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A quick check of the clock on the wall as I took the stage behind the curtain showed that it was nearing nine o'clock. The show had started earlier that night at seven, so a two hour show was a good show. My song was the final one, and after I was done, each of the performers from the night would take the stage and take a bow in conclusion of the first annual Mobius Memorial Karaoke Night.

The emcee and a couple emergency personnel were checking Blaze and Silver for burns, as well as checking the stage for burnt spots. They needn't have worried, though. Her Majesty Blaze's name should have given the powers away from the first time the audience heard it. I could tell she had some sort of special fire-related power, even though I had never seen it or even really heard of her before this night.

So many memories and emotions had been released at this teahouse tonight. From my buddy Carbine's breakdown on stage, to Shadow's sudden disappearance (no doubt a Chaos Control), through two engagement announcements and my father's massive (and completely unneeded) ass kicking... I should consider myself incredibly lucky to have been here for this event. I do consider myself lucky to have been here.

"Stealth, the stage seems to have been left miraculously untouched. The stool too, if you need it." The emcee had popped his head through the stage curtains to tell me this, but looked at me like I was blind. Perhaps it was my pupil-less eyes that caused him to give me the weird look, but I shrugged it off and just nodded. "Whenever you're ready, just say so and I'll announce you."

I nodded and he disappeared back through the curtains to announce to the audience the findings of the investigation into princess Blaze's flaming performance. I grabbed my guitar and tuned it, strumming a couple times to make sure I had the correct chords tuned in. I ran my pre-song speech through my head, then flexed my wrists and steeled myself for the coming emotional onslaught.

If you looked at the itinerary for the night, you would have seen my name at the very bottom with a question mark beside it regarding the song I was gong to play. I was one of the people that had helped arrange this event, and had signed myself up for it before I knew what it was that I would play. I wasn't very good on the guitar and only knew a couple songs, so as the night grew closer I would practice as hard as I could on what I did know, and what could be a suitable song to play.

I wish I had picked a song definitively, because it turned out that since the plan was to not have any artists repeated during the night, I couldn't play my original song anyway. My mother chose to sing a song by RED, and my song Faceless was by them. So I had to come up with a new song in the ten or so minutes I would have between her performance and my own... you can bet I cursed myself for my indecisiveness then.

The emcee poked his head back through the curtain as I finished my warm-up and I nodded my head to indicate that I was ready to perform. He nodded as well and retreated to the microphone to give me my introduction.

"And now, the final act of the night. His face is generally unknown in these parts, and I'm sure he'll give his reasons for that, but in the meantime let's have a round of applause for Stealth!"

Gee, thanks. Carbine didn't even get such a lousy introduction. Guess the emcee is just tired of dealing with us music-types. -.-

I pulled the stool up to the mic and sat down, allowing my wings to droop to the sides of my body and hang off the seat. I adjusted the mic so it wasn't so high, took a deep breath, and smiled.

"My name is Stealth, and I am from a future that will never happen here. I am from a desolate wasteland pockmarked by battle, where nearly every living thing has been snuffed out, save for a small tribe of elder echidnas, and where the mighty Chaos has been obliterated to the point of no resurrection. I come from a time where there is no hope, where there is no peace, where life is hunted from the minute it is born. We have survived by playing the fool, by playing dead, by staying hidden and not going after that which oppresses us... until I was born.

"I am the son of the legendary guardian of Chaos and an amazingly gifted and blessed jewel thief. My father died while fighting to protect my mother and my unborn essence against an entity known as the Mriah. Though their emergence was not directly his fault, he still held himself responsible for their appearance, as well as their subsequent possessions of both Sonic the Hedgehog and Shadow the Hedgehog. These two would be the vessels that would destroy my world."

An audible gasp echoed throughout the crowd. Obviously they believed that their heroes were invincible.

"By their hands, the Mriah would scar my planet, kill my parents' friends, and render the Chaos Emeralds completely powerless. The Master Emerald was reduced to a few shards of pretty glass, the city of Station Square little more than the same. By the time I was born, the Mriah had committed planetcide on Mobius, and all that remained of the heroes of the planet was my mother and the echidnas.

"My mother raised me as best she could, and the song I am going to sing tonight is one she learned not long after she became pregnant with me. It's a song that she taught to the elder echidna clan just before she died. She used to sing it to me to put me to sleep, and it is one that I feel describes me and my time's relationship perfectly and vividly.

"Presenting... Prayer of the Refugee, by Rise Against."

A bit wordier than anyone before myself, perhaps, but it had to be said. I relaxed my shoulders and took a deep breath, then with a firm hand I took hold of the guitar in my lap and began the opening chords.

With each strum, my wrist and hand relaxed. I began to lose myself in the music, and would soon relive my darkest hours with the words. The opening verse was nearing, and before I closed my eyes to concentrate on the task ahead, a final glance to the crowd showed they were intent on the music; my mother's eyes were wide with recognition already.

" Warm yourself by the fire, son, and the morning will come soon. I'll tell you stories of a better time, in a place that we once knew..."

Already my voice began to crack, and I wondered if I was truly ready for this night. I kept my eyes closed, and let the memories roll in.

" Before we packed our bags and left all this behind us in the dust, we had a place that we could call home, and a life no one could touch..."

I remembered the stories the elder echidnas told me of the great Sonic the Hedgehog. I remember every adventure the ever regaled about his exploits; about how he stopped the evil doctor Robotnik at every turn, how he could harness the greatest powers of the emeralds without wavering, and how he risked life and limb to protect the weak and innocent without a single second thought.

There were similar stories told about other heroes from before my time. There was the aforementioned legendary guardian of the Master Emerald, my father, who was known to be naïve at times only because he had spent the majority of his life away from civilization and had no idea who to trust and who to be wary of. It would be because of this naivety that the Master Emerald would be stolen the first time and cause Angel Island to drop from the sky, but it would also introduce him to Sonic, and get him to open himself up and to learn more about the world outside of Angel Island.

" Don't hold me up, now, I can stand my own ground, I don't need your help now, you will let me down, down, down! Don't hold me up, now, I can stand my own ground, I don't need your help now, you will let me down, down, down, doooown..."

Of course, outside of the heroes there were the typical villains of my time. As I mentioned already, there was a human known as doctor Robotnik, who dealt destruction and mayhem with mechanical behemoths, and enslaved animals to do his bidding. He was always after Sonic, always trying to do him in, and for what? So that he'd have nobody to stand in his way of the collection of the Chaos Emeralds and world domination.

Then there was a character known as Nega Eggman. From what I've been able to gather, this strange enigma of a man was almost the exact opposite of doctor Robotnik, except that he too wanted to take over the world. He spent his time trying to collect the Sol Emeralds in his dimension and being thwarted by Princess Blaze.

" We are the angry and the desperate, the hungry and the cold; we are the ones who kept quiet and always did what we were told. "

The Freedom Fighters, as Sonic and his gang were known to call themselves, consisted of Sonic himself, Miles 'Tails' Prower, Amy Rose, and my father Knuckles. The villains were doctor Robotnik, Nega Eggman, and an alternate, evil Sonic who liked to be called Scourge.

Then came the few who stood between the groups, with no official affiliation. For instance, there was my mother, Rouge, a simple jewel thief with extensive martial arts training, a broken family history, and an eye for trouble. Then there was Shadow the Hedgehog, the self-proclaimed Ultimate Lifeform, who had problems with depression and self-blaming, and who became the second vessel for the Mriah to destroy my world. These two would eventually join the humans' military, G.U.N., and work as mercenaries.

Well, worked. Then Robotnik's final plan released them_..._

" But we've been sweating while you slept so calm in the safety of your home; we've been pulling out the nails of everything you've known..."

The evil doctor Robotnik was, as I've often been told and have already reminisced, always trying to find a way to get one over on Sonic. As far as was able to be gathered, he stumbled upon an old echidna prophecy about the end of the world, and thought that he could control this devastating power. The prophecy told of not eight Chaos energies, but twelve: the seven Chaos Emeralds, the Master Emerald, the god of Chaos, and three Chaos Spirits. There was a Heroic Spirit, a Neutral Spirit, and an Evil Spirit.

The Spirits were new information to the doctor. Supposedly, two of the three Spirits would be released into the world when the time was right for their skills to be harnessed, and they would choose hosts that they felt were worthy of their power. The prophecy told of the defining characteristics of the three Spirits: that they'd be able to harness the energies of the original Emeralds and ascend to a higher form.

With this information, Robotnik was able to determine who the Heroic and Neutral Spirits had chosen to hold their power: Sonic and Shadow, respectively. But the third Spirit had not been released, to be held in check by Chaos. The doctor then devised a two-fold plan to help rid him of Sonic: release the god Chaos from the Master Emerald and use him to destroy the world. At the same time, Robotnik would release and capture the Evil Spirit to be used in an experimental shell, should Sonic find some way to defeat Chaos.

The release and capture went simply enough. While Robotnik made a show of taunting Sonic and his friends for the Chaos Emeralds and powering up Chaos, each time he retreated to his flying fortresses, he continued work on his artificial lifeform. Codenamed C.H.E.R.I.G., Robotnik used DNA captured from Shadow, Tails, and Knuckles to create a hybrid with the strengths of all of them, and none of their weaknesses. The creature would coincide with another part of the prophecy he uncovered, stating that a similar creature would pose as the guardian protectorate in an effort to fool the legendary guardian and destroy the Master Emerald.

" Don't hold me up, now, I can stand my own ground, I don't need your help now, you will let me down, down, down! Don't hold me up, now, I can stand my own ground, I don't need your help now, you will let me down, down, down, doooown..."

Robotnik was a fool. Soon after the incident with the Biohazard, his creation escaped his confines and decimated the secret space station upon which Robotnik had built his lab. He survived his plummet to Mobius, and was recovered by a naïve echidna named Tsunori who helped nurse Cherig back to health. For over a year, the hybrid was in a coma, his body recovering from the shock of falling from orbit to the ground, and yet Tsunori never gave up hope, praying to Chaos that the hybrid might survive. Tsunori believed the hybrid to be the guardian protectorate, as the prophecy foretold.

During the year of Cherig's coma, Robotnik lost control of another of his creations, Metal Sonic. The fight that ensued between the metallic fiend and the blue blur caused Robotnik to finally see the error of his ways, at least when it came to building large mechanical or artificial lifeforms with self-supporting AI systems. Robotnik would continue to harass Sonic, but no longer built henchmen to do the fighting for him, as well as completely forgetting about Cherig in the process.

And then Cherig attacked. The swathe of destruction he left in the echidna ruins and beyond would be told over and over by many of the elders for years afterwards. When the hybrid awoke, he did so with a fire in his eyes not seen by anyone since the original destruction of the echidna clan by the god Chaos.

Tsunori was the first to suffer the wrath of Cherig, and the young echidna had no chance. The hybrid opened his palm at the boy and let loose a volley of energy that completely obliterated him and his room. There wasn't so much as a speck of dust left with any trace of the echidna, and the ensuing collapse of the caves made sure that nobody would be able to find anything for a few years anyway.

" So open your eyes, child, let's be on our way; broken windows and ashes are guiding the way..."

Cherig made his way through the hidden palace caves with one thought in mind: kill the guardian. The Master Emerald had been moved back into the caves no more than six months prior to this event in an effort to keep it away from Robotnik a bit longer. Reunited with his clan, Knuckles had been able to place more than just himself as guards to the main cave, and the guardian spent his days perched upon the Emerald as its last line of defense.

Cherig didn't even bother with the guards. He blasted his way into the main cavern from the side, nearly covering Knuckles with debris in the process. From his hole, he shot over to the altar and started throwing punch after punch at Knuckles in a blind fury, trying to rip the echidna limb from limb, but he underestimated the guardian.

Knuckles managed to knock the hybrid back, but he just kept coming. Compared to the natural-born Knuckles, Cherig was artificially created to need neither food nor sleep. Had Robotnik been able to do so, he would have made Cherig not require air either, but the best he'd been able to do was give the hybrid a nanomachine-fueled healing system capable to channeling energy to different parts of the body for defensive and/or offensive purposes.

Cherig eventually began using those nanomachines at their fullest, throwing beam after beam of energy at my father. Knuckles was just able to dodge them, but the beams continued up into the roof and caused it to collapse, breaking a hole into the top of the cavern and allowing the light to shine through.

The sudden light blinded the hybrid, and Knuckles used this opportunity to grab Cherig by the wrists and flip him over in the air, slamming him into the rocky floor. The momentum created allowed the hybrid to bounce back into the air, at which point Knuckles grabbed him by the ankle and tossed him as hard as he could against the cavern wall. The hybrid tumbled through the air and into a pointed outcropping of the wall, which impaled him through the chest and sprayed the inside of the sacred cavern with blood.

Knuckles was sure he had won, and began to clean the top of the Master Emerald of debris from the collapsed cavern. His blood-soaked hand touched the Emerald, and the Evil Spirits from within Cherig's body used this opportunity to escape from the blood itself, causing the Master Emerald to explode and pierce Knuckles with thousands of shards.

He would live, but the Mriah were now loosed...

" Keep quiet no longer, we'll sing through the day of the lives that we've lost, and the lives we'll reclaim... go!"

The Mriah started with Sonic. They went after the Heroic Spirit within him, and in possessing the Spirit, they warped his mind and body. It took no more than an hour after Sonic was caught for them to use him to destroy the city of Station Square. The energy-firing capability present to Cherig had made its way to the arsenal of powers given to the Mriah, and through the Mriah it was given to Sonic. The Hell-blast that was used to obliterate the city also caught Sonic's friend and partner, Tails.

My mother used to tell stories about the destruction. Herself, Amy Rose, and my father Knuckles survived only because they were blown into a sewer below the shopping mall that they all attended. As they recovered from the shock of the explosion, Shadow appeared. They watched Sonic survey the destruction of the city, then turn toward the water and take off like a bat out of hell, running atop of it towards an island a few miles off.

Things get a little blurry after that, it seems. They next time Mriah Sonic would be met, the survivors would be gathered at Tails' old workshop, looking for a way to defend themselves against the onslaught. An old prototype ice ray of Tails was recovered, and with the little technological expertise that Shadow possessed, the group would be able to get it working. It ran on the power of the silver Chaos Emerald, and against an overwhelming power like the Mriah, it would give the group a chance to escape and hide.

What they failed to realize was that it wasn't their lives that the Mriah was after. It was, instead, the Spirit within Shadow, the legendary guardian, and the Chaos Emerald. Mriah Sonic landed outside the workshop not long after the ray was completed, all essence of Sonic completely erased from the shell. Shadow exited the workshop empty-handed and confronted the monster, and after a bit of banter the two began to fight. Shadow was trying to give the group a chance to get away.

Shadow's fight would be short-lived. Narrowly dodging a blast from Mriah Sonic, Shadow would go to use Chaos Control on the monster to attack it, and would be caught off-guard by its own Chaos Control, which was more powerful. The Mriah used this opportunity to possess the Neutral Chaos Spirit, taking control of Shadow's body.

" Don't hold me up, now, I can stand my own ground, I don't need your help now, you will let me down, down, down! Don't hold me up, now, I can stand my own ground, I don't need your help now, you will let me down, down, down!"

After hiding the group in a series of tunnels near the Hidden Palace, Knuckles would go back for Shadow, only to find two Mriah entities instead of just one. The ensuing battle was severely one-sided until Knuckles actually managed to fire the ray at Mriah Shadow, at which point he was able to hold his own against Mriah Sonic.

Finally, my father knocked the monster to the ground and began to channel power into his fist to deliver the final blow, when he was caught from behind by a newly thawed Mriah Shadow. The Mriah used Shadow's body to buzz Knuckles in half using his spines, and the ice ray fell into their hands. They removed the silver Emerald from its power core and crushed the gem into dust.

The destruction of the silver Emerald caused the Hidden Palace to begin to collapse. The loss of an Emerald of power, as well as the controller, was too much for the Palace to contend with after centuries of having the power nearby, and in the destruction, Amy Rose was crushed. My mother, only a few weeks pregnant with me, managed to escape into the deeper caves that were held up purely by natural formations, and the Mriah destroyed the rest of the planet.

" Don't hold me up, I don't need your help, I'll stand my ground!"

My mother died five years after giving birth to me. I was trained by the elders in many forms of martial arts and weapons, and when I reached 18, I was given my sword, forged with the remaining shards of the Master Emerald, and inlaid with pieces of the remaining six Emeralds. I was tasked with the protection of the altar of the Master Emerald, which I refused, stating that it was stupid to protect an empty altar and that I should instead pursue the Mriah.

For my refusal, I was banished from the Hidden Palace.

" Don't hold me up, I don't need your help, I'll stand my ground!"

In my journey from the Hidden Palace, I stumbled across a large shard of the Master Emerald. Its power radiated with my sword, and the god Chaos contacted me. He used the last of his power to send me back in time, but he couldn't send me far enough. I arrived just in time to see the Mriah take over Shadow, and had to fight to defend my father and destroy the Mriah. To bear witness to the possession of Shadow was a sight I did not want to repeat.

My father arrived as I was fighting, and took the opportunity to once again freeze Mriah Shadow in his tracks. With his help, I was able to destroy the Mriah inside of Sonic, unfortunately needing to kill Sonic to do so. With Mriah Sonic gone, it didn't take long to destroy Mriah Shadow. With the monster defeated, I was able to locate the shard of the Master Emerald originally responsible for sending me back, and convinced the god to send me farther.

" Don't hold me up, I don't need your help, I'll stand my ground!"

I would arrive in time to see Tsunori's home cave in upon itself, and I would rush to the cavern of the Master Emerald. I convinced the guards to let me in to see Knuckles just in time for Cherig to break in, and me and my father both faced the menace. I was intent on making sure history didn't repeat itself.

When the final blow was delivered to Cherig in the form of a toss into the rocky wall, I rushed with him, spreading my wings and covering his body as his blood erupted from it. When I was sure he was dead and his body no longer spurted blood, I fell to the floor, exhausted, and passed out.

When I awoke, I was in the care of Knuckles. He asked my name, and I gave it; Stealth. He asked where I forged my sword, and I told him I was from an alternate time, an alternate dimension, after which he ceased to ask any questions and just nodded his head. He made a joke about me being his son, and I just sat there in stony silence, wondering whether or not to tell him the truth. Ultimately, I decided not to.

" Don't let me down, down, down, down, down!"

The final note of my song rand clear and true, and I laid down my guitar by my side. I took another deep breath, then opened my eyes. The crowd just stared, awestruck, but I didn't know the reason why. From the crowd came a blur of blue, and Sonic soon stood by my side, offering me a hand.

"Dude, as soon as you closed your eyes, your sword started glowing. It showed us images from your thoughts, man. Everything you thought as you sang, we saw in our own heads. You've been through more in your life than I ever want to go through, and now we understand why you came here." He smiled.

My thoughts... my memories of my former life were now laid bare to these people. I finally feel accepted.

The teahouse exploded in applause.