//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2 - Meet the Pyro [after proofreading] 
// Story: Time Outcasts - Is it more psychic to flirt with a spiteful cat or move boxes with your mind? 
// by Unknown7x7 
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	"Silver, I'm fully aware that you have an empty spot somewhere between... I mean, now under your ears... but could you at least keep it clean, without any junk? Mentioning Sonic 2006 is a disgrace to any gamer."

There are a lot of things I don't like about Silver. He is loud, whiny, reckless, dense, easily distracted... I could go on and on about this for hours. When my dumb companion comes to any city, suddenly every single clown in five miles radius loses their job. And yes, he is naive, often as much as the original character. It's not as likable as my lookalike stated in the game-that-shall-not-be-mentioned (the worst spent seventeen bucks ever). There is however no doubt what I hate the most about him, since it gets us almost killed plenty of times.

Wasting all of his power by showing off.

"Don't spoil all the fun, that was awesome! Did you see their faces? I regret nothing!" he exclaimed, massaging his forehead with one hand and holding onto my arm with the other. Once a really strong headache strikes, Silver is almost completely unable to move without my help (something about not telling apart left from right). I had to make sure I wasn’t running too fast - without his powers, his top speed is only around sixty miles per hour.

You see, that's exactly the problem with Silver's power. As long as he has it, he is the most powerful hero in Sonic's universe (I really mean it - what use is super speed if your enemy can just mop the floor with you by his thoughts alone?), but after it wears out, he’s just dead weight. It's not hard to push his buttons and cause him to waste all his ammo in a little anger outburst.

"In the name of the law, I command you... HOLY CELESTIA SWIMMING IN HOT CHOCOLATE!"

Oh, yes, another guard decided to actually try to do his duty. "Try" being the operative verb here. Once he rounded the corner and saw me running (well, with my definition of running it was more like a quick march) straight at him with a shield of fire in front of me, he instantly decided to change his objective, direction of motion, and probably also job.

"I didn’t sign up for this crap!" And then he was gone. If there’s one good thing I can say about these guys, they sure do retreat really effectively.

"I think we’re close now," said Silver once we were almost to the central hall, "I can already feel that sweet, sweet taste of freedom, fresh air, and scared horse. It’s… oh, great."

I stopped. A whole contingent of Royal Guards in full kit greeted us right as we rounded the corner, doing their level best to glare at us in what might have been an intimidating manner if we were any other criminals.

Now, I want you to imagine that you are standing in a room with a psycho. Not a nice picture? That's not all. Let's make him really eager to leave this place, while your task is to stop him. To make it even more painful for you, let's give your opponent a flamethrower. If you think it can’t be worse, you are greatly mistaken. It's a woman with a short patience, sharp claws fingernails, and high heels. There’s also somewhere around fifty other men on your side, but you know, you just know that all of them could probably stand to change their (metaphorical in this case) underwear. Now you know how those stallions felt at that moment.

One of them stepped forward and put a megaphone next to his mouth.

"Prisoners! Cease resisting immediately, lie down on the ground, and put your... erm, front hooves over your heads! If you don’t comply, we will have to use force!"

"Ouch! Dude, you’re like five meters from us! There’s no need for a megaphone!" Silver shouted back, covering his ears. Turns out both anthropomorphic cats and hedgehogs have good hearing and no tolerance to ringing in their ears, since I winced too. 

"Wait a second... you have a megaphone!" Geez, Silver, really? What a brilliant comment! "You already invented speakers! Do you have computers too?! I haven't played any video games in ages! Literally!"

Huh... That’s actually a good point. How much time did the guard say we spent in this place? Eleven centuries? Also, why did this pony say "hooves"? Did Equestrians get so xenophobic they no longer knew the correct names for basic anatomy parts of bipeds?

"Prisoners, I repeat...!" That's it, screw that noise.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, SHUT UP!" I screamed, focusing my anger in my palm and throwing it as a fireball towards the guardspony. At this point it was instinctual for me. You want your enemy gone? Get mad. You want to burn a place to the ground? Get mad. You want to make Silver lose all his hard-earned rings just for fun*? Get mad. It solved almost all my problems in both of my lives. 

This tactic proved itself once more. As soon as my attack reached the main officer, he went up like a prayer candle and leapt into the air with an almost comical scream. The rest of his troupe stared at me wide-eyed.

I took a step forward, holding my red-glowing hands open at my sides.

And just like that, they all promptly turned and stampeded away like a freaked-out herd of sheep. There was something... primal in fear of fire. You think humans are scared of uncontrolled flames? Hah. Horses and ponies have it sooooo much worse.

"Blaze! That wasn't nice!" Silver piped up once the guards had left the scene.

My mouth pressed into a thin line. "Oh, come on, that was barely a love tap. He’ll be fine."

"But you could have just created a wall of fire in front of him, not shoot at his face!"

“I have a learned reflex to shoot at whatever goes above a certain volume. Rise Against notwithstanding.” I flashed him a smirk. “Are you really that angry it wasn’t you?”

That shut him up, like always. Maybe I should feel some remorse for my only companion in this world, but he can be so annoying at times... Anyway, those are Royal Guards, right? They accepted dangerous situations like this as part of their job, and they surely have insurance and hazard pay. Besides, it was nothing. He will only have to regrow his fur.

Finally, we found a way out… only with one problem. “Another steel gate,” I noted, already raising a hand and preparing to blowtorch my way through.

I was stopped by Silver, who slipped out from under my arm and walked straight up to the door. “No worries, Blaze, I got this.”

“Aren’t you still recovering?” I raised an eyebrow.

But Silver was already cracking his knuckles together and limbering up his neck like some hotshot Dragonball Z cosplayer. “O ye of little faith…” Oh, no, he did not just smirk at me. Silver, you better move right now, or—

“FUS RO DAH!!”

A wall of telekinetic force so thick I could see the air distorting around it slammed into the gate, snapping the middle bars in half and bending the others like the convex side of a magnifying glass.

Silver listed slightly to the side, panting heavily, but still found enough energy to shoot me a thumbs-up. “See? What’d I tell ya? I’m— OW!”

My fiery spark hit him dead center on the tail, making him jolt upright. It was nowhere near full strength, but just enough to express my extreme displeasure. “What did I tell you about wasting all your power, you moron?!”

He swatted at his singed rear, giving me a dirty look. “Oh, come on, I’ve wanted to do that for years!” he complained, “Besides, I’ll just get it all back in a minute or two. It’s not like the Royal Guards are gonna mess with us anymore after our little show.”

“Murphy’s law, Silver,” I warned.

“Super Epic Interdimensional Space Jedi, Blaze,” he returned, already giving me that contemptuously annoying grin.

A long-suffering sigh blew out from my lips. “Fine. Let’s just get out of here.”

Thankfully, he didn’t say another word after that, so I didn’t have to spend my own stamina on another fireball. It would have been totally justified, though. Like I said, reflex. We stepped through the ring-shaped hole in the gate (I almost smiled at the irony) and finally exited the prison’s dim corridor, trading torches and glass windows for sweet, sweet full sunlight. I had to squint my eyes after so long a time spent locked up in the dark at first, but when they adjusted, I was treated to one of the grandest sights of my (second? Third?) life.

So... this is Canterlot.

The city was much, much more beautiful than it seemed in the show. When you saw Equestria's capital from the distance on TV, it was a ridiculous sight, a violation of the law of physics. Now, however... It was truly a place to behold. I've been to Canterlot before, but a millennium of prosperity has changed this place past all recognition. It used to be just the Royal Sisters' summer residence. After all this time it had practically become a second Rome, only instead of seven hills you had one giant mountain. Cobbled streets, renaissance architecture, wonderful parks with green trees, incredible panorama stretching for miles... It is not easy to amaze me, but this one time I was very impressed.

"Blaze, look! An extra life!"

I tore my eyes away from the beautiful landscape, and focused them on a giant jar standing next to the former door. If we would have just marched out of there, we wouldn't have noticed it at all. Inside of the jar was floating a picture of my face (and in Silver's vision it was surely his face).

"How many lives do you have?" I asked.

Silver closed his eyes and stood still for a few seconds.

"Just three. It seems our last fight took a toll on us."

I followed his example. Once I closed my eyes and waited a little, two numbers appeared... don't ask me how or why, but this is the way in which we check our status (number of rings and lives, to be precise). Believe me, it makes falling asleep very hard.

"I have two lives and six rings. I need it more." I approached the jar and kicked it (unlike rings you need to actually hit them, not just run next to them or even through them like they were just air). It always felt awkward to me. 

As soon as the jar opened, however, I heard the cringe-inducing sound of some children shouting "YAY!". At least it's not Fluttershy’s voice doing it, but I swear, I'll murder that Merchant if I ever meet him again. He took away all the pleasure from getting an extra life. I guess that's exactly why we were called Dawwkward Duo.

"If you spot some rings nearby, tell me. I have none," Silver informed me. "So... what’s the plan?"

"Let's just continue with our efforts to return to Earth... also, we need to find a way to let us measure up against the Princesses, and fast. Maybe we should summon something nasty from the void... Right now we’re too weak to fight them, so we should first gather some rings and maybe a few Emeralds."

Silver nodded. "So pretty much your standard action/adventure smash-and-grab. Cool! Let's go, we need to escape from the city before the Princesses come here personally."

"Was that a pathetically obvious reference to Sonic Adventure 2?" I asked, getting into a position that would provide me with a good start.

"...Maybe."





Prison is, by definition, not the calmest place you can find, even if it's not Balkham Asylum. Prison after an escape attempt is much, much worse, just boiling with distrust and agitation. And if that attempt turns out to be not only successful, but also spectacular, everypony will be ready to go through Tartarus itself to find the perpetrator. After all, you need to either point at somepony or be the one who is pointed at.

All the staff was in uproar. Medics and doctors were running everywhere, still not accepting that Blaze "I-will-burn-you-alive" the Cat restrained herself to scaring off ponies (and in corporal Sentry's case giving mere first degree burns). Two stallions that happened to be inside of the cell during the escape had been sent to the hospital. Royal Guards interrogated other Royal Guards, unicorns from the Magical Defense Unit were searching for the source of a small earthquake, unfed prisoners were getting noisy...

Overall, the blaming and hoof-pointing was actually counter-effective. In all the chaos, nopony paid attention to a certain "janitor", who had casually left the boiler room. In a matter of a few hours the investigation team would check this place and find out that a valve keeping warm water away from the main cell's pipes was unscrewed. The saboteur calmly walked down the corridor until he found the door that definitely wasn’t on the building's architectural plans. He opened it with his key, and stepped inside. A few seconds later the door gradually faded away to look just like any other piece of masonry in the hall, which somehow went unnoticed by everypony in sight.

The investigation team never found out who caused the escape or why.





Speed.

When it comes to many characters in Sonic's universe, this word was one of the most important in their description. At the same time this attribute was never explained in great detail. How fast is Sonic the Hedgehog? Nobody is sure, to be honest, but it is doubtful he indeed breaks the sound barrier without using the Chaos Emeralds. The same goes for the original Guardian of the Sol Emeralds.

Blaze did not care about her maximum speed. As long as she was the fastest, she wasn't even questioning her top speed, no need for any strange diet stuffed with calories, AND ability to reach it despite wearing high heels. What she was questioning, however, was why she was able to think while being on the run through Canterlot's streets.

Games from this series demanded full attention from the player. There’s no eating, talking, getting bored, etc. Gameplay is simply too fast. You just run and hope to finish as fast as you can. And yet, Blaze often found herself letting her reflexes and instinct handle all the work, while her mind wandered, as if running at extreme speed wasn't dangerous and exciting. She had no doubt the Merchant was once again the one responsible for that.

Blaze was one of the few Displaced that was fully aware of their situation right after their first day in Equestria. She knew of other victims of dimensional misplacement, and there was no doubt the Merchant could change even the way minds worked. She was practically waiting for tokens from their brothers and sisters in misery, some of them she actually found interesting. She just hoped Silver and Gilgamesh would never meet... she couldn't handle those two clowns at the same time. Her body surely wasn't the only thing that had changed. Her mind was different, her soul was different. She could only hope it wasn’t broken beyond repair.

There was hope. You don't have to be a genius to know that someone was going to eventually stand up to the Merchant. This... damn it, she had forgotten his name. It's even more awkward since she still remembered his ridiculous title of Fabulous Rainbow Magician. She had to show him the Emeralds, or at least someone familiar with the subject. There was a big chance they were the key to this multidimensional trap.

There were seven Chaos Emeralds and seven Sol Emeralds. The original Emeralds were pretty much this ultimate plot device that gave the heroes the upper hand. Doctor Eggman woke up some ancient evil god? Get the Emeralds and go Super Sonic at him. Two Eggmans created an ultimate weapon and caused interdimensional collision? Go Super Sonic at them. Evil multidimensional god of time destroys everything everywhere in every part of history? Go Super Sonic at him. Hell, Sonic himself is dead? GO SUPER SONIC! If problems were headaches, then that was the universal aspirin.

Two Emeralds... maybe even two Emeralds were enough to escape from this trap. That's all you needed to time travel. She didn't know for sure, she never had the chance to even test it... but maybe, just maybe, if she managed to get back to ancient Equestria, she would find a way home.

A home she lost very long ago...





I hated conventions.

It didn't take me too long to figure that out once I found myself part of one. What was I thinking? How could I expect to have fun in this place? Sure, there were games, contests, stands full of copies of various well known fictional items... but... okay, there is no way around this.

I hated crowds. And I went into one dressed up as Blaze the Cat, a character from the Sonic game series. And let's face it... this fandom has a really bad reputation. Many people see these games as childish... oh, who am I trying to fool, they are childish even when SEGA tried to do something more grim (yes, I'm looking at you, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 and Sonic Lost World). At one point one of the girls I was passing giggled, probably at something completely unrelated to my costume, but it still angered me - sometimes I can be irrational like that. I wanted to leave immediately, but my parents were going to pick me up an hour later. Nothing stood in the way of just calling them except my pride, which was massive. I'd rather suffer in this place for an entire sixty minutes than admit I was wrong about something.

After a few minutes I decided to look at the wares. Some of them seemed really interesting, like a working hidden blade from Assassin's Creed or helmet of the Brotherhood of Steel, but I had no intention of buying them. I need to be really into something in order to buy an item that would only collect dust on my shelf.

Unfortunately for me, I found something just like that.

A sudden flash in the corner of my vision caught my eye, and I turned around. There was a little stand in the corner squeezed in between two large ones, and in the center of the table lay...

"Sol Emeralds?" I said aloud. All seven of them were placed in a little, elegant jewelery box. Right next to them was a rim... no, a ring. It might be huge, but it's still an item from games so I should call it by its right name.

"Yes, stranger," a sudden, hoarse voice made me jump a little. I looked up and saw a Merchant straight out of Resident Evil 4 sitting behind the stand. I immediately recalled The Merchant and barely suppressed a smile. I really shoudn't read so many fanfics those pathetic bronies write, but... I just can't help it. I love to hate MLP and any related fanfiction. "Lookin' for your Emeralds, Princess?"

Despite how incredibly creepy that sounded, I decided to play along. "Indeed. As their Guardian it is my duty to ensure their safety. Say, would you part with them in exchange for coin?"

I'm sure he smiled under his guise. "It is possible, but I can sell only the entire collection. Only together can they show their full power. This Power Ring is a free bonus to them. The entire set costs eighty dollars."

Eighty dollars for this? I'm not an expert, but these Emeralds seemed to be of a really high quality for something fake. I leaned forward and saw how they were shining in the open sunlight. If I didn't knew better, I'd say they were the real deal. I smiled.

"Okay, I accept. However, I can promise you that if I suddenly find myself in Equestria because of this trade, things are gonna get ugly," I said, hoping he’d get the joke - the setting was too familiar in my opinion to be accidental. Turns out I was right.

"And I can promise you that in such case all your efforts to return to this world would be for nothing," he chuckled. I handed him the money and took the jewelery box and Power Ring.

"Oh, and one more thing!" he said when I was already heading the other way. I looked back.

"It's dangerous to go alone. Take him!"

And then... he created a fucking fireball in his hands and threw it at me.

Everything went black.








* Blaze actually did so once. Silver decided to collect as many rings as he could and then check if a world would get lag after him losing them all at once. The world was fine - probably one thousand five hundred seventy-six rings wasn't enough. Silver's expression after premature release of the rings was very rewarding and definitely worth that terrible feeling of guilt... like she had kicked a cute puppy.