Chapter 54

"Guys, guys, you won't believe it!" Sonja exclaimed the next morning, swinging the door to the house open. She had the biggest smile on her face as she held Pico. "Pico said his---"

Sonja stopped. The smile immediately fell from her face. There were people talking in Sonic's room. Tails, and the deer they had met the day before. Curiously, she peeked her head into the open doorway. There was someone there. He was blue, but not true blue like Sonic. He had a black nose, but it had nostrils. His eyes were disconnected.

He beared the image of Sonic, but this couldn't be Sonic. The areas where skin showed through were replaced by dull patches of fur that resembled his skin color. He was unconscious. And Sonic was nowhere to be seen.

"What's going on here?" Sonja exclaimed. "Is he okay?!" Tails and the deer turned to Sonja.

"Sonja!" Tails exclaimed. "He's okay. His heart is beating, but... he won't wake up!"

Sonja looked over to the creature that resembled Sonic. "Sonic?" She asked.

She reached out her hand, but before she could touch him on the shoulder, he jolted up in a blur. He stood on his feet, looking around. When he opened his eyes, they were all black. Everyone jumped back. The deer took out a sharp nail, and held it in front of him with no proper form.

"Whoa, guys!" Sonic exclaimed. His voice was echoey. "What's wrong?" Sonic looked at his hands. He saw no gloves, but instead, he saw hairy hands, with gross, long fingernails on them. "Ah!" He shouted. He stumbled backwards and onto the ground.

Tails helped Sonic up, rolling his eyes. Sonic grabbed his hand. Sonic's hand was now very small, and the nails were uncomfortable to look at. "What's happening to me?" Sonic asked as he got up on his feet. He held his forehead, which hurt badly.

"I don't know... But I may have an idea!" Tails sighed. "Sonja." He pointed to Sonja. "When you and I were talking, you said Pico turned into a Mobian due to a timerift, right?" Sonja nodded. Pico sniffed Sonic's scent to ensure that this was in fact Sonic. It was. "So maybe, the opposite is happening to Sonic. It could even be happening to the rest of us!"

"What do you mean?" Sonja asked, perplexed. Tails shook his head.

"He's de-evolving," Tails stated. Everyone gasped but Pico and Tails. Nobody quite knew what this meant, but it sounded bad. Tails picked up on this, and continued. "It's possible that we're traveling back through time right now, to the point that Sonic is beginning to morph and change in ways that can't be explained. Soon, we may all adapt to the time that we're in. But if it changes too rapidly, our DNA could corrupt, leaving us as... nothing..."

Sonic looked at himself in the mirror. "So... I'm like this because of this?" Sonic asked. He pulled out the hourglass. Tails' eyes seemed to glint. "So, we should probably destroy it before we 'de-involve' into nothing!" Sonic raised the hourglass above his head. Tails reached out his hand.

"NO!" Tails cried. Everyone looked at him, and Sonic put the hourglass back to his side. "I... I mean... it's too dangerous!" Tails warned. "If that hourglass is making you travel through time, it holds the information of time itself inside it. If it breaks, the time-space continuum could break!"

"That doesn't sound good," Sonic replied. He put the hourglass in his bag for safe-keeping. "So how do we stop this?"

"I... don't know..." Tails responded. An overpowering gloom fell onto the room. Everyone looked down at the ground.

"Sonic..." Sonja whined. She looked into Sonic's black eyes. Sonic stared back.

"Sonja..." Sonic said, walking to Sonja. "I promise. We'll find a way out of this mess. We have to." Sonic held out his pinky. She took it with her pinky, just like Shahra did in her book. "I promise."

Sonja sniffled. "How are we going to do it?" She asked. "We have no clue where to even start!"

"It's okay. We don't need any of that," Sonic replied, as their pinky fingers uncurled from around each other. "I've got my way. My own way."

Sonja looked determined. She nodded. "Yeah..." She said.

"So let's explore this house for now. It can't just be a coincidence that we stumbled upon it," Sonic declared. "There's something in here that we need to find."

"Everything happens for a reason, right?" Tails replied. He smiled.

"Yep!" Sonic agreed. "So let's go!" He walked out of the room, holding the door open for everyone. He smiled at Sonja as she floated out.

They walked through the house. Nothing of note so far. It was dark, and humid. They checked every room, and still they found nothing. That was, until they stumbled across a large dining room. There was a long banquet table. Sonic heard whispers from underneath the table, spouting out nonsense.

"Uhh... does anyone else hear that?" Sonic asked. Tails immediately went over and lifted the wet table cloth. Rings were everywhere! They floated in the air and spun around, just like a Ring should. But... they weren't golden. Instead, they were black.

"Oh, sweet!" Sonic exclaimed. He smiled, revealing human teeth, as opposed to the long, single tooth... or whatever it is... that he usually has. Everyone cringed away. "We'll just collect these and be on our merry way..." Sonic reached out to a Ring. But as soon as he touched it, he felt his hand burn. A loud scream emanated from the Ring. Sonic immediately recoiled his hand and jumped away, holding the burn. "Yowch!" He screamed. Lifting his hand off the burnt one, there was a raw burn on the hand. He held his own hand gently.

"Sonic!" Sonja and Tails gasped. They looked back at the Ring, and, just then, all the Rings under the table grew a purple fire around them. The whispers continued as the Rings made their way towards Team Sonic. The team backed up towards the door, but found it had been locked from the inside. They were surrounded! And they couldn't fight the Rings directly, or else they'd be burnt. If Tails was to throw Dummy Rings, he'd blow everyone up, too.

Panicking, Sonja floated up, carrying Pico and Sonic with her. Sonic was forced to take his hand off the burn and let the air make contact with it, making him yell in pain. Tails picked up the deer and flew him across. But the Rings started to shout and chant as they floated up into the air, slowly giving chase.

The team landed on the other side of the room. There, was a bucket of water. Pico squirmed towards it. And Sonja immediately knew what he was trying to do. She let him down and let him suck up some water into his trunk. "Uh... now might not be the time to DRINK!" The deer shouted. But then, Pico lifted his head and sprayed water out of his trunk at the Rings. A drowned-out and watery trumpet sound accompanied the spraying. "Oh... huh..." The deer rolled his eyes.

The Rings screamed and shrieked as the water hit them. Then, they fell to the floor, chiming as they did. Their fire had been extinguished. Sonic held onto his burn. "Are you okay?!" Sonja asked, turning to Sonic.

"I've been burnt worse..." Sonic groaned. It didn't look like it, however. "I'll..." He breathed in sharply. "I'll be fine..."

Pico squirted out some leftover water from his trunk onto Sonic's hand. "Thanks, Pico," Sonic whispered.

"There's no door..." Sonja stated. "Where do we go?"

Tails looked all around the room. But then, his eyes affixed to a handle on the ceiling, surrounding it was a piece of ceiling that seemed to be cut out. He pointed up to the out of place part. "Up there! It's a trap door!" He exclaimed.

Sonja floated up and, pulling the handle, the door opened! Dust flew out of the room above, and a mechanical ladder lowered down. "That's the ticket, Sonja! Good work!" Tails exclaimed. He climbed up the ladder and poked his head through to the other room. He looked around. It was cold, but the air was clearer here. That must have been due to the lack of a stable roof. It was covered in some places, but the boards were unstable and wobbly in the wind.

"All clear!" Tails exclaimed. Everyone piled up into the room. Sonic only used one hand to climb up. The team looked through the room for a while. Sonic stumbled across a toolbox, in which he found a wrench. He handed it to Tails. "Thanks, Sonic!" Sonic nodded, and followed everyone out of the room. They were done here.

The next room was a staircase. It led down into a basement. It was even darker here than the rooms before. Sonic's burn had calmed down by now, but it still hurt a little.

"Can't even afford some proper lighting?" Sonic asked. He chuckled weakly.

Just then, there was a knocking sound from under the floorboards. Everyone stopped. Maybe from the shock, maybe from the fear of going forward. The knocking sound was far away, but it was coming closer with each knock. The knocks reached them, and then, slowly stopped.

All was silent. And then, the knocking continued. It grew louder... louder... louder! And it was right under them. Everyone forgot their fears of moving forward and ran for it. Just in time too, as as soon as everyone left, a muscular, grey arm punched through the floor. There was the awful sound of wood breaking as it shot through.

Immediately, the smell of death and decay shot through the room. Whatever was down there had been dead for a long time... but it was still moving... Everyone ran. But duplicates of the same arm shot out wherever they were, hoping to drag them down with them under the floor.

Everyone scrambled to get out, but kept knocking into objects they couldn't see. Every time they knocked into something, they feared that it would be one of the arms. Soon, the whole room was a maze of zombified arms, reaching in and trying to drag our heroes down to Hell. "Go, go, go!" Sonic shouted.

An arm grabbed onto Sonic's foot. He gasped. It tried to drag him down, but everyone else grabbed onto him and tried to stop him from being pulled down. Except the deer, who looked to have some sort of "every man for himself" mentality when it came to moments like these.

The deer ran around calling out for help, but everyone was focused on getting Sonic to safety. They pulled, and pulled. But the arm's grasp was too strong. Sonic, taking matters into his own hands, tried to shake loose. When that didn't work, he focused all his energy onto making his leg go into some sort of Spindash motion on its own. The leg wound the arm up in circles, and finally, Sonic kicked his leg the other way, pulling up the arm and throwing it across the room.

The arm detached from whatever it belonged to. There was a sound of flesh tearing, and a splat as the arm fell to the ground and rolled. Then, the arms went back into their holes. Was it over?

There was a faint scratching sound from inside the walls, which turned into knocking. Everyone was paralyzed in fear as the scratches turned to knocking, then pounding like drums. Then, the left wall broke. Out of it, walked a man. His skin was gray. His arms were muscular. His lips and lower chin had been torn off, leaving a bloody mess around his mouth. He wore plain, dull blue clothes. His dark brown hair fell down to his elbows.

He turned to look at Sonic. His eyes were missing, leaving just empty sockets. His neck gave out, twisting his head to the right. He opened his mouth, and out of it, fell a purple tongue that looked like that of a cow's in length and overall size.

He then yelled. A yell loud and strong enough to create a shockwave and send Sonic and the others flying.

He sprouted more arms out of his sides, leaving blood pooling out and onto the ground. Sonic was the first to get up. He scrambled to the door, trying to open it, but it was shut and locked.

The man sprouted legs out of his chest, and fell forwards onto the ground. A mouth opened on his head, which had fangs like the pig hearts' and looked like some kind of black void. He sprinted towards Sonic like a spider on all of his legs and arms. Sonic tried to kick the door down, but it was no use.

Sonic saw a shine coming from Chip's bracelet, which put up another one of those neon green forcefields between his friends and the zombie-spider monster. The monster didn't get forced back, but he instead kept running against the shield. But the glow was now flickering as Sonic tried to force the door down. It wouldn't hold much longer. The monster rammed its head through the shield with the sound of glass shattering. It tried to bite at Sonic's friends with its two mouths. The deer cowered in the corner.

Tails got up reluctantly... out of fear of the situation, or some other reason, Sonic didn't know... and threw a Dummy Ring capsule into the beast's mouth. The beast swallowed it, and soon, there was an explosion from inside. The beast threw up Dummy Rings, as it blew up from its internal organs.

The beast fell, dead. Everyone had a moment to breathe, before the door opened. Everyone ran inside and shut it behind them. A completely pitch black room. Though confused, everyone continued to run. They certainly didn't want to go back there. But then, Sonic felt the hourglass shaking again in his bag.

Sonic stopped. Everyone stopped behind him. Everyone was blinded by a white light.

Continue to Chapter 55