Just in case you jumped ahead, make sure you've read the previous chapter before starting this one. This one picks up almost immediately after the previous ends.

Chapter 16 Emerald Explanation

"Its never a good sign when I end up here..." Dusk groans, looking around at the negative void she always goes to whenever a nightmare is readying itself. The invisible ground, the purple clouds on a black sky, its always the same...any moment now, some freakish ghoul will lunge out at her.

But at the same time, something is ominously different this time around. There's a chill in the air around her, not a freezing cold or an eerie frost, but she feels cold. A cold that slowly works it way down through her fur and skin; chilling her bones and setting her nerves on a painful edge.

She wraps her thin arms around herself in a vain attempt to warm up. "Hello?" she asks after a minute, surprised to see her breath and no ghoul around. Desperate to get things over with, Dusk starts to walk off, searching for the tardy nightmare.

"Sonic! Amy!" Blaze yells, noticing her friends catching their breath (well, Amy's catching her breath, Sonic is politely waiting with her) outside of the hospital. The two look up and are quite surprised to see the regal feline approaching.

"Blaze? What are you doing here?" Sonic asks.

"I got a call from Shadow, he said something happened to Dusk and the Sol Emeralds were involved."

"News to me," Sonic grumbles. His green eyes look down at the pink girl beside him. "Ready to go inside?"

Amy nods, leading the trio in and up to the counter. "We're here to see Dusk," she says.

The attendant gives them a hollow smile before leading further into the building.

"Okay, seriously, where the hell are you?" Dusk yells, still left by herself in the freezing abyss. She's lost track of how long she's been walking...and then the world takes a turn for the weirder when the abyss suddenly becomes a dimly lit metal hallway, like one found in an abandoned lab.

She immediately perks up and looks around, but only sees a hallway stretching onward into darkness in both directions. Severely creeped out, but unsure of what else to do, she continues on...and another eternity later, she finally comes to a room...with a very disturbing image inside...

...her birth machine. The machine that Eggman had constructed to nurture and grow her from a little cell is standing before her...although it seems to be a darker color than before.

Before she could turn around and go the other way, the machine hisses before opening up; releasing a blob of black goo onto the floor. Right before her eyes, the goo trembles, then grows into a darkened silhouette of Dusk herself.

The black likeness of herself stands for a moment, then swings an arm forward; the limb quickly expanding and becoming a sharp ebony lance. Dusk shrieks and dives away, causing the attack to stab into the metal wall behind her.

She wants to fight this thing, desperately get this nightmare over with, but she couldn't. Her legs lift her up and carry her away; her speed increasing as she hears the screech of rending metal as the demon pulls itself free. Dusk never looked back over her shoulder, but she knew that...thing is following after her.

"So...what exactly happened?" Sonic asks, doing his best to not tread on one of Shadow's nerves.

The umber hedgehog sighs, "We were going through this underwater base when a bulkhead slammed shut and separated us. It was Chaos Energy-proofed, like the whole base, so I couldn't teleport back to her. Next time we met, she was..." he trails off, trying to figure out how to describe her behavior so the others would understand, "Possessed is the only word I can think of," he says after a few seconds, then goes on to explain her look while she was insane.

"Worse part is she refused to stay down...hell, she even plowed through my attacks just to get to me!" he adds, after letting the other three gape for a minute.

The other mobians look in the window at Dusk; laying on a bed with a machine monitoring her vitals sitting nearby. Honestly, it looks like she's asleep, but she didn't make any noise, didn't twitch or roll over. She just lies there, still as a board, with a look of distress frozen to her face; like she's having a nightmare, but can't wake up from it.

Amy sadly sighs while putting a hand against the window, "She still hates herself for losing control in Station Square a year ago...I don't want to think about how she'll take this."

Blaze gives a moment of respect to the elder Rose sister before turning back to Shadow. "You mentioned something about the Sol Emeralds, right?"

"Yea," Shadow says, removing the purple and gray emeralds from his quills and handing them over to Blaze, "She was using those while trying to slice me in half, but when I took them away...she just collapsed. Even stranger...the two of them were black."

The feline's gold eyes widen, "Emitting a crimson glow?"

Shadow curiously looks at her, "How'd you know?"

"Because I know what happened to her...but first, are all of us on the same page with the emeralds?" Blaze asks, then explains, "The Chaos Emeralds release Chaos Energy, while the Sol Emeralds release Sol Energy. Chaos Energy is the stronger of the two, but can only be used by certain people; like you," she says while gesturing at Sonic, "And you Shadow. Sol Energy can be used by anyone, but provides a weaker power boost than Chaos Energy does."

"Yea, and the Chaos Emeralds react to the user's emotion and emit more energy of the appropriate charge," Sonic adds, "Like, if you're feeling heroic it releases positive energy, but when you're angry and hateful, it releases negative energy."

Blaze nods at the blue hedgehog, "Yes, the same applies to Sol Emeralds...but there's a small hitch."

Shadow and Sonic lift an eyebrow at her. This is news to the both of them.

"In the case of Sol Energy, there's some...feedback I guess. The emotion triggers the energy release, but then the energy turns around and reinforces that emotion...essentially making the user feel more brave or courageous for example," Blaze sighs and drops her head, "Which is great if it only applied to the positive emotions. Trigger a Sol Emerald when you're feeling a negative emotion, and the same result happens."

"So if you use it in anger, it makes you angrier?" Sonic asks, making sure he's got a grip on the concept. He gets a nod for an answer.

"Its called 'Sol Corruption,' because, well...you tend to lose yourself when feeling a negative emotion anyway, emerald or no emerald. The Sol Energy just makes it worse," Blaze explains, then looks down at the jewels in her hand. "One emerald causing it is bad enough, but two fueling the fire? I shudder to think of what could've happened if she got her hands on a third...or even all of them..."

The other three glance away from each other. The ghoul of Dark Sonic lurked in the back of their minds ever since he showed up, however briefly. They don't want to think about the possibility of a Dark Dusk running rampant.

"And the emeralds only magnify each others power," Sonic adds, "Like lining up magnifying glasses, the more you get, the higher the magnification."

A moment of uneasy silence passes between them. "But..." Blaze says, "There's never been a case of Sol Corruption before. I thought it was just a...a myth. Meant to scare people into using the emeralds responsibly. I've even felt myself use the negative energy of a Sol Emerald on occasion, and haven't gone even as remotely berserk as what Shadow described. How could it have happened to Dusk?"

"Could the negative energy have reacted with something inside her?" Sonic offers, "Some kind of...I don't know, a fear? Or maybe her temper burst when it happened, and it just compounded that anger?"

Blaze only shrugs. She doesn't know anymore than they do.

"Now that I think about it..." Amy says, after a minute and finally joining the conversation, "Every now and then she'll have a nightmare that really seems to bother her."

"What do you mean?" Shadow asks.

"I could never get her to tell me much," Amy admits, "But, from what I could gather, sometimes she'd dream about a sinister black silhouette. Sometimes she'd run from it, others she'd fight it, but judging from the look on her face, she could never win. She wouldn't tell me what happened after it won, though...for all I know, she could've woken up before that."

Dusk continues to run, the shadow lances narrowly missing her head. Whatever illusionary laboratory she wandered into has long since melted away, and the two are now just running through the abyss.

'I really hope this place is endless...maybe I can outlast this damn thing...' Dusk thinks to herself, only to feel a weight come down on her shoulder. Next moment, her face hits the invisible ground; brought down by the harsh whip-like attack from her dark twin.

Before she could recover, Dusk can feel a fluid starting to engulf her body. She screams and tries to fight the muck off, but nothing she does will get it to detach. The horrible goo swallows up everything from the neck down. Just as she thinks she'll be swallowed up by it, the demon stops and forces her to get up; then walks her off in some direction...where she doesn't know, but she's damn sure that its someplace she doesn't want to be.

"I wish I could understand what was going through her head," Blaze says, glancing through the window at Dusk. If she hoped to find a change in her condition, she's awfully disappointed. "We're her friends. Friends are supposed to be able to confide in each other, right? Then why does it feel like there's a wall she won't let us pass? Like she's hiding away her problems instead of asking for help?"

Another minute of uncomfortable silence passes before Shadow speaks up, albeit with a bitten lip. "She's told me something..." he starts, getting all three heads to turn, "Something that...I can't really understand. She's afraid of herself."

"Afraid of herself?" Sonic repeats, scratching his head, "I'm not sure if that even makes sense."

"'Herself' isn't exactly right...its more like...she's scared of her own powers," Shadow admits, "Whenever they begin to lash out, she feels as if she's losing herself. As if her powers start to take over and she has less and less control over her actions. That's the part that confuses me, her powers overriding her will..."

He seems to pause as he walks up to the window and rests a hand against it. "I want to protect her, but how do I protect Dusk from herself?"

Nobody says another word for a little while, until Sonic finally shakes his head and clenches a fist, "Come on, wallowing around in our own gloom isn't going to do any good. If it was any of us in Dusk's place, she'd have already left to tear apart whoever was responsible, not stand around and mope."

Blaze nods, "You're right Sonic. One of Metal Sonic's creations did this to Dusk, and now its time he pays for it."

"And I plan on collecting every last cent he owes," Shadow growls, his fists clenching.

The three turn and look at Amy, finding her gaze focused on her shoes instead of them. "I know I should be fired up and all...and I want to be...but I'd rather stay here, be available for Dusk when she wakes up."

Sonic smirks and ruffles Amy's hair, getting her to squeak in surprise and hop away. "I thought you'd say something like that Ames," he laughs, then fetches the communicator in his quills and hands it to her. "Call us when she wakes up, we'll make sure to save something for the two of you to smash up."

The pink hedgehog finally manages a smile before hugging her beloved Sonic. She accompanies the other three heroes down to the front doors of the hospital, where they find a dry thunderstorm waiting outside.

"Ominous weather, isn't it?" Blaze remarks, her fur bristling.

"Never stopped us before," Shadow replies.

The three give a good-bye to Amy before charging out the door and out of sight down the street. Amy sighs, placing a hand into her pocket and finding the red Sol Emerald still there. She'd completely forgotten to give it to Blaze! 'Well, too late now. I only hope that Burning Blaze won't be needed...' Amy sighs before turning on her heel and heading back up to Dusk's room.

Things seem fine, until a loud electronic shrieking catches Amy's attention. Hurrying towards the noise, Amy finds a very disturbing sight; the machine making the horrific noise is the one that was attached to Dusk, but the purple hedgehog is nowhere to be found and the window of her room smashed open.

The pink girl hurries into the room and looks out the window; seeing a purple blur rushing off into the distance. "Dusk!" Amy yells, leaping out the window and following after her. 'I don't get it, why is she running away?'

To get that answer, Amy speeds up, following after and desperate to catch the little flicker of purple up ahead.

A slightly modified disclaimer here: While I do not own the Chaos or Sol Emeralds, I did create this interpretation of how their powers work. I also created the whole concept of Sol Corruption. I am willing to let other authors use the Sol Corruption concept in their stories, if they so wish, but I'd like it if you ask me in advance.