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It had been dealt with.
Eggman's "perfect city" was destroyed and the day was saved.
She should be out with her friends and team, celebrating their victory! But here Tangle was, sitting on a couch in the restoration lounge alone.
She couldn't understand what she was feeling, but she had felt it since she and her friends got back. It just kept nagging and nagging her in the back of her head even though she had no idea what it was supposed to be! It was so frustrating!
Calming herself down, Tangle decided to think over everything that had happened in the city to see if she could find its source.
She thought about the aftermath of her team name suggestion; while she did feel bad about it, it wasn't as bad as what she was feeling presently.
She remembered the conversation she had with Whisper and Lanolin after falling through that portal and that wasn't it either, she felt more relieved than anything else.
Tangle then looked back at the moment that she and her team got into the tower Eggman was hiding in.
Her train of thought began to slow down as she remembered them all becoming visible, remembered the dimension traps the doctor made.
The moment Whisper got caught in one of the traps, making Tangle think that she had....
knock! knock! knock!
Tangle jumped a bit at the sudden noise before turning her head left to set her eyes on Whisper, standing in the doorway having just knocked on one of it's legs.
"Oh! Uh-hi Whisper!" Tangle greeted, hastily waving her hand. "What are you doing here?"
"Been looking for you." Whisper answered before taking a few steps into the room. "Is it alright if I sit with you?"
"Oh yeah, go ahead!" Tangle announced before scooching over to make room for the wolf.
Once Whisper was sat with Tangle, the lemur went back to thinking about that moment in the tower, the feeling she was experiencing before return after a brief absence when Whisper showed up.
This deep thinking didn't go unnoticed however, as Whisper saw Tangle stare absently at the ground, frown and sad expression on her face.
"Is there something you want to talk about?" Whisper questioned, snapping Tangle out of her trance again as the lemur turned to face the wolf. "You look like you have something on your mind." Whisper continued.
Tangle let out a nervous "uummm" while placing her hand on her left shoulder, specifically where her shoulder and head met.
"Can I.....ask you a... semi-personal question?" Tangle requested. Whisper simply nodded in reply.
"You don't have to answer if you don't want to!" The lemur clarified while adjusting her arms to be in front of her.
The wolf, again, simply replied "I know.".
Tangle pulled her legs up onto the couch cushion, wrapping her arms around them, before taking a deep breath.
"What did it feel like...when you found out I was infected during the metal virus?"
Whisper stood in shock of the question for a second before looking at her hands, resting in her lap.
Whisper stared down at her hands for a short while before she opened her eyelids, revealing the cadet blue sapphires that hid inside. The wolf showed grimace on her face as she forced herself to recollect the events of that moment.
"It felt like...like someone ripped my heart out of my chest." Whisper finally answered. "Like I was experiencing every pain I had felt before all at once, as if I lost a part of myself in that moment." The wolf finished.
"Why do you ask?" Whisper inquired in turn.
Tangle thought over the answer she had been given, thought of the emotions she felt in the tower alongside it.
Whisper watched Tangle thinking over her question, before the lemur closed her eyes.
"I've been feeling something ever since we left the city, something I couldn't put into words."
"But hearing how you describe the pain you felt..." Tangle continued as she started to tremble, Whisper easily taking notice.
The wolf then watched as Tangle turned to face her, tears starting to fall down her face.
"You just perfectly described what I felt when I thought you died." Tangle was able to finish before starting to break down in tears.
Whisper leaned over to try and hug Tangle, to which Tangle strongly accepted as she wrapped her arms around the wolf's torso.
Whisper sat in shock for a second before returning the hug as she heard Tangle weeping into the wolf as she felt all the emotions she didn't let herself process until now.
Whisper kept on a stoic face even as sh felt tears of her own fall silently down her cheek. To this wolf, pain was an old acquaintance.
Tangle, on the other hand, was asking herself multiple questions as she unleashed this pain she had been feeling.
Why is this happening to her? Why is it happening to her friends? What did they do to deserve this? What did she do?
The lemur searched through so many of her memories trying to find an answer to her questionsz but found something else instead.
She found a reoccurring theme in the times she had felt this type of pain before. She remembered that someone was the cause behind them.
Someone went on a planetwide war with them in an attempt to take it over.
Someone created the metal virus and decided on a world that was still recovering from the previously mentioned war.
Someone made those dimension traps with the intent for them to kill their enemies.
As Tangle processed these conclusions, she could feel the pain and ache she had felt dissipate and be replaced with something else.
This feeling gave her the sense that she had a fire inside of her and it caused her muscles to become tense.
Tangle had now stopped crying as she opened her eyes, tears still hanging on to them.
The lemur looked on in front of her as her brow furrowed deeply; now, the pain was no longer pain.
The pain she had been given had now been converted into hatred.
A deep, seething, indomitable hatred for him.