#but Sonic's chaos energy consumes his entire body | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cutegirlmayra · 4 years

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This is gonna be a v. indulgent prompt but how about some Silvamy? Especially with silver hopelessly pinning Amy (imma ramble on: his heart fluttering, heart beating so fast whenever he thinks of her and he is much happier and healthier, and he pinsss and yearns and longs) and the ending is more two sided? Maybe? Thank u 🎉

I’ll do my best, Sweet-Chan ^^;b

ONCE AGAIN, PLEASE, PROMPTS ARE ON SHUTDOWN! DON’T SEND ME MORE UNTIL THEY REOPEN AGAIN! Thank you~

Prompt:

It was getting harder…

I came back from the future on a report of something happening with the Chaos Emeralds in the past. Apparently, Eggman had found himself a new ‘friend’, so to speak. But this… this monster was like nothing Sonic, nor his friends had ever faced before.

We were engulfed by the Chaos Emeralds power, time and space suddenly shifted, but not just that…

I shifted.

We were all separated, but me and… Me and Amy, by some matter of fate, were consumed in the light that sent us to the same place.

Here, there seems to be a never-ending winter. But the snow doesn’t really bother me so much. Amy, though… It was hard to watch her struggle.

This place… this zone… It was horribly gloomy. But no matter how cold Amy was, she was always… smiling.

Silver stopped walking a moment, his feet sinking into the snow a moment as he looked up into the cloudy air above him.

“Will it never stop snowing?” he held out his hand, watching a snowflake fall to it and melt even before it reached him.

It wasn’t just body heat, but his unique abilities allowed him to divert the chilly wind or keep the sun centered on them. He could telepathically move heat to himself, something he couldn’t have done before. But in this strange world… with the Chaos Emeralds effect creating for him some new abilities, he was able to do many things.

“S…Silver…”

His eyes widened and he turned around. “Amy..!” his hand glowed and he immediately brought her closer, within the ‘orb’ he had created to keep the heat in. “I’m sorry, I must have been moving too fast. I’ll try and remember to keep you close…em!” his face suddenly turned red, seeing her willingly lean into his chest fur and shiver from the cold outside his concentrated bubble.

“Y-you o-o-ought to look be-be-behind you more…” It was a light scold, barely a complaint as she rubbed her arms for warmth.

“OoooOOOoohh… Silver! Don’t just stand there! R-rub your hands with mine!” she took his hands instantly before he could even object and turned her back to the warmth of his chest and began rubbing their hands together.

“E..Ehh??” He moved his head around, not sure what to do but tried fighting the urge to resist her. “A-Amy…”

“Quit making a fuss, you’re the one that has these new ‘heat’ powers and besides, you said that next time I get cold I could just come closer to you, right?” she looked behind her a second and then placed his–now warm hands–up to her face. “Ahh~ It’s like hand warmers… but literally! Haha!”

He was so confused. For one, his heart was doing something strange. Was it the chaos manipulation? He couldn’t tell. It bounced in rhythm to a song he didn’t know nor understood, but the pounding sensation made him uncomfortable…

“A-Amy…” He lightly whispered this protest out, but then just shut his eyes to take it. ‘I-It was my fault she fell out of the force, I should be m-more considerate of her!’ his eyelids trembled before blinking open again. “U-Um… That’s not quite how it works but… I am sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry, Silver. I know you’re trying your best to find a way back to our time and place.” Amy’s voice comforted him almost instantly, but he didn’t know why.

She had moved his gloved hands away from her face, looked up and over her shoulder, and smiled so warmly to him… he didn’t need the sun for a moment, he just needed her eyes to warm his insides.

His hands twitched slightly… they were warm against her face…

His eyelids drooped and his actions began to be smoother in motion, moving to take her hands again as she–surprised–looked to see what was going on.

“Huh?”

“I promise. I’ll find a way to get us out of here.”

‘W-where was this strength coming from? I see her face and I just… her hope in me… I don’t want to let her down! I have to protect her! She’ll die out here if it wasn’t for my new abilities. I can’t let that happen. I won’t let that happen!’

With new resolve, nodded to her, “Amy, I think I’m gonna try and fly again.”

“Fly?” Amy turned away from the odd action of his hands and looked back to him, curious. “But didn’t you fall straight into the snow last time?”

In this winter wonderland, she was like looking at spring.

He smiled, relaxing for some unknown reason. “Please, have a little more faith in me.”

“Yeah, but you hit rock bottom. Hard…” Amy looked a bit worried, but her words suddenly shook his resolve.

“I-I-I was just off my usual balance and concentration!” he blushed again, raising his voice just a little higher to try and sound affirmative. “I don’t think it will happen a-again!”

“Emm…” she studied his face, then squinted her eyes and moved… -gulp- dangerously close to his face.

“I-Is there something wrong?” he shifted his eyes about, not liking how his hands grew sweaty and his heart started to skip the song and just start playing an entirely new beat.

After a moment of her invading his own personal bubble inside the heat trap, she finally moved away and smiled. “I can see Sonic in your eyes. I know you’ll do it. Just like he does!” she beamed.

But that… broke his spirit somewhat.

He froze… in that little melting snowbank…

He let go of her hands, “O-oh… like Sonic… Right.”

‘Why am I acting this way..? What has the Chaos Emeralds done to me? Sonic is an amazing hero… I… I don’t understand why comparing him to be is so upsetting right now…’

he moved up and began to try and float again, but his jaw tightened and his eyebrows quivered down to a narrowed glare.

‘I’m not Sonic! I’ll do this my way. I’ll show her she can trust my eyes! Why did she see him in me?! What does that even mean-Ah…Ahhhh!!!’

Silver lost his focus again and straight down into an icy river he fell.

“Silver!” the muffled voice of Amy’s cry under the water broke his moment of unconsciousness from the impact.

‘Amy… I’m failing her… she needs me … she … I have to… keep her warm…’ The cold was starting to pierce through his thick hair and fur, the wetness soaking his gloves and shoes… now the bitter cold finally made his actions slow, but his mind was fully alive. ‘Amy… Amy..!!!’

As he tried to bring out his power, reaching his hand up to the water’s clear and shining surface, it was disturbed almost instantly by Amy jumping in and diving for him.

‘What?’ Air bubbles escaped his mouth, left completely in amazement. ‘She’ll get cold… what is she doing? Is she… coming for… me?’

She grabbed his hand, turning around and heading back to the surface.

We quickly found a shelter, it wasn’t much, but with the excuse–wait… why am I calling it an excuse? It’s a reliable reason! A-anyway… I was wet and cold. Amy came closer and began to rub my arms and head, trying to help me warm up so I could use my power again.

She was clearly freezing… but even as her teeth clattered against one another… I would look up and see her desperately trying to warm me… Where did that determination come from? Was it… Was she…

Silver’s eyes suddenly focused on her, as she began to sigh.

“Man… You’re really soaked all the way through. Geez… I told you you could, but I didn’t mean for you to bolt off into the sky like that! It was too fast, of course you wouldn’t be able to see. Ohhh… I should have mentioned to take it easy. I guess my motivation can sometimes be a little too effective…”

Her hands over his head… he completely gave in and let her hands move his head in any which way they moved him. He closed his eyes, feeling her and her breath just above him.

He was sitting down, but Amy was up on her knees, moving closer as he went limp.

“H-hey! Come on, Silver! Stay with me!” her voice turned frantic and he blinked his eyes slowly open again.

“S-…Sorry.”

‘What’s happening to me? I just… I want her closer…’

He could feel the urge to lift his icy hands up, pull her against him, and let the heat do the rest… but as he thought about it, his face flushed again and he couldn’t help but stare up at her.

“S…Silver?” She leaned one hand down to touch his head, “Ah! You’re burning up!”

“…Am I?” he smiled, his eyes bending as though he wasn’t completely there anymore.

“Ohh…” Amy looked a little upset, placing her forehead to his own. “Hmm… Here.” she sat down in front of him and leaned against him, holding him. “Take in some of my heat. Together, we should be able to warm each other up enough for you to use your powers again.”

…Did he want too?

If he did… she wouldn’t remain like this… But would he rather die a frozen hedgehog than let her go?

Soon, he had enough strength to trigger his powers again, allowing Amy to rest in the warmth of the sun for a moment as they headed out.

“Don’t let go!” he urged, a few times, as Amy held onto his flying body. “For some reason, I can’t lift you up and hold this circle around us at the same time.”

‘…Is it wrong to say I don’t want to try? Is that lying?’

“Waahh..! Just try and summon Chaos Control again! Eeee..! Don’t drop me!” she was flailing about, holding herself up by wrapping her arms around his neck, being held up by his shoulders.

He puffed out his chest, smiling.

He had plenty of energy now, but tilted himself slightly to keep her balanced on him a bit.

“Don’t worry, I won’t ever let you fall.” he leaned his head into the top of hers. “Never… Definitely never.”

‘Who needs a portal?’ had he completely lost his mind?

When a portal opened above him though, he was sad, but Amy’s face lit up in joy.

“It’s working!”

“I’m not doing that…” He admitted, almost like he was pouting in disappointment.

The gang had saved them… whoopie.

Coming back, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Defeating Eggman? He took his time, didn’t work as hard. Going back to the future? He made every attempt to convince Sonic and the gang he needed to stay longer…

Really, I just wanted to be around her more.

Her cheery voice… her gentle touch… her tough attitude during cold fronts… She was amazing to him.

‘Maybe she does love everyone… but for now, I’ll just pretend it’s only me.’

His powers returned to normal, so now he didn’t have an excuse to hold her hands, bring her closer…

He bent down by her side while she attended her garden. She was so close… yet so far.

He wanted so desperately to reach out for her, even thinking of maybe taking the hose in her hand and manipulating it to spray near her, then he would jump in–grab her– and yell out, “Look out!” as though he hadn’t staged it.

Her soft fur against his own… Her hands moving along his head… Her voice crying out his name…

“Silver?”

“Yeah… just like that.” he closed his eyes and leaned his head up to the sun, before hearing her say it again.

“Umm… Silver?” Her eyes looked unamused.

“…GAHK!?” His face shone red and he freaked out, jumping up into the air and hovering their a second, “Did I say that out loud!?”

“E-hee. You sure did.” she giggled it off… but would she ever figure it out?

“Ohh Geez…” He slouched in the air.

“Hey, make yourself useful and fetch me some of those sunflower seeds.” She pointed behind her. “I also want to plant some of those white flowers over here. They remind me of you! Haha! See?” she showed him the picture, taping it to a stick and putting the stick down in the soft, deep brown soil where her flowers would go.

“Sunflowers?” he blinked his eyes, using his abilities to bring them over. “These ones?”

“That’s right! I wanted something to remind me of the sun in that world, and of you, of course.” She nodded towards him.

“…You are my sun.”

“Huh?”

“Ohh… Nothing!” he gripped his head, ‘Man, figuring out I love her is so hard! I can’t hide a thing! At least she’s easily distracted and can’t tell…’

“N-Nothing at all!!!” he took off, “Ignore me!”

“Hmm… What is that boy thinking?” Amy batted an eye a moment, “Couldn’t be… me, could it?” she laughed at the idea. “Silver?”

He flew back, still flustered. “E-emm?” his mouth wiggled in a nervous line, and his eyes remained shut and head facing up and away from her pretty gaze towards him.

“…I hope you don’t leave for a while.” her eyes softened.

“H-huh?” He turned to finally look at her again.

“…Do you know why?” she tilted her head, …

‘Ohh… Don’t do that.’ his eyes turned back to a clear sign of infatuation. ‘Can’t you see it drives me wild!?’

“No… I don’t know why…” He moved closer, “Tell me?”

The plea was almost too much, so she turned away and “Pfft!”d to the side.

‘Oh, now she’s mocking me.’ he pouted, moving slightly away.

“I’m serious! Why do you want me to stay?”

“Cause the world seems a lot warmer with your innocent heart flying around everywhere.” she winked his way, and then planted the first seed of the white flower. “It’s nice to have you around… You’re very genuine. I hope these flowers bloom before you do go. That way, I won’t be sad when you leave. But I’ll have them spreading that same warmth to my world. Well, I hope so, anyway.” She giggled, “Don’t make that stop you from leaving if you were going too. I just wouldn’t have a picture of you, and that would be sad, you know?”

She took out her miles-electric, looking sadly to it with a smile before he put his hand to it and pushed it down, startling her as she looked to his face just inches away from her cheek, hovering over her shoulder.

“Don’t worry.”

‘Does she see my eyes now..? And not Sonic’s?’

He smiled kindly to her, trying to convey what his heart pined for him to declare.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

And for once, he did see her stare differently at him.

‘These aren’t Sonic’s eyes…’ He moved closer…

‘They’re mine… Looking at you.’

#silvamy #silverxamy #sonic prompt #silver prompt #amy rose prompt #silver the hedgehog #amy rose #cutegirlmayra #silvamy prompt #sonic au

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kiraidrabbles · 3 years

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"Ares... you've been sitting here for hours. You can't just watch him forever, love." Sonic whispered kneeling down to the darker males level. Crimsons hollow under agony stared emptily at the reflect sitting across from him in a whole other world. He watched his life go by, ragged as it was. Tender hands gracefully pulled Ares from the ground and guided him back to the over world. He settled him down to sit and sat across from him. Cerulean brows furrowed as regret blinked across jade hues. "Maybe I made a mistake showing that to you..."

Ebony ears twitched and he jumped up in defense. "No, no! It was... it was good you showed me. Better then living in ignorance I guess..." he sighed out and settled back into the seat as pointed ears soon wilted forward. "I just didn't realize how much damage I actually did..." his own hands came to fight uncomfortable with themselves. Thumbs idly fiddling around as he tried to find solace for the whole in his chest being gnawed away by unrelenting guilt. Sonics own hands came to intertwine with Ares', tightly knitting themselves comfortably in his grasp. Ares peered up with heart heavy vermillion's still in search of peace for this ache in his chest.

"Ares..." peach lips pressed against Ares temples as he nuzzled in close. His tone was so washed out under the constant ache. "I hurt him so badly Sonic. And I can't take it back. I can't dull that pain. Truth be told... we were so early in our relationship that a part of me still stuck to you and being reunited with you... that I let my life slip through my fingers without even taking in the consequences... I let my conscious go in the moment the person I cared about was under the control of someone else. He ended my life and I let him. And it left scars on him that I don't think can be healed. I made him open up his heart slightly to me and I shattered him and I can't get over that. I can't let go of that. I regret it so much..." he pulled his hands away from Sonics hold and tugged them up under his arms. "He was barely open to me... where will he go after this? He was already a hard shell to crack and now I just practically pushed him over an edge of hardening that wall so he doesn't make that mistake again. I just want to apologize Sonic... I just want to tell him I loved him... I want to hold him till he feels better. But I doubt he'd let me." His head fell and he closed his eyes and Sonic was left tattered by the scene.

"...why wouldn't he let you, Ares? He... loves you right wouldn't he be ecstatic to see you again?" Confusion bubbling on the surface of emerald hues.

Ares sat in a moment of silence thinking over Ki. He knew how he would react. He would react the same way he reacts to anyone asking about Maria or Gerald. "You've never met Kirai. He's not like me. He didn't have memories before me. He didn't have Maria like me. His Gerald gave him fake memories that scarred him. He doesn't grasp emotions well... and if he's actually grasping these ones that can only mean that I did a lot of damage. I hurt him and I don't know if he's going to cope with it or repress it and its scary to think about him repressing this..."

Sonic sighed and pondering for the moment before kneeling at Ares eye level. "Why don't you visit his dreams? Like you did Rouge... maybe you can apologize and maybe that can help him heal." The older male lifted his head in response. You could see the thought moving across his face before realization hit. "That's it! I have to go!" And he sprinted off without a moments notice. Leaping back into the living world he moved across till he was back in Kirai's home. The younger alternate laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling with a cigarette in his mouth though he wasn't huffing it. He took one huff then laid it against the ashtray and let it smolder. The scent brought a warmth to his chest he wasn't aware was missing. He laid there watching it burn away into ash, eyes heavy from the lack of sleep he actually got. He eventually couldn't keep them open any longer and he drifted off.

Right back into his own he'll.

The same nightmare. The same dream. His hands around Ares watching the color leave his eyes and despite it being a dream. He still couldn't pull himself away and he hated it. It burned. It burned. It burned. Until it melted. The image disintegrating into his palms and he was left in the open white abyss that was a void. He settled to his knees staring down at where Ares use to be. He could feel digits resting on his shoulders and his reflexively jerked his body away and moved to his feet. "Its my mind you can't control me in my own dreams, Rouge." He retorted though his tone was callous and lacking any remorse or empathy.

"Kirai..." the moment his voice crossed the air his own breath hitched. His stomach knotted tightly and his eyes shrank till they were pinpoints. Turning his head meeting a façade he thought dead set an all but habitual pain to radiate up his body. His head throbbed. His chest *ached*. He grit his teeth. He clenched his fists till his knuckles whitened. "Ki...?" It hitched again before he fully turned, throwing chaos spears in the others direction with a force he'd not known he had. It was a dream and they simply moved through Ares. He stood in silence before he took a step forward. The echo of his boot against the floor derailed him further and Ki backed up more. His quills bristled and he snarled and hissed. "Ki." His tone melting into something more stern.

"GET OUT." he seethed through gritted teeth, baring fangs. His body shaking in unkempt aggression. "GET OUT! GET OUT OF MY HEAD! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!" he kept throwing spears though they did nothing. He further backed himself creeping down into the corner where he covered his ears. Deny his existence it will go away. Deny him. Deny him. It rang over and over like an alarm. Ki's tone hurt. His body language brought a fresh wave of guilt over him as the ache threatened to consume him whole. "Please just let me explain... please."

"I DONT WANT AN EXPLANATION! I DONT WANT IT! I DONT WANT IT! I DONT WANT IT!" His body quaked under the denial. The exhaustion beating at him down. "...I don't want it... I don't... I-I don’t... I just want to forget..." it was eating at him. The tears threatened to spill and he bit his lip to keep from crying. He had fallen further into himself. "...I don’t..."

Ares crossed the distance anyway. His fingertips inches away from resting on Ki's own hand before his entire form was racked with a sudden agonizing buzz. Everything in him burning with a newly lit ember. He groaned, staggered back before he was ripped from this void. He was back in the above world but the buzz didn't go. It worsened. It was burning. Like a fire radiating across every nerve. He collapsed to his knees and held onto his stomach. Reeling over in groans of pain. "Ares?!" Sonic had darted across the field before Ares could feel it. A steady thump in his chest before he was torn from the overworld and dragged back to his body. And from there it went dark.

Sonic couldn't believe what he saw. In panic he dove into Kirai's dream. He has stabilized slightly and was nested in the corner curled up in himself breathing steadily to keep himself going. "Ki, right?" Hollowed rubies gazed up to meet a familiar had before he sneered in response. "A Sonic? What the hell do you want?" He crossed his arms over his chest and glared jaded daggers at Ki. "Eesh. You are negative. But I don't have time for that! Ares was just here right? He got dragged back to Earth! He's alive again. Somehow. Not sure *how* but he's alive." Sables twitched at his words before he turned away.

"...alive?"

"Did I stutter?" He cooed with a cocktail arrogance. "If he’s alive that means someone dug up his grave." Hearing those words forced his ears to park before crimsons narrowed in response. Without a remark to follow Ki forced himself to wake up jumping from the bed and barreling down to a sight he avoided since the start of this catastrophe. The sight of a make shift burial. And it was dug up. His heart plummeted for mere moments before he was livid. His body burning with an ungodly heat that couldn't be sullied until he had those responsible in blood at his feet.

Eventually he found Rouge. Together they gathered Omega. As a group they located Isaac. As a team they stormed the GUN.

Isaac's tracker in Ares bloodstream eventually led him to said body. He forced his men to dig up Ares grave and pull the limp hedgehog from the dirt and throw him into the back of their truck where they retreated back to the undisclosed base in the midst of the desert. Ares body was laid on a metal table where he was restrained before hooked up to a machine. Isaac placed one wire over his chest as well as two on his temples before throwing on the machine that started his heart and brain back up. When he came to his was restrained and panicked and the only person om his mind being Ki. He started to scream into the air for Ki.

"Oh let's shut that up." Isaac purred sliding a bind over his mouth to silence him for the moment. Ares continued to struggle under binds. His body jolted by sudden life after months of being dead. He ripped at the cuffs around his wrists and failed his legs trying to undo that around his ankles. Isaac attached two cuffs to Ares wrists. Once clamped down they attached to his wrist, four small needles stabbing into the skin. "These little beauties are going to pump pure liquefied chaotic energy into your body. The overflow might damage the cerebral cortex a bit but you will be alright." He smiled in that vicious way. He inched closer to the on button when there was an explosion that dismantled the left side of the facility. Rouge and Omega stood in the rubble. "Omega Plan B." And he chirped before the facility starts to explode under a heavy barrage of missiles. Isaac dove away from explosions and tried to quickly set up the machine. Rouge landed in front of him and kicked the machine out of his hands. Slipping a scalpel from his coat he dove at her with eyes ready for murder. Before he could close the distance he was hit with a bullet straight into his chest. He peered up, meeting narrowed crimsons staring at him from the top railing. His body burning with a palpable heat. He jumped from the railing and dropped the gun. He formed a spear and closed the distance between Isaac and the wall. His eyes widened and he put his hands in front of him and pleaded with unrelenting fury. "Have mercy!"

"Don't know the word." Ki stated in such a degrading tone before letting out all his emotions on the man. Rouge paid no mind, trying to ignore the cruelty and undid the binds on Ares hands and feet before pulling off the cuffs. "I'm sorry I know that hurt..." she stood him up and dusted him off. She couldn't contain the tears that welled in her eyes before she wrapped around him in a hug. "I missed you Ares." Crimson striped arms curled around her in return. "I missed you too." He pulled away, returning his attention to his alternate who was... gone?

Ears flicked as the back door slammed shut and he didn't hesitate to push away and sprint off into the same location. "KIRAI." He sprinted after him, his tone pleading as he rushed to grab him. "Ki please wait!" Ki finally slowed in his stead and stopped dead in his tracks. Ares followed suit stopping about a foot or 2 behind him. "Ki... please talk to me. Please I'm begging you... please just let me exp-"

"Do you hate me?" He interrupted. His deep tone twisted with pain and lack of understanding.

"H-hate you? Ki, no I don't hate you! How can you ask that?!" He asked, ears wilting at the thought that he could bare ask such a thing.

He turned to face Ares and his face was drenched. His cheek soaked as the tears flowed heavily down his face. "Did you not want to be with me? Was this your way of telling me? You let me end your life... is that how you escape me? What was it Ares?" His stare torn holes into Ares chest. The tears made it worse. He thought he might suffocate.

Tears of his own streamed down his face as he stared at Kirai. The torture of the situation written across his features. He went to speak but his words stuck to the back of his throat. And they hitched as Ki started to sob. He *did* this to him. He ruined him. He forced him to do something that no person should have to go through. "...n-no... no I-I don't hate you... i-it was never about n-not wanting to be with you! I love you Ki! I-I just... I-I-I..." he swallowed back the sobs that lingered in the back of his throat. "...I- I wasn't mentally there... I-I was still attached t-to my past I wasn't thinking straight... I don't hate you! I'd never hate you. And I'm sorry... I-I’m so sorry.... I-I’m so sorry Ki... I didn't want to hurt you the way I did... I'm sorry...."

Ki's own tears didn't stop falling down his face. They worsened. They grew heavier. "...I loved you... I've never loved anyone... but I loved you and I got hurt. I put my everything into you... and you let me take your life... you let me kill you with my own bare hands and it haunts me! I cant sleep without seeing my hands around your neck! I can't work without fear of shooting someone undeserving! I’M HAUNTED BY WHAT I DID TO YOU! and I can't escape it! I can't run from it! I can't drown it out! It's eating me alive and even with you here... even with you alive it still haunts me... I loved you and you left me... in the worst way possible... I-I don't trust you... with my heart... with my life... because the last time I did you tore it out of my chest..." he wiped his face. He couldn't look at Ares. He couldn't bare to look him after saying that. It hurt to say it all. "I need to go..." and without further words to spare he took off.

Ares was left standing. Watching him run off. The cold was overtaking him. Swallowing him, gnawing away at his chest. He deserved that. But it ached. His entire chest felt as though it was on fire. His ears wilted and he collapsed to his knees. Tears worsened and he couldn't bare to contain the sobs. He broke down in the grass. Hands curled around him once more. They were delicate and soft and Rouge pulled him close. He collapsed into her. Tears raced down his face against her. She rocked with him. "Just give him time... he'll come too. The wounds still fresh... come on love you can stay with me for now." She picked him up and took him to her place.

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amidst-the-storm · 4 years

Text

[State of Mind]

[Controlled Iblis State Theme (WARNING: LOUD/BASS-HEAVY)

Warnings: Blood, Mention of Bone, Heavy-Duty ‘Final Battle’ stuff.

Fair Warning: Controlled Iblis State (all Chaos Emeralds Present/revealing Tempest’s ultimate ability set). This is meant to be near the end of Tempest’s canonical storyline (still a WIP on Quotev), and currently non-canon to her character on the blog. I don’t know if I’ll ever make it canon since this final form of hers is meant to be INCREDIBLY powerful. Also I was listening to the Theme the whole time so the whole thing is me being in a battle-mindset.

Word Count: 1,490

Takes place near the end of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood.]

“You can’t hope to defeat me, Sonic.” Ix’s words were measured, evened out. The entire team was battered, beaten within an inch of their lives. But she was a livewire. Tempest’s mind was echoing with wrath and rage, the month she had spent in this place... Seeing this world...

The destruction to her own....

“You never deserved the power of the Master Emerald.” Knuckles grit his teeth, his gloves torn and dirtied. Tempest’s eyes narrowed. “.... Now then....” His voice deepened. The tone shifted, from level-headed and calm to murderous in moments. Something was going wrong. The echidna stood atop the pedestal...

Began to glow.

His super form shed away. Left in its place was all his life. All versions of him, from the smallest child to the most elderly adult. It all burned, yet it fit. It was him. The entire timeline of his existence, on display.

Tempest couldn’t do this any longer.

She reached her hand up, bloodied fingers slipping on her necklace.

“.... We were at your death, if memory served... How rude of me to leave you waiting...” The echidna took a step down, all his forms repeating the action like fluid. Tempest’s fingers latched.

The necklace snapped.

“Another device broken?... How pitiful.... You see, this is one of the reasons why-!” Ix was silenced by a light smashing into him.

He was slammed back to the pedestal.

She was so done.

The Chaos Emeralds glowed, lifting into the air around the two like jewel spectators.

There wasn’t time. There never was. Their hand stretched out. A million flames flickered to life. Two eyes glared, the color gone beneath a burning white. This man- this frail old maniac- was trying to destroy her home.

“You want to see power, Ix?” Her voice was many. The uncountable, the impossible, an untold number of lives destroyed once by her own blood. By her own soul.

By her own hand.

It echoed and twisted, words contorted into the infinite.

Purple wires stretched around them. Ix rushed forward. He was young and old, all at once. Stinging gray hairs intertwined with the beige-green of his youth. Tempest leaped to the left, just narrowly dodging a smack to the face. His staff cracked against the ground.

More wires sliced through reality. Ix growled. He turned, pure-white orbs full of ungodly wrath.

“I am power!” His voice was echoed, multiplied. Every form of him throughout his life, echoing the same phrase. More wires encapsulated the two, burning into time itself. He rushed forth. Another swing was made. This one caught. It slammed into Tempest’s ribcage.

She knew bones had broken.

She was slammed to the wires.

They glowed, the outside world beginning to blur and distort. Time ripped off its hinges. For a moment, she heard her friends.

Tails.

Amy.

Shade.

Knuckles.

E-123 Omega.

Shadow.

Blaze.

Cream.

Cheese.

Rouge.

Big.

Sonic.

They were screaming.

Voices raw.

Bodies bleeding.

“You want to see POWER?”

They had come so far. They had fought so hard.- They had defeated his armies, his alliances left to collect. They had severed his tie to every colony, refusing him any lenience.

He was trying to destroy their world, and he wanted to talk about power?

The wires all roared. A million voices, every word ever said or to come. All echoed into one chamber. Time itself collapsed into nothing. The land outside the wires cracked. It was not real. It was not their reality, not right now.

Ix smashed his staff into her leg. Tempest screeched. Another bone was gone. The rage in her mind was just barely under a leash, collected by the very Emeralds she could never use. She couldn’t move. She could barely think.

Flames ruptured from her back.

Her skin crackled and snapped.

Light green slashed to ribbons.

Replaced by the dark, grim shades she had known two lifetimes ago.

“I’ll show you POWER, all right.”

And in that moment.

That one moment...

They were one.

There was no more fighting, no more controlling one over the other... The three collected, their fates tying into a single entity... But now, there was a new element.

The life of a human considered.

Ix dashed forth.

His staff snapped.

They turned their eyes. White still flowed from them. Flames flashed. Wires and heat collected, turning on all within and preparing to consume. They would not be distracted by the outside, not now, not ever.

“I WILL- KILL YOU!” Ix slammed forward. Tempest rushed to meet him.

The two met in the middle.

Energy arced out from their hands as they connected. Wings flared as Tempest swung her body. Ix went to do the same. The two connected yet again, shoe and sandal meeting with an almighty-

“SMASH!”

“Power isn’t about being able to control the universe, Ix.” Ix spat in her face. Tempest didn’t even flinch. He shoved her away. Twin wings of bone flapped behind Tempest, coated in the flames she had long shunned and hid. Ix was glowing, coated in an aura of pure white malice.

“THE TIME FOR TALK IS OVER!” He slashed back again. A new staff appeared in his hands. Tempest’s hand slammed into it. The staff was white, ornate. Her hand gripped it tightly. Ix’s eyebrows narrowed. His attention was on her.

The staff went from normal to white-hot in a millisecond.

“Sadly, Lord Ix, it is far from over.”

Ix screeched. His staff was dropped. Tempest kicked it away. The purple wires narrowed in, closing the bubble until it was barely big enough to move. Tempest kept her vision on Ix the whole time.

He was shaking. Really, truly shaking. The leader of the Echidna tribe- a tribe led astray by madness and wrath- was quivering.

“... Power is more than just holding fate in your hand- you should know that.” Ix turned, ready to run. He stared in horror at the wires, ensnaring him. The bubble moved. Wires wrapped and warped around him, just barely digging into his skin. They rendered him immobile, tying up his legs and arms. He could only flail, attempting to summon one of his void strikes.

A single slash of Tempest’s wing collapsed it.

“Power is knowledge.... The knowledge that we cannot control fate, nor its lines.” Ix made a desperate move to punch her. It connected with her jaw. There was a crack. Tempest didn’t even flinch. The pain was nothing compared to this.- Nothing compared to everything she could feel, everything she could see.

She touched her cheek, right where she had been hit. Ix smirked. He went for another attack.

His fist was intercepted. Several wires held it back, mere centimeters from breaking her neck. Tempest scarcely blinked.

“I once wished I could control fate. I wanted to so badly, that I became something evil...” Tempest pulled back, her wires forcing Ix to the ground. “... And you know what?... I’m not going to be that anymore... But I accept that I was part of it.”

“What would you know of p-MMPH!” Wires covered Ix’s mouth. There were many, an entire cosmos of lines that refused his speech. Tempest glanced back to him.

“... You know what else I’ve accepted?....”

She took a step towards him. The cage of wires grew smaller, her wings snapping from reality. The glow in her eyes only got stronger, white burning all else. The purple coalesced, solidifying back into pale peach skin. Tempest stepped ever closer as Ix attempted to move back.

The aura around him cracked.

White drained from his eyes, revealing a light red-hued pupil. Tempest got down to her knees. Both white-eyes were focused on her opponent.

The one who caused so much grief these past few months.

The one who tried to kill her and her friends.

The one that claimed he could be more than Solaris.

More than Iblis.

More than Mephiles.

More than anything she had ever been.

More evil than she could ever dream.

“.... That I can’t change it....”

She glared at Ix as the wires all snapped, revealing the glowing purple bubble of time around them. Ten seconds. That was all she ever needed, wasn’t it?

“.. But I can be better than those days.... Maybe, one day, you’ll be better than today.” Ix was freed. He slammed into Tempest.

Nine.

She slashed up, hand colliding with his chest.

Eight.

Ix’s fist crashed into her temple. She saw stars.

Seven.

The flames around her roared to life.

Six.

Ix threw another punch.

Five.

Tempest caught it, the fire traveling up her arm.

Four.

The hand over Ix’s chest was now coated in flames.

Three.

Tempest threw Ix off as he screamed from the burns, the fire clinging to his fur.

Two.

She rushed forward.

One.

Reality returned, just as Tempest’s fist collided with Ix’s face. He crumpled, aura snapping into nothing. Tempest collapsed seconds after. The flames on them both flickered and faded.

“... Maybe....”

#[fate's hand: controlled Iblis State]#[burned thunder: tempest]#[soul spark: iblis]#[soul shadow: mephiles]#[outside eternity:the mun]#[pencil and paper: writings]#[writer's needs: fanfic]#LONG drabble #long post #[writing forever]#[-legit me going off the rails with Tempest's final form and my headcanons for it-]#[-you can read it if you want to see me writing a fight XD-]#[-my only defense is that the final form of any story hero/heroine-]#[-is always SO BLOODY POWERFUL-]#[-and I kinda went crazy with the tune ^_^-]

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cutegirlmayra · 6 years

Note

I'm actually a little curious of what would happen if Amy DID loose herself on that one prompt where it's explained if something happens to the past self, the present ones would feel bruises, or something like that. Good luck! Not that you need it anyway since you're writing is just... I can't even describe it. What a better word for phenomenal?

Lol, how about ‘I love you?’ *wn* thank you so much!

WARNING: For the faint of the precious heart feels, plz read with some caution.

Original: (x)

ALTERNATIVE “DARK” ENDING

Prompt:

“Stooopp!!!”

“L-leave this to us…”

“We don’t want you to change! You’ll only hurt yourself by being something you’re not! But we will fight with you!”

“Please! Listen to us!”

In a moment of true weakness, her heart feeling heavy and her hammer held tightly as if she was a rabid animal, Classic Amy breathed heavily and looked down.

She didn’t see their faces.

She barely saw through the blur of her eyes, her hands shaking and her vision going in and out of focus.

Her mind barely grasped their words… till she felt a strong hand upon her own, which was gripping her hammer.

She lightly shifted her gaze her to it, but never looked up into the keeper’s eyes.

Her mind was wild, it wasn’t stable.

Modern Amy tried to run to help the others but fell as her head started to throb, her grip on herself slowly disintegrating as she gripped her head.

“W..what’s going on? I can’t… I can’t think straight… I’m.. I’m…”

Classic Amy shook her head, “N-…Nooo!!!” she flailed and fought. Her sudden movement shocked her friends as they were tossed around and flung away from her.

She looked up with unchecked rage at the robot, and swung her hammer out towards it, readying for battle.

“Very well, foolish girl.” Classic Eggman fired the machine gun.

She skillfully arched and swerved her way through it, before smashing the robot’s footing and getting it off center.

Thanks to her practice, she found some weak points and targeted its balance, before the cannon charged and fired her back and away from them.

“No!” The Modern Sonic Team cried out, trying to desperately get up, before succeeding. Racing against time, Knuckles reached out and gripped Classic Amy’s limp body, grinding his shoulder against the rock of the broken earth and rolling along with the bumps and ramps in it.

Out of sheer power, he dug his knuckles into the earth, and stopped them before they both went tumbling into a gorge of glowing lava…

He breathed in his own sweat and the smoke suck to the inside of his mouth. But he didn’t care much, looking down at the precious jewel in his arms.

She was out cold. Her color faded. Her quills still spiked in aggression and tension.

“Ah, kid…” He breathed out, seeing as she really took a blow.

He let his head fall just above hers, trying to catch some air, but nothing was cleaning his lungs from the smoke and heatstroke he was experiencing so close to the edge.

Tails flew over and helped them up, before realizing…

Modern Sonic fought with the Classic Team, it was clear his quills had risen somewhat in his distress at seeing Classic Amy blasted away like that.

Taking down the main threat after seeing she would be alright was his first priority, then he could check on her later.

“Amy!” Tails turned to look out into the distance, squinting his eyes before his panic threw him into a loop.

The two dimensions were almost fully one… when more than just 7 Chaos Emeralds flickered into existence near Amy.

Modern Amy’s body was collapsed on the ground… but her color was faded as well, as the emeralds started spiraling around her, glowing as if getting some form of a power source around her.

With Modern’s universes Master Emerald obliterated by the Eggmans, having the Classic era’s Master Emerald and destroying any further way to charge the emeralds, it was almost a complete victory…

But Tails quickly pulled Knuckles and Classic Amy from the edge even further and then flew out to meet her.

“Amy! What’s going on!?” he cried out, seeing the emeralds flicker out of existence after touching her back, turning her even darker.

“Amy..?” he slowed down, his voice growing faint, before backing up a little bit… his arm over his head as if to shield him from something…

Sonic and the Classic Sonic Team finally took down the robot, getting ready to capture the Eggmans when they turned around at a shadow moving swiftly over the land…

The fires dimmed… but made the only light possible.

“Oh no… are the universes one?” Tails looked at the darkened sky and quickly back to Amy.

Something was going on… but he didn’t know what.

What he didn’t know… was that because the two dimensions were now polluted with uncharacteristic potential reactions… that the universe was being changed constantly.

He didn’t even realize it happening to him, but could certainly see Amy’s body burst out into a darkness power.

The reverse of Super Form was because of the corruption of time and space, and instead of a controlled power…

Modern Amy slowly got up to her knees.

At first, Tails smiled, “Amy!” he moved a little forward, being knocked back a moment but was unsure of the dark aura…

His smile faded when she stood with a blank expression, her eyes empty except for a void of white, and the darkness whisking around her in desperate need of stability.

In fear and exhaustion, the team were forced to dodge and even fight back against her bursts of power, attacking anything that moved, and seeming unable to recognize them.

“I don’t think that’s Amy!” Tails cried out, dodging another dark energy pulse that came from her, laying down from the impact. “I… urk… I think it’s the essence of the universe! It’s just as distressed, and with all the pressure of the two dimensions being painfully merged together… I think it’s just using her as an outlet!”

“That shouldn’t make sense!” Knuckles, still holding onto Classic Amy’s dangling body, jumped to the side to avoid a power blast.

“…” Modern Sonic clenched his teeth, unable to speak.

He sped up and burst out into a spin dash towards her.

However, Modern Amy turned her ghostly head and blasted a motionless pulse that spun him off his course.

He landed on his knees and braced with his hands, hitting the ground. “No..! This wasn’t.. suppose to happen… Amy! I know you’re in there!” he whipped himself around, “You gotta remember yourself… control yourself!” he was more aggressive as well, everyone being altered through the pollution of the two shredded and torn realities.

“Who are you!?”

She didn’t move again, as a pulse pushed him back but he remained able to withstand through the placement of his feet, skidding against the ground some in resistance.

“Grr… You said you felt weird… but you never said you were turning against yourself!” he cried out, shielding with squinted eyes against the furry of hot air and dark pressure trying to push him away.

“Amy! Say something!”

Nothing… just staring in his direction… the darkness building more unimaginable rage and even less comprehension…

But she broke.

Her face suddenly gave way to strained pain, stretching her face back before she swiped her hand out and her eyes turned a darkness with a shadow as it’s pupil.

“You care about us… we’re your friends… you may be the first to morph because of all this.. but if we don’t do something… you won’t be the last!”

A painful cry rang out as the gang turned to see Classic Tails gripped his head, staggering backwards as multiple colored emeralds appeared around him before flickering away when they touched his struggling body. He tried to smack them away but they suddenly, violently thrust themselves and their power into him.

“N…no..” Modern Tails watched in horror, before looking at his hands and seeing the color fade.

He looked up… but without much warning… his eyes widened as he immediately felt swallowed up at the same time as his Classic self burst into a dark silhouette and fainted.

Modern Tails’s entire body was consumed in dark flames, as they formed into some figure of a mythological fox spirit, residing on all fours and having sharp, jagged teeth. The darkness flared up but returned to his normal size, as Modern Tails began to savagely attack Classic Sonic with his new found form. Running on all fours, he slashed through to injury him, leaving Modern Sonic to reel back and watch as a slow-moving scar began to be created on the side of his chest, moving across and just stopping before the center of his body.

He breathed in fear, feeling scared, and not understanding why he couldn’t push past it like he used too.

Immediately grabbed his Classic self, Knuckles took both kids in hand and started racing away from the Classic double-ganger of Modern Tails.

The Eggmans had already begun to cringe with mouths open on the ground, feeling great pain as more emeralds swarmed them from the other dimension. As if time and space were fighting against the merger, and also going insane…

“We… Argh! Have to get to the AUUUHH…. Master Emerald.” Modern Eggman put an arm over his Classic Self, trying to help him up as he looked as though he were painfully dying, but hoisted him over his shoulder as the pain also replicated to him, causing him to fall once again to the ground.

“The Master Emerald?” Knuckles looked into the fallen robot, seeing the gem start to dangle over the fire crevice… “Oh no!” he quickly looked to the kids…

Judging what would be better, he put the kids down beside each other, seeing his Classic self take off his head, and hold it to his chest.

“We’re in deep… aren’t we, buddy?” His Classic self held a solemn look as if trying to resist accepting his fate just yet.

“…Hmm. We’ll make it.” Knuckles gave him a thumbs up, a confident smile, before booking it to rescue what could be their only hope…

Classic Sonic fought off Modern Tails, but only keeping him back with rapid spin-dashes, having marks everywhere from battle damage.

Modern Sonic could feel every attack, and gripped his arm as his body mimed taking injury… walking towards Modern Amy.

“You… have to fight it… both of you… all of us…”

The Eggmans shifted, turning into spider-like robots in dark form, and charging after Knuckles to stop him- the emeralds combining the Eggmans with parts of the fallen robot they, themselves, had invented…

Amy started to laugh.

A darkness rose behind her, a pillar to be feared, as she began to step back into it. “You think… that was… love?”

The fire engulfed her, morphing her fully into a shadowed beast, raising her up to loom over Sonic at the top of the pillar.

He could barely stand up any longer… feeling the effects of the universe… but he wasn’t going to fall so easily…

He rose his head to watch her form and then listened to her shriek out her next line-

“Now you’ll feel the pain!!!”

“…Funny.” He straightened out his back.

The universe closed in all around him, Modern Knuckles throwing the Master Emerald before the dark, mutated Eggmans got to him, and Classic Knuckles rushing to grab it and abandoning the fallen Classic Amy as she stirred to start forming into a dark creature as well.

He passed it to Classic Sonic, “Go long!” he cried out, his hat flying off into the wind.

Classic Sonic stumbled but caught it, holding it up before an attacking shadow beast, not even seeing it as his friend anymore.

“For something that wasn’t real… it still brings you lasting pain?” he gave himself a smile… before an Emerald jabbed into his shoulder, being absorbed by him. “AH!”

Like a gunshot, Sonic fell to his knees again…

But Modern Amy twitched back at his words, before shaking her head.

“You ruined the cosmos! You destroyed me!”

“…Amy did care…” Sonic gasped out, fighting with quakes against the pain in his shoulder, seeing another Emerald flicker into existence, he turned his head in reflex and dodged it as it lunged towards him.

Classic Sonic stumbled and dropped the Master Emerald, having it roll through the broken earth’s ramps and peaks before falling near Modern Sonic…

“Amy doesn’t exist!”

Sonic rose his head, “So you are the universe!”

The dark formed creature leaned its head back in surprise, realizing Sonic knew that darkness was invading the world through pollution. They weren’t his friends anymore… it was possession.

He dashed to the Master Emerald in one last attempt for freedom, Knuckles shifting, his Classic self fading, and Sonic seeing the darkness start to quickly consume him.

Suddenly… everything was black… all Sonic could see through it was his white, gloved hand… reaching for a faint emerald color…

Then the light shone before he was fully taken over.

Chaos emerged and was released from the emerald, encircling Sonic in a brilliant glow.

He was purified and turned super, immediately using Chaos’s abilities to cover the world and split the dimensions back into their proper place.

Classic Amy woke up under a tree. The sun shining, the air clean.

She looked around before she saw a patch of flowers swaying by her, freshly picked.

She smiled and happily smelled them before a figure walked up behind her.

A few… actually.

“What are you doing way out here, Rosy?” Tails leaned over to smile at her, as Sonic and Knuckles looked to one another and then smiled down at her too.

“Need a lift?” Knuckles offered, as he held out a hand for her.

Happy, content, and not even wondering why everything was so peaceful, Amy had no idea the adventure that had happened in another pocket of time and space; and with the healed universe, took Knuckles’s hand, and leaped into Sonic’s arms.

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disrepairhouse · 4 years

Text

::Return - Chapter 6

The world was covered in darkness. Nothing, as far as the eye could see.

The air was thick, heavy. The ground gave way with every step, requiring more and more energy to get through. Her voice disappeared into the void with every call and nothing ever responded. Darkness covered every square inch, so consuming that she couldn’t make out her own body. As she muddled her way through the thick atmosphere, little blips of deep red flashed in the distance. She didn’t know what they were, but they gave her a heading. Something to move towards.

The ground sank more, the air grew hotter, and it became harder to breathe, but the blips were still there. As she drew closer, they took shape. Vague at first, they slowly formed into small, flashing boxes. They looked strange, like they both had form yet didn’t. Their colors made no sense and emitted a light that only illuminated themselves. But it was better than the darkness, and so she pushed forward.

The boxes grew in number, but never size. She couldn’t tell if they were close or far away and they stretched for miles. Finally, a noise, the first one she’d heard. A voice. Garbled and incomprehensible, but deep and echoing. She didn’t recognize it but it meant she wasn’t alone. She trudged forward.

The boxes flashed and warped, grew and shrank, were everywhere and nowhere. They were ahead of her and then behind her. The voice remained silent again and she no longer knew which direction to travel. The darkness was as all-consuming as ever and she questioned if she had made any real progress at all.

Just as soon as she was about to give up, the boxes surrounded her, then blipped out of existence again. The voice spoke up. This time it was clearer, though there were no words. Only a laugh. As her head swam and she questioned her sanity, a figure appeared, huge and looming, directly in front of her. Misshapen and metallic with a bright red and yellow eye glowing in the center, staring directly at her-

Itara darted up out of bed with a gasp, looking around the dimly glowing room frantically, clutching the sheets with crystallized claws as the purple and green of her eyes swam back and forth. It took several minutes of heavy panting and reassurance before she slowly calmed and let out a long, slow breath. Her head dropped, along with her ears, as the crystals around her fingers and the tips of her spines retreated again. “A dream…,” she sighed to herself and glanced around the room. There was no concept of day and night and thus she had no idea how long she’d slept, or even when she fell asleep in the first place now that she was thinking about it. She was in bed, back home, but she had no recollection of leaving the other base.

She recalled sitting and catching up with her friends for a long while. Once the explanation about her and the robots finally ended (her friends having no shortage of questions about it, as she expected) the conversations turned to the others and how they’d managed over the years. Itara and Simon explained that they’d been holed up in the base the entire time, never leaving until they contacted Sonic, but the other two had much different experiences. Itara had kept a silent eye on Sceira over the years, but only Sceira.

They discussed the festival and what they remembered of it, but it was a topic dropped quickly, Simon and Sceira both visibly uncomfortable with the memory, though Itara assured them she’d forgiven them long ago. Afterwards, the conversation moved to how everyone got to the current base, during which Sceira explained that her dad was actually a Freedom Fighter years ago, a fact he’d kept hidden from even her for some time. But when everything started, he brought her and her mother to a Freedom Fighter base where he finally let on about his past. Itara figured he had to be something of that ilk when he caught on to Metal Sonic so quickly.

Sceira and her family had mostly been in the same place the entire time, but they’d lost her mother during one of the few times they’d been run out by a collapse. They’d been at the current base the longest. Tobi, on the other hand, had mostly been surviving by bouncing around the area alone. He’d been separated from his parents during the festival and never managed to find them again, even after returning home. It wasn’t until Sceira’s father happened upon him during an outing that he was brought to the current base.

After a while of talking with her friends, though, Itara went to check in on Metal and RK, to make sure they weren’t causing problems and get an update on Shadow and Zero. She moved up to RK’s shoulders to get a better view of the room and… oh. That must have been when she fell asleep. She looked up from the blankets again to look around and listen, but the house was quiet. Far quieter than she was used to. No clattering or clanking of dishes, no snoring, none of Simon’s yammering, or even passive-aggressive fights between Lynda and Kelly. Was she possibly still dreaming? With a quick pinch to her arm and a wince, she determined that she was, in fact, awake. But with that confirmed, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and dropped to the floor to search for the others. The silence, like her dream, was uncomfortable but at least she could see her surroundings and her own arms.

But what was the meaning of the dream this time? That wasn’t Mephiles or Iblis or even Solaris. It certainly wasn’t Gaia or Chaos. What were those cubes? She didn’t recognize anything in the dream at all. Maybe it was just a dream for once. Normally such vivid dreams were heavily connected to her father, whenever she could remember such detail after waking up it was meant as a warning. But perhaps it was just stress from the coming event and state of the world. Even she could get stress dreams, after all.

She shook her head and looked around the empty living room where she and Ned had been sleeping for the past eight years – she’d offered her room to Lynda and Simon – the empty kitchen, the empty spare bedroom Mira and Kelly had taken up. No one was around. Why? She headed to the basement door and called out for RK and Metal but the lack of response put her further on edge. She was almost afraid to go down but took a deep breath and descended. Her concern was quickly dissuaded as she saw all three robots hooked up to the charging cells and in standby. They were still there, they were just charging. How long ago did they come home, though?

Well, they would reactivate when they were ready. The house was empty for the first time in years, maybe she should take advantage of the quiet. She looked up towards the stairs, then back at the desk – at the black notebook beside the keyboard and the red gem sitting on top of it. She really could use someone to talk to right now. With a sigh, she walked over and picked the gem and journal up, returning to the stairs and continuing to the kitchen. No one was around to stop her from getting into the food, at least.

She set the book on the dining table and tucked the gem into her pocket again, “I don’t know if you can even hear anything right now or not, Kipper, but things have been a little crazy again lately and I miss having you to talk to.” She climbed up on the counter to get into the cupboards, knowing there were some snacks packed away into the back, “I had a really strange dream that I have no idea what it means for once. There was nothing familiar about it so I don’t know if I should take it as a warning or disregard it as a stress dream. Not that I’d even know what to take the warning about in the first place, I suppose. I’m about to spend a lengthy amount of time with Shadow of all people here soon, so I guess it makes sense I’m stressed out. Sonic is one thing, he’s annoying but he’s mostly harmless, aside from bad memories. Shadow, though…” She trailed off, frowning, “Shadow remembers Mephiles now. He remembers me. If I’m not careful, he’d be all too easy to set off.”

There was a packet of old cookies at the back of the cupboard. But as she turned around to munch on them, sitting at the counter surrounded by the hot glow of a world on fire, she couldn’t help but remember the original timeline. When RK and Kipper showed up after Shadow nearly killed her, when she so foolishly protected Mephiles. It was the first time she met Iblis. Technically the first time she met Shadow. She was supposed to die that day. If it hadn’t been for RK and Kipper, if Mephiles got his way, she would have died in the original timeline and Mephiles would have had her shard of his power back. She wouldn’t have a second chance at existence, never would have seen the world as it was supposed to be, never got to experience everything she has since the reset.

She glanced down at the stale, crumbling cookies in the package. Kipper brought her a little bag of stale cookies then. While she was recovering from the attack. She couldn’t help but smile a little and pat the pocket with the gem, “You’re a troublemaker, but I liked having you around for as long as I did, Kipper.” With that out there, she returned to her cookies to debate the dream again, explaining it in as much detail as she could to the silent ghost, hoping to spark some sort of realization if she verbalized it. She didn’t get far, though, as she was out of cookie crumbs long before she made any sense of the dream images.

-----

The pages of her journal were still blank. Itara flipped through the book, particularly the last half, one more time before closing it and putting it in the small backpack. Whatever happened today, she would be flying as blind as everyone else again. Luckily, she’d gotten used to that by now. In a way, it was almost comforting. With the backpack filled and zipped up, she pulled it on and walked out of the bedroom to the living room where the three robots were waiting, some more impatiently than others.

Metal Sonic was bouncing from foot to foot, Zero had his arms crossed by the door, and RK was waiting just outside the bedroom, ready and waiting to check over her. “You sure you have everything you need?” he questioned as he knelt down to let her climb up to his back.

“Yep.” She patted the pocket with Kipper’s gem to make sure it was still there and got comfortable against the tall, fluffy, pirate robot. “You all got enough of a charge?” Short nods around the room and they were all out the door, headed back to the base where everyone else was waiting. As eager as Metal was to finally get back into action, she and RK were more wary of the situation. Zero was as unreadable as ever. They were only going to be investigating the area, though, they wouldn’t be making any active decisions until they knew what exactly the anomaly was. The only thing to be wary about was the possibility of Dark Gaia appearing… and Shadow’s mood.

Itara gave a quiet sigh of resignation as the other base appeared on the horizon. She didn’t want to be near Shadow, especially not mostly alone, but there wasn’t much choice. They would all be connected over a comm unit at least, so if anything did go wrong she could alert RK or Metal, but it didn’t put her at much ease. Metal was fast, but Shadow wouldn’t give much warning if she pushed him the wrong way, either. Plus, there would still be some monsters in the area. That was the purpose of the others running point around the perimeter, but there was no telling what may happen. The fact that every time she tried to check further in the day, her portals sidelined her back to the present wasn’t helping, either. She’d been able to check shorter and shorter times in the future for the past few days, but now she couldn’t even get five minutes. They would need to take extra precautions.

They met up with Mira and Kelly outside the base, having to deal with a brief panic from the hedgehog parents about their sudden disappearance last night, before moving inside. Apparently RK and Metal didn’t inform anyone that they were leaving when they did and it caused Mira no shortage of fury. Luckily, Itara managed to talk him down again so they could get back to what was important. The group continued down the halls in silence until they once again entered the office to the usual faces. Tails and Knuckles were going over a list of precautions while Sonic was attempting to hold Amy off. Espio leaned against a box on the nearby wall with his eyes closed while Vex seemed to be pumping himself up for the coming mission. Rouge was doing maintenance on Omega towards the back of the room… but Shadow was nowhere to be seen. Itara scanned the room a couple more times, thinking maybe he was just hiding, but after not seeing him, she turned her attention to Tails and Knuckles, who noticed their appearance first.

“Where’s Shadow?” The rest of the room’s eyes fell on them.

Tails sighed in exasperation and explained, “He already took off. He said he would meet us there and refused to wait.” Itara rolled her eyes but to say she was surprised in any way, shape, or form would be an outright lie. “We shouldn’t take long catching up, though.”

Itara nodded and the group as a whole collected around the console in the middle of the room. They discussed and debated groupings and who would cover what area. Metal and Zero were the most difficult to get on the same page, both insisting they could work just fine alone, but while RK eventually convinced Metal to just pair up with him, Zero remained persistent. Luckily, Itara was already used to dealing with him and Metal and the other group was used to Shadow, so they were able to work around the collective stubbornness and get a plan figured out.

Itara and Tails would head for the center to meet up with Shadow while RK and Metal would cover the southern perimeter, near Gaia’s crater. Sonic and Knuckles would cover the north, to keep as much distance between them and the robots as possible. Espio and Vex would cover the west, while Rouge and Omega handled the east. Amy elected to stay behind to keep at least one fighter at the base in case anything came their way while everyone was out. Monsters still roamed free across the area and while the base was as secure as it could be, there was still the occasional attack. Mira also opted to remain in the console room with Amy should they need any technical support from the base. Kelly tried to convince the others to let her join, but Mira ultimately convinced her she was needed at the base more. In case there was anything Amy couldn’t handle alone, Kelly would be sufficient backup.

The final addition gave Sonic a minor hint of relief that only Tails seemed to pick up on and thus said nothing about it. Despite his constant insistence otherwise, he knew full well Sonic’s feelings towards Amy and the idea that she would be defending the base alone worried him, though he still wouldn’t admit it out loud. With the situation handled, everyone went through final preparations and headed out of the base. Amy and Kelly followed them to the door, Amy commanding that everyone double-check that their comm units were synced up before letting them outside the gate. RK, Metal, and Zero opened a second connection to sync to the groups instead of allowing them on their main connection line.

“Be safe, okay? If anything gets dangerous, come back, alright?” Amy practically pleaded as they geared up to leave.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,” Sonic grinned, exchanging glances with Knuckles before taking off. Amy watched the trail of dust behind him while Knuckles huffed at being left behind. He nodded to the group then took off after the blue speedster. Espio, Vex, Rouge, and Omega weren’t far behind and Zero was gone before anyone had a chance to even ask where he’d be. Kelly gave Itara a final pat on the head before following Amy back inside, leaving RK, Metal, Itara, and Tails remaining at the gate.

“We’ll follow you to the center before continuing south,” RK stated in a no-argument tone and crouched down to let Itara onto his back again. Tails watched them warily but nodded and motioned for them to lead the way. He’d talked with Sonic the night before about the robots, mostly boiling down to Sonic being absolutely sure they were still up to something and warning Tails to keep an eye on them. He would do so, but something about at least Metal Knuckles’ mannerisms said he had less to worry about than he initially thought. Metal Sonic on the other hand…

They took off, following the directions Itara gave them the night before mostly in silence. Metal kept darting ahead and slowing down to let them catch up again but RK kept at pace with Tails, despite knowing he could keep up with Metal easily enough. Metal tossed a menacing grin Tails’ way every so often, but otherwise said nothing, but RK kept his focus ahead of him and on the little girl on his back.

After some time, Tails could no longer resist and questioned, “Did you alter Metal Sonic and Metal Knuckles’ loyalty chips to serve you instead?”

RK only glanced at him but Itara sighed rather dramatically, “Why does everyone keep asking me that?! No! I didn’t alter their loyalty chips! Metal’s couldn’t even be altered if I’d wanted to, it was too advanced.”

“Was? Then… why…?”

“I just repaired them, that’s all,” she explained, “well, I repaired RK. I dug him out of a destroyed base years ago and his systems were so badly damaged he could only run in emergency mode for a long time. His loyalty chip was equally damaged so we just cut it off completely. Metal was trickier but after the first fight with Solaris he was in an even worse state so we were able to disable his chip. They’ve both been running on rogue AI since.” She heard a scoff and looked ahead of them to see Metal Sonic running just ahead of them again, “Don’t give me that look.” She looked at Tails again and pointed to Metal’s clearly mismatched robotic arm and explained, “That’s why one arm is all robotics with no covering, he didn’t have an arm for a while. That one was made by someone else.”

“Yeah, sure, let’s just tell the fox everything, shall we?” Metal growled.

“What’s he gonna do if he knows, anyway?” Itara questioned, “You’re working fine now, it’s not like either of you are in a vulnerable state anymore.”

“So then… why are they working for you?” Tails repeated after a moment of concern, watching the scowl spread across Metal’s face.

“We work for no one,” Metal hissed, glaring at the two-tailed fox, “A time traveler is just useful to have around, that’s all.”

“We’ve gotten attached,” RK corrected, getting the blunt force of Metal’s fury in the process, which only got a smirk from the robotic echidna.

“Speak for yourself, Momma Bear.”

“Don’t lie, Metal, you care about her just as much as I do. Otherwise you would have abandoned her in Spagonia.”

Metal went silent, glaring at all three of them before his gaze fixed outwards, struggling for a response. Eventually, he scoffed and raced ahead again, leaving RK to silently laugh at him. Itara had gone equally silent during the conversation and half hid behind RK’s quills. Tails, however, watched the interaction with a heavy dose of confusion. The last any of them had seen of the robotic counterparts, they’d tried to kill all three of them. To see them arguing so amusedly over a little hedgehog girl was hard to grasp. But it did at least put him slightly more at ease about being alone with the robots. He had a feeling they weren’t up to anything beyond what they actually said. It was strange, but comforting.

The rest of the run was silent and they found Shadow easily enough where they expected to. Metal was nearby, tapping his foot impatiently, when RK ran up and let Itara down from his back. Tails flew in close behind and landed closer to Shadow to explain what he’d missed at the meeting and double check that he knew what needed to be done. Once Itara was firmly on her feet again, RK knelt down to look over her and ensure she could get ahold of him or Metal should she need them. Shadow and Tails watched silently from afar as the red robot obsessed a bit over the little girl, who assured him multiple times that she would be fine.

“RK. It’s fine. Really. If anything happens, Shadow can take care of it and if there’s anything he can’t handle for some reason, Metal can be here in seconds. Not to mention everyone else running around the area. This is what we’ve been waiting for, I’m sure of it.”

“C’mon, Momma Bear, she’ll be fine,” Metal urged as he walked over, impatient as ever, “Let’s go secure that perimeter. And fight something.”

RK frowned and stood up, looking warily between Itara and Shadow before sighing, “Fine… fine. Just, be careful.”

“I will be.”

RK hesitated a moment before kneeling again and wrapped his arms around the little hedgehog, catching her off-guard. She stammered a moment before going silent and hugging him back. He stood up again, nodded to Metal, and they were off. Itara watched after them until they were out of sight, a bit red in the face, then turned back to Shadow and Tails. Her face only burned further when she saw the looks of disbelief and stuttered and stammered her way over, “Sh-shut up… Let’s get busy!” The other two exchanged glances before following after.

The energy in the area was so strangely chaotic that it was hard even for Itara and Shadow to make heads or tails of where it came from. As they headed inward, combing the inner forest in as much of a back-and-forth pattern as they could manage, the forest seemed to constantly shift around them. It wasn’t dense by any means, especially being entirely burnt down, the trees were thin and branches were sparse, yet they never seemed to find the other side. Once they got far enough, check-ins from the other groups stopped coming and Tails’ virtual map became nothing but static. They had no choice but to follow Itara and Shadow’s gauge about where the energy was strongest.

A monster or two would appear, seemingly out of nowhere, the further they went. While it was no problem for Shadow, it hardly seemed aware of itself, let alone them, it only served to put the three further on edge about the possibility of being jumped. Tails could mostly handle himself and Shadow was plenty powerful, even without the Chaos Emeralds, but Itara was mostly defenseless. She had powers, but she was no fighter, and lighting the area on fire would be more hindering than helpful. Eventually, Itara stopped the group to look around.

“Tails, get the reader out,” she commanded, to which he quickly obliged. Much like the backpack Itara brought, Tails had his own bag stuffed full with the equipment they would likely need. Since they didn’t know for sure what they would be facing, they couldn’t be sure what exactly they would need, so he’d packed for a number of possibilities. While he did that, she turned to Shadow and questioned, “Does this area feel different to you?”

Shadow turned to her with the usual sharp gaze but looked out again and nodded, “Could this be it?”

“If it isn’t, it’s got to be close.”

But as soon as Tails had the thick, square mechanical reader out, the entire area seemed to bend. The hard ground softened, the trees warped sideways, and the air grew heavy and sickening. The wind rank of charcoal and a light pulse radiated through the air, subtle at first but grew stronger and more frequent. They struggled to stay standing as the ground beneath them rumbled and swayed and a stabbing pain shot through both Itara and Shadow’s heads, sending Itara to her knees but got little more than a wince from Shadow. Itara reached up with both hands to try and stabilize her head while Shadow trudged over to Tails and his devices to start the reader as the fox was all but incapacitated by the swimming atmosphere.

The device clicked to life and the ground shook, sending all three of them and a number of trees toppling, a screech of pain echoed around, followed by a radical beeping from the reader. With a heavy thud, a monstrous amalgamation of molten Biter and oozing Nightmare dropped behind them, its echoing scream of pain and confusion and rage piercing their flattened ears. Itara yelped in horror as she struggled to escape the creature’s claws as it lashed out at the nearest moving object.

The beast clipped her leg but she managed to scramble away from it, Tails was near to passing out, though, and Shadow was struggling to stay upright. The monster raved and bucked around wildly, its two sides battling for control of its one, melded body, sending it barreling forward. Itara ducked as it rolled directly over her towards Shadow, its four differently sized feet stumbling over themselves as Shadow dove out of the way at the last second. The monster crashed head-first into a tree just beyond them but hardly reacted and only bucked and brayed around in circles until it caught sight of them again with its three malformed eyes. Shadow squared up to face it but Itara could do nothing but try to crawl out of its sight while pressing wildly at the comm unit to call anyone for help.

The creature rushed Shadow again, getting a shoe to the face for the effort, which sent it crashing off to the side. But much the same as the tree, it hardly registered the hit. Itara screeched into the comm unit, getting no response, unsure if anyone was even getting their calls while Shadow scowled at the monster that jumped back to its feet and rushed him again. However, before it could reach him, a flash of bright, neon blue lit through the creature, sending it crashing back to the ground in halves before him. Shadow turned his scowl to the much taller robot, but had no time to argue about the kill as the world crumbled again and another pulse of energy brought him to his knee.

Itara reached for her head but another quake rumbled through the earth. The ground cracked and crumbled and seemed to tilt sideways as a much louder boom tore through the air around them, followed by a sudden, shining light that seemed to materialize right in front of them before surging up. Itara and Zero followed the trail of light, their eyes narrowing as two figures appeared within, their focus far above them.

Sonic?

But with another pulse, the figures disappeared and their attention was drawn back to the earth as the boom became a furious roar. A thick purple fog rolled in and long, ethereal purple tendrils snaked out around them. Itara couldn’t focus on anything Shadow was saying as she struggled to not roll down the newly created incline. She crawled over to a tree to prop herself up against it to try and see what was going on, but once she stopped panicking, she easily recognized the tendrils surrounding them. The towering, glowing purple body of Dark Gaia rose far up above them and the several, furious green eyes almost seemed to hone in directly on the small group.

Yet the worst was yet to come. The entire area heated up to the point that more dead trees burst into flame. The fires spread quickly, but it wasn’t the light of the fire that burnt through Gaia’s fog or which finally dragged Gaia’s attention off the group below. Every ounce of color and certainty drained from Itara’s entire being as the light from before changed and shifted to become the golden light of Solaris.

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disrepairhouse · 4 years

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::Return - Chapter 20

Solaris.

Solaris was here.

He was going to destroy even this world.

She was going to have to watch yet another timeline be destroyed.

Everything she’d done, everything she’d tried to do, did none of it matter? Was this a fate she couldn’t change?

Itara zoned back into reality as she felt someone violently shaking her shoulders, nearly tearing them off in the process. She could hear the vague sounds of panic around her, but none of the words registered. Not until the shaking stopped and a pair of sharp, blue eyes moved into her line of sight, glowing against the dark expression on the face they belonged to.

“Snap out of it.” She blinked, attempting to focus on the eyes in front of her, though the falling sun remained a harsh glow in her peripheral. “If you’re going to do something, do it now.”

What?

What could she possibly do now?

“I am not getting stuck in this world!”

This world? She blinked. Her vision focused in on the familiar blue eyes, the red helmet, the long, blonde hair. “Zero?” His scowl only darkened but the glow behind him grew ever brighter and hotter.

“This is no time for your meltdowns! You’re the only one who can do something about this, right? So, do it.”

She jerked at the accusation but shook her head and closed her eyes to calm back down. This wasn’t Solaris. This was only an illusion created by the Phantom Ruby. An illusion only she’s immune to. She opened her eyes again and looked down at the prototype… and the long, white line blazing up her arm. The burn stung and she had no idea what caused it, but she didn’t have time to worry about it, either. She knew now that she could stop Infinite’s virtual realities. It was time to find out just how much power the prototype could give her. It was, quite possibly, exactly the time for one of her meltdowns.

With a slow release of her breath, she picked the prototype back up and looked up to Zero, only then noticing the group of mobians surrounding them, including Shadow. She studied the panicked faces around her, all looking to her to save them, inwardly cringing at the attention. She wasn’t a hero-type. She didn’t want this kind of attention. But she knew what needed to be done and focused on Zero, nodding, “Right. You’re right, I’ll take care of this. I know how.”

Zero watched her closely to make sure she meant it before standing back to his full height again as he’d been kneeling to reach her. “Then I suggest you hurry.”

She forced a grin and reminded him, “Time God.” She shrugged her backpack off, holding it out to him, “it’ll weigh me down plus…” she looked around at the others and back to him, “things are about to get… explosive.” He took the bag and crossed his arms again while she looked around at the group of mobians, studying their various expressions before centering on Knuckles, “I suggest you call the Resistance back. Get them off the battlefield and as far from me as possible.”

“What?”

She reached for the prototype’s power again, pulling on far more of it than ever before. Her eyes swapped colors, her crystals ran up her hands and spines, and both arms burst into flame as the area around her heated up further. The mobians around them stepped back in shock and confusion, Zero taking his own step back to avoid the incoming explosion. “Call the Resistance back. If you wish them to remain intact. I’ve never tested the full strength of this power before,” she warned before turning to face the far-off Robotnik and Infinite again. “The Egg Carrier will be nothing compared to this,” she tossed to Zero as she headed for the battlefield, drawing more power from the prototype in the process.

The field between them was swarmed with still-fighting Resistance members and Infinite’s copies. Fire and lightning sparked and scorched the endless copies in a desperate attempt to fight until the bitter end. Even with the blazing heat of the falling sun, a heat Itara could feel less and less as her own temperature exploded out, the Resistance did it’s best to make any sort of headway. She watched with satisfaction as they slowly withdrew as she passed, however, on Knuckles’ command. They would hopefully get out of range of the blast, but she couldn’t guarantee anything.

There was a point where it wouldn’t have concerned her. When she realized she wasn’t mortal and their plights weren’t her own. She was immortal. The daughter of a God. What did she care about the mortals and their short, often wasted lives? She was part of an eternal Sun God. She had powers no one else did. She could travel through time. Rewrite history. Forever change the future. Fate was entirely in her hands and not even Sonic could stop her.

Except she hadn’t been unstoppable at all, had she? The one to teach her to use those powers, the one that introduced that immortality to her, had also been the one to break that illusion. She died at the hands of that Sun God and she had to start over, without those powers, and relearn to live life. Yet, even when she tried to stay out of the way of the world the second time through, he still shattered it all. Even in another timeline, in another world, where he was still split, he was still in her way. And now she would do anything necessary to stop him.

She looked up to find the doctor and his latest lacky, spotting them hovering far behind the battle lines, and took a deep breath. With a quick glance behind her, ensuring the Resistance was as far as possible and retreating, she locked the prototype in her grip and released the building energy. The blast was massive. The entire field of copies and the few Resistance fighters that had lagged behind the furthest were blown away, leaving only a several-mile-wide scorch mark where they once stood. Even Robotnik and Infinite were blown back by the blistering heat and the Resistance that had moved back towards the hillsides took as much cover as possible behind nearby rock outcroppings, having been warned by Zero of the incoming attack. The distant fires caused by the heat of the fake sun erupted with the intense heat of the explosion, the glowing orange turning hot white before vaporizing the trees they’d clung to.

The interruption and complete annihilation of an entire army drew the attention of the baffled and confused Robotnik and the confused and now furious Infinite. Robotnik stared in shock at the scorched-black battleground and the tiny, crystallized hedgehog at the center of it but Infinite moved first to face her. She waited patiently as the black and white jackal darted back down to ground-level to meet her, his fury more evident in his body language than his hidden expression.

“What are you?” he fumed.

“A trembling child,” Itara mocked, melting into a shadow, allowing Infinite to zip straight through where she once stood in his attempted attack. She materialized behind him, tilting her head, “You asked if this world could offer you a challenge, did you not?” She spread her arms out and grinned, “Here I am.” When he turned to face her again, she looked to the gem embedded in his chest, “I wonder if the creature powering that gem knows of its use?” She met his gaze again and held a crystallized claw out to him, “I offer you this one opportunity, Infinite. Join me, join a battle far greater than this world has to offer. Find a new world of power you could never imagine. Or fight me and pit your simple use of a power you don’t understand against the power of an immortal Time God. Your choice.”

Infinite studied her for a mere moment before laughing harshly at the suggestion, “How about I personally send you to oblivion, instead?”

Itara put her arm back down and stared at him. As he activated the Ruby’s power, glowing with the red energy of the gem, she shook her head and reached for the prototype’s power, fires wrapping up around her arms again as she stated darkly, “I am oblivion.”

Infinite’s first mistake was not realizing she was immune to the Phantom Ruby’s projections… but he that was not immune to her power. He summoned several dozens of copies to surround and attack her but Itara stood her ground and summoned her own, single, towering purple and black, glowing monster to wipe them out. A complete fallout of creation-on-creation battle ensued. Crystal Biters tore through Shadow copies. Massive golems smashed fake Metal Sonics. A Solaris-sized phoenix ripped and smoldered dozens of defenseless Chaos’. Infinite floated further away from the battle and Itara was eventually forced to do the same to avoid being caught up in the battle. But it was when he tried to attack her directly with a line of cannons that he finally truly realized what he was up against.

She stared up at the cannons, waiting until they fired before vanishing again. Similarly, every beast she summoned to fight his vanished with her. Duplicates all across the field bounced uselessly off the ground and slid past enemies that were no longer there. Infinite’s eyes narrowed in confusion as he looked around for the missing hedgehog, eventually lowering back to the ground where she once stood, looking around in confusion, clearly on edge.

“Where did you go?!” he called out angrily, whipping around, not noticing his shadow shifting unnaturally beneath him.

“Your field of vision must be awful in that helmet,” her voice came, though he couldn’t tell from which direction as he jerked around, looking for her. “I’m right here.” His shadow shifted and warped below him, but it wasn’t until the hedgehog slowly materialized, consuming the jackal above her with fire, that he finally realized and darted away from the ground again. He didn’t get far. While Infinite was distracted by the fire that caught on his tail and zipped off, attempting to put as much distance between him and the hedgehog as possible, Itara summoned another massive, glowing creature to block his path. Though, this time, she took a note from his book and the great beast Iblis rose from the fires with a bellowing roar and knocked the panicked jackal back. It vanished as quickly as it appeared, but it was enough.

Infinite crashed into the ground but as Itara cautiously approached, the world wavered and shifted around them. She stopped short, hovering to avoid falling as the ground shook and slanted. Infinite struggled back to his feet, putting distance between them again. He took a short minute to regain his composure, shaking his head, before scowling back down at the green-eyed monster staring up at him.

“This is more than the prototype should be capable of,” he hissed, “How are you doing this?”

“Hundreds of years and dozens of timelines of practice,” Itara grinned up at him.

Infinite remained silent but shook his head again and looked up. “No matter. This distraction was meaningless. Whatever you are, you still failed to stop my plan.” Behind them, the sun continued to descend on the world. It was mere seconds from colliding with the earth and had already done immeasurable damage to the area around it, taking out several of the taller buildings in Metropolis. It seemed impossible to stop.

But Itara only grinned wider.

“Did I?”

Infinite’s attention snapped back to her as she motioned towards the falling sun… and the far-off figure flying directly into it. “What?!” Infinite looked back to question her, but she was gone and the remnants of a portal dissipated where she once stood. He growled and cursed under his breath before taking off after the figure.

Itara jumped onto the back of a phoenix as soon as she exited the portal, commanding it to fly into the sun. She could only go back a couple minutes and didn’t have much time before the sun would do irreparable damage to the world, luckily she only needed to make sure she had a head start on Infinite, hoping her minions would keep him at bay long enough for her to destroy the illusion again. The gem sparked and flashed violently in her hand the closer she got, causing her to wince when the energy zapped through the gem and up her damaged arm. The glowing white line from before burned furiously, but she tried to keep her focus off it. The prototype was threatening to wrangle control from her and she had to fight to keep hold of the power. But the closer to the falling sun she got, the more violently the gem reacted. She started to wonder if it was even the prototype that the energy was reacting to.

The sun’s heat burned around her, but it was no different than standing beside Solaris. Despite the blackened edges around her clothes and the white-hot metal buttons on her overalls, the sun’s heat didn’t much bother her. However, what did distract her was the molten burning running up and down her arm. It was hardly subtle to begin with and it worsened the more she tried to control the Phantom Ruby’s reality. The air around her filled with a furious, sparking electricity that bounced off the prototype, causing the glow around it to waver and its response to give in and out. She could feel the phoenix beneath her gain and lose solidity, threatening to give out at any moment, but it was the sudden rush of power that finally broke her concentration.

Before she even knew what was happening, something – or someone, more likely – knocked her off the bird and attempted to grab the prototype from her. The second they touched it, however, the backlash that had been threatening since entering the sun’s sphere exploded out in a powerful burst of flames and static electricity that ran through her entire body. Molten lava ran through her blood as the foreign hand that still had a grasp on the prototype convulsed violently. A horrid screech of pain tore through her ears, though whether it was her own or the other’s, she didn’t know. All she knew was that it felt like her very soul was being ripped in half as her vision filled with a white-hot light she couldn’t block out, no matter how she tried.

The last thing she recalled before the blinding light finally faded to black was the prototype shattering to dust in her hand and a scream of agony filling her head. She didn’t know what happened, or whether she succeeded or not, but as thousands of flashing images filled the darkness in her head, she decided she no longer cared. Her body was in unspeakable agony and thousands of timelines and possibilities were flashing through her head, threatening to crack it open.

Sonic and Elise in a wide, green field. Mephiles speaking with Silver and Blaze in the lab. Iblis roaring through the molten lava of the volcano. Metal Sonic’s initial creation. RK, covered in vines, chasing after someone she couldn’t see. A black and white jackal, defeated by Shadow. Sonic and a small, blue humanoid robot traversing a dark hallway. Robotnik and some strange, white-haired man. Chaos rampaging through Station Square. A massive, wolf-like, rabid Sonic running through the dark streets of Spagonia. Tails Doll racing through a wide-open track. Zero battling a less demented-looking Sigma in a rundown warehouse.

The scepter.

The flame.

The Phantom Ruby.

The Chaos Emeralds.

Super Sonic.

Several erased worlds.

And eventually, darkness. Itara had never been so grateful to see nothing in her many lives. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to wake up again. But for the time being, she would enjoy the numbness.

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recommendedlisten · 5 years

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Last year, Recommended Listen introduced its first appendix to its Best of list series with a deeper look at the best heavy albums the year had to offer, and it's doing it again in 2018. There's so much music being released nowadays, and in a year that was exceptinally great for artists within the dark realm of punk, hardcore, metal, and experimental noise, this site would be remiss not to properly acknowledge the sounds this site has reflected upon throughout the year in their own space. There was a lot of new blood spilled across the floor in 2018, though just as impressive was how the scene's groundbreaking veterans met these moves every step of the way. Without further ado, here's this year's class of Heavy '18...

American Nightmare - American Nightmare [Rise Records]

At the start of this decade, Wes Eisold had seemingly outgrown his hardcore roots and remade himself a dark pop fashionista with his synth-pop band Cold Cave. After all, putting his band American Nightmare to bed followed a tumultuous chapter in his life involving renaming the band twice-over for legal matters atop of a sea change in the scene that sucked his drive out of the project. 2012′s reunion of the band was a timely reaction to a deserved reappraisal from listeners and critics alike, however, with a rekindled interest in AN’s brutalist sound being long overdue. The band’s self-titled comeback and first new music in 15 years lives up to that legacy by adding new chapters to its trail of destruction. Here, Eisold and company furnish their artillery with wiry post-punk and a metalcore exoskeleton that gives a glimpse into what once was while showing what hardcore has evolved into during these years of AN’s silence. Eisold’s screams are still deafening, offering plenty of more survival anthems as we spiral into the void.

awakebutstilinbed - what people call low self-esteem is really just seeing yourself the way that other people see you [Tiny Engines]

It’s one thing to channel your emotions into your work, but Shannon Tyler lets hers entirely consume her every being throughout public confessionals behind awakebutstillinbed’s blistering debut what people call low self-esteem is really just seeing yourself the way that other people see you. The breakout release from the San Jose basement punks found a cult following early on in the year under their own self-released merits, but its catch-on energy got them signed properly to Tiny Engines for a deserved wider release, and it’s easy to hear why. These are songs torn straight from Tayor’s diary and bled into the microphone as her signature sing-screams confront insecurities and earnest frustrations through a brave way of banging your brain against the headboard. Whether it’s an introverted meditation or cathartic outburst, awakebutstillinbed know how to find a space for them within the facets of twinkling post-hardcore, and honor the emotions no matter how hard.

Body/Head - The Switch [Matador Records]

Body/Head, the collaborative experiment between Kim Gordon and guitarist Bill Nace make sense of the droning disarray they create. It takes a certain mastery of chaos to sculpt art worthy of admiring in all its sonic deconstruction and reconstruction, if even with its abrasive imperfections, and with The Switch, the noise auteurs fully come together in a sensory induction that reflects the state of the world’s crude turmoil like a black mirror. Across five compositions, Gordon and Nace thread a pressurized anxiety through minimalist guitar waves and droning static that very much feels like every particle on this Earth on the verge of collapse. Gordon’s considered, drawn spoken passages can feel like a prequal to the hum of a hydrogen bomb dropping in slow-mo just before you actually witness it free falling with deafening silence. Elsewhere, the discomfort is not so much in the possible realities of what the noise might represent if given a visual form, but in the the energy seeping into you. The listen twitches with micro shocks and rattling cellular walls and when the echoes retreat their way back inside of you, Gordon’s voice makes its home in the depths of your subconscious.

CLOSER - All This Will Be [Lauren Records / Conditions Records / Middle-Man Records]

As with every great post-hardcore band in-the-making, CLOSER are a tour de force at the eye of the storm, and in this case, this would be their primary vocalist and drummer Ryann Slauson. A Brooklyn-based poet and visual artist, you have to imagine their background came as an advantage during the creative process of writing All This Will Be upon assessing how every scream that rings into their thunder clouds has an intentionally built lining around it. Alongside guitarist Matthew Van Asselt and bassist Griffin Irvine, CLOSER cover practically every hue of black in the post-hardcore color spectrum here from a pretty post-rock twinkls, roaring atmosphere of feedback,, as well as divvying up the sum of their parts where you can see the lines separating. Yet, Slauson’s emotionally wrought lyrics are what strike beneath the skin’s surface. They capture hyper-specific moments with the finesse of a detailed wordsmith that make each moment of impact feel like you’re swept up in them long enough to pause and appreciate the beauty before their true destructive nature reveals itself.

Daughters - You Won’t Get What You Want [Ipecac Recordings]

While most reunited bands from Daughters’ era of early Aughts post-hardcore have been content picking right up where they left off in reminding longtime listeners why they became fans of their music in the first place, the Providence band’s comeback of a fourth studio effort You Won’t Get What You Want operates on a different timeline. It’s one that acknowledges glimmers of their past efforts while turning the page toward an exciting new path of annihilation in their sound, leading into the pitch black where hidden corners reveal dangerous new shapes in Daughters’ grind. In 2018, Daughters 2.0 is made up of industrial rattles, stomach-churning drone, goth rock macabre, and eventually, the grandeur of the ascent (descent?) into black hole theatrics, cohesively-defined to rumble onto bigger stages than ones we last remember them standing ground on. In all their flesh, muscle and broader bones, Daughters usher a new reign of mayhem with You Won’t Get What You Want that marching valiantly into the unknown.

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love [ANTI-]

A lot has been written about Deafheaven in regards to their awesome, arresting sound -- an amalgamation of genres as vast as black metal, shoegaze, post-hardcore, and post-rock – and with Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, the bands seismic riffs tackled onto classic rock heroics state a case that it may be best left to start thinking of their endless string of epics not so much by what they’re made out of rather than what memory banks. There’s plenty of space to be had for them within each sprawling listen that at its most basic element -- even a gothic ballad sung in tandem with fellow dark spirit Chelsea Wolfe -- that they can be filled with the moments in our lives where memories mean the most to us. Plush rumbling builds climbs their way to a peaks where their flair for thunderous dramatics coupled with George Clark’s hellion screams rain vigor down heavily before unwinding their way around a colorful choral hill. Despite Ordinary Corrupt Human Love’s characteristically abrasive exterior, it’s as if there’s an inverse approach to permanently branding a flicker from life into our brains where Deafheaven tap into that beauty organically.

Emma Ruth Rundle - On Dark Horses [Sargent House]

Emma Ruth Rundle’s On Dark Horses finds the Red Sparrowes guitarist battling an eventual demise with an elegant grandeur that makes her invitations of darkness altogether alluring. On her fourth solo effort, the Louisville-based doom-folk songwriter has found a balance between controlling loud and soft dynamics that have rippled throughout her work in the past by gripping catharsis in lieu of uncertain outcomes. It’s without question her most carefully-constructed listen to date thanks to sprawling guitars, morose pianos, and an intermittent crashing of cymbals through the air mediating fear of the future with blind courage to forge forward. Her voice, classically spectral, acts as a transcendental vessel across its sludging and dense fogs of reverb. Eventually Rundle finds life in the here-after by crossing a threshold where the subconscious submits to the darkness, yet it’s not without a fight.

Fiddlehead - Springtime and Blind [Run for Cover Records]

With new, like-minded faces in the scene rising in their peers Turnstile or Fury, we’re experiencing the next chapter in a wave of hardcore’s underground that bands like Touché Amoré, Title Fight and La Dispute set in motion. Fiddlehead’s debut full-length Springtime and Blind is not just one of the earliest documents of these influences cemented in hardcore canon, however, but doubles as a personal one sewed in the season of grief against the juxtaposition of one symbolic of rebirth surrounding the loss of vocalist Patrick Flynn��s father. The LP gains its heaviest weight from those lyrical reflections in Flynn screaming or singing out to his father’s ghost as melodic swervedriving battens down, but by the time Springtime and Blind concludes with “Widow In the Sunlight”, the Boston four-piece is jamming a meditation on a life cycle of purpose, shouting the mantra, “May everything you lose come to find you.” It’s an optimistic closing thought in spite of its preceding morbid inclinations, yet in Patrick Flynn laying bare his own grief for our consumption, he and his ‘mates offer something much bigger.

Gouge Away - Burnt Sugar [Deathwish Inc.]

When Floridian post-hardcore act Gouge Away crashed through the scene’s doors in 2016 with their debut full-length , Dies, it was apparent that they had something to say. Singer Christina Stijy screamed empathy for animal rights with an emotional gravitas that hits the core hard while her bandmates wound up her words in a melodic tear of spiky punk riffs and big tent reverb that cuts through the static with resonating impact. Its sophomore follow-up Burnt Sugar finds them joining forces with hardcore and metal gold standard Deathwish Inc. alongside Touché Amoré frontman Jeremy Bolm behind production as Deafheaven mixer Jack Shirley remains behind boards. Throughout the blistering listen, Gouge Away deliver a burden of proof that they’re ready to take their message to the masses through universally-binding emotion. It’s a burst of social anxiety that finds Stijy tensely recoiling her discomfort from the inside out. Though this may be a sign of a promising band finding themselves in existential turmoil, Gouge Away burn hard enough on Burnt Sugar to ensure they’ve left a lasting taste in your mouth.

Jesus Piece - Only Self [Southern Lord]

In a year that saw Pittsburg metalcore thrashers Code Orange nominated for a Grammy and Bostonian heavy-hitters-on-the-rise Vein having a listmaking breakout debut that has since caught the ears of the Deftones and Thursday, Philly’s Jesus Piece punctuate it all with an exclamation point on their debut Only Self. For this quintet, the album is a culmination of sweat and blood left in the underground hardcore scene, having been workhorses for years performing no-holds-barred basement shows and hitting the gas pedal to the floor on several promising EPs and 7″ singles. Only Self bottles up their rage in one fell swoop, and obliterates the world around it in a half hour of powerviolence, doom and D-beat-driven explosions where Aaron Heard, who currently doubles as the bassist for shoegazing punks Nothing, is the eye of their storm, tearing down pillars of norm-core and bowing down to no gods or masters. For Jesus Piece, they’ve become their own salvation as the world around them burns.

MINDFORCE - Excalibur [Triple B Records]

MINDFORCE.is a rising four-piece out of the Hudson Valley hardcore scene featuring three-fourths of the now-defunct Living Laser who have been building buzz ever since last year’s The Future of… EP, With their first effort for the reliable ringing ears of DIY hardcore label Triple B Records and debut full-length Excalibur, they deliver a solid framework built on the bricks of ‘90s hardcore, thrash metal, and maybe just a hint of the alternative gloss aspirations reflected in Turnstile’s 2018 list-topping effort Time & Space. Like many of the heaviest hitters within today’s modern hardcore scene, MINDFORCE operates by devastating measures of tearing down walls by force of scaling metallic riffs, battering ram breakdowns, and an antagonistic call-and-response anthemry that defies the status quo of whichever unlucky powers that be stand in their way. In that regard, you can consider Excalibur the coup de grâce against a fucked up society.

Nothing - Dance On the Blacktop [Relapse Records]

On 2016′s sophomore effort Tired of Tomorrow, Nothing returned with more teeth in their nihilism following another brush with oblivion after Dominic Palermo was mugged brutally assaulted playing a show in Oakland. His injuries were so severe, that in the years since, he’s been diagnosed with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), the same neurodegenerative disease that affects those who’ve suffered traumatic brain injuries, which you’ve probably heard about in football, hockey and pro-wrestling news, and not punk rock. Palermo’s prognosis is grim in the long run, and yet, on Nothing’s third studio effort Dance On the Blacktop, he does his best to make peace with his fate. Topically, the listen remains existentially heavy as ever, though they’ve sonically pushed themselves to the next level in their loud, lush atmosphere in a way that sounds airier and – dare we say – brighter than ever. Influences wield from shoegaze’s standard vanguard, but also Brit-pop melancholia and silver-stringed alternative juggernauts that in totality with Nothing’s characteristically long shadows collect some of the band’s most tangible dalliances with the void yet.

Portrayal of Guilt - Let Pain Be Your Guide [Gilead Media / Holy Roar Records]

“This album has to do with the different types of pain one may go through when living in and accepting the horrors of reality,” Portrayal of Guilt guitarist and vocalist Matt King says of the Austin screamo band’s debut album Let Pain Be Your Guide. Among those pains: “Corruption within our own government, witnessing and experiencing clear injustices, ‘friends’ entering and leaving our lives without reason, the list goes on.” The listen takes the processing of such devastation to the extremes, with Portrayal of Guilt rendering of hardcore intensity being experienced through a hybrid of elements collected from pg. 99′s screamo DNA, Converge’s relentless fury, and CEREMONY’s gothic cynicism smoldering its way through the smoke and mirrors of humanity’s own bullshit. What’s left is a charred reminder of the agony we encounter, singed into ash at your feet. Follow the groundwork Portrayal of Guilt lay moving forward,.so at least you’ll know better not to cross those same paths again if you can help it.

Primal Rite - Dirge of Escapism [Revelation Records]

The Bay Area scene does a lot of things right in their punk and hardcore community, and the latest comes by way of the very heavy cross-pollinating thrashers Primal Rite. The six-piece made a bold impression last year with their debut EP Sensory Link to Pain, and we get the full metal jacket load with their first full-length album Dirge of Escapism. The effort ups the ante with the level of hard loaded intensity busting out of it from every nut and bolt holding this thing together from start to finish, melding together a high speed thrashing of hardcore styles, pummeling drum chugs, and guitar metal solo thievery all while vocalist Lucy Xavier unleashes humanity’s ascorbic nature all over their power grid. Though Primal Rite may dig deep into self-nihilism on the standout, there’s an even deeper layer of hyper aware reflection beneath Xavier’s call to arms once you scrape away the static grit off its the surface. True to the album’s title,, Primal Rite’s free-fall into oblivion feels like the sweet release of death without having to dig a grave for yourself.

Shame - Songs of Praise [Dead Oceans]

On the surface, Shame sounds very much a product of their surroundings – Brash, intellectualized, yet endearingly foul-mouthed UK punk upstarts – but in defining their idea of a revolution as a shrug against destruction and a focus on words as power instead, it helps their debut full-length Songs of Praise stand out as a bold statement in a scene saturated by moody guitar rock casting a heavy, nihilistic shadow over the world. “One Riszla” is the most deliberate example of this, acting as an antithesis to past clichés by way of its tunefulness, but it’s not necessarily a full portrait of how much substance they’re able to milk out of their bleak canvas. Standing in the midst of it all is lead singer Charlie Steen, whose vocals are like an undomesticated hurl of vitriol, meditative angst, and spoken word oration. Given the current climate of our world, he could ave very well dedicated Songs of Praise to being a vapid scream against all that is miserable and rotten, and while the album does point out plenty of examples of where humanity has lost its way, he and Shame ensure that every effort to grate is an intentional one.

Thou - Magus [Sacred Bones Records]

Thou have given of themselves a lot to the world this year. Over the summer of ‘18, they released a string of EPs on different independent labels, with each one reinforcing the Baton Rouge doom slayers ability to push themselves onto the experimental edge. The House Primordial keeps characteristically in the sludge of the swamps that breed them, where as Inconsolable reigns n their heaviness for a stripped afterlife before diving into the abyss of hardcore influences for Deathwish Inc. on Rhea Sylvia. No surprise really should be had that those were just warm-ups capping off the prolific four-piece’s fifth proper full-length Magus. It’s hands down one of metal’s most colossal listens of the year with over an hours worth of sprawling requiems for the human condition, though it doesn’t deter away from their genre-crossing ways that have pushed the scene and their politics beyond the realm of heaviness with purpose greater than Thou. Transcendental on every level is just one way of summing up the year this band had.

Turnstile - Time & Space [Roadrunner Records]

Time & Space, Turnstile’s sophomore effort and major label debut for Roadrunner Records, makes the most out of the Baltimore band’s knack for infusing melodic anthemry into their ‘90s hardcore-indebted intensity. Combined with the slick efforts of punk scene’s go-to rock sculptor Will Yip, the collective have produced a transcendent punk album loaded up with guitars and crash rhythm that blow you over like an explosive stack of dynamite grounding you to the present. There’s also moments where these big riffed head bangers gorilla press the quintet’s melodic weight straight into the masses with some strange flare ups of psychedelic cult seances and a muscular metal-edged guitar solos. That it’s reception has only polarized the hardcore purist community makes it all the more edgier and forward-thinking. No fucks are given on Turnstile’s end regardless, as Time & Space instead celebrates the ability to live by your own set of rules, in the moment, diving head first into it all.

Uniform - The Long Walk [Sacred Bones Records]

Uniform’s 2017 debut album Wake in Fright couldn’t be any more fitting considering the nightmarish hellscape that American politics and our society had spun out to seemingly overnight. The Brooklyn industrial noise band, then only consisting of vocalist Michael Bergan and NYC underground rock producer and guitarist Ben Greenberg, pulled us right down into the belly of chaos with heavy slabs o static feedback and ear-busting drilling that captured the terror of the times. Uniform’s sophomore follow-up The Long Walk offers no further comfort for these anxieties, but they do ponder a way out of the bleak existential despair, and in bolder form now that Guardian Alien / Liturgy drummer Greg Fox has been added to the chaos-making. The addition enriches their sound with a more human feel in its limbs as it flails its body through havoc. With that, Uniform have at least taken the world’s fright by the collar, and turning it into their own horror show where embracing the terror is all part of being alive.

Vein - errorzone [Closed Casket Activities]

Maybe this is factually wrong, but Boston has not only birthed, but also harvested some of the best metalcore music in its scene over the last few decades. Converge, Cave In, American Nightmare, the Hope Conspiracy, to name a few, and the lineage bleeds through the Merrimack Valley in Vein, a five-piece who’ve been not so quietly making noise in DIY spaces and releasing a trifecta of idea burst EPs over the years that have all led up to their proper arrival in their debut full-length errorzone. Akin to the biggest band of the moment in modern hardcore, Code Orange, errorzone share an affinity for spastic, self-destructive time sigs à la guitarists Josh Butts and Jeremy Martin cross-cutting craters of hyperactive thrash made in the crash between drummer Matt Wood and bassist Jon Lhaubouet. Vocalist Anthony DiDio’s intensity hurls himself into their relentless chaos and tears over genre lines without caution. It’s a violent display of physical hardcore and metal injections ramming muscle and bone from all directions.

War On Women - Capture the Flag [Bridge Nine Records]

War on Women made headlines two summers after their infiltrated the otherwise boys club-heavy lineup of the Warped Tour, aiming to open minds while wrecking bodies with their feminist hardcore message. It was a bold move that paid off, if even to their own credit, considering most of their peers would much rather pander to those who already agree with their views rather than disrupt the rhythm of anyone who they might potentially convert to a better path of humanistic righteousness. That fuck-all momentum carries over on their sophomore effort Capture the Flag. Here, frontperson Shawna Potter continues their plight by positioning activism front and center louder than ever with a razor-edged execution through polished big riffs and hoisting choruses into crowd anthems that bulldoze misogyny, gross politicians, womanizers, and generally anyone doing damage to the balance of equality in our society. By defying them with self-empowerment, Capture the Flag is reminder that War On Women’s message will wave without defeat.

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recommendedlisten · 6 years

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We’re nearly halfway through the year, but that does not change the fact that we were already feeling the wrath of music content overload bearing down on us as listeners since the springtime. You’d think that now that we’ve gotten into the summer swing of things that might slow down, but this past month alone has been a monster alone, especially in the worlds of rap and hip-hop, and it’s not hitting the brakes any time soon. Here at Recommended Listen, this single human writing machine does its best to stay abreast of everything new and good from all directions, and in typical human form, there’s going to be room for error. Enter this year’s Recommended Summer Listening, which has characteristically become the strongest seasonal round-up of albums this site didn’t have a chance to give full-blown review props to, or flew under the radar upon its initial release. Take a moment to slow down with these albums, because great music doesn’t have an expiration date.

American Pleasure Club - TOUR TAPE [Self-released]

Earlier this year, American Pleasure Club, the band led by experimental rock shape-shifter Sam Ray, put out their career best in the mostly lovely, sometimes ugly, fragmented effort A Whole Fucking Lifetime of This. Ray is a prolific songwriter who also never fully puts down his creative arm, and even out on the road in support of that album, he managed to assemble an entire album’s worth of new songs equally recommended for its surprising turns with TOUR TAPE. The self-released collection steps off from where its predecessor left off in swimming into sunny, psychedelic waters of acoustic indie pop ballads, fizzling pop-punk, and warped experimental electronic samples, but as the listen wears on, Ray shows sharp new teeth off by gnashing screamo and black metal influences into his ever-expanding soundscape. For the season’s adventurers, this one keeps your senses on edge.

Culture Abuse - Bay Dream [Epitaph Records]

Bay Dream does more than just encapsulate the warm sun beating down on you as you cruise through the highway, or sink your skin into the sand. It’s a mindset that has been cultivating itself these last few years into a satisfyingly dirty craft brew known as Culture Abuse. The sophomore effort and first since the San Francisco garage punks signed to Epitaph Records rounds off a lot of the scraggly edges heard in their 2016 breakout Peach by sedating their sound with high hooks of self-care and an absolved stoner slackerism that in turn exhales a lot of their youthful angst in exchange for mellowed out posi anthems. For lead singer David Kelling, the album reps a transitional growth spurt experienced down the SoCal coastline, and he brings plenty of punk philosophies about life and every kind of relationship in tow to bake under while you’re catching a vibe.

Gang Gang Dance - Kazuashita [4AD]

A band like Gang Gang Dance can step out of focus for years and yet seamlessly return into the lens, because their sound is one that has always existed outside of proper time and space. As veterans of NYC’s experimental rock scene of its golden age Aughts, they’ve contributed many things to the way their auditory creations have challenged our perceptions on reality, be it an undefinable noise ruminating through the void, psychedelic transcendentalists, and synthetic celestial bodies, but with their first movement in 7 years on Kazuashita, the trio are inhabiting a formation that defies physicality as a hazy orb shape-shifting in radiance as it moves through our world, bringing both calm and chaos with it. That these are tumultuous times to be alive influence which polarity you hear throughout the listen where political statements needn’t any explicit statement -- Their new age ambiance carries our nature through them just as well.

gobbinjr - ocala wick [Topshelf Records]

Summer can be a bummer, too, and gobbinjr knows what’s up when life gets you down. On her sophomore effort ocala wick, the project spearheaded by NYC-based songwriter Emma Witmer serves up a full glass of melancholy indie pop lemonade at her stand with a bittersweet taste of self-deprecating thoughts and wry humor. Songs entitled “fake bitch” and “zitty mcgee” sprinkle a little extra into the mix, but her music is through and through a reflection of hard-earned self-care and pure DIY, having written, recorded, and produced it with her own two hands. “Good people feel shitty,” she sings poignantly on the album’s centerpiece “Sorry Charlie”. If the rest of the world outside seems kind of like a terrible place to live in, or you just can’t stand to see another humblebragging wedding and vaca selfie on your timeline, ocala wick is the kind of listen that helps you escape indoors.

Forth Wanderers - Forth Wanderers [Sub Pop]

Fear of motion sickness during your summer travels? Whenever you put some Forth Wanderers on, prepare to get a case of the spins. But you needn’t worry, as it’s all experienced in a way that won’t be leaving you spilling your guts on the floor -- At least not in a literal sense. With their eponymous sophomore effort and first for Sub Pop, the Montlclair, NJ indie rockers may tie knots in your stomach and induce a sea-sawing sensation through wiry guitars and ebbing rhythms, yet it’s not just caused by the constant unraveling of riffs and making short on sharp swerves in their time signatures. Fronthuman Ava Trilling’s outpouring of up and down romantic contexts is a thing of strange beauty to observe in both narrative and prose. When Forth Wanderers map out their storyboard in words and action, their quiet quakes have the power to turn the world upside down, and who wouldn’t want to take a trip to that place?

Hatchie - Sugar & Spice EP [Double Double Whammy]

Aside from the unavoidable buzz surrounding Hatchie, something that has stood out in glaring effect with the dream-pop sounds being created by Brisbane musician Harriette Pilbeam is the uncomplicated clarity in her concept. Glassy layers of synths and an effervescent coolness in her singing voice is not a path that we haven’t heard tread several times over since the style’s inception during the ‘80s, but perhaps Hatchie’s version of it is surmised by the title of her debut EP Sugar & Spice -- Especially in the former of those two tastes. Instead of pushing her muse beneath the surface of the clouds, Pilbeam pushes the sweet and sour tastes of your everyday romance onto her music’s surface level, making their basic nature sound more interesting when adorned in textures that swirl and sparkle. If it’s a simple kind of summer love you’re looking for to no resolve, Sugar & Spice does its best to sort those feelings out for you.

Iceage - Beyondless [Matador Records]

What began as an exorcise in violence, nihilism, and anxiety personified in the least suspecting of scenes in Denmark’s desolate DIY punk basements has evolved into a meticulous exercise in shape-shifting art rock experimentation where gothic purveyance has subdued Iceage’s louder abrasions, but not necessarily their ability to confront the dark with any softer hesitation for a grander stage. Beyondless, the band’s fourth studio effort, is a new peak culmination in Iceage’s insatiable desire to further themselves, er, beyond the limits previously drawn in their musical style. The way the quartet wear danger and bleak existentialism in tandem with their bootsy grit is sexed up for pomp and glam in its incorporation of strong brass winds and cantankerous avant jazz fits. Elias Rønnenfelt has written himself a charismatic stage persona to match -- Consumed by the theatrics of a rock god and the Devil himself at once.

Kamasi Washington - Heaven and Earth [Young Turks]

For the long distance travelers of the season, Kamasi Washington takes you further out than you expected with Heaven and Earth, his latest grandeur display of avant jazz adventures composed with the special powers of the video game superheroes he invokes when aligning big brass purists and less discriminatory crossover crowd on the same universal plane. The double LP featuring 16 tracks average in 10 minutes in length each may as well be a quadruple one by today’s standards, though it also finds the Los Angeles saxophonist and his band in top form with cohesively connecting the dots in his experimentally sound genre reconstructions that encompasses free wheeling eruptions and percussive winks into the realms of rock, soul, and R&B. Heaven and Earth mediates his world of the weird and technically proficient with out current pop climate changes, and there’s more than enough sonic sight seeing in this journey to keep your senses in awe.

Rae Sremmurd - SR3MM [EarDrummer / Interscope Records]

SR3MM is the next step in finesse from Rae Sremmurd who, since breaking out with their 2015 debut SremmLife, have become the go-to assembly line for ready-made party mixers in the vein of fashionista hip-hop. The triple album, which also encompasses Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi’s first solo efforts Swaecation and Jxmtro respectively, sees the duo separating their ids as well as feeding off one another’s cool energy as a cohesive unit. It’s black light trap, pop, and rap fused and filtered through three individual statements of artistry, with SR3MM itself especially standing out as the moment we finally hear the brothers Sremm scratch beneath the surface of their one night / club life endurance tests, or puffing out their chests through material wealth, and refining their sound with a pop singularity and shelf life to be looked at as more than just the music you put on the party playlist. Rather, in having gained full control over their fame and all the desires that come with it, they're perfecting a sound that defines what it is to truly feel full of life. You’ll still want to have all three on deck for your backyard picnic or beach hangs, though...

Snail Mail - Lush [Matador Records]

Lindsey Jordan knows the roller coaster emotions of being young better than most indie rock songwriters out there right now, perhaps because she’s still figuring out a way to deal with them. With her debut album Lush, the 19-year-old’s creative outlet Snail Mail invites the entire world into the thick of her Tiny Little Corner of Anywhere where the doldrums of suburban living collide with teenage romance and its ensuing anguish in a manner where even a minor happening in heartache is enough substance to soundtrack a turning point moment in the coming-of-age experience. How she does so is through a stronghold in sharp earnestness wise beyond her years with lyrical specificities wrapped up in slowburning melancholic hooks that might otherwise suggest what '90s indie rock might have sounded like had it been put to her eloquent pen in the present. Yet, Lush is through and through about living in the moment, growing pains and all, and Snail Mail is in no hurry to shake the ride.

Speedy Ortiz - Twerp Verse [Carpark Records]

With each release as the years have gone by, these pages have referred to Speedy Ortiz as indie rock collegiates, scholastics, or some other form of intellectualized indie rock entertainment. This being because ever since they arrived on the scene as recent college grads with their 2013 debut full-length Major Arcana, the combination of singer Sadie Dupuis’ verbose prose and she and her bandmates’ higher level learning of six-stringing has been the thing that has made them stand out in a pack of younger bands heavily influenced by the history of the thinking person's undergound. With 2015′s Foil Deer, they proved that they had studied every book inside the libraries at the University of Malkmuschusetts and knew how to use that knowledge to write their own chapter for the kids outside today, but their latest effort Twerp Verse is a selfless endeavor devoid of needing to prove anything to anyone. Instead, it's their most outspoken commentary on modern day righteousness made all the more digestible with some new tricks from Dupuis’ second degree in pop experimentation gained under semester abroad under the sad13 guise. Speedy sure cram a lot to chew on here about common decency, but rest assured, it will keep your brain in check while working on that consensually admired, self-cared, imperfectly perfect beach bod.

Sudan Archives - Sink EP [Stones Throw]

Sink is the second EP from rising Los Angeles-by-way-of Cincinnati experimental singer-songwriter Brittany Parks who, through her moniker Sudan Archives, is reshaping the sound of avant R&B by channeling it through electronic waves, subtle hip-hop booms, and pop undercurrents bowing through folky nylons strings. It makes for a hypnotic introspection in its sway, but beyond these glimmering facets on its surface skin, the soul and bones of Sink is an exploration into Parks’ evolving identity, be it as a young black woman in a frayed American landscape, or in how she embraces her cultural roots by utilizing her self-taught ancient West African violin tutelage to the fullest. It’s a promising early leg in the 23-year-old artist’s journey as she continues carving out a lane all her own from from the underground up, and build new worlds for listeners to travel in the process.

Vein - errozone [Closed Casket Activities]

The Boston legacy of heavy has long been a place where hardcore and metal collide with awesomeness, and that lineage continues to expand today with Vein, a group of Merrimack Valley thrashers who've amplified the intensity of the scene's groundbreakers like Cave In, Converge and American Nightmare, and bare down the void with their own young nihilism. Their debut full-length errorzone uses the framework laid before them and fuses its pieces into a sound of apocalyptic proportions where human adrenaline and natural forces smolder into the quintet's firestorm to form a death-wielding vehicle tearing shit up in every which way. Lead screamer Anthony DiDio is a reckoning on his own two feet, but backed by Vein's seismic riffs and pummeling storms, errorzone is unapologetically harsh in see that everything burns to the ground. Needless to say, this one feels best when walking on scorched sand...

War On Women - Capture the Flag [Bridge Nine Records]

Last summer, Baltimore’s War On Women joined the perpetually problematic, male-dominated lineup of the Warped Tour with the intention of cracking heads open not so much in the pit (although, there was probably plenty of that that, too,) but in broadening the world views of the minds of tomorrow. The traveling pop-punk circus has in recent years become a breeding ground for toxic masculinity, but the co-ed feminist hardcore punk band bulldozed right over them as frontperson Shawna Potter shouted out demands for equality in all walks of human life. Capture the Flag, their sophomore effort, continues the plight by positioning their activism front and center, louder than ever with a razor-edged execution through polishing up big riffs and hoisting choruses into crowd anthems that resonate immediately. For the kids who took anything away from War On Women’s set last summer, this is a reminder that their message will wave without defeat.

Uniform & The Body - Mental Wounds Not Healing [Sacred Bones Records]

The Carters may have the most talked about married couple collaboration of this summer, but it’s the unholy union from two corners of the experimental void that unsuspectingly creeps up on you with a most satisfying terror. On one end, you’ve Uniform, the NYC duo of production guru and guitarist Ben Greenberg and the howl of former Drunkdriver vocalist Michael Burdan who’ve been making the industrial complex a hell on Earth ever since last year’s resounding breakout full-length Wake In Fright, and on the other is the Body, the prolific Providence-based noise metal architects who similarly corrode everything in their path. Their merged alchemy on Mental Wounds Not Healing is the formation of one heavy-hitting heartbeat, their beings inseparable through the static, yet forming a distinctly visible outline of every limb. It’s a mutually beneficial exchange in brutality that comes to blows just by propping each band onto the others’ shoulders.

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