think he entirely knew what that would… mean.” Pretzel shuffled her wings uncomfortably. “Even I didn’t, really. It could have gone really wrong. I thought it would just free you from Light Gaia, not do— that.”

“I do like to surprise,” Sonic said with a crooked smile. “Just. Uh. Please don’t do that again.”

“I won’t,” Pretzel said. She’d never forget the pain on Sonic’s face, how alien he’d looked when the darkness took over. Even if that hadn’t been all her, to make him feel pain that great… No. Never again.

“Then we’re good,” he said, with a real smile. Like it was that easy. How did he make it seem so easy?

They settled back into silence, broken only by Sonic’s occasional laugh at the antics of his friends. Pretzel stayed curled around his shoulders, trying to feel as at peace as he was. But still the prickles of unease, the throbbing fear, the ricocheting thoughts, and worse, the nauseating feeling of wrongness continued to swirl in Pretzel’s mind until a smell on the breeze distracted her. She lifted her head, blinking. The breeze had cooled, ruffling her fur with something like fondness.

It started to rain.

Pretzel sat up, staring in wonder as water fell from the sky. Little droplets, splattering against the ground. One or two of them would have amounted to nothing, but they continued to fall steadily, washing away the smoke and ash, transforming the world into something that felt almost familiar. Almost right.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Sonic said softly, tipping his muzzle up to let the rain run down his fur.

Pretzel followed his lead, letting the rivulets run down her fur and scales and wings, cleaning away the lingering feeling of filth and grime, like it could wash away all the stains of the past few days (had it been only days, since she woke up? It felt like a lifetime.) Some part of her had recognized it, had known what rain was, but she’d never seen it herself in the short time she’d been conscious. Seeing it now, clouds covering the sun that had burned so unnaturally the past few days, feeling the coolness wash away Light Gaia’s fierce heat, was like a piece falling into place. It seemed to wash away not just the actual dirt and grime, but the tangled bristly thoughts and anxious feelings as well. For the first time since she’d woken up, she actually felt almost… safe. 

She looked at the dog creature, crouched under the plane wing and watching the rain warily. Did he feel as she had? Like he’d woken up alone in a hostile world, not belonging and not welcomed? Did he feel a lingering guilt for things he didn’t fully remember? Was he afraid ?

It seemed impossible, to think of Light Gaia being scared. Yet the thought lingered.

Maybe that was why, when Blaze brought up the subject of the dog creature, Pretzel found herself volunteering to look after him. Maybe that was why she tolerated his onslaught of enthusiastic gratitude with rolled eyes instead of bared teeth. Maybe that was why she accepted Amy’s invitation for both of them to stay in her apartment.

Maybe. Or maybe it was just because she knew she was the best and safest option to make sure he didn’t try anything again. Yes. That was why. Sonic, Blaze, Shadow, Rouge, and maybe, tentatively, Tails and Amy—they were Pretzel’s friends now. Her only friends. They knew who she was, and they’d accepted her anyway. They were kind to her. They protected her.

She’d do the same for them.

Even if it meant sharing an apartment with Light Gaia.

Pretzel flattened her ears as the dog creature—apparently having deemed her a new friend, despite every evidence to the contrary—continued chattering way too loudly considering how uncomfortably close he was. Pretzel drew her wings tighter around herself, digging her claws into the sand to keep from slashing at him. Oh this? This was going to suck.

Chapter Text

Pretzel didn’t dream. She didn’t sleep either, not the way other people did. From what she’d observed of Amy, normal people seemed to actually lose consciousness when they slept. Just— blacking out. Every night. As if that was a perfectly ordinary thing. It was bizarre.

For Pretzel, sleep was more of a… meditative state, Amy would call it. Pretzel called it “deliberately ignoring everything because the world is very loud and bright and annoying and I do not want to deal with it”. Same thing, really. She didn’t need to do it often; one perk of being fueled by negative energy was that she could refill her stores just by being around people, and Empire City certainly had those in abundance. She “slept” frequently anyway, because again, the world was loud and noisy, and Whip was even louder and noisier, and her best chance of getting away from those things was pretending they did not exist.

But even Pretzel got bored of lying around ignoring her brother sometimes, and when that happened she had found a good alternative: dreaming. Not her own dreams; she didn’t have those. Other people’s dreams.

She’d started doing it a few nights after she and Whip arrived at Amy’s apartment. Since the others preferred to waste the hours after sundown sleeping for some reason (why would you choose to sleep at night , when it was actually nice to be awake?), Pretzel had been left with plenty of time to herself. Naturally she spent it experimenting with dark magic.

Her memories had been slowly trickling back since she first opened her eyes in Apotos. At first it had just been impressions, a feeling of “this is dangerous” or “this is familiar”, but after seeing… seeing her true form, in that alternate reality, the memories had started returning more clearly. She wished they wouldn’t. There still weren’t many, yet; a glimpse of a ruined city, a vision of swimming alongside some now extinct sea monster, an impression of lava on her scales. But each little snippet of memory only brought her closer and closer to that thing. That monster.

The actual, solid memories came back slowly, but her instincts seemed to return much faster. When she’d first woken up she’d seen strange auras around people, which at the time she’d foolishly assumed was a normal thing everyone saw. Amy had eventually explained to her that—shockingly—most people don’t automatically detect how much Light and Dark everyone else has in them. 

Other things that most people couldn’t do but Pretzel could included such delights as manipulating shadows, sapping energy, and causing depression. That had been a fun one to discover. Amy liked to say that no power was inherently evil and that anything had the potential to be used for good, but Pretzel had a hard time seeing what positive benefit there could be to making someone lose all interest in life. Maybe if they ever got attacked by a serial killer she could just make them really, really sad. Helpful.

Still, regardless of what she personally thought of her evil witch powers, Pretzel had made up her mind to protect the five-maybe-six people she could at all say were her friends from the highly dangerous creature they insisted was also a friend, and if Pretzel wanted to do that she’d have to figure out how to actually use her spooky witch powers. So. She practiced.

She hadn’t meant to snoop on Amy’s dreams. It just sort of happened. And she’d apologized, even though she told Sonic Amy would probably prefer not to know that Pretzel could snoop on her dreams at any time (and she’d been right, judging by the queasy look on Amy’s face). But she’d apologized anyway, like a good little creature of darkness, and then she’d set to work learning what exactly she’d done and how to do it again.

One of her few almost-pleasant memories of before the Incident was a vague recollection of the time she’d spent in the core (with Light Gaia, though thankfully it wasn’t in the memory). She’d always assumed she’d spent that whole time sleeping— actual sleeping, not meditative ignoring sleeping—, but as it turned out she’d occasionally woken from her coma to mess with people’s minds. Or just spy on people’s minds? It was hard to tell from the snippet, but she seemed to be in the habit of visiting people’s nightmares. Or giving people nightmares? Even darkness incarnate had hobbies, apparently.

Present day Pretzel hadn’t expected to have the same global reach as Dark Gaia had, but apparently space didn’t matter much in the dreamworld ( Maginaryworld , Sonic had told her, whatever that meant). So while Amy and Whip slept and went outside and made friends like boring normal people, Pretzel used her dark magic powers to watch the dreams of people around the world like channels on an exceptionally surreal TV. Except to change channels on this TV, you had to walk to the channel you wanted, which was unlike any actual TV Pretzel had yet encountered. 

For whatever reason Pretzel’s dreamwalking always started in a cave. A small cave, dark and strangely cozy. Its walls were decorated by glowing crystals, each connected to a different sleeping mind. It didn’t matter where the dreamer was relative to her body in the physical world; Egypt or Antartica, every mind was equidistant from her dreamspace, as if the cave was at the exact center of the earth. The core.

Each night Pretzel walked the perimeter of the cave, testing the crystals and politely keeping from peaking at their innermost thoughts and desires (Sonic had said something about privacy, though Pretzel didn’t see how it mattered; it wasn’t like she cared who was in love with their neighbor or cheated on their math exam or was currently planning a murder), until she found a particularly nasty nightmare. Or until she got bored or Amy told her to go do something else. Just like regular TV, really.

This morning’s offerings included a nightmare about someone’s house getting flooded and also they didn’t have any clothes, a nightmare about someone’s town burning down and also they didn’t have any clothes, and a nightmare about someone’s house getting buried in a landslide and also they did have clothes, which was terrible for some reason. A lot of natural disasters. That was odd. These people didn’t even live remotely near each other.

Pretzel frowned, leaving behind the clothes-bad guy (now he was having a pleasant dream of spending time with his friends overseas, blech) to seek out another source of negative energy. She brushed past several more pleasant dreams, careful not to touch them, before finally zeroing in on a nasty tangle of fear and misery. There. She didn’t really need to be cautious—no one in a nightmare that bad was likely to notice as small a presence as herself—but she slowed down nonetheless. She circled the mind a bit, satisfying herself that the dreamer wasn’t about to wake up any time soon, then took a breath and dove into the dream.

A storm. Rain lashed immaterially against her fur, and thunder crashed overhead. A massive tidal wave—or was it a monster? It kept changing, the way dreams often did—roared above her, threatening to drown the entire village. The dreamer, a tiny monkey, was curled up on his bed (probably couldn’t move, the way these dreams usually went), sobbing as the wave crashed towards him.

Pretzel sighed and flicked her tail, concentrating on the spiky terror radiating off the monkey. Carefully she pulled on his negative emotions. Even though they made her stronger, she’d discovered she couldn’t actually just remove negative emotions, at least not without a much rougher (and potentially damaging) touch. And she certainly couldn’t give positive emotions; that was Whip’s area of expertise, not hers. So instead she focused on rearranging what was already there, smoothing terror into worry and grief into a gentler melancholy. She couldn’t make someone happy , but she could make them calmer.

As the monkey’s sobs eased into sniffles, the tidal wave dissipated into a pleasant, gentle mist. For good measure Pretzel tugged a bit on the dream world, making the sun rise and casting a rainbow through the droplets. People liked rainbows, right? The monkey blinked, still sniffling, then uncurled and smiled. Easily pleased, this one. He ran out to play in the droplets, giggling and calling for his family (who appeared out of nowhere, as was the way with dreams).

“It’s not real, idiot,” Pretzel muttered, watching them frolic. 

Honestly. How was it that no one (or mostly no one, that one fox had been weird and frankly terrifying and Pretzel had made a point to avoid her dreams since) ever seemed to realize they were in a dream? It wasn’t like they ever made any sense. Well, whatever. The monkey was happy. Her work here was done.

Pretzel shook her head and dipped out of the dream, heading for the next nightmare. That had to be… what, five nightmares about natural disasters tonight? Normally there was a little more variety, especially with dreamers as far apart and unrelated as these. She frowned. It was forming a pattern, and that could only mean bad things. Maybe she should have paid more attention to the news on TV last night instead of fighting with Whip over the remote.

Speaking of which… Whip would probably be coming to pester her soon. If she wanted to visit one more dream, she needed to get moving.

Pretzel sought out the nearest tangle of dark energy. This one was less raw terror and more lingering unease. One of the more subtle nightmares, then. Probably not a natural disaster. She hesitated just a moment on the bounds of the mind, feeling an unexplained sense of trepidation. The dreamer influencing her, maybe. She dove in anyway.

It was blinding. Pretzel blinked, squinting against the illusory sunlight. They were in a coastal city of white buildings—Apotos, Pretzel recognized with surprise. It looked just like it had when she’d last seen it, on the run with Sonic and Shadow. Bright and eerily empty.

She found the dreamer easily, a small red wolf standing in the middle of the street, staring around at the empty city. Oh. Pretzel’s stomach dropped. She recognized this person. She’d seen him in Apotos when she first woke up. Normally she wouldn’t be so careless as to visit the mind of someone familiar, but she’d been preoccupied and hadn’t thought to check. Well, she was here now. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice her. (Hopefully his nightmare wasn’t about her.)

“Baba?” The wolf called, his voice echoing in the empty streets. “Where are you?” 

He perked his ears, listening for a response, and Pretzel found herself straining to listen as well. She mentally scolded herself. Hadn’t she been the one griping about how easily people were taken in by their dreams just a few moments ago?

Something moved nearby. A teal wolf stepped into view, walking towards his son with a wide smile. The red wolf lit up with relief. He ran forward, throwing his arms around his father in a hug. The teal wolf wrapped his arms around his son, but the gesture was clearly awkward and artificial, and his smile was more fangs than warmth. She could feel the dreamer’s unease growing. The dream would shift into a nightmare in a moment unless Pretzel found a way to soothe it. The father would turn into a monster, or die on the spot, or suddenly reject his son for no good reason. She’d seen such nightmares before.

So why did her own unease only grow?

Carefully Pretzel reached for the dreamer’s tangled negative emotions to see if she could soothe them, but she flinched back at the unexpected severity of his fear and— hate? What was that directed towards? His father? No, that wasn’t it. What was—

The father’s eyes didn’t have pupils.

Panic seized Pretzel’s chest. No no no no, she’d made a mistake, she shouldn’t be here, this was— this was—

The father burned. The wolf scrambled back, screaming, and from the ashes rose— it. Light Gaia, turned monstrous by the dreamer’s terror, a flaming beast, smiling in a cruel echo of the father’s expression a moment before. The flames rose and rose, the red wolf wailing in terror, and Pretzel couldn’t move, because Light Gaia was there, looming over her, burning and burning and—

Looking right at her.

Her, not the dreamer.

The creature lunged, and Pretzel jerked back, out of the dream and into the waking world. Her heart thundered painfully in her chest, and she gasped for breath. Her wings trembled.

Of course people would have nightmares about Light Gaia. The Gaia Incident, as they called it, was fresh in everyone’s minds. Pretzel had stumbled into one such nightmare before, and made a point to avoid them afterwards. Walking into that one without first checking had been a stupid mistake. But that— it had looked at her. Her. No one had ever noticed her presence in a dream before except Whip, and that couldn’t have been Whip. 

Pretzel?

For a horrible moment Pretzel thought it was Whip trying to talk to her. He was the last one she wanted to see right now. Not when that burning still echoed in her mind. But her panic eased when she recognized the presence for what it was. Sonic. She could handle Sonic.

Ever since Sonic (a known idiot) volunteered himself to hold onto a sizable chunk of Pretzel and Whip’s respective energies while they learned to not be monsters, he’d had some sort of magic psychic hotline to both of them, similar to what Pretzel and Whip (unfortunately) had with each other. Whip wasn’t aware of this. Pretzel very much was. It was handy for the many, many times Sonic didn’t have a communicator and Amy needed to get in contact with him, but less handy when Pretzel wanted to pretend to be asleep so she didn’t have to talk to anyone.

You alright? Sonic asked. 

I was doing a lot better before you woke me up, Pretzel grumbled. She could feel Sonic’s amusement, mixed with justified skepticism. He knew as well as she did that she didn’t actually sleep.

At least the psychic hotline thing didn’t give them full unrestricted access to each other’s thoughts and feelings; usually it was just what they wanted to project. But the nightmare had caught her off guard, and now she had to deal with concerned Sonic, who was at least less persistent than concerned Amy. Not that that was saying much.

She knew Sonic would keep needling her about this, so she added, It was just a dream. Caught me off guard.

What was it about?

Pretzel winced as she remembered the nightmare. That was a can of worms she did not want to open right now. It wasn’t my dream, she deflected. 

Should she mention the wolf kid? No. Her excuse for entering people’s nightmares was that she did it to ease the nightmare aspect, and she didn’t snoop around in their mind outside of that limited dream space. It was a small act of penance for centuries of Dark Gaia causing those very same nightmares. Sharing the details of someone else’s dream seemed like it would be a breach of that privacy thing Sonic told her about.

Are you at the space station yet? She asked.

Ugh, no, Sonic grumbled, mild concern shifting into annoyance. This elevator has to be the slowest thing in the world.

Doubt Tails agrees. 

In response Pretzel received a brief image of Tails clutching a sic-sac and looking miserable. She grinned.

He keeps giving me concerned looks whenever I talk to you. Sonic sounded both frustrated and amused. I’m pretty sure he thinks I have brain damage.

You probably do, Pretzel pointed out. He’d certainly hit his head plenty of times since she’d met him, and she’d known him for all of two months. Maybe he’s onto something. Most people don’t have voices in their head, from what I’ve heard.

And most people try to avoid having nightmares, Sonic rebutted, his tone that particular mix of concern and exasperation everyone liked to use on Pretzel lately. Drat. She’d hoped they’d gotten off that subject.  Have you ever considered, I dunno, not actively seeking out the worst dreams possible?

I get bored and Amy said I need to stay close to the apartment at night. She didn’t get why that was a rule. Did Amy really think Pretzel was going to get mugged in a dark alley? She was Dark Gaia; nighttime was her domain. If anything, Amy should be worried about everyone else. Besides, it’s a good way to practice with my powers, and you keep saying I need to get used to them.

Yes, yes, I get the dreamwalking thing. Sonic paused, then amended, Well. I sort of get the dreamwalking thing. What I don’t get is why it has to be nightmares specifically.

Good dreams are boring. Pretzel made sure to project her eye roll, so he could feel the full force of her disdain. And if I did walk in a good dream, it would probably turn into a nightmare anyway. She was pretty sure that was how it worked. Which made her wonder what would happen if Whip started walking in people’s dreams. Would he turn nightmares into cotton candy fluff just by being there? Ugh, probably.

Sonic was quiet for a moment, which probably meant she’d said something she shouldn’t have. Or that something was happening in the real world that he needed to pay attention to. Or he’d just gotten distracted. It was hard to say sometimes. But she felt concern radiating from his end of the link, which probably meant it was the first thing. Thankfully, she was saved from further conversation when something grabbed Sonic’s attention.

We’re at the space station, Sonic told her in that distracted way which meant he was also talking to someone out loud. She could feel his mood shifting into something focused and wary, the way it did when a fight was brewing. Eggman’ll probably try an ambush. We’ll talk later, okay?

If you insist, Pretzel grumbled, determinedly keeping the warm glow of happiness at the “talk later” from carrying over the link. They’d already had enough sappiness between them when he and Tails left on their little space adventure.

Still, something made her maintain the connection a moment longer, feeling the spikes of adrenaline, catching glimpses of a silver elevator and a yellow-furred fox. She felt— something. Some premonition of dread. Maybe it was just the lingering fear of the nightmare, but…

Be careful, she reminded him. Don’t go running into any walls.

Sonic laughed, radiating amusement and reassurance. Don’t worry. I’ve got Tails around to keep me from doing anything stupid. His attention snapped to a new threat, and he pulled away from the connection. Pretzel let it drop, leaving her alone in the silence of her own mind. If only she could let her unease go that easily.

Chapter Text

Pretzel wasn’t given long to dwell on her unease. A feeling of overwhelming light and warmth slammed into her mind with all the subtlety of a brick, and a moment later it was followed by a much more physical ball of red fur that nearly bowled Pretzel into the wall.

“AHA!” Whip squeaked much too loudly for how close he was to her ears. “I got you!”

Amy had said that if Whip was annoying Pretzel, she needed to tell him what he was doing wrong before lashing out. So because Pretzel was trying to be a good person now, she very politely stated, “If you do not get off I am going to throw you.”

Then she threw him. Enhanced strength really came in handy sometimes. 

Unfortunately it had little effect on Whip, and he bounced right off the wall and back over to her, unfazed. “Were you surprised? Did I surprise you? I totally surprised you, didn’t I?”

“Whip,” Pretzel said, very patiently, because Amy would want her to be and also if she made Whip cry again (she hadn’t meant to, she’d just wanted some space , was that too much to ask?) Amy would take away her dark chocolate. “We are psychically connected. I am constantly aware of your presence. It is impossible for us to sneak up on each other.”

“But did I surprise you?” Whip demanded insistently.

“…Yes. Yes, I was shocked. You gave me a heart attack. Don’t do it again or I’ll die.”

“That is a lie, ” Whip pronounced solemnly. “Amy says we can never die.”

Well there went her latest attempt. When had Amy told him that little tidbit?

Since Whip apparently wasn’t going to be leaving anytime soon, Pretzel stood, jumped to the floor, and pointedly walked out of the room. Whip, of course, followed.

“Besides, if we can’t sneak up on each other, how do you do it to me ?” Whip demanded as they entered the living room. The living room was bright and clean and colorful, just the way Amy liked it, and it always made Pretzel feel out of place, like a black stain on a white carpet.

“Because you have the attention span of a chimpanzee,” Pretzel informed him.

That, and she knew how to mask her aura to a degree (something Whip did not know how to do, and probably never would), but really it was mostly the “never paying attention to his surroundings” thing. She’d “snuck up” on him multiple times purely by accident. So had several other people. Even Charmy had managed to catch Whip by surprise. Her brother wouldn’t last five minutes in the wild.

“Chimpanzees are smart, right?” Whip asked.

“They’re cannibals,” Pretzel said, because they were. Ugh, she hated monkeys. Apes. Whatever. Wasn’t her domain anyway.

“That’s gross. Let’s talk about something else.”

“How about the reason you attacked me?” Pretzel suggested, hopping onto the arm of the couch to peer judgmentally down at her brother. It wouldn’t be the first time he was sent to tell her something and forgot to actually say what he was there for.

Sure enough, Whip jolted, eyes wide. “Oh! Right! Amy wanted me to ask you something!”

“And that was…?” Pretzel prompted.

Whip scrunched up his face, but was saved from having to remember when Amy herself walked into the room. Though “walked” wasn’t quite the right word. Amy didn’t walk like normal people did. She always moved with a skip in her step, often adding a little twirl for flare, like she was full of energy and love for life or something. Bizarre.

“Whip, did you— oh, good morning, Pretzel!” Amy also had a way of always acting like she was incredibly happy to see someone, even if that someone was the moody antisocial nightmare beast currently squatting in her apartment. “How did you sleep?”

“I did not,” Pretzel informed her flatly.

“Mmm,” Amy said in that “I’m concerned but I know you don’t want to talk about it so I’ll put it aside for now but just know I am going to bring this up again later” way she did sometimes. It was amazing how much could be communicated in such a simple sound. But Amy’s bright smile quickly returned, impervious to Pretzel’s mood-ruining abilities (how was Amy so cheerful all the time? Pretzel was exhausted just looking at her. Or maybe that was the effect positive emotions had on her? She still wasn’t clear on how that worked.) “Well, Whip and I were going to stock up in case that storm hits tonight. Do you want to come with us?”

Pretzel sat up. “Storm? What storm?”

“It was on the forecast this morning.”

“And the news!” Whip added. “They said a big hurricane was going to hit and that it was the end of the world !”

A storm. After all those nightmares of natural disasters… A coincidence? As if Pretzel could be that lucky.

Amy blinked at Whip. “That’s… no, the world is not ending. But it would be good to stock up just in case, especially with Mom and Dad away.” 

Ah yes. The parents. Amy had those. Human ones, at that. She’d told Pretzel she avoided mentioning them around her friends for security purposes (since said friends had an unfortunate habit of attracting dangerous madmen, and Amy’s parents were tragically underpowered compared to their Mobian daughter). Pretzel suspected it also had to do with the fact that pretty much everyone in Amy’s friend group was an orphan. Amy had been surprised when Pretzel brought this up, but Pretzel figured she’d have to be a pretty pathetic dark god or whatever to not have noticed the general vibes of “my family members died tragically before my very eyes and now I have severe trauma” the group gave off. Even Whip had picked up on it, and he was as observant about these kind of things as the average brick.

“So, do you want to come with us?” Amy asked.

“No,” Pretzel said, then added a “thanks” as an afterthought.

“Aww, come on!” Whip pleaded, jumping up beside her. “It’ll be fun!”

“And it would be good for you to get out of the apartment for once,” Amy added. “Maybe you’ll make a friend!”

Pretzel highly doubted that, but she didn’t say so, because it would make Amy sad and Pretzel was supposed to be nice now. Amy and Whip were both looking at her with hopeful expressions. Did they really want her out of the apartment that badly? Fine then. She did owe Amy for letting her stay here; the least she could do was carry groceries. And someone needed to keep an eye on Whip while Amy was busy preparing for the end of the world or whatever.

“Fine,” Pretzel sighed. “I’ll come.”

“Yes!” Whip cheered. “This’ll be so fun!”

“Great!” Amy said, sounding genuinely excited about this for some reason. “Just let me get my purse and my wallet and we can go.”

“Why do you need that?” Pretzel asked as Amy returned, bag in hand, and the three of them headed out the door.

Amy hummed as she locked the door behind them and tucked the key into her purse. “Hammerspace is nice, but it’s hard to keep organized, and it can have…” she wrinkled her nose. “…side effects.”

“Like your hammer?” Whip piped up.

Amy smiled. “Kind of. And besides, this purse is cute.”

“Like me!” Whip said, and Amy laughed and patted his head. Pretzel rolled her eyes.

The hallway and stairs were mercifully empty, but the street outside was a different matter. Pretzel kept close to Amy’s shadow, wincing at the bright sunlight and noisy crowds. At least it wasn’t hot. And the beach was close enough for her to hear the waves and smell the salt. That was one thing she loved about Amy’s apartment; the ocean was never far away.

The summer had been absolutely miserable even without Light Gaia making the days longer, but now it was at last shifting to fall. The air was cooler, and some of the trees were already turning orange and red (why were orange and red the colors of fall? That seemed unfair; those were Whip’s colors, in her season). The autumnal equinox (in the northern hemisphere, at least) was in a few days; Amy had given her a little calendar back when summer was at its height to give Pretzel hope for the return of cooler weather. Pretzel had been eagerly counting down ever since. (She was also counting down to Halloween—42 days and counting!—, because that just sounded like a great time.)

Speaking of Halloween. The tingling ominous sense of “something bad is coming” was back again in full force. She got that feeling a lot of the time, but today it was especially strong. The nightmares, and now this coming storm. Was it worth bringing up? Pretzel hesitated, but ignoring coincidences never worked out well when you were as involved in magic nonsense as she was, so talking it was. Ugh.

Whip had flown off to pester his favorite ice cream vendor, and Amy was looking at her shopping list with a slight frown. Best she tell Amy while Whip was out of earshot; this might be a Gaia thing, and they’d been trying to keep Whip from finding out more about that “until he was ready”. Whenever that was. In Pretzel’s personal experience, you were never ready to find out you were actually a monster who’d nearly destroyed the world. But maybe Whip was built different. At least he got some cool temples with the deal.

“Amy,” Pretzel said, and when that failed to get her attention, jumped up onto her shoulder, even though that ran the risk of getting her noticed by—horror of horrors— other people . “Amy!”

Amy blinked and glanced down at her. “What is it, Pretzel?”

“Last night I dreamed about storms,” she said. It was an oversimplification, but Amy would get it, and if anyone overheard it wouldn’t immediately get Pretzel burned as a witch. Did people still do that? She wouldn’t put it past them. “A lot of dreams about storms. Bad ones.”

Most people in this modern day and age would have dismissed Pretzel as paranoid, but Amy Rose had the misfortune of being a close friend of Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as a babysitter for the two incarnations of light and darkness, so instead her expression was one of genuine consideration.

“I did hear something about that on the news,” she said slowly. “That there’s been a lot of strange weather around the world lately. Some people think it’s just a side effect of the Gaia Incident, the world rebalancing itself, but…” she bit her lip. “Some are afraid this is just the beginning of a new disaster.”

Pretzel nodded, tail twitching uneasily. It was a natural conclusion. There’d been no warning before Light Gaia emerged, and as many people had pointed out since the Incident, the existence of a Light Gaia suggested there was also a Dark Gaia. GUN could reassure the populace that the problem had been taken care of all they wanted, but it wasn’t like GUN had anticipated the first Incident, had they?

“This doesn’t have anything to do with you two, right?” Amy asked.

“I… I’m not sure,” Pretzel admitted.

Logically there was no way this could be the doing of either Gaia. Pretzel was pretty sure she’d know if she was causing natural disasters around the world, and if it was Whip’s doing he would have blabbed by now. But… no one really knew how the Gaias worked. What if, by not getting sealed away like they always had in the past, Pretzel and Whip had kickstarted some sort of apocalypse? Maybe not having all that Gaia energy connected to the actual Gaias threw off the balance of the world somehow. Maybe they were supposed to be in the core, and their very presence up here was wreaking havoc.

Pretzel flattened her ears. Sonic had only stopped the Gaias from getting sealed away because he knew Pretzel was afraid of getting locked in that cycle again. Had her selfishness doomed the world?

Her thoughts were interrupted by Whip slamming into her at full force for the second time that day, which was frankly two times too many. Pretzel yelped, wings flapping frantically as she tried to keep a grip on Amy’s shoulder. Amy winced at the claws digging into her and looped her arm around to support Pretzel while she regained her balance. Thankfully Whip let go of Pretzel and took to flitting around Amy like an energetic hummingbird, freeing Pretzel to resettle on Amy’s shoulders and try to regain her dignity.

“What were you guys talking about?” Whip demanded. “What does what have to do with us?”

“I’ll, um, tell you later,” Amy said, clearly flustered. If there was one downside to her hosting Pretzel and Whip, it was that Amy Rose was not a practiced liar. She wasn’t terrible, by any means, but she was no Rouge, especially not when caught off guard like this.

“The world is ending,” Pretzel interjected before Whip could pick up on Amy’s discomfort.

“Really?” Whip looked genuinely alarmed for a gratifying half second, before immediately smiling again. “That’s okay! We’ll stop it!”

Amy smiled too. “That’s the spirit!”

Sure. Because it had been so easy the last time. Pretzel sighed and jumped off Amy’s shoulder, returning to her preferred place in her shadow. It was easier to hide with her “shadow melty powers” (as Sonic called them) in proper shade, but she knew Amy preferred for her to stay nearby, and though she wouldn’t admit it, so did Pretzel. Amy was safe . Other people… other people were something else.

Most of Amy’s neighbors were well used to the presence of Pretzel and Whip by now; Amy’s official explanation for what they were , exactly, was always deliberately vague, leaving the curious inquirer to happily fill in the gaps themselves (were they Mobians? Mutated Chao? Who knew!). She’d explained to Pretzel that most humans would attribute just about anything unusual to “Mobians” anyway. Actual Mobians tended to be more suspicious, but so far Amy’s “they’re from one of the uncontacted Chaos islands” explanation had worked well enough. 

Still, there were always visitors and tourists around, and Pretzel preferred to avoid the stares and questions, even if Whip seemed to bask in the attention. This was one of the main reasons she hated leaving the apartment during the day. So many people. And they all prickled with their own resentments and regrets and joys, bombarding Pretzel with their every emotion, all their light and darkness on display. With each person she brushed against it was like Russian roulette, except all the barrels were loaded. Touch someone sad and she’d get a burst of adrenaline (and guilt, because what kind of person drew strength from other people’s misery?), touch someone happy and it was like she’d just run a mile in the scorching desert. The best she could hope for was someone feeling only mild emotions. But no matter what she always felt something , and it was exhausting.

So as they turned away from the ocean and further into the crowded chaos of the city, Pretzel kept close to Amy’s heels, trying to tune it all out. She focused on the contrast between Amy’s merry red boots skipping and clicking down the pavement and Pretzel’s own dark, strange talons silently trailing behind them.

“Hey!”

Pretzel glanced up sharply at Amy’s yell, wings raising instinctively. But Amy didn’t look frightened, only angry. She was clutching her purse, quills bristling as she whirled to scan the crowd, while Whip fluttered confusedly at her shoulder.

“Someone stole my wallet!” Amy exclaimed, stamping her foot in frustration.

Whip gasped, looking outraged. “That’s horrible!”

“Was there anything important in it?” Pretzel asked, looking up at Amy.

Amy was still studying the crowd, hoping to spot the thief. “Just my allowance and a gift card. It’s a good thing I didn’t bring Mom’s…”

“Don’t worry, Amy! We’ll find that thief and get your wallet back!” Whip struck a ridiculous pose in the air, chest puffed and feet spread apart, and hit his hand with his fist.

Pretzel’s ears twitched back, discomfort curling in her stomach. Logically she knew that Whip was just imitating the heroes he saw on TV, but her mind went back to a rooftop in Spagonia, watching a mob of Light Gaia-possessed people pursuing a petty thief with mindless fury. The thief had escaped, but Pretzel had heard plenty of stories (and witnessed even more nightmares) about people who’d been less fortunate. That was the real horror of the Gaia Incident, beyond the droughts and the melted ice, beyond the terror of what might as well be a deity threatening your entire world. The real horror was not what Light Gaia had done but what it had made others do. For those who hadn’t been possessed, the terror of being hunted by every other person on the planet seemed to never leave; and for those who had been possessed, the stains of guilt never quite faded.

Whip didn’t remember any of that. So far he didn’t possess the sheer cruelty he had as Light Gaia, but Pretzel watched with nauseas apprehension whenever he yelled at villains on the screen or got too passionate about a wrong done to one of his friends. His child-like sense of justice had yet to be warped into the self-righteousness Light Gaia had exhibited, and Amy didn’t seem to see anything wrong with it, but it still made fear twist painfully in Pretzel’s chest. It was hard, in those moments, to keep up the act. To keep pretending this was her brother, and not the creature that warped and possessed and destroyed to get what it wanted. 

Pretzel was sure by now that Whip wasn’t an act, wasn’t some Light Gaia scheme to catch her with her guard down. That was more her style than his. Whip was genuine. And in a way that was worse. It was one thing for a monster to pretend to be innocent; it was another thing for an innocent to become a monster. She couldn’t let that happen to Whip.

(And maybe the history books had been right. Maybe Light Gaia had been good, and all those cruel and horrible things were just Eggman’s influence. Maybe it had been right, those memories of claws on her neck and burning white fury. Maybe it had been as simple as Light Gaia the hero and Dark Gaia the villain, Light Gaia the savior and Dark Gaia the destroyer, Light Gaia the good and Dark Gaia the monster. And if that was true, then… what would Whip think of her, his “sister”, if he knew the truth? Would he reject her? Hate her? Tear her apart? Pretzel didn’t know. Pretzel didn’t want to know.)

So when Pretzel saw the thief, a weasel walking casually through the crowd across the street, his aura dark with smug accomplishment, she hesitated. Would Amy lose her temper if she saw the thief? What if Whip laid eyes on him and that cruelty woke again? (What if he saw that Pretzel had the same darkness, and hated her too?)

For a moment, Pretzel hesitated.

And then everything descended into chaos.

Chapter Text

The city had always been loud, but never this loud. Sirens wailed and people yelled, confusion and panic rising to a deafening crescendo. Whip dropped to the ground, clutching his ears and whining in pain, while Amy instinctively whipped out her hammer, looking for the threat. Pretzel flattened her ears and crouched next to Whip, spreading her wings over them both. She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate past the sharp jabs of fear-panic-pain-despair bombarding her. She tugged the shadows up in a blanket around her and Whip. The world went dim. For all her practicing, Pretzel’s energy shields still weren’t especially strong (a good blow from Amy’s hammer was enough to break one), but it should at least be enough to keep them from getting trampled. It also had the benefit of muffling the noise.

Amy! Pretzel projected, since there was no chance of her voice getting heard over the cacophony. What’s going on?

I think the sirens are a storm warning, Amy explained, agitated but not panicked (unlike certain other mortals). But there’s no way a storm could have hit this quickly without warning. Something else is going on. Could you lower your shield?

Pretzel did, reluctantly. Whip squeaked at the renewed onslaught of noise, clutching his ears as Amy scooped him and Pretzel up into her arms and started shoving her way out of the crowd. The wind had kicked up, and Pretzel had to fold her wings against her back to keep from getting pulled out of Amy’s arms. Whip buried his head in Amy’s shoulder.

Amy managed to fight her way free of the stream of people and climbed up on a bench, squinting over the heads of the crowd. She huffed in frustration. 

“What are—” Pretzel started, then yelped as without warning Amy shifted her from arm to shoulder. Pretzel clawed for balance while Amy—now with one arm free—vaulted over the bench, ducked around the crowd of bewildered people, and sprinted toward a nearby apartment. Without breaking stride she jumped on top of a dumpster set against the side of the store, grabbed the fire escape with her free arm, and pulled herself, Whip, and Pretzel up. She didn’t stop there, scaling the metal stairs with speed that would make Sonic envious, until with a final grand leap Amy deposited Pretzel and Whip on the roof of the apartment building.

Well, it was quieter.

“Wow,” Whip said, taking his hands off his ears and staring at Amy with wide eyes. “How did you do that?”

Amy smiled. “Practice.” She walked to the edge of the roof, raising a hand to shade her eyes. “Oh,” she said softly. “Oh, that looks bad. ”

Pretzel flew to join Amy, following her gaze towards the ocean. The sirens had stopped, and up here the noise of the crowd was muffled and distant. The quiet was almost eerie— especially when contrasted with the sight of the coast. A roiling mass of black clouds had appeared in the sky, while a matching black fog was rolling from the tempestuous sea onto the ill-prepared land. Thunder boomed, breaking the unnatural quiet. The wild winds and rain and the waves they had stirred up had already hit the coastal edge of the city; it was hard to see with the black fog, but Pretzel glimpsed several buildings with chunks missing, almost like something had taken a bite out of them. Her stomach twisted. Where had Amy’s apartment been again…?

“That isn’t natural,” Amy said, watching the black fog spread along the coast, reaching into the city like grasping claws. “That’s—that’s definitely not a normal storm.”

“We have to stop it!” Whip said, fur bristling with agitation.

“ What ?” Pretzel asked, alarmed. “Whip, we can’t fight a storm. ”

Amy bit her lip. “There might still be people down there…”

Pretzel stared at her. “Why would anyone be there?” She looked the other way, where crowds of people were still streaming away from the coast. “Everyone is over there, leaving, like we should be.”

Whip crossed his arms. “A hero wouldn’t run from danger.”

“And a sane person wouldn’t run towards a hurricane,” Pretzel shot back. Her heart was pounding. Something about that storm wasn’t right, and she couldn’t let Amy and Whip anywhere near it. She needed to make sure all her people were far, far away from that thing . She was— this was—

This fear wasn’t all her own.

She’d missed it in the initial chaos, but suddenly Pretzel realized that the panic in her chest wasn’t just hers. It was coming from someone else. Whip? No; he was radiating determination right now, not panic, and she’d gotten pretty good at filtering him out anyway with how intense his emotions tended to get. But for most other people she’d only feel what they felt if she was in physical contact with them or deliberately reached out to their mind, and Amy certainly wasn’t the one, so who—

Pretzel jolted. Sonic.

Sonic! She projected urgently, his panic and hers rebounding off each other, amplifying like they were caught in an echo chamber. What’s happening? What’s wrong?

There was no coherent response, only a jumbled panic of pain and fear and stop stop stop please stop, and then—

Silence.

Deafening silence.

Pretzel cried out, pain stabbing through her chest as she felt a terrible wrenching sensation, like one of her very wings getting ripped from her shoulder. Dimly she could hear Whip yelping, feeling the loss as well, which just meant it wasn’t in her head, Sonic was— no , he was fine, he had to be fine, he had to be. Desperately Pretzel reached out, searching for the familiar beacon of his mind, that mix of light and darkness and something that wasn’t quite either. She reached, grasping for that familiar bond—

And met the storm instead.

Darkness. Overwhelming, pure darkness, washing over her, dousing her in the cold, primal anger of the sea itself. For just a moment she saw through its eyes, saw those unnatural protrusions stabbing the earth, tainting the sea, infesting her world, and felt fury. An animalistic urge to destroy, to cleanse, to purge, filled her, and her claws raised, poised to send another sweeping wave to wash away this filth , and—

Pretzel snapped back into herself, gasping like she’d just come up for air.

“It’s alive,” she choked out without thinking. “The storm, it’s— it’s alive. ”

“What do you mean?” Amy was kneeling beside her, looking at Pretzel with concern, which was ridiculous because the thing she should be concerned about was right over there , and it could kill them all as easily as squashing a bug, because to it they were bugs, an infestation, just pests to be exterminated, and Pretzel had been in its mind, and felt the desire to destroy, and what did that mean? What did that say about her, that she could step so easily into this monster’s head?

“It’s a creature,” she managed to say through the overwhelming feeling of something vast and dark pressing down on her, the feeling of choking, the feeling of drowning . “It’s— it’s a monster, creating the storm.”

“A monster…” Amy’s expression darkened, and she looked toward the storm—the monster with a frown. Suddenly she gasped, jumping to her feet with wide-eyed panic. “That’s our building! It’s going towards our apartment!”

“We’ll stop it!” Whip said with the naive certainty of a child ( of a being that could burn the world to ashes ).

Amy hesitated, then nodded, fear replaced by determination as she summoned her hammer into her hands. “You’re right. If it’s alive like Pretzel says, then it can be stopped. We won’t let it hurt anyone else.”

No. No, no, they couldn’t fight it, it would kill them —

The words choked in her throat. Amy seemed to read the panic in Pretzel’s eyes regardless. Her expression softened. “Maybe you two should get to safety. You’re not used to your powers yet.”

“No way!” Whip puffed up his chest. “I want to help!”

They all knew he was going to follow Amy no matter what, so Amy sighed. “Okay, but stay close and listen to me.” She glanced at Pretzel. “Pretzel, you can head out of the city. Find Vanilla—”

“No!” Pretzel burst out, seized by a new panic. Sonic was gone, Sonic was gone, if she lost Amy and Whip too— No. She couldn’t let them out of her sight. “I’ll go with you,” she said, trying to force some measure of calm into her voice.

“Alright,” Amy said, looking at her uncertainly. “If you’re sure.”

Pretzel had never been less sure, but she couldn’t let Amy and Whip face that beast alone. Not when they might be the last things she had left.

Amy led the way back to ground level and then towards the storm. They fought their way against the current of people. Pretzel flew closed to Whip, who was still cringing from the noise. As they left the crowd behind and the unnatural dark fog grew closer, Amy slowed, hefting her hammer. She glanced back to give them a reassuring smile and then stepped boldly into the darkness. Whip followed without hesitation. Pretzel hovered at the edge of the fog, cast one last glance over her shoulder towards blue skies and safety, and then, taking a breath she didn’t need, she plunged into the fog.

Silence reigned.

If the quiet on top of the apartment building had seemed eerie, this was positively sinister. The fog was somehow more translucent now that they were actually in it, no longer as opaque as it had seemed from the outside, but it still cast the world in somber muted hues. And now Pretzel could see the destruction the creature had wrought. Chunks of broken cement, glass, and metal had cratered the ground like meteors. Crushed cars and ruined roads made a strange contrast to the palm trees lining the street, undamaged and unperturbed. And over it all loomed the creature.

For a moment Pretzel was hit with a horrible sense of deja vu. A massive creature, covered in dark scales, its long forelimbs and sharp claws illuminated by glowing tentacles and bioluminescent markings. The image of a similar creature, backlit by lava and baring countless teeth, briefly overlaid on Pretzel’s mind, but she shook it away. This creature was far bulkier than the snake-like thing she had seen, with a sleek, flat head and two large, black eyes surrounded by glowing pink markings. It scales were smooth, more fish-like than reptillian, and colored dark blue, not greyish purple. Though the creature’s mouth was wide and toothy, it was in the way of a shark, not the gruesome, unnatural shape of the other monster. And most importantly, there was no keen cruelty in this creature’s eyes, no cold intelligence. Just a primal rage, like a wounded animal.

“Alright,” Amy said, narrowing her eyes as she sized the creature up. “Whip, Pretzel, you fly up and draw its attention. Try to draw it away from the buildings, and make sure you keep out of reach. I’ll come at it with my hammer while its guard is down.”

“On it!” Whip’s ever-present enthusiasm was undamped by the beast looming over him. He took off, a glowing speck against the vast dark sky.

Pretzel was considerably less enthused, but she grit her teeth and flew after him. Amy and Whip wouldn’t back down, and she couldn’t let them get themselves killed fighting this thing. Besides, the way it was headed it would destroy Amy’s apartment, and Pretzel couldn’t just stand by and let her safe place get crushed to pieces.

Better the apartment than you, some cynical part of her mind pointed out. Fair enough. But Pretzel had already reached the creature’s head, and Whip was shouting challenges, and oh there went any hope Amy’s plan wouldn’t work and the thing would just ignore them. Its eyes locked on Whip, and it roared so loudly the sound seemed to vibrate in Pretzel’s bones. She winced, wings faltering. Whip shrieked and covered his ears.

Pretzel saw the creature open its jaws, and in a burst of adrenaline she grabbed Whip—still discombobulated from the noise—and dragged them both out of the way just as the creature lunged. It was slow, thankfully; they’d have to be really off the ball for a single bite to land, but with the size of those teeth, one bite would be all it took. The creature hesitated, head twisting as it looked for the two Gaias. Pretzel dragged Whip after her, keeping them in the thing’s blindspot. It could probably smell them, maybe sense them too, but being out of its eyesight would still give them an advantage, however slim. And it kept them out of reach of its jaws.

Whip shook out of his daze, pulling free of Pretzel’s grasp. “It’s so loud ,” he complained. He looked pleadingly at Pretzel. “Can we…?”

Pretzel sighed. “Fine.” 

It was harder to do in the air, since she couldn’t do her usual shadow-stretching visualization, but fortunately this particular power was one that came naturally, not to mention one she had plenty of practice with. She focused on that bright hum at the back of her mind that indicated Whip’s presence. It had always been there, ever since she woke up, though the brightness and cadence of it had changed when Light Gaia did. Normally Pretzel kept it in a little walled off corner of her mind so as not to constantly be overhearing Whip’s nonsense thoughts, though even that didn’t seem to keep everything out, as she still found random snippets of his inner monologue getting through her barriers, much to her irritation. 

Right now, however, she needed that pathway open. Carefully, reluctantly, she peeled away just a bit of the barrier. Immediately she felt the rush of Whip’s enthusiasm and adrenaline and all his other very bright very loud emotions. Pretzel filtered them out and focused on Whip’s mind, imagining throwing a dampening blanket of darkness over the top of it. Most people—including Pretzel, before she’d learned better—would assume Pretzel and Whip’s powers would cancel each other out. Sometimes they almost did, but most of the time—as had been discovered when Sonic volunteered to host their energies—they mixed rather than canceled. And as it turned out, when used together the two Gaia energies had a handy tendency to cover for each other’s weaknesses.

“Thanks!” Whip said cheerfully, his sensitive hearing now dampened enough that another roar wouldn’t cause him actual pain.

Pretzel just grunted. She received her own benefit—her eyes were now far less agonized by bright light—but that wasn’t particularly helpful in this situation, what with the cloud cover and fog. And anyway, she was used to dealing with the sun stabbing her eyeballs on her own. Whip, whose introduction to the world had not been being dumped alone in the middle of an apocalypse geared to kill him, was less adept at dealing with his own weaknesses. He’d learn. Probably.

A squeaky yell drew Pretzel from her thoughts, and she glanced down to see Whip was already charging towards the beast again. It whipped its head toward him, baring its teeth. Whip dodged on his own this time. He was a better flier than Pretzel, his tiny, useless-looking bug wings belying a grace in the air her own, much more anatomically correct bat wings couldn’t hope to match. Sometimes Whip seemed to move more like a cartoon character than an actual person. If the beast couldn’t catch Pretzel, it didn’t have a chance at getting its teeth on Whip. Its head kept snapping around, eyes struggling to follow his quick movements.

Well, they had its attention. What was the second part of the plan?

“HI-YAH!” Amy yelled, vaulting up the beast’s body and slamming her hammer down on its head with full force.

The result was… anticlimactic. The beast grunted and shook its head, flinging Amy off. Pretzel dove to catch her, but Amy nimbly broke her fall with her hammer and came to a graceful landing on the pavement. Pretzel touched down beside her.

“It barely even noticed me,” Amy pouted, putting a hand on her hip. “I know I hit it full force!”

Pretzel knew from experience just what “full force” meant with that hammer. She’d seen a single swing of it crater steel . Yet Amy was right: the creature hadn’t taken any more notice of her than of a mosquito bite. It didn’t bode well for actually beating the thing.

Above them Whip was trying to lure the creature toward the ocean, but his taunts were falling on deaf ears. The creature still snapped at Whip if he got too close, but it had stopped actively pursuing him, instead focusing on heading further inland. It attacked the buildings around it with the zeal of Whip tearing into a chocolate bar. Even when Whip tried attacking it directly, it only shook its head and halfheartedly swatted at him like he was an annoying fly.

“Come on,” Amy said, hefting her hammer. “Let’s try again.”

Pretzel frowned, but followed her into the fray.

The results were much the same. The creature remained unbothered by the shockwave-inducing blows of Amy’s hammer, or Whip’s high speed aerial cannonballs (directly into its eye, which made Pretzel wince), or Pretzel’s attempts to scratch through its scales and, failing that, even her attacks on its eyes. Nothing they did seemed to cause any damage; every injury healed in a moment, and all their attacks dissipated harmlessly, like ripples on a lake.

“This isn’t doing anything,” Pretzel said to Whip as they drew back from their latest assault. “None of our attacks are affecting it.”

“We just have to keep trying!” Whip said, eyes glowing with naive determination.

“Amy,” Pretzel tried, flying down to speak to her as she recovered from her latest futile assault. “This isn’t working.” She wasn’t sure Amy even heard her; the hedgehog just shook out her quills, tightened her grip on her hammer, and launched forward to attack the beast again.

Pretzel hung back, watching the fight and trying to think of a new plan. Clearly they couldn’t bring this thing down with physical attacks, and Pretzel shuddered at the idea of entering its mind again. Could they divert it instead? Whip’s attempts at distraction hadn’t worked; the beast was too intent on destruction to be lured back to the ocean.

Pretzel watched as the monster continued on its path of destruction. It couldn’t be reasoned with; it attacked with animalistic fury, no pattern to its destruction. It swiped at another building, crushing cement and steel as easily as if it were Whip’s dried out play-dough. Pretzel winced as the rubble fell, on path to crush a grove of trees. She had liked that park. But then the monster did something unusual: its tail swiped around, knocking the rubble to hit against another building.

Pretzel blinked, looking back over at the street. Yes, the trees were all still perfectly intact. She’d thought it odd but not particularly noteworthy before, but after seeing that display… She flew higher, studying the area hit by the creature so far. The pattern held; every manmade structure had been crushed to rubble, while the trees, grass, flowers, and even the sandy beaches were left largely rubble free. So maybe it wasn’t completely mindless after all. She remembered what she’d seen in the creature’s mind: rage. It was primal, yes, but it did have a clear target, not just wanton destruction as Pretzel had initially assumed. Unfortunately, that target happened to be the entirety of humanity. And…

Pretzel’s stomach lurched. There it was. The building that housed Amy’s apartment, Amy’s home, sitting innocently right in the creature’s path.

Below, Amy was yelling with desperate fury, attacking the creature’s legs again and again, but her attacks did nothing, and the monster’s next step sent her flying across the street. Whip was shrieking, flying at the monster’s face with reckless abandon, but the beast flicked him away with a single claw as easily as if he was an insect. 

Pretzel saw it all. She saw Amy climbing painfully to her feet, too far away to do anything. She saw Whip recovering in the air and zipping back toward the beast, futilely yelling for it to stop. She saw the monster reach the apartment building and raise its claws. Her own claws twitched, a voice in her head that sounded like Whip urging her to do something, but there was nothing she could do. No shield she could throw up would be big enough, and even if it was, it would crumble under a single blow. No dreamwalking or mindreading would mean anything against this primal beast. None of her attacks had phased it. There was nothing she could do.

Some part of her, the part that sounded like Whip, the part that had watched too many superhero movies and children’s shows, thought this was the moment. This was the moment a hero would arrive at the last moment, repelling the beast, saving their home.

But there was no hero. Just an injured young hedgehog desperate to save her apartment, a naive Gaia who didn’t know his own nature, and Pretzel. Useless, helpless Pretzel.

The creature’s claws slammed down. The building was crushed to pieces. Pretzel thought she could make out the pink of Amy’s walls, somewhere amid the plaster and cement. Was that the plush sofa she’d been perched on just an hour earlier? And there, was that Whip’s superhero-themed dog bed?

It was all lost in the destruction. The creature finished its work, and for a moment Pretzel could have sworn it turned to look directly at her. Green eyes meeting green eyes. Was it mocking? Warning? She couldn’t say. And then, as if to add insult to injury, instead of continuing its rampage the creature turned, picking its way around the ruins it had created before slipping into the ocean. The waters closed on its back like it had never been there. The unnatural fog and stormy sky followed. Dimly Pretzel noticed the sound of helicopters as GUN arrived on the scene far too late. All she could see were the crushed ruins of what had been their home. She landed in a daze. Amy stood beside her, hands empty, while Whip flew around the rubble, trying to find anything that had survived the destruction. Useless. Pretzel’s claws dug helplessly into the cracked cement. Useless .

“Our home…” Amy breathed, putting a hand to her mouth. She looked like she might cry. Amy never cried. “It’s…”

Pretzel leaned against her silently, Amy’s grief and frustration and uncertainty washing against her like the stormy waves washing against the beach.

“Don’t cry!” Whip zipped back over to Amy, reacting to sorrow the way he usually did: with panicked, almost aggressive attempts at cheering the person up. He pressed a ragged piece of cloth into her hands. “Look! I found this!”

Amy unfurled the thing in her hands, and tears welled in her eyes. It took a moment for Pretzel to recognize it as the “home sweet home” sign from the kitchen. With the tattered rose and torn letters, the once cheery knitting now seemed tragic.

“Whip—”

“See! It’s okay!” Whip said earnestly, completely ignoring whatever Amy had been about to say. “We’ll fix it and it’ll all be okay, so you don’t have to cry, Amy!”

It’s not okay, Pretzel thought, frowning at him. Our home was just destroyed. Surely that deserves a few tears.

But Amy was already swallowing her grief, forcing a smile and straightening her shoulders like nothing was wrong. “You’re right. We’ll just— focus on the next step. We’ve rebuilt before, after Perfect Chaos, and we’ll rebuild… again…” She frowned, her eyes drifting out to sea. “Perfect Chaos…” Her eyes widened and she scrambled to grab something from her purse; a phone, Pretzel recognized. “That’s it! I know what we need to do!”

“What? What is it? What is it Amy?” Whip asked eagerly, fluttering up to peer over her shoulder because he had no concept of personal space.

Amy smiled at him. “A while ago our city was attacked by another creature—Chaos—that was a little like that one.”

“You think they’re connected?” Pretzel had heard a bit about Chaos just from being around Sonic and his friends, but they’d never shared the whole story.

“I don’t know,” Amy said, typing something into her phone. “But I do know someone who might.” She looked up at them, eyes bright with new determination. “I think we’re overdue for a world-saving adventure, don’t you?”

“Yes!” Whip cheered, pumping his fist. “Save the world! Save the world!”

Amy grinned and turned to Pretzel. “Pretzel? You with us?”

Pretzel hesitated. World-saving adventures, in her experience, tended to be less fun and more incredibly terrifying . She’d found something almost like safety in Empire City. Even if she hadn’t been adored and cooed over like Whip, she’d still at least been tolerated by Amy’s neighbors. Leaving would mean… it would mean something new. It would mean people who might try to kill her, and places where she wouldn’t have a hiding spot to retreat to. These past few months had been safe; leaving that was terrifying.

But, Pretzel reminded herself, glancing at the ruined apartment, her safe space was gone. Things had already changed, whether she liked it or not. The apartment was destroyed; Sonic had been cut off from her; all she had left now were Amy and Whip. She couldn’t lose them too.

She looked up at Amy. “What did you have in mind?”

Chapter Text

“Everyone’s busy fixing this mess,” Amy said as they walked away from the ruined section of the city, heading down a familiar route now changed by the destruction. “It’ll be easier if we just use the Gaia gates to get around. I don’t think the temple would have been hit…”

Thankfully it had not. They got in easily—they were regular patrons, after all, and Amy’s hero status got her special perks—and Amy lead the way to the portal room. Together the three of them considered the doors. Initially they’d thought only seven were functional (assuming you had something to power them, like a Gaia or a Chaos Emerald), but with a little experimentation they’d figured out that Whip could reactivate the defunct doors, though only temporarily; the moment he left the door stopped working again. He’d even been able to activate the door to Chun-Nan despite Eggman disassembling the other side, which suggested to Pretzel that the doors were more of a way to channel and anchor Whip’s power rather than being teleporters in and of themselves.

“This one should do it,” Amy said, walking up to one of the scratched doors. “Whip, would you…?”

Whip eagerly flew up and smacked his paws flat on the door. He narrowed his eyes in concentration, and a moment later the symbols on the door—including the scratches—began to glow with white light. He flew back, and Amy tugged the door open, revealing a blank white space, as was always the case with the broken doors.

“Here goes,” Amy said, tucking her purse into hammerspace. Pretzel hopped onto her shoulder and Whip landed opposite her like they’d rehearsed it. They all knew the routine by now. Amy stepped through the door, the world twisted, and then they were standing outside an overgrown jungle temple.

Whip immediately shot off to explore, but Pretzel stayed on Amy’s shoulder, squinting against the sunlight. “Where are we?”

“Oh, that’s right,” Amy said, picking her way through the ruins with an ease that suggested she’d been here many times before. “You didn’t come with us when we tested this door. This is Mystic Ruins,” she explained, gesturing grandly to the aged temple. “A friend of mine lives near her.”

“Big!” Whip chimed in energetically, flying back to join them. “He’s really nice! And kind of weird. He gave me fruit!”

Amy nodded. “You’ll like him, Pretzel. Come on, it’s this way.” 

She skipped merrily into the jungle, Whip fluttering at her side and chattering about what snacks Big would have this time and is this fruit edible and do cocoa beans taste like chocolate and several other, mostly food related things Pretzel couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to. Amy listened with smiles and nods and polite hmms, occasionally interjecting with a “don’t fly too far ahead!” or a “no don’t eat that it’s poisonous!” Pretzel took up the rear, slinking after them in silence. The jungle was warmer than she would have liked, but at least it was also humid and muddy, and the trees cast a lot of shade. And there were bugs everywhere. Bugs were always a plus. If this Big person chose to live out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but trees, bugs, and mud, maybe they actually would get along. Would he be open to a roommate? No, wait, it was still way too hot for her tastes. Maybe it got cooler at night?

As they walked, Pretzel heard a sound, different from the chirps of birds and insects, growing louder and louder. For a moment she was worried they were approaching a road, but then the source came into view through the trees: a river. A little ways more and she saw a simple wooden hut amid the greenery. She wasn’t sure “hut” was even the right word for it; it didn’t have any walls, just a couple of wooden poles holding up a leaf roof, a single lantern, and several dead fish on a string. The floor was a wood platform, raised slightly above the river bank with stilts. The only “furniture” was a stone-lined fire pit set in a hole in the wood platform, over which hung an old metal cooking pot, and what looked like a nest of leaves off to one side. Wood stairs lead past a small boat and down to the river. And that was it. No steel or cement or glass, no buzzing electronics, no roads nearby to conduct noisy traffic, no sidewalks crowded with pedestrians. Just a simple hut in the middle of the jungle. Pretzel loved it immediately.

“Big!” Amy called with a wide smile, waving energetically. “Over here!”

Pretzel took her eyes off the hut and followed Amy’s gaze to the riverbank. She immediately took a step back, spreading her wings and arching her back instinctively. A massive figure was rising from beside the river. And it was massive. The creature had to be at least three times Pretzel’s height, even if she wasn’t hunched over like she often was, and they had the mass to back that height up. They were a predator, clearly, a cat, with thick fur colored the same purple as the ocean’s depths. It reminded her of Blaze, actually; perhaps they were related? They certainly carried themselves with the same majestic dignity. Massive ears—each one alone was bigger than the head that bore them—framed a face with gleaming yellow eyes and jaws that surely contained an array of deadly fangs. Not that it would need them; the cat’s limbs seemed, to Pretzel, as big as tree trunks, and she could only imagine the claws hiding under those yellow gloves. This person— no, this being was huge.

“Hey Big!” Amy called again, running up to him with the confidence of someone who wasn’t less than two feet tall. 

Wait. Big ? That was his name ? And Pretzel had thought Sonic was unimaginative.

Whip flew right up to the being, this forest giant, this jungle spirit, with his usual confidence, even grabbing Big’s arm as he chattered about snacks. Big tolerated this annoyance with the grace of the great whales of the deep, the serenity of the powerful. Though to be fair, most people had more tolerance for Whip than Pretzel expected them to. Amy said he had charm . Pretzel didn’t see it.

She approached slowly, folding her wings as this “Big” showed no signs of attacking. Why should he? What could possibly be a threat to an apex predator such as this? No; predator wasn’t right. She could sense his aura, now, the gentle waves of serene calm, a still, undisturbed pool untouched by the chaos around it. That was not the serenity of someone who needed to hunt; this was someone who had ascended the food chain.

He also had a fishing rod, so he probably lived off fish, not tiny furry mutants. Pretzel personally had never eaten seafood, on principle, but if you had to eat meat, she could respect that choice. Anything aquatic was bound to be superior to its land-born alternatives, obviously . If there was such a thing as “sea chocolate” it would probably be the best thing ever. (And as much as Pretzel loved fish, they were. Really dumb. It was their own fault if they let something as obvious as a fishing rod catch them. Who was so easily defeated by a stick ?)

“Big, this is Pretzel,” Amy said, gesturing Pretzel forward. “She’s been staying with me. Pretzel, this is my friend Big.”

“Hello,” Big said, blinking serenely down at her. His voice was deep and slow, the exact opposite of Whip’s high-pitched yammering, so that was an instant addition to the rapidly growing list of reasons Pretzel liked this stranger. He crouched down—which made him twice as tall as her instead of three times—and extended his hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Pretzel studied his hand for a moment, then, with careful reverence, slapped it with her own. It was an odd position for a high five—Sonic usually held his hand up vertically, not horizontally—but at least it was easier for her to reach. Big nodded wisely and stood up. Amy made a weird choking noise and Pretzel glanced up at her, but she was clearly breathing just fine. Whatever.

“So do you have any food?” Whip asked, completely ruining the moment.

Pretzel shot him a glare, but any potential argument was cut short by a croaking noise nearby. Pretzel’s head whipped around, and her eyes widened as she saw a bright green creature climb out of the river and start hopping toward them. She’d seen frogs before, but never one so big and brilliantly colored, or one with a pronounced tail for that matter. It had orange stripes, which was not one of her favorite colors, but she could admit it looked quite striking paired with the cool green.

“Oh! This is Froggy.” Big crouched down to scoop the frog up, then held him level with Pretzel’s face. “Froggy, this is Pretzel.”

Froggy and Pretzel stared at each other, nose to nose, for a long moment. Then Froggy looked at Big, croaked, turned back to Pretzel, and hopped on top of her head. Pretzel froze, hardly daring to breathe. Froggy shuffled around a bit before settling down with a content ribbit.

“He likes you,” Big intoned with sage wisdom.

Pretzel stared up at the frog—or what she could see of it, since it was sitting on top of her. One of its feet was on her third eye, which was more decorative than functional. Most people found its blank stare creepy, but the frog seemed wholly unbothered, as did Big.

Big gave the frog a fond pat before walking over to his hut. Pretzel remained where she was, dazed by the sensation of this little living being perched on her head. Froggy seemed perfectly content. Was he sleeping? Pretzel followed his lead, closing her eyes and letting herself soak in the jungle ambience. It was peaceful, just sitting still, listening to the river gurgling gently nearby and feeling the cool touch of Froggy’s webbed feet, the squish of the mud beneath her claws.

“Pretzel,” Amy said, crouching down beside her with an amused smile. Pretzel blinked up at her, rising from whatever trance she’d slipped into. “It’s time to go.”

Reluctantly Pretzel lifted Froggy from her head and set him down on the ground with utmost care. The frog croaked with displeasure before hopping over to join Big, who had stowed his fishing rod with a strap on his back. Big gently picked the frog up and set him on top of his head.

“This way,” Big said, pointing into the jungle, and strode off.

Amy scooped up a now frog-less Pretzel, letting her settle around her shoulders, and picked Whip up from where he was busy eating what had to be Big’s entire fruit stash. Then she followed Big into the jungle.

“Where are we going?” Whip asked once he’d inhaled what fruit he’d been able to bring with him. “Weren’t we going to save the world? Is Big going to help us?” He gasped excitedly. “Is Big leading us to an ancient magic temple where we’ll get cool magic powers and a wise old woman will tell us how to stop the bad things and we’ll save the world !?”

“Not quite,” Amy said, smiling at him. “We are going somewhere special to ask for advice, though I doubt Knuckles would appreciate you calling him an old woman.”

Pretzel, currently slung around Amy’s shoulders like a prickly scarf, looked up with interest. Knuckles. Both Amy and Sonic had spoken of him several times, and even Rouge had mentioned him that one time she stopped by, but Pretzel had never gotten the chance to meet him herself. Apparently he didn’t like leaving home, a trait he and Pretzel shared which had thus far kept them from ever crossing paths. Even Whip hadn’t met him, judging by the flood of questions he was currently spouting.

Pretzel kept her own questions to herself. She just hoped this “Knuckles” lived somewhere like the jungle, and not in a city or somewhere else horrible and populated. Unfortunately her hopes of avoiding civilization completely were dashed as, after an hour or so of walking, they reached a proper road with a sign indicating where the nearest town was.

“Let’s head that way,” Amy said, much to Pretzel’s disappointment. “They might have seen Angel Island. And we could use some supplies,” she added with a self-reproving grimace. She’d only brought a couple jackets and some snacks, which wouldn’t be enough if they ended up away from home for more than a day. To be fair, with the state Empire City had been in it might have been a month before they got their hands on proper supplies. If only Pretzel had thought of that earlier. She could have delayed this whole “adventure” by at least a week. Oh well. At least she’d gotten to meet a frog.

“Maybe they’ll have ice cream!” Whip suggested eagerly.

For once Pretzel was on board with his train of thought. Much as she loved the mud and dampness of the jungle, the heat was really starting to irk her.

“Maybe,” Amy agreed with a smile and turned to Big. “Do you still want to come with us? We can find our own way now that we’re on the road.”

“I’ll come,” Big said simply, and Froggy croaked agreement.

As they started walking again Pretzel hopped off Amy’s shoulders so she could slink through what shade was available on the road. Without the overarching trees or nearby river, the heat was much more stifling. It was a relief when Pretzel heard a familiar sound: waves.

“Mystic Ruins isn’t far from the ocean,” Amy explained at Pretzel’s questioning glance. “The town we’re heading to is probably coastal.” She frowned. “Though I wonder why we haven’t been passed by any cars. I guess not a lot of people come this way…”

Soon the town came into view. Or what remained of the town, anyway. The first row of buildings they passed were fine, but as they drew closer to the ocean more and more of them looked like they’d been batted about by some giant, irritable cat. Pretzel drew closer to Amy, flattening her ears. This town had been hit by a storm , a fierce one. (One like the “storm” that had hit Empire City?)

Amy frowned, setting Whip down as they reached the beach. Here the buildings looked the worst hit. Several had collapsed altogether. “This doesn’t look good.” She glanced up at Big. “Could you look after Pretzel and Whip? I want to ask around.”

“Can I come?” Whip asked hopefully.

Amy shook her head. “I’m not going to be doing anything interesting, just asking questions. I’ll see if I can find a snack, okay?”

“Okay,” Whip agreed, pouting.

Big set Froggy down and sat on the sand, casting his line out into the ocean. Pretzel found a shady spot under some of the rubble and flopped down. It was still far too hot for her taste. Maybe she should try lying in the ocean; it would be in the sun, but it would also be in the water. Would the two cancel each other out?

“Pretzel, Pretzel, Pretzel!” Whip landed next to her with a thump, spraying sand over her wings. “Come play with me!”

“It’s too hot for playing,” Pretzel grumbled, stretching out further.

“Hot is perfect for playing! Come on, pleeeease?” He did his best puppy dog eyes, his most powerful and deadly weapon.

Unfortunately for him, Pretzel was one of the few people immune to Whip’s cute factor. “No.” She rolled over, pointedly putting her back to him. She flicked her tail to spray him with sand for good measure.

“Why are you so boring all the time?” Whip whined. Pretzel stuck her tongue out at him. Whip huffed and flew off to pester Froggy instead.

Once she was reasonably sure he wouldn’t come back and pounce on her, Pretzel got up and dug into the sand, flopping down again after unearthing the cooler layer beneath. It didn’t help much. She looked over to where the others were playing. Whip, brow furrowed with intense focus, was trying to sculpt a sand castle worthy of the frog. Froggy watched his efforts imperiously, occasionally croaking critiques. Pretzel snorted as Whip’s latest attempt collapsed into a pile of sand.

“It’d work better if you got the sand wet ,” Pretzel called helpfully.

Whip stuck his tongue out at her. Touché.

Pretzel was considering sneaking up on Whip and dousing him with ocean water (and weighing whether his surprise would be worth Amy’s wrath) when she felt an icy chill, wholly out of place on the humid and sunny beach, run down her spine. Prickles of unease raised her fur, and she fought the urge to bolt for cover.

Something was watching her.

Pretzel kept still, casting her senses around her. Nothing. Carefully, with a manufactured air of laziness, she rolled over on her back. There was no one behind her. She couldn’t hear or smell anyone, either; it was just her, Big, and Whip. Yet the feeling persisted. She was being watched.

Pretzel stood up with an exaggerated stretch, trying not to betray her unease. She walked over to where Whip was playing, struggling to keep her tail from twitching, and sat down. Surreptitiously she scanned the beach. Still empty. The feeling of being watched persisted. Was she just being paranoid? Should she warn the others?

Whip nudged her, and Pretzel started at the sudden jolt of bright energy. He blinked innocently at her. “Are you going to help with the castle?”

“Um,” Pretzel said, blinking down at the pile of sand. “Sure.” At least this was an excuse to keep close to the others. Whip especially was prime kidnapping bait. He needed someone who didn’t trust every smiling, candy-proffering stranger.

She’d only just started digging into the sand when a loud noise had her whipping around, wings rising. Seeing that the noise came from a group of children running onto the beach only slightly lessened her alarm. Pretzel had known, kind of, about children when she woke up, in the way she knew other random, unhelpful things such as the difference between an eel and a moray and what boats were (but not, apparently, what screens or phones or chocolate were). Children were young, underdeveloped people whose brains didn’t quite work yet. That was simple enough; (almost) every species had them. 

What Pretzel struggled to understand was when, exactly, someone stopped being a child. She didn’t see how a measly few years could make the difference between a child and an adult. Every person Pretzel had met fit the young and dumb criteria of children, so where was the distinction? How could someone who’d only lived, say, fifty years be considered “old”? That was just five decades. That was hardly anything . Really, everyone Pretzel knew should be considered a child. Babies, the lot of them.

The main distinction Pretzel had found between “children” and “adults” (or “teenagers”, as if everything wasn’t already complicated enough) was that children had no impulse control. Whatever they thought, they said; whatever they felt like doing, they did; whatever they wanted, they took. They tended to be horribly unpredictable and horribly loud. In that way they were a lot like Whip.

Speaking of Whip, he jerked around at the noise as well, but unlike Pretzel his face lit up with excitement. “Hi!” He called, darting into the air and waving vigorously. “Do you want to play?”

The kids stopped short, as anyone should when addressed by a strange mutant dog thing. Pretzel crouched lower to the sand, readying herself to grab Whip and run. Most people hadn’t reacted to them with hostility, but you never knew, and Amy wasn’t here to defend them if things went south. She glanced down the beach and was relieved to see Big watching them from his fishing spot. He didn’t look concerned, so probably this was okay?

“What are you?” One of the kids—a bird of some kind, maybe a quetzal?—blurted out, breaking the awkward silence. Pretzel let her wings sink down. The kid didn’t sound hostile, just curious.

“I’m Whip! Who are you?”

While her brother befriended the random strangers, Pretzel slowly backed away, trying to decide if it would be better to bolt for the shade or dive into the ocean. She froze as one of the kids, a young jaguar girl, laid eyes on her.

“Oh!” The jaguar gasped, putting her hands to her mouth. “Hi! Who are you?” She crouched down and extended her hand, making clicking noises like she was trying to call a cat.

Pretzel stared at her. Two options. Option A: answer the girl’s question, thus revealing herself as a Person Who Could Talk and probably flustering the kid into backing off, possibly leaving herself open to be approached by a different child. Or , Option B, make inhuman screeching noises and convince the entire group that she was some sort of feral monster that had crawled out of the sea and was going to eat them all. There was really only one clear choice.

Pretzel opened her mouth to do her best impression of nails on a chalkboard when Whip beat her to it.

“That’s my sister, Pretzel!” He said, flying over to throw his arms around her like the person with no respect for personal space he was. Pretzel growled at him, but the moment had been lost; she had been clearly revealed as a Person Who Could Talk and thus both approachable and condemnable, and the jaguar girl wasn’t even flustered.

“Oh wow,” the jaguar breathed, eyes round with awe. “Are you a dragon ? I heard there’s a whole tribe of dragons in Chun-Nan, are you from Chun-Nan? And that eyeball on your forehead looks so cool, can it see stuff? Can I touch it?”

“She’s not a dragon ,” the quetzal said, rolling his eyes. “ Obviously she’s a snake. Idiot.”

“Idiot yourself,” the jaguar snapped back. “Snakes don’t have fur .” She blinked at Pretzel. “Are you a hybrid?”

“…yes,” Pretzel said, since that was the simplest explanation she could think of.

“That’s so cool!” The jaguar said earnestly. “Ooh, and your claws glow too!” She pouted and looked at her own hands, flexing her not unimpressive claws. “I wish my claws glowed. I asked Mama if I could paint them but she said I have to wait till I’m older.”

Pretzel looked at her claws like she’d just noticed them for the first time. People had commented on her… appearance before, but “cool”? That was a new one.

“Can we play now?” Whip interjected. “I want to build sand castles!”

“It’ll never work if you do it like that ,” the quetzal said with the authority of youth, looking down at Whip’s pile of sand with disapproval. “You need water to make it stick together.”

“Told you,” Pretzel muttered.

Whip pouted.

“I’ll go get my bucket,” the quetzal said, nodding to himself. “You guys go look for shells and stuff.”

“We don’t have to do what you say all the time,” the jaguar argued, putting her hands on her hips, but the rest of the kids had already taken off down the beach in a pack of yells and jostling elbows. It was an impractical method of searching; didn’t they realize they’d find things much quicker if they actually split up (and if they stopped fighting over each shell they found)? The jaguar huffed, but she started picking up seashells from around her feet as well.

“Why are we looking for shells?” Whip asked curiously.

“To decorate,” the jaguar said, intent on amassing a pile of… things. Some were shells, but there were also several sticks of wood, bits of rock, pieces of seaweed, and what Pretzel was pretty sure was a chunk of warped plastic. “Don’t you want your castle to look pretty?”

“Definitely,” Whip nodded his head seriously. “Froggy deserves a beautiful palace.”

Froggy croaked his agreement.

“Hey— um— red dog!” One of the kids called from down the beach, where several of them had clustered around a palm tree. The trees, Pretzel noticed, had been left unscathed by the storm. Hopefully that didn’t mean anything. “You can fly, right?”

“Me?” Whip blinked, then beamed. “Yes! Me! I can fly!” He grabbed Pretzel’s arm. “Come on, let’s go get shells!”

Pretzel didn’t see how they could be getting shells out of a tree, but it wasn’t worth pointing out to Whip. More concerning was the implication that she was expected to participate in this castle-building venture. It had been one thing when it was just Whip and Froggy, but all these strangers…

“Pretzel’s going with me, ” the jaguar declared, and before Pretzel had time to react she had been slung over the jaguar’s shoulder like an abandoned sack of potatoes. “And we are going to find the best shells on the whole beach .”

That was enough to awaken Whip’s competitiveness. “Not true!” He declared, puffing out his chest. “ I’m going to find the best shells!” And he flew off to join the kids around the tree.

“Come on, Pretzel,” the jaguar said, starting off down the beach, still carrying Pretzel. Her grip was surprisingly strong. 

Pretzel considered wriggling free, but she didn’t have to when the jaguar spotted another shell and promptly dropped her. Pretzel landed on the sand, shaking herself out, and glanced longingly towards the shade. She considered making a break for it then and there, but… she glanced back towards the jaguar’s pile of shells, and then towards where Whip was fooling around with the other kids. Clearly they didn’t know what they were doing. 

Pretzel’s eyes narrowed. Oh yeah. They could totally win this.

“The best shells will be closer to the water,” she told the jaguar. “You focus on covering more ground and I’ll look under all the debris, since I’m smaller.”

“Do you know a lot about shell hunting?” The jaguar asked.

“It’s a hobby,” Pretzel said, shrugging. “Also I’m basically a sea monster, so this is my element.”

The jaguar grinned, showing her fangs. “Oh, we’re totally going to beat them!”

Pretzel grinned back.

Chapter Text

They didn’t beat them. Instead the children got sidetracked with a splash fight in the waves, and then with running around playing some sort of game where they hit each other with sticks and bits of driftwood, and then Amy came back and Pretzel was extremely relieved to escape the noise and chaos. Children. Unpredictable and overwhelming.

Whip pouted at having to leave his new playmates, but he perked up again when Amy revealed the spoils of her search: a bar of chocolate ( milk chocolate, disappointingly), a lemon which made Pretzel a little less bitter about the milk chocolate, and more to the point of this whole trip, an eyewitness account from someone who’d seen this “Angel Island” Amy was looking for just a few days ago.

Pretzel still wasn’t clear on why this island was so hard to find—it was an island, it wasn’t like it could move —but regardless, they bid farewell to the children and set out in the direction the island had last been sighted… and where it presumably still was because again, island. It wasn’t even one of the Islands of Chaos Pretzel had heard about; she’d learned the names of all seven in case she ever needed them for their cover story (she never did), and “Angel” was not among them. 

Regardless, Amy seemed to be under the impression they needed to hurry, and Big said (in fewer words) he knew the area it had been spotted in, so once more they set off into the wilds, Whip’s new fan club waving and shouting pleas for them to come back behind them. Soon the town faded from view, and Big took the lead as they reentered the jungle. At first Pretzel was relieved to be back in the shade, but soon all she could think of was the sea breeze they’d left behind. As much as she loved the mud and bugs and general dampness, the constant heat was really getting on her nerves. It felt like they’d been walking for months when Big finally stopped and pointed.

“There it is!” he pronounced. Pointing up. At the sky.

Slowly Pretzel’s eyes followed Big’s extended finger and— okay. Huh. Island floating in the sky. Just. Massive chunk of land. Floating in the sky. Cool. Pretzel really should have realized it would be something weird. For all she knew it was her fault this island was floating, or Whip’s, but unfortunately her memory would never be so helpful as to give her relevant information.

“Wow,” Whip said, wide-eyed. “Islands can fly ?”

“Most can’t,” Amy explained, much to Pretzel’s relief. She may not remember much about the world, but she was pretty sure islands didn’t normally float for no reason. “Angel Island is kept in the air by the Master Emerald.”

Of course it was an Emerald. But why the “Master” title? Was it different from the regular Chaos Emeralds, somehow?

“Wow wow wow,” Whip said, eloquent as ever. “How are you and Big and Froggy going to get up there, Amy? You can’t fly.”

That… was a good point. Whip, Pretzel, Big, and Froggy all looked expectantly at Amy, who for her part had the distinct look of someone who hadn’t thought this far ahead. Pretzel had seen it on Sonic’s face too many times to count.

“Uh. Hmm. Well.” Amy put her hands on her hips, squinting up at the island. “Pretzel, do you think you can—”

Pretzel was saved from whatever that question was going to turn out to be by a distant whirring noise. Amy cut herself off mid-sentence, and they all stood in silence, straining to hear. The noise grew louder. The first explanation Pretzel’s mind provided for it was “car”, but this was not nearly loud and big enough. Motorcycle? Closer. Whatever it was, it was a machine, it was moving fast, and it was moving towards them.

A blur of red, gold, and green appeared in the sky, rocketing towards them from the direction of the island. Amy summoned her hammer, while Whip raised his fists in what was supposed to be an intimidating pose. Pretzel uncertainly raised her wings and her spiked tail tip. Robots never failed to throw her off; she couldn’t read them like she could living beings, which made it a lot harder to tell if one was an enemy or a friend (and had led to a disastrous first visit to Cream and Vanilla’s home, though thankfully Gemerl had forgiven her. Probably. Hopefully.) Amy and Whip seemed to think this was a threat, but Big looked wholly unconcerned.

The robot came to a stop, hovering in the air just a little above them. Pretzel blinked. The robot was made of sleek, streamlined metal, not unlike the ones Eggman had employed, but the thing that surprised Pretzel was its shape. Big head, small body, long limbs, swept back quills… It looked a little like…

“Metal Sonic!” Amy gasped. She lunged forward, hammer slamming down… on empty air, as the robot dodged easily to the side. Amy whirled to face it again, quills bristling. “What are you doing here?” She demanded, tightening her grip on her hammer.

Whip darted over to hover beside her, wide-eyed. “Amy, what’s Metal Sonic?”

“A bad guy,” Amy said, not taking her eyes off the robot. “Stay back, okay?”

“No way!” Whip raised his fists again and glared at the robot with all his eleven pounds of rage, as if that would somehow stop it from attacking. “We fight bad guys!”

The robot didn’t react to the threat display. It just hovered there, staring at them with its glowing green eyes.

“Amy,” Big said before Amy could attack. “Maybe it’s a friend?”

Whip whirled around to face him with an affronted gasp. “Bad guys are not friends!”

Amy hesitated. She glanced from Big to the robot, a frown growing on her face. The robot continued to hover peacefully in the air. Slowly Amy lowered her hammer.

Whip blinked at her in confusion. “Amy?”

“It’s not attacking,” she said thoughtfully. “And Eggman’s on the space station; why would he send Metal Sonic here? And with a new paint job?” She added, eyeing the robot speculatively.

For a being supposedly called Metal Sonic , the robot in question didn’t resemble Sonic much aside from the build and the pointed “quills” (and even those didn’t look that much like Sonic’s when you got a good look at them, though Pretzel supposed you could only do so much with metal). It was primarily a deep red, with gold and white highlights striping its body like war paint and vivid green accents on its chest, hands, and feet.

“Amy!”

A new voice came from above, and Pretzel looked up to see a red-furred figure gliding down to them. Somehow. He didn’t have wings that she could see, and he didn’t seem to be a robot. Maybe it was one of his abilities, like Sonic’s speed and Amy’s hammer-summoning and Blaze’s fire. To be fair, Cream was able to fly with her ears , so perhaps this shouldn’t be so surprising.

The newcomer landed in front of them with a solid thud. “Don’t worry,” he said, nodding at the robot. “He’s been reprogrammed.”

“Hi to you too, Knuckles,” Amy sighed, putting her hammer away. “Reprogrammed by who? Tails?”

“Wave,” Knuckles corrected. He blinked at Pretzel and Whip. “Who are they?”

“I’m Whip!” Whip chirped brightly. “And this is my sister Pretzel! We can fly, but we have wings. How do you fly without wings? Why do you have spikes on your hands? Also, why don’t you have fingers? Doesn’t that make it hard to pick stuff up?”

Knuckles blinked slowly, a reaction people often had to Whip. “Um. Yes?” He looked at Amy with an expression pleading for help, but she was fixated on something else.

“ Wave ? When did Wave get her hands on Metal Sonic? And why didn’t any of us know about it!?” Amy had her arms crossed and was doing the “disappointed mom” look, as Sonic had dubbed it. Presumably that was a reference to how it was a perfect impression of a look Amy’s own mom often wore to terrifying effect.

Knuckles shrugged. “I was busy. And my communicator was broken.”

“I noticed,” Amy grumbled. “So why didn’t you fix it ? Tails would have been happy to help! What if something had happened and you’d needed our help?”

Knuckles scowled. “I could have handled it.”

Amy did not look pleased at his answer, but she seemed to realize that argument wouldn’t work and switched tact. “And if we had needed your help?”

“You’re here now, aren’t you?” Knuckles folded his arms.

“We are,” Big agreed pleasantly. 

Amy looked like she wanted to keep arguing, but Big’s interjection seemed to remind her why they were there. “We need to talk to you about something. Something that might be related to the Master Emerald.”

Immediately Knuckles’s eyes became sharp and hard. “I see.” He glanced around at the surrounding jungle, suddenly wary for reasons Pretzel couldn’t guess (other than the general paranoia everyone should feel from simply existing in this world, and yet somehow no one seemed to experience except her). “You should come up. We can talk on the island.”

Amy blinked, looking from him to the island floating far overhead. “How?”

“He can carry you,” Knuckles said, nodding to the robot. “And you too, if you want,” he added to Big.

“I would like to go,” Big agreed.

Amy eyed the robot uncertainly, but finally sighed. “I guess I don’t have any better ideas. So how do we—” She cut herself off with a shriek as the robot suddenly moved with speed to make Sonic shed a proud tear, scooping Amy up and rocketing to the island before any of them had a chance to react.

Knuckles looked largely unbothered by the sudden kidnapping. “You two can fly on your own, right?” He asked Pretzel and Whip.

“…Yeah,” Pretzel said, staring after the robot. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“That looked fun!” Whip said, because Whip had no sense of his own mortality. Or sense in general, really.

Pretzel sighed. Stars save her from these people.

They all made it to the island alive and relatively unscathed, though Knuckles came close to getting flattened by an enraged Amy for not giving more warning. Apparently this “Wave” had programmed the robot to be very responsive to Knuckles’s commands, even implied ones. It suited Knuckles just fine, but after some threatening from Amy he agreed to have Tails come around and adjust it to be more considerate of other people.

Angel Island was beautiful. That much was evident immediately. Their landing spot was in the midst of a green jungle, not unlike the one they’d just left on the ground, but thankfully cooler (probably because of the altitude). Cliffs rose around them, and waterfalls tumbled down their stone faces. Tiled stone paths, carefully swept clean, led in different directions, and carved wood poles supporting torches were set intermittently along the paths. 

But Pretzel didn’t pay much attention to the scenery. Something else was tugging on her—no, that wasn’t right. Something was pushing against her. It was like when two ends of a magnet were put together, pushing against each other to keep from touching, except in this case one of the magnets was Pretzel and another was… the island? Not quite; something in the center of the island, she thought. It was not a pleasant feeling. Pretzel grimaced and took a step back, shaking her head. She bumped into Whip and glanced over to see him looking equally uncomfortable. So this was a Gaia thing. His warmth eased the feeling of wrongness slightly, and judging from the way he leaned into her it went both ways. Pretzel considered shoving him away, but decided it wasn’t worth it. He’d probably get distracted and fly off soon anyway.

None of the others seemed bothered by the sensation. Big and Amy were looking around with wonder, while Knuckles stood off to the side, arms folded and a hint of a proud smile on his face.

“It looks different,” Amy finally said, turning to look at Knuckles again. “Have you been making renovations?”

Knuckles nodded, clearly pleased. “The robot helped.”

Amy glanced at the robot. “Have you given him a name yet? He isn’t really ‘Metal Sonic’ anymore, is he?”

Knuckles shrugged. “I’ve just been calling him the robot. If he wants a name he can pick one.”

Amy’s brow wrinkled. “Is he… aware?”

“Wave says he isn’t,” Knuckles admitted. The robot seemed to have grown bored of the conversation and shot off down the path. Knuckles started walking in the same direction, and the rest of the group followed suit. “Supposedly she just programmed him to obey my orders and protect the island, but you and I both know robots can become more than their programming.”

“Fair enough,” Amy agreed. “How did you end up with him, anyway?”

“That’s a long story,” Knuckles said, sighing. “You know a few months ago, when there was that laser from space and the days suddenly started getting longer?”

“I remember,” Amy said, glancing back at Whip, who thankfully wasn’t paying much attention.

“Right. So I was fighting the Babylon Rogues, who were after the Master Emerald, when I saw this light—”

Knuckles went on to tell a story about time travelers and possessed spirits and birds on hoverboards that Pretzel understood less than half of. Whip had gotten bored and flown ahead, while Big and Froggy were meandering farther behind, looking around at the island with rapt curiosity. Pretzel decided it was probably best Whip not be left unattended on the magic mystery island and flew after him. (Besides, the repulsing magnet feeling was even worse without his presence, not that she’d tell him that.) She found him standing at the top of a flight of stairs, staring down with wide eyes. She dropped down beside him and followed his gaze.

The steps led down into a natural bowl of sorts that sheltered a green garden. A clear blue waterfall ran down the steepest part of the bowl and flowed into a small stream, which then fed into a still pool in the center of the garden. Several of the garden trees hung heavy with fruit, flowers bloomed in colorful displays throughout the greenery, and what looked like children’s toys were scattered across the ground. She spotted the robot on the other side of the garden. It was tending to the plants with a gentle care you wouldn’t have expected to see from a machine, and a methodicalness you would have. But none of that was what held Whip’s attention.

“They’re so cute !” He squealed, tail wagging excitedly.

The Chao in the garden below babbled softly to each other, unaware of their nearby admirer. Pretzel had seen Chao before, when visiting Cream and Vanilla, but she’d never seen so many in one place. They were more varied than she’d expected, and she understood a little better why Amy had considered using the Chao cover story. With the sheer mishmash of features on display before her, she and Whip would fit right in. Or Whip would, anyway; none of the Chao were quite as lean and snake-like as Pretzel.

“Hi! Hi!” Whip called, zipping down into the garden. Several of the Chao looked up at him in surprise, and a few even ran away into the underbrush. “Hey, where are you going?”

“You need to move more slowly,” Pretzel said, demonstrating her point as she picked her way down to him. “You’ll startle them if you rush in like that.” Or at least, that was how most animals were, and she imagined Chao weren’t much different.

Typically, Whip ignored her. He continued to zip about like a caffeinated hummingbird, and the Chao continued to be understandably put off by it. 

“Doing the same thing and expecting a different result,” Pretzel commented as she watched his latest failure. “You know that’s the definition of insanity, right?”

Whip stuck his tongue out at her, but he did at least innovate by trying to grab a fruit. And then lobbing it in the direction of the Chao because Whip had neither patience nor impulse control. No wonder Cheese never seemed enthusiastic about their visits.

Pretzel winced as one of the Chao, startled by Whip’s latest feeding attempt, started crying. The robot looked towards them, and she was sure it was glaring. Pretzel cringed apologetically. “Whip, maybe you should—”

And then the water attacked them.

Whip squawked as a stream of water slammed into him like a fist. Another swiped at Pretzel, and she backed up, hissing. Whip’s fur bushed as he scrambled away from another assault by the enraged liquid and ducked behind Pretzel. They both watched, wide-eyed, as a being emerged from the nearby pool. It was shaped like a Mobian, but it was made of water, a translucent blue broken only by a pair of yellow-green eyes and, submerged in its head, what seemed to be a pink brain . The being burbled threateningly. Pretzel glanced around, wondering if it would be better to hide or attack, while Whip struck a fighting pose that was undermined by the quivers of fear running through his body.

Wait!

An unfamiliar voice rang in Pretzel’s head. Beside her, Whip started, looking around wildly. Pretzel felt—something. A pulse, a warm and calm presence. A person, she thought, but not a person like Amy and Big and Knuckles. This wasn’t just her picking up on someone’s emotions or “aura” or whatever, this was… this energy was the person. Someone made of energy, like Pretzel and Whip?

An orange light glowed, and then the speaker appeared. Whip shrieked and scrambled back, cowering behind Pretzel. Pretzel didn’t see what he was so worked up about. Sure, it was a ghost, but it wasn’t a particularly threatening ghost. Probably the least threatening a ghost could be, actually.

She was the same species as Knuckles— echidna, some part of her or Whip’s brain informed—, but her fur was a soft orange-peach, and her eyes were a bright and clear blue. She looked younger, too, yet at the same time as old as the island itself. She stood between the water creature and the Gaias, extending her hands to either side as if to hold them apart. When she saw that both parties had stopped to stare at her, she lowered her arms.

It’s alright, Chaos, she said, turning to address the water creature—Chaos. Wait, Chaos ? He didn’t mean any harm. She turned to Pretzel and Whip with an apologetic smile. I’m sorry if Chaos frightened you.

“Are you a ghost?” Whip squeaked, terrified.

…In a sense, I suppose, the ghost said, blinking at him. My name is Tikal, and this is Chaos. They are… very protective of the Chao, but they won’t hurt you. They’re really very peaceful.

“They don’t look peaceful,” Whip mumbled, still hiding behind Pretzel.

“Tikal’s right,” Knuckles said, and Pretzel turned to see him and Amy making their way down the stairs. Big still seemed to be a ways behind them. “As long as you don’t hurt the Chao, Chaos won’t hurt you.” Chaos burbled accusingly, glaring at Knuckles, who raised his hands defensively. “I didn’t have any warning they were coming either!”

“Well if you’d fixed your communicator , maybe I could’ve let you know,” Amy huffed.

Chaos burbled again and then, without warning, their arm shot out with liquid fluidity and slapped Knuckles. Pretzel jumped back, wide-eyed, but when Knuckles whirled on Chaos there was a playful gleam in his eye. Pretzel watched in confusion as the echidna and the monster started… playing? Yes, they were definitely playing.

“Amy,” she said, coming over to where Amy was watching the scuffle with an amused expression. “Is that the same Chaos that destroyed Station Square?”

Amy nodded.

Whip, clearly still upset over being drenched, shot Chaos a glare. “I knew they were a bad guy! Why are they here, Amy? Shouldn’t they be in—” he floundered for a bit. “—monster jail?”

“Not a thing,” Pretzel muttered.

“It’s— not that simple,” Amy said hesitantly. “Chaos… wasn’t entirely themself when they destroyed Station Square.”

Pretzel frowned. “What do you mean?”

Chaos was chosen long ago to be a guardian, Tikal explained. And for a long time they lived peacefully, protecting the Chao, the Master Emerald, and when they were present, the Chaos Emeralds. But four thousand years ago my— my father wanted to use the Emeralds for… horrible things. She shuddered. I tried to stop him, but he hurt me, and the Chao. Chaos became angry, and with the Chaos Emeralds they turned into Perfect Chaos. A monster.

Negative emotion and Chaos Emeralds, together making a dangerous, potentially world destroying creature. It was a familiar story.

I sealed myself and Chaos into the Master Emerald to stop the destruction. But their anger only festered, until after four thousand years they were freed by Dr. Robotnik.

“And then Eggman gave them the Chaos Emeralds to turn them into Perfect Chaos again,” Amy explained. “It was only when Sonic beat them as Super Sonic that they calmed down.”

And now they are at peace. Tikal smiled at Chaos, who was letting a Chao attack their leg in a babyish imitation of Chaos and Knuckles’s wrestling a moment before. There was a clear fondness in the way Chaos watched the Chao, in their gentle movements and soft burbling. Despite the lack of facial features, the slight crinkle in their eyes seemed to suggest a smile. And there was a similar warm, content fondness in Tikal’s eyes as she watched the scene. We both are.

Whip wrinkled his brow, trying to wrap his head around this idea. “So someone hurt Chaos… and Chaos hurt a bunch of people… and you turned into a ghost… and now you’re… friends? Even though they’re a monster? You’re not angry at all?”

I might have been angry, once, Tikal admitted. But I also understood Chaos’s pain. And hurting them further would only perpetuate the violence, not end it.

Whip frowned, clearly still lost. Pretzel understood how he felt. All that—all the destruction and pain they had caused—and Chaos still found a happy ending for themself. Peace, and companionship, and purpose. They were accepted. They were at home, and safe, and happy . She glanced to the other side of the garden, where the robot was steadily tending to the plants. And this “Metal Sonic”, too. He has once been Amy’s enemy, judging by her reaction to his presence, but some switch had been flipped and now he was perfectly happy tending to gardens? Living alongside his former enemies? How? How were the others so accepting? How was Chaos not constantly looking over their shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop? How was the robot so content with this sudden change? How had they all found this, made this peace?

Pretzel didn’t know. But she wanted to.

Chapter Text

It’s not Chaos, Tikal said with certainty once Amy finished explaining to her and Knuckles what was going on in the surface world.

“I didn’t think so,” Amy said, glancing over to where Chaos was still playing with the Chao. “But could it be connected in some way?”

Tikal shook her head. This is not Chaos, or the Emeralds. She glanced at Whip and Pretzel. This is the doing of the Gaias.

“Gaias?” Whip looked up at Amy curiously. “Amy, what are—”

“Pretzel!” Amy interrupted, clearly trying not to sound panicked. “Why don’t you take Whip and go explore the island? It’s not often we get a chance to visit.” She looked at Knuckles, a silent plea in her eyes. “Is that alright?”

Knuckles blinked. “Uh. Sure.” He looked at the robot. “Go with them and make sure they stay out of trouble.”

The robot set down its watering can and strode stiffly over to stand by Whip and Pretzel.

Whip blinked. “Wait, why do we have to leave?”

Amy turned her pleading gaze on Pretzel. Pretzel heaved a sigh but obediently grabbed Whip’s arm and started tugging him up the path.

“While they have their boring grown-up conversation—” which I would really prefer to be a part of, she added mentally. “— we are going to explore this cool magic island. It’ll be fun,” she said, voice completely devoid of enthusiasm.

“Oh. Um. Cool?” Whip blinked at her.

Soon they were out of earshot of the other three (four? Somehow she doubted Chaos was going to be contributing to the conversation). Pretzel released Whip’s arm and looked up at the robot. “So? What way should we go?”

The robot stared back blankly.

No help there. Pretzel looked at Whip. “Where do you want to go?”

“To the Chao garden,” Whip said pointedly.

Pretzel sighed. “ Besides the Chao garden.”

Whip wrinkled his nose. Pretzel was just about to suggest looking for Big and Froggy when he finally came up with an idea. “How about we find that weird pulsing thing?”

“You mean the thing that’s pushing us away? The thing that feels like death? That thing?” Pretzel asked incredulously. “You want to go to it?”

Whip nodded firmly, his expression determined. “I want to see what it is.”

Pretzel gaped at him. “Weren’t you the one terrified of Tikal ?”

Whip lifted his nose, though there was a sheepish tilt to his ears. “I was not terrified. I was just… surprised.”

Great. Her brother was going to get both of them killed just to prove something to… who? Himself?

Still, maybe he had a point. Pretzel didn’t want to be anywhere near the pulsing death thing, but ignoring it would probably just lead to more bad things down the line. Might as well size up her enemy now, before it tried to end the world or whatever.

“Fine,” Pretzel sighed. “Lead on.”

Whip looked at her with round, pleading eyes. “Maybe you could go first?”

“ Ugggh, ” Pretzel groaned dramatically, but she dutifully took the lead, following the cold pulsing. Whip stuck close to her tail, and the robot marched at the rear, like a prison guard taking them to their execution.

The pulsing got worse the further they went, which at least told Pretzel they were heading in the right direction. Soon it was bad enough to be dizzying, pounding on Pretzel’s skull and blurring her vision. Whip tried to fly ahead to get a look and promptly fell out of the air. Pretzel grit her teeth. Nausea churned in her stomach, and each step took twice the effort it should have. If they kept walking forward like this, they’d end up useless heaps on the pavement. They needed a way to see the thing without actually getting close to it. 

Pretzel changed course, leading Whip and the robot towards a nearby hill. Fortunately the island had a surplus of those, as well as paths that made them easier to scale. It was a relief to not be moving towards the pulsing thing anymore. The pain in her skull and the nausea in her gut eased as they climbed higher, though it didn’t abate completely. Whatever the thing was, it must be on ground level. Or, well, island level. They reached the crest of the hill without either of their brains turning to mush; sure, Pretzel’s bones felt like ice and her energy was being sapped by the moment, but at least it wasn’t so bad she couldn’t see straight. She scanned the area below, looking for the source. Aha!

“There,” she said, pointing. “That has to be it.”

A stepped stone shrine sat in the center of a circle of stone pillars. Green plants surrounded the center pagoda, and clear water poured around its base and then down into a stream that probably connected to the one in the Chao garden. But the thing of interest was in the center of the shrine. A giant green gem, in a similar cut as the Chaos Emeralds but far larger, sat passively in the center structure, pulsing with a deathly chill. Pretzel felt simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by it. Looking into it felt how she imagined looking into a black hole would; an unfeeling void, pulling in all life and light around it. Cold was how she’d described the feeling, but even that wasn’t quite right, because cold would have been something . This thing, it felt like…

“Nothing,” Pretzel murmured.

If anything mastered chaos, it would be complete emptiness.

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” Whip whispered.

Pretzel nodded, and together they made their way back down the hill, away from that horrible thing.

“What was that?” Whip asked once the wrong feeling had faded enough for them not to feel nauseous anymore.

“The Master Emerald,” Pretzel said, glancing at the robot for confirmation. It nodded. “I think it nullifies the Chaos Emeralds. And, apparently, us.”

Whip shuddered. “How does Knuckles stand it?”

“We probably just have a stronger connection to the Emeralds,” Pretzel lied. It was the same lie they’d used to explain their powers. She just hoped Whip would never have the opportunity to be around the Emeralds, because if his experience was anything like hers it would blow the “connected” idea right out of the water. Emeralds and Gaias did not mix, not without an in-between.

Whip nodded and took off, flying down the path. He had a tendency to get restless when he was nervous. Though he also got restless when he was happy or sad or hungry or anything, really, so it wasn’t much of an indicator. She just hoped he didn’t—

“Pretzel!” His voice squeaked from down the path “Pretzel, you gotta see this!”

Pretzel sighed. Find trouble. At least he didn’t sound frightened, so hopefully it wasn’t something dangerous. But Whip often had different standards than her for what was and wasn’t a threat, so it was hard to say.

The robot turned towards Whip’s voice and rocketed off. Pretzel followed it down the path and then into a clearly well maintained tunnel in the side of the cliff. The glow of the robot’s eyes intensified, illuminating the tunnel ahead. Pretzel didn’t need the assistance, but she supposed that would be handy for people who couldn’t see in the dark. Or people who didn’t glow as bright as the sun like Whip did. He was farther down the tunnel, but between the echoes of his excited exclamations and the reflected glow off the walls, it wasn’t hard to catch up.

Pretzel found him in a larger cave, gaping up at something on the walls. She walked over to join him. The object of his fascination was a mural, a mosaic of stones, ceramic, and pieces of glass, clearly old but kept surprisingly intact by the underground environment. It looked like it had been recently polished, too. The image depicted some sort of massive lizard thing that reminded Pretzel uncomfortably of the creature that had attacked Empire City, roaring as its waves toppled buildings. Whatever Tikal claimed, it seemed history had a way of repeating itself.

She glanced around, examining the rest of the cavern. More murals covered the walls, stretching down the tunnel and out of sight. Behind her, the robot had produced a rag from somewhere and was busying itself cleaning one of the many art pieces. She wondered if it was bored with her and Whip. Probably.

“This place is so cool!” Whip squealed, scampering deeper into the cavern. His voice echoed back to them as he vanished down a tunnel.

Pretzel sighed and followed. The robot tucked its rag away and marched after them, somehow managing to convey annoyance without actually changing any of its facial features. At least the cave was nice, Pretzel reflected. Colored crystals glittered amidst the vestiges of old civilizations, and more murals and paintings decorated the walls, detailing a history most had forgotten.

“What’s that?” Whip asked, stopping short at one of the bigger murals and allowing Pretzel to finally catch up.

He reached up to touch the mural, and with record speed the robot sped over and slapped his hand down. It gave him a scolding finger wag before turning to clean one of the fixtures nearby. Whip stuck his tongue out at it before returning his attention to the mural. He’d mostly skimmed past the ones before; what about this one was holding his interest? Pretzel looked up and sucked in a sharp breath.

A massive, snake-like creature, dark as the night, reared in toothy, tentacled glory over a destroyed city. Across from it, a giant bird, brilliant as the sun, seemed to caw a challenge, its claws grasping a piece of an old temple. Even with the stylization, the likenesses were enough to make her wings raise. Around the edges of the mural, people—echidnas like Knuckles, and others besides—cowered in fear from both beings.

“What are they?” Whip asked.

“Gaias,” Pretzel said crisply. She sat beside him, folding her wings back down. “That’s Light Gaia—” she pointed to the bird. “—and that’s…” she swallowed. The thing seemed to stare back at her with its myriad of eyes, daring her to deny it. “That’s Dark Gaia.”

Whip looked at her. “I keep hearing people talk about the… the… the um…”

“Gaia incident,” Pretzel supplied.

Whip nodded. “That. What was it? What are Gaias?”

“I don’t know about other Gaias, but I do know that they— ” she nodded at the mural. “—were dangerous monsters. They were supposed to protect the world, but instead all they did was hurt each other and ordinary people.”

“Why?” Whip asked, blinking up at her innocently.

“Dark Gaia wanted to plunge the world into eternal night,” Pretzel said, pieces of her age-old memories slipping through her mind like ice water. “But Light Gaia wanted to make it day forever. So they fought.”

“Day forever doesn’t sound so bad,” Whip said, frowning. It was just an innocent observation, any kid would say that, don’t read into it, don’t read into it—

“Light Gaia woke up a few months ago,” Pretzel said, keeping her voice calm and level, her eyes on the mural. “It tried to make it day all the time. But when it did that, it made the world too hot. The weather was all wrong, and some people didn’t have enough water, while others didn’t have enough food. People couldn’t sleep and nocturnal animals couldn’t hunt because it was bright all the time. It was only a few days, but a lot of people got hurt.” Not to mention the brainwashing and mob violence, but Whip didn’t need to hear about that right now.

“Oh,” Whip said. “That’s bad, then.” Unexpectedly he leaned against her. Pretzel jerked in surprise, then settled into the contact. He was upset. She’d allow it. He was warm, as always, warm and solid. It was grounding. “Both Gaias sound really mean. I’m glad they're gone.”

“Yeah,” Pretzel said, looking down at her claws. A heavy feeling sat in her chest that she couldn’t explain. A more familiar feeling rose in her throat—bitterness, and shame . “Yeah. Me too.”

“Let’s look at something else,” Whip said, shaking himself. He bounded down the tunnel, and Pretzel followed slowly.

While Whip ran ahead, Pretzel stopped, noticing something on the wall. She walked closer, narrowing her eyes at the image. Was that…?

“Pretzel?” Whip asked, running back to join her. “What is it?”

Pretzel flicked her tail at the mural in answer. It was in the same colorful, abstract style as the other murals, and in a way seemed to mirror the Gaia piece: two brilliant figures, facing each other down on opposite sides. On one side was a large, almost humanoid shape, though it only had a torso and arms, no legs. The face looked almost familiar, with its pointed nose and… mustache? Was that a mustache? One hand seemed to hold a brilliant green Emerald (Pretzel couldn’t say if it was meant to be the Master Emerald or a Chaos Emerald). The humanoid figure’s opponent was a blue, spiky figure, surrounded by a brilliant golden aura and laced with gold lines.

“Is that…?” Whip asked.

“Probably,” Pretzel sighed. Of course Sonic would be the subject of an ancient prophecy.

“That’s so cool!” Whip stood on tiptoes to get a closer look. He started to reach out to touch the image, but glanced over his shoulder to see the robot had swiveled around to glare at him. Sheepishly he dropped back down to the ground. “And the other one, that’s the bad guy, right? Eggman?”

Pretzel nodded. Normally she tried not to encourage Whip’s bad guy/good guy view of the world, but Eggman… yeah, Eggman was pretty solidly “bad guy”.

“Sonic saved the world from Light Gaia, didn’t he?”

“And a lot of other things.” No rest for the good, apparently.

“Like a real life superhero,” Whip breathed. “I want to be like that.”

Pretzel blinked at him. He seriously wanted to be constantly risking life and limb to take down mad dictators and quasi-deities? Maybe it was easier to see the appeal when you hadn’t already helped prevent the apocalypse. Once was enough for her, thank you very much. 

“Maybe you can ask him for pointers,” she suggested dryly.

Whip’s wings drooped. “I don’t think he likes me very much.”

Pretzel paused, caught off guard. Whip wasn’t exactly prone to self-doubt. Everyone liked Whip, and he knew it. Or… almost everyone liked Whip. Most people didn’t know the truth and saw Whip simply as a cute if sometimes annoying kid, but for those who did know his true nature, they had to contend with the things he’d done as Light Gaia. Most people had the boon of not actually remembering what they’d done under Light Gaia’s command, but for someone who did, who remembered what it was like to have his mind and body twisted, his very self used as a weapon against his friends, all by Light Gaia’s hand… she couldn’t blame Sonic for being standoffish. 

He did a good job of covering it, or so she’d thought. He was always perfectly polite and friendly to Whip. But he always found an excuse to extract himself from Whip’s presence after a few minutes, and he’d never used the mental bond he had with him the way he did with Pretzel. She’d thought Whip hadn’t noticed Sonic’s unease, but evidently he was more perceptive than she realized.

“I don’t think he… dis likes you,” Pretzel said slowly, awkwardly. “I’m sure he’ll warm up to you eventually.” She was not sure of that, actually, but it seemed like the comforting thing to say, and Sonic had proved irrationally, even recklessly forgiving in the past.

“You think so?”

“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.”

Whip beamed at her, and Pretzel found herself smiling back. Turned out she could do something right after all.

They found Amy sitting in the Chao Garden, playing with some of the little creatures while she talked to Tikal. Big was fishing in the stream and Froggy was getting harassed by the Chao, who were quickly joined in their pursuit by Whip. Pretzel pointedly sat down next to Big, her back to Amy.

“Oh, there you two are!” Amy said brightly, completely unbothered by Pretzel’s obvious cold shoulder. “You ready to go?”

“Did you find anything out?” Pretzel asked, reluctantly letting her desire for answers take precedence for the moment. She’d save her annoyance at getting sent away from the earlier conversation for later. Maybe she’d leave a frog in Amy’s boot again.

“Not much,” Amy sighed. “Knuckles is going to try and find answers here while we go investigate on the surface.”

“Where is Knuckles?” Pretzel looked around, but there was no sign of the red echidna. She’d been hoping to ask him about the murals.

“He said the Master Emerald felt disturbed and went to go check on it.”

Oh, that… That was probably Pretzel and Whip’s fault. Served the Emerald right, really; it had certainly disturbed her enough.

“We should be going,” Amy said, standing up and brushing off her hands. The Chao that had been in her lap whined unhappily. “Will the… uh, robot help us down again?” She glanced awkwardly over at the robot, which was innocently tending to the garden once more.

Tikal nodded. I’m sorry we don’t have another means of transport for you. I know you have a history.

“I’ll be fine,” Amy said firmly.

Pretzel looked up at her. “History?”

This robot used to belong to Dr. Robotnik, Tikal explained.

“Metal Sonic kidnapped me when I was six. But he didn’t hurt me, and Sonic rescued me pretty quickly. Honestly it was more embarrassing than anything,” Amy added with an awkward laugh.

Pretzel glanced over at the robot. “He was created by Eggman?”

Amy nodded. “He was one of Eggman’s most powerful fighters. He was made to destroy Sonic, but now…” she smiled at the robot as it knelt beside the flowers, touching them with a strange gentleness. “Now he can be what he wants to be.”

Pretzel hummed, tail flicking thoughtfully. Must be nice, to have a switch that could flip you from “evil” to “good” so easily. She wondered what Sonic would have to say about his evil doppelgänger changing sides. Probably he’d be as happy about it as Amy was.

Sonic. Pretzel remembered the gaping absence in her mind, and her heart sank. Right.

“Amy,” Pretzel said. Best to be blunt about this. “I can’t sense Sonic anymore.”

The smile dropped from Amy’s face. “What do you mean? When did this happen?”

Pretzel’s ears swiveled back. “When the monster was attacking. I felt him just… cut off.”

Amy swallowed. “Cut off? What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s dead—” Please don’t let him be dead “—but the Gaia energy was torn out of him, somehow.” Which then raised the question of where it had gone. That much energy didn’t just disappear, yet she couldn’t sense it at all. It was like getting a limb cut off.

Amy closed her eyes, sucking in a deep breath. After a moment she opened them again, expression determined. “Okay. I’ll try and message Tails, though knowing Eggman I don’t think it’ll get through. If something was really wrong, Tails would have found a way to let us know. Right now, these storm monsters are the bigger threat. So we’ll… we’ll focus on those.”

Pretzel nodded.

Amy turned to Tikal. “Thank you for helping us with this. I’ll ask Vanilla if Cream can come help with the Chao garden sometime, I’m sure she’d be thrilled!” She glanced over at Big. “Do you want to come with us, Big?”

You are welcome to stay if you want, Tikal added.

“I’ll stay here,” Big agreed, patting one of the Chao currently cuddled against his side. They seemed to gravitate towards him, probably because they had good taste. Also Chaos had rescued Froggy from his pursuer and was currently holding him in the stream, much to the frustration of the Chao and relief of the frog, so they were short a playmate.

Amy gave Big a hug, which he gently returned. “See you later, then. Stay safe, all of you.”

The same to you, Tikal said, smiling warmly.

Chaos burbled from the stream and gently deposited Froggy on top of Big’s head, safely out of reach of the disappointed Chao. Then, unexpectedly, Chaos reached out and patted Pretzel’s head, gurgling something to her that was deep and profound and completely incomprehensible. They disappeared back into the stream, leaving Pretzel soaked and blinking in bewilderment.

Chaos likes you. Tikal sounded suspiciously close to laughing.

Amy also looked like she was trying to hide a laugh, but at Pretzel’s glare she schooled her expression into something more dignified. “I’m glad you’re making friends, Pretzel.”

Pretzel sighed. “I guess I could do worse than a water… monster… thing.”

“Their proper title is actually ‘god of destruction’.”

Pretzel stared at Amy incredulously, then at the stream, then at Amy again. “‘God of destruction’? That guy? Really?”

They were very destructive, as Perfect Chaos.

“And that’s enough to get called the ‘god of destruction’?” Pretzel demanded, incensed. “Chaos destroys one civilization—a civilization that antagonized them and attacked their family —and they get to be called the god of destruction!?”

“They destroyed Station Square, too,” Amy reminded her.

“And one city! One!” Pretzel lashed her tail indignantly. “What about all the civilizations I destroyed, huh? When do I get to be called a god of destruction?” If she was going to be the incarnation of darkness or whatever, she should at least get a cool title to match.

Amy gave Pretzel a placating pat. “I’m sure you’ll be properly feared someday.”

Pretzel pouted.

“Are we going now?” Whip asked, coming over to join them. The Chao he’d been playing with had gotten tired and, like their brethren, gravitated to Big.

Amy nodded, smiling. “Yup! We’ve got to save the world, remember?” 

This time she seemed more prepared for the robot picking her up. Pretzel jumped onto the robot’s shoulders, twining herself around its neck. Amy looked up at her questioningly, and she shrugged. “My wings are tired.”

The robot’s descent was more gradual than its ascent had been, much to Pretzel’s relief. It deposited them safely on the ground and blasted back up to the island with record speed.

“Wow, it’s fast,” Whip observed as they watched the robot fly off. “Can I be that fast?”

“Maybe,” Pretzel said, shrugging.

“If you eat your vegetables,” Amy said. A noble attempt. She’d been trying to improve Whip’s diet since they moved in, and had so far been thoroughly losing the battle. Judging by the face Whip made, this latest attempt wouldn’t be any more successful.

The jungle seemed different. The sun had lowered in the sky, the horizon turning red. The paths between the trees were cast in deep shadow, and the bird chatter was gone, its space filled by a chorus of insects. It was cooler, too, much to Pretzel’s relief.

“We should head back to that town before it gets dark,” Amy said.

“When are we having dinner?” Whip asked as they started walking.

“Soon, hopefully.” Amy glanced around at the jungle. She seemed uneasy in the evening gloom.

Pretzel was about to point out that she could see in the dark and so they had nothing to worry about when she heard… something. A crack? She whipped around, scanning the jungle. Nothing. That watched feeling was back with a vengeance, and now Pretzel was sure she wasn’t imagining it.

“Amy—” she started to say, turning back to her companions, but she was too late.

A cloaked figure lunged at Amy, pinning her to the ground before she could summon her hammer. Amy writhed, but a cloth was pressed to her muzzle and she suddenly went limp. Whip squeaked in outrage and rushed at the cloaked figure, but a second attacker threw a weighted net over him, and while Whip was thrashing with uncoordinated rage, a third clamped something around his neck, and he collapsed in a heap. It was over before Pretzel could think to react.

Something moved behind her, and Pretzel whipped around to see two more figures trying the same weighted net trick on her. The moment the net landed she moved on instinct, slipping through one of the holes with that unnatural fluidity Amy always found so disturbing. She shot up the nearest tree, pulling the shadows around her as she moved, and dropped flat on the branch, pulling a blanket of darkness around her. Then she waited.

The cloaked figures—she counted seven in total—milled about, searching for her. Finally they gave up and picked up the unconscious Amy and Whip, binding their limbs and gagging their mouths before dragging them off into the jungle.

Pretzel stayed crouched on the branch. A voice like Whip’s insisted she jump down and fight the figures off, rescue her friends like Whip or Amy or Sonic would, but the rest of her knew that would never work. For all her powers, she wasn’t skilled in combat, and one against seven? She wouldn’t stand a chance.

But she couldn’t just let them take Amy and Whip either.

Carefully Pretzel moved from her hiding spot and started hopping from tree to tree, following the figures on the ground below. She wasn’t Sonic or Amy or even Whip. She wasn’t a hero. But she was selfish and spiteful and mean. And she wasn’t letting these strangers have what was hers .

Chapter Text

Pretzel prowled through the trees, tracking the cloaked figures. Visually the kidnappers were almost impossible to spot; they didn’t carry any lights, moving with a silent grace that suggested they were intimately familiar with this area, and their dark cloaks blended perfectly with the lengthening shadows of the jungle. Luckily, Pretzel didn’t need sight. These people reeked of darkness, and not even in the sense that they were experiencing a lot of negative emotions. It was more like they’d been rolling in it, deliberately covering themselves with dark, negative auras. Somehow.

The kidnappers slowed as they reached a dip in the ground. Five of them stood guard over Whip and Amy—still unconscious, though Pretzel thought she could feel Whip beginning to stir—while the other two uncovered a hidden entrance in the ground. The first five dragged their victims forward, dropping them into the hole before heading into the darkness themselves. The last two waited a moment longer, probably making sure no one had seen their entrance, before pulling the trapdoor shut behind them.

Ha. As if that would stop Pretzel.

She jumped down from the tree and crept up to the entrance. The trapdoor was old, made of worn wood and rusted metal, set in a stone frame that looked even older. The hinges and lock on the door, however, were newer, as was the padding to muffle the sounds of it opening and closing. A recent renovation?

Pretzel could probably force the trapdoor open, or at least break the lock, but that would alert the kidnappers. Instead she felt around the trapdoor, testing the wood. As she’d suspected; the warping of the wood and the wear on the stone created a gap between the trapdoor and its frame. The gap was far too small for anything bigger than a mouse to get through (and even the mouse would be cutting it close), but as long as Pretzel’s shadow could make it… She closed her eyes and concentrated. You are energy. You are liquid. You are a shadow. This body isn’t real. You aren’t here. You are in there.

There was a brief melting sensation Pretzel didn’t like to dwell on, and then she was in. She shook herself, trying to get rid of the dizzy feeling that always followed that trick. Fortunately no one was on the other side of the door to catch her off guard.

Once she’d steadied herself, Pretzel crept forward down the tunnel, pulling the shadows around herself like a cloak. The walls were old stone, but the floor was packed dirt that squished slightly beneath her claws, and over all of it grew moss and vines and roots in a chaotic mess of plant life. Soundlessly Pretzel slipped past what seemed to be sentries, garbed similarly to the kidnappers. There were no lights to illuminate the passage. Could the people within see in the dark, then? That would make sneaking past them more difficult. Fortunately the sentries made the mistake most people did—they expected a human- or Mobian-sized intruder, and didn’t think to look down and see the odd shifts in the shadows from Pretzel’s passing.

As Pretzel prowled down the tunnel, she saw more and more offshoots, forks i the path and doors to musty rooms. She started scratching the wall at each turn she made. They’d probably need to make a quick escape, and she didn’t trust her memory to guide them back out. It seemed this wasn’t just a secret passage to a different destination; this was the destination, an entire underground complex. An old one, too, judging by the worn stone and architectural style. That “style” being… creepy, was the best word to describe it.

The walls weren’t straight but curved like the interior of a throat, a mental image that did not make Pretzel feel less uneasy. Said walls were lovingly carved with a myriad of eyes that seemed to follow her every movement, and where there weren’t eyes, there was what resembled veins . She didn’t know how they’d made them raised from the stone without any of them chipping, but they certainly didn’t help with the tunnel-throat comparison . (And she could have sworn one of the veins pulsed when she brushed against it.) A lot of tentacles, too. Just way too much going on on the walls. It was claustrophobic. And there were no sharp angles in this place, which should have made it seem friendlier, but the way the doors and walls and floor curved, unaligned with each other or even themselves, just made it feel even more like she was walking through the belly of some massive beast or into some cursed alternate reality.

There were some bits she did like, such as the fanged snakes that ran along the base of the wall in a tangled mass, and the bats that decorated some of the doorways, wings spreading over the arches. The creeping vines and roots and moss were nice, if slippery, and they muffled what little noise there was. No eye-searing lights, either. At some point she reached a part of the passage where a stream of water poured along the side of the hallway, its gentle trickling a soothing melody. Yes, some part of her really liked this place. She was doing her best to ignore that part, however, because this place had kidnapped her friends. And her own personal preferences aside, the whole aesthetic was clearly meant to unnerve the average visitor, which did not bode well for the intents of the inhabitants.

She kept glancing back at the eyes, which always seemed to stare back. Something about them… She shook it off. No dwelling on it. Just get Whip and Amy and get out. Simple as that.

She didn’t have to worry about getting lost on the way in , at least; she could feel Whip’s blinding presence, clear as ever, as well as his growing distress. She picked up the pace. The white light guided her deeper and deeper into the structure. A temple, she guessed, some sort of cult dedicated to… it didn’t matter what it was dedicated to. Find her friends, get out. Don’t think about it.

Pretzel slowed as she neared where Whip was being held. It seemed to be the central chamber of the place, which couldn’t be a good sign. The door was surrounded by (hopefully fake) teeth. Also not a good sign. Pretzel swallowed and crept inside.

Here at last was light: moonlight, pouring through a hole in the roof which was also surrounded by teeth—these ones made of crystal or glass—, and dripping with vines and roots from above. The hole was covered by tinted glass, dying the moonlight violet and casting the room in an eerie glow. Not like the room needed the help. All the creepy architecture of the previous corridor had reached its peak of grotesqueness here. Veins and eyes covered every surface, while carved figures of snakes and bats and even howling wolves seemed to swarm across the walls. Creeping plants and fungi cascaded down stone steps set up like stands in a stadium, all packed with silent cloaked figures fixated on the centerpiece in the middle of the room: a twisted iron cage. And in the cage, naturally, were Amy and Whip.

They weren’t unconscious anymore, not that that did them much good. Whip was flying around in a mad panic like he did whenever he was put in an enclosed space (car rides were a disaster ), while Amy tried to simultaneously soothe him and glare daggers at their captors. The seven who had kidnapped them (or at least, Pretzel was pretty sure it was the same seven) stood in a circle around the cage, watching their struggles impassively. It didn’t look like Amy or Whip had been harmed… yet. (Was that rust or blood stains on the cage? Please let it be rust.)

Pretzel forced herself to move, keeping to the edges of the room and pulling the shadows close around her. The crystals reflecting the moonlight made it trickier, but hopefully they’d also make it less likely for someone to take notice of any odd behavior from the shadows. She circled her way around the room, studying it. Now that there was more light, she took notice of the style of the cloaks on the… cultists? They were probably cultists, right? Whatever they were, their cloaks had similar eye-patterns as the rest of the temple. A few even seemed to have used glow-in-the-dark thread. And all of them, Pretzel realized, were wearing masks that looked like eyes. Singular giant eyes, covering their faces. Unconsciously Pretzel reached up to touch her third eye. It still felt cool and glass-like, not a real organ. ( But it could be. )

A coincidence. This all had to be a coincidence. Please let it be a coincidence.

Pretzel froze as the cultists around her suddenly shifted, but they weren’t looking at her. They were looking to the door. Someone was walking through; a short figure, probably Mobian, with an ornate cloak long enough to trail after their feet. The figure held a dark wood staff, embedded with purple crystals and topped with a carved eye (of course). The figure slowly walked down to the bottom of the bowl, the attention of all the other cultists following them attentively. The leader, then.

The seven kidnappers stepped back, allowing the leader to walk up to the cage. Their eye mask stared blankly at the captives.

“Who are you?” Amy demanded, her hand reaching out as if to summon her hammer, though the weapon failed to materialize. Pretzel remembered the metal band they’d clamped on Whip. Did they have some means of power blocking?

“We,” the leader said in a wheezing, raspy voice that nonetheless echoed through the chamber. “Are the children of Dark Gaia!”

All Pretzel’s hopes that her intuition was wrong, that this wasn’t what it looked like, crashed to the floor.

Amy’s face blanched. “You’re… what ?”

The leader threw back their hood dramatically, letting their wide ears spring free, and pulled off their mask to reveal a hairless leaf-nosed bat with blood-red eyes. No, he couldn’t be pure bat; he had a small horn on his head and a lizard-like tail. A hybrid, probably.

“I am the Naugus of Darkness, heir of all Naugus before me, last of the trolls!” The bat (troll? was he actually a troll or was he just trying to make himself sound cool?) declared, still in that same raspy voice. Did he smoke? “And we are the children of Dark Gaia, the shadow of Ixis, the true inheritors of darkness!”

Amy leaned forward, a peculiar gleam in her eyes. Pretzel knew that gleam; it was the look Amy’d gotten when she’d asked Pretzel what the world was like thousands of years ago, and when she’d seen the Gaia temple for the first time, and when she’d heard about all the other Gaia temples around the world. It was her archaeology nerd look, as Sonic put it.

“You’re the ‘last of the trolls’?” Amy asked eagerly. “Does that mean you’re descended from them? How directly? I mean it can’t be that directly, they’ve been extinct for millennia . Was it trolls that built this temple? Is this a temple of Ixis? You said ‘shadow of Ixis’, does that mean there’s a connection between Dark Gaia and Ixis?” She grabbed the bars excitedly. “Do you have any idea how hard it’s been to find remnants of the first civilization? This could be groundbreaking!”

The Naugus seemed caught off guard by her enthusiasm. “I… Uh, well…” he seemed to remember he had an audience and drew himself up with a cough. “Silence, light one! You and your companion stand here accused of sunblindness!”

“Sunblindness?” Amy echoed.

The Naugus swept around to dramatically gesture at the carvings on the wall. “Long ago, Ixis ruled the world with peaceful darkness!” Pretzel followed his outstretched arm to a carved image of some vague tentacled beast with a multitude of eyes. “But then came the seven stars , the Chaos Emeralds, which shattered Ixis and stole its power, giving it to an undeserving being: the Light .” The Naugus spat the word as if it was a bad taste, and the various cultists made strange growling noises that seemed to be the creepy Dark Gaia cult equivalent of booing.

“But Ixis lived on!” Naugus crowed, his raspy voice reaching a fervent peak. He gestured to another image, and this one made Pretzel’s heart sink right into the floor. There it was: Dark Gaia, in all its multi-eyed, toothy, tentacled glory. “Its shadow, Dark Gaia, fought against the arrogant Light and sought to return the world to the peaceful dark!”

He dropped his arms, his raspy voice lowering to a vengeful hiss that they all had to strain to hear. “But humanity—children of the Light—took the side of their wretched parent. They built temples to their false deity, strengthening its power. And their hubris reached its height two months ago!” His voice rose again, cracking with passion. “A human woke the Light from its slumber in the earth, stealing power from the Dark and giving it to this impostor deity!” He lowered his head. “And we all know what happened then.” Mournful howls filled the chamber.

Naugus swept his arms up again, cloak flaring like wings. “Humans and Mobians alike gave in to the Light’s sway, carrying out its bidding! Only the few true children of Ixis stayed loyal. And now we see the price of Earth’s betrayal, as the planet itself revolts against us! Storms destroy our homes and famines destroy our families!” 

Amy straightened, and Pretzel leaned forward. Did this lunatic know something about the storm monsters? Could they actually get some useful information out of this?

“These disasters are Ixis’s punishment of the unfaithful!” Naugus shrieked with mad fervor. Never mind, then. “For the complacence of humans and Mobians in Light Gaia’s conquest, Dark Gaia is punishing us! And to appease the Dark’s hatred, we must give it a sacrifice!” He gestured grandly to Amy and Whip. “A sacrifice of the lightblinded!”

Whip squeaked in terror, his panic over being put in a cage overshadowed by the implications of being sacrificed.

Even fearless Amy blanched. “W-wait, I don’t think—”

But the seven kidnappers were moving forward at Naugus’s direction, opening the cage and dragging Amy and Whip out. Pretzel naively hoped Whip would make a break for it—he was small and quick enough he could probably do it—, but instead he tried to fight his attackers and got his wings, hands, and legs bound for his troubles. Amy struggled against the grip of the cultists, and yes, now Pretzel could see a band around her neck similar to the one on Whip’s. Power limiters. A rare find. Perhaps someone in this club had powerful connections (or was just rich).

The sacrificees weren’t taken far; the cultists dragged them to an open spot on the floor of the bowl and held them there while Naugus pulled out a… oh, yup, that was a knife. A very long, probably very sharp knife. Okay. Time to do something. Pretzel picked up the pace, weaving through the attendant cultists down to the bottom of the bowl. A few jerked in surprise as they felt her brush past them, but most were too rapt by the scene before them to take notice of her.

“This isn’t going to change anything!” Amy called, struggling against her restraints.  She managed to jerk free of the two cultists holding her, but before she could make a break for it (or, more likely knowing Amy, fight them) the other cultists dogpiled her and forced her to the ground. Pretzel winced, but at least it kept the cultists from noticing her as she slipped past and started climbing up the cage. “You really don’t need to do this!” Amy shouted as Naugus approached Whip (who needed considerably less people to hold him down) with a knife. “We’re trying to fix the problem, same as you!”

“There is only one solution,” Naugus said, raising the knife with a mad glint in his eye. “And that is blood .”

That was her cue. Pretzel reared up on the cage, snapping her wings open to their full extent, and pulled on all the shadows and negative emotions in the room. They responded eagerly. Her shadow grew into a huge silhouette, mirroring perfectly the image of Dark Gaia carved into the wall behind her. Pretzel shoved dread onto the minds of the cultists, and a chorus of screams rang out, with some cultists even trying to bolt from the room. Ha. So much for being children of the dark. Even Naugus gaped, staring up at Pretzel’s shadow. The knife clattered to the ground.

“W-who are you?” Naugus squeaked.

I am Dark Gaia’s vessel! Pretzel declared, projecting her mental voice as loudly (and deeply) as she could. It seemed to work, judging by Naugus’s flinch. A few more cultists fled the room, while the rest cowered. The true inheritor of darkness! And you… She cast her shadow over Naugus, twisting its gaping jaws into a sneer. Never mind that that didn’t make any sense with how shadows worked; this was about presentation. You dare presume to speak for Dark Gaia?

“B-but the Dark One itself ordered me to do this!” Naugus squeaked.

That was news to Pretzel. She didn’t let her surprise show. Idiot. Would you fall for every impostor claiming to be me? Clearly you know nothing of the true dark.

“But—” Naugus started to argue.

I am Dark Gaia! Pretzel declared grandly, casting her shadow as big as she could, while simultaneously sending out another wave of terror, this one mostly concentrated on Naugus. If she could just get him, the rest would likely follow. I am the darkness itself, the depth of the ocean, the chill of the night! Why should I want your petty sacrifices?

“They’re sunblinded!” Naugus protested. “They follow an impostor deity!”

Oh, like you? Pretzel sneered. If they are so tainted, how is it that you dare bring them to my temple?

“I… hadn’t considered that,” Naugus admitted nervously.

Pretzel rolled her eyes. Of course you didn’t. Get them out of here immediately. I have no interest in these “sacrifices” of yours.

Naugus blinked. “You would have us… free them?”

And now he was getting suspicious. For all the negative emotion in the room, Pretzel still had only a weak grasp on her powers. Without better knowledge of Naugus and his fears she couldn’t terrify him into submission, and she didn’t know nearly enough about this cult’s beliefs to convince him intellectually. Fortunately, convincing them she was Dark Gaia had never been part of the plan.

Are you deaf as well as dumb? Pretzel’s shadow demanded, while Pretzel herself snuck around behind Naugus and over to Amy and Whip. Whip perked up and Pretzel quickly shushed him. Thankfully he got the message and kept quiet.

Naugus’s eyes had narrowed. “If you’re the real Dark Gaia, then why are you only a shadow?”

You think I have the time to visit you in person? Pretzel projected, making her voice sound bored. There’s a hundred lunatics just like you around the world. Or there were a hundred, she corrected thoughtfully. Some of them couldn’t take a hint.

Naugus cringed.

While he tried to grovel for his life, Pretzel investigated Amy’s limiter band. It needed a key. Great. She grabbed hold of the chain binding Amy’s wrists and broke it with a snap. Naugus didn’t seem to notice, but at least one of the cultists glanced over. Quickly Pretzel broke the rest of Amy’s chains and moved on to Whip. Several cultists were standing now, looking intently down at them.

“Naugus!” One of them shouted, pointing. Naugus whipped around and stumbled back in surprise.

Turning your back on me? Rude, Pretzel’s shadow said, right before it slammed into him. There was no physical force to it—it was a shadow, after all—but Pretzel hit him with one last onslaught of fear, distracting him long enough for her to grab his knife and his keys and toss both to Amy.

Amy grinned and unlocked her limiter band just as one of the cultists (apparently this one had a better reaction time then the others, who were still standing around being surprised) lunged for her. In an instant they were downed by a swift hammer to the head. Amy tossed the keys to Whip, who fumbled to catch them before they hit the floor. Naugus jumped forward with surprising agility and grabbed Whip’s wings. Whip screamed. Pretzel snarled and pounced on Naugus, digging her teeth into his pointed nose. He screamed. Pretzel—very much regretting biting him instead of scratching, he tasted foul —pulled Whip free, and together they ran to join Amy, who had her hammer at the ready and was facing down the seven kidnappers… who were still hesitating.

“What are you waiting for?” Naugus screamed at the attendant cultists. “ Get them! ”

The seven kidnappers exchanged looks—or at least, they turned their eyeball masks to each other. Hard to say what their expressions were under there.

“If that’s Dark Gaia,” one of them said slowly. “Then shouldn’t we do what she says?”

“That isn’t Dark Gaia!” Naugus shrieked.

“And how would you know that?” One of them challenged. “What if it is Dark Gaia? I wouldn’t want to go against her direct word, not even for you, Naugus.” Several other cultists nodded in agreement, but another jumped up in protest.

“That’s not Dark Gaia! Dark Gaia’s vessel is a wolf , not a cat! And besides, Dark Gaia isn’t a she . Everyone knows that!”

A heated argument broke out as all the cultists started pitching in their own opinions on what Dark Gaia would look like when she appeared in the flesh. Whatever decision they came to, Pretzel wasn’t there to hear it. She, Amy, and Whip were already rushing out the doors and into the corridor, leaving the sound of arguing and Naugus’s frustrated shrieks behind. Pretzel took the lead, glad she’d thought to mark the corridors as she went down them the first time. The complex was wonderfully empty; it seemed every one of the cult’s members had attended that meeting. Well, almost every one. Two very surprised guards didn’t have time to react before Pretzel forced the trap door open, and the three of them burst out into the jungle night.

They didn’t stop running until the guards’ shouting had completely faded from hearing behind them. At last they paused, listening. The only sound was the jungle ambience. Amy put her hammer away and Whip flopped to the ground, panting. Pretzel started cleaning her paws, hoping to get rid of the taste of Naugus’s flesh. Ew.

“I don’t get it,” Whip said when he’d regained his breath, the first to break the silence. “What was that big shadow? Was that actually—” he shuddered. “—Dark Gaia?”

“That was me,” Pretzel said. So technically, yes. “I can manipulate shadows, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” Whip said. “Um—umberkin—”

“Umbrakinesis,” Amy provided.

Whip frowned, sitting up. “But Pretzel, why did you pretend to be Dark Gaia? Why didn’t you just—” he mimed punching motions. “Fight the bad guys?”

Pretzel stretched out on the ground, closing her eyes against Whip’s glow. Now that they were safe, the feelings of panic from seeing her friends taken and satisfaction from breaking them free had both been replaced by a pounding headache and a deep-set weariness. She didn’t want to think about the horrifying temple dedicated to her honor, and the cult apparently killing people in her name, or about how easy it had been to slip into the persona of their dark lord or whatever. She was just… tired.

“Pretzel?” Whip asked, poking her. The touch sent a jolt of light through her—not enough to burn, but not pleasant either. “Why didn’t you fight?

Pretzel sighed. “We can’t all be heroes like you, Whip.” She ignored Amy’s look and stood, shaking herself. “We were going to the town, right? Let’s get moving before those lunatics find us again.”

Amy didn’t look happy, but she accepted the change of topic anyway. “I don’t know how we’ll find our way there in the dark.”

“I’ll scout ahead,” Pretzel volunteered immediately. “Wait here.” She took off into the trees before Amy could argue, glad to leave behind furrowed brows and questioning eyes. 

The night sky was beautiful overhead, clear and free of pollution. Why would anyone choose to live underground, in creepy stone tunnels, the only moonlight twisted and tainted into something eerie? Who had built that temple? Had she encouraged cults like that, in the time before? Another item on her long list of sins.

Pretzel stopped on a branch, squeezing her eyes shut. Her conversation with Whip echoed in her head. Why didn’t you fight? We can’t all be heroes.

Somewhere below, Amy and Whip were waiting for her. Somewhere below were two of the brightest, kindest, most heroic people in the world, counting on Pretzel of all people. Somewhere below were two innocent lives who had almost been destroyed because of her .

They were waiting. Pretzel grit her teeth and kept moving.

Chapter Text

They reached the town safely, and Amy used her magic powers (talking to people) to get them a place to stay for the night. Whip devoured the food she got him and then immediately dozed off. He still didn’t seem to realize he didn’t need sleep. Or maybe his constant zipping around expended a ton of energy and that was why he needed actual rest? Maybe if Pretzel ran around like a maniac all the time she’d need to sleep sometimes, too.

Pretzel perched on the windowsill, listening to the ocean crashing against the beach nearby, just out of sight. Amy was in bed, reading. She claimed it helped her relax. Maybe Pretzel should try it sometime. Whip was snoring on the pillow by Amy’s head. Amy didn’t seem to mind.

“Sorry for running away,” Pretzel said, because it was needed. “When you got captured. I hid.”

Amy blinked up at her. “That’s—Pretzel, it’s fine. You don’t have to be a fighter like me. Or Whip,” she added, casting the sleeping Gaia an amused smile. She looked back at Pretzel. “Your way of doing things actually saved us this time. Thank you.”

Pretzel flicked her tail. “You got captured by a cult dedicated to me. If anything it was—”

“No,” Amy interrupted sharply. “You can’t blame yourself for what they chose to do, Pretzel.”

Pretzel studied her for a moment. “Did you know? That there was a Dark Gaia cult?”

Amy sighed, running a finger along the spine of her book. “I’d heard about Gaia cults that sprang up after the incident. I mean, there have always been people who believed in and even worshipped the Gaias, but it was mostly relegated to specific cultures and places. It was only recently that it started spreading globally. For obvious reasons, I guess.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to upset you. These movements have been spreading, yes, but they’re still outliers. It’s not something you needed to worry about.” She looked up at Pretzel with a serious expression. “And I mean it. You can’t take responsibility for what they choose to do. They latched on to the image of your past self, but you never told them to do any of this. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been Light Gaia, or Chaos, or something else entirely. This isn’t on you.”

Pretzel just shrugged and turned back to the window.

A few moments later Amy’s breathing shifted, and she glanced back to see her fast asleep, book fallen on the floor. Pretzel hopped down, put Amy’s bookmark back in place, and set the book on the bedside table. She adjusted Amy’s position so her neck wouldn’t hurt in the morning, moved Whip down beside her, tugged up the sheets around them both (not that she thought they would need them, really; it was cooler now, but still warm for Pretzel’s tastes), and then flicked off the light. She jumped back on the windowsill and looked down at her companions. They were both sleeping peacefully. At least they weren’t having nightmares.

Pretzel curled up on the windowsill, looking out towards the jungle. She knew intuitively what way the temple was; she could feel the cultists, their mingled fear and uncertainty and bitterness. That was her doing, at least partly. Why didn’t you fight? Whip had asked. Your way of doing things actually saved us this time, Amy had said. Did she actually believe that, or did they both think her a coward? Was she a coward? Was she worse?

Pretzel sighed. She wouldn’t find answers tonight. She had something else she needed to do.

Pretzel closed her eyes and stepped into her dream world. The crystals and stone walls seemed far less inviting now after her experience in the temple. She was just glad the rock didn’t have any carvings on it. Pretzel walked along the threads of sleeping minds. Normally she’d just seek out any old nightmare, but tonight she had specific targets. She found one soon, checking that she had the right person, before slipping into their dream.

Waves lashed, and thunder and rain crashed overhead as a storm not unlike the one that had hit Empire City surged over a small town. The dreamer, a cricket, screamed in terror as her home and family were washed away in a tidal wave. A nightmare, but one with the edge of memory. Normally Pretzel did her best not to intrude on the minds of the dreamers, but this time she made an exception, delicately poking at the thread of memory to see what came after the storm. And ah, there it was: a friend approached her, mentioned a group who thought they could stop the storms. The cricket, lost and frightened, took the bait, and before long she’d been indoctrinated into the cult. 

Several other cultists probably had similar pasts, and Pretzel didn’t doubt they’d seen a surge in membership after the Gaia incident two months ago. Perhaps that had even been when they’d started; that temple certainly hadn’t been built by this group, so perhaps they were a new movement taking advantage of what had been left behind by a far older movement.

Thunder crashed, and Pretzel jolted. The dream shifted, and suddenly the storm was a monster like the one that attacked Empire City. The cricket gasped in shock, and Pretzel jerked back. The monster didn’t just look like the one that attacked the city; it was the exact same one. Had she accidentally brought it into the dream? Pretzel hissed to herself. She should have known better than to go dreamwalking with her emotions as much of a mess as they were. Hopefully she could reverse the—

The creature was looking directly at her.

At her, not the dreamer, not anything behind her. At her , Pretzel.

It didn’t roar. It didn’t attack. Instead it reached out a claw towards her with a strange, terrifying gentleness. The claw rested lightly on Pretzel’s head, cool to the touch, and for a moment—just a moment—she knew the creature in its entirety. Its love, its mourning, its pain, its cold and relentless fury —

Pretzel screamed.

She jerked awake with a gasp, claws scoring deep gashes in the wood windowsill beneath her. She flailed for balance, heaving for breath she didn’t need, and looked around the room wildly, trying to reassure herself that she was here, she was present, the monster wasn’t real, it had just been a nightmare—

Thunder crashed outside. Pretzel whirled around, digging her claws into the wood as she leaned out the window. Rain lashed her fiercely, and the wind seemed to howl. No; that wasn’t the wind. Pretzel stared as the monster reared over the town, storm clouds and unnatural fog spreading around it like a dark cloak. The monster looked down, and for a moment it and Pretzel locked eyes. 

The same monster from Empire City. The same monster from the dream. Pretzel’s heart dropped and in that moment she knew. It had followed them here. It had followed her here. She had brought this upon this town.

“Pretzel!” Amy called. The storm had woken her and Whip, and she already had her hammer in hand. “Pretzel, come on!”

Pretzel pulled herself from her daze and darted over to Amy. As they hurried out into the hallway she kept close to Amy’s heels, willing her wings to stop shaking. Whip darted around them, flying ahead and circling back, over and over again, his own wings fluttering with nervous energy. They hurried down the stairs. Each boom of thunder seemed to shake the building to its foundation, and between the crashes Pretzel heard the monster’s howls. They made it outside, and Pretzel folded her wings tight to her back to keep from getting blown away by the wind. Whip, with his smaller wings and flight that seemed to defy actual physics, was less affected, though he hung close to Amy anyway. Amy, still clutching her hammer, stared up at the monster.

“Not again,” she whispered. “Not here. Did it…?”

“Amy,” Pretzel said urgently. 

She could feel the monster’s focus on her like a pressure in her mind, and the image of their apartment, reduced to rubble, kept flashing in her eyes. They hadn’t been able to stop it last time, and this time destroying a few buildings wouldn’t be enough. It wanted them . It wanted her .

Pretzel swallowed. “Amy, we need to—”

Something caught her eye.

The jaguar and the quetzal from the beach, from a time before water gods and cults and storms. They were huddled in the street a little ways away, staring wide-eyed up at the monster. The monster stared back.

No, Pretzel begged, body frozen. Don’t do this.

The monster raised its claws.

“Leave them alone!” Whip shrieked, and flew off before anyone could stop him.

“Whip!” Pretzel yelled, taking off. The wind pulled at her wings, rain lashing her eyes, and she grit her teeth, urging herself to fly faster, even though she knew there was no chance of her catching up. She’d always been slower than Whip, and in this storm… She was slow, too slow, she wouldn’t get there in time, what was Whip thinking —

The monster’s head snapped up, its gaze falling on Whip. It growled, a deep rumble that shook the air as surely as the thunder. Whip, stupid , reckless Whip, charged right at it. Pretzel dove after him, not sure what she was hoping to accomplish, but it didn’t matter because she was too far away, too slow. The claws came down, and Whip was thrown through the air like a meteor, crashing down somewhere out of Pretzel’s view. 

On instinct Pretzel reached for him, grasping desperately to feel his mind and know he was alright—and instead she felt something cold and dark and terrifying. For a moment the storm seemed to still, and it was just Pretzel and the monster, locking eyes through the rain.

Pretzel almost pulled away from the connection. She didn’t want to understand this thing; she didn’t want to have anything in common with it. But… fighting it didn’t work.

Whip would fight it anyway, she told herself. Whip did fight it anyway. Whip and Amy and Sonic—they’d all find a way to defeat this thing.

But Pretzel wasn’t Whip or Amy or Sonic. Pretzel was just Pretzel. The monster who, apparently, had a connection to other monsters.

Your way of doing things actually saved us this time. Amy had said that. What if she had meant it?

Her way of doing things.

Might as well give it a shot.

Instead of shoving the connection away, Pretzel mentally grabbed hold of her link to the monster, strengthening it, refusing to let the monster pull away. She held its gaze, lifting her chin. You want me to feel what you feel? Fine. But you have to listen to me, too.

Why are you doing this? she projected sharply.

To her surprise, the monster actually responded. Not with words, but with a jumbled wave of feelings and images and sensations. Images of human creations, of wild lands taken over by man, of polluted oceans and dying life, and over it all a feeling of aching pain. She felt the monster’s grief and rage at humanity, and she understood it.

I get it, she said, because she did. People, she had observed, had a very strong tendency to cause pain, to themselves, to each other, and to the very world they lived on. It hurts. But this? She projected an image of the destruction it had caused, of the terrified people. This isn’t going to make it hurt less. She knew that from personal experience; no matter how she lashed out, it never took the pain away, only forced it onto other people. She projected that feeling, too, urging the monster to understand.

And it did. It made a low, mournful noise that reminded her of whale song, and then… it disappeared. Pretzel gasped, jerking back in surprise as the monster dissolved into dark purple mist, not unlike the fog it had brought with it. The mist surrounded her before she could escape. Pretzel sucked in a breath as she felt a sudden rush of energy, of power. Images and sensations rushed through her head: a boat tossed by the sea; an ocean storm lashing the trees; a whale gliding gracefully through the moonlight; a shark hunting its prey in the depths. Pretzel saw them, felt them, and knew them. She knew this feeling of power rushing through her veins, the force of the ocean made manifest. This power was hers.

That was what the monster was. That was why it had taken such an interest in her. It was a piece of her, a piece of her power.

A piece of Dark Gaia.

That was what Tikal had said; that the storms were caused by the Gaias. Was that what all of these disasters were? Pieces of rogue Gaia power?

Pretzel didn’t have time to think about it; the rush of images had barely faded before suddenly the world shifted and she was somewhere else.

They were destroying it. They were destroying it, the home of her children, the place that was hers. These things, things not of her, these unnatural machines, were destroying the things that were hers , all to build their arrogant little “cities”.

Destroy them, the voice urged.

Her anger rose to a crescendo, and the waves rose with it. She roared down at the city, rage fracturing her vision and flooding it red. She could see the little creatures, sneering at her, her, and she hated them. She crashed her darkness down on the city, crushing it, crushing them, and still her vision was filled with red, red, red, fractured like glass, and the voice kept urging her to destroy, destroy, destroy.

She obeyed.

Pretzel gasped, jerking upright, claws scrabbling for purchase on the slick mud. She was on the ground; had she fallen from the air? Whip was holding her arm and Amy was running over to her. Both alive, both unhurt. Pretzel looked up, blinking away the rain. The monster was gone. The storm was gone, too, leaving only gentle rain. Just normal, wonderful, blessed rain. The jaguar and the quetzal were being led away by an older jaguar; the child’s mother, probably. How long had Pretzel been out? It couldn’t have been long, since neither Amy nor Whip looked particularly concerned.

Out. Pretzel remembered what she’d seen, what she’d felt, and shuddered.

“Pretzel! Pretzel, that was awesome !” Whip gushed. “You made a face like this—” He let go of her arm to put his fists on his hips and scowl at the air. “—and poof! It was gone!”

“That was really impressive,” Amy agreed, smiling. “How’d you do it, anyway?”

Pretzel glanced at Whip, who stared back at her innocently. Best not to talk about it being a part of Dark Gaia with him here; it would raise way too many questions. “I, uh, talked to it. The monster. It was confused and in pain—more of an animal than anything, really. I calmed it down and it, uh, left.”

Whip looked taken aback. “It… left? I thought you defeated it. Like, y’know—” he punched the air, making “pow! pow!” noises. “Like the heroes do!” 

“She did defeat it. It isn’t hurting anyone anymore, is it?” Amy smiled at Pretzel. “Pretzel just did it her own way.”

Pretzel glanced away, uncomfortable with the pride in Amy’s expression.

“But… it was evil ,” Whip said, clearly lost. “The bad guys don’t just give up , right?”

“Sometimes it’s more complicated than bad guy, good guy, Whip,” Pretzel sighed.

Whip just made a doubtful noise. Then he looked at Pretzel, cocking his head. “Hey, you look different.”

Pretzel blinked and looked down at herself. He was right. Her fur had shifted to a darker, richer brown, not unlike the mud beneath their feet. She reached up to touch the tufts on the sides of her head. They felt different, more fin-like, and from the corner of her eye she could see they’d turned from their previous purple to blue like her claws, as had the skin of her wings. The biggest change, though, she could feel on her back: she had, somehow, spontaneously manifested a dorsal fin, like a shark or a fish.

“Huh,” Pretzel said, trying not to show her unease. She’d regained a massive chunk of her Gaia energy; of course there’d be changes, and these weren’t really that massive. But they still meant she was just a bit closer to becoming that thing she’d glimpsed in the other reality.

Whip was still looking at her expectantly. She needed to think of an explanation.

“It’s probably just a side effect of defeating the, uh, monster,” Pretzel said. “It gave me an energy boost.”

“Oh, like when you beat a bad guy in a video game!” Whip latched onto the idea immediately. “You leveled up!”

Well, that was one way of looking at it.

“If I fight a monster, will I level up too? Are there any more monsters to fight? I want to have cool spiky things!” Whip looked around as if expecting a monster to just appear out of thin air. To be fair, the last one had just dis appeared into thin air, so maybe he was onto something.

“ Are there more monsters like that?” Amy asked, looking at Pretzel.

“I think so,” Pretzel said, sifting through what she’d received from the storm monster. Except “monster” wasn’t really the right word for it. Piece? Wisp? Fragment? Should she give it a name? Was it weird to name something after you kind of killed it? “I don’t think they’re all exactly like that, but… yes, there are others.”

“Do you think you could stop them, too?”

Now wasn’t that the question. Pretzel still didn’t fully get what she’d done with the storm mon—Hurricane, she was just going to call it Hurricane. She didn’t know how she’d stopped Hurricane. But she’d done something . Could she do it again?

“I… maybe,” she said at last. “I don’t know. Probably?”

“Then it’s settled,” Amy decided, putting her hands on her hips. “The three of us will find these other monsters and stop them!”

“Yes!” Whip cheered. “Save the world! Save the world!”

Amy grinned, twirling her hammer. “That’s right. And speaking of saving the world…” she glanced around at the town. “Why don’t you go fly around and see if anyone needs help? Pretzel and I will check on things here.”

“We will?” Pretzel asked, feeling like she was missing something as Whip saluted and shot off.

Amy didn’t respond until Whip had flown out of sight. Then she dropped her hammer into hammerspace and turned back to Pretzel. “Alright, tell me the full story now.”

Ohhh. That made sense.

“It’s a piece of me. The monster.”

“A… piece? What kind of piece?”

Pretzel furrowed her brow, trying to figure out how to explain. “When Whip and I took these forms, we gave up a lot of the powers we’d had as Gaias. All that energy, that power, had to go somewhere . And now it’s wreaking havoc.”

Amy frowned. “But I thought Sonic took the excess Gaia energy?”

“He took on a lot of it—” more than he should have, Pretzel added silently. “—but not all . I thought the rest would just dissipate, but apparently it. Well. Went rogue.” She might have anticipated this if she had any clue how her own powers worked .

Amy bit her lip. “You said you got cut off from Sonic. Does that have anything to do with this?”

Pretzel hadn’t considered that. “Maybe? Whatever happened, I think it had to do with the Gaia energy he was carrying. Like it suddenly got ripped away from him.”

“And turned into monsters?”

“I… don’t think so,” Pretzel said slowly. “It might have. But I feel like it ended up somewhere else.”

Amy hummed. “So you think all the strange weather and natural disasters we’ve been hearing about are because of rogue Gaia energy?”

Pretzel nodded.

Amy clapped her hands and smiled. “Then this should be easy! All we have to do is have you and Whip take the energy back, right?”

“I doubt the other fragments will go easily,” Pretzel pointed out, if only to avoid her bigger concern. She looked down at herself again. If she’d changed this much from just one fragment…

Amy’s excitement faded. “Do you know what will happen if you and Whip absorb all the fragments?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“We’re going to have to tell him,” Amy sighed. “Or else he’ll figure it out on his own.”

Pretzel remembered receiving the memory from Hurricane and shuddered. Amy was right; if they were hoping to have Whip absorb his stray fragments, they’d have to tell him the truth of his identity. And the truth of Pretzel’s. What would happen then? Would he resent them for not telling him? Would he hate Pretzel for what she was?

“I don’t think we should tell him right away,” Pretzel said, trying not to sound too pleading.

Amy gave her an understanding look. “I suppose it can wait until we understand the situation better.” She looked around. “Speaking of Whip, I’d better go check on him. Hopefully he hasn’t eaten all the village’s food supplies. You want to come?”

“I’ll wait here.”

“I’ll be back soon,” Amy promised, and then Pretzel was alone.

She’d thought often about when Whip would inevitably find out about their true origins, but that didn’t make her dread it any less. As annoying as Whip was, Pretzel had come to almost like having him as a brother. She didn’t want to see him become a hate-filled monster again. But more than that she feared—selfishly—that he wouldn’t change, that he would stay Whip, but a Whip that hated her, Pretzel. Hated her for not telling him, hated her for what she had been, hated her for what she was.

Whip was annoying and overwhelming and exhausting to be around, but he was the closest thing she had to family. Sonic was gone now. Rouge only rarely visited, usually brief “hellos” while on business in the city, and Pretzel hadn’t seen Shadow or Blaze since the Gaia incident. She had Amy, but if Whip turned against her, which of them would Amy choose?

Pretzel dug her claws into the mud. She didn’t want to lose them, any of them. But she’d already let selfishness direct her in the past, and now the entire world was in danger.

She had to make this right. Whatever it cost.

Chapter Text

A week after Pretzel and Whip first moved in, Amy, fast growing sick of their constant arguments, went out to Family Video and rented several different children’s shows in the hopes of finding one both Pretzel and Whip would like. The winner was Yu-Gi-Oh! , which Whip liked because it had cute monsters, friendship, and a hero with magic powers and a strong sense of justice who made sure the bad guys got their comeuppance, and which Pretzel liked because it had gross monsters, crimes, and a hero who was a highly unstable ghost that used dark magic to mindbreak people who annoyed him. Amy had ended up banning the show within the week for her parents’ sakes (apparently humans had a limit to how much yelling about card games they could take), but while it lasted it marked a turning point in Pretzel’s relationship with Whip. It had been when she stopped seeing him as a threat and started seeing him as annoying-but-potentially-tolerable. Screaming at characters on a screen with your sibling really had a way of building a bond.

Maybe it was the Egypt parallels, but as they arrived in Shamar, Pretzel found herself remembering that time watching Yu-Gi-Oh! . She remembered the only light coming from the TV, the curtains drawn and closed, the air conditioning humming quietly in the background, barely audible beneath the constant chatter of the characters on the screen. That had been nice. Shamar was not nice, and within seconds of setting foot on its blistering hot sand, Pretzel concluded that she would much, much rather be watching Yu-Gi-Oh! .

“I hate it here,” Pretzel declared.

“Really?” Whip asked from where he was already rolling in the sand. “I love it! It’s so bright and warm and big!”

“Exactly,” Pretzel said, looking up at the brilliant blue sky with disgust. “It’s awful.”

“You’re weird,” Whip said.

“ You’re weird,” Pretzel shot back.

“Focus, guys,” Amy said, studying her phone. “The storm will be hitting any minute.” She tucked her phone away, replacing it with her hammer, and looked around. “We need a better vantage point.”

They’d left the village after spending several hours helping with the clean-up effort. They weren’t construction workers or anything, but they’d at least been able to clear some of the rubble, and in the process Pretzel discovered her already disproportionate strength had increased after absorbing Hurricane, enough to impress even Amy. Amy and Whip seemed to think this was a good thing (“it’s because you leveled up,” Whip said confidently), but Pretzel—well, Pretzel tried not to think about it. When it was clear there wasn’t much else they could do, they’d headed back to the Mystic Ruins, where Amy had picked out the door to Shamar. She’d said it was because the news had mentioned unusual sandstorms in the area, but Pretzel wasn’t ruling out the possibility that this was Amy getting back at her for the expense of the clawed up windowsill.

Amy looked around at the empty street and picked out a building nearby. She gracefully jumped her way up to the roof as if she did it every day. Maybe she did? Was building scaling part of Amy’s regular workout routine? Pretzel and Whip flew after her, still debating the pros and cons of the desert. They fell silent as they joined Amy at the edge of the roof.

“Wow,” Whip said, staring up at the fast approaching wall of sand. “I didn’t realize it would be so big.”

“We do not want to be caught out in that,” Amy said, grimacing. “Pretzel?”

Pretzel nodded and reached out for the creature. She could sense it, a living presence within the storm, and she brushed against it, expecting something like Hurricane. Stupid. Reckless. She should have known better, but her previous victory had made her overconfident and now—

Light. Burning, searing light and heat and fire and it was Light Gaia, that was Light Gaia, burning into her, ripping her apart, tearing her to pieces, no no no NO —

Pretzel jerked away from the contact, but the fear stayed, the memory of claws tearing into her, of that brilliant light burning into her skin and scales and mind, reducing her to ashes, burning and burning and burning. Amy was talking to her urgently, but Pretzel couldn’t hear her over the desperate pounding of her own heart. It was out there, that monster. Not Light Gaia, but horribly, horribly similar. A beast of light and fire, and it was coming closer and closer —!

“New plan,” Amy decided, scooping Pretzel up and leaping down from the roof.

Whip flew after her as Amy ran down the street and ducked into an open building. There was a loud thud as the door closed behind them and they were plunged into darkness. Separated from the approaching monster, the illusory claws clenching Pretzel’s chest loosened their grip, and the vice of fear on her mind eased.

“Sorry,” she muttered to Amy.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Amy said. “I should have guessed.”

“Guessed what?” Whip asked curiously. “Why are we hiding?”

“It’s a, uh, fire monster,” Amy explained hastily. “Pretzel, um… doesn’t like fire monsters. Like how you don’t like ghosts. But worse.”

“ Oh ,” Whip said. He looked over at Pretzel, expression unusually somber. “Sorry, Pretzel.”

Pretzel just nodded, too worn out from the emotional rollercoaster to bother with a response. She flinched as the door rattled and reminded herself it was just the force of the sandstorm. The monster didn’t know they were here. Yet .

“So what do we do now?” Whip asked Amy. “Are we still going to fight it?”

“We’ll think of a plan. This thing’s got to have a weakness…”

“If it’s a fire monster, it’s an opposite of the water monster. So if Pretzel beat the water monster…” Whip perked up. “I can beat the fire monster!”

“Wait, Whip, don’t—” Amy started, eyes widening in alarm, but Whip was already flying for the door.

“Don’t worry!” he called back to them. “I’ll stop it!” And then he disappeared into the hail of sand.

Pretzel jumped to her feet, her fear suddenly twisting in a different direction. No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening. Whip was tiny and soft and stupid, he wouldn’t stand a chance against that thing. And what if it took him and made him something else? Something more like Light Gaia? She couldn’t let that happen. She had to do something.

“I’m going after him,” she said, and took off out the door before she could think about all the reasons she should absolutely not do that.

Wind and sand whipped against her, lashing painfully on fur and scales alike. She summoned a shadow shield, weak in the sunlight but enough to protect her from the worst of the sand, and flew upwards, squinting through the storm. There: a flash of red fur, a tug of white light. Flying towards the center of the storm, where—

Burning, furious hatred, made terrifyingly manifest. It could sense them, both of them, and it wanted to destroy. Whip was flying toward it. He could stop it, but not like that. Not by fighting it. He didn’t know himself, didn’t know this thing. What would it do to him? Kill him? Could it? No. It would do something worse. He was too close; it was turning on him, eyes burning, burning, burning. She couldn’t let it have him. 

“Hey!” Pretzel yelled over the roaring storm, pretending the scratchy crack in her voice was from the sand and not her own terror.

The monster whipped around to lock eyes with her, and Pretzel’s chest seized all over again. Her wingbeats faltered, and if she wasn’t frozen with fear she would have fled. It didn’t matter: the monster had seen her, and now it lunged, grabbing her, claws searing her fur and scales. Pretzel couldn’t scream; the sound lodged in her throat, choking her, and she could only stare up at the creature in silent terror.

It didn’t speak. It only burned, burned with primal hatred and rage, searing into her mind. The claws closed tighter, digging into her, ready to tear her apart, and what then? Would she become a fragment like Hurricane had? A ghost of age-old hatred? Would any piece of Pretzel remain, or would it all be Dark Gaia? Would Whip and Amy be—

“Leave my sister alone !”

Whip slammed into the monster, and the grip on Pretzel lessened. In an instant she slipped free, the pounding pain of being torn to pieces making it frighteningly easy to turn immaterial. She fell to the ground amid the whirling sand, more shadow than person, and desperately reached for the fraying pieces of herself, reclaiming the straying strands of energy before they could dissipate, knitting herself back together with careful, painful stitches.

Only when she could feel the heat of the sand against her paws did she finally dare to look up. Whip was staring down the fragment. The furious wind and sand had stilled around them, like they were in the eye of the storm. They were talking, she could tell. The fragment was less than expressive, but she could read Whip’s face clearly: confusion, fear, anger, understanding, cycling in response to whatever the monster was showing him.

Fragment, she reminded herself. This thing wasn’t any different than Hurricane. She knew that, she knew she should show it the same compassion and understanding, that Whip would need to empathize with it, yet the terror clinched in her chest, and—

This thing was hatred, and anger, and it hated her. What if it convinced Whip… no, that was ridiculous. Wasn’t it?

“I understand,” Whip said, blinking up at the monster. He had a tendency to speak out loud even when communicating mentally. “I understand why you’re angry.”

Despite all her attempts at reasoning with herself, Pretzel’s stomach dropped. Was this it, then? Was this the moment when—

“But this isn’t right ,” Whip said, in that earnest way only he could. “You can’t just hurt people because you don’t like them. Destroying things—” he looked around at the town, covered in sand and scorched by fire. “Destroying things is never right.”

And the monster… listened. It bowed its head, and faded away, and then the storm was gone, and it was just Pretzel and Whip and the silence.

She waited quietly while Whip stared off into space until he jerked back with a frightened cry. Then she approached, cautiously.

Like her, the influx of energy had changed him. Whip’s fur had lightened to a softer burgundy red from its previous crimson shade, making him look more in a way like he had in that alternate timeline. The cracks on the edges of his wings had healed, adding to the similarities to the other Whip, and his two pairs of ears had become one. But he had also acquired golden flame-shaped markings on the tips of his ears, and she was pretty sure the other Whip hadn’t had those.

“It’s so warm ,” Whip said, looking dazed. “But what was that nightmare?”

“A memory of Light Gaia,” Pretzel said. “You okay?”

Whip blinked up at her. “Yeah, but… what happened to the monster?”

“You, uh, convinced it,” Pretzel said, hurriedly thinking of a non-Gaia related explanation. “So it decided to lend you its power. Like a video game.” That should make him happy, right?

To her alarm, his face fell. “I talked to it, Pretzel. It was so angry, and I was angry too.” He swallowed and looked up at her, round-eyed. “Do you think it likes me because I’m like it? If the bad guys like me, then doesn’t that make me bad?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Pretzel said immediately. “It…” she huffed, trying to find the right words. “It wasn’t a bad guy. It was like…” she swallowed, trying to forget the feeling of terror, to look past it and see the reality. “It was like the one I fought. It wasn’t evil, exactly, just… like an animal in pain. And you took away the pain, so of course it’s going to like you, right?”

“I guess so,” Whip said, still uncertain. It wasn’t a good look on him.

“Besides,” Pretzel added, trying to make her tone more playful. “You did the same thing I did. If this makes you a monster, then I’m one too.”

“You could never be a monster,” Whip said vehemently.

Pretzel blinked, taken aback by his conviction and the sincerity in his eyes. Some of the tightness eased in her chest. Whip had faith in her. Of course, a cynical part of her mind argued, that would probably change when he found out the truth. But in that moment, she could almost forget how temporary all of this was.

Pretzel cleared her throat, making an effort to regain her composure. “Then the same’s true for you,” she said. “Come on, we should find Amy before she—”

“ Pretzel !” Amy yelled, forcing her way through the sand pile that had formed in front of the door.

Pretzel cringed. Oh yeah, she was mad.

“We defeated the monster, Amy!” Whip called cheerfully, oblivious as always. Amy turned her fierce glare on him, and he cringed. “Ohhh… you’re mad …”

Amy made some gargled inarticulate noises. Finally she found her words. “ How am I supposed to take care of you two when you keep running off like that!?”

Pretzel bristled slightly at that. It wasn’t like they were children. Well, okay, Whip acted like a child, but they were ancient! Powerful! Beings to be feared, not babysat!

“But the monster—” Whip started.

“We could’ve fought the monster together ,” Amy said sharply. She sighed deeply and ran a hand through her bangs. “Look, just—warn me next time, okay?” She glanced at Pretzel, who was biting her tongue on the “we are centuries older than you puny mortal” thing even though she really, really wanted to point it out. “I know you’re capable, both of you, and this is more your thing than my thing, but I would at least like to be let in on what you two are planning. We’re a team, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Pretzel and Whip sighed in unison.

“We love you, Amy,” Whip said, hugging her like the suck-up he was. “We couldn’t do it without you. Even though you can’t fly and you don’t have psychic powers and—”

“Where are we going next, Amy?” Pretzel interrupted loudly. “Invaluable team member Amy who is the only one who knows how to navigate this world and create an actual plan instead of just rushing into things like some people?” She glared at Whip, who had the grace to look sheepish.

“Thank you, invaluable team member Pretzel,” Amy said with a wry smile. She pulled out her phone. “I was thinking we could head to Holoska next. It’s accessible from the temple, and apparently there’s been some odd weather there. I mean, there’s been odd weather everywhere, but this is a place we can actually get to. Plane tickets are so expensive,” she added under her breath.

“Holoska… Holoska!” Pretzel perked up as she remembered where she knew the name from. Oh wonderful, wonderful Holoska, land of cold and snow and ice and water, the opposite of this horrid desert. “ Yes , let’s go to Holoska, please let’s go to Holoska, right now, immediately.”

“Yay, Holoska!” Whip cheered, obliviously going along with Pretzel’s excitement. The poor naive fool. “What’s Holoska like, Amy?”

“You’ll see,” Amy said, smiling. “Come on, I think the temple’s…” she shook her phone, squinting. “This way?” She started off, kicking up sand with each step.

“We’re gonna save the world, we’re gonna beat the monsters!” Whip chanted, zig-zagging energetically through the air. “Did you see how fast I took down that monster, Pretzel? This has to be the easiest quest ever!”

Pretzel just grimaced.

They reached the temple and headed inside. With everyone bunkering down from the sandstorm, there was no one there to stop them, and between Amy’s hammer and Pretzel’s… meltiness, locked doors weren’t a problem. Amy left a polite note explaining the situation and some cash. Pretzel wasn’t sure how useful that cash would be in this country, or if anyone here would be able to read English, but she kept those concerns to herself.

“Holoska, here we come!” Whip said cheerfully, placing his paws on the portal. “What do you think this monster will look like? A water monster or a fire monster? I hope it’s another fire monster, then I can beat it up! This is gonna be so easy!”

“Don’t be so sure,” Pretzel muttered.

They’d been lucky so far, but if experience had taught her anything, it was to never expect things to go as, well, expected. And as much as she was looking forward to escaping the heat, it wasn’t like things had gone well last time she visited Holoska. Hopefully no one would almost drown or have an identity crisis or get kidnapped this time. If they just didn’t jinx it—

“Don’t be so gloomy, Pretzel,” Whip giggled, poking her. “What could possibly go wrong?”

Pretzel was going to kill him.

Chapter Text

“I hate it here,” Whip whined.

Pretzel smirked. “Really? I love it. It’s so dark and cold and wet —”

“Ugggghhhh,” Whip groaned, shooting her a disgusted look.

“Would you like a coat, Whip?” Amy asked sympathetically, her flashlight cutting a swatch of illumination across the snow as the turned to Whip. She’d had the foresight to pack the flashlight and a few jackets in her subspace before they left for Mystic Ruins, perhaps sensing that they’d end up traveling much farther than Central America.

Whip gratefully took the bundle of clothing, even though Pretzel knew he could handle the cold just fine. She supposed it was like how she could take extreme heat, but didn’t necessarily enjoy doing so. But unlike Whip, she’d never been offered a… well, a coat wouldn’t work, but like. A fan. A mini air conditioner. Something . She shot Amy a resentful look. Amy just laughed. Well fine then. See how she liked waking up to boots full of snow tomorrow morning.

“So what weird weather is it this time?” Pretzel asked, flicking snow at Whip. He shrieked and dove behind Amy. “A blizzard?” She looked speculatively up at the night sky. The stars were obscured by a blanket of grey clouds and flurrying snow, but it didn’t look like a storm. Not yet, anyway.

“Actually, from what I heard they were suffering from flooding,” Amy said, pulling her coat tighter around her.

“ Flooding ?” Pretzel echoed. “How?”

“Well, not flooding exactly,” Amy amended. “You remember that the village is located near the ocean, to overlook the temple?”

“I remember. They’d relocated when I visited, but Sonic said they moved back once the Moray stopped attacking the cliffs.” Her ears pricked forward. “Do you think it’s the Moray again?”

“It’s possible.”

“What’s the Moray?” Whip asked. “Is that another monster like the Dust Devil?”

“ Dust Devil ?” Pretzel echoed.

“The sand monster! Isn’t that a cool name for it?”

“Fitting,” Amy agreed with a smile.

Whip poked Pretzel. “So? Is that what the Moray is?”

“Not exactly,” Pretzel said. “The Light Moray isn’t a fragment. I think it was a normal moray that got mutated by Light Gaia.”

“Why?” Whip looked around at the snow, wrinkling his nose in distaste. “What would Light Gaia want with a place like this?”

That… was actually a good question. An arctic ocean was hardly Light Gaia’s natural habitat. So why have a temple here, and why bother making the Moray guard it? Why even have a Moray at all? Water creatures were her thing. Pretzel felt a vague itch in the back of her mind, the feeling that told her she’d had a relevant memory about this, once, which she had yet to regain. Had the Moray been hers, only to be stolen by Light Gaia? That… seemed like something he’d do. Seemed like something they’d both do, if she was being perfectly honest. Had it been her in the position of power, she would have— 

Pretzel remembered crackling lava and a looming shadow and cut off that line of thought. This wasn’t that timeline. This was the reality where she’d been given a second chance, a chance to redeem herself. And as for whether that was a good or bad thing… she couldn’t say. She didn’t know how the story of that other timeline ended. Maybe Dark Gaia was vanquished for good. Maybe the other Sonic and the other Whip were able to live happily, in peace, without storms and water monsters and the looming prospect of a return to the status quo. Or maybe not. She had no way of knowing.

They soon reached the village. It was clearly still in the process of rebuilding from the last disaster, and Pretzel couldn’t blame the villagers for their hostile glares. She wouldn’t be too happy about a bunch of chipper tourists casually strolling in when her home was on the brink of destruction, either. Plus it was before sunrise, which most humans did not see as good visiting hours.

While Amy and Whip tried to talk to the villagers, Pretzel made her way to the cliff and peered down. She could see the temple below the water, close enough to be visible but too deep to be accessible. It hadn’t quite made it to the surface before Light Gaia shut it down. Anyone wanting to reach it would need a set of gills, and that was without taking into account that the water was likely cold enough to kill even a Mobian of Amy’s hardy constitution. They’d cross that bridge later, she supposed.

Pretzel turned away from the ocean and headed back to her companions. The conversation wasn’t going well, judging by the look of frustration on Amy’s face, and a moment later she stormed off, while the man she’d been talking to glared at her back and made a gesture Pretzel stored away for later use. Whip, ever mature, stuck his tongue out at the man and flew after Amy. 

“What’s the news?” Pretzel asked.

“The Moray has been causing trouble, but they seem more concerned about a series of thefts happening in the night. Someone keeps stealing or messing with their oil and their lanterns, which is kind of a problem given how long the nights are getting.” She cast a disgruntled glare over her shoulder. “And they seem to think we might have something to do with it.”

“I would make a great thief,” Pretzel agreed.

“Stealing is bad, ” Whip reminded her sternly.

“Yeah, and I’d be great at it.”

“ Please stop talking about how good you are at stealing,” Amy sighed.

Pretzel was distracted from the conversation when something brushed against her senses, a cool and strangely familiar touch. She spun around, so distracted by the sensation she nearly missed the movement out of the corner of her eye. A tiny figure, slipping around Amy with nimble grace.

“Amy!” Pretzel warned, too late.

“What—” Amy whirled around, flashlight beam waving wildly, but the figure already had her phone in its hands and was running full speed towards the cliff. Amy took off after it. “Hey! Give that back!”

Whip zipped after her, of course, and Pretzel heaved a sigh before launching into the air and flying after them. She caught up to them at the cliff as the creature skidded to a halt, looking from its pursuers to the water below. Amy was stalking towards it with her hammer in her hands and a look of murder in her eyes, while Whip flew close behind her, fists clenched in an imitation of his favorite superheroes.

Now it had stopped moving, Pretzel could observe the creature more closely. It was some sort of reptilian humanoid, with midnight blue scales, ice blue claws, fin-like spines running down its back, and glowing pink markings on its paws and around its eyes. Its eyes were black with glowing pink pupils. Ice-blue frills adorned the tip of its long, lizard-like tail and its wrists and ankles. Its build was almost Mobian, bipedal with a large, round head and long, gangly limbs. No, not just Mobian; it looked like a child .

“Wait, don’t attack it!” Pretzel yelled without thinking as Amy lunged forward. Amy stumbled to a stop, glancing up at her in surprise, and even Whip drew up short, blinking at her. Huh. Pretzel… hadn’t actually expected them to listen.

“What is it, Pretzel?” Amy asked. She cast another suspicious glare at the creature, but she’d lowered the hammer slightly.

Before Pretzel could try and explain herself, the creature looked her dead in the eye, smirked, and backflipped off the cliff. Amy gasped and lunged forward too late. The three of them peered over the edge of the cliff, staring down, down, down… to where the creature had landed, perfectly unharmed, on top of— yes, that was the Moray. Was the Moray smirking at her, too? Stupid eel. It looked different now, too, more suitably Dark. Somehow it seemed more like itself, though she couldn’t say how she knew that.

“Well,” Amy sighed. “I guess that makes sense.”

Whip gasped indignantly. “That’s the bad guy! We’ve got to stop it!”

Pretzel frowned, studying the fragment. It hadn’t attacked them, or any of the villagers, not like Hurricane and Dust Devil had. And it was far smaller than those fragments, too. Maybe smaller fragments were less aggressive? She looked at its more Mobian-like form, the way it was grinning mischievously up at them. Perhaps this one was simply… different.

“Maybe we don’t have to fight this one? We still have to stop it,” she added hurriedly. “Just. It doesn’t seem aggressive?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Amy agreed. “What’s your plan?”

Pretzel glanced at Whip, whose brow was furrowed.

“If you think we don’t have to fight it,” he said slowly. “Then… I guess we can try it your way.”

“Thanks,” Pretzel said, and meant it. She glanced down the cliff to the ocean below. “Um, Amy…”

Amy sighed and planted her hammer in the snow, leaning against it. “I’ll sit this one out. You two be careful, alright?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Whip chirped.

“Come on,” Pretzel said, and together they launched off the side of the cliff.

Pretzel spread her wings, reveling in the cool ocean breeze, before folding them and diving down. She snapped them open just before she hit the water, hovering at the fragment’s eye level. The fragment smiled at her, but then it tensed as Whip arrived, eyes narrowing in suspicion. Uh oh. If it dove into the ocean with the Moray, even Pretzel wouldn’t be able to catch it.

“Do you want to play a game?” Pretzel blurted out.

The fragment perked up immediately, nodding vigorously and clapping its hands. Then it narrowed its eyes again and pointed at Whip.

“He’s playing too,” Pretzel said firmly. “Me and him against you and the Moray. If you win, we’ll leave you alone. If we win, you leave the village alone. Okay?”

The fragment pouted, but its desire to play seemed to outweigh its hostility to Whip, and at last it nodded. Then it cocked its head, motioning at her in a clear “well? you gonna explain?” gesture.

Ah. Right. Now Pretzel needed to think of an actual game they could play. A game involving her and Whip (who would not want to be in the water) and the fragment and the Moray (which wasn’t able to leave the water).

“We should race!” Whip suggested excitedly.

“How are we going to do that in teams?” Pretzel asked.

The fragment made a chirping-clicking noise, not unlike a dolphin, and mimed covering its eyes.

“A blindfold race?” Whip guessed.

“That could work,” Pretzel said slowly. “One person on each team is blindfolded, and the other has to guide them.”

“So who’s going to be blindfolded?”

The fragment chirped and pointed at Whip, before miming covering its eyes again.

“Guess it’s you. And it’ll have to be the Moray that’s blindfolded, since it would be too easy for it to guide the fragment. Except—” she glared at the fragment. “I see what you’re trying to pull. Morays navigate with smell, not sight. You need to block its sense of smell, too.”

The fragment pouted and pointed at Whip’s ears.

“Fine,” Pretzel rolled her eyes. “You block its smell, I’ll block his hearing.”

“What!?” Whip squeaked. “But then how will I hear your directions?”

Pretzel gave him a flat stare. “Whip. Psychic bond?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Whip fiddled with his ears, still looking uncomfortable with the idea. When Pretzel raised her eyebrow at him questioningly, he put on a look of determination. “It’s okay. We can do this.”

“Amy!” Pretzel called up to the cliff. “Do you think you could find some strips of cloth?” She looked down at the Moray. “Really big strips of cloth?”

Amy gave her a thumbs up and ran off, returning moments later with a massive piece of cloth and several concerned villagers. Pretzel flew up to estimate the length of cloth they’d need, and after a bit of fiddling (and some wheedling with the villagers for a knife they could borrow) the blindfolds (and nose- and earfolds) were ready. Then they rubbed the nosestrip with some particularly pungent oils, which would hopefully impede the Moray’s sense of smell, and at last Pretzel flew down loaded with cloth and very grateful for the strength boost from Hurricane.

She glanced down to see that while she’d been working on the blindfolds, the fragment had gone and set up an entire obstacle course, with the help of the Moray. Strange dark purple rings marked out a course mirrored above and under the water. They looked similar to the shadow shields Pretzel made. Had the fragment created those with its powers? That was… really creative, actually. Pretzel would have to try that some time. 

Now a whole group of villagers were on the cliff, watching the proceedings with interest. Dark magic really had a way of drawing in a crowd. Whip waved at them enthusiastically. The fragment was more shy, shifting uncomfortably and glancing nervously at all the people watching. Introversion, it seemed, was something that ran in the Dark side of the family. Or maybe it had realized these were the people it had been harassing for the last however many days.

“Hey,” Pretzel said to the fragment as it (or he? it seemed to be projecting “he” vibes) watched her tie the cloth strips around the Moray’s eyes and nose. “What’s your name?”

The fragment pointed at her.

“That’s—no, my name’s taken,” Pretzel said. “Your name’s supposed to be your own.”

The fragment thought for a moment, then pointed at her again.

“You want me to give you a name?” Pretzel asked, and was surprised when he chirped enthusiastically. “Uh… okay, how about…” She squinted up at the sky. It was still dark, though the horizon had started to lighten with the beginnings of dawn. She looked at the fragment again. His dark blue-black scales reminded her of the night sky. “Midnight?”

The fragment made a politely enthusiastic chittering noise which she took for a “yeah, I guess that’ll work”. Fair enough.

The Moray attended to, Pretzel flew up to Whip with the smaller strips of cloth. “You ready? You can still back out, if you want.”

“It’s fine,” Whip said, smiling at her. “I trust you.”

Wait. Really?

“Oh.” Pretzel cleared her throat, willing her voice to stay level. “Thanks.”

She carefully tied the blindfold around his eyes, then used the second strip to tie his ears down. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but then she wasn’t sure how well the nose blocker would work on the Moray, so it seemed fair enough. Pretzel took Whip’s hand and guided him to the start point just above the Moray’s nose. Below her, the newly dubbed “Midnight” was crouched on the Moray’s back, hands flat on its scales.

“Ready?” Amy shouted from the cliff. “Set! Go !”

Whip and the Moray took off, Whip’s speed in the air (and had he gotten faster since absorbing Dust Devil?) letting him keep pace with the bigger Moray. They were pretty evenly matched; who won would be up to the skill of the one’s guiding them.

Down, Pretzel instructed, projecting into Whip’s mind. No, not that far down! Left— too far left, you’re— She winced as Whip ran into one of the rings. So they were solid. Okay, yes, that’s good, fly straight— a bit down— up again—

The Moray was, of course, gliding through the underwater course with grace. But Pretzel noticed its movements faltering as Midnight glanced up again at the crowd. Hmm. He was easily distracted. They could use that. And Pretzel and Whip had another advantage: Whip was smarter than the average eel. Not by much, maybe, but still.

Hey, follow this, Pretzel said, and shoved an image of the entire course in Whip’s mind.

Wha— Pretzel! That’s cheating! Whip squawked.

Says who? How do we know Midnight isn’t doing the same thing? Just keep flying, I’ll get back to you in a bit. 

She left Whip to his moral crisis and reached out with her mind. She could feel the Moray—would it be called the Dark Moray now if it had been the Light Moray before?—, but for the time being she ignored that and focused on the far Darker presence of the fragment. She was surprised at just how strong he was. This wasn’t less energy than Hurricane; if anything, it was more . It was just manifested in a different, subtler form. Interesting.

Pretzel brushed against his mind carefully, and Midnight whipped around, nearly falling off the Moray’s back. Pretzel grinned and poked him again, and this time he locked eyes with her, glaring indignantly.

You never said it was against the rules, Pretzel pointed out.

She wasn’t sure how good Midnight was at comprehending words, but she could feel his annoyance nonetheless—and beneath that, his amusement. He’d probably try cheating now, too, but Pretzel didn’t think they needed to win this game anymore.

Why have you been attacking the village? she asked, projecting an image of the unhappy villagers.

The response was immediate. Images of fires and electric lights, breaking up the darkness and forcing the little fragment to hide in the shadows. The image wasn’t flavored with the anger that Hurricane’s had; if anything, it seemed a little sad. Mostly it felt like a child pouting about having to go to bed when the sun was still up. Or more accurately, when the sun was still down .

You… want to get rid of light? Pretzel asked, not sure she’d understood correctly. She projected an image of lights turning off and a city being plunged into darkness, and immediately felt the fragment’s enthusiasm. Huh.

She knew Dark Gaia had wanted to plunge the world into darkness, and it had always seemed like a suitably evil and villainous goal. But the same ideal came across very differently coming from such a young, childish mind as Midnight’s. Midnight liked the darkness. He felt comfortable in it. He didn’t want to get rid of the light out of hate or malice; he just wanted more time to play.

Pretzel backed away from the connection and returned her attention to Whip. He’d taken the lead, probably thanks to Pretzel distracting Midnight. The Moray was, after all, an animal; it couldn’t navigate the course without Midnight’s instruction, and honestly didn’t have any reason to even try. Whip, on the other hand, would still try to follow the course even without clear instructions, and he’d been doing an admirable job of it. Still, as he slammed into another ring, Pretzel decided it was about time she actually helped.

Go right, she said, and even after the stunt she’d pulled a moment earlier, he immediately responded. He really did trust her. She… didn’t know what to do with that. Down just a bit— okay, now up— left— this one’s really low, you want to feel the ocean on your toes— now UP, quickly— left— down— up just a bit— aaand stop.

Whip grabbed onto the cliff and immediately tore off his blindfolds. He looked back in time to see the Moray touching the wall— after him—and grinned. “Ha! We won!”

Midnight stuck his tongue out at Whip, but didn’t seem too disappointed at his loss.

“Can we go again?” Whip asked hopefully.

Pretzel shook her head and pointed to the horizon. “The sun’s rising.”

Midnight chirped sadly as the sun rose higher, the darkness of the night fading. Pretzel came to land beside him on the Moray. The rising sun cast her and Midnight’s shadows long behind them, making them overlap into a greater darkness.

“Look,” Pretzel said, nudging Midnight. She pointed to their shadows.

Midnight chirped delightedly. He raised his hand and contorted it into different shapes, mesmerized by the way the silhouette morphed.

“You can’t have shadows without a light to cast them,” Pretzel said quietly.

Midnight looked at her and cocked his head. Then who’s casting me?

Pretzel blinked in surprise. “You can talk?”

Midnight’s eyes crinkled in amusement. Thank you. I understand now.

“Wait—” Pretzel started, but he was already dissipating. She felt a cool rush of energy, brushing against her like a night breeze. With it came a sensation of playfulness, of waves dancing on the shore, of dolphins leaping in the sea, of a cat toying with its prey in the night, of children chasing fireflies in the dusk.

The memory this time was less fragmented, the red tint subtle enough for her to make out the cool colors of night. She watched through the eyes of a reptilian creature—one of her minions, she knew instinctively, her eyes and ears and claws across the globe—as a child tottered towards the bushes where she, in the body of her minion, hid. The child spotted her tail sticking out of the bushes and reached for it, but she tugged it back before it could be grabbed. The child pouted, disappointed. She grinned and flicked her tail out again. The child gasped in delight and reached for it again, and again she pulled it back. 

Now the child became more determined, reaching into the bushes to pursue the coveted tail. She lured them deeper into the woods, where her shadows could play more freely, creating strange shapes on the ground and the trunks. The child pursued the tail a while longer, but soon they began to slow, looking around at the strange shadow shapes uneasily. A voice called, a human voice, and the child turned, calling back. She considered messing with them further, but discarded the idea. She’d already wasted enough time. Still, she gave a pout of her own as the child wandered back to their parents. Why did they have to ruin her fun?

Pretzel shook her head vigorously, the feelings of the memory clinging to her fur like burrs. Evidently Dark Gaia hadn’t spent all her time wreaking destruction, but Pretzel wasn’t sure if she liked this image better. She was glad it—she— hadn’t actually hurt the kid, but the way it had toyed with them, luring them away from safety, messing with them through the shadows… And the most haunting part about it was how Dark Gaia had felt . It had been amused . Not malicious amusement; genuine playfulness. It hadn’t seen any harm in its little game. And in a way, that was more terrifying than outright, destructive maliciousness like what she’d seen from Hurricane.

“He’s gone now?” Whip asked sadly, pulling her from her thoughts.

“I guess so.” Pretzel cocked her head at him. “Aren’t you happy? This is the whole reason we came here. To stop the monsters, remember? And you seemed pretty mad when he stole Amy’s phone.”

“But…” Whip flicked his tail, scrunching up his brow in thought. “He didn’t seem bad. Just confused.”

Pretzel felt something new stir in her chest. Something like… pride. Whip was right. Midnight hadn’t been evil. Neither had Hurricane. The fragments were just pieces of power, left without direction or purpose, acting on their base instincts. Confused, as Whip had said. And somehow… she had helped. She looked down at her hands. I understand now. That was what Midnight had said. He’d seemed… content.

Something caught her eye. She blinked and raised her arm to get a better look at it. No, it wasn’t just a trick of the light; her previously dark purple fur tufts had turned the same shade of pink as Midnight’s markings. She had a matching tuft at the base of her tail spike now, too, like the frill Midnight had. And her previously darker grey paws had turned a paler, bluish shade, as had the scales on her underbelly and—as her reflection in the water showed—the fur on her muzzle and inside her ears.

“Oooh,” Whip said, noticing the changes as well. “Cooool. Pink is a much better color than purple. It’s happier.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Pretzel said dryly. 

Dark Gaia’s tentacles had pink-purple tufts on the end, she remembered uncomfortably, and the energy… mane? on its head had been pink. But Dark Gaia also hadn’t had that pale blue-grey color Pretzel’s markings had taken on. Maybe… maybe these changes weren’t turning her into Dark Gaia after all?

“Well,” Amy said, glancing at the villagers who were suddenly looking very interested in their visitors. Their visitors who had just made it blatantly obvious they had a connection with the thing that had been harassing the village for however long. “We’d, ah, better get going. Where’s the temple, Pretzel?”

Oh. Right. They’d reached the bridge now, and Pretzel still didn’t have a plan for how to cross it.

“It’s down there,” Pretzel said, pointing to the temple below them.

“Ah.” Amy leaned over to peer into the unfathomable depths of the arctic ocean. “I don’t suppose the water is nice this time of year?”

“Nice to die, maybe,” one of the villagers said. Amy glared at him.

Something nudged against Pretzel’s mind, and she glanced down to see the Moray thrashing in the water. It really did look different now; all glowing purple, blue, and pink, with a dragon-like head. It was honestly kind of cool. The Moray made a roaring sound and thrashed again, looking up at her almost… hopefully? Playfully? It reminded her of the dogs she saw people playing with in the park.

“I think the Moray wants to help,” Pretzel observed, the gears in her mind turning. She looked at her companions. “If you guys rode on the Moray’s back, I could probably create a shadow shield to protect you from the water. We could get to the temple that way.” Her tail twitched nervously. Much as she liked the Moray’s new look, it was far from non-threatening. She wouldn’t blame Amy and Whip for not wanting to put their lives in its nonexistent hands.

But to her surprise, after a moment’s thought Amy nodded. “That sounds like it would work.”

“Is the Moray nice?” Whip asked, glancing nervously down at the beast, which roared helpfully.

“It won’t hurt you if I tell it not to,” Pretzel said, then hastily added, “Because, uh, Midnight put me in charge of it when he gave me his powers.”

“Oooh,” Whip said. “So the Moray is yours now?”

Pretzel hadn’t thought of it that way before, but… She looked down at the Moray consideringly. Maybe if they—

“Absolutely not,” Amy said immediately. “You are not bringing it home with you.”

Pretzel pouted. “We already live on the coast. It would be just as happy on one side of the Atlantic as the other. And morays usually live in warmer water, so really —”

“No,” Amy said firmly. “If you want a pet we can get you a fish.”

Pretzel sighed and rolled her eyes. “ Fine . We should go now.” She started shuffling to the edge of the cliff.

“Pretzel.” She froze at Amy’s tone. “Pretzel, look me in the eyes.”

Pretzel reluctantly looked back at her. She had the “mom look” on again, arms folded and face stern.

“Pretzel, promise me you will not bring the Moray to Empire City.”

“I promise,” Pretzel said slowly. “That I will not bring the Moray to Empire City.”

Amy squinted at her for a moment.

“C-c’mon, Amy,” Whip said through chattering teeth, arms wrapped around himself. “Can’t we go now?”

Amy’s expression softened. “Alright. Just let me have a quick word with these fine people—” she cast a glare at the still spectating villagers, several of whom shifted uncomfortably. “—and then we can go, okay?”

As soon as she was out of earshot, Pretzel shuffled over to Whip.

“Thanks,” she whispered.

Whip grinned. “Do you think I’ll get a cool monster, too?”

Pretzel remembered the Light Gaia Phoenix from Chun-Nan. That had definitely been one of his. A terrifying one of his. “Probably.”

Whip leaned against her, giving her his best puppy dog eyes. “And you’ll cover for me, too?”

Pretzel chewed her lip. On the one hand, terrifying fire bird. On the other hand… big dragon eel friend. “Fine,” she relented. “You help me convince Amy to let me keep the Moray, I’ll help you convince her to keep whatever pet abomination you find. Deal?”

Whip beamed and bumped against her. “Deal!”

They dropped the conversation as Amy walked back over, having “convinced” all the villagers to keep quiet about what they’d seen. She squinted suspiciously at their sudden camaraderie until (prompted by a mental nudge from Pretzel) Whip started shivering and chattering his teeth, dramatically throwing himself across Pretzel and begging her to share her (nonexistent) body heat. Amy still looked suspicious, but she didn’t prod them, possibly because she was relying on them to fly her down to the Moray without dropping her in the ocean.

They all landed on the Moray, which had helpfully arched its back up out of the water at Pretzel’s command. Pretzel cast a blanket of shadows around Amy and Whip, shielding them from the ice cold water as the Moray dove under, while she herself remained on the Moray’s exposed back. To her surprise, the shadows formed into a smooth, solid shield, more like Midnight’s constructs than her previous, flickery attempts. It still wouldn’t be warm for those inside, but it was certainly more survivable than being exposed to the water. They reached the temple without incident, and Pretzel had a pointedly drawn out and mournful farewell with the Moray (which happily hammed up its sorrow at her departure) until Amy physically dragged her away.

Of course, the moment Whip stepped onto the central carving, the temple rumbled, lit up, and started rising to the surface. Whip and Amy squawked, nearly falling over, while Pretzel hurriedly sent soothing mental waves to the very surprised Moray. Hey, hey, it’s fine, she assured it. No mean hedgehogs or cats are going to attack you this time, okay?

The temple finally settled, now floating on the surface. Pretzel peered out the window to see the villagers exclaiming excitedly to each other. She hoped Amy had paid/threatened them well, because otherwise the three of them were going to be starring on the Greenland news within the hour. Though maybe that wouldn’t be such a problem. How much global attention would a random temple surfacing in Greenland attract, anyway?

“Where are we going next?” Whip asked, flying from wall to wall looking at the pictures. Pretzel barely glanced at them. She’d had more than her fill of the murals in this particular temple last time she’d visited.

“I don’t know,” Amy said, humming and scrolling through her phone. Presumably she was looking at articles she’d saved offline, since there was no way she had signal here. Amy’s global coverage was good (she’d told Pretzel once that Tails had given her phone some maybe not strictly legal and definitely not manufacturer supported upgrades), but not that good. “There’s been some weird things going on in Chun-Nan, but that might just be paranoia after Eggman made his base there. Maybe—”

“We should go to Chun-Nan,” Pretzel interjected, remembering her deal with Whip. And Amy’s words had made her realize another good reason to visit. “That Eggman base could have some clues to what might be going on with Sonic and Tails.”

“Rouge said GUN had already done a pretty thorough search,” Amy said, but her eyes were shining. “But I guess if there’s a chance…”

“Chun-Nan! Chun-Nan!” Whip chanted. He leaned in and whispered to Pretzel, “Is Chun-Nan cold?”

“It’s on the equator,” Amy said, because Whip’s whisper-voice was terrible. “So it should be pretty warm.”

Darn. Oh well. Maybe Eggman’s old base would have air conditioning.

“Are we agreed then?” Amy asked, looking between them both. “To Chun-Nan?”

“To Chun-Nan!” Whip cheered.

“To Chun-Nan,” Pretzel agreed. Really, a little heat wouldn’t be too terrible. Just as long as there wasn’t any fire, it’d be fine.

Chapter Text

Of course the portal deposited them right next to a bonfire. A crowded bonfire, at that. Pretzel grimaced, huddling in the shelter of Amy’s shadow, away from the too loud strangers and too hot fire. Too loud, too bright, too everything. The crowd was unperturbed by the trio’s sudden appearance, which should have been the first hint that something was very wrong here.

“Hello! Are you here for the festival?” a nearby dhole asked Amy conversationally.

“Oh, um… what did you say?” Amy stammered, her words strangely stilted.

The dhole grinned. “English better?”

Amy smiled apologetically. “Yes, sorry.”

Ohhhh. They’d been speaking a different language. One quirk of being Gaias was that language barriers weren’t really a thing with Pretzel and Whip. Everything just… made sense, and if Pretzel wasn’t concentrating she often didn’t notice language switches at all. It went both ways, apparently; Pretzel and Whip were always perfectly understood by anyone who heard them, which unfortunately meant Pretzel would never get to pull Sonic’s trick of talking in a different language to keep a secret from someone (or to get people to leave him alone).

“Are you here for the festival?” the dhole asked again.

“What festival?”

“For the equinox, of course!” the dhole said brightly. He said everything brightly. It was making Pretzel uneasy. “It’s in two days, but we thought hey, why not celebrate early?”

Amy blinked, looking around at the decorations. “But… it’s the September equinox. The beginning of autumn . Why the, uh, summery motif?” 

She had a point. The decorations the crowd were waving around were all suns and flowers and flame dragons and phoenixes, and all in bright, fiery colors. It was what she imagined a festival run by Whip would look like.

Wait.

Uh oh. Pretzel shot to her feet. “Amy, I think we should—”

The dhole’s eyes locked on hers, and suddenly the friendly affability was gone. To her credit, Amy reacted as quickly as the dhole; he lunged, she swung, and the bonfire erupted into chaos. The previously cheerful festival goers suddenly turned violent, lunging at Pretzel with inhuman snarls. They weren’t completely mindless, however; the first few to suffer Amy’s hammer soon stumbled away in pain, and this seemed to give the rest of the crowd pause. Their hesitation, however brief, was all the opening Pretzel needed to grab the abundance of evening shadows nearby and throw them up in a protective shield. The brainwashed civilians launched themselves at the barrier in a frantic mass, yelling in wordless frustration. Silently, Pretzel thanked Midnight for the power boost. Where her previous shields would have disappeared in seconds under such an assault, the new construct barely flickered. Finally realizing the futility of their efforts, the festival goers backed off and started circling the shield, eyes locked on Pretzel.

“What’s happening!?” Whip squeaked. “Why are they acting so mean?”

“A fragment is here,” Pretzel explained. “Sometimes they can mess with people’s minds.” A Light Gaia fragment, she realized with a twinge of dread. The terror of thinking, even for a moment, that Whip would side with the fragment in Shamar against her was still fresh in her mind. Sure, that instance had turned out fine, but if Whip kept absorbing the Light Gaia fragments, how long until…?

Well. Worry about that when the fragment actually appeared. And who knew? Maybe there was a way to stop it without Whip absorbing it. Pretzel’s terror began to settle as the shield continued to hold. They were backed into a wall, yes, but the more Pretzel paid attention to what was actually happening and not bad memories, the more she noticed the weakness in what had initially seemed a terrifying assault. This wasn’t quite on the level of what Light Gaia had done; this group was small, hardly the whole city, and no reinforcements seemed to be coming. And though they were clearly possessed, it wasn’t to the point of them being immune to pain, as demonstrated by how they had reacted to Amy’s hammer before Pretzel put up her shield. Experimentally, Pretzel poked at one of the nearby minds. Yes, this was a far weaker hold than Light Gaia’s overwhelming light. Maybe she could…

Unexpectedly, the possessed people stopped circling the shield. They continued to glare at Pretzel, but they were backing away now, leaving a wide open space in front of the bonfire. Had Pretzel done that? But she hadn’t done anything except poke at one person’s mind. Either whoever had been controlling them had an incredibly weak hold, or—

An eagle scream, a whoosh of heat, and suddenly the Phoenix was there. It only took a few seconds for the shield to collapse under the Phoenix’s flames; even Midnight’s shadows couldn’t stand up to this, but they at least give Pretzel the chance to dodge—barely. Burning talons scraped against the wall where she’d been pressed a moment before. Amy rolled the other way and Whip shot up into the air. The Phoenix screeched in frustration.

“Pretzel!” Amy shouted.

Pretzel waited until the Phoenix swiped again, then dodged past it and slipped over to Amy.

“This isn’t a fragment, right?” Amy asked.

“No, it’s like the Moray. It was probably an eagle or something that got mutated by Light Gaia. So your hammer should work just fine.”

Amy grinned. With the fire reflecting in her eyes, she looked wild, a far cry from the responsible young girl buying groceries and telling the Gaias to behave. Beneath that civilized exterior was a burning passion, and it was in moments like these that Pretzel understood why Amy and Sonic were friends.

“You and Whip get its attention,” Amy instructed, summoning her hammer. “Keep it away from those people. I’ll hit it from behind.”

Pretzel nodded and dove to the side to avoid another attack from the Phoenix. It seemed intent on Pretzel specifically, which would work well for the plan. She found Whip and relayed Amy’s instructions. Together they started harassing the Phoenix, goading it into pursuing them— away from the crowd of brainwashed civilians. Pretzel threw up a few constructs to draw its attention, and while the Phoenix was literally chasing shadows, Whip managed to land a punch that seemed to do actual damage (which meant he’d gotten a boost from Dust Devil the same way Pretzel had from Hurricane; something to worry about later, or never, since Pretzel thrived in denial). Boost or not, the Phoenix was still too quick for Whip’s untrained swings to do much more than annoy it, and Pretzel’s constructs only lasted a few moments under its flames, but that was fine. Stopping it had never been the point. 

Focused on Pretzel and Whip as it was, the Phoenix was not prepared in the slightest for Amy to descend from the heavens like a meteor of justice, slamming her hammer at full force into the back of its head. The Phoenix screeched in pain. Amy hit it again. It wheeled, throwing her off its back, but it moved more slowly now, and kept shaking its head as if dazed. Its wings beat unsteadily. Whip moved to fly down and help, but Pretzel grabbed his arm, shaking her head at his questioning expression. Amy’s eyes were alight with a fire of their own. She was enjoying this fight, and Pretzel had no doubt she’d win it easily. The Gaias would only be getting in her way.

Something grabbed Pretzel.

Pretzel screeched as she felt herself burn , white hot light tearing through her like it had when they’d faced the Dust Devil. Whip yelled and threw himself at her attacker. Pretzel stumbled free, gasping from the pain, and spun around.

This fragment was similar to Midnight in the same way the Dust Devil had been similar to Hurricane. It—she?—was small and childlike, like Midnight. Unlike him, however, she was more avian than reptilian, covered with molten gold feathers that flared in a flame shape around her head. White-blue tufts surrounded her wrists and ankles. Her eyes were summer sky blue and shone with… enthusiasm? Yes, this fragment was grinning ear-to-ear, dancing around them and giggling like a… well, like a child.

It didn’t make her any less terrifying. If anything, it made Pretzel more frightened. The fragment lunged at Pretzel, and she jumped back, grabbing at the nearby shadows to throw up a shadow shield. The fragment tore through it even faster than the Phoenix, barely giving Pretzel a moment to scurry away. Frantically she threw up another shield. It was destroyed just as quickly. Stars, the thing was fast . The slightest slip-up and she’d be on Pretzel’s throat, and then—

“Leave her alone!” Whip yelled, and tackled the fragment. Or he tried to; she was still bigger than him, and faster, and he ended up ineffectually tugging on her tail feathers.

The fragment made a tutting noise and, with blinding speed, grabbed Whip’s wing and tossed him aside carelessly. Whip yelped as he slammed into the wall. Pretzel moved to help him, but the fragment blocked her advance, forcing her to back away and throw up yet another shield. The shadows were only getting weaker as the fragment drove Pretzel closer to the bonfire. And as the fragment got more fired up, she burned not just Pretzel’s shadows but the area around them as well. A patch of flowers blackened beneath her feet, but she didn’t notice, too focused on playing with Pretzel. And that was what this was, Pretzel realized with a sinking feeling as the fragment continued to dance around her. She was toying with them. To her, this was all just a game.

But no game could last forever. Soon the fragment grew bored with Pretzel’s weak attempts to dodge past her and increased the intensity of her assault. And now she added a new power to the mix; rather than just slashing at Pretzel with her claws, she summoned spears of white light and threw them through the air. With her new toys, the fragment soon had Pretzel backed right against the bonfire. This close to the fire, Pretzel’s already struggling shields were made even weaker. Whip, recovered from the earlier blow, lunged at the fragment again, and again she dodged him easily. Childish the fragment may be, but she was far, far more capable a fighter than either of the Gaias. Pretzel was suddenly glad Midnight had agreed to a simple game.

While Whip momentarily distracted the fragment, Pretzel glanced over to check on Amy’s progress. She was still holding her own against the Phoenix, but she was distracted now, torn between her battle with the bird and her concern for Pretzel and Whip. Now the Phoenix was the one on the offensive, bolstered by the fragment’s presence. And if the fragment thought to put the brainwashed people to use…

They didn’t have a choice. Pretzel raised her voice. “Whip!”

Whip ducked away from the fragment and blinked at her. “What is it?”

Was this really the right thing to do? Maybe they could wait… delay this somehow… no. She couldn’t run from this, and neither could Whip. Pretzel swallowed her fears and forced herself to speak. “You need to connect with her! Like you did in Shamar!”

Whip’s ears flattened. “But—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence. A spear of light burned through Pretzel’s shield and stabbed right into Pretzel’s chest, knocking her back into the fire. Everything burned . Pretzel didn’t scream; she couldn’t. Fire consumed her, bright and terrible, and everything went red.

Whip was alone.

The fragment turned from the fire and smiled at him. Her eyes were pure, bright blue, without any of the black of other people’s eyes. Normally Whip liked blue, especially that blue, the color of a cloudless summer sky. But now… now it scared him. And angered him. The fragment had burned Pretzel. He could feel her, unmoving in the fire, hurting. Hurting because of this fragment. It made him upset. It made him angry . But anger wouldn’t help now. Pretzel had said he needed to connect with the fragment. How was he supposed to do that?

“Why did you do that?” he blurted out. “Why did you hurt her?”

The fragment drew closer, and he felt something warm pressing against his mind, like how he sometimes felt Pretzel speak to him, and like how he’d felt the Dust Devil in Shamar. Whip didn’t understand it, but Amy and Pretzel said it was just part of his powers. Besides, it had helped him stop Dust Devil. So he did his best to focus his thoughts and imagined speaking to the pressing thing in his mind.

Immediately he felt what the fragment felt. A desire to burn .

But why? he pleaded.

She showed him. He saw darkness, and shadows, and creeping things that moved in the night, and he felt the fear of it. He—she— they didn’t like the darkness. Then he saw the Phoenix, its glowing wings casting away the shadows. And he saw a dozen lights, growing and growing, until finally the world was freed from the darkness and the night forever. That was what the fragment wanted. She wanted sunshine that would never go away.

“I understand,” Whip said, because he did. The dark scared him sometimes. And you couldn’t play in the dark. The sunshine was just so much better. He’d often wished the long summer days could last forever, that there was no need for the sun to set each night. But…

He thought of Pretzel. Pretzel didn’t like the light. Several times he’d woken in the night to find her sitting outside, all the lights off, staring up at the stars. He’d asked before why she didn’t turn the lights on, and she said she liked the dark better. It made her feel safe. Whip thought that was weird, but, well, that was Pretzel. If there was no dark anymore, how would she feel? Pretzel liked the night, as much as Whip liked the day. But even when Midnight had wanted to make everything dark forever, she’d insisted that wasn’t right, though Whip knew —felt it in his mind, the way he did sometimes—she would have enjoyed a world like that. Felt safer in a world like that. Maybe even been happy.

But she’d told the fragment that wasn’t right. What had she said to him? You can’t have shadows without a light to cast them. Did it go the other way around, too? Everywhere there was light, there was shadow. Even the bonfire, bright as it was, still cast Whip’s shadow deep and dark and long in front of him. He tried to imagine a bright world, without night or even shadows. It would be… boring, he realized. Flat and colorless. Without the dark, light became bland.

“I understand,” Whip said again. “But… if there weren’t shadows, how would we even know there was light at all?” He looked over at the people who’d been acting so weird when they first arrived. “And people need the night to rest.”

He could feel the fragment’s pout at the idea of rest, and he smiled. He understood that.

“You have to rest to play,” he said. Amy had told him that many times. “And…” He frowned, distracted from his train of thought by the burnt flowers beneath the fragment’s feet. “Hey, you hurt those.”

The fragment looked down and blinked, as if noticing for the first time.

“You need to be careful,” Whip chided, kneeling down to pick up one of the flowers. “It doesn’t matter how bright you make everything if there’s nothing good left.”

The fragment knelt beside him, looking almost sad. She gently touched one of the burnt flowers, watching as it crumbled away.

I understand, she said in his mind. Thank you.

Whip gasped in surprise as she dissolved into white light, light that pooled into him and sent a rush of warmth through his body. It felt like sunshine.

He was in a strange house, watching over a strange child. It was dark. The child was curled up on their bed, trembling at every flickering shadow. They were afraid. Afraid of the dark. He could help! He could make it better! He reached out, brushing his light against the child’s mind. He felt the child’s fear spike, but he soothed it, soothed everything until the child’s mind was bright, white calm. Yes, this was better, wasn’t it?

Whip woke up from— whatever that had been to see Pretzel crawling from the bonfire, her fur and scales seeming to reform from the shadows. Was that a power she’d gotten from the fragments? Whatever it was, he was just happy to see she was okay.

“Pretzel!” he called, bounding over. “I did it!”

Pretzel eyed him. “You stopped her?”

“Yup!” Whip looked down at himself to see what had Pretzel looking at him so funny. Oh, he’d leveled up again! The tuft on the end of his tail had turned white-blue, and when he reached up to touch his ears, they felt more feathery.

“Your eyes are blue,” Pretzel observed, surprised.

“Really?” Whip moved to touch his eyes, then realized that was a stupid idea and dropped his hands. “It must be part of my power up. I talked to the fragment, and…” 

His enthusiasm faded as he remembered what the fragment had wanted, and what he’d seen in that—had it been a dream? A memory? For a moment, he’d wanted to burn the world, to destroy all the dark and the shadows and make it day forever… no matter who it hurt.

“Pretzel, what if…” he started, but the words seemed to catch in his throat as she looked at him expectantly. He swallowed.

What if she got scared of him if he told her the truth? He wasn’t stupid; he’d seen her flinch away from him, back when they’d first moved in with Amy. And he’d seen her be scared of the Light Gaia fragments in the same way.

But no. This was Pretzel, his sister. She could be mean and rude and weird sometimes, but she’d never, ever run away from him, no matter how much she complained. And besides, Pretzel was brave, way braver than him. She fought sea monsters and tricked creepy cults and didn’t run from things even when they frightened her. How scary could he be, compared to everything else?

“Pretzel, what if I become like— like them ? When I talked to Dust Devil it was angry at humans and I was angry too, and Sunshine wanted to make everything day all the time and I think that sounds really nice but— Pretzel, I don’t want to be a monster !”

Pretzel stared at him, and for a moment he was afraid she agreed, that she thought he was like the fragments. Scary and dangerous. But then she leaned forward and thwacked him with her wing. Whip yelped and rubbed at his head, frowning at her.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Pretzel said, rolling her eyes. “You’re no more monster than me, remember?”

“But what if—” Whip started to argue, but Pretzel was ignoring him, too busy poking through the burnt flowers. She made an “a-ha!” noise and plucked something from among them, offering it to him. An unburnt flower. Now that he was looking, he saw not all the flowers in the patch were burned; a ring around the edge retained their merry colors, untouched by fire.

“You’re not becoming like the fragments, Whip,” Pretzel said as he took the unburnt flower carefully in his hands. It was blue, like Sunshine’s eyes. Like his own eyes, now. “If anything, it’s the other way around.”

Whip blinked. “The other way around?”

“Sure.” Pretzel shrugged. “You convinced Dust Devil to stop attacking the town. You convinced this fragment—”

“Sunshine.”

“Alright, you convinced Sunshine that she couldn’t just burn whatever she wanted.” Pretzel flicked her tail at the flowers. “Look there. What do you see?”

“Flowers?”

Pretzel sighed. “What about the flowers?”

“Some are burnt,” Whip said, leaning closer to try and see what Pretzel was going on about. “And some have been pushed down, like somebody stepped on them. Oh! That must have been when Sunshine knelt down.”

“Right. Sunshine knelt on the flowers, but didn’t burn them. Because you showed her what she was doing, and that it was wrong. You get it? The fragments aren’t making you like them ; you’re making them like you .”

“…Really?” Whip asked hopefully.

“You’re not a monster, Whip,” Pretzel said with certainty. And Whip believed her.

Pretzel lied, sometimes, but not about something like this. If she’d thought he was mean or scary or bad, she’d have let him know. Or, more likely, she’d have simply left. But she was here, with him, comforting him. That was proof enough on its own.

Whip looked at the flower in his hand and then, careful not to damage it, tucked it into the tuft of fur on his head. He looked up at Pretzel, beaming. “Thanks, Pretzel!”

Pretzel just shrugged and turned away. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

But he knew she was smiling.

Chapter Text

Apparently getting nearly beaten to a pulp by Amy’s hammer had done much to improve the Phoenix’s mood. Pretzel and Whip found Amy stroking the Phoenix’s beak and giving it a talk about controlling its temper and choosing its friends wisely. How much of it the Phoenix understood Pretzel didn’t know, but it certainly looked content.

One of the no longer possessed civilians piped up to tell them that the Phoenix normally lived in the temple nearby. Or, rather, what had once been the temple. Eggman had done a thorough job of converting it into his base, and the Chun-Nan residents were still working on reversing the damage. Amy decided they should escort the Phoenix back to make sure it didn’t cause any more trouble, and so they could investigate Eggman’s old base just in case. Whip, thankfully, didn’t bring up the idea of taking the Phoenix home with them; whether that was because he was having a rare moment of tact or because he’d just forgotten, Pretzel didn’t know, but she was grateful nonetheless. At least the Moray hadn’t tried to tear Whip apart or needed to be beaten into submission by Amy.

(The Moray might have tried to kill them, given the chance, but the point was that it hadn’t, and so therefore Pretzel’s pet was clearly the better behaved of the two.)

Pretzel recognized Eggman’s base as they approached. Back during The Incident, she and Rouge had snuck in together to try and steal Eggman’s Chaos Emeralds, but instead… Pretzel shuddered and glanced at the Phoenix, remembering Rouge’s echoing scream. It had been brainwashed by Light Gaia then, no more to blame than the Moray, but the terror of that moment echoed in Pretzel’s mind nonetheless, and she quickly looked away.

While Amy went to check out what remained of Eggman’s base, Whip accompanied the Phoenix to its “nest” in an area that looked a little more like a serene sun temple and a little less like a technological madman’s evil lair. Pretzel went with him, just to make sure the Phoenix didn’t go berserk again (and that Whip didn’t get it addicted to chocolate or something). She didn’t need to worry about Whip’s safety, at least. The Phoenix adored him, constantly nuzzling him and making cooing noises like a dove. It almost made it look nonthreatening. Almost.

“I know Sunshine seemed really nice,” Whip was saying to the Phoenix as they reached its roost. “I like the sunlight, too. But you shouldn’t hurt people, okay?” He patted its beak. “You need to be more like a campfire, not a wildfire.”

The Phoenix cooed agreeably. Then it grabbed Whip in its beak. Pretzel lunged forward, but Whip was giggling, and her panic faded as she realized the Phoenix wasn’t eating him, just trying to put him in its nest.

“I can’t stay,” Whip told it, wriggling free. “I have to finish my quest. But I’ll visit!”

The Phoenix cooed sadly, but it didn’t stop Whip as he left. It did, however, give Pretzel what she thought might have been a warning glare.

“Hey, I’ve been looking after him just fine the past two months!” Pretzel protested. The Phoenix continued to stare at her judgmentally. Pretzel huffed and followed Whip out. Stupid birds.

“I didn’t find anything in Eggman’s base,” Amy told them disappointedly as they joined up again. “Nothing we didn’t already know, anyway.” Then she smiled, looking towards the Phoenix’s nest. “But we still made progress! One more fragment down, however many more to go!”

“We’re great at this!” Whip cheered, high-fiving her.

“A lot,” Pretzel said. “There are a lot of fragments left.”

Both Amy and Whip gave her disapproving, “don’t kill the mood” looks.

“I’m just saying ,” Pretzel insisted, raising her wings defensively. “If we keep going one fragment at a time, it’ll take forever.”

“Forever?” Whip asked.

“Months, at least. And that’s if we keep up this pace, which we probably can’t.” She didn’t know about her and Whip, but she was sure Amy wouldn’t do well on a routine of constant fighting and portal jumping with hardly any downtime. “Who knows how much destruction the fragments could cause in the meantime?”

Amy sighed. “And we left Empire City in such a hurry. My parents will be coming home soon…” 

She cast a longing glance towards the building that housed the portals. Or the remaining portals, anyway; apparently Eggman had disassembled several of them. Pretzel wanted to think they’d become completely useless once taken apart and separated from the temple, but with their luck they were probably a key part of Eggman’s latest scheme. Hopefully Sonic could handle it. (Hopefully Sonic was alive .)

“Maybe we could split up?” Whip suggested. “You can go back to Empire City, Amy, and make sure everyone’s alright. And—” he hooked his arm around Pretzel’s, who immediately stiffened and gave him a warning look. He remained oblivious. “—me and Pretzel can go find the next fragment!”

Amy chewed her lip. “Wouldn’t that just slow things down?”

“Probably,” Pretzel said, pulling her arm free as she thought Whip’s proposal through. It was a stupid plan, really, and a month—no, even a week ago she would have balked at going on a trip, alone , with Whip , to fight terrifying monsters, but…

But Whip was changing, and he was changing in a good way, not a reverting-back-to-Light-Gaia way. He’d defended her from Dust Devil, trusted her about Midnight, and looked to her for reassurance after Sunshine. If Whip could learn to actually listen and think things through for a change, well, then maybe Pretzel could learn to be a little braver. Step out of her comfort zone, fight some monsters, go on a quest with her brother. Maybe it would even be… fun?

With that in mind, Pretzel continued speaking. “But… Amy, maybe if you get a chance to rest in Empire City you can think of a better plan.”

“My plan is awesome!” Whip protested.

“And in the meantime,” Pretzel said, ignoring him, “ we can learn more about the fragments.”

Amy folded her arms, staring them down. “This isn’t just you trying to get rid of me, is it?”

“Never!” Whip objected passionately. “You are essential team member Amy!”

“You’re the brains of this operation. And brains need rest.” Seeing the hesitation on Amy’s face, Pretzel added, “We’ll be fine , Amy.”

Whip slung his arm around Pretzel’s shoulder, which she reluctantly allowed. “We’re the dream team! With my speed and Pretzel’s slowness, we can take down anything!”

“Your speed and my slowness? How about your flightiness and my ability to actually focus ?”

“I am flighty!” Whip agreed cheerfully. “Super good at flying!”

Amy sighed, glancing up at the sky. The sun had set and it was fast growing dark. “How about we sleep on it? They offered us a room here for helping with the Phoenix, and we could use the rest.”

“I’m not sleepy!” Whip protested, and was immediately betrayed by his own yawn.

“We can get dinner, too,” Amy suggested, and naturally Whip was sold.

Though she didn’t need sleep, Pretzel was relieved to get a break. Being nearly destroyed by two Light Gaia fragments was enough excitement for one day, thank you very much. She still had a lingering weird melty feeling from Sunshine’s attack, like she might dissolve into shadow without warning. The food helped. It was good food, too, though not as much chocolate as Whip would have liked. It reminded her of a restaurant they’d gone to with Sonic, Rouge, Shadow and Blaze when they visited them in Empire City two months ago, right before Blaze returned to her dimension. That had been the last time Pretzel saw all four of them together. She hadn’t seen Blaze at all since then, and even Rouge and Shadow (who actually lived in her dimension) hadn’t visited until they’d all come to say goodbye to Sonic a few days ago.

Sonic. Where was he? He’d clearly lost his Gaia energy, but what about the rest of him? Was he alright? Pretzel didn’t think he was dead. He couldn’t be dead. But why else would he have been cut off from her so completely? Sure, the Gaia energy had been taken, but Pretzel was still able to connect with Amy just fine, if not to the same extent as Sonic, and Amy didn’t have any Gaia energy (or at least, not any more than everyone else on the planet). Was it just the distance? Or was there something more?

When they went to bed that night, instead of walking in dreams, Pretzel tried something new. Her connection with Sonic was gone, but not like it had never been there. A… stump, she supposed, remained, like when a limb was cut off. Now she poked at the wound experimentally, trying to trace what had caused it and where the missing limb had gone. The stump remained stubbornly unresponsive. In fact, it even seemed to be resisting her.

Wait. What if… what if it wasn’t that Sonic had been cut off, but that she had been blocked ? That seemed like something Eggman might try, right? If that was the case, than surely all she had to do was remove the blockage.

C’mon, Pretzel thought through the mental equivalent of gritted teeth. She shoved at the barrier, bombarding it with her energy. Give!

The barrier resisted, and resisted, and then without warning it let her through and Pretzel experienced something like falling. Falling up, into the sky, up, up, up, past stars and moon and into the glassy pool of the heavens, reflecting the world below, until her momentum jerked painfully to a halt and she fell flat on her face in a pool of shadows.

Shaking herself, Pretzel scrambled to her feet and whirled around, scanning her surroundings suspiciously. She was on a boat, a small sailing ship not unlike the ones she’d seen in Adabat. Waves lapped softly against the sides. Pretzel leaned over the edge of the boat to peer into the ocean, but instead of clear water the waves were a roiling mass of dark shadows, too murky and inconsistent to make any sense of. The strange sea stretched as far as Pretzel could see. Dark and empty. Above her was a sky devoid of stars. The crescent moon, hued an ominous purple, shone cooly overhead, illuminating the boat’s solitary journey through a sea of darkness. 

The whole scene felt… strange. Distant, like she was straining to make it out from far away, or watching through a foggy window, even though she was right there on the boat. Dreams—and this was obviously a dream—normally had a certain etherealness to them, but this level of disconnect was unusual. Was it because of how she’d accessed this particular dream?

Someone was in the boat.

Pretzel turned to see a Mobian wolf, kneeling beside her and looking at the dark waves. He was short, with a stocky, broad-shouldered build and long arms. His fur was purple-black, fluffed against the chill of the dream world, with icy blue-grey tufts on his wrists and ankles and matching tips on his ears and tail. His eyes were a cool green. 

Patterned along the wolf’s arms and legs were unusual scale-like markings that glowed a soft purple in the dark. Most of them were a simple rounded shape, but the one on his forehead stood out to Pretzel. It looked like a crescent moon, with a small oval floating between the two tips; together the shapes almost formed an eye. Matching marks were on the backs of his hands and the sides of his feet. The symbol felt familiar; everything about the wolf felt familiar, but the strange fogginess of the dreamworld was making it hard to figure out why.

As Pretzel watched, the wolf leaned over the side of the boat, trailing a hand in the false sea. His fingers passed through the shadows like they were mist. He sighed softly. And then he looked right at her.

Pretzel backed away on instinct. If recent experience was anything to go by, it never meant good things to be noticed in a dream. But the wolf didn’t look aggressive. He just looked… sad.

“Who are you?” Pretzel asked. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. Distorted.

The wolf tilted his head at her. Had he not heard?

“WHO. ARE. YOU?” Pretzel repeated, enunciating loudly.

The wolf spoke, his soft voice distorted and crackling, like Amy’s phone when it had a bad connection. She couldn’t make out what he was saying in the slightest.

“WHAT— Oh, forget this.” What did you say? They were in a dream, after all; wasn’t like they needed to talk out loud.

That’s much better. The wolf sounded pleased. His voice was still distant and oddly tinny, but at least she could actually understand what he was saying.

Why did I find you? Pretzel demanded. She’d been looking for Sonic ; how had she ended up in the dream of this stranger?

I was going to ask you the same thing, the wolf said, amused. This is my dream, isn’t it?

Fair enough. Still, something had brought her here. There must be a connection. Was this guy somehow involved with what happened to Sonic?

Where are you, anyway? Pretzel turned around slowly. The dream didn’t give any hints, other than the boat. Are you in Adabat?

We’re traveling. 

Pretzel received a brief impression of two blurry faces that disappeared before she could study them. One of the faces seemed familiar, but like everything in this dream, the feeling slipped through her grasp before she could make sense of it. And the more Pretzel tried to grab on, the more the dream seemed to fade, dissolving around her as the waking world pressed more and more urgently. She was running out of time.

Who are you? Pretzel demanded urgently. How are you connected to all this?

That’s the problem, isn’t it? the wolf said, a wry, melancholy smile curling across his muzzle. I don’t know.

And then the dream was gone, and Pretzel woke up with more questions than answers.

After they’d had breakfast, Whip, in a surprising display of focus and being able to remember things, again brought up the idea of them splitting up.

“I don’t know…” Amy said hesitantly. “Are you guys sure about this?”

“Definitely!” Whip said.

“About as sure as I am about anything,” Pretzel said, which really meant “not sure at all”, but they didn’t have to know that.

“C’mon, Amy,” Whip pleaded. “We can do this!”

“And you need to check in with your parents, anyway,” Pretzel added.

Amy sighed. “Alright, but we’ll need a way to keep in contact.”

She took something out of her hammerspace and handed it to Pretzel, who turned it over curiously. It was some sort of mechanical device, clearly, though it didn’t look like Amy’s phone or Rouge’s tablet. Smaller, and without the screen, just buttons and a speaker.

“Keep that with you. If you guys need me, you can call by pressing—” Amy leaned down to point at the device. “—this button.”

Pretzel nodded and tucked the device into her hammerspace the way Rouge had taught her.

“So where’s the next monster?” Whip asked, his tail lashing excitedly. “Where should we go, Amy?”

Amy took out her phone, squinting at the screen and making swiping motions with her finger. “Hmm… Mazuri… Apotos… Spagonia… Adabat… All the places with Gaia temples have been having the same sort of strange weather…”

“Adabat?” Pretzel interjected, remembering the wolf. 

The boat had looked like the kind she’d seen around Adabat, hadn’t it? Maybe that's why she’d dreamed about him, because she and Whip would meet him soon. The implication that she was gaining some sort of prophetic ability on top of everything else was… alarming, to say the least. But maybe the wolf was Adabat’s Gaia fragment. It would make sense; wolves were one of her creatures, and he’d had a clear moon/darkness motif going on, which fit Dark Gaia perfectly. And those glowing markings had been similar to the ones Hurricane and Midnight had.

“Where’s Adabat?” Whip asked, looking between Pretzel and Amy.

“We were there just… has it really been three days?” Amy blinked, then shook herself. “That’s where we said goodbye to Sonic and Tails, remember?”

“Oh!” Whip perked up, delighted at something being familiar for once. “I do remember! I know that place!” He wrinkled his nose. “It was wet.”

“It’ll be warm, though,” Pretzel pointed out. “Warmer than Holoska. And there’s that bean porridge stuff you like.”

“Ooh, Amy, Amy, can we get bean porridge?”

Amy smiled. “I think I still have some cash from last time.” She dug through her subspace for a moment before handing Pretzel a small pouch, which Pretzel carefully tucked away. “And remember, you need to pay for things. You can’t just take them.”

“I would never!” Whip protested hotly.

Amy looked at Pretzel.

“I know, I know. I won’t get us arrested.”

“No. Crimes.” Amy told her firmly. “Even if you can get away with them.”

Drat. She really did know Pretzel too well. Pretzel pouted.

“Stay safe, both of you,” Amy said as they at last made their way to the temple, where Whip activated the portal to Empire City. Another reason for the communicator; Amy would need to let them know when she was ready to be picked up, since a Gaia was required to use the temples. “I’ll see you soon!”

And with that Amy was gone, leaving Pretzel and Whip completely unattended for the first time in months. Pretzel wondered if Amy was already regretting her decision as much as Pretzel was.

“Let’s go let’s go let’s go !” Whip chanted, impatiently slapping his palms on the Adabat portal. The moment it lit up he nearly gave himself a concussion from flying into the door. He glanced sheepishly at Pretzel. “Could you…?”

Pretzel rolled her eyes and shoved the stone door open. “You’re such a lightweight.”

“That’s why I’m better at flying!” Whip said cheerfully. He sniffed at the breeze blowing through the door. “Isn’t it nice this is somewhere we know? This is gonna be so easy!”

“Stop tempting fate,” Pretzel said, but honestly? She agreed. Maybe this saving the world gig wasn’t so bad after all.

Chapter Text

Adabat was wet.

The moment Pretzel and Whip stepped through the door, they were met with grey skies and lashing rain. Last time they’d visited it had been raining, too, but… wasn’t it supposed to be the dry season? Was this a Gaia fragment thing? And if it was raining last time, that meant whatever fragment was here had been active before Pretzel even knew the fragments were a thing. Which made sense, but it still unnerved her to think of all the pieces of her power that had been wreaking havoc in the world without her knowing all this time.

“It’s so wet ,” Whip whined, wrapping his arms around himself as he looked around hopefully for an escape from the rain. They’d been dumped in the middle of an open street, oddly empty for the time of day. Maybe the weather was keeping everyone inside.

“C’mon,” Pretzel said, resisting the urge to laugh. With his fur soaked as it was, Whip looked decidedly pathetic. “Let’s look around.”

She slunk out into the street, Whip reluctantly trailing after her. He tried to keep to the shelter of the overhanging roofs when he could, but with the rain at an angle as it was they did little to protect him. Watching him wade miserably through the puddles, Pretzel was torn between amusement and pity. They should have asked if Amy had any raincoats before they left.

Suddenly Whip perked up. “Pretzel! Over there!” 

He pointed across the street to a food cart sitting alone in the rain, and before Pretzel could react he was already racing over. She hurried after him. With the rain she would have expected any street vendors to have gone home (or at least parked under a roof), but no, the cart was definitely open and inhabited. As they neared it she made out the sounds of… sobbing? Was someone crying?

“Why are you crying?” Whip asked, hovering in front of the food cart with a furrowed brow. 

The vendor (judging by the apron, anyway) was draped over the counter and sobbing into his arms. He didn’t even seem to hear Whip’s question. Pretzel looked around with a frown, trying to pinpoint her sense of unease. The empty street gave her no answers. Sure, there could be any number of reasons the vendor was so upset, but something about it…

Cautiously, Pretzel reached out, brushing lightly against the vendor’s mind. Immediately she recoiled. Yes, there was definitely something unnatural about the vendor’s mood. A dark cloud hung over his mind, not something produced by his own brain chemistry, but rather pushed on him from outside. She recognized that touch. It was the same trick she’d used on Sonic to snap him from Light Gaia’s control, a trick she still regretted. Even if it had seemed necessary at the time, it had also been cruel. Trapping someone’s mind in nightmares of their own making… If she’d had any doubts that the Adabat fragment was a piece of Dark Gaia, they were all gone now.

“It’s the fragment,” she told Whip. “It’s messing with his mind.”

Whip gasped. “That’s so mean! Making him sad for no reason like that!” And then, before Pretzel could think to stop him, he reached out and laid his hand on the vendor’s.

Immediately the vendor snapped upright, a broad smile on his face even as residual tears continued to run down his cheeks. “Hello! It’s so nice to meet you!” he said in an unnaturally cheerful tone.

Pretzel stumbled back. The empty smile, the pupilless eyes, the fake chipper tone— And Whip still had his hand on the man, smiling that creepy smile right back at him.

“Whip,” Pretzel said, voice strained. He didn’t respond. “Whip! Stop it!”

“Is something wrong?” The possessed man asked her with mock concern, his smile suddenly menacing.

“ WHIP !” Pretzel snapped, grabbing Whip’s arm to pull him away. She gasped and jerked back. Touching him burned . The fur on her palms turned black, and a nauseating scorched smell filled the air.

“Pretzel?” Whip blinked at her, and suddenly everything was back to normal. The vendor was hunched over his counter again, and Whip wasn’t smiling, just looking at her with concern. “Is something wrong?”

Pretzel looked at her hands. Normal. Unburnt. Even the pain was gone. She clenched her fists and swallowed. “Nothing,” she said, hoping it was true. Unease trickled down her spine, icier than the rain. “It was nothing.” She turned away from the food cart and his round, innocent eyes. Don’t think about it. Focus on the mission. “Come on. We can help him by stopping the fragment.”

“Yeah!” Whip agreed, concern forgotten.

He left the vendor with a last conciliatory pat (that thankfully didn’t seem to cause a reaction this time, though Pretzel still tensed) and flew after her. Together they headed down the street. Pretzel was relieved when the vendor was out of view.

“Soooo… how are we going to find the fragment?” Whip asked after a respectable thirty seconds of silence.

“I don’t—” Pretzel started, then drew up short. Someone was looking at them, peeking around the corner of a nearby building. A little girl, it looked like, though it was hard to make them out through the rain. “Do you see that?”

“See what?” Whip asked, following her gaze. “Oh! I think I know her! Hi!”

The little girl blinked at them, then without warning turned and took off through the rain.

“Wait! Nagi!” Whip called, but the girl kept running. He started to follow, but Pretzel grabbed his arm, stopping him short.

“We need to be careful,” Pretzel urged. “We don’t know what the fragment’s planning.”

“Maybe it’s like Midnight,” Whip suggested optimistically. “Maybe it just wants to play!”

Pretzel remembered the vendor. That didn’t strike her as playful. “Just… be careful,” she said, letting go of his arm.

The girl—Nagi, Whip called her—had stopped in the street ahead of them. She waved her hand in a beckoning motion before turning and running onward.

“See? She wants us to follow!” Whip grinned and took off after her.

Pretzel followed, chest still tight with unease. This whole thing felt like the set-up of a horror movie. What did the fragment want?

Her unease only grew as Nagi led them out of the town and into the jungle nearby. Even Whip slowed uncertainly as the undergrowth grew denser and darker around them, and still Nagi led them on, beckoning them playfully. At last they reached a clearing in the jungle, split by a deep ravine. Nagi ran right toward the crack in the ground as if she didn’t see it.

“Nagi!” Whip called, panicked. “Nagi, stop! You’ll fall!”

Nagi turned, gave them one last smile, and then collapsed into the mud.

Whip gasped and lunged forward, but Pretzel held him back. Together they watched, transfixed, as something like a shadow flowed out of Nagi’s body, growing and twisting until the monster took form.

It was bipedal and Mobian-like in appearance, as Midnight had been, but this creature was a far cry from Midnight’s childlike innocence. It was tall and lean, with a long, curling tail tipped by a scorpion-like barb, and sharp, wicked claws that seemed to glow in the dark of the jungle. Matching spines ran down its back and tail like a dorsal fin, and slender spikes framed its face and adorned its wrists and ankles. It was covered in short, dark brown fur, with scales running down its underbelly and glowing markings on its face, hands, and feet. Its eyes—all three of them—were a poisonous green.

In short? It looked like Pretzel. A taller, leaner, more threatening version of Pretzel.

“Hey,” the fragment said, baring her fangs in a lazy grin. “I’m Twist. And welcome—” she did a little theatrical twirl, extending her arms to indicate the jungle as a whole. “—to my game board.”

Whip took a step forward, even though his fur puffed with fear. “What did you do to Nagi?”

“Oh, her?” Twist glanced down at the child slumped in the mud. She crouched down and turned Nagi over, poking at her like she was an interesting insect. “She’s resting .”

Whip moved as if to lunge at Twist, but Pretzel kept hold of his arm, pulling him back.

Twist smirked at them as she scooped Nagi into her arms, cradling her with surprising gentleness. The gesture was undermined by the way she laid her hand on Nagi’s collarbone, claws resting against Nagi’s throat. The warning was clear.

“I’ve put her to sleep,” Twist explained, smiling down at the child in her arms. “I’ve put them all to sleep.” She looked up at Pretzel, and Pretzel dug her claws in to the mud, resisting the urge to run from those piercing, poisonous eyes. “Isn’t it nice? So quiet and peaceful . Happy people are so loud . Don’t you get tired , Pretzel, of all the noise, noise, noise ? All that smiling and laughter . It’s obnoxious , really. Don’t you wish you could just make it all stop ?”

“Shut up,” Pretzel snapped. “Don’t act like we’re the same.”

“You made everyone sad!” Whip said, glaring at Twist. “You’re a monster !”

Twist barely spared him a glance. She was still looking at Pretzel with those eyes that saw too much. “If you’re so much better than me, why don’t you prove it?”

“What do you mean?” Trepidation coiled like a physical weight in Pretzel’s chest. They were treading on dangerous ground. Twist clearly wasn’t like the other fragments. This was no primal force of nature, no misunderstood child. This was a cunning and malicious intelligence. Wasn’t Pretzel supposed to be a Gaia, a force of nature, even a deity? Why did she feel so helpless ?

“A game,” Twist purred, tracing a claw down Nagi’s sleeping face. “You against me. If you win, I’ll let everyone wake up. And if I win…” She flashed a fanged smile. “Then you enter a nightmare of your own.”

Pretzel swallowed. A nightmare of her own. What if Twist could do to Pretzel what Pretzel had done to the other fragments? What if Twist could make Pretzel into a monster?

“We won’t play with you!” Whip snapped, stepping in front of Pretzel and flaring his wings. He put on a good show, but Pretzel could see the tremble in his hands, the frightened twitch of his ears. “We’ll—we’ll just take Nagi anyway! You can’t stop both of us!” He moved towards Twist.

“Ah ah ah,” Twist chided, her claws back at Nagi’s throat. “Are you sure you want to try that?”

Whip hesitated, glancing from Twist to Nagi.

“Don’t,” Pretzel warned. “If we try to attack, she could hurt Nagi before we reach her.”

Whip reluctantly stepped back and folded his wings, eyes still on Nagi.

“Now you get it.” Twist grinned at Pretzel. “So, what do you say? Game on?”

Whip glanced anxiously at Pretzel. This was not a situation he knew how to handle; it was up to her, then. She squeezed her eyes shut, digging her claws deeper into the mud. A game. She could play a game, couldn’t she?

If I win, you enter a nightmare of your own.

Don’t think about that.

“Fine,” Pretzel spat, looking up at Twist. “What are the rules?”

“It’s simple,” Twist said. 

She laid her hand on Nagi’s face, and suddenly the girl’s eyes sprang open. But they looked… wrong. Clouded. Lightless. Twist set Nagi on her feet and gave her a nudge. The girl moved like a sleepwalker, shambling across the clearing and towards the ravine. Whip gasped, but Nagi didn’t fall off the edge. Instead she walked to a small tree that leaned over the ravine. Then she started climbing, up the tree’s trunk and then onto its branch. There she stood, the slender branch the only thing keeping her from plunging into the ravine below. She stayed there, perfectly still, a lifeless puppet waiting for its next orders.

“Bring her back!” Whip cried, fists clenched.

“Ah, but then we wouldn’t have a game, would we? Now here are the rules. You and I, Pretzel, will take turns telling riddles. The other player has to guess the answer. And if you take too long—say, more than thirty seconds—or get an answer wrong—” Twist gestured to Nagi, and the girl took a step forward. The branch shook beneath her. Whip whimpered.

“And of course, if you try to cheat, the game ends immediately,” Twist continued, as casually as if they were playing Uno. “In that case, I’ll make her jump immediately.”

Pretzel forced herself to keep her eyes on Twist. Twist, who enjoyed hurting people. Twist, who was smiling, cruel and vicious. Twist, who would threaten an innocent girl. Never had Pretzel wanted to hurt someone more than she did looking at that leering shadow. Twist was the worst of Dark Gaia, the worst of Pretzel. And Pretzel hated her with a seething rage like nothing she’d ever felt before.

It’s all a mind game , she reminded herself. Don’t let her distract you. She wouldn’t lose her temper like Whip. Her hate, her anger, it wasn’t the hot and blinding thing that Whip’s was. Hers was cold. Clear. Calculated. She wouldn’t let it cloud her mind.

Whatever it took, she’d get Nagi to safety. She’d prove Twist wrong.

“And what if you get a riddle wrong?” Pretzel challenged. “What’s your punishment?

“That’s for you to decide. But you already have, haven’t you?” Twist smiled, eyes dark. “Yes, you’ve been planning the perfect punishment for a long time now.”

Pretzel held her gaze. The cold hate seemed to wrap around her like armor. A reassuring numbness, a lens through which to view the world without all the cloudiness of sentimentality and feeling. Yes, she knew exactly what the perfect penalty would be. “Your punishment will be Whip.”

“W-what?” Whip started. “Pretzel, what do you—”

“Every time you get a riddle wrong,” Pretzel continued, ignoring him. “Whip will put his hand on your eye for ten seconds.”

“How is that a punishment?” Whip glanced from Pretzel to Twist, bewildered.

Twist smiled, all fangs. A crocodile grin. “And I lose when I can’t take it anymore. Cruel indeed. I knew I liked you.”

Pretzel scowled. “I’m just doing what it takes to stop you.”

“Pretzel,” Whip said, reaching a hand out to her. Pretzel flinched at his touch. The warmth felt strange. “Pretzel, I don’t think we should—”

“I’ve made up my mind,” Pretzel growled, not looking away from Twist. “Let’s start the game already.”

Whip reluctantly stepped back, wings still fluttering anxiously.

“I’ll go first.” Twist’s tail lashed lazily across the ground, swinging like a pendulum. “It can’t be seen, can’t be touched, can’t be heard, and yet is feared. What is it?”

“Darkness,” Pretzel said. “That’s obvious.”

“So it is,” Twist agreed, still grinning. “Your turn.”

Alright. Pretzel could do this. Riddles. She could think of a riddle. She just wished Whip would stop making distracting worried noises.

“Clock’s ticking,” Twist reminded her. On the branch Nagi shifted as if preparing to take a step.

Pretzel gritted her teeth. A riddle, a riddle, she’d read riddles before. “Alive without breath, cold as death, and always drinking yet never thirsty. What is it?”

“A good one,” Twist hummed. “Alive without breath…”

Pretzel counted in her head, tail twitching with nervous energy.

“Alive without breath…” Twist murmured again.

“Thirty seconds!” Pretzel said. “It’s been thirty seconds.”

“It was fish, wasn’t it?” Twist guessed, but she obligingly knelt down to Whip’s level. 

Whip looked at Pretzel uncertainly. She nodded. He stepped up to Twist and laid a hand on her eye. Twist hissed in pain, smoke rising from the point of contact, and Whip jerked back, wide-eyed.

Twist straightened, stumbling slightly as she put a hand to her eye. “Painful,” she said, pulling her hand away at last and looking almost… intrigued. “Very painful. Are you hoping to throw me off my game with this punishment?”

Pretzel bared her teeth, trying not to look at Whip still staring at his hand. “Just give me the next riddle.”

Twist rolled her eyes. “Fine. It reaches for the sky, but clutches to the ground. Sometimes it leaves, but it’s always around. What is it?”

Pretzel furrowed her brow. Reach for the sky, clutch to the ground… Her eyes drifted to Whip, who was holding his hand to his chest, expression painfully lost. No. Focus. Find the answer.

“Time’s up,” Twist chided. “Really, Pretzel. It’s a tree. Even a child could have figured that out. And speaking of…” She grinned as Nagi took a step forward. The branch shook under her, and Pretzel instinctively jerked forwards before stopping herself. If she overstepped, Twist would make the girl jump. How many steps would it be before Nagi reached the end of the branch? Three? Four?

The game went on. Twist was good, unfortunately. She had a way with words. Pretzel’s attempts, by comparison, seemed far too blunt and obvious. Nevertheless, Twist did seem… confused by certain things. Her knowledge of the modern day was far more scattered and uncertain than Pretzel’s, based on distant observation rather than actual experience. For all her pretending, Twist hadn’t actually been alive that long. Pretzel used that. 

Though Nagi drew closer and closer to the end of the branch, Whip’s burns—he’d refused to touch Twist’s eye again, and Pretzel couldn’t blame him—were having an effect. Twist still put on the calm, confident face, but her gritted teeth and lashing tail told another story. She seemed to sway a little on her feet, and she took longer to come up with and answer the riddles. Her focus was fraying. Twist was wearing down, but slowly, too slowly. Nagi was nearly to the end of the branch.

“You’re running out of time,” Twist said, as if she’d read Pretzel’s thoughts. “One more mistake and she’s dead. But I’ll offer you a deal: guess one last riddle, and you win the game.”

Pretzel narrowed her eyes suspiciously, claws digging into the mud. She glanced at Nagi, balancing precariously on the shuddering branch. Another step, and she’d be gone. “One riddle? And the previous terms still hold?”

“One riddle. Guess correctly, and I’ll wake the girl and return her safely home. Guess wrong, and…” she grinned. “Well, you know what happens.”

Pretzel glanced at Whip. He stared back at her, round-eyed, worried… and hopeful. It hit her like a bullet to the chest. Whip thought she could pull this off. Whip believed in her. Why?

“Alright,” Pretzel said. “I’ll take your bet.”

“Good. Then here’s the riddle.” Twist held Pretzel’s gaze, poison green eyes almost hypnotic. “What am I?”

Pretzel blinked. What was Twist?

“That’s easy. You’re—” Pretzel’s voice broke off.

Whip was looking at her. Whip was looking at her with wide, innocent eyes. Whip was looking at her, full of faith in his sister to defeat this monster. Whip believed in her. Whip cared about her. And Whip would hate her if he knew the truth.

“Well?” Twist taunted, and Pretzel hated her, hated her voice, hated her eyes, hated her cruel grin, hated everything about her. “I thought you said it was easy. You know the answer, but if you don’t want to say it, well…” She shrugged. “Your choice, I suppose. You never did like children.”

“I know what you are,” Pretzel spat, the hatred bubbling out of her like venom. “You’re a heartless, lying monster playing games with people’s lives. ”

Something unreadable passed over Twist’s face. Then she laughed . “You’re right,” she grinned, all fangs. “I am heartless.”

Twist disappeared. Nagi jumped. Whip screamed.

Pretzel launched herself off the edge of the chasm. She wasn’t nearly a fast enough flyer to catch Nagi before she hit the rocks, but she didn’t need to be. Pretzel pulled on the cool shadows around her—and, more importantly, around Nagi. Eagerly they wrapped around Nagi’s sleeping form, shielding her as she tumbled down, and down, and—stopped, thudding onto a ledge. The shield dissipated as Pretzel landed beside her. The child was unharmed, still sleeping peacefully.

Whip joined her in an anxious flutter, pawing worriedly at Nagi’s face before looking up at Pretzel.

“She’s fine,” Pretzel said.

“How did you do that?” Whip asked, his expression uncomfortably… awed.

Pretzel shrugged. “While Twist was distracted by you burning her, I prepped the shadows around Nagi. By the time she jumped they were already partly made into a shield, so I didn’t have to do much to get it up in time.” 

She’d tried making shields around other things before. It was trickier than just throwing up a shield around herself, and making a shield for someone or something bigger than Pretzel—even if they were still relatively small, like Nagi—was especially hard. It had been easier, for a little while, after she absorbed Midnight, but her shadow constructs seemed to have weakened again. Something Twist had done? Or did the energy boosts from the fragments simply wear off with time? It didn’t matter; she’d had plenty of time to work on the shield while Twist was distracted with pain and riddles, and it had proved strong enough to keep Nagi alive. That was all that mattered.

“That was smart,” Whip said with open admiration. It made Pretzel uncomfortable. He looked around. “Did you know she’d land on this ledge?”

Pretzel shook her head. “I guess Twist misjudged where to make her jump.” Or she knew she’d land here and this really was just an elaborate mind game, she added to herself. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

Thankfully Nagi stirred before they could discuss it further. She blinked in confusion at her surroundings, then at Pretzel and Whip. She sat up, wrapping her arms around herself. “Where… where am I?”

“You’re safe,” Whip assured her, smiling warmly. “We’ll help take you home.”

Pretzel and Whip worked together to fly her out. Either one of them might have been able to handle the weight alone, but it was more comfortable for Nagi if they both carried her. (And Pretzel’s strength from Hurricane seemed to have faded as well. It was fine. Nothing to worry about.) Then they led her through the jungle until she spotted the town and ran off ahead, calling excitedly for her parents. The rest of Adabat seemed to have recovered from their spell, and several people wandered the streets, looking bewildered. The rain had stopped, and a hint of sun broke through the clouds.

Pretzel grabbed Whip’s arm to stop him from following Nagi into her house, and together they listened from the roof as Nagi was welcomed by her overjoyed parents.

Whip beamed. “I feel like a real superhero now!”

Pretzel rolled her eyes. “I don’t think finding one kid lost in the jungle makes you a superhero.”

Whip hardly seemed to notice. He was watching the streets, which were quickly becoming more busy. “All the people seem happier now. Does this mean Twist is gone? Did you…” he hesitated. “Did you. Um. Understand her?”

“No, I didn’t.” Pretzel hadn’t absorbed Twist like she had the other fragments, but as long as she was gone it didn’t matter, did it? “I defeated her the normal way.”

Whip looked relieved. “You wouldn’t have wanted a power up from her, anyway. She was bad. ”

“Yeah,” Pretzel muttered, looking at her claws. Her chest twisted painfully. Whip was right; she of all people knew he was right. So why did it still hurt to hear him say it? “Yeah, she was bad. Irredeemable, even. It’s good she’s gone.” Assuming she was gone. What if she came back?

“Stop looking worried,” Whip said, poking her face. “We beat her! All by ourselves! We’re awesome!”

Pretzel swallowed the pain. Whip was right. Twist was gone and Adabat was saved. This was a victory. Twist didn’t deserve her grief. “Of course we beat her. Have you seen us?”

“Yeah!” Whip bounced up and down. “We’re like monster-hunting masters! Monster-hunting heroes !”

“Any fragment would be an idiot to show their face around us,” Pretzel agreed, returning his grin. She let his excitement drown out her doubt. 

Heroes. Maybe this would work. Maybe this would be her redemption.

Chapter Text

“We should call Amy,” Pretzel realized as she and Whip made their way to Adabat’s temple—after a quick stop to buy some bean porridge, at Whip’s insistence. “She’s probably worried about us.”

“Tell her we totally saved the day!” Whip suggested, bouncing in place. He’d already finished both his own porridge and Pretzel’s. “She’ll be so impressed!”

“Impressed at us solving some basic riddles?” Pretzel asked dryly. She reached into her subspace, pulled out the little communication device, and pressed the button Amy had shown her. They both watched the device expectantly. Nothing happened.

“I think you’re doing it wrong,” Whip commented helpfully.

“I’m doing what she told me to!” Pretzel snapped.

“Maybe you just have to talk into it!” Whip leaned forward and pressed his muzzle to the device. “Hello? Amy?”

The only response was the crackle of static.

“Ominous.” Pretzel shook the device. It remained stubbornly silent.

“She’s probably just busy,” Whip offered.

“Maybe,” Pretzel said, wings twitching anxiously. She tucked the device away and looked up. They’d reached the temple now. “Well, we don’t have any other leads anyway. Why don’t we go to Empire City and meet up with Amy?”

“Yes, that’s a good idea!” Despite his optimism, Whip seemed relieved. “Amy will know where to go next.”

They reached the portal room unnoticed, to Pretzel’s relief; the guards and curators were well used to them by now, but she still preferred to avoid attention if possible. She stood watch at the room’s door, willing the tight feeling in her chest to ease, while Whip activated the portal to Empire City.

“Got it!” Whip called.

Pretzel hurried over, and together they pushed the door open. She sighed with relief as the familiar scent of Empire City wafted from the door. Of course it had worked. The portals always worked. There was no reason to think they’d ever stop behaving as they always had. But…

“Let’s go through together,” Pretzel said, taking Whip’s hand.

Whip glanced at her quizzically, but didn’t protest. Pretzel felt foolish as they stepped through the portal, exactly the same as they had a hundred times before, and—

Everything twisted.

Pretzel’s stomach lurched, bile rising in her throat as she was seized by a sudden feeling of vertigo. Whip’s grip on her hand tightened, and she heard him cry out. Her awareness twisted, contracted, fragmented, and for a moment they were everywhere and nowhere all at once. Then they tumbled onto hot pavement, blissfully solid and whole.

Pretzel lay still for a moment, head pounding. Gradually, the feeling of vertigo retreated. The headache did not.

“Pretzel? Pretzel, what happened?”

Whip’s voice. Pretzel groaned and forced her eyes open. Burning sunlight stabbed at her, hammering on her skull and weighing down her body. She climbed to her feet. Whip was standing beside her, ears twisted back nervously. He stepped back as she stood, and together they looked around.

A gently curving cobbled road ran under their feet, lined by neat buildings made of white stone that reflected the blinding sunlight and green trees that waved in a warm breeze. In one direction, the city rose in tiers, with the highest points adorned by windmills and bell towers. In the other lay the ocean, serene and blue, reflecting the cloudless sky.

“It’s so pretty!” Whip smiled in delight, but then he frowned. “This isn’t Empire City. Where are we?”

“Apotos,” Pretzel said, mouth dry. She remembered this place all too well.

“ There you are! I’ve been looking all over!”

Pretzel whirled around and froze. The growing dread she’d been feeling since Amy hadn’t returned their call coalesced into an avalanche of memory and terror, falling around her, entombing her in numbing fear, only able to watch as the thing approached.

Fangs bared in a playful grin. Lean, cat-like build, tufted tail, tall, pointed ears. Head framed by a mane like the rising sun. Claws, gleaming in the light. For a moment she was there again, cowering before the monster that had been her friend— no. The monster that had taken her friend, taken and twisted and scooped out everything that made him him , then using the shell left behind to torment and burn and destroy. She could feel its burning touch, hear its inhuman laugh, see the burning light seething behind its eyes. She was there again, small and alone and terrified . It was only a moment, but it felt like an eternity.

Then her vision cleared, and she saw the thing standing over them for what it truly was. It was not the Hedgecat. Not exactly. It was bigger, bulkier, and lacked the slender, fairy-like wings. There was no blue on its fur, but instead a brilliant sunrise red, and its eyes burned amber, not green. Its mane was a real mane, not quills approximating one, and it bushed magnificently around its head and neck, feathery and gold. A shape like a flaming sun marked its forehead, glowing faintly in the sunlight, and the same marking adorned the creature’s palms.

No, this wasn’t the Hedgecat. There was no Sonic in this creature. Only Light.

“My name is Nova,” the creature said with an elegant bow. His voice was warm, friendly, almost like a more mature version of Whip’s. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

“Hello!” Whip said, smiling back. “I’m Whip, and this is my sister Pretzel.”

“I know,” Nova said. His eyes flicked to Pretzel, and his expression shifted to one of open disgust and hatred before he looked back at Whip and smiled once more.

Even Whip noticed the shift in expression, and he took a step back, unnerved. “O-oh.”

“How did you know we were here?” Pretzel choked out, though she already knew the answer. “Why were you looking for us?”

“That’s easy,” Nova said, meeting her gaze. He bared his teeth in a grin. “I’m here to kill you.”

Pretzel scrambled out of the way just as he shot forward, claws scoring the pavement. He spun smoothly to face her, turning on a dime. Pretzel barely launched into the air in time to avoid his slashing claws.

“Stop!” Whip yelled, darting towards Nova. “Why are you attacking her!?”

Nova gave him a bemused look. “Do you even know what she is, little brother? Why do you defend her?”

“She’s my sister!” Whip snapped, wings flaring indignantly.

Nova just shook his head. “You are an innocent one. I’ll show you the truth later. I need to finish this first.” He turned to face Pretzel again—but Pretzel was gone.

“Go!” Pretzel hissed to Whip, darting from the shadows of the nearby buildings to grab her brother’s arm while Nova had his back turned.

The two of them flew through a nearby window into a thankfully deserted house, then out the other side. Pretzel kept tugging Whip forward until they’d flown across what had to be half the town. Finally they stopped in the narrow alley between two buildings.

“Did we—” Whip started, but Pretzel clamped a hand over his mouth. She cautiously leaned out of the alley and peered down the street before releasing him.

“I think we lost him,” She said. “You alright?”

“I’m fine,” Whip said. “But I don’t get it. Who was that guy? Why did he want to kill you?”

“That was another Light Gaia fragment. An intelligent one, like Twist.” Pretzel shuddered.

“What did he mean, about me knowing what you are?”

Pretzel flattened her ears and looked away. “That’s not—”

“You still haven’t told him?” A familiar voice interrupted, smooth and mocking.

No. No, no, no, no. This couldn’t be happening.

Pretzel wheeled around, pushing Whip behind her and flaring her wings. (As if you could do anything to protect him.) Twist dropped into the alley. She crouched in front of them, ears twitching, and grinned that slow, predatory grin.

“You think I’m intelligent? Pretzel, I’m touched .”

“Go away !” Whip snapped, pressing against Pretzel. She could feel him trembling. “Pretzel already beat you!”

Twist turned her grin on him. “Technically, she never answered that last riddle. But we weren’t talking about that, were we? We were talking about your dear, sweet sister. If she can even be called that.”

“Stop it!” Whip said, voice cracking. “We’re not going to listen to you!”

Twist stepped closer, and they both backed away—moving closer to the sunlight, out of the safety of the alley. “I hate to say it, but the blowhard’s right. You really have no idea who your sister is—or who you are, for that matter. Innocent indeed.”

“Stop,” Pretzel said, desperate, mind whirling with panic. Another step back, another step toward the light. Not like this, not like this, please not like this—

“They’ve told you all about the Gaias, haven’t they?” Twist continued, ignoring her, eyes on Whip. “Dangerous monsters who tried to destroy the world. Didn’t you think it was odd, how your earliest memories began when Light Gaia… ended?”

“Shut up!” Pretzel snapped, glancing at Whip. He was staring at Twist as if transfixed. Sunlight burned on Pretzel’s fur.

Twist prowled closer. “They stripped the Gaias of their power. Declawed them, so to speak. But then, what to do with the leftovers? Hide them in plain sight. No one would suspect the apocalypse to be hiding in a little girl’s apartment, would they?”

“W-what are you saying?” Whip’s tail curled around him, and he looked at Pretzel, desperate. “What is she saying?”

“I’m saying ,” Twist said, before Pretzel could respond. “That you, Whip, are Light Gaia, and your dear, clever ‘sister’ is Dark Gaia. Your opposite.”

The words, finally spoken out loud, struck Pretzel like a knife to the gut. Whip flinched, and Pretzel flinched too, wrapping her wings around herself.

“That’s—that’s not true!” Whip yelled, stamping his foot and glaring at Twist. “You’re a—you’re a liar ! You lie about everything! I won’t listen to anything you say!”

“Then don’t ask me!” Twist swept her arm as if to indicate the world as a whole. “Ask anyone! Ask Pretzel! Ask Amy! Or better yet—” she tilted her head and grinned. “Ask Nova .”

She vanished in a puff of smoke, just as a fire-red blur slammed into the alley. Pretzel gasped as she was pinned to the wall, fur, skin, and scales burning at Nova’s touch. He bared his teeth mere inches from her throat.

“Enough games,” he growled as Pretzel writhed in his grip, crying out in pain. “Today I end this.”

“Don’t hurt her!” Whip screamed. Pretzel could barely see him through the haze of pain and burning.

Nova barely spared him a glance. “Peace, little brother. Today I destroy Dark Gaia for good.”

Pretzel squeezed her eyes shut. This was always how it was going to end. Burning claws and betrayal. She wished she could apologize to Sonic. All their pain and struggle, and it ended this way anyway.

“I said —” Whip shouted, voice somehow both far away and painfully close, resounding in her mind. “ Don’t! Hurt! Her!”

And suddenly a burst of light, pure white and burning hot, blazed around her. The claws on her throat disappeared, and Pretzel fell to the ground, gasping. She blinked, staring up in shock as Nova stumbled back, a spear of light stabbing through his chest.

“Pretzel!” Whip said, grabbing her hand—and then jerking back as she screamed. His touch burned , even more than Nova’s had.

They stared at each other, Pretzel clutching her arm to herself, Whip’s extended hand slowly falling back to his side.

“Pretzel,” Whip said again. Pleading. Begging . “She was lying. Right? Twist was lying. ”

Pretzel shook her head slowly. She felt—tired. So this was how it went? This was how he found out? Cruel. She should have listened to Amy.

“She was telling the truth,” Pretzel said when he continued to stare at her, disbelieving. “We’re the Gaias.”

Whip backed away, wide-eyed, trembling. “That’s not—that’s not true!”

Hatred and anger, she’d expected. Denial, she wasn’t so sure how to deal with. “Whip—” Pretzel reached towards him instinctively before she remembered and pulled her hand back. “It is true. That’s why we could absorb the fragments.” She glanced back towards Nova, still groaning on the ground at the other end of the alley. The spear of light was gone, but it had left a white scorch mark on the ground. “You were… reclaiming your power.”

“No!” Whip yelled, tears welling in his eyes. “You’re lying ! I’m Whip ! I’m not a monster!” He swiped furiously at his eyes. This time Pretzel didn’t stop herself from reaching towards him, but he backed away, glaring. “You’re a liar! You’re—you’re just as bad as Twist!”

Pretzel flinched like she’d been slapped.

“I won’t listen,” Whip said, spreading his wings. “I won’t listen to you anymore! You’re mean and cruel and a liar !”

“Whip, please —” Pretzel begged, reaching out for him. She grasped for the connection between their minds, but he shoved her back, the heat of his anger and hurt surging over her like fire, more painful than any physical burn. By the time her mind cleared, he’d already flown off. Gone.

Pretzel was alone.

She shivered, huddling into herself. What should she do? Follow him? He wanted nothing to do with her, and it wasn’t like Nova would hurt him. Nothing could hurt him. Nothing except Pretzel.

Nova. Nova would wake up soon. She had to move. Pretzel stumbled forward, seeking the shadows, anywhere she could hide from the merciless sun. Find safety. There was no safety. Find somewhere to hide, somewhere he won’t find you. Darkness. You’re just as bad as Twist! Don’t think about Whip. Don’t think about Amy, or Sonic, or Rouge or Shadow or Blaze or any of them. Don’t think about how it’s all over.

“Pathetic,” the voice purred. No. Not now. “Just tragic. The very power of darkness itself, reduced to a cowering wreck by a few harsh words?”

Pretzel crouched on the ground, feeling smaller than she ever had as Twist stood over her. Twist was poised as ever, looking down at Pretzel with that lazy grin and that piercing green gaze. The sight threw Pretzel back to that place of crackling lava, staring up at those myriad eyes and countless fangs. Seeing the truth of herself. In that moment, looking up at Twist, she understood. This was the true Dark Gaia. Pretzel was the fragment. A broken piece of a forgotten whole, left without purpose, causing pain and destruction wherever she went.

“He’ll find you soon,” Twist said, glancing over her shoulder. “And he’ll kill you, easy. No one to protect you now.”

Pretzel curled her tail around herself, shivering. She could already feel the claws, crushing her chest, choking her throat. Desperately she reached out—for Whip, for Sonic, for anyone who could hear her. But there was nothing. Nothing but the suffocating fear and the truth of Twist’s words.

“You know what you have to do.” Twist’s tail brushed against the ground in slow sweeps. The swing of a pendulum, counting down. “You know there’s only one way to survive.”

Pretzel dug her claws into the cement. Sonic was gone. Amy was gone. Whip was gone. The deception of the past few months was over, and the truth was laid bare, cowering in an alley, alone in the dark.

“So?” Twist asked, and Pretzel could hear her smile. “What’s the answer to my riddle, Pretzel? What am I?”

Pretzel closed her eyes. No more hiding. No more running. No more fighting.

No more Pretzel.

“You’re me,” she whispered. And like an embrace, the darkness came crashing down around her.

Whip huddled on the porch of a stranger’s house, desperately longing for the sun, yet afraid to step out of hiding. Would Nova be hunting him? Would Twist? He didn’t know. Pretzel would know. Except Pretzel had lied. She had to be lying. Whip wasn’t a Gaia; he wasn’t . He wasn’t a monster that tried to destroy the world. He wouldn’t brainwash people and torture them. He wouldn’t.

(But he’d thought Pretzel wouldn’t lie to him, either, and he’d been wrong about that, so what did he know, really? Was anything he believed true?)

The world plunged into darkness.

Whip gasped. He took off into the air before he could remember he was supposed to be hiding, flying up and up and up until he could see the whole town spread out below him. And he saw the shadows, peeling away from all the little crooks and crannies where they’d been hiding from the sun to race over the white buildings and green trees, a wave of darkness surging towards a central pillar of strange violet-black energy. A pillar rising from an alley not far from Whip’s hiding spot. For a moment he caught a glimpse of Pretzel, looking tiny as she huddled to the ground, and Twist, looming over her with vicious delight. And then the shadows reached them. They broke around Twist like waves around a rock, but they surged over Pretzel, swallowing her whole before swirling back around Twist, around and around until she, too, had been swallowed by the darkness.

And then the shadows mushed together and solidified. Like liquid hardening in a mold, they shaped into scales and sinew, teeth and claws, rising up and up until the great and terrible monster loomed over Whip, casting its shadow over the whole town. It looked at him, green eyes sharp and keen, fangs bigger than his entire body. As big as Hurricane, as dark as Midnight, as sharp and cruel as Twist. As clever as Pretzel.

Dark Gaia.

A roar caught the attention of both Whip and the monster. He looked down to see Nova charging forward, burning with white light. For a moment he felt hopeful; Nova was strong, and fierce. Maybe he’d stop this monster. He watched in awe as Nova leapt on top of a building and threw himself forward, still bellowing his challenge. The monster looked right at him…

…and swatted him away like an insect.

Whip gasped as Nova was sent flying through the air. He landed somewhere in the ocean, too far away for Whip to see, and the monster turned to Whip with a calculating gaze. Whip trembled. He raised his fists, trying to remember what the heroes in the shows did when they were facing a giant, terrifying monster.

The monster grinned.

All visions of heroism fled Whip’s head. Suddenly he realized just how small he was in front of this thing. If Nova couldn’t stop it, how could he?

Whip wasn’t a hero. Whip was just Whip.

The monster moved. Whip turned and ran.

Chapter Text

Whip hid.

It wasn’t very brave, and it wasn’t very heroic, but he was finding that it was a lot harder to be brave and heroic when there was no one there to be brave and heroic for . He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t know what to do. That had always been Pretzel and Amy’s part of things. But Amy wasn’t here, and Pretzel—

Don’t think about Pretzel. What would Amy do? First, she’d take stock of the situation. Whip could do that. Cautiously, he peered out of his hiding place. He was in a small house on the inland edge of town, far away from the monster. It wasn’t rampaging and destroying things like Hurricane had; instead, it stayed stationed near the ocean while its tendrils of darkness quested through the streets. Was it searching for him, or for the people hiding in the buildings? Would it make them all sad and droopy, like Twist had in Adabat?

Whatever it was doing, right now it didn’t seem to know where Whip was. This could be his chance to escape… except the monster had situated itself right on top of the Gaia temple. Whip could try flying to Empire City, he supposed, but he got the feeling it was a long, long way away. Too far for him to fly on his own; he’d probably get lost without a map. Could he find one somewhere?

Whip squinted out over the white buildings, trying to guess where a map would be kept. What had Pretzel called this place? Apotos? It seemed… familiar…

The town was bright, wonderfully bright! So many brilliant minds, eager to let him in to play. And why wouldn’t they? He’d help them, and they’d help him, and together they’d burn away all the ugly dark bits and make everything clean and white and perfect. But first, he needed to take care of something—two somethings. The rotten man was clever, but Light Gaia had a plan to deal with him. Soon he would show him the foolishness of trying to control Light itself. The key was the conduit. The lovely, lovely conduit, the one who’d woken Light Gaia in the first place, a mind that was bright and burning and good. The perfect friend… except for the fact that, true to his nature, the conduit was just as easily used by other powers. Powers like the Other One. Light Gaia HATED the Other One. It was a virus, an infection, a stain, spreading its nasty darkness everywhere it touched, even on his new friend. This could not stand.

Fortunately, his new friend had lots of other friends, and lots of those friends were Light Gaia’s friends, too! Like this one, the clever little fox. Perhaps too clever; he kept scribbling notes everytime Light Gaia left him alone, and Light Gaia had to clean up the mess each time. It was ridiculous; Light Gaia hadn’t hurt anyone, and the fox made brainwashing sound like a bad thing. Washing made things clean! Washing was good! Light Gaia made the fox erase the latest note and ushered him outside, painting a bright smile on his face. He knew just where the conduit was, wandering around the town, lost and confused. Light Gaia’s mood soured at that. His new friend wouldn’t be confused and upset if the Other One had just KEPT ITS DIRTY TENDRILS OFF HIM!

But it was fine. Because Light Gaia was going to save him. He had a perfect plan, too, one he’d gotten right from the fox’s clever little mind. He’d give the conduit a map. The fox had already used his strange glass box to figure out where Light Gaia was, and with his help, Light Gaia would bring his new friend to meet him in person. Then Light Gaia would be freed from the rotten man, and his new friend would really get to know him! Yes, it was a perfect plan. 

Except for one thing. The Other One interfered.

Somehow, even when it really should have known to STAY OUT OF HIS WAY, the Other One still managed to be the worst. The mere sight of it was enough to make Light Gaia’s RAGE explode, cracking his vision like the glass box’s screen and flooding it with red. Teeth and claws flashed. When the rage cleared, the conduit and the Other One had escaped, frightened off by the fox’s sudden aggression.

Ugh. Well, fine. Light Gaia would just have to find another way. He bared the fox’s teeth in a snarl. The Other One could run and hide all it wanted. The world was his now, and soon… soon it would be perfect.

Whip burst from the memory, gasping. His heart beat a wild rhythm in his chest and his wings fluttered anxiously, but there was nothing to run from . No monster except—him. Light Gaia.

Whip shivered, wrapping his arms around himself. The memory replayed in his mind, over and over. Tails, controlled by Light Gaia—by Whip —, viciously attacking Pretzel and Sonic. No wonder Sonic had always seemed so uncomfortable around Whip. And Pretzel… He remembered Pretzel flinching away from his touch. Was that the truth? Had… had Pretzel always been afraid of him? Had she hated him?

Had they ever been siblings at all?

“It doesn’t matter,” Whip told himself. It was nice to hear a voice out loud, even if it was just his own. “Pretzel’s a liar. It doesn’t matter what she thought about me. I don’t care .”

He’d never been good at lying.

Restlessly, Whip tugged on his head tuft—and stopped. His hand brushed something that wasn’t fur. He pulled the flower free and blinked at it. Blue like the sky, its petals unburned, if a little rumpled from all the flying around. Pretzel had given him this flower back in Chun-Nan, when he’d been scared he was becoming like the Light Gaia fragments.

You’re no more monster than me, remember?

Whip clutched the flower close and peered up at the great dark monster still crouched over the Gaia temple, surrounded by a writhing mass of dark shadows. Somewhere in there was Pretzel. Dark Gaia. The one who’d lied to him and tricked him and done all sorts of terrible things. The one who’d tried to plunge the world into darkness. A monster.

A monster, who’d yelled at children’s shows on the TV with him. A monster, who’d played with him when he was bored. A monster, who’d followed him into the dust storm, who’d fought by his side against creatures he knew terrified her, who’d leapt into the darkness to save a child, who’d stood between him and Twist, who’d reached out to him even after he burned her.

A monster who’d comforted him with a flower.

Whip tucked the flower carefully back into his fur. Maybe Pretzel was a monster, some horrible, wicked villain like in all the shows. Maybe he was, too. But he couldn’t leave it like this. He couldn’t just give up, turn tail, and run. That wasn’t what Amy would do, or Sonic, or Big, or Knuckles, or even Pretzel herself, though she’d act like she would. Pretzel, Amy, Sonic… they all must have known the truth. Yet they’d never given up on him, even after all he’d done to hurt them. There must have been a reason they gave both him and Pretzel a second chance. The least Whip could do was try . He couldn’t leave until he’d spoken to Pretzel one last time.

Even if it meant he had to fly towards the giant scary monster of darkness.

“I’m brave,” Whip told himself. “I’m super brave.” Taking one last deep breath to steel himself, he launched into the air.

The monster turned, reptilian green eyes widening at Whip’s rapid approach. Then it sneered, baring its fangs in what seemed to be amusement. Whip willed himself not to flinch.

“Pretzel! Pretzel, are you in there?”

There is no “Pretzel”, you idiot , the monster hissed in his mind. It sounded like Twist. Whip ignored it.

“Pretzel! Pretzel, please! I want to talk to you!”

The monster swiped at him, and Whip darted back with a squeak. But he didn’t retreat; he kept flying around it, shouting for Pretzel.

You are obnoxious. The monster swatted at him again, and he dodged, again, but the move was a feint, and one of the monster’s other arms grabbed him out of the sky.

Whip cried out as he was slammed into the pavement. The monster didn’t let him go; it kept pushing, the cement cracking under its strength. Its scales felt like ice to the touch, and the chill spread over his body, so cold it almost burned. Whip wondered if this was how Pretzel had felt when Nova had her pinned.

“Pretzel!” he cried weakly as the darkness continued to try and drown him. “Pretzel, where are you?”

The monster leaned down so its unnaturally wide fanged mouth was close to Whip’s head. There was no heat from its breath, just biting cold. Sayonara, idiot.

The icy claws stabbed down into him, and the blackness finally won out.

Whip woke to darkness, which was honestly just unfair. Darkness, darkness, everything darkness. He shook his head, trying to clear his swimming vision. Gradually his eyes adjusted, though that didn’t mean much with how dim and hazy everything was. He could barely see a few feet in front of him. The only light came from a couple of violet crystals and his own softly glowing body. Shadows swirled around him, so thick they looked solid. When he touched them, they swirled away like smoke, repelled by his hand. He couldn’t see the ground, but it felt like rock. Wet, slimy rock. Gross. His footsteps made no sound. Nothing did. Everything was so quiet .

“Pretzel?” Whip called hopefully. “Pretzel, are you here?”

No response, not even an echo. The odd fog seemed to swallow his words.

“Pretzel!” Whip shouted, wading forward. “Pretzel, I’m here!”

Still no answer. He huffed in frustration. Even if she was here, he’d never spot her in this darkness. If only there was a way he could make more light… Wait! He remembered what he’d done against Nova. It had been like he’d taken some of the bright, warm energy he’d received from Dust Devil and Sunshine and pulled it out of himself. He closed his eyes, concentrating on that inner light and willing it into his cupped hands. He imagined blowing on it gently, stoking it like a flame. And wonderfully, it worked. A glowing sphere of white light appeared in his hands. The shadowy fog retreated in a wide circle around him, revealing the slimy, mossy rock floor, pocked with tiny pools of water like tide pools on a beach. Now he could see he was in some sort of underground cavern; wide and tall, but not as infinite as it had seemed in the dark.

And—there! Not far from him, huddled away from the crystals, was Pretzel.

“Pretzel!” Whip called excitedly, running towards her. “Pretzel, I’m here to rescue you!”

Pretzel whirled around, meeting his eyes. Whip smiled.

And Pretzel turned and ran.

Whip’s ears flattened. “Pretzel! Wait!” 

He ran after her, but something solid and scaly slammed into him, knocking him back. He grunted, sitting up, and blinked in astonishment as the monster from Empire City—Hurricane, Pretzel had named it—loomed over him. He tried to peer around it to see where Pretzel had gone, but it growled, a rumbling that seemed to make the very world shake. The crystals trembled with the vibrations. Hurricane snapped its jaws at Whip, and he scrambled back, squeaking in fear.

The monster lunged at him again, and Whip spun around and wriggled into a narrow cleft in the rock. Hurricane roared in frustration, scraping its claws against the stone. The combined noise was agonizing. Whip clamped his hands over his ears and huddled further into the stone, whimpering. He had to get past Hurricane if he wanted to find Pretzel, but even Amy, Pretzel, and Whip combined hadn’t been able to make a scratch on this creature. How was he supposed to beat it on his own?

Hurricane leaned forward, turning its head so its reptilian eye could better peer into the crack. It tried once more to reach in after him, then pulled back with a huff. Whip blinked, lowering his hands. That sound… it kinda sounded like the one Pretzel made when she was frustrated or annoyed with him. And now it was scraping its claws against the ground, like Pretzel did when she was upset. What was Hurricane upset about? Pretzel had said it was like an animal, so what made animals upset? Being hurt? Being hungry?

Whip shifted in his hiding spot, his head brushing the stone. The flower came loose from his fur, and he hastily reached to catch it before it fell to the ground. He smiled at the soft blue petals. Blue like the sky. Blue like the sea. Pretzel liked the sea, didn’t she? The sea was Dark Gaia’s, he knew instinctively. She protected it, like he protected the sky. Together, they protected the whole world. And since Hurricane was a part of Dark Gaia…

“Hurricane!” Whip called, standing up. He wriggled his way out of the crack. Hurricane stared at him, apparently too confused to attack. “I understand! I don’t want the world to hurt, either!” He held the flower up like a white flag. Except, well, blue.

Slowly Hurricane leaned down, sniffing at the flower. It touched its nose delicately to the petals. Than it cocked its head, peering at Whip. Whip held its gaze, willing it to understand.

Hurricane hummed and pulled back. It moved out of the way and swept its tail, indicating an opening in the cave that seemed to lead into another cavern. Whip blinked, then beamed.

“Thank you!” he called up to Hurricane, tucking the flower back into his fur and running down the tunnel. Hurricane rumbled after him, sounding fondly amused.

Whip slowed as he entered the tunnel, shuddering at a blast of cold. Ice frosted the stone. He suddenly missed the slimy moss and puddles of the previous cavern. Still, he forged on, feet slipping on the ice until he stepped out of the tunnel and into another cave. It was smaller than the previous one, with a much lower ceiling, and all of it was encrusted with ice. Frozen stalagmites created a twisted maze of shadows, and even with Whip’s light, much of the room remained hidden.

Something moved in the darkness.

Whip spun around, wildly flapping his wings to keep his balance on the slippery ice. “Pretzel?” he called hopefully.

He was met with a giggle. So, not Pretzel.

The shadow struck without warning, slamming him to the ice and darting away again before Whip could get to his feet. He groaned, peeling himself off the ice, and squinted into the darkness. He saw something—a glimmer of cool light—before the shadow shot towards him again. Whip squeaked and ducked, but the shadow was far more nimble on the ice than he was, and it spun easily to face him again.

“You’re Midnight,” Whip blurted out, finally recognizing the creature. This was the fragment they’d played with in Holoska.

Midnight giggled and darted off into the shadows again. Whip crouched in the center of the cavern, futilely trying to watch every side of the cave at once. It turned out to be doubly pointless; Midnight dropped from the ceiling, knocking Whip to the ice again, then skipped away giggling while Whip fumbled to get to his feet.

“Stop doing that !” Whip snapped, finally regaining his footing. 

He glanced towards the other end of the cavern, where the tunnel continued. That was the way to Pretzel, he was sure. But as long as Midnight kept harassing him, he’d never be able to catch up to her. Midnight had seemed so friendly back in Holoska; why was he trying to stop Whip now?

Midnight ran at him again, and Whip took to the air, hoping to gain the advantage by flight. But Midnight moved with the grace of the ice skaters Amy liked to watch on TV, twirling under Whip before nimbly leaping into the air to bat at Whip’s wings. Whip tried to dart away, but instead slammed into the ceiling. He yelped and rubbed his head.

Below him, Midnight giggled again and twirled. Then the little fragment paused, cocking his head. It took Whip a moment to figure out what had caught his interest. With Whip and his glowing ball of light—which seemed to follow him without needing to be held—now on the ceiling and Midnight directly below, Midnight’s shadow was cast in stark display on the ice. Midnight lifted his hand wonderingly, trying out different shapes and giggling at the results.

Hesitantly, Whip landed beside the fragment. Midnight spun warily to face him, but he didn’t run and hide or try to attack again. Instead he watched Whip. Waiting.

“‘You can’t have shadow without a light to cast them’,” Whip said. “That’s what Pretzel said, back in Holoska. And then you asked her something.”

What is casting me? Midnight’s voice came clear in his head, young and small.

“I think I know the answer. You need two things to cast a shadow. A light—” Whip held up his ball of light. “—and something to block it.” He took the flower in his other hand and held it in front of the light. Its shadow was painted clearly on the wall. Midnight cooed appreciatively.

“I’m the light,” Whip continued, looking down at the ball of light. “And Pretzel is the one who blocks it.” He looked up at Midnight. “We need both of us.”

Midnight smiled. He reached out to brush his hand against the flower, then stepped back and, with an exaggerated bow, gestured Whip towards the cavern’s exit. Whip smiled back. He started across the ice, then hesitated at the door and turned around.

“Hey, if you want, you could—” he stopped short. Midnight was gone. The cavern was empty.

Whip looked down at the flower in his hands. Where Midnight had touched it, the petals were now streaked with black. Before he might have thought it sad, but now the sky blue seemed all the more brilliant for the deep black beside it. Whip smiled, tucked the flower away, and continued on.

Chapter Text

“Pretzel!” Whip called, cupping his hands around his mouth. “PRET-ZEL!” Drawing out the syllables didn’t make a difference. There was no sign of his sister. 

There was no sign of anything . His current cavern was dark, as all of the caverns had been. The air was thick with the strange shadow fog, and glowing purple crystals decorated the walls, floor, and ceiling, their light pulsing like a heartbeat. It made Whip imagine being inside a giant creature, the crystals its veins pumping glowing blood. Maybe that wasn’t far from the truth. Something had happened with the big monster in Apotos; had it eaten him like it had eaten Pretzel? He’d figure it out when he found her. Pretzel was smart; she’d know what was going on.

Still, the cave was creepy. It wasn’t covered in ice, like Midnight’s cave, and it wasn’t all wet and slimy, like Hurricane’s (though it did have a stream running down the floor he could hear burbling in the darkness), but it somehow seemed more… hostile than both. The stalagmites and stalactites (he could never remember which was which) jutted into teeth-like points, all aimed directly at him. The crystals, too, jabbed into the air like fangs, and the shadows drew much closer to him than they had before, even with his ball of light. They almost seemed like creatures , wolves darting in to nip at his heels before retreating from the light. He imagined them circling just outside his vision, hidden by the darkness. Watching. Waiting. Testing.

Something scraped on the floor and Whip spun around. Was that a pair of glowing eyes?

You’re just imagining things, Whip told himself. You’re safe. Perfectly safe. That was what Amy always said whenever he had trouble falling asleep after seeing something scary on TV. Except this wasn’t Amy’s apartment, and it wasn’t his safe, cozy bed. This was a strange cave, or maybe the belly of a giant monster. He had no idea what to expect here. And there was no Amy to protect him.

Another scrape on the stone—he was sure that was the click of claws—and Whip whirled around again, backing towards the reassuringly steady sound of the stream. Would the monsters be able to swim?

As Whip’s heart rate increased, the shadows seemed to respond to his fear, drawing closer to the circle of light. He wasn’t imagining things. He could see them now, creatures in the darkness. They looked like aliens or horror movie monsters, not real animals. Like Hurricane and Midnight, they were reptilian, with dark, smooth skin and glowing markings. But where Midnight and Hurricane had seemed one-of-a-kind, there were a countless number of these things. Some looked like bees, flying in the air with glowing, spear-like stingers; some were weird hovering sphere creatures; some looked like eyeballs, and some like lizards, and some like wizards, and some like dinosaurs. None of them had the gleam of intelligence in their eyes that Midnight and even Hurricane did. They seemed… mindless. If Midnight and Hurricane were bosses, these were clearly the basic minions.

A lot of basic minions.

“H-hi,” Whip squeaked, clutching his ball of light close. “Um. Nice to meet you?”

One of the lizards lunged for him with a screech. Whip screeched back and stumbled away. His paw hit the water and he slipped into the stream, the light ball falling from his hands. The water was freezing . The temperature didn’t bother the lizard thing; it jumped right in after him, and its brethren followed. Whip rolled away from its slashing claws and splashed through the stream, away from the creatures. 

The light ball, drifting downstream on its own, dissipated in a puff of light that flew right to Whip’s chest. A brief surge of warmth, and then he was left alone in the dark. He glanced over his shoulder. He glimpsed the glow of the monsters’s markings, rapidly drawing closer, and he could hear the cacophony of their shrieks and snarls. He missed when the only sound had been the stream.

Whip tried to will another ball of light into his hands, but it was hard to think past the panic and the fast approaching monsters. He nearly tripped in the stream again before he remembered he had wings and took to the air. Unfortunately, the cave’s ceiling was low, too low for him to fly well. At least he was going faster now. Maybe he could outrun the monsters.

A blue glow in front of him. In front of him? Whip stopped in the air, glancing back. No, he hadn’t gotten turned around; the pack of dark creatures were still behind him, fast approaching. And now there were more dark creatures in front of him. Whip swallowed and balled his hands into fists. He’d have to fight.

The first lizard-thing reached him and leapt into the air. Whip yelped and darted away, but another creature jumped for him, and another, until there was nowhere to run and one of them finally pulled him to the ground. It pinned him there, hissing victoriously while Whip struggled to push its—thankfully blunt—claws away from his face. Its touch was cold, though not as bad as the Apotos monster. The other lizards crowded around, shrieking and trying to dart in and bite at him. They weren’t working together, which was lucky, but in their eagerness they’d probably trample him by accident. Whip writhed, trying to push the first lizard’s claws off him, but it hardly seemed to notice as it hissed at the others. Were they fighting over him? Were they planning to eat him?

Come on, Whip told himself, trying to summon up his light like he had when Nova attacked Pretzel. Do something! But the light felt a lot harder to reach when he was pinned on his back, surrounded by the dark and the cold, alone. He scrunched into a ball as best he could with the creature pinning him and squeezed his eyes shut. Somebody, please, help me!

The lizard creature screamed, and suddenly the weight was off Whip’s chest. He blinked his eyes open to see a new creature standing over him, snarling. It looked like a wolf—or, no, like the shadow of a wolf. Whip flinched, but the wolf wasn’t growling at him. The shadow monsters backed away, hissing to each other—confused? The wolf did not explain itself; it snapped Whip up in its jaws, leapt over the monsters’ heads, and took off running. Whip yelped and wriggled, trying to get himself free or at least in a more comfortable position. Hanging by his scruff from the jaws of a shadow wolf was not an ideal way to travel. But the wolf didn’t stop. It just ran and ran, until the angry baying of the monsters had faded into a distant echo, and once again the only sound was the trickling of the stream.

At last the wolf set Whip down. He scrambled to his feet and backed away, but the wolf didn’t attack. It just stood there, watching him.

It didn’t look like the monsters had. It was pure black, but it didn’t have scales or smooth skin like the other monsters. It looked as immaterial as the shadows wafting over the cave floor, but it had somehow carried Whip away with very physical jaws. He couldn’t make its mouth out now that it was closed, or its eyes for that matter. It was more of a silhouette than an actual creature. Yet it had saved him. Was it another fragment?

“Who are you?” Whip asked curiously.

He hadn’t really expected an answer, but to his surprise the wolf shifted , its shadowy form twisting and reshaping itself into a more person-like shape. Then it solidified, real features forming out of the dark mass, and at last a Mobian wolf stood before him. It—he—was shorter than Amy or Sonic, though that was still twice as tall as Whip. His fur was still black, but now it had a slight purple hue, though that might have just been from the glow of the crystals. His muzzle and paws were dark grey, and he had pale blue-grey fur on his chest, wrists, ankles, and the tip of his tail. Glowing purple markings lined his arms, legs, and eyes, and speckled his muzzle. A crescent moon glowed on his forehead. His eyes were a cool green.

“My name’s Black,” the wolf said. His voice was low and soft, with the same rough, growly edge as Pretzel’s.

“You’re not like the other fragments,” Whip said.

Black had a lot of the same features as all Dark Gaia’s fragments—dark colors, glowing markings, sleek shape (though in this case that shape was covered by fur, not scales). But none of them, not even Pretzel, looked as distinctly Mobian as this one. Pretzel looked a little like a cat and a little like a bat and a little like a snake and mostly like nothing else at all. Midnight and Hurricane and even Twist had been the same way. But this new fragment was clearly a wolf, the same way Amy was a hedgehog and Big was a cat and Knuckles was an echidna. And his eyes… all the other Dark Gaia fragments, even the monsters that had just been attacking him, had mostly black eyes with glowing pupils. Yet this one’s eyes looked perfectly normal. Green, like Pretzel’s. And like… 

“You look kinda like Sonic,” Whip realized, cocking his head. He couldn’t say why; Black was shorter than Sonic, and stockier, and he was a wolf, not a hedgehog. Maybe it was just the way the fur on his head spiked a little like quills, or maybe it was the green eyes. But the thought nibbled at him, persistent. “Are you related to him?”

“Yes,” Black said. “Same as you.”

Whip frowned. “I’m not related to Sonic. We aren’t even the same species.”

“Relationships shape us,” Black said, and started walking away, as if that was an explanation.

Whip hurried after him. “But that doesn’t make us related. To be related you have to have, like, the same parents. Or your parents have the same parents. Or something like that.” He looked down at his feet. “Gaias don’t have parents, so I’m not related to anyone.”

There was silence for a moment. Then, Black spoke: “You aren’t Light Gaia.”

Whip’s head snapped up to stare at Black, but the wolf wasn’t looking at him, gaze fixed steadily ahead. “What?”

“You aren’t Light Gaia. Not anymore. You’ve known others, and they’ve changed you.” He finally looked down and met Whip’s gaze. “Her as well. You’ve both changed.”

That sense of familiarity tugged at him again. Green eyes… “Who are you?” Whip demanded. “You aren’t like the other fragments. You’re something different.”

Black smiled softly, an expression at once fond and sad. “I’m just another cast shadow.”

Whip frowned, but Black didn’t elaborate further. He didn’t seem likely to answer more questions about himself, so Whip decided to try something else. “Do you know where Pretzel is? I’ve been looking for her.”

“Why?” Black asked, looking at him sharply.

Whip flinched away, even though Black hadn’t moved to attack him. His ears had turned back, and his eyes seemed steely, like they might stab Whip just by looking at him.

Whip swallowed under the force of that glare, but he pressed on. “Because—because whatever she did, before, when we were…” He took a breath. “Because whatever happened before, she’s my sister now , and I want to help her.”

“And what does she want?”

Whip blinked. “Um. To not be swallowed by a giant monster?”

He thought he saw a hint of a smile before Black’s expression became serious once more. “Maybe. But what if she doesn’t want your help?”

Whip frowned. “Why wouldn’t she want help?”

“Many reasons,” Black sighed. “All I’m saying is she might not be happy to see you.”

Whip swallowed, remembering Pretzel running from him in the first cave. But then he thought of her back in Apotos, huddled alone in an alley as the darkness swallowed her. He’d abandoned her once. He wouldn’t do it again. If she didn’t want his help, she could tell him herself. And if she really wanted nothing more to do with him… he’d just have to live with that.

“I understand,” he told Black. “I still want to find her.”

Black studied him as if searching for something. Whip waited, not looking away. At last Black nodded and turned forward again. “I’ll take you to her.”

“Really?” Whip gasped excitedly.

Black nodded, not looking nearly as excited as Whip. He didn’t speak further, and all Whip’s attempts at conversation were met with noncommittal grunts until finally he gave up. The tunnel they walked down only got darker, the shadows thicker, the rocks more jagged, like fangs or spears pointed toward them. Warning them away.  Black’s words echoed in Whip’s head. She might not be happy to see you.

A few times they spotted a pack of monsters ahead, forcing Black to change course and take them down another tunnel. Usually they could avoid the monsters easily, but if they accidentally got too close they seemed to sense Whip, and even if they couldn’t see where he was, they’d work themselves into a frenzy trying to get to him. In those cases Black would melt back into the form of the wolf and distract them until Whip had gotten far enough away. The monsters didn’t have the same interest in Black as they did in Whip. Maybe they saw him as one of them. 

Black did seem to have a connection to… whatever this place was. He always knew exactly which tunnel to take, and which detours would avoid monsters while still moving them towards their main destination—that destination being down , judging by the way the tunnels sloped. Their passage only got darker, too; in a few places there were no glowing crystals at all and Black—apparently unaffected by the lack of light—had to lead Whip by the hand. As they clambered down increasingly steep tunnels, surrounded by stones like teeth and a darkness never touched by the sun, the feeling of being swallowed by a vast beast only grew stronger.

“How do you know where Pretzel is?” Whip finally thought to ask Black. He didn’t think the wolf was misleading him, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t get lost by accident. You could look confident and still have no idea what you were doing; Whip knew that from experience.

Black looked down at him, his markings glowing a soft blue-purple. “I’m part of this place. And her.”

Whip looked around at the cave. “Is this place why I can’t feel her anymore?” 

He’d tried prodding at their bond without results. It wasn’t something he’d ever questioned, that link. Sensing where Pretzel was, getting impressions of her thoughts and emotions, always feeling like she was right there, like they were connected even when she was a block away… that had all seemed perfectly natural to Whip. Only now did he realize it was probably a Gaia thing and not a regular sibling thing. And only now, when he reached out for Pretzel and found only stone walls, did he realize how much he’d taken it for granted.

“Maybe. She doesn’t want you to find her.” Black’s expression darkened. “None of her does.”

“Hurricane and Midnight do. And you do, too.”

Black smiled at him. “That’s true. But even we…” he shook his head. “It’s frightening.”

Whip’s ears flattened. “You’re frightened of me?”

“Of what you were,” Black said frankly. “What you could be again. But…” he glanced around at the tunnel. It wasn’t just the pointed stones or the darkness; the very air had a weight of hostility to it. “You’ve changed. And she needs you.”

Black stopped suddenly, and Whip looked around, expecting more monsters. All he saw were the glowing crystals—they seemed concentrated here, clustering across the walls and peppering the ground so there was barely any bare stone left. Yet their combined glow hardly combatted the thick shadows, which had grown so thick Whip was sure he could feel resistance when he moved through them, like he was wading through water.

“We’re here,” Black said, nodding toward the opening in the wall ahead. 

It was too dark for him to see what was on the other side; in fact, the shadows seemed to be pouring out of the cave ahead. Crystals circled the entrance, pointing out like teeth, and frost slicked the stone around them. It did not give the impression of a warm welcome. Whip glanced up at Black hopefully, but he shook his head, expression grave. Whip would be taking these last steps alone.

“Good luck,” Black said softly.

“Thanks,” Whip whispered. He swallowed his fear and stepped into the dark.

Chapter Text

Whip stepped slowly into the cave. The dark fog within surged towards him, swallowing him. The tunnel behind him, the glow of the crystals, Black’s solemn expression, the very ground beneath his feet—all disappeared from view. Whip may as well have been walking blind. Even sound was muffled; his own footsteps were soft and faint, and he couldn’t hear any echoes off the walls like he had in the previous caverns. It felt like drowning.

Whip’s heart thundered. His breath caught painfully in his chest. Was the darkness even affecting his breathing now? He desperately wanted to turn and run, return to the light and fresh air. He took a half step back, then forced himself to stop. He clenched his fists. No. He’d come this far. Pretzel was in there, somewhere. He had to find her.

Whip took a deep breath, and was relieved to feel the tightness in his chest ease. Then, carefully, he edged a foot forward, feeling the ice-slicked stone in front of him. He took a step. Then another. Carefully, carefully, he inched forward through the darkness. He extended his hands to either side to help keep his bearings; he couldn’t feel the walls, but he occasionally brushed jagged stone—crystals, perhaps, or stalagmites. Stalactites? Whatever they were, they at least told him he wasn’t floating in the void.

It felt like he’d been walking for hours when the fog shifted. Whip squinted into the darkness. Was he imagining it? No, he was sure. He could see something, now. His own faint glow illuminated the floor directly under his feet, and the fog itself now had hints of purple instead of being pure black like it had before. For a moment Whip was worried he’d accidentally gotten turned around, but then he noticed the floor. Crystal veins ran under his feet, glowing with violet light and pulsing in time with a heartbeat he couldn’t hear. And they all seemed to run in the same direction. Towards the heart.

Whip followed them, still moving carefully in the murky darkness. The fog continued to lighten until it was nothing more than a few wisps of shadow. The room was still dark; the crystal veins were the only light source aside from Whip, and their glow was too dim to illuminate the full cave, but at least now he could see more than a few feet in front of him. And there at last was Pretzel.

She huddled on the floor, wings raised like a protective shield and tail curled around her feet. In the stone beneath her, the crystal veins converged into a pulsing mass of violet. Around her reared sharp crystal spikes, all pointing outward, like a bristling hedgehog. A prison? Or a hiding place?

“Pretzel?” Whip called.

Pretzel whipped around. She looked genuinely surprised to see him, which was a first; apparently her blocking off their bond went both ways. Then she backed away from him, arching her back and baring her teeth like a feral cat.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded sharply.

Whip felt a flash of hurt. Despite Black’s warning, he’d still hoped their reunion would involve more hugging and less snarling. He’d come to rescue her; couldn’t she see that? But Pretzel was scared, and when Pretzel was scared she got mean.

“I came to find you,” Whip said, trying to sound patient and calm like Amy, and not confused and hurt like Whip. “So we can go home.”

Pretzel did not look happy at this. Pretzel did not smile and thank him or finally come over and give him a hug. Pretzel didn’t even make a sarcastic comment and role her eyes like she often did. She didn’t do any of the things Whip expected. Instead, she laughed , sharp and bitter.

“Still playing hero?” She was trying to sound like Twist, casual and mocking, but it was undermined by an undercurrent of hurt and bitterness. Her tail lashed, agitated. “You never change.”

“I came to help,” Whip said earnestly, reaching a hand out to her. “I can help you escape this place! If we just—”

“Shut up !” Pretzel snapped, voice cracking with… anger? Yes, that was anger in her eyes, he realized a little too late. 

And then Pretzel changed. Her eyes turned black and glowy like the monsters back in the cave, and spikes bristled from her back. Shadows pooled around her claws, and Whip stumbled back as she snarled, really snarled, like a wolf.

“I do not,” she hissed. “need to be rescued.” The shadows swirled agitated around her as she spoke, the darkness rising, forming the shape of something jagged and sharp and monstrous. “I am not an innocent little victim for you to save, I am not a cat up a tree or a damsel in distress, and I do not need to be helped just so you can pretend to be a hero!” The last words were a shout, resounding off the cave walls.

Whip swallowed as Pretzel glared at him, inhuman eyes glowing red-pink. The shadows writhed behind her, forming a shape like they had when they’d confronted the cult. A shape like the images in the temple that had always creeped him out so much. A shape like Dark Gaia, looming over him, monstrous and terrible. And at its feet Pretzel, small and hurting.

He’d gone into this assuming he could save Pretzel from Twist. He’d pictured her confused and helpless and needing a rescuer. But the crystals pointed outward; the shadows surrounded her, jumping to her beck and call; Hurricane and Midnight and even Black answered to Pretzel. If Pretzel wanted to leave, she could. So why didn’t she?

Black had said Pretzel needed him, but she seemed far more in control here than Whip was. This was very much a Dark Gaia situation, not a Light Gaia one. So what could she possibly need him for?

Stupid. When has she ever wanted you for Light Gaia?

“You’re right,” Whip said. That alone seemed to catch Pretzel off guard, and the shadows froze in place. While she stared at him, he quickly forged ahead. He needed to get this right. “This whole time, I wanted to prove I could be a hero. Punch the bad guys and save the day, like on TV. I thought that would make everyone like me, even you and Sonic.”

The shadows around Pretzel had shrunk down now, the monstrous silhouette fading to leave just Pretzel, staring at him like he was insane. She often did that when he started rambling. At least she hadn’t thrown him out yet. 

“But you never cared about that, right? I was trying to be a hero, but I forgot what I already was.” Whip swallowed. “Your brother.” I’m still your brother, right? He hurried on, afraid to see her reaction. “Amy always says the key to a good relationship is listening. I know I talk a lot, and it annoys you sometimes, and I didn’t really listen when you said you didn’t want to chase monsters, and when you were trying to explain about us being Gaias, but—” he took a deep breath and forced himself to finally meet her gaze. He couldn’t read her expression, but the shadows were gone, and the weird spikes had disappeared. “I’m listening now. If you want me to go, I’ll go, but before I do just—tell me. Please. Did you know the whole time? Why did everyone pretend? Were you—were you planning to tell me, someday?”

A million additional questions clamored in his mind, but he realized he was going to start rambling again and quickly clamped his mouth shut. He held his breath, waiting. A moment of silence. Another. Then Pretzel sighed, the fight seeming to drain from her body.

“Fine,” she said. 

Whip exhaled softly and resisted the urge to speak. He’d promised to listen, and he was determined to keep that promise.

“I knew from the beginning,” Pretzel said softly. “I realized I was Dark Gaia just before the… um… just before you were created. And I saw you get… transformed, so. Yeah.”

Whip nodded, trying not to feel too hurt. She must have had a good reason to keep it from him, right?

“Amy, Sonic, Tails, Shadow, Rouge, Blaze—they all knew too. Only them; I don’t think Amy told Cream or anyone else.” Pretzel bit her lip. “They thought if more people found out, they might try to arrest you or something. I don’t know how they’d do that, but—” she shrugged. “It seemed better to keep it quiet. Better for us to keep an eye on you without the whole world weighing in.”

Whip winced at that thought. He tried to imagine what it would have been like, if everyone had known the truth during those first confusing weeks. Would he have been on the news, or even in jail? Would people have been scared instead of cooing over him? Would he and Pretzel have been safe at all?

“Amy agreed to take us in,” Pretzel went on. “She didn’t have any known connection with the Gaia Incident other than being friends with Sonic and the others, so she seemed the safest option. Short of hiding in a cave, anyway, which was what I wanted to do.”

Whip’s ears pricked forward at that, and he spoke before he could remember he was supposed to be quiet. “You didn’t want to go with Amy?” Belatedly he clamped his hands over his mouth.

Thankfully, Pretzel looked more amused than annoyed at the interruption. “I didn’t. I hardly knew her, and…” she grimaced. “Well. To me you were still Light Gaia.”

“So why did you come with us? You could’ve just gone with Sonic or Rouge or Shadow, right?” Wow, he was bad at this not talking thing.

Pretzel hunched her shoulders, looking… apologetic? “Honestly? I wanted to keep an eye on you. I wanted to be the first to know if you became a threat again.”

Whip remembered those first weeks of Pretzel constantly glaring at him from across the room. It had always confused him how she seemed to simultaneously hate him and yet never want to be apart from him. That… made a lot more sense now. A hurtful kind of sense. He understood why she did it; Pretzel hadn’t had any real evidence that Whip wouldn’t become Light Gaia again, and wanting to keep an eye on him was actually a rather heroic thing to do, all things considered. But it still hurt, to think she’d only ever pretended to be his sister because she thought he might become a monster.

“I was jealous,” Pretzel admitted, and Whip stared at her in surprise. “They all accepted you so easily, even knowing who you were, even after everything you—after everything Light Gaia did. At first I told myself it was all an act, but eventually I realized you were genuine. And that scared me.”

“Scared you?” Whip echoed. “Why?”

Pretzel scowled like she did when Amy tried to make her talk about her feelings. “Because if you were genuine, then it meant you really were as good and nice as everyone thought you were, and I was the impostor. The one lying to you. And I saw the way you reacted to the monsters on TV. If you found out the truth…” she hunched her shoulders, looking away. “If you found out I was a monster like that, I knew you’d hate me.”

Whip looked at his feet, remembering how he’d responded when he had found out the truth. Something slid loose from his fur, and he blinked, bending down to pick up the flower.

“Pretzel,” he said softly, looking up at her, the flower clutched in his hand. “Do you remember what you said in Chun-Nan? You said—” he swallowed. “You said I’m no more monster than you. So… so do you really think we’re both monsters?”

Pretzel looked affronted. “You’re not—I’m not saying— you’re not a monster, Whip. You can be annoying and insensitive, but you’re not a monster . No matter what you did in the past.”

“Well,” Whip said deliberately slowly, furrowing his brow as if he was thinking really hard. “If I’m not a monster even though I used to do bad things, and we’re both Gaias who did equally bad things, then that means you're not a monster either, right?”

“That’s not—” Pretzel’s wings fluttered, agitated. “It’s not the same—”

“It is the same. But even if it isn’t, I don’t care.” He reached out and pressed the flower into her hand. “You’re not a monster. You’re my sister. If you want to be,” he added hurriedly. “I know I kind of messed up, and I understand if you—”

“I want to,” Pretzel interrupted him. “I…” she took a deep breath, looking at the flower. “We both messed up. But I do want to be your sister. I want to try again.”

Whip smiled. Hesitantly, Pretzel smiled back. 

He let himself bask in the warmth of it for a moment, but then other worries came crowding into his mind and he looked around, frowning. As Pretzel had been talking, the heavy darkness in the cave had lightened, allowing the glowing crystals to illuminate the walls. The cave seemed far smaller now that he could actually see it. And there was only one exit, the way he’d come in.

“How are we going to get out of here? Back to the… um, the surface? The real world?” Whip furrowed his brow. “Where are we, anyway?”

“I think I know the way out,” Pretzel said, turning around slowly. “But I’m not sure we should leave.”

Whip blinked at her. “Why not?”

“We haven’t saved the world yet,” Pretzel said, smirking briefly before her expression became serious again. “When I was… absorbed, I guess, I figured something out. We thought the fragments were disconnected, just acting on their base instincts at random, but that’s not it. Something’s agitating both the Light and Dark fragments, making them destructive.”

“So if we stop that thing, all the fragments will stop hurting people?”

“That’s the theory. But I don’t know if it’ll actually work. And it’ll mean heading down, into the dark, to fight something we know almost nothing about, with no one to help us.”

That didn’t sound fun. But saving the world wasn’t supposed to be fun , was it?

“I want to do it,” Whip said firmly. “It’s our job, right?”

Pretzel sighed. “Unfortunately.”

For once Whip understood her lack of enthusiasm. He turned, inspecting the cavern. “So how do we get to this thing? Do you know the way, or—”

He was interrupted by a loud rumble. They both jumped back in alarm as the rocks around them began to shake. And then, on the wall opposite the entrance Whip had come through, a hole opened in the stone.

Pretzel and Whip exchanged glances, then, carefully, approached the new entrance. Together they peered in. A dark tunnel lay in front of them, leading down and down and down, illuminated only by faintly glowing crystal veins.

“Oh,” Whip said. “I guess that’s how.”

“You ready?” Pretzel asked, glancing at him.

Whip swallowed and balled his hands into fists. “No. But let’s go anyway.”

“That’s the spirit,” Pretzel said, and together they walked into the deep.

Chapter Text

The tunnel sloped steadily downward, never branching or twisting, always leading them further and further into the depths. The glowing crystals on the walls helpfully illuminated the path like the lights on a runway. The whole set-up made Pretzel uncomfortable; it felt like an invitation, and an invitation was really just another kind of trap. But they didn’t have a choice. Ignoring the problem wouldn’t fix things, and the root of the problem was here, deep in the Earth.

Why are you here? 

What do you think you can do?

You will fail, as you have failed before.

The voices. They had started echoing in her mind when they entered the tunnel, and they’d only gotten louder as they walked deeper. It was getting old.

“So,” Whip broke the silence between them, clearly making an effort to keep his voice light despite his rampant nerves. He’d never liked the dark, yet he hadn’t hesitated to volunteer for this journey. Would that she had his courage. “Are we actually walking to the center of the Earth, or is this like some sort of weird dream? Is any of this even real?”

“I don’t think anyone else could come here,” Pretzel said, glancing around. “So in that sense no, it isn’t real. But we’re Gaias. We’re made of energy. Physical forms are just a formality with us. Even if this place wouldn’t be real to anyone else, to us it is.” 

Whip nodded as if that made perfect sense. Which it did, to Pretzel, but she got the feeling it would not have seemed nearly so natural to anyone who wasn’t, well, them. There was a lot of new information in her mind now since getting absorbed by Twist, and she still wasn’t sure what to make of it. Had Twist known all this, or had getting absorbed somehow unlocked it in Pretzel’s mind?

You aren’t real. You’re just another fragment.

A monster, like us.

Pretzel grit her teeth. Just keep walking. Ignore the voices. Was she going insane? Maybe she’d always been insane. Maybe she was actually just some normal person locked away in an asylum somewhere, hallucinating this entire experience. Wouldn’t that be nice.

“Stop it!” Whip shouted, and Pretzel jumped in surprise. He wasn’t yelling at her, though; he was shouting at… the wall? The ceiling? The tunnel itself? “Stop whispering at me!”

“You can hear them too?” Pretzel asked.

“Yeah, and it’s really annoying !” Whip stomped his foot. “Stop saying mean things in my head and come out and face us!”

“I don’t think—” Pretzel started, but stopped short as the shadows shifted.

Six figures formed in the darkness ahead of them. Three seemed to form from the shadows, while the other three were made of bright light, drawn from the crystals around them. They took a moment to settle, details appearing and figures shaping until six fragments blocked the tunnel ahead of them. Four of them were familiar—Hurricane, Dust Devil, Midnight, and Sunshine—while two were strangers. They looked like Mobians, a wolf and a lion, which put her in mind of Twist and Nova. Not a good sign.

Pretzel drew back with a hiss. She had no idea how Hurricane and Dust Devil could fit in the tunnel (it certainly hadn’t seemed big enough before , and she had to remind herself of what she’d just told Whip about this place’s relative “real”ness), but fighting both of them at once in closed quarters seemed like a recipe for disaster. Still, they needed to progress down the tunnel. Pretzel glanced from the Dark fragments to the Light fragments. Could she get them to—

“Pretzel, wait,” Whip said, laying a hand on her arm. “I don’t think they want to fight.” He smiled at the Dark fragments. “Those three helped me find you.”

Pretzel hesitated, eyeing the fragments warily. “If they don’t want to fight, why are they here?”

Do you hate us that much? 

It was Midnight who’d spoken. He looked at her sadly, like a child rejected by their parent—which, Pretzel realized, wasn’t entirely inaccurate. This was a piece of her, and here she was, assuming it wanted a fight. She looked at the other fragments. They were all watching her, waiting.

“I don’t hate you,” Pretzel said quietly. 

She walked over to Midnight and extended her hand. He held out his hand next to hers, the pale underside just a shade bluer than Pretzel’s. Hers had become that color after she absorbed him, when she’d understood him for what he was. He’d wanted darkness so he, and all those like him, could have the freedom to play. A childish wish, perhaps, even a selfish one. But not evil. 

Pretzel looked up at Hurricane, who had moved their head down to be closer to her level, nose brushing her ear. The blue, fin-like protrusions on their head were tinged purple by the crystals. Pretzel raised her hand to touch the fins on the side of her own head. Those, and the one on her back, had appeared after she accepted Hurricane. They’d wanted to level cities so the world could heal. The method was undeniably harmful, but the pain and the anger that had led to it— that she understood very well.

Pretzel looked at them both, these pieces of herself. Together they represented Dark Gaia’s desire for darkness and destruction, her playfulness and her protection, her selfishness and her rage. They’d messed up. They’d done stupid things. But that was what they needed her for. And she needed them.

“You’re not monsters,” Pretzel said. “Or villains. You’re part of me. And I’m glad to have you.”

Midnight smiled. Hurricane hummed. And then they both disappeared, returning to their proper place. Pretzel closed her eyes, savoring the rush of cool energy as something settled within her, like a piece slotting back into place.

Pretzel blinked her eyes open and looked at Whip. He glanced at the Light fragments, then back at her. She nodded. They were part of Whip, the same as Hurricane and Midnight were part of Pretzel. He needed them. And she didn’t need to fear them, or him. He knew the truth now, fully, about the both of them. And still he’d found her in the dark and asked her to come home again. Still he’d wanted to be her brother.

After that, what was there left to fear?

“I understand now,” Whip said, looking up at his fragments. “I know who I am. And I know you’re part of me.” He took a deep breath. “You’ve done some bad things. We all have. But you’ve also done good things.” He glanced at Pretzel. “I guess… I guess it’s not about good guys and bad guys. It’s about what we do next.” He smiled up at the fragments. “So let’s work together from now on, okay?”

Sunshine smiled back, while Dust Devil purred. Then they bothdisappeared, returning to pure white light. Whip gasped softly as the light poured into him. For a moment he was almost bright enough to be blinding, but then the light died down, settling within him. Pretzel felt strangely sorry to see it go. In that moment, the tunnel had seemed somehow safer, more welcoming. She’d never gotten that feeling from light before.

Two fragments remained. Pretzel looked up at the wolf, frowning. “Who—”

“That’s Black!” Whip bounded over to join her. He beamed at the wolf, who smiled back. A much smaller smile, but to be fair few people could match Whip’s face-stretching grins anyway. “He helped me find you.”

“And him?” Pretzel asked, looking at the other fragment. He met her gaze with a bright grin. He was a white lion with a golden mane, green eyes, and a red and gold sun emblazoned on his forehead. He reminded her of the Hedgecat, but unlike Nova he didn’t seem threatening. Just friendly in an affable, innocently clueless way.

“I’m White!” the lion said cheerfully, bouncing on his heels. “It’s nice to meet you!”

“Black and White?” Whip said, looking from the wolf—whose expression had soured now that White had joined the conversation—to the lion. “Are you guys related?”

White grinned, shooting Black a teasing look. “You could say that.”

Black rolled his eyes.

Pretzel looked between the two fragments, frowning. They didn’t look like the others. They were more fully Mobian than even Twist and Nova had been, and though they had some of the same general features as their fellow fragments, there was also something… more. They seemed less like pure pieces of the Gaias and more like they’d been mixed with something—or some one —else. Looking at them, Pretzel had a niggling feeling of familiarity. White’s teasing grin… Black’s annoyed eye roll… She’d seen those both somewhere before. And they both had green eyes. Why weren’t White’s eyes amber, like Whip’s?

“Sonic,” Pretzel realized. “You’re the Gaia energy we gave to Sonic, aren’t you?”

Black nodded.

“Ooh,” White said. “You figured that out way quicker than I did!”

“Why are you here?” Pretzel asked. “Did something happen? Is he okay?”

“We’re only partly here,” Black explained. “Think of it like your dreamwalking.”

“Or like a phone call,” White suggested at Whip’s look of confusion. “Whatever a phone is.”

“But you were separated from Sonic,” Pretzel said, remembering the sensation in Empire City. “And from me.”

“Sonic’s alive,” Black reassured her. “In danger, but alive.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” White said, seeing the expressions on their faces. “He may be in trouble, but he’s not alone.” He smiled at Pretzel. “His brother’s looking out for him.”

Pretzel nodded, understanding. Worried as she might be about Sonic—what could have possibly separated him so completely from the Gaia energy?—, she had to trust that he and Tails could handle it. Just like Sonic was trusting her and Whip to make sure he had a planet to come back to once his mission was done.

Whip was looking at White, seeming almost… hesitant. “You’re… you’re Sonic’s Light Gaia energy?”

White smiled at him, the gentlest expression Pretzel had seen on him yet. “He doesn’t hate you. The memories are hard, and it’ll take time, but he doesn’t hate you, Whip.”

Whip nodded, making a sound suspiciously like a sniffle. “I’m glad.”

“Thank you,” Pretzel said to both fragments. “For telling us.”

Black nodded, and White gave them an enthusiastic thumbs up. They disappeared in sync, a portion of darkness and light—smaller than the other fragments—flowing into their respective holders. There were no flashbacks, of course; all their memories of Sonic were perfectly intact.

Pretzel let the energy settle before looking down the tunnel. She could see its end, now, an innocuous opening in the rock that led into one last cavern. Their final destination. Through the opening she could sense a horrible wrongness grating on her senses. The rocks there were miscolored, light where they should have been dark and dark where they should have been light, and the air around the entrance seemed warped, buzzing with something like static. And over it all hung a horrible smell, like rotten meat or an infected wound.

“So,” Whip swallowed. “That’s where we’re going?”

Pretzel nodded grimly.

They ventured closer cautiously. Whip’s wings fluttered with anxiety, and Pretzel’s own tail twitched nervously. Going near whatever was in that cavern felt horribly wrong, but they had to see this through.

Just one last door, and it would all be over.

“Don’t think it’ll be that easy,” a horribly familiar voice taunted.

Pretzel jerked back, instinctively shielding Whip with her wing as a dark mist swept in front of the door and coalesced into Twist’s sneering form. Beside her, a flare of bright light formed into a scowling Nova.

“Maybe they’re nice now?” Whip whispered hopefully. A hope that was quickly punctured when Nova glared at him.

“We won’t let you through. You’ve betrayed yourself, little brother. And this one—” Nova cast a disdainful look at Pretzel. “—this one cannot be trusted.”

“And Twist can?” Whip demanded incredulously.

Nova looked briefly uncomfortable before his expression turned to one of resolve. “For now we have the same goal. I will of course kill her afterward.”

Twist rolled her eyes.

Pretzel looked at her, frowning. “Why are you working with him ? You’re opposites. He’s literally going to kill you. Don’t you hate him?”

Twist flashed her teeth in a grin. “I could ask the same thing about you and your brother. ”

Pretzel glanced at Whip. “That’s not—”

“Enough talk!” Nova snapped, leaping forward. “Today, you die!”

Pretzel and Whip dove in opposite directions. Nova turned smoothly on his heel, eyes locked on Whip, and lunged after him. Pretzel started after him, but Twist moved smoothly between them.

“Let the boys have their contest,” she said, grinning that cold, mirthless grin. “You and I never finished our game.”

She struck like a snake, lashing a claw through Pretzel’s ear. Pretzel hissed and scrambled back, ducking a second swipe before she ran into the wall. Cornered. Great.

Twist stalked toward her, vicious delight in her eyes. Pretzel slashed her with her tail spike, but Twist hardly noticed the gash in her leg, and Pretzel stared as something like smoke poured from the wound. Taking advantage of her distraction, Twist lunged forward and seized Pretzel’s by the neck. Pretzel writhed, digging her claws into Twist’s hands, but Twist just laughed. She slashed her own claws down Pretzel’s face before tossing her roughly to the tunnel floor.

Pretzel coughed, staggering to her feet through a haze of pain… only for the pain to be replaced by a strange coolness. She raised a hand to her face and felt, to her surprise, that the wounds were already knitting themselves together. Benefits of the power she’d reclaimed?

“Don’t be too proud of yourself,” Twist sneered, though there was clear displeasure in her eyes. “That little trick just means I can draw this out even more. How much pain can you take, Pretzel?”

She grabbed Pretzel again, this time by the wing, and slammed her against the wall. Pretzel gasped in pain, both from the impact and from the wrenching in her wing arm. She screamed as Twist slashed her claws through the wing’s membrane. Twist released her hold, and Pretzel fell roughly to the ground. Her wing burned with agony, but Pretzel grit her teeth and willed herself to her feet again.

“We know all about pain, you and I.” Twist studied her claws, now coated with the goopy purple-black liquid that poured from Pretzel’s wounds instead of blood. “Sorry this has to be so messy, but I can’t cause you burning agony with just a touch. Unlike someone we both know. How do you think he’s faring? Barely learned he’s a Gaia and already facing down such a powerful fragment.” She grinned. “If he dies it’s on you, you know.”

Pretzel’s wounds knit themselves together again, slower this time. Even with her recent power boost she still had limits, and Twist would find them quickly if this continued. What were her options? Fight her? Twist was a fragment, a piece of Dark Gaia itself, and a powerful one at that. For Pretzel, fighting her was fighting herself.

Not that that’s stopped Twist, Pretzel thought wryly, wincing at the lingering pain. Pain caused by a piece of her own self. It sounded like a terribly on the nose metaphor.

“Why are you doing this?” Pretzel demanded before Twist could attack her again. Maybe she could stall her; Twist did seem to enjoy gloating.

“Why should you care?” Twist snapped, something like genuine anger peeking through her taunting tone. “I’m a heartless monster, aren’t I? This is what monsters do .”

Pretzel closed her eyes. So that’s what this was about. She could hear the scrape of claws on stone as Twist moved towards her, about to attack again. About to hurt again.

Here’s the riddle. What am I?

I know what you are. You’re a heartless monster playing games with children’s lives. 

“I’m sorry,” she said.

The tunnel was suddenly quiet.

“I’m sorry,” Pretzel said again, opening her eyes. Twist had frozen in place, staring at her. “For the way I treated you. We never did finish the game properly.”

“It’s a bit late for that,” Twist snapped.

“I know the answer,” Pretzel continued, holding her gaze steadily. Green eyes, same as hers. “I know who you are. You’re me.”

Nova was faster than Whip. Nova was stronger than Whip. Nova was maybe even smarter than Whip. And Whip thought that was more than a little unfair. He was the Gaia here, wasn’t he? Why was the fragment better at this Gaia stuff then him?

Well, alright. It wasn’t really Gaia stuff; they’d quickly figured out that using their Light Gaia powers on each other, while flashy and cool-looking, didn’t actually have much of an effect. As it turned out, fighting fire with fire wasn’t an effective strategy. That meant their fight was mostly hand-to-hand combat, which meant that being twice as tall and much more muscular gave one a significant advantage. Really, it just wasn’t fair. Whip was supposed to be a super powerful sun monster; why did he have to be so much shorter than everyone?

At least he had his wings.

“Can’t we talk about this?” Whip pleaded, flying out of the way of Nova’s claws. “We don’t have to fight!”

“You chose the wrong side, little brother,” Nova growled. “That creature must be destroyed .”

Whip scowled. “Why do you hate Pretzel so much? Why do you want to hurt her? Pretzel’s not evil!”

To his surprise, Nova stopped attacking. He stood in the center of the tunnel, regarding Whip solemnly.

“I want the same thing you do. A world without tears.” Nova gestured back down the tunnel, to where Twist and Pretzel were fighting. “They are creatures of darkness and grief. I will burn them away, them and all that is wrong with this world. I will make it perfect. ”

“But that won’t work.” Ignoring the voice of caution in his mind that sounded a lot like Pretzel, Whip flew down to Nova’s eye level. “You can’t force people to be happy, Nova. It doesn’t work like that.”

He’d tried it, when he was first getting to know Pretzel. When she’d been in a bad mood, he’d determinedly tried to make her happy, and been confused when she responded to all his attempts with angry glares. Amy had to take him aside and gently explain that while trying to help people was good, you also had to respect their feelings. Only now did he fully appreciate the wisdom in that. He’d been so focused on trying to make Pretzel happy because he’d wanted her to be happy, that he hadn’t actually taken the time to listen to what she wanted.

“You can’t help people by forcing them to be what you think they should be,” Whip continued. “That’s not being nice, that’s being selfish. ”

Nova frowned, tail swishing back and forth on the stone, the way Pretzel’s did when she was thinking. “You think people want to be unhappy?”

“No,” Whip said. “But I don’t think they want to be forced to be happy, either. Being hurt or sad is a part of being alive. And that just makes it even more special when you are happy.”

Whip landed on the floor, reached out, and took Nova’s hand in his. Nova’s was a lot bigger, the claws sharper, but the warmth it gave off… that was familiar. Nova didn’t attack him or pull his hand away. He just stared.

“I understand,” Whip said sincerely, looking up at Nova. “I understand you want to make the world better. But we can’t do it with fire. Don’t you want to try a different way?”

Nova regarded him for a long moment. Then, beautifully, he smiled. “I suppose we might as well give it a shot.”

“ Why ?” Twist demanded, voice cracking. Her eyes shone with what might have been tears, and her previous poise had been replaced by a coiled crouch like that of a frightened animal. Her tail lashed, agitated, like Whip when he was upset. The mask of confidence had cracked, and beneath it was a raw pain that Pretzel felt as her own. “You reject all of us, but when he calls for you, then you come running? Him? The one who hurt us most?”

“Whip isn’t the one who hurt us most,” Pretzel said softly. “ We are. But I…” she swallowed. “I want to change that.” She held Twist’s disbelieving gaze, willing her to believe. For them both to believe. “We can change. I already have, and so has Whip. And we can keep changing. We can be something better.”

“Without me,” Twist guessed bitterly.

“No,” Pretzel said firmly. “ With you. The good, the bad, all of it. You’re part of me; you’ll always be part of me. We can’t move on if we aren’t whole , and we can’t change if we don’t know what we’re changing in the first place.”

She could hear Whip approaching quietly, his fight finished, but she kept her gaze on Twist.

“Please. Can’t we try to be better ?”

Twist closed her eyes and, softly, sighed.

“Okay,” she said simply. She opened her eyes again and smiled slightly. A real smile. It was a good expression on her, better than the bared teeth and condescending smirk. “But when we die in fiery glory, don’t blame me.”

Pretzel smiled back and looked at Whip. Nova stood behind him, eyeing Twist and Pretzel uneasily. Pretzel raised her eyebrow, and Whip gave her an enthusiastic thumbs up. Well then.

“So,” Pretzel said, nodding to the hole in the wall. “That’s where we need to go? The root of all this?”

“Unfortunately,” Twist said. “But what waits at the core won’t be defeated by a couple of pretty words.”

Nova nodded gravely. “The rage of a few stray fragments are nothing compared to that creature. You will need all your strength.”

He knelt and placed his hands on the sides of Whip’s head. Twist did the same to Pretzel.

“I’m glad,” she said softly, so only Pretzel could hear. “I’m glad we’ve changed.” She looked Pretzel in the eye, gaze intense. “Put an end to this, Pretzel.”

Pretzel nodded.

Twist and Nova dissolved into energy. They flowed into their respective Gaias, and Pretzel and Whip gasped simultaneously at the surge of power. And then—

The Other One stands before them, and they feel a surge of furious H A T E. The very sight of the Other is enough to turn the world to R E D, and the air between them seems to warp, their vision cracking into pieces. Between that and the red, red, red, they can hardly see, but it doesn’t matter. They have eyes only for the Other, intent only to D E S T R O Y this wretched thing infecting their world. They slash it with burning white claws, and they bite it with cold dark teeth, and they lock around each other, dragging each other down and down as they tear each other apart. The world is red, and they want to K I L L.

Pretzel squeezed her eyes shut, shuddering with the echoing pain of a battle millennia past. She could feel the ghost of his burning claws tearing through her, almost taste his blood on her tongue. Nausea churned in her stomach; she might have thrown up if there was anything to throw up. She could feel Whip shuddering beside her, whimpering. She forced her eyes open and met his gaze. Bright, brilliant eyes, different than her own. Eyes of her enemy.

“I’m sorry,” Whip said softly, reaching out as if to touch her before stopping himself. “I’m sorry for hurting you.”

Pretzel leaned forward and closed the gap between them, pressing her head against his. They mirrored each other perfectly, wing touching wing, tail twined around tail.

“I forgive you,” she said, feeling the truth of it to her core. “And I’m sorry, too.”

They stayed like that for a long moment, until their racing hearts fell into the same steady rhythm and their panting breaths evened out. Then at last they stood and faced the gaping hole. The door to their final challenge.

“Ready?” Pretzel whispered.

“Ready,” Whip said.

Together, they stepped into the Earth’s core.

Chapter Text

They emerged into bloody light.

The cavern was round, almost a perfect globe. Its curving walls were covered by creeping crystals, jutting out like teeth or cutting through the stone like veins. They bathed the room in an eerie red glow, pulsing slowly in time with a heartbeat Pretzel couldn’t hear. A strange red-black goop coated any surface the crystals didn’t, like some sort of alien moss or creepy mold. That was the source of the rot-smell. The horrible feeling of wrongness had increased tenfold, churning in Pretzel’s stomach and pounding painfully in her head. It made her want to crawl out of her skin and flee this place.

“Creepy,” Whip mumbled. For once, Pretzel agreed with his assessment.

Pretzel brushed his wing with hers, then led the way further into the cavern, studying it warily. She didn’t see any sign of the creature Twist and Nova had spoken of. Was it hiding? Was it responsible for the rot-mold and red crystals, or was that a Gaia thing? Pretzel eyed the slowly pulsing crystals. They certainly weren’t in time with her heartbeat.

Looking at the crystals too long made her vision fracture and intensified her headache, so she turned away from them and focused on the walls. She squinted, frowning. Was there something… under the mold? A hint of color amid the gray stone? Cautiously, she walked over to the wall and stood on two legs to get a better look at it.

“If this turns me evil or something, I’m counting on you to stop me from killing everyone,” she called to Whip.

“What?” Whip asked, turning from where he’d been glaring at a crystal. His eyes widened. “Pretzel, I’m not sure that’s—”

“I’m doing it,” Pretzel said and, before he could make her second-guess herself more than she already was, plunged her hand into the mold.

Nothing happened.

Well, nothing except the extremely unpleasant feeling of touching the mold. It was slimy, but not in a pleasant muddy way. This was more of a half-rotted, maggot-infested carcass feel, or maybe a horribly-infected, probably-needs-to-be-amputated wound kind of vibe. And the smell was awful. Pretzel gagged, but against her better wishes she dug her hand further into the rot-stuff and started scraping it away from the wall. To her surprise, the mold actually recoiled at her touch, peeling back in a large circle around her hands. That was convenient.

In perhaps his bravest act yet, Whip joined her efforts (making his own gagging noises all the while), and together they cleared the rot off one wall of the cavern. After what felt like centuries but was probably more like a few minutes, Pretzel stepped back and shook her hand off, trying not to retch. Together she and Whip looked up at the fruits of their labor. 

It was a massive mural, bigger than even the ones they’d seen on Angel Island. And unlike the Angel Island murals, this wasn’t one image but rather a collage of different stories and even different artistic styles. Some looked like the echidnan art had, while others seemed to be from entirely different cultures and time periods. The entire cavern was decorated; Pretzel could see the edges of even more pictures poking out from under the remaining rot-stuff, even on the ceiling, which unfortunately meant they’d need to deal with the rest of it. Still, what they had cleared seemed to be the centerpiece.

Depictions of Light Gaia and Dark Gaia tangled around each other, some carved into the stone, some painted, some made of metal or glass. The interpretations of their forms varied; Pretzel wasn’t sure if that was artistic interpretation or if they had actually changed appearances throughout the centuries. In some of the depictions they fought each other, while others showed them wreaking havoc on the mortal world. Both of them wreaking havoc. Here Light Gaia wasn’t glorified the way he was in many of the Gaia temples. Pretzel supposed that made sense; the Gaia temples had been dedicated to Light Gaia, while this place was… what was this place? Who was this here for? Who had made it?

Something caught Pretzel’s eye. Pieces of some kind of crystal were set into the center section of the wall in an array of red-purple, green, and blue. It looked like a mosaic, but she couldn’t make sense of what it represented, and it didn’t fit with any of the other pieces. She walked along the wall, frowning. Another array of crystals, similar in cut but all in white and gold, were set into the stone on the left side of the wall. She turned the other way and found a third set of crystals on the right side, these in black and pink. Were they all part of the same pattern?

“Pretzel?” Whip asked curiously as she backed up nearly to the entrance of the cave, eyes fixed on the far wall.

The crystals were a mosaic, a massive one spreading from ceiling to floor and sprawling across half the cavern. Before all the rot-stuff had covered everything it would have been the first thing they’d seen upon entering the cave. All the other art pieces were arranged around the mosaic, like it had been there first and the other artists had merely added on to it. She couldn’t tell how old it was; all the art pieces were perfectly preserved in this place without sunshine or rain, with no sign of damage or wear other than the alien mold covering the walls.

“What’d you find?” Whip asked, fluttering over to join her. He squinted up at the mosaic and gasped.

Depicted in glittering crystal were three huge figures. On one side reared Light Gaia in white and gold, while on the other arched Dark Gaia in black and pink. In the center stood a figure bigger than them both. It was primarily a dark reddish purple, with markings in black, white, silver, and gold. Its bright green and blue wings—the colors of the planet itself—arched across the cavern, bridging the gap between Light and Dark.

“What is it?” Whip whispered, staring up at the mural in awe. “Was there a third Gaia?”

“I don’t know,” Pretzel said, shaking her head. “Wouldn’t we know by now if there was?”

Whip hummed. “Whoever they are, they look nice. Green eyes like you, Pretzel.”

“More yellow-y than mine, though,” Pretzel said. She pointed up at the creature’s chest, where a particularly large chunk of crystal sat. “And look, it’s got that green gem-necklace thing like you do.”

“Oh yeah,” Whip said, cocking his head. He considered a moment. “I want to touch it.”

“You want to touch it ?”

Whip shrugged. “Why not?”

“Because it’s ancient ? This could be an important piece of history. Touching it would get your fingerprints all over it.”

“But I thought you said this place wasn’t real,” Whip said, grinning.

Pretzel frowned, looking from him to the giant gem. On the one hand, touching it seemed stupid and reckless on multiple levels. It would certainly be an obvious place to put a booby trap. On the other hand… She really wanted to touch it.

“Alright,” Pretzel agreed. “We’ll fly up together. And if this triggers the end of the world or whatever, it was your idea, got it?”

“Got it,” Whip grinned.

Being the faster flier, he reached the gem first and waited for Pretzel, bobbing up and down in the air with excitement. Pretzel rolled her eyes, though her own heart was thrumming with anticipation.

“It probably won’t even do anything,” Pretzel grumbled.

“Then why are you excited?” Whip challenged.

Pretzel stuck her tongue out at him. Whip just giggled.

“On three,” Pretzel said, raising her hand. Whip did the same.

“One… two… three!”

They touched the gem.

Nothing.

Nothing, and then suddenly something, the world alive with colors and life, exhilarating, energizing life. They flew through stormy skies, dove into the ocean depths, swam in lakes of lava and danced on platforms of ice, and they belonged to all of it . They watched the myriad forms of life that populated this world, their world, and laughed with the joy of it all. So many creatures, breathing and eating and sleeping and being. 

Best of all were the people-creatures, the ones whose minds hummed with activity. They were clever, these people-creatures. They did not simply exist in the world, but shaped it, harvesting rocks from the earth and making of them something beautiful. All creatures knew the one watching them, but these people-creatures seemed to take this knowledge further. They called the watcher a Gaia, and they tuned their crystals to the Gaia song, making them sing with the energy of life. They made forms for the Gaia, and the Gaia tried them all in secret, delighting in this new way of being. 

Some part of the Gaia told them to be cautious, but they had never feared the other creatures, so why be wary of these little siblings? Still, they were careful, appearing first to the small people-creatures who had not yet learned to make the crystals sing. The little people-creatures were friendly, welcoming, and soon the Gaia was visiting with all the people-creatures regularly. Not too regularly; they had a whole world to care for, after all. But they liked to visit the people-creatures every few generations, to see what new names and forms they’d come up with. And the people-creatures seemed to get more and more clever by the day, finding ways to use the Gaia energy that the Gaia had never even thought of. Partnership, the people-creatures said, and the Gaia liked the word very much. The Gaia hadn’t thought of themselves as lonely, but the task of cultivating this world… well, suddenly it seemed far more pleasant with these new partners by their side.

And then the visitors came.

The Gaia and their world were still young when death streaked the sky. The Gaia recoiled from the death thing, this thing of rot and wrongness . Even after the death thing left, a piece of it remained, a piece of rot in the Gaia’s world just waiting to spread. But there was no time to get rid of the infection; something else was coming, something entirely other . Not rotten, no, but dangerous . The people-creatures had gotten clever, very clever, and they tried to stop the coming things, to save their world from destruction. The Gaia tried to help, but the infection was distracting them, weakening them, making them dizzy and confused. And then there was collision, pieces of infinity colliding into each other, and a horrible tearing sensation, and then—

and then—

Pretzel opened her eyes.

Beside her Whip gasped, clutching his chest as if in pain. The same pain echoed in Pretzel, lingering from the memory. Memory . Had that been a memory? Hers, or his?

The answer was obvious.

“What—what was that ?” Whip gasped. He stared up at the creature in the mural, looking down at them with a gaze that now seemed… sad. “Did we see that creature’s memory?”

“Yes,” Pretzel said softly, pieces clicking into place. “We did.”

“Who… who were they?”

“Ixis,” Pretzel said, the name surfacing from somewhere deep within her. “Earth’s Gaia.”

Whip blinked at her. “But we’re Earth’s Gaias.”

“We’re pieces of Earth’s Gaia.” Pretzel gestured to the mural. Light Gaia, Dark Gaia, and in the center, Ixis. Dark and light. A mixture of them both. No; they were pieces of it . “Originally, it was just Ixis. But then… something happened. Something powerful.”

The red crystals pulsed, and Pretzel’s mind went to an entirely different set of gemstones. Gemstones of infinite power. What would happen if the Chaos Emeralds collided with a Gaia?

“We were split in half. And then… something went wrong.”

“Ixis was supposed to protect the world,” Whip murmured. “But we…” he looked down at the other pieces of the collage, the images of the destruction they caused. “We just tried to destroy each other.”

“An infection,” Pretzel said, remembering the vision. All of the visions. The infection Ixis had been so frightened of, the strange redness that had spread over Dark Gaia and Light Gaia’s vision as they fought, blinding them to the destruction they wreaked. A thing of death, streaking across the sky like a comet, leaving a piece of its corruption behind. “Something corrupted us, turned us against each other.”

“Turned us into monsters. Is that why the cave looks all gross? Because of the infection?”

“I think so,” Pretzel agreed, looking around. “A part of it must still be here.”

“But if that’s true,” Whip said slowly. “Then… where’s that part now?”

What waits at the core won’t be defeated by a couple of pretty words.

The rage of a few stray fragments are nothing compared to that creature.

Put an end to this, Pretzel.

“It’s here,” Pretzel realized. “It’s still here. Waiting for us.”

On the floor of the cavern, something moved.

Chapter Text

Pretzel grabbed Whip’s arm, tugging him away from the wall just as it was swallowed by a surging mass of the rot-mold. The mold grew and spread over the walls with frightening speed, and Pretzel could only watch in horror as the mosaic and the images of their past were covered once more. The red crystals continued to pulse, and now it seemed the rot-mold pulsed with them, all in time with the same alien rhythm. In the center of the cavern the mold surged into a lump, then a pillar, throbbing all the while like a beating heart. And then it burst open in a spray of red.

Immediately the feeling of wrongness increased. The world seemed to invert, then turn red, then tilt on its side. Vertigo seized Pretzel, and Whip’s fingers dug into her arm as they both fought to keep their balance. She knew on some level they weren’t actually falling, but the dizzy feeling persisted and her vision danced. A strange whirring, whining sound rang in her head, drowning out thought. The wrongness retreated for a blissful moment, then hit again, washing over her like a wave in time with the pulsing of the crystals.

It’s a distraction tactic, whispered a voice in Pretzel’s head that sounded suspiciously like Twist. Focus.

Pretzel grit her teeth and dug her claws into the ground ( when had she landed? ), trying to see through the dizzy redness in her vision. Something was standing where the mass of rot had been. Something person-shaped, something alive.

Their enemy. The final fragment of the corruption that had ruined them. The wrongness retreated again, and Pretzel saw the figure clearly. The shape was humanoid, even Mobian, but the creature wasn’t any animal that belonged on this world. Its slick black skin was striped with red, and its head came to three points, like a crown or a jester’s cap. Its hands and feet were clawed, and its tail ended in a wicked spike. Its eyes were pure black with reptilian irises. In a strange way, the black and red color palette reminded Pretzel of Shadow, if Shadow had been some sort of alien demon here to destroy the world.

“You are pathetic,” the thing said. Its voice was strangely normal, young and masculine, yet at the same time distorted, like it was being filtered through a bad speaker. Or was the “normal” voice the filter, a mask over the true face? “Hardly worthy to be called Gaia. It is fortunate for this world that I am here to take your place.”

“You’re no Gaia!” Whip snapped. “You’re not like us!”

“No,” the thing agreed. “I’m better . I’ve eclipsed you.”

The wrongness was back, turning the world on its head. Pretzel wanted nothing more than to hide until the nauseating feeling passed. But she stood up anyway.

“Bold words. But we don’t die easy.”

“I don’t intend to kill you,” Eclipse sneered. “I intend to become you.”

The world twisted, and this time they really were falling. Pretzel snapped her wings open and rolled to the side to avoid one of the crystals on the wall, but she was just a moment too slow. It left a long, dark gash on her side, stinging with dull pain. Whip had recovered faster, already flying back toward the floor-turned-ceiling… but then the world twisted again, and he barely pulled up in time to stop himself from smashing into the stone.

While Whip was still regaining his bearings, Eclipse moved. One moment it was in the center of the cavern, the next it had appeared right next to Whip, seizing him by the wing before he could react. Pretzel dove to help, but Eclipse looked up at her and the cavern turned on its side. Pretzel flailed to course correct, but the pull of gravity changed yet again and she was slammed into a crystal. She gasped as the spear of red stabbed through her wing.

“Pretzel!” Whip shouted. He kicked out at Eclipse—who was unaffected by the gravity change—and wrenched himself from the infection’s grasp.

Pretzel grit her teeth and braced herself against one of the other crystals in the cluster. With a yell of pain she pulled her wing free, leaving a smear of black liquid on the crystal that quickly evaporated. Her wound continued to sting, however, and no healing came.

“Be careful!” Pretzel called to Whip as he flew to join her. “These things interfere with our healing.”

“We have healing ?”

Right. Pretzel kept forgetting how new to this he was.

She didn’t have time to respond to him. The crystal beneath her shifted, and tiny new crystals sprouted from its surface, pricking her feet. Hastily she took to the air, wincing from the pain in her injured wing, but then gravity shifted again and suddenly she was flying in entirely the wrong direction. Whip yelled and reached out his hand—he’d corrected faster than her once again, though in her defense he wasn’t injured—, but Pretzel missed his grasp. Something else caught her instead; claws and the smell of rot.

Eclipse slashed through Pretzel’s good wing, tearing the membrane completely, then seized her throat before she could even scream. Its claws started to tighten, but Whip slammed into it from above with a battle cry. He wasn’t big enough to knock it over, but while it was stumbling from the impact Pretzel slashed the spike on her tail across its wrist and dropped free. She scrambled across the cavern and huddled in the shadows, panting. Her ripped wing still burned with pain, smoke bleeding from the torn edges. Pretzel freed, Whip pulled away from Eclipse, darting up to the center of the room before it could grab him. Hopefully he’d be safe from gravity changes there.

Eclipse tutted. “You always have to fight, don’t you? This would be a lot simpler if you’d just let me do what I need to do.”

It snapped its fingers, and the twisted shadows cast by the glowing crystals moved, surging over Whip. He gasped and spun in the air like he was blinded, flailing in the dark. Pretzel snarled. That was her trick. How dare it use it against her brother? She reached for the shadows, trying to pull them from Whip. For a moment they seemed to obey—only to form into a dark spear and stab through Whip’s wing, pinning him to the wall. Red crystals jabbed into his limbs. Whip screamed. Eclipse laughed.

“Stop it!” Pretzel yelled, stepping towards the infection. “Leave him alone!”

Eclipse glanced at her and smirked. “Fine.”

The nearby crystals dimmed, and a globe of light formed in Eclipse’s hands. It tossed the light towards her and Pretzel scrambled to the side, but a mere flick of its finger turned the light after her once more. A spear of burning pain stabbed through her chest. Pretzel staggered, too stunned to even cry out. Through the haze of pain she saw Eclipse sauntering towards her, light in one hand and dark in the other. Of course. The infection had corrupted both Dark Gaia and Light Gaia, and though their core consciousnesses—Pretzel and Whip—had broken free, a large part of their power was still under its sway. How were they supposed to fight something like this?

Pretzel blinked away the tears of pain and looked past Eclipse. Above them both, Whip was writhing and shouting, struggling to get free, though Pretzel knew how much being stabbed like that hurt. She met his desperate gaze and felt a surge of renewed strength. There was one thing they had that Eclipse didn’t.

Pretzel huddled on the ground, feigning that she was too overcome with pain to do anything else. It wasn’t a hard act. Eclipse raised a spear of light, aimed at her head… and Pretzel dove towards it, letting the light spear through her already ruined wing while the rest of her slammed into Eclipse. It stumbled back, snarling, and gravity shifted again, pulling her away from it. Perfect. 

Pretzel leaned into the fall and locked eyes with Whip, now below her. He growled and put his hands on the shadow spear holding him in place. With Eclipse distracted below, it couldn’t stop the spear from burning away. Whip pulled himself forward and stretched out his hand, reaching for Prtezel. Below, Eclipse realized what was happening and gravity shifted again—but too late. Whip had one hand wrapped around a crystal and the other clutching onto Pretzel, leaving them dangling together from the new ceiling.

“What do we do?” Whip gasped out. “He’s stronger than both of us.”

“Stronger than us, maybe,” Pretzel agreed. “But not stronger than all of us.”

“The fragments? But we absorbed them, remember?”

“We did, and we left it at that. But we’re Gaias, Whip. We have our power back now, or at least what wasn’t corrupted by that thing . We just need to use it.”

Whip’s ears flattened. “B-but what if we become like— like that again?” The images on the walls had been covered by the infection, but they both knew what he was referring to. “I don’t want to be a monster.”

Pretzel swallowed. “Neither do I.” The crystals were pulsing in time to the infection’s heartbeat. That was wrong. This place was theirs. This world was theirs. This power was theirs. It was time they took it back. “But we aren’t monsters. We’re Gaias. And more importantly, we’re Pretzel and Whip.” She dug her claws into the crystals and pulled herself up so she and Whip were eye to eye. “Do you think I’m a monster?”

“Of course not,” Whip said immediately. “That’s not who you are.”

“And it’s not who you are, either. We know each other. We know who we are. And who we are is not what we did back then. As long as we remember that, we’ll be alright.”

“You really believe that?”

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”

Whip smiled. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

They let go.

I need you, Pretzel said to the fragments. To the pieces of herself. All of her—the rage and the calm, the hurt and the joy, the hatred and the love. Every mistake she’d made, every bond she’d forged, every step of the journey that had taken her here.

She called, and they answered. The glory of a tidal wave, the clarity of starlit ice, the beauty of a moonless night. It filled her and all her empty spaces, broken pieces slotting into place and together forming something new. And then it surged outward, unfurling like a flower impatient to bloom.

Her wings spread like the night sky, her claws glistened like ice, and her scales flowed like water. She’d taken this form before, when she’d drawn on the world’s darkness to fight Light Gaia. Sonic had compared it to a dragon, but at the time she’d hardly felt worthy of that moniker. She’d still been afraid, then, afraid to claim herself, and so she’d skirted away from her “true” form towards something less monstrous. But this time things were different. She knew now that there was no “true” form. She was darkness and water; she could take whatever shape she wanted, as terrifying and monstrous or as innocuous and unnoticeable as she pleased, and all of them were still her . Dark Gaia and Pretzel both.

This time, she wasn’t hiding.

Pretzel’s eyes, all of them, opened, and she saw for what felt like the first time. The crystals still pulsed, and the cavern was still bathed in red and coated in rot. But now, rather than be overwhelmed by the sensations, she saw the picture as it really was. This wasn’t an insurmountable terror or an unbeatable monster. This wasn’t a horror movie. This was just a mess to be cleaned up.

This was pest control.

Pretzel opened her wings, stopping her descent. Whip did the same beside her. He’d changed as well, and now he could almost be called intimidating, assuming you knew nothing about him. Despite their bigger forms, the cavern still fit them both perfectly. It was made for them, after all, regardless of the infection’s attempts to change it. 

Whip’s wings weren’t single shards anymore, but a full array of brilliant green crystal feathers. Additional ears crowned his head like flower petals, and his white ruff had become a fire-blue mane. His paws were clawed; the back paws were those of a lion (of Nova), while the front were the talons of an eagle, or a phoenix. Once that might have frightened her, but he wasn’t her enemy anymore. He never had been. That honor belonged to the creature below them.

Pretzel grinned at him. Whip grinned back.

Eclipse stumbled back, eyes wide, before recovering itself. “This means nothing,” it spat.

The world tilted and distorted again, but this time, Pretzel saw through it. Two of her eyes saw the illusion Eclipse was casting, but through the others she saw the cavern as it was actually supposed to be. She let that image be her reality, and refused to let it throw her off balance. Whip stayed right beside her, his eyes closed and ears twitching as if listening to a voice she couldn’t hear.

“That won’t work anymore,” Pretzel said, looking down at Eclipse.

Eclipse snarled. The rot-mold from the walls surged towards it, crawling over its body and enlarging its form with bulky armor. Large wings sprouted from its back. It launched into the air and arrowed toward them, one clawed hand extended before it, Light and Dark energy gathering in its palm.

Pretzel and Whip dove to either side, the shot ripping between them. Pretzel swept past the corrupted crystals, their tips just grazing her scales, then turned sharply and shot back towards Eclipse. Whip mirrored her on the other side of the cavern; they couldn’t have been more in sync if they’d choreographed it. 

Eclipse spun to face them, but it was slow, far too slow. Pretzel met Whip’s eyes, and they both grinned. Then, together, they slammed into Eclipse. Light and shadow intertwined in a dizzying display, and Eclipse’s armor was sliced through by claws of ice and fire, exposing the vulnerable creature beneath.

“This isn’t the end,” Eclipse hissed. “Even if I am gone, you are still nothing more than the broken pieces of a Gaia, too weak to protect this world from what is coming.”

“Shut up,” Pretzel said. And together, she and Whip slashed the last of the infection through, dissolving its form into smoke.

Pretzel’s claws met Whip’s, and they spun in the air, interlocked and in perfect sync. Pretzel’s shadows trailed behind her like a cloak, while Whip’s white light followed him like a comet’s tail. As they spun together, so did their trails, twining into a braid of light and shadow. But rather than destroy each other, they grew stronger for the contrast, energy building between them. Too soon they reached the roof of the cavern. Pretzel nodded to Whip, and they broke apart, diving back down the cavern walls. And as they parted, the energy that had built between them exploded. It surged through the core, freezing cold and burning heat, blasting the rot-mold from the walls and shattering the corrupted crystals into shards that fell like rain.

Pretzel and Whip landed next to each other. Together, they watched the infection dissolve from the core, revealing the ancient murals once more. As the crystals fell, the red light at last faded from within them, leaving the shards clear as glass. They’d regrow, eventually, in their proper colors this time. 

When at last the cavern was completely cleaned, the energy returned to the Gaias. Pretzel smiled and lifted her head, breathing in air that was at last free of the smell of rot. That tight knot in her chest, her constant companion since she woke up all those months ago, finally, finally loosened completely. They’d done it. The infection was gone.

“Is that it?” Whip asked. “Is it over?”

“Not quite,” Pretzel said.

They both looked up at the center of the cavern. There, where Eclipse had been destroyed, hung a cluster of tangled light and darkness. Their corrupted energy, now purified. The last piece. With the mural behind it, it almost looked like it was held in Ixis’s claws.

“Now that the infection’s gone…” Whip began hesitantly. “Does that mean we’ll be one Gaia again?” He looked at Pretzel, ears flat. “ Should we be one Gaia again? Was Eclipse right about us being too weak as we are?”

Pretzel looked up at the mural, trying to read Ixis’s expression. Sorrowful? Serene? The memory they’d received had been confused, jumbled. Had Ixis understood what was happening to it? Had it known it was dying?

What had Ixis been like, really? In the memory, it seemed young, a child by Gaia standards. Would it have grown into something compassionate, caring? Or would it have become a cruel and harsh deity? How much had it been like her, and how much had it been like Whip?

They would never know. Maybe they didn’t need to.

“Whatever we were back then,” Pretzel said, turning away from the mural to face her brother. “I, personally, prefer what we are now . Don’t you?”

Whip smiled. “Definitely.” Then he frowned. “But Eclipse said—”

“Eclipse doesn’t know anything,” Pretzel said, rolling her eyes. “So some dying fragment of a disease believes we’d be stronger as one Gaia. Do you really think it had any idea what it was talking about? And besides,” she grinned at him. “Even if something bad is coming, I’d think two Gaias would have a better shot at dealing with it than one, right?”

“Right,” Whip said, fully smiling now. He looked up at the mass of Gaia energy in the center of the cavern. “Should we go, then?”

“Let’s.”

Together they flew to the center of the cavern. They locked eyes on last time, then reached into the energy.

I really hope I was right about this, Pretzel had a moment to think, and then the power flooded through her.

Suddenly the whole planet was spread before her mind's eye. For an overwhelming moment she was the whole planet, the fish in the sea, the trees in the forest, all the little flying insects and massive whales. She was every unaware person all at once, a countless number of names and faces and dreams and heartaches all washing over her like a tidal wave. It was a terrifying, overwhelming sensation, and she was glad to feel Whip’s hand gripping hers, to know he was bearing this with her. She grit her teeth and pushed through the awareness like she was swimming for the surface. The overwhelming rush of power and connection faded, settling into something more comfortable, more controllable. She let it settle within her, adjusting to this new piece of herself. And then, carefully, she used it.

It was easy to find where the fragments, goaded on by the corrupt remnant, had wreaked havoc. She found the touch of her own power on coastal cities and island nations and carefully, carefully stretched out her new energy, urging the trees and plants and seas to heal and regrow. Whip was right there beside her, fixing the damage from his own fragments, and when either of them slipped up, the other was there to correct it. 

She could feel Whip’s desire to fix everything , even what hadn’t been directly their fault, and she gently reined him in. They couldn’t fix everything; it was neither possible with their current abilities nor advisable, for their sakes and the sakes of the people on the planet. This was a team effort. But… well, Earth had been without a proper Gaia for a while now. So what if they regrew a few barren lands and healed a few scarred trees? They were just making up for lost time.

It was slow and meticulous work. Their energy could do good, but only if it was used properly. And they had to work in tandem; if Pretzel poured a little too much into one area without Whip there to balance her out, she might accidentally give an entire city depression. But they could, at least, fix some of the damage their own powers had caused.

Pretzel was in the middle of regrowing a grove of trees Hurricane had accidentally wiped out when she felt something familiar. An old connection clicked into proper place, like someone who’d put her on hold had finally picked up the phone.

Sonic? Pretzel asked, surprised.

She felt the surprise returned to her, along with an overwhelming weariness. Evidently he had not had a restful past few days. Well, that made two of them.

Pretzel? You seem different.

So do you.

Sonic’s mind often tended to be cluttered and chaotic, but it was usually in a bright, energetic way, not this exhausted, pained mess of confusion. Something had happened on that space station that he was having trouble grappling with, but the radiating aura of exhaustion told her now was not a good time to talk about it.

A lot’s happened. We can catch up when you’re back on the surface. It was both a promise and a threat.

I’ll look forward to it, Sonic said, some of his usual humor returning, along with an unmistakable wave of relief.

“Sonic’s back,” Pretzel said, opening her eyes to meet Whip’s curious gaze. At some point during the repairs they’d both reverted to their usual forms. Or could they be called usual forms, when they’d only used them for a few months out of their millennia of existence? Whatever. Pretzel liked this shape.

“I know,” Whip said. “Is he okay?”

Pretzel made a so-so gesture. “Not right now. I didn’t press him, but…”

“Maybe we can get him to take a vacation,” Whip mused. “He’s been doing our job for us for a while now.”

“I think we’d have to ship him off to another planet to get him to stop saving this one,” Pretzel said dryly.

“And he’d probably end up saving that other planet anyway,” Whip giggled.

“Probably,’’ Pretzel agreed, rolling her eyes.

They continued working for a while—how long, Pretzel wasn’t sure. She hadn’t imagined Gaias could get tired, but at some point she woke to find herself and Whip curled together on the floor of the cavern. There was no indication of how much time had passed, not without sun and moon in sight. Whip snored beside her, and Pretzel smiled. She reached out with her expanded senses and was satisfied to find they’d mostly finished the job. The wounds caused by the fragments had been healed as best they could. The humans and Mobians would finish the clean-up.

Pretzel laid her head on her arm, letting herself just breathe. Beside her, she felt Whip stir, yawning and blinking. She expected him to start bouncing around with his usual overflowing energy, but to her surprise he stayed put. They both lay there in silence, looking around at the cavern. All of it, every rock and crystal and ancient mural, felt intimately familiar. This was their resting place, where they’d slept away all the centuries between their battles. It was as much their core as the Earth’s. 

And yet… and yet it was so empty . Just two small Gaias and a whole lot of rocks. No dark nooks to sleep in, no TV for Whip to turn up way too loud, no childishly stitched sign in the kitchen for Amy to get embarrassed over. Many people would kill to see a place so magnificent, ancient and untouched. Yet Pretzel found it, more than anything else, boring.

“So… what do we do now?” Whip asked, always the first to break the silence. “Do we have to stay down here? Because that sounds super boring.”

Pretzel smiled. She knew the answer; they both did. “Isn’t it obvious? Now we go home.”

Chapter Text

“CHAOS CONTROL!”

Reality twisted around them. The stone beneath them fell away, replaced by shifting sand. Pretzel scrabbled for purchase, flaring her wings to keep her balance. The ocean lapped at her feet. Instinctively she turned to face Whip, relieved to see him standing beside her with a pleased smile.

“You don’t actually have to say that,” Pretzel pointed out. “It’s not actually Chaos Control when we do it.”

Whip shrugged, grinning. “Yeah, but it’s fun. You should try it!”

“Sorry,” Pretzel said, keeping her tone flat and dry. “I’m afraid you got all the ‘fun’ parts of our personality. It’s only fair, since all the intelligence went to me.”

“You must have gotten all the boringness , too,” Whip shot back.

“And all the good comebacks, apparently.”

She looked around, squinting at the bright light. Empire City’s beach was bright and sunny, as it should be. It was also, thankfully, cool. “Thankfully” because it was September and heat would be unnatural, not thankfully because she personally liked it being cool. Obviously. Resenting the natural seasons would be terribly un-Gaia-like of her.

Across the street, Pretzel spotted the heap of rubble that had once been their apartment building. Workers in safety gear swarmed over it, while bright yellow machines rumbled around the perimeter, waiting to be called on. And there, standing nearby and chatting with a couple of humans, was a familiar pink hedgehog.

“Amy!” Whip called enthusiastically, shooting towards her. Pretzel followed more slowly, picking her way across the closed-off road and around the strewn pieces of rubble. 

The clean-up crew was doing a good job. The sidewalk and road were already clear, and the massive hunk of collapsed apartment building seemed much smaller than it had a few days ago. Pretzel noted with satisfaction that the nearby grass, bushes, and trees had regrown in abundance. She’d already known that—it had been her doing, after all—but it was nice to see in person. She and Whip had made the right choice. Gaias shouldn’t be cooped up in the core of the world. They should be out in it, experiencing life in all its variety. How could they know how best to protect the world if they never saw it for themselves?

Amy spun around, and a wide grin spread over her face as she saw them approaching. “Whip! Pretzel! You’re back!”

She laughed with delight as Whip slammed into her, already chattering a mile a minute about their “adventure”. Pretzel arrived a moment later and sat at Amy’s feet, nodding politely to Amy’s startled parents. Nice people, the Wachowskis. Clueless, but nice. 

Amy shifted Whip to one arm and scooped Pretzel off the ground with the other. Pretzel put up a token protest Amy paid no attention to before settling into the hold, closing her eyes contendly. She let Whip’s ceaseless chatter and Amy’s occasional interjection wash over her, as familiar and reassuring as the ocean waves. Yes, they’d definitely made the right choice. Apartment or no apartment, this was home.

“And Pretzel talked to Sonic,” Whip said, finally winding down. “Apparently he’s not feeling very well but soon he’ll be back and then we can bully him into taking a vacation so it’ll be fine, right?”

“Of course,” Amy agreed. She looked at Pretzel. “Did he tell you when he’s coming back?”

Pretzel reached out, brushing lightly against Sonic’s mind. It had settled in the past few days—and wow, it had been three days since Pretzel and Whip defeated Eclipse. Apparently they’d need to be careful not to lose track of time when using their Gaia powers. She felt a wave of deja vu as she recognized where Sonic was, on the space elevator with Tails. But this time he was heading back to Earth instead of away from it.

“He’s on his way,” Pretzel said. “He should be here in just a few—”

Pretzel gasped. Whip screamed.

Pain seized her, a horrible ripping sensation tearing through her mind and body. She’d thought losing her connection to Sonic hurt, but this agony was far worse. It felt like someone had taken a knife and was carving out her insides, gutting her like a jack-o-lantern. The overwhelming pain was accompanied by a powerful fatigue. It beckoned her, the exhaustion, a looming chasm that seemed almost inviting if only it meant she didn’t have to hold onto this cliff, this pain, anymore. The pain wasn’t just hers; she could feel it echoing in Whip, in the very world itself as all the energy they’d given to heal its wounds was ripped away again. 

Energy . Someone was taking their energy.

Dimly Pretzel was aware of Whip beside her, his presence flickering weakly in her mind, and of Amy speaking to them, urging them to respond. The siren call of unconsciousness was growing louder. Pretzel could feel herself fading away, but she had to warn Amy first, tell her what was happening.

She grabbed Amy’s arm with her claws, willing herself to stay there, stay conscious just a moment longer. She struggled to form coherent words. “Sonic— Tails—”

“It’s alright,” Amy said, sounding panicked, almost hysterical. Amy was never hysterical. That wasn’t right. “It’s going to be alright, Pretzel, please just hold on—”

“ Warn them ,” Pretzel urged her. She could feel herself slipping. All that power, and they were rendered helpless in an instant. “Something’s taking it.”

“Taking what?” Amy asked, desperate.

Pretzel barely understood the words. She was clinging to a cliff, hanging over a terrible void, the wind slamming against her while her grasp weakened with every moment. Everything was slipping away, fading into something worse than darkness. Into nothing .

“Warn them,” she choked out once more, and fell.

Eclipse was right. They’d been too weak to stop this.

It was up to Sonic now.