Boom, head(shot)...not
But more than pain, I felt anger. I nearly brained a guy for throwing a brick at my head, imagine what I wanted to do when someone tried to shoot my head off.
Plus, they ruined my hard hat. Yeah, it was just a hard hat, but it was mine.
Looking in the direction of the shooter, I saw a wolf (those ears were hard to miss) wearing a dark cloak and covering her face with with some kind of armored mask, and surrounded by weird floaty thingies of various colors, apparently surprised that not only I had survived their shot, but also was glaring at them.
One moment, the wolf was aiming again. The next, she was on the ground with her face uncovered (they had blue eyes), one foot on her chest, the other on her rifle, and my revolver on her mouth. Yes, her mouth and chest, it was a girl. The floaty things tried to force away from her, but frankly they didn't even annoy me.
If not for Silver putting himself between me and her, well, guess what'd happened. Yes, I was too angry to consider the consequences of pulling the trigger.
"WAIT!"
I looked at him, then back at the wolf, who was glaring at me, although it was clear to me she was also terrified.
"Why? She shot at me."
"Why?! She's the Guardian Angel that aided the Resistance, turning the tide of the battle when they were in peril!" Silver exclaimed. "She's a hero!"
"Yeah, and was one bigger gun away from becoming a 'take in dead or dead for murdering local villain-turned-handyman-turned-hero' villain for Floral Forest Village!"
"Uh?!" Silver stared at me, then at Sonic, who shrugged.
"Yeah, they would be very, very sad... and angry. He got them some fancy stuff that creates energy and hovercars. Oh, and also fought off a robot attack. He had help on the last one, but since it was Eggman fighting his own robots to save people..."
"A monster like you can't be a hero!" The wolf girl cried.
"Well, sorry to pop your white and black world girl, but monsters can be heroes when given the chance and realize that being bastards again and again just bring them suffering, pain, and shame!" I shouted back. 'And heroes can easily become monsters' I thought bitterly, remembering Shadow and his overzealous idea of justice, and Knuckles and his obsession with that magic rock of his.
"Don't you remeber the atrocities you and your empire commited?!"
"God dangit, one of those- NO!" I screamed at her, surprising her. "I don't remember anything of what I did, AT ALL, okay?!" I screamed again, her anger now mixed with confusion and a bit of fear. I sighed before stepping off of her."Only that I did, and even then i had to be told of them. Even so, I know I did it. I'm doing everything I can to atone for it, like fighting my own robots."
"Hey, that explains your broken arm!"
"No, I nearly died fighting them, the arm is because a certain vat-born, arrogant, self-righteous, couple-steps-away-from-becoming-a monster bioweapon went crazy just like this girl here, only I didn't back down and shoved him back."
Sonic grimaced at that, possibly imagining what Shadow would do if he heard that from me, but I didn't care for the cocky bastard.
"And for the record Shadow's hand is also still broken." Sonic chimed in.
"Wait, you fought against Shadow and WON?!" Silver exclaimed in shock and a little awe.
"Partner, I look like a shaved gorilla on steroids now, it shouldn't be that surprising that I can take on that cocky little freak. Also, I didn't said I won, just that I didn't." I said as I carefully stepped off the wolf, who didn't do much except glare.
"You still have to pay for what you did to my friends!"
"What the hell are you talking about!"
"Put this on and look!" She said as she shoved her mask on my chest. Confused, I did as she ordered and put on the mask.
I saw everything: the girl was called Whisper the wolf, she belonged to an anti-Eggman mercenary squad called Diamond Cutters and was her sniper. I saw them doing a couple of jobs, with the obviously evil octopus guy called Mimic complaining of how he was risking his life for little money. The Cutters being ambushed because Mimic betrayed them, Mimic talking with old me and me threatening him, Whisper surviving the betrayal because the leader told her to stay...
If I had been more 'good', I would had cried and felt horrible for making this happen, for ruining the life of this girl and getting her friends killed, and begged her that I really felt sorry and wanted to atone.
But while I did feel bad for what happened to her, I simply couldn't feel sorry for them. I mean, I literally didn't know I made that Mimic guy betray the rest of his squad until that very moment.
Plus, there was also the fact that I just didn't know Whisper or the Diamond Cutters enough to care for them that much. I mean, do you guys care about red shirts, or any named clone trooper that does something significant but in the very same episode he appears in? Yeah, the Cutters were not different genders, but also different species, but it's the same principle: I just didn't know them.
"Don't you remember what you did?!" She screamed at me.
"Goddamn-no, I don't remember anything crap of that happened during the Dark Time!" I screamed at her, making her fall to the ground once again. "Hell, I don't remember most of MY past life! Not my evil past, my past! I'm trying to fix things, but then you, and Shadow, and all the others think I'm unable to be a good person and try and kill me and-" I stopped and breathed deeply, just screaming back at her won't do it. "Hell, I didn't even know you existed until you showed up!" I screamed
Hey, didn't Sonic say that the Silver guy was a psychic?
"You, can you make people see the minds of others?"
"Well, yes, but why-"
"Good, make her see mine." I told him before grabbing Whisper by the shoulders, scaring her. "Girl, i'm gonna show you everything I've seen since I woke a month and a week ago."
And show her everything I did: my stay at Floral Forest Village, meeting with Sonic, fighting Shadow to a standstill, saving Vanilla and Cream and nearly dying, meeting the Restoration, fighting Badniks at Seaside City... I hid nothing, because those were my memories, what I saw and did, not my thoughts.
Look, I get it, she had very good reasons to hate me and try and kill me, but I sincerely didn't remember at all what happened during Sonic Forces, only that it happened. Plus, as you might have guessed by now, I'm good, not nice, and even then only to those that had been nice to me or needed my help. I mean, I may be a genius, but I'm still only a man, don't have to be a saint and turn the other cheek, and if I do, it'll be because the cheek is covered in poisonous, barbed spikes. Plus, I just discovered that I made the future much, MUCH better than canon, so I also wanted to live to make sure it ended up happening.
"W-what was that?" She said, now whispering.
"I just showed you what happened to me, what I remember, and what I did. And as you can see, I'm more than willing of becoming not just a good person, but a hero.
Then, I turned to Silver. " And you, you better start talking about the future you visited, because I want it to happen!"
"Now?!"
"NOW!"
"Alright alright!"
"Okay, when I left it, my time had been conquered by the Egg-the evil empire."
"You can call it Eggman Empire, I don't care."
"Right, by the Eggman Empire." Silver continued, now sure that I wouldn't harm him for talking. "Everyone was living in fear of robotic patrols taking them from their homes and loved ones, chocked on polluted air from the many factories dotting the planet. When I came back, the Empire was gone, replaced by a sprawling, huge city that covered most of the planet sans the seas, and yet still had forests and such: the capital of the Mobian Union."
"Okay. Anything important you can tell of this 'Mobian Union', why it came to be and other info?"
"Well, for starters it was... well, not exactly an utopia, since crimes of all kinds were still a thing and apparently there was a war with some 'Great Khanate' going on, but poverty, bigotry, hunger, homelessness and others didn't exist. That, and it wasn't a factory-covered, completely polluted wasteland serving the whims of a madman."
"Bigotry?" Whisper... whispered.
"There were not just Mobians, but also aliens! Big ones with one single eye that resemble cyclopses, a bit smaller ones that kinda looked like orcs, small ones with six arms, many that looked like Mobians... yet I saw no sign of species conflict nor anything like that among them. Okay, maybe a bit, but apparently those guys were refugees from the Khanate. And that was just the people: flying cars, holograms everywhere, colonies in other systems, ships the size of mountains... It was incredible."
"And then you discovered that Eggman of all people was the founder father or whatever of this... Mobian Union and decided that it was evil." Sonic said.
"Well, yes, I mean... can you imagine it? Eggman! The same Eggman that tried several times to conquer Mobius, and managed to do it once, terrorizing the world for five months! That same Eggman?"
"Well, yes, I can imagine it after seeing what he did with Floral Forest and his plans with the future." Sonic snarked.
"So, instead of discovering what did I do to create this not perfect yet wonderful future, you instead assumed that something evil had happened because everything was due to me and decided to come back here without finding out what really happened, and why?" I asked him very carefully.
"...Yeah?"
"Sonic, is this guy your descendant?" I asked Sonic, who shrugged, before looking down at Whisper. "Look, I know you hate me, and I sure as hell don't like you, but right now we have bigger problems. Peace?"
"I still don't trust you, and I will not forgive you." She growled, which made me grunt in exasperation. I literally open my mind to show her that I really changed, and yet the bitch was thick in the brain. Yes, I know, she had the right to be angry with me, but so was I given that had her gun been any bigger I'd been dead. You just don't forgive someone that trie to you literally a few minutes before.
"Fine enough, you have the right to not trust me completely nor forgive me, at least for now. But that also means I don't trust you, nor really forgive you for nearly blowing my head off. Plus" I said as I grabbed the hologram, ", take a look at this. THIS. Does this look like the work of a tyrant bent of being evil for the sake of being evil?" I asked her, and lo and behold I managed to make her think!
And, out of the blue, I had an imagination spot in which Whisper shot Vanilla and Cream while they were on the back of a hovercar I was driving.
I had to stop myself from decking her then and there with all my strength.
"Let's get this over with before I do something boty me and you would regret." I growled before going ahead and preparing to lift the hopefully last door in our way, as Sonic and Silver spoke with each other.