The throne room fell silent as Robotnik's ultimatum hung in the air.
His finger hovered over the button that would end four lives in an instant. His smile was the smile of a man who believed he had won—who had calculated every variable, accounted for every possibility, and determined that even a god-like being could be brought to heel with the right leverage.
He was wrong.
Perfect Nazo stood motionless for exactly three seconds. In that time, a war raged inside him—the darkness howling for immediate violence, the remnants of Marcus Chen screaming for caution, and something else entirely beginning to stir in the depths of his chaos-born soul.
He thinks he has control, Nazo realized. He thinks that threatening them gives him power over me. He doesn't understand what he's dealing with.
He doesn't understand what I'm about to become.
"Well?" Robotnik demanded, his confidence growing with each passing moment of Nazo's silence. "Have you made your decision? Surrender your power to my containment systems, submit to my control, and I'll release your precious—"
"No."
The word was quiet. Almost gentle. But it carried a weight that made Robotnik's finger freeze above the button.
"No?" The doctor's smile flickered. "I don't think you understand your position. One press of this button—"
"Will accomplish nothing." Perfect Nazo's yellow eyes met Robotnik's, and something in that gaze made the dictator's blood run cold. "You designed your failsafe based on my recorded power levels. You calculated the speed at which I could move, the distance between us, the time it would take for electrical current to travel through their restraints."
"Y-yes. The math is quite precise. You cannot possibly—"
"Your math is based on Perfect Nazo." A smile crossed the crimson hedgehog's face—a smile that held no warmth, no mercy, no humanity whatsoever. "You have no data on what comes next."
Robotnik's finger jabbed down on the button.
Nothing happened.
Or rather, nothing that Robotnik could perceive happened. From his perspective, he pressed the button and then Nazo was simply... gone. Vanished. As if he had never been there at all.
"What—" Robotnik started.
"Up here."
The doctor's head snapped upward. Nazo floated near the ceiling, but he was no longer alone. Cradled in his arms were Sally, Rouge, Bunnie, and Amy—all four women freed from their restraints, which now sparked uselessly in the empty air where they had hung moments before.
"That's... that's impossible," Robotnik whispered. "The current should have... you couldn't have... the SPEED required to—"
"I told you." Nazo descended slowly, setting the four women gently on the floor before turning to face the doctor. "You had no data on what comes next."
And then he began to change.
The transformation was different from his shift into Perfect form.
That change had been violent—an explosion of dark energy, a fundamental rewriting of his being that turned silver to crimson and kindness to cruelty. This was something else entirely. This was an ascension.
The crimson of his fur didn't change. The yellow of his eyes remained. The black aura still crackled around his form like living shadow. But something was being added—something that elevated him beyond even the terrible heights of Perfect Nazo.
Golden rings materialized around his wrists and ankles, gleaming with inner light for just a moment before that light was consumed. The gold darkened, corrupted, transformed into bands of absolute black that seemed to drink in the surrounding illumination. They were like holes in reality itself—voids where light went to die.
The black aura surrounding him intensified exponentially. What had been crackling energy became a maelstrom of darkness, a vortex of chaos power so dense that it distorted the air around him. The throne room's lights flickered and died, unable to compete with the absolute shadow that now emanated from his form.
Reality itself seemed to bend around him, warping and twisting as if his very presence was too much for the fabric of existence to bear.
"What... what ARE you?" Robotnik breathed, shrinking back in his throne as the transformed being advanced.
"I am what happens when you threaten the people I care about," Super Perfect Nazo replied, and his voice echoed with harmonics that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. "I am the darkness that exists beyond darkness. I am chaos perfected and then transcended."
He raised one hand, and the black rings around his wrist pulsed with anti-light.
"I am your ending."
Sally watched the transformation with wide eyes, her hand pressed against her chest where her heart hammered with a mixture of fear and awe.
She had seen powerful beings before. She had witnessed Sonic's Super transformations, had watched Shadow unleash his full potential, had faced down Chaos itself during the flooding of Station Square. She thought she understood what power looked like.
She had understood nothing.
Super Perfect Nazo stood before them now, and he was beautiful in the way that a black hole was beautiful—a terrible, consuming majesty that defied comprehension. The darkness that surrounded him should have been terrifying. The sheer weight of his presence should have driven her to her knees.
Instead, she felt... safe.
Protected.
Loved.
"He's incredible," Rouge breathed from beside her, and there was no fear in her voice either—only wonder.
"That power..." Bunnie shook her head slowly. "Ah've never felt anything like it."
"He came for us," Amy said, her green eyes shining with unshed tears. "He tore through an entire city to save us."
They should have been afraid. By every rational measure, they should have been cowering in terror at the apocalyptic being that had emerged from their friend. But none of them felt even a flicker of fear.
Because deep down, in a place beyond logic or reason, they knew the truth.
He would never hurt them.
No matter how dark he became, no matter how much power he accumulated, they were safe with him.
Always.
Robotnik scrambled backward as Super Perfect Nazo advanced, the doctor's earlier bravado completely evaporated.
"W-wait!" he stammered, hands raised in desperate supplication. "We can negotiate! Whatever you want—money, technology, territory—I can provide it! There's no need for—"
"You kidnapped them." Super Perfect Nazo's voice was quiet, but it resonated through the chamber with physical force. "You threatened to kill them. You thought you could use them as leverage against me."
"A—a miscalculation! A terrible miscalculation! I see that now! Please—"
"You thought that my love for them was a weakness." Another step forward. The black rings pulsed. "You were wrong."
Robotnik's back hit the wall. There was nowhere left to run.
"It's not a weakness," Super Perfect Nazo continued, looming over the cowering doctor like a god of darkness regarding an insect. "It's the only thing keeping you alive right now."
He reached down and grabbed Robotnik by the front of his jacket, lifting the portly man off the ground with one hand. The darkness surrounding him intensified, and Robotnik let out a scream of pure terror as he was engulfed in shadow.
"If I gave in to what I want to do—what every fiber of my being is screaming at me to do—I would unmake you at the molecular level. I would erase you so completely that even the Chaos Force would forget you existed. I would make your death last for eons, stretching each moment of agony into an eternity of suffering."
Robotnik whimpered, tears streaming down his face.
"But I won't." Super Perfect Nazo brought the doctor close, until they were nearly face to face. "Do you know why?"
"N-no..."
"Because THEY wouldn't want me to." He glanced back at the four women, who watched the scene with expressions of concern and compassion. "They believe I'm a good person. They think I'm worthy of their affection. And I refuse to prove them wrong by becoming the monster you want me to be."
He released Robotnik, and the doctor crumpled to the floor in a heap of terror-stricken flesh.
"But understand this," Super Perfect Nazo said, his voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried more weight than any shout. "If you ever threaten them again—if you ever so much as LOOK at them with hostile intent—I will forget my mercy. I will forget their faith in me. I will become exactly what you fear, and I will make you experience horrors that would break the minds of gods."
He leaned down until his yellow eyes were inches from Robotnik's tear-streaked face.
"Do. You. Understand?"
Robotnik nodded frantically, unable to form words.
"Good." Super Perfect Nazo straightened. "Now. You're going to shut down your factories. You're going to release every roboticized prisoner in your facilities. You're going to dismantle your war machine piece by piece."
"I—I can't—the systems are designed to—"
"I don't care about your excuses. You have one week. After that, I'll return. And if I find that you've failed to comply..."
He didn't finish the threat. He didn't need to.
"One week," Robotnik repeated weakly. "Yes. One week. I'll do it. I'll do everything you say."
"See that you do."
Super Perfect Nazo turned away from the broken dictator and walked toward the four women who waited for him. As he approached, the darkness around him began to recede. The black rings faded from his wrists and ankles. The terrible pressure of his presence slowly lifted.
By the time he reached them, he was Perfect Nazo again—still crimson, still changed, but no longer the reality-warping horror he had been moments before.
"Are you all okay?" he asked, and there was genuine concern in his voice despite its altered timbre.
Sally was the first to move. She stepped forward, reached up, and cupped his face in her hands.
"We're fine," she said softly. "Thanks to you."
"I'm sorry." The words came out rough, as if dragged from somewhere deep inside him. "I'm sorry you had to see that. The things I said, the power I used—that's not who I want to be."
"Sugah, you just saved our lives," Bunnie said, moving to stand beside Sally. "You don't gotta apologize for anything."
"She's right," Rouge added, joining them. "If anything, that display was... impressive. Terrifying, yes, but impressive."
"You were amazing," Amy said, completing the circle. "Like something out of a dream."
Nazo—for he was becoming Nazo again, the crimson fading to silver, the yellow eyes returning to green—looked at each of them in turn. They weren't afraid. They weren't disgusted. They weren't backing away from the monster he could become.
They were moving closer.
"I don't understand," he admitted. "How can you look at what I just did—what I just became—and not be horrified?"
"Because we know you," Sally said simply. "We know that no matter how dark you become, you'll always find your way back. You'll always choose to be good."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because you love us." Sally smiled, and there was such warmth in her expression that Nazo felt something crack inside his chest. "And we love you. That's not something the darkness can take away."
The transformation completed. Silver fur, green eyes, gentle demeanor—Nazo stood before them as himself again, the ordinary version of an extraordinary being.
"You... love me?"
"Yes, you idiot," Rouge said fondly. "That's what we've been trying to tell you for days."
"All of us," Bunnie confirmed.
"Obviously," Amy added with a roll of her eyes.
Nazo looked at them—at these four incredible women who had somehow decided that a two-week-old chaos entity was worthy of their affection. He still didn't fully understand it. He probably never would.
But for the first time since his rebirth, he stopped trying to understand and simply accepted.
"I love you too," he said quietly. "All of you. I don't know how that's possible or what it means, but I do."
Sally's smile widened. "Then let's go home and figure it out together."
Behind them, Robotnik watched the group depart through his shattered throne room. His body ached, his pride was in tatters, and his carefully constructed plans lay in ruins around him.
But his mind was already working.
One week, he thought as the Freedom Fighters disappeared from view. One week to comply with his demands. Or...
Or one week to find a way to destroy him.
Because Robotnik was many things—cruel, megalomaniacal, utterly without conscience—but he was not a man who accepted defeat gracefully. The humiliation he had suffered today would not go unavenged.
He just needed to find the right weapon.
And somewhere in the vast multiverse, he knew, such a weapon existed.
He just had to find it.
The journey back to Knothole was subdued.
Sonic and Shadow had arrived at Robotropolis just as the group was leaving, having raced to provide backup only to find that backup was entirely unnecessary. Their expressions upon seeing the devastation Nazo had wrought—the destroyed defenses, the dismantled robot army, the literal crater where half the city's manufacturing district had once stood—spoke volumes about their reassessment of their new ally's capabilities.
"Remind me never to make you angry," Sonic said as they flew back toward the Great Forest.
"I'd rather not be reminded of today at all," Nazo replied quietly.
Shadow, surprisingly, offered a grunt of what might have been approval. "You showed restraint at the end. That's more than most would have managed."
"It didn't feel like restraint. It felt like barely controlled chaos."
"Welcome to having power," Shadow said. "It never gets easier. You just get better at managing it."
They landed in Knothole to cheers and celebrations. Word had spread quickly about the rescue and the destruction of Robotropolis's military capability. For the first time in years, the citizens of the hidden village felt hope that the war against Robotnik might actually be winnable.
Nazo accepted their gratitude with awkward grace, uncomfortable with being treated as a hero when he still felt like a monster who had nearly lost control.
But the four women never left his side.
Sally held his hand as they walked through the village. Rouge stayed close enough that their shoulders brushed with every step. Bunnie offered words of encouragement whenever his expression darkened. Amy chattered happily about nothing and everything, filling the silence with her irrepressible energy.
They were his anchors. His light. The reason he had found his way back from the edge of absolute darkness.
And somehow, impossibly, they loved him.
That night, after the celebrations had wound down and the village had settled into peaceful sleep, Nazo found himself sitting on a hill overlooking Knothole.
The stars wheeled overhead, unfamiliar constellations that reminded him how far he was from the world where he'd been born. Marcus Chen had died in a flash of lightning, and Nazo had risen from his ashes—a being of chaos and power, thrust into a universe he'd only known through stories.
"Mind if we join you?"
He turned to find all four of them approaching—Sally in a casual outfit rather than her usual mission gear, Rouge without her spy's accessories, Bunnie with her mechanical parts gleaming softly in the starlight, Amy in a nightgown she'd apparently deemed appropriate for late-night conversations.
"Please," he said, gesturing to the grass beside him.
They settled around him, forming a loose circle with Nazo at its center. For a long moment, no one spoke—they simply sat together, watching the stars and breathing the cool night air.
"So," Sally finally said, breaking the comfortable silence. "We should probably talk about... everything."
"Yeah," Rouge agreed. "Specifically the part where we all confessed our love for you and you said it back."
"That part," Bunnie confirmed.
"The really important part," Amy added.
Nazo felt heat rise to his cheeks—an odd sensation for a being made of chaos energy. "I meant what I said. I do love you. All of you. But I don't... I don't know what that means. In practical terms."
"Neither do we, honestly," Sally admitted. "This isn't exactly a conventional situation."
"Four women, one chaos god," Rouge said with a smirk. "Definitely not in any etiquette book I've read."
"But we talked about it," Bunnie said. "While you were recoverin' from the Downunda mission. We figured out that none of us were willin' to give you up, and fightin' over you wasn't makin' anyone happy."
"So we decided to try something different," Amy continued. "Something... unconventional."
Nazo looked at each of them in turn, seeing the sincerity in their expressions. "You mean... all of you? Together?"
"If you're open to it," Sally said carefully. "We know it's not traditional. We know there will be challenges. But we'd rather share you than lose you entirely."
"And we've already proven we can work together when it matters," Rouge added. "The whole being-captured-and-rescued-from-a-madman thing was actually pretty good team-building."
"There's nothin' traditional about any of us," Bunnie pointed out. "Ah'm half-robot, Rouge is a spy, Amy's... Amy, and Sally's a princess leading a rebellion. Why would our relationship be any different?"
"Plus, you're a two-week-old chaos entity who can destroy cities when he's upset," Amy said cheerfully. "Normal was never really on the table."
Nazo was silent for a long moment, processing this proposal. It went against everything he'd absorbed from his old life about how relationships were supposed to work. It was complicated, unconventional, potentially messy.
But then again, so was he.
"I don't know if I can be what you all need," he said finally. "I'm still figuring out who I am, what I'm capable of. Today I almost became something terrible. Tomorrow could be even worse."
"We know," Sally said softly. "And we're willing to take that risk."
"We believe in you," Rouge added. "Even the dark parts."
"Especially the dark parts," Bunnie said. "Those are the parts that need the most love."
"And we have plenty of love to give," Amy finished.
They moved closer, closing the circle around him until they were all touching—a hand on his shoulder, fingers intertwined with his, a head resting against his arm. The warmth of their presence surrounded him, driving back the lingering darkness that still whispered in the corners of his consciousness.
"Okay," Nazo said quietly. "Let's try this. Together."
Sally squeezed his hand. "Together."
"Together," Rouge echoed.
"Together," Bunnie agreed.
"Together forever!" Amy exclaimed, because she couldn't help herself.
They sat there on the hilltop as the stars wheeled overhead, five figures silhouetted against the night sky. Tomorrow would bring new challenges—Robotnik's deadline, the threats still looming on the horizon, the everyday complications of trying to build a relationship with four very different women.
But for now, in this moment, Nazo allowed himself to simply be happy.
It was, he realized, the first time he'd felt truly happy since his death.
Maybe even before it.
Across the dimensional void, something stirred.
It had been watching. Waiting. Calculating.
The emergence of Nazo had drawn its attention—a new chaos signature unlike anything the multiverse had seen before. And now that signature had evolved, transcended, become something even more powerful.
Something that might finally be worthy of its attention.
The entity that existed between dimensions—ancient beyond measure, vast beyond comprehension—made a decision.
It was time to introduce itself to this new player.
It was time to see if Nazo could survive what was coming.
And if not... well, the multiverse would simply continue as it always had.
Consuming. Destroying. Perfecting.
The darkness began to move toward Mobius Prime.
And even Super Perfect Nazo, in all his terrible glory, might not be enough to stop what was approaching.