My Brother's Keeper - re:TUNED

by jljj1996

After a botched attempt at Chaos Control separated him from his younger brother, Josh now faces the daunting task of hunting down the Chaos Emeralds in order to reunite with him. It won't be easy, as Dr. Eggman has his sights set on the Emeralds for his own nefarious purposes. It's a race against time as Josh, along with some familiar allies, rushes to reunite with his brother.

1. Author's Note

Author's Note:

Hello there! Thank you so much for showing interest in my little fanfiction! Before we get started, I just wanted to include a little forward and give you some background information on what you're about to read. I wanted to talk about why I made it, what it means to me, and why it's "re:TUNED." If you're new to my work, especially to My Brother's Keeper, please read this. And if you've read My Brother's Keeper before, keep reading, I have some stuff for you too!

So, let's go back 7 years to 2012. My Brother's Keeper, the original one, was self-insert fanfiction I was writing for me and my brother. It was pretty typical fare for FanFiction at the time, full of pretty much every trope and cliche you could think: Orphans, main characters with powers (sort of), self-insert character getting adopted by the main canon character, emotional singing, and more edginess than a Hot Topic store had before it started pandering to geek culture. It was, to put it lightly, stereotypical teenage trash. And I loved every moment of it. I was feeling pretty lonely during those days, so imagining I had this cool "big brother" that also just happened to be a person I really admired and looked up to helped me get through a lot of hard moments during that time. It was probably the first time I seriously sat down and wrote something lengthy that I actually put value into. Not going to lie, it was a little all over the place, with hallucinogenic circuses, obstacle course hoverboarding, and a killer roller coaster that I basically just ripped from an actual theme park in the U.K.

And then I stopped. I abandoned it. I don't know, I guess I felt like I was getting too old, or too busy, but I stopped. And for a while, I had just planned on leaving it uncompleted. I forgot about it.

But then I started to want to write again. I started to come up with an original story, and I decided I wanted to write professionally. Maybe even make it my career somehow! But somewhere in the back of my mind, I kept going back to one thing… My Brother's Keeper, rotting away in FanFiction purgatory. I thought, man, I LOVED working on that, and then I just… gave up on it. If I didn't complete that, what chance did I have of completing something a completely original work of fiction, one that will probably take more work to write, not to mention get published?

So at that point, I resolved that, before I would write my new book, I had to finish off My Brother's Keeper, or at least show myself that I was making progress towards finishing it, and would finish it. I logged back into FanFiction and began to read back through what I had written a few years back, ready to remember where I was, what I was doing, where I was going, and get writing once again.

I quickly became aware of two problems…

1) My writing was such a mess, I didn't remember where I was going to go with the plot, and I didn't know how to continue.

2) I had written basically a steaming pile of poop. It was a beloved steaming pile of poop, I loved reading through it, it reminded me of a simpler time and gave me some warm fuzzies... but it still a steaming pile of poop.

So, there was really only one thing to do... start over from scratch. For a little while, I started trying to think up an entirely new story, one where Sonic was on Earth, Josh and Jake were pretty normal kids, and it was set in the future, in a world teetering on the brink of war with the Egg regime.

But I still liked the basic story. The story itself wasn't bad, it was poorly written and leaned pretty heavily on tropes when I definitely could have backed off a bit. Plus, the whole dystopian future thing has been done to death here, and it just wasn't my style. The story didn't need to be thrown out, it just needed a bit of retuning (re:TUNING maybe? Eh?) to make it better. Plus, when I thought about it, there have been lots of successful stories where the main character is an orphan, they discover they have secret powers, and they get taken in by a fatherly/brotherly figure in their lives, plus plenty of emotional moments sprinkled throughout (Did I just describe Harry Potter? I just described Harry Potter!). In fact, even self-insert, which is normally considered fairly cringy, can be done fantastically, even becoming adored (Luke Skywalker is literally George Lucas).

So dear reader, that's my challenge. I have to turn cringey Jr. High writing into something that I wouldn't be totally embarrassed publishing, not that I can or will. And, from what I've come up with thus far, I'd say I'm doing pretty alright! But you, the reader are the ultimate judge. And I really, really do hope you like this, and will maybe inspire you, if you aren't already, to write your own fiction, no matter what the idea is!

Now, for all you first-time readers who are just discovering Jacob and Josh's story, just a few quick notes. I wanted to take my time, especially at the beginning (If you go read the original My Brother's Keeper, you'll understand why), so Sonic and Friends don't show up for a chapter or two. I promise, keep reading until roughly chapter 5, that's when the story really starts to get into the swing of things. If you have any suggestions for future chapters, feel free to leave a review or send me a PM to let me know, I'll definitely take it into consideration! And if you're wondering around which game or TV show or comic this takes place... it doesn't. In fact, I consider this universe to be totally separate from the main series. Some things will be different than how SEGA/Archie/whoever has established. Characters might act a bit different, places might look different, you might see people from totally different universes interacting, the bottom line is I ask that you keep an open mind. I do my best to do research on the people and places so I don't stray too far from, at least, the spirit of the thing, but I might twist or bend the facts sometimes in order to make a more interesting world (to me) or for plot purposes. Please, enjoy!

For you "veterans," those who read the original, if there are any... first of all, welcome back! I'm flattered you've stuck around for so long! I hope you enjoy reading this new take as much as I'm enjoying writing it! Just a heads up though, this isn't just My Brother's Keeper with a shinier coat of paint. I've changed a few things, from Josh and Jake's background info to entire sections of the story... there's going to be some twists and turns that I hope will make this second ride through just as fun and interesting as the first one. So, welcome back, and get ready to dive back into the world of My Brother's Keeper.