Silver the Hedgehog: Hero, or Villain? - Chapter 2

"Almost…almost…. Alright I did it!  I can't wait to show this to everyone."  A certain two-tailed fox named Miles Prower said to himself as he finished his latest creation.  Using the power of the blue chaos emerald in his possession, he was able to make numerous machines that one couldn't even dream of powering for at least another hundred years.  As he put his new invention away there was a knock on the door of his workshop.

"Tails open up!  Something strange happened to me the other day."

Tails went to the door wondering what Knuckles wanted with him.  He briefly hesitated at the door wondering if he would barge in like he usually does when something odd occurred.  Tails sighed and made sure to step to the side as soon as he answered the door.

"Thanks for letting me in Tails, you're never going to believe what just happened to me," the echidna said when he barged in like Tails had expected him to.  "Do you still have the blue and yellow chaos emeralds with you?"

"Yeah the blue one's right here," Tails answered while showing it to Knuckles.  "I put the yellow one away, but it should still be there.  Why'd you want to know?  Need them for something Knuckles?"

"No I don't need them, but make sure it's where you left it.  I need to see it before I tell you what happened."

"If you say so.  Give me a second to go get it."  Tails jumped into the air and spun his two tails like helicopter propellers and flew to the second story of his workshop.  Once he was up there, Tails went to his room where he left the emerald on his bed.  When he came back there was still only one emerald in his hand.

"I take it that the emeralds missing, right?"

"Yeah, I left it on my bed the other day and had my windows locked.  There's no way it could have been taken.  Although I've been working almost nonstop for the past three days straight nobody's been here but me."

"Tails, you remember giving me the green emerald to hold on to right?"

"Of course I do.  It was so you could practice nullifying the powers of the emeralds and keep one of them safe.  Did yours go missing too?"

"Not missing, more like it vanished into thin air.  I was taking a break from my training and sitting by the Master Emerald guarding it when it started glowing and flashing bright lights.  I tried to force it to stop using its powers but all I could do was prolong the inevitable.  My concentration was broken for just a moment and the next thing I knew the emerald was gone.  I didn't know what to make of it, so I woke Chaos up and asked him to take my place guarding while I went to check this out.  I spent the past two days searching Angel Island for clues but nothing was out of the ordinary."  

Finished with his story, Knuckles waited for Tails' reply, expecting him to have some genius explanation for what happened to their emeralds, but when the fox only stayed silent his hopes slowly diminished.  

"Well Knuckles…..I don't know what to make of it either.  Since the blue one is still with me, we'll have to assume the yellow and green emeralds are the only ones that are missing.  Let's go find the other emeralds and try figure things out.  Let me grab my emerald locator and call the Chaotix.  I gave them a detector just in case we all needed to find them.  There's got to be somebody around to help us."

"I'm not so sure.  Charmy, Espio and Vector said they just got a big job that they were specifically asked to do.  Mighty's off training in the mountains somewhere and Ray could be doing anything.  We may be on our own for this." Knuckles said with a slightly dejected tone but Tails either didn't notice or ignored it.

"I'm calling anyway, Ray just might be there.  Go get the Tornado ready Knuckles, this shouldn't take too long."  Tails was tempted to try and find Sonic but quickly pushed that thought aside.  He was Miles Prower after all. If he could take on Eggman all by himself then he could handle this with the aid of Knuckles.  He quickly dialed the number of the Chaotix detective agency and was glad to hear a familiar voice groggily answer.

* * *

"Shadow, are you sure we're on the right track here?  I mean whatever appeared here probably already left and none of us are really any good at tracking things down.  Can't we just go back and say we didn't find anything?"

"Not a chance Rouge.  Whatever came here has a connection with the chaos emeralds.  Around the time G.U.N. picked up on the strange energy readings my chaos emerald starting acting strange.  I'm not going to stop until I find out what's going on.  If you want to blame someone blame G.U.N. for taking so long to pinpoint where the energy source came from," Shadow answered as he continued through the forest where the strange energy had appeared then disappeared.  

"But Shadow come on, if it's connected to the chaos emeralds then it's definitely something that's alive.  So why would it want to stay in this jungle?  It probably went to where the nearest emerald was."  Rouge wasn't in the mood for a wild goose chase; she had so many better things she could be doing right now.  There was this cave she had scoped out last week that could have some nice…

"Nearing source of the energy disturbance.  Preparing to scan the area for a residual energy trail.  Commencing in 3……2……1…"  The sentient robot of the group, E-123 Omega had been equipped with energy detection systems before leaving out in order to try and trace whatever it was that may have appeared.

"And since when can you trace energy Omega?  I thought you were all about the heavy weaponry."  Rouge was skeptical about how Omega just suddenly had the ability to trace energy.

"G.U.N. has upgraded my systems with an energy tracer.  They were unsure whether or not we would be able to identify the anomaly on our own.  Energy signal has been locked on to.  Confirming origin… no other source of energy known that is similar besides that of the chaos emeralds.  Shadow was correct in his assumption.  Come, I will lead the way.  The energy trail will eventually stop, but more clues should present themselves as we progress."

"Good work Omega.  Let's get moving.  I want to know what's going on with the chaos emeralds."  Shadow was hardly one to give praise, but Omega deserved it this time, and Rouge certainly wasn't going to be giving congratulations in her current mood.

"Guess this means I won't be getting that vacation anytime soon…" Rouge sighed as she took to the skies to follow her team in the sunlight.  The gloom of that dark forest was getting to her more than she wanted it to.

"So Omega, just how far can you trace the energy?"  Shadow was curious about the improvements G.U.N. had made.  Omega rarely allowed the scientists to update him with anything other than weapons.  Mostly to be sure the humanity within him stayed exactly the way it had come to be.

"My systems by themselves can only trace this signal for approximately 15 miles before it becomes too faint to read.  But, using the red chaos emerald you have in your possession I should be able to follow the trail indefinitely."  Omega readily answered Shadow's question as he had been expecting it.  And he held out his hand waiting for Shadow to place the chaos emerald in it.

"Here, but once you've got this all set up I want to use chaos control to warp us to the closest spot we can get to.  Find the coordinates and have them sent to my communicator.  We're going to solve this mystery as quickly as possible.  Something just doesn't feel right." Shadow gave Omega the emerald and waited as the robot placed it within itself and begun spouting off what it was doing.  It was only going to be a matter of time before he would get to the bottom of this.

* * *

While Sonic and Amy were enjoying their date a certain hedgehog was keeping an eye on them from the low rooftops of the city.  Nothing out of the ordinary had been occurring, and if things went according to plan the two time travelers would be able to return home in no time at all.

"Silver, are you sure we should trust the information that we've been given?  I didn't like the attitude of that man we met outside of time.  He didn't give off a trustworthy vibe."

"Blaze, we've got no choice but to rely on his information.  If we spend too much time trying to figure things out we might be too late to stop our time from being erased.  I know it doesn't make much sense that the world's greatest hero would go and destroy time but something similar happened to the Eggman from our time remember?"  Silver had his own doubts, but his desire to save his world was enough to push them away.  

"But Silver we can't afford to make any mistakes here.  If we do the wrong thing here, we'll have no hope of ever restoring our time.  I just think you're rushing things a bit.  Maybe if we went and talked to that hedgehog and his friends we can figure this entire thing out."  Blaze herself didn't know what to think at the moment.  The mad scramble that had been locating a second chaos emerald so that she and Silver could escape their time as it was being erased hardly left any time for her to think.  On top of that was their experience with the strange man that resided outside of time.  He had been able to convince Silver that there was hope yet for their time, and that destroying a hedgehog named Sonic was the way it could happen.  Blaze on the other hand wasn't as naive as her friend and wasn't sure that killing one hedgehog would change anything.

She looked over at Sonic and Amy as they were enjoying lunch at a café and briefly wished that she and Silver could forget their troubles for a moment and do the same.  But they had no money from this time period, and once Silver had his mind set on something it'd take something more than Blaze was willing to give just so they could have lunch together.  Blaze told Silver she'd be back in a bit because she wanted to get a feel for the city and where things were.  He complied, admitting that it'd be hard to get around without knowing where things were.  Sonic and Amy weren't leaving anytime soon, so Blaze had plenty of time.  She jumped down from the rooftop and began to sprint around Station Square, noting the differences from her own time as she went.

With her speed she was able to explore the city fairly quickly and asked the locals for names when she figured a portion of the city seemed important.  On her way back something made her take it slower than she normally would, and that something is what led her to a young rabbit named Cream.

* * *

Wandering the streets of Station Square should be something anyone can do with no worries, but not today.  The trio of avian treasure hunters/thieves called the Babylon Rogues just happened to be passing by on their extreme gear when they spotted a familiar looking rabbit and her pet chao.  Now normally, in a situation like this they would have just passed on by, but the girl rabbit was holding the cyan chaos emerald.  An item that was far too valuable for a mere child to be in passion of it.  So they did what any reasonable band of thieves would do. They circled the poor girl and demanded she hand over the emerald of have it forcefully removed from her.  What they didn't account for however, was the sheer volume that this particular rabbit could scream at.  It nearly shattered their eardrums.

"Jet, this kid's getting to be too much trouble.  Let's just take the emerald and get out of here before somebody spots us."

"Chill out Wave, I can handle this…" Jet, leader of the three rogues, said to Wave.  "Storm, handle this already will ya."  You could almost hear Wave mentally face palming as she gave Jet a disappointed look.

"Sure thing boss, it'll only take a second.  Now, now little rabbit don't squirm too much and I promise not to hurt ya too bad kay?"  Storm, the muscle of the group and not much else was about to grab the poor rabbit when her chao gave him a well deserved headbutt, dazing them both.

"Cheese, are you okay?  That didn't hurt you too much did it?"  The rabbit said to her chao as is floated into her hands holding its head.  Cheese in response shook his head to show he was fine.

"That's it you've gone far enough girly.  Guess we're taking that emerald by force then.  Storm, hurry up and grab her you dunce!"  Jet was furious now; they should have already been speeding towards their next destination, not messing around with a little rabbit girl who thinks she can defend herself.  He expected to see Storm grab the little pest so he could snatch the emerald from her, but instead saw the unsuspecting albatross get kicked off his extreme gear and land face first on the pavement, groaning in pain.  He looked up to see his attacker, a purple cat who looked like she wouldn't be much in a fight.  

"Whoever you three are I'll only say this once.  Leave this girl alone and get out of here before I make you suffer."  Blaze had heard the girl's scream for help and had instinctively run to her aid.  It wasn't any trouble for the cat to kick Storm off of his extreme gear; she had speed comparable to Sonic's, allowing her to gain plenty of momentum.

"Just who do you think you're messing with here?  We're the Babylon Rogues, the best treasure hunters ever.  Think you can just come and stop us from obtaining that chaos emerald?  Cause if so you've got another thing coming!  Wave, let's get her."  Jet was done letting things get between him and that chaos emerald.  This cat was gonna pay.
Jet the Hawk may be a decent treasure hunter, and fast on extreme gear, besides that he couldn't do a thing.  The only fighter in the Babylon Rogues was Storm, and he had blacked out from Blaze's surprise attack.  To say he was outmatched just doesn't properly portray how in over his head he was.  Wave knew this all too well, being the brains of their operation, so she let Jet speed towards what could be his certain death.

Blaze watched as Jet went in a wide arc to gain speed and momentum. Once he thought he had enough, Jet charged at Blaze and screamed with what he thought to be righteous fury.  Blaze didn't even need to think twice about jumping in the air and delivering a roundhouse kick to the hawk's skull.  Jet got sent flying into Storm, who had regained consciousness and was starting to get back up.  She merely looked at Wave with an expression that said, "I take it you'll take these two morons and leave before I get serious".  Wave looked back with her expression being one of compliance.  She flew over to Jet and Storms boards, grabbed them and threw them at the two birds while they were struggling to get up, effectively knocking Jet out cold.

"Storm, we're getting out of here.  Carry Jet and his board and let's go." Wave didn't look back to see how Storm was fairing and sped off.  Storm luckily had enough of his mind working to realize he didn't want to be left and followed after her with Jet and his board in tow rather quickly.

Blaze was left now with only a kid rabbit looking up at her in awe.  The girl's eyes were open wide and the admiration she now had for Blaze was quite apparent.  Not used to being looked at that way by anyone but Silver when they first met, she was unsure of what to do.  She really needed to get back to Silver so he wouldn't do anything stupid, but at the same time this girl probably wouldn't leave her alone unless she talked to her.  Blaze sighed mentally to herself and walked over to the rabbit girl.

"Young rabbit, what is your name?"