Whisper crept through the treacherous Speed Jungle Zone, a forested area located on the Northstar Islands. It wasn't too uncommon for the Dodon Games to bring her back to Erius, but she found it odd how this giant game of Hide & Seek took place in such a remote area. Untouched. Undiscovered. Undisturbed. Until now.
The plan was simple. Make it seem like there were third-party poachers in the arena, scare Dodon Pa into evacuating the players. Whisper switched her Wispon to Rocket mode, and found an old metal totem pole to hide behind. She loudly shot at thin air, running along the side trail and aiming away from any players. They were terrible hiders.
"Aw, darn it! You found me!" A girl's voice exclaimed overhead. Whisper aimed her Wispon at the treetops, and saw Tangle the Lemur hanging upside-down by her tail. "Whoops… did I just give myself away? I'm sorry, it just gets so lonely up here!" Whisper sighed, and put down her Wispon.
"Don't apologize. I was… looking for a hiding spot too, I won't tell anyone you're here if you keep this a secret," Whisper kept moving, before hearing Tangle land behind her. "What now?"
"First of all, hi, my name's Tangle! I was just wondering… I'm flying solo, nobody from back home wanted to join the games," Tangle muttered, walking circles around Whisper as she continued on her way. "Maybe we can join forces, and take home the gold!" Tangle smiled wide, and put her hands above her head. "If you're not already on a team, that is!"
"I'm not," Whisper said hurriedly. "But… I'm not sure if it is wise to work together at this point."
"Ah, well. I guess that's fair," Tangle yawned, turning away. "I should get back to hiding. If I stay out here, I could probably get—" A slimy, slithering sound. Tangle shrieked. Whisper turned back, only to see nobody there. Fiddling with her mask and activating an infrared mode, Whisper carefully approached the side of the path with her Wispon's Pink Spike mode activated. She saw heat signatures in the distance, but no sign of that poor lemur. Until she looked down. It almost seemed like Tangle was being dragged underground by a ghost… more likely, someone without a heat signature.
Whisper mowed away a patch of tall grass, and slashed a few bombs stuck to her arm. They were definitely left behind by whoever had taken Tangle. She hopped into the chute underneath the brush, and fell deep underground.
"Crikey! What's all that racket?!" Nack grunted. Bean stared at the smoky remnants of Whisper's rockets in awe. "If this keeps up, the seekers are gonna find us." Nack walked onto the main path, and whistled. He hopped into his Marvelous Queen airbike as soon as it flew to his side. "Looks like we have to do some hunting." Just as he was about to take off, he spotted someone who wasn't on Team Hooligan walking through the jungle.
The bone-masked seeker looked their way, but didn't say anything. They kept shambling across the path, becoming obscured in a bunch of hedges. The team took a second to process what had happened, before Nack shot at the shrub. Animalistic cries shot out amidst the gunshots. Bean and Bark covered their ears.
"Ha! That's why some people call me 'The Sniper'!" Nack exclaimed, taking a deep breath and blowing the smoke off his gun. "Ptooey!" Nack coughed up a bunch of the smoke he had inadvertently inhaled.
"People call you that?" Bean asked.
"I go by a lot of aliases, anyone who knows my true name is a liability," Nack replied, the Marvelous Queen rising into the air.
"I know your real name… we've been buds for years!" Bean exclaimed, tugging on the wing of the Marvelous Queen. Bark saluted Nack as he tried to float higher.
"Exactly! Yer dead weight, Bean! So stay outta my way!" Nack shouted, kicking Bean to the ground before flying off.
…
Amy looked up at a huge bronze structure in the middle of Speed Jungle, its sheen had faded and moss was creeping up the walls. It looked like an ancient water tower. She brushed through the plants surrounding the old structure, feeling water drizzle onto her head from not too far above. Slipping through the waterfall, she was met with the scent of rust. It almost sounded like she was inside a giant conch shell.
"What a… perfect hiding place," Amy whispered to herself, walking up a creaky, golden spiral staircase. The moonlight glistened through the cracks in the wall, covered in runes and a complex vein of electronic wiring. Looking past the decay of Erian metals, this temple looked like it could have been built by the Fallen Stars. Maybe even a species that existed around the same time.
Amy reached another floor, and came face-to-face with an odd mural. It depicted a dragon eating its own tail, forming into a ring. Trip's words from the roof came back to Amy. This shell was a place of worship.
She stepped forward, each footfall echoing off the walls for what felt like eternity. When Amy arrived at the foot of the mural, she lifted a hand to an ovoid purple jewel in the center. Before she could touch it, she let her arm fall back to her side. "This is about Eternamy, isn't it?" Amy sighed, looking down. As soon as she gathered the courage to look at the mural again, she tensed up.
The jewel was gone. She was not alone.
Amy pulled out her hammer. "Hey! You can't hide from me for long, not with my girlish intuitio—!" Amy's mouth was covered. She tried to kick, but she was thrown overhead and held up before she could hit the floor.
"Keep it down, you airhead," Rouge whispered, fluttering overhead and holding Amy up by one of her Inhibitor Rings. She had the purple jewel in her other hand.
"Rouge? Put that back…" Amy hissed. "It might be important. Just stick to regular jewels!"
"No way, Amy," Rouge giggled, pocketing the jewel. "Power Stones like these look excellent on a shelf. Better yet, GUN lets me keep a collection so nobody can abuse their abilities. If the Chaos Emeralds are always scattering across the world, I do need a more loyal collection." Rouge assumed a more serious expression. "Besides, that's not all I came here for." Rouge snatched Amy's Inhibitor Rings, letting her fall to the hard floor.
"What are you doing? I NEED those!" Amy cried. Rouge sighed lavishly, admiring her spoils while reclining on the window.
"Don't worry, Amy. They'll be going to a good cause," Rouge snickered, placing the rings into her chestplate and flying off into the night. "What would I do without a friend as generous as you?!" A blue aura appeared around Amy as Rouge laughed, before the hedgehog looked up to the moon and gave chase.
Sonic ran along the girders standing tall above Speed Jungle, causing sonic booms to imitate the sound of bombs. "Alright, keep it small-scale, Sonic. You just wanna scare 'em off. I want to protect EVERYONE, I don't want to hurt ANYONE… but Clutch definitely does. This whole thing is starting to get on my nerves!" A missile. A real explosion consumed the strange metal shell right behind Sonic. He was being hunted.
Sonic jumped over what appeared to be a person in a bush, before he felt something slimy wrap around his ankle. He was pulled back by the tongue of a Toad Mecha behind the shrub, and slammed chest-first into the hood of the Marvelous Queen. The Toad Mecha was bashed open as Nack drove through.
"What the—? SONIC?!" Nack shouted, standing up and looking at Sonic as he flew along with the airbike. "Nuh-uh! No way! Back to the curb, hitchhiker!"
"Oh… hey, NACK," Sonic groaned with a slight smile, peeling his face off the windshield. "Do you mind? I'm kinda in the middle of something."
"You wouldn't be part of that group tryna take down the games, right? Run as fast as you want, I can notice when someone's in two places at once," Nack growled, diverging from the girders and into the open sky.
"Maybe, maybe not. I imagined you'd be there before me," Sonic said, jumping between both ends of the Marvelous Queen and dodging Nack's gunshots.
"As if! I don't do volunteer work, just tell whoever's in charge to quit it before you ruin my shot at a well-earned cash prize!" Nack yelled, a vein bulging on his head. Sonic grabbed his gun and tossed it aside. It collided with something midair, and was blasted into gunpowder. "Whoa! What's this?! My radar's picking up some kind of gemstone. The power's off the charts! Could this be… the rumored EIGHTH CHAOS EMERALD?!"
"Sorry, that's me," Sonic sighed, patting his chest. Suddenly, the Marvelous Queen shook as someone swept by. Sonic held onto the rearview mirror.
Nack swerved out of the way as Rouge threw a Heart Bomb down at them. Before Nack could retaliate, Uninhibited Amy shot through and tackled Rouge. She dropped her Heart Bombs, causing fire to rain down all around. The Marvelous Queen was hit, and nosedived under the canopy. CRASH!
Sonic and Nack tumbled out of the wreckage and slid across the ground. Nack bounced along the path on his tail as Sonic rolled forward. "MY BAAAABY!" Nack cried, Drifting back around to tend to the hazardous remains of his beloved hoverbike. Sonic pulled his face out of the grass and looked up at UI Amy, standing over Rouge with the Piko Piko Mjolnir in hand.
"Give… them… back," Amy grunted with a burst of magic energy. Rouge held her new treasures away.
"These were Shadow's anyways. If I can bring them back, it could stabilize his condition!" Rouge shouted. She got up and kicked at Amy, only to be blasted back without a single movement from the superpowered hedgehog. The Inhibitor Rings fell to the ground along with Rouge.
"Whoa…" Sonic whispered, backing away. Amy glanced over to him. "Amy, what are you doing?"
"I'm not gonna hurt her… I'm not trying to hurt her…" Amy stuttered, looking as if she could barely hold her hammer. "I didn't mean to hurt any of them… I didn't mean to make that girl fall." Sonic took a second to process what she had said. Before he knew it, he had gone into his Hyper State, blue electricity running through his quills.
"So THAT'S what happened to Trip! You could have killed her, now look what she's going through!" Sonic shouted, pointing a finger Amy's way. "Why? Lemme guess, just cuz you were JEALOUS!" Sonic revved up a Spindash and shot towards Amy's hammer.
Amy gritted her teeth, and hit her hammer against a tree. The logs and girders above collapsed between her and Sonic and released a plume of dust. Sonic slashed away at the rubble. Nack panicked, and got the Marvelous Queen to fly him out of there. Behind Nack, a dark figure emerged. "I don't know what's wrong with you. But I'm not gonna let you hurt anybody else! Rouge is our friend!"
"There you are," Stake the Mosquito muttered. Amy kicked Rouge to the ground as she tried to get up. Sonic tensed up, realizing the mosquito's voice was coming from behind him. Before he knew it, he was grabbed by a clammy and bristly claw, and pulled up to Stake's face. "Y'know, for all your showmanship, I thought you were gonna play fair. But here you are, still kicking around, even when all you've done is cheat." Stake pierced the log right behind Sonic with his stretchy needle-nose. "I don't like cheaters, you know. Anyone who ruins MY favorite game is my enemy. I've won every Dodon Games tournament for the past four years, and I'm not gonna let you take away my chance for a fifth!" Stake bent backwards, and then bit into Sonic's neck.
Whisper slid into a pitch black cave. Switching her Wispon into Burst mode, she held it in front of her as a torch. "Come out, Mimic," Whisper sighed. "You're a Diamond Cutter, taking hostages is rather uncouth, wouldn't you say?" The wolf rounded a corner, and began to hear something… a far-off voice.
"Whisper, this way! We have a surpriiiiise for you," a raspy voice muttered. It was him, the person she entered the games just to find. Whisper bolted down the tunnel, ready to burn him to ashes.
"Don't be so hasty! Take this one step at a time, it'll be worth the wait," a familiar girl's voice said from behind her.
"Easy for you to say… 'Claire'," Whisper giggled, turning her gun behind her and pressing the trigger. She bit her lip. "You can't trick me anymore." Cyan flashes lit up the tunnel. Whisper turned around to see sizzling marks on the wall far behind her, as the light faded. "Huh?"
"I'm so proud of you! I can't WAIT for you to see what we've got cooking up at Smithy's workshop," another of her friends' voices said. Whisper kept running, not sure where she was going anymore as she delved deeper into the cave.
"This is my finest work yet, Whisper. Take good care of it, okay?" Somebody grabbed her Wispon, she tried to pull it away. The voices combined, began pleading and shouting for Whisper as one.
THWACK! Whisper was punched in the face, and stumbled into the rock wall. She was held to the wall by a slimy gloved hand. The screams of her old friends exited her attacker's dry lips in the form of shrill, warbled noise.
"Sorry, was that too much?" Mimic the Octopus asked, taking off his Diamond Cutter mask and holding a dagger to Whisper's throat. "I really didn't want it to come to this. I knew you would come here looking for me, but I didn't count on you seeing through my disguises as soon as the second round. You always had a keen eye, I suppose."
"Let me go!" Whisper grunted.
"Can't. Your little manhunt somehow caught Eggman's attention. They wouldn't have even known you were still alive if you were just a little more careful," Mimic sighed. Whisper remembered seeing Eggman in the hospital, just as she was about to finish off Shadow. She silently cursed herself. "I tried to protect you, I really did. I told Eggman you died with the others, and back then you at least had the sense to run off." Whisper tried to struggle, but Mimic tightened his grip. "Listen, will ya?! Hand over your mask and the Variable Wispon, it'll be enough evidence for Eggy. And then I won't have to KILL YOU."
"I won't!" Whisper sobbed, holding her mask with one hand and using her Wispon to shove the knife away with the other. "It's all I have left!"
"Then you've left me no—!" Mimic shouted. A horn went off above ground, distracting Mimic. A tail whacked him, he dropped the knife, and Whisper kicked the octopus off of her. Whisper grabbed onto the striped tail that had saved her, and was pulled up to a hole in the ceiling. Although she would usually fit just fine, her Wispon stopped her from squeezing through.
"No… come on…" Whisper sputtered, trying to fit it into the small tunnel. Mimic got back up and grabbed the Wispon, pulling Whisper back down inch by inch. Whisper switched it to Spikes mode, and slashed Mimic's hand. He jolted back, but the Wispon cut through the stone and landed right next to him. Whisper was carried out of the caves… the tunnel fell silent. Mimic laughed hoarsely, and pulled the Variable Wispon out of the floor with his bleeding hand.
Whisper, holding onto the tail, was lowered into a clearing in Speed Jungle. "Man, that was a close one," Tangle sighed, pulling in her tail. "What a creep! People here will do anything to win a silly game." Whisper took a deep breath.
"He wasn't trying to win this game. Nor was I," Whisper muttered, looking down into the cave opening. Tangle cocked her head.
"Well, that's good, I guess, cuz the game's over!" Tangle exclaimed, as the horn blared again. "At least, I assume that's what all the racket is about…"