The portal dumped Elias onto a snow-covered peak in the Himalayas. The drastic temperature shift from the Sahara to the freezing altitude should have killed him, but the Chaos energy boiling under his skin kept him warm—too warm.
He collapsed into a snowbank, the Purple Chaos Emerald clutched tightly in his hand.
"Get... out..." Elias gasped, clawing at his own chest.
The Dark form didn't want to leave. It felt good. It felt powerful. It whispered to him that Luthor deserved to be crushed, that Ra's deserved to be erased. It was an intoxicating cocktail of adrenaline and righteous fury.
System Warning: Psycho-Kinetic Instability. Dopamine levels critical. Serotonin suppression active.
"No," Elias gritted his teeth. He focused on the cold snow against his face. He focused on the steady, rhythmic pulse of the Purple Emerald.
"Chaos is power," he recited, a mantra from Sonic Adventure 2. "Power enriched by the heart."
He forced himself to think of something calm. He thought of the Chao Garden. He thought of idle animations. He thought of the quiet hum of the Green Hill Zone music.
Slowly, agonizingly, the black fur receded. The white void in his eyes filled with color, returning to emerald green. The violet aura sputtered and died, leaving only steam rising from his blue quills.
Elias rolled onto his back, staring up at the grey sky. He was exhausted.
"That," he wheezed, "is a bad habit."
He looked at the Purple Emerald. It was dull now, dormant.
"One down," he whispered. "But they saw me. They saw the Dark form. They know I have a breaking point."
He sat up. He couldn't stay here. Luthor would track the energy signature.
"If I'm going to use the Dark form," Elias decided, standing up and shaking the snow off his quills, "I need to drive it. Not the other way around."
The Rematch
Three days later.
Elias stood in the center of Times Square, New York. It was midnight, but the city was bright as noon thanks to the neon signs. The civilians had fled hours ago.
Why? Because Lex Luthor had parked a fifty-foot tall Warsuit in the middle of Broadway.
"Come out, rodent!" Luthor's voice boomed from the mech's speakers. "I know you're watching. I have the tracking data from the Sahara. I know what makes you tick."
Elias sat on top of a billboard for a Broadway musical, eating a hot dog he'd grabbed from an abandoned cart.
"He's loud," Elias mumbled.
Below the mech, shadows moved. Ra's al Ghul's League of Shadows had secured the perimeter, turning the intersection into a kill box.
"We have the bait," Ra's voice echoed.
In the mech's massive hand, trapped in a stasis bubble, was a small, frightened family of tourists who hadn't evacuated in time.
Elias stopped chewing.
The anger flared. Instant. Hot.
Trigger identified.
"Okay," Elias whispered. "Let's try this again. Controlled burn."
He dropped the hot dog.
He closed his eyes. He invited the darkness in, but this time, he built a wall around it. He visualized the Dark form not as a flood, but as a suit.
He jumped.
Transformation.
By the time he hit the ground, he was black. His eyes were white. The violet aura screamed.
But Elias was still in the driver's seat. Barely.
"Put them down," Dark Elias said. His voice was still distorted, terrifying, but it was steady.
Luthor laughed. "There it is! The monster. Analysis indicates your cognitive functions drop when you enter this state. You become a beast."
The mech raised a massive cannon arm. Kryptonite Beam charging.
"Dodge this."
A beam of green energy, thick as a telephone pole, erupted from the cannon.
Elias didn't dodge. He didn't block.
He phased.
He turned his body into pure negative shadow energy. The beam passed harmlessly through his chest, hitting the pavement behind him.
Elias blurred forward. He wasn't running; he was sliding through the dark dimension.
He appeared on the knee of the Warsuit.
"Shadow Kick!"
He delivered a roundhouse kick wreathed in black fire. CLANG.
The mech's leg didn't just dent; the metal became brittle and shattered like glass. The darkness was entropy. It aged the material instantly.
Luthor stumbled. "Structural integrity failing! How?"
"Because," Elias growled, leaping up toward the cockpit, "I'm not just angry, Lex. I'm focused."
Ra's al Ghul intercepted him. The immortal launched himself from a rooftop, swinging a sword that glowed with green Lazarus energy.
"Your soul is tainted!" Ra's shouted, slashing at Elias in mid-air.
Elias caught the blade. With his bare hand.
The Lazarus energy sizzled against the Dark Chaos aura.
Elias pulled Ra's close, face to face with the white void eyes.
"My soul," Elias whispered, "is a prism."
He snapped the sword.
He spun in mid-air—Dark Spin Dash—and slammed into Ra's chest, sending the Demon's Head crashing through three stories of an office building.
Elias landed on the mech's shoulder. He looked at the stasis bubble holding the family.
"Let them go," he commanded.
Luthor panicked. He tried to activate the self-destruct sequence on the arm to take Elias with him. "If I can't study you, I'll dissect your remains!"
Elias placed his hand on the cockpit glass.
"Chaos... Blast."
He didn't release it outward. He directed it inward.
A focused beam of destruction punched through the glass, destroyed the control console, and disintegrated the weapon systems, but—miraculously—left the pilot seat untouched.
Luthor sat there, stunned, surrounded by smoking ruins of his controls. The mech powered down, freezing in place.
The stasis bubble faded. The family fell.
Elias moved.
He dropped the Dark form instantly. The black fur vanished. The blue returned.
He caught the family—a mother, father, and little girl—before they hit the ground, creating a whirlwind to slow their descent.
He set them down gently on the sidewalk.
"Go," Elias said, his voice back to normal, though he sounded exhausted. "Run."
They ran.
Elias turned back to the disabled mech. Luthor was climbing out of the smoking cockpit, coughing. Ra's al Ghul was nowhere to be seen—he had vanished into the shadows the moment the fight turned.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Elias looked at his hands. They were shaking violently. The Dark form had taken a toll. He felt cold, hollowed out. The control had worked, but the cost was high.
"One minute," Elias muttered. "I can hold it for one minute before I lose myself."
He looked up at Luthor.
"Next time," Elias said, his green eyes flashing, "I won't aim for the console."
He tapped his foot.
Boost.
He vanished into the night, leaving Luthor standing in the wreckage of his billion-dollar suit, staring into the darkness with a mix of fear and obsession.
"This isn't over," Luthor whispered. "I need a sample."