Chapter Text
Somewhere in Kitsunami’s heart, he knew this was the most tragic ending he could’ve gotten.
It was never one he could’ve predicted. If you had asked the fennec how he thought he would die, and he had been willing to give you an answer instead of boiling you from the inside out for the intrusive question, he would’ve told you that the only way to kill him would be to return him to the flames that forged his artificial being. 3,750°K, slightly higher than the melting point of tungsten, was the temperature at which the modified metal virus in his skeleton would begin to slowly break down, bringing the ability to regenerate the rest of him with it. Given how improbable that was to pull off for almost everyone he considered his enemy, Kit found it reasonable to consider himself, and especially his dear sister Surge, functionally unkillable.
But then, a vat of molten alloy, his throat trapped in Blaze’s hand, the surface of the sun, none of those were where he found himself now. Quite the opposite of those, in fact. It was cold. So very cold. Between the lack of sunlight and the dampness of lying in a pool of his own blood, he had lost the strength to control his own body temperature long ago. It wasn’t a blindingly bright inferno, it was dark. Suffocatingly, and all-consumingly dark. His cybernetically enhanced night vision did little to remedy that. There was no screaming or maniacal laughter, it was dead silent. An utter vacuum, save for his own slow, haggard breathing. It was not painful, at least, not anymore. The ginormous javelin that had pierced straight through his heart and pinned him to the rock floor beneath had been there a while. He shifted uncomfortably around it, but it was clear his pain receptors had felt all they could at this point.
Most importantly, however, was the fact that he was alone. No Surge, no Eggman, no Sonic nor Tails. Not even the ghost of Starline could be bothered to ferry him across the styx. The closest thing Kit had to company was the soon-to-be corpse of Tangle the Lemur. A woman he had barely remembered existed until a couple months ago.
He shifted his gaze over in her direction, as useless as the gesture was. Unconscious on the ground nearby, the barely perceptible flow of blood from a weak heartbeat was the only way the fennec knew she was still alive. Kit was surprised she hadn’t died hours ago. He’d done what he could to heal her wounds, using his hydrokinesis to forcibly clot the lemur’s blood at the offending areas. But it was no use. A mile underground in the remote mountains of northern Chun-nan, help was not coming. Tangle would eventually wake up, and then she would be faced with the choice of stubbornly waiting for a rescue that would never come, or avoiding the suffering and ending herself.
But at least Tangle got to die. Kit did not have that luxury.
As long as the fennec’s cybernetics persevered, the rest of him would too. His heart was unable to heal with a large metal intrusion in the way, but the good part of that was that he would eventually lose consciousness too, and drift into a coma. Existing forever in a permanent stasis until the weapon was removed. Which, given the isolation of his grave, would likely be never. Hell on Earth, finality without death. That was his tragic fate.
Maybe it’s what I deserve. Kit thought to himself. After all, this was all his fault, wasn’t it?
The cynical genius melted away like light snowfall, leaving nothing but a scared child in his place. Weak, strained sobs escaped out of his throat, his eyes burned as tears crept out and stained the fur on his cheeks. Surge was never going to know what happened to her little brother. What was the tenrec thinking right now? Did she even realize something was wrong? Was she worried about him? Did she even care? Then again, maybe she would find out what happened, and hate him for it, be glad that he was gone. Or maybe not. Countless scenarios ran through his head, ones where she saved him, ones where she didn’t, and dozens of permutations of each. None of them had happy endings. Bittersweet, at best, but nothing wholly good could ever have come from all of this. What about Tangle? She was supposedly in the same position as he was, but what could this annoyingly pure bundle of optimism and ADHD have done to earn a similar fate?
THUMP.
Kit’s spiraling was interrupted by the sudden noise, slicing abruptly through the silence and right into his sensitive ears, making him wince.
THUMP.
Another one, right after, but closer this time. The cyborg turned his head weakly towards the source. Of course, he saw nothing, except… a light.
THUMP.
But not a bright light that invited him to the other side. Instead, the faint thin wires of a dim rainbow, flowing down and around the outline of a hulking mass like veins. A gaming PC from hell, was how Kit had initially described the monstrosity when he first saw it.
THUMP.
The object of their quest, the big bad evil guy of the campaign. The reason these two unfortunate souls had been forced into their position in the first place. A threat that, too late did anyone realize, was a job for the super hedgehogs. Not a raggedy street brawler and a teenage cyborg. It was so far beyond them, and yet…
THUMP.
…Here it was. A leviathan in the depths, flashing the only light for miles towards its prey. It possessed no need to draw them in, the soft glow was merely to taunt them. It had no reason to even be here in the first place. It only approached them now because it wanted to. Maybe he would die today after all.
THUMP.
A morsel of pride that Kit didn’t know he even had flared up inside him. There was nothing he could do, it was over. But if this monster wanted to be petty, then two could play at that game. The fennec shifted his arm in the blood pool around him, fighting against an almost full body numbness. His head spun, and he stifled the urge to vomit as he put all his focus into his hydrokinesis.
THUMP.
The steps were agonizingly close, echoing all around the cave and vibrating the surroundings. It was almost here. Manipulating the water in his own blood, he rose a weak and unsteady tendril, reaching it toward Tangle. Shifting the long coat she was wearing to the side as the fennec felt around to find what he was looking for. And after a few seconds, he found it, a holster strapped to her hip.
THUMP.
The last and loudest step indicated the beast was finally here, towering over him. Kit grabbed Tangle’s gun (A paradoxical statement, if ever there was one) and brought it back into his own hand, awkwardly shifting the safety off and raising it directly above him, where he knew his soul was being stared straight into. He looked up, just barely able to make out its dark glassy features shining in the multicolored streams that ran down its body.
“None of this would have happened if it weren’t for you.” The cyborg forced out his last words, his voice sounding weaker than it ever had before.
As far as Kitsunami the Fennec was concerned, he was born at nine years old. He never really concerned himself with the person he was before, and he was content with the life he’s lived for the past six years, up until this point. All that was to say, there wasn’t much to flash before his eyes here at the end. But even still, the only thing that ran through his head were the events that led him here. Only a month it took for his and Tangle’s lives to get upturned, to live with agonizing uncertainty as they were forced to be a pair of thieving cowards. Not just to survive, but to protect what they held dear. He could only hope they’d accomplished the latter.
With a herculean effort that felt like trying to tear a star out of the sky, he pulled the trigger.
BANG.