In this case, all commentary will be saved for the end of the chapter.

Epilogue.

The bird found his Master buried deep, deep, deep within the darkest corner of the world that he could find; within a mountain that was carved hollow, and filled with chaos energy which flowed around them like hot, melted rocks.

He had to hop back into the Nothingness in order to get to this place (that foul awful Nothingness; he hated going there, hated it just being there, but he had no choice; His Master was too far away from Station Square for Caulk to just fly to him, and besides, there was no normal way into the mountain from the outside. Just tunnel after tunnel after tunnel, none of them leading anywhere). It was cold and terrible, and just the thought of it made him clutch his chest where his heart should have been. Travelling through the Nothingness was like trying to go nowhere, but always ending up somewhere. Usually somewhere far away. You could take a few steps inside of it, and end up miles away from where you had been before. In fact, when you weren’t trapped in it for a few thousand years, the Nothingness was a lot of use. So for a few minutes, Caulk endured the emptiness, hopped between the worlds and landed in the dark depths of His Master’s cavern.

Caulk scuffed his claws against the damp gravel on the floor and sucked in musty old air through clenched teeth. The Nothingness had been stupid and wrong, but this... This was a good place. Cold and quiet and very, very solid; and bright, too. Brighter than it should ever have been so deep below the dirt. Master had created things to decorate the darkness. There were lights shining from green candles and bits of glass and steel and clothing scattered across the gravel floor. Caulk had spent so long trapped in the Void, trapped without flesh or bone or feathers (had he always had feathers? Hard to be sure... it had been a very long time). He had been nothing more than thoughts, strung together in the darkness. Caulk hadn’t even had his own body for company, and he had forgotten what touch, taste and sound were like. Now he wanted to sense everything and feel everything. A dripping, dark cavern was as wonderful to him as a spring meadow.

And in the darkness before him, moved a disjointed shadow.

‘...Master?’

‘One moment, Caulk.’

Caulk watched with interest as his Master cast one metal coated hand in and out of the golden flame. It was the Master’s fleshy hand, he realised. The one with bones beneath the metal. The one which, as Caulk had learned from his experiences back in station square, would hurt and burn if help too close. He was about to warn master of this when Master found out for himself just how painful flame could be when it touched living flesh. Master held it there for a long while, watching the skin changing colour as it burned. Then, when the skin was black and stunk of fire, Master pulled his hand away. The candle fell to the floor and extinguished.

‘...Ah. Is pain, Master. This is what pain feels like in flesh. Just flesh, mind you, nothing else. Metal doesn’t feel pain. Neither does wood or plastic stuff. The feeling is not pleasant to Caulk, neither.’

‘...Yes, I remember it now.’ Master said evenly, clearly thinking very hard about things that Caulk didn’t feel it his place to question. ‘It’s a curious sensation, isn’t it? And it doesn’t always end as soon as I remove my hand, either. Sometimes it lingers... attentiveness appears to be a factor. The more I focus on it the worse it becomes.’ Master curled his flesh hand into a tight fist. ‘Forgive me, I was distracted... what is it that you came to tell me, Caulk?’

Caulk flapped his wings, preening his steel tipped feathers as best he could. His new neck wasn’t long enough for him to reach the awkward places. ‘There is news of goodness. But there is news of badness too. In which order does Master want it?’

‘In whichever order Caulk would prefer to give it. But try and keep it concise, would you? You tend to ramble a bit...’

Caulk squawked loudly. ‘Ah. News of goodness first then, good news will sit nicer in Master’s insides. The Energy Channels are working plenty fine. They go up, and they came down again in new places. They has new energy to drain, more lives to eat. There will be plenty of food for your creatures soon.’

‘Good. We still have plenty of life energy left over from the first gathering... But this will run out. We need all the power we can get.’

Caulk coughed uneasily. ‘Ah... we has not so much power now, Master. Not so much.’

‘...And that, I take it, is the bad news?’

‘Is so, Master. The Chaos Creature has returned. Two of them this time, two brothers. They came and they killed Master’s creation.’

‘The oil creature?’ Master sounded displeased. Not good. ‘They destroyed it completely?’

‘Yes. They killed it dead, tore it apart. There is nothing left of it but black, black puddles. And worse still, Master, they has stolen back the six Chaos Emeralds we had and thrown them away. Stupid creatures.’

There was silence for a moment. Caulk tried to work out whether Master was angry, surprised, or scared, or all of those things at once. ‘...Master?’

‘...It’s alright, Caulk, it’s... Well, I had expected them to defeat the Oil Beast... even with the Chaos Emeralds to support it, it was only oil... But I didn’t anticipate losing the Chaos Emeralds. Two of them, you say?’

‘Yes indeed. Is ‘hogs. Ugly, bright coloured, big mouthed ‘hogs. They use Chaos Control.’

‘I see. That is unfortunate. And we’d only just retrieved those Emeralds, too... These creatures are very powerful, aren’t they?’

Caulk swallowed, an uncomfortable feeling settling in his steel stomach. ‘Master does not anger... Master is not unhappy with Caulk?’

‘Why should I be, Bird? After all, the plan was not yours. It isn’t your fault that it failed’ Master sat, the chair appearing where he desired it to be, carving itself almost instantly out of the rock, and said curiously to himself. ‘I wonder if it felt any pain...’

‘Shouldn’t be thinking so, Master.’ Caulk sniffed. ‘Beast brother was nothing but oil an’ dirt. No flesh. No flesh at all. Only flesh feels pain.’

‘That’s true. A shame... It would’ve been interesting to watch I expect. And you say that that together they destroyed my distraction? But surely they had only one chaos emerald between them... How could they have possibly...?’

Caulk scratched his beak. ‘Caulk isn’t knowing the how’s and why’s of that, Master. Caulk knows only what he saw. They destroyed beast, and they destroyed the Energy Pipe that it guarded same time.’

Master was staring firmly into the flame of another candle. You could see the crawling blackness inside the pits of his empty eyes. They were good eyes, strong and dark, but Caulk thought that he had much preferred the eyes His Master had before, in their old life, before they were imprisoned. ‘I should’ve known better, I suppose, than to give that creature all of the Chaos Emeralds we’d found... but Oil was all I had to use at the time, you see.. I needed to create something in order to keep them busy... Without the Chaos emeralds it would never have grown strong enough to be a nuisance... and with them... well, it should have been invincible.’

‘Will all respect meant, Master, Invincible it wasn’t. Chaos Creatures are strong.’ Caulk flapped his heavy wings and landed on the stone table his master had made. ‘But Master should not be blaming self. Is not Master’s fault Chaos Creatures are stubborn spiky spike-heads.’

Master reached out with his metalv hand and ruffled the steel tipped feathers atop Caulk’s head. There was static in the touch. ‘Thank you, Bird. Well... they gained little else I suppose... They did not prevent our Energy Pipes from returning to the surface; the transfer continues. And I have plenty of energy now for creating as many Beasts as we require... But if these... Chaos Creatures have worked out how to destroy My Surfaces... even just one at a time...’

Caulk purred uncomfortably. ‘Then we has problem trouble, does we not, Master?’

‘Probably, yes... Still, they are few, and our beasts shall be many. I doubt they could destroy my Energy Drains as quickly as we can create them... ’

Caulk frowned to himself. Master spoke of one thing, but looked as if h meant another. His expression was anxious confused. ‘Something else troubles Master? Something he has not told Caulk?’

‘Hm? Oh. Yes, something does as a matter of fact... A piece is missing.’

‘Piece?’ Caulk blinked. ‘What piece does Master speak of? Is Master missing limb? Master can simply make new one, yes?’

Master chuckled dryly. ‘Not a piece of my form, Caulk. Of the Master Emerald. Or at least... I think that’s what it must be. I thought I sensed a disturbance earlier but only now am I sure. There is... a gap within our surfaces. One wall less than there should be... well, actually, there are two walls less than there should be now, thanks to those foul chaos creatures... When we finally shattered the Master Emerald into pieces, caulk, one of the Fragments must have escaped our reprogramming efforts. It is here now. In the human world. Probably lying in the dirt somewhere.’

Caulk scratched his beak again. ‘Is bad... We need this last piece, yes? We use it?’

‘Yes, I think we shall need it eventually. Though granted, we have more than enough power right now. Things appear to be working out well for us, energy wise.’ Master watched new flesh and skin crawling over his scarred fingertip, replacing what the fire had burned away. ‘No matter. We will look for it and it is certain to turn up.’

Or whatever it was that he was walking on right now, truth be told they didn’t look very much like feet. Maybe the feet an insect might have if it were much, much bigger. He stood again and Caulk watched, fascinated as ever, as his body twisted and turned and melted together until His Master had two legs on which to walk.

‘We shall deal with these Chaos Creatures in time. Powerful as they may be, we still have the energy of the Master Emerald on our side... More than enough to kill them. Onto other matters. What about the female? Did you bring it?’

‘Indeed we did Master, indeed we did. We stored her good and proper between the worlds. She is comfy safe.’

‘And you’re certain that she is the right one? That she came from the place they call Sol Alasmo?’

‘Is her indeed. Master was correct. Computers told us all we need to know. The female is one of them. Master will speak with her now?’

‘Yes. Come with me. I hear that human beings have a certain fondness for animals... Perhaps you can help me convince her.’

It was Helen who Sonic found first when he returned to the city. She was on the sixth floor of the University, where they had been yesterday for Grandpa Chuck’s talk. She was out of her wheelchair, curled up on a sofa that Danny had placed in the laboratory especially for her. She sat with papers scattered across her lap and across the table in front of her, and she was staring at these papers so hard that her eyes were watering a little.

At least, Sonic figured that was why they were watering.

‘Hey, Helen, what’s hanging?’

‘Oh... Sonic... hi.’

‘What, just “hi”?’ Sonic cocked his head, staring at Helen firmly for a moment. He grinned. ‘Don’t I even get a smile, or something? You could be happier to see me.’

‘I am happy to see you.’ Helen mumbled, clutching some of the papers much too tightly in her hands. ‘I always am...’

‘So then, what’s got’cha tail in a twist? Well... you know... if Humans had tails, that is.’

Helen didn’t laugh.

Which was just weird. Helen always laughed at Sonic’s jokes, even the ones which were really bad. If Sonic hadn’t been convinced that something was wrong before, he was now.

‘No no, I.. .well, yes, but that’s not why I’m freaked out, I... It’s about Chris, Sonic. Those scans that we had taken earlier... they’ve finished processing. We have some X-Rays and...’

‘Yeah?’ Sonic really had no idea what an X Ray was supposed to be, but whatever it was it sounded kind of... invasive. Helen took a deep breath.

‘Do you see that machine on the wall over there? The flat computer screen?’

Sonic looked around. ‘You mean that thing?’

‘Yes, that. Would you turn it on for me?’

Sonic looked at Helen for another long second, knowing that\whatever he was feeling right now was very, very wrong. It was kind of like how Amy knew when he was going to be late for something, or how Tails could tell when a computer was about to blow up when he wasn’t even in the same room. Amy knew Sonic’s patterns, Tails knew machinery, and Sonic... well...

Sonic knew fear. He didn’t always know what people’s expressions meant, but he knew exactly what they looked like when they were really, really terrified. It wasn’t something he really thought about himself (when a situation was bad enough to be freaking out about then actually doing that freaking out and making it worse would just be stupid. Being scared was no fun, and mushy stuff was icky, boring and slow.) But he knew it when he saw it in other people.

And right now, Helen was really, really freaked out. And not by something that Sonic could fight back against and get rid of.

‘...Helen ,what’s wrong?’

‘Sonic just... just turn it on,’ Helen bit back an annoyed snap, and then looked guilty/ ‘Please, i think you really need to see this and... whatever you do, don’t just go running off after this, okay? We really need to talk.’

‘Oh...kay,’ Still no idea what she was going on about, but Sonic reached out and flicked the switch on the side of the monitor anyway. An image flickered into view before him, a strange bundle of black outlines surrounding white shapes. A little like that scan they had taken of Cosmo, except that...

‘Whoa... man. Uh, okay, so... so this is...?’

‘An X-Ray and Radiation Level overlay of somebody’s chest and ribcage,’ Helen said. ‘Chris’s to be exact. The one on the left, the bigger one? That’s... that’s mine. That’s the way that a human’s internal structure should look.

Sonic looked back and forth between the two images een though he really didn’t have to. The difference between them was staggeringly obvious, even to someone who hadn’t known what an X-Ray was until just now (heck, he’d never really needed to know). Sonic felt his heart clenching just a little inside of his chest. ‘I... you humans you... you have your hearts in about the same place we hedgehog’s do, right?’

‘Pretty much.’ Helen whispered.

‘...Oh... okay... So then, uh... I have a question. What’s that bright, green, glowing thing where Chris’s heart should be?’

End.

Ye'gods, you have no idea how long I've been waiting to say that one, single, final line.

So, uh... All That’s it, then. The first chapter is over. I’d like to give a huge thank you to everyone who has stuck with this throughout. Especially those people who have offered concrit or useful information. I still have a lot to learn with regards to my writing, and every little bit helps. Your input means a lot to me.

So, yeah, there’ll be a sequel to this, and hopefully I’ll be able to refine my skills a little more in that. You get better every time you write, after all. I’m looking forwards to continuing this and I sincerely hope you’ll all show up for the sequel and whatever comes after it. I have a lot more characters to explore, a lot more to say, and a lot more escapades to get these guys into. Hopefully there’ll be some more humour in the upcoming series’ too. I really need to lighten the mood after an ending like that...

So... I think that’s all I can say really, except for another big thank you :)

-Scarab