Mobius Destiny (A Sonic Boom Fanfic)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two

By the time she returned to the dimension she'd left to fend for itself for a short while, Kay had been gone for about three-quarters of an hour. The time difference between Mobian dimensions was practically nonexistent, but forty-five minutes was a long time to be left alone to battle the forces of Enerjak.

She should know. She'd fought the entity before entirely on her own.

With Shadow's ability to use Chaos Control with a single Emerald combined with a warp ring, he was able to open a portal back to where she needed him to be. He had her go through first, then he followed close behind her. No sooner had they set foot in this strange dimension, however, than Kay was suddenly waylaid by Aurora, who had a crazed look in her eyes that scared the hedgehog down to her bones in a way she hadn't been in a long, long time.

"You insolent, wretched girl!" Aurora spat, her voice a hiss not unlike a snake's. She grabbed onto Kay's arms and squeezed hard, but Kay pressed her lips together defiantly. "I will not be defeated by you a second time, do you hear me? I will not lose to you again!"

Kay wrenched herself out of the echidna's grasp just in time for Shadow – who had witnessed the scene with confused detachment – to reach forward and pull Aurora away. Aurora spun and attempted to attack him, but the Ultimate Life-Form wasted no time in punching her hard squarely in the jaw, sending her toppling to the ground in a heap.

It took some effort for Kay not to laugh. As it was, she barely suppressed a smile. She then took the opportunity to do a quick scan of the area to see how bad the damage was. To her surprise, those of Aurora's forces that weren't knocked out cold or worse on the ground had mostly fled. Eggman and his minions were long gone. The Shinobi and Gossamer warriors kept the last few rebels at bay.

Kay turned back to Aurora, who was groaning and holding her jaw as she struggled to get back to her feet. "You're right, Enerjak. You won't be defeated by me again. I can't defeat you. You're an entity of Chaos, and Chaos has long since left me alone. There's no way I can win this time."

At this point, Nikōru had noticed Kay's return and gotten the attention of Espio, who hurriedly left his men to their duties to rejoin her. The lynx wasn't far behind him.

"Kay," he said breathlessly, reaching out to place a hand on her shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, your highness. I'm fine." She smiled. "It looks like you held out pretty well on your own."

Espio shrugged. "Without that Chaos Emerald, the Dimension Keepers really didn't stand much of a chance. And your friends from that island took care of their guy and chased him out of here pretty quickly. Actually, the hardest thing has been keeping this one—" here he gestured to Aurora, "—down long enough for us to do our work."

A couple of different things jumped out at Kay in that sentence. "Wait...without the Chaos Emerald? What happened to it after I left?"

"Um." Espio glanced at Shadow, who stood off to the side behind Kay with his arms crossed. "He took it."

"No, not this one," Kay replied quickly, her mind racing. "This is the Shadow I just brought back from Mobius Prime. Our Shadow was the one who had to have taken it. Where did he go?"

Espio glanced at Nikōru, who shrugged helplessly.

"Ugh, Shadow!" Kay grumbled, running a hand through her quills in frustration. "Why on Mobius did he run off with that thing? I thought he wanted this all to be over."

"I do," came a gruff voice that was just off enough from Prime Shadow's for Kay to know it belonged to this dimension's version of the black hedgehog. She and the others looked around just as he emerged from the darkness in a far corner of the room, his face set in a hard stare directed at his counterpart. In his hand was the Blue Emerald. Kay let out a sigh of relief.