The Robotic Endgame

XXVI. Sonic the Hedgehog

I focused on all the people Mega Man gave hope to - I know, cheesy, but that's how the Chaos Emeralds work. Part of the job is using brute strength, but that's not all. They strive on hopes and wishes - negative or positive. Sure, a pure heart works far better, but apparently anger helps enable them, too. Mega Man deserved to survive, but not just because of the people around him. I needed his help. And I needed that hope to be a reality. And such a large wish was going to take a vast amount of power.

"Chaos Control," I whispered, exhaling. I felt a pretty large drop in energy, but the Chaos Emeralds were still powering me. As I opened my eyes, I flew back a few feet, not liking what was in front of me. A black hole had opened, tearing the room to shreds. But this was no normal, world-ending void - this was extremely powerful. Part of it was the energy from the Chaos Emeralds Eggman had been storing for weeks, if not months. Another was the shards. But mostly, it was the super concentrated energy Eggman had extracted from me before with the Chaos Emeralds. The black hole itself made me feel hopeless, and a bit like I had felt with the unbalanced energy. It was a massive amount of negative energy. This wasn't going to be easy.

Even though I had sacrificed a good portion of my energy to Mega Man, there was still massive amounts of energy in my body. And I would need a lot to stop this thing. It grew with an alarming rate, already almost as big as the entire room. Letting it grow any more would be too dangerous. It would only get stronger, and it would swallow the world in no time.

I flew as close as I dared to the void, holding out my hands. While it was sucking everything around into itself, I was able to stand my ground and stop it from growing. It was trying to get me away, like it had a mind of its own. It felt like my entire body was being stabbed with long spikes, but I didn't let that discourage me.

Using willpower and the desire of saving this world, I focused on making the void shrink. Everything that had been sucked in would be gone forever, but I decided that that wasn't a bad thing - those shards were better off destroyed. After all, they had started all of this. I was sure that Mega Man would agree with me, especially since no one really knew how to use them.

Shrinking the void into nothing turned out to be even harder than I thought it would be. It went extremely slowly, and Eggman was right; this could easily kill me.

"I have to do this," I muttered, my face distorted with concentration and pain. After all we had done, after all that had happened to me and Mega Man, I wasn't going to let Eggman's attempt at killing me destroy this world, and I was going to do all I could to make sure I survived, too.

The pain got worse, my focus faltering. Suddenly, I saw Sally and Tails being sucked into the void. I opened my eyes with a gasp, looking around, but I couldn't see my surroundings. I saw Silver holding on to a part of the wall that was still there, calling to me for help.

I almost fell for it. I was so close to leaving the black hole, rushing over to help him. But the void was shrinking, and Sally and Tails were safely out of the tower. Right...?

Still, Sally, Tails, Silver, and even Tempo called for my help. They asked why I wouldn't help them, why I was letting the world be destroyed, you know, stuff like that. Still, it made me feel guilty, even though I knew it was fake.

I felt lucky that I had had experience with such dark thoughts in the past couple of weeks, because that's basically what the void was - an expanse of negative energy that would corrupt anyone too weak to fall to it. The optimistic warmth of the Chaos Emeralds helped me regain my focus.

Before too long, I was able to see the void again, its power failing. It was the size of my head, but it was more resilient than ever. The already slow speed that it was shrinking at was even slower. I thought I would be here for the rest of my life, keeping this back hole at bay.