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Sonic World

This is the universe of Sonic the hedgehog, his friends and his enemies.

Setting and premise

The setting is a post-apocalyptic era of villages of small straw huts tucked away in great dark forests amid the overgrown ruins of formerly great cities. Only one city still exists, and that is the super-metropolis that was once called Seattle but is now known as Motor City. Therein dwells the mad, tyrannical Doctor Eggman, the man responsible for the apocalypse. The people of Earth have been turned into his robot slaves, their wills overridden. Only a lucky few escaped, and they formed a resistance group, the Freedom Fighters. The group that remained in this area set up a small village at the heart of the biggest forest there is, a village they call Knothole. Other groups exist worldwide, hidden away in the wilderness at varying locations.

Knothole

Knothole is built in the great redwood forests of the American Northwest, the forest that surrounds Motor City on all sides for miles around. The winters can be brutal, but the great trees shelter them from the worst of it. The Freedom Fighters forage for fruits, nuts and berries, and they also go fishing. Small gardens are also the norm at every house, but the community garden is by far the largest. They store food for winter and supplement that store with whatever can be found. Only during the hardest of times do they hunt birds, mice and other small game, and they avoid it when they can.

The Freedom Fighters

Sonic—He leads the group on missions. Being the fastest thing alive, he can often be found running to and fro for no readily apparent reason. The leader of the Freedom Fighters, Sonic's childhood friend Sally Acorn, often sends him on solo scouting missions. A typical teenager in all but chronological age, he tends to be happy and carefree, a bit forgetful and apt to crack stupid jokes. But all that changes in a battle situation. In battle, he's as deadly as deadly can get. Focused, determined, relentless and unforgiving, he's truly a force to be feared. He's worked up to an amiable relationship with Shadow, the genetically altered clone of him created by Doctor Eggman's grandfather Gerald. They're still rivals, but their rivalry has evolved from hatred to a good-natured game. Contrarily, his rivalry with Metal Sonic, the robotic double created by Doctor Eggman himself, contains much hate. The nine-year-old fox named Miles Prower, better known to all as Tails, considers him a cross between a father, a brother and a best friend. His perennial partner is Knuckles, the echidna. The pink hedgehog known as Amy used to annoy him constantly, but now she's calmed down considerably. A deep blue hue, he has a large white patch on his stomach and chin, and his eyes are as deep and pure a green as Shadow's Chaos Emerald.

Tails—He's a typical kid, save for the fact that he's a fox with two tails. He flies by twirling them round and round. Aside from that, he's a genius. He puts his technological aptitude to the test in the fight against Doctor Eggman, building weapons or just fixing stuff. Having been orphaned at a very early age, during Doctor Eggman's initial takeover, he's sort of adopted the Freedom Fighters as the family he's never known. He's the only one not scared of Metal Sonic. He remembers the unexpected kindness the robotic doppelganger had shown him. No one else knows that the two have ever crossed paths outside of battle, save for Metal Sonic himself. They are aware that Metal Sonic has never actually gone for Tails, but they assume that it's because Tails isn't a major threat like Sonic and the rest. Tails still dreams about Metal Sonic and his uncharacteristic kindness, but those dreams are very rare nowadays, seeing as it was so long ago. Bright and cheerful, innocent and inquisitive like the child he is, he always seems to put a little bit of happiness into everyone's day. Amy hangs around with him sometimes, since their sunny attitudes are similar to each other. He is light brown, with a white stomach and chin, and white tips on both his tails. His big bright eyes are a baby blue color that only increases his already considerable innate cuteness.

Knuckles—He calls the mystical Angel Island home, but lately he's been hanging around with the Freedom Fighters. Guardian of the Master Emerald, he's the serious, practical sort. At times concerned with things such as celestial signs and portents, he doesn't think much of technology. A superb treasure hunter, he always seems to be the one picked for espionage missions and break-ins and other things of that sort. He's the last echidna on the planet since the race of mystics and oracles mysteriously vanished from their secret haunts when he was very young. Angel Island used to be their home, but now Knuckles lives alone. Incredibly lonely, he feels that his life would turn around completely if he found even one other echidna out there in the world. He guards the power of the Master Emerald from those who would abuse it, but lately he's wondered whether his duty is really necessary anymore. The seven Chaos Crystals have been scattered all over the world, their power broken. The Master Emerald controls the power of the Chaos Crystals, but now there is no power for it to control. Does the Master Emerald even need its guardian nowadays? He secretly likes Sally and Amy just annoys him. He is red, with Jamaican dreadlocks and a white crescent-shaped patch on his chest. He also sports a pair of sunglasses and often tries to look cool. His deep indigo eyes give the impression of great wisdom and spiritual serenity.

Shadow—A pensive, even morose loner, he is Sonic's polar opposite in almost all things. He uses the Chaos Emerald to warp and distort the fabric of space and time, a unique power he calls Chaos Control. Sonic can do it too, but not nearly as well as he can. Always on his mind is the long-deceased Maria, his first and only friend. What Sonic is to Tails, she was to him. Tails is kind of afraid of him and that's the way he likes it, even though deep down he likes the kid. Tails reminds him of the way he'd once been. He knows from the tales Maria had once told him of his earliest childhood that he'd been a spunky little ray of sunshine just like Tails. His most precious possession is a photograph of himself and Maria together. He had initially wanted to destroy the world to get revenge in Maria's name, thinking that had been her last request, but he soon realized that such was not the case. She hadn't asked him to destroy the world; she had asked him to protect it. Once he realized this, he hooked up with Sonic to do just that. Even despite his great efforts to come to terms with his past, he still has violent nightmares about Maria's death and sometimes awakens screaming her name. Amy's sweet, cheerful innocence reminds him of Maria, and he's protective of her for that reason. She's like Maria all over again for him, and this time he won't fail in his mission to protect her. He is a dark black with streaks of deep red, with a smallish tuft of pure white on his chest. His eyes are a warm red hue that would look evil but for the gentleness and pain visible in them.

Amy Rose—She's completely hyperactive, and she used to be totally nuts about Sonic. Now she's best pals with Tails, since they're actually a lot alike. She's the one who got Shadow to remember the truth about the promise he'd made to Maria. He'd initially scared her with his antisocial tendencies, but she soon saw through his gruff veneer to the hurt soul hidden beneath it. Not nearly as fast as Sonic or even Tails or Knuckles, she makes up for her shortcomings by wielding a large pink mallet as her primary weapon. She's colored hot neon pink with big blue eyes and she wears a short red skirt.

Sally Acorn—Her father was the king before he was banished to another dimension. She leads the Freedom Fighters in hopes of freeing him. She and Sonic have known each other since early childhood. Tails is all but a son to her, but she's still a little leery of Shadow. Knuckles, however, is a kindred spirit to her. She is a brown and plain squirrel with nothing remarkable about her appearance.

Bunny—Her name describes what she is. She's a rabbit. She's partially cybernetic and has been since she was captured and Doctor Eggman managed to partially turn her into a robot. She retains her free will, and has gained enhanced strength and speed from the change, along with innate resilience. A quiet, calm soul, she sometimes jokes when the going gets tough. But she's mostly serious.

The loose cannons

Metal Sonic—He was named for his appearance: he looks like a metal Sonic. This robotic duplicate of Sonic was created by Doctor Eggman to destroy the Freedom Fighters, but thus far he has failed. Lately Doctor Eggman has gotten impatient with him, being sick of his failure. He's given his creation one last chance, and Metal Sonic knows it. He must destroy Sonic and the Freedom Fighters or be destroyed himself. So his mission has evolved from a vendetta to a matter of survival. He hates Sonic with a passion, hates all of them, but not Tails. If he got the chance, he knows he would spare Tails. Doctor Eggman engineered a control mechanism into him to insure his obedience. He cannot fully repair himself on his own, lacking the proper tools and knowledge of how to do it. Necessity has taught him some rudimentary skills, allowing him to improvise in order to patch himself up a little and make a few temporary repairs, but that's all. He is programmed to feel only a few emotions: fear, anger, hate, curiosity and want. Doctor Eggman has promised to give him the ability to feel other emotions if he succeeds in destroying the Freedom Fighters. Doctor Eggman has also promised to give him the sense of touch, along with the ability to smell things. But it is doubtful that he will keep his word to his creation, what with the way he scraps his lesser creations when they have fulfilled the set purpose he initially created them for. He has seen Maria's stasis chamber and knows that she has some connection to Shadow, although he doesn't have any idea what it is. Seeking to learn from her and ascertain the condition of her sleeping mind, he has tapped into her brainwaves and discovered many things. Images and sounds discovered in her mind puzzled him. Baby Shadow, lullabies… These intrigued him and he recorded them in his memory files for later analysis. He is a deep metallic blue and his eyes are neon red. His hands are yellow and silver, with lethal metal claws. A turbine set in his chest acts like a built-in jetpack, allowing him to travel as fast as Sonic. In conjunction with his heel jets, it also allows him to fly.

Maria—She is Doctor Eggman's secret trump card, to be played against Shadow. A young, frail, crippled child, she spent her entire life in space. He believes that she died many years ago during an assault on Space Colony ARK, but she actually survived the attempt on her life. Having lost her grandfather, her home, Shadow and everything she ever knew and cared about, she cracked under the pressure, descending into madness and becoming intensely self-destructive and suicidal. She was cryogenically frozen as a last resort all of three months after her supposed death, to be thawed when a cure for her mental problems was found. Somehow her stasis chamber found its way into Doctor Eggman's clutches. So she sleeps on, deep in the heart of Motor City. She still wears the sky blue dress she was wearing when she last saw Shadow, and tucked away in her pocket is a very old photograph of herself and Shadow. In the stasis chamber her body sleeps but her mind is caught in dreams of the past. Every moment she relives Shadow's birth, babyhood and childhood, along with the time she lost everything. She relives her valiant attempt to get Shadow to safety at the seeming cost of her own life, looks on his frightened expression and hears his anguished cries, and feels the pain of the gunshot wound that had come so close to taking her life. That wound still exists, since it had no time to heal. The many beautiful songs she'd sung for him as he'd grown up still haunt her. The memory brings only pain now.

The Chaos Crystals

The Chaos Emerald is in the possession of Shadow, while the Chaos Topaz is being used as a power source for the machines Tails uses in his workshop. The Chaos Sapphire is unaccounted for, as is the Chaos Diamond and the Chaos Amethyst. Doctor Eggman possesses the Chaos Onyx and is using it as a power source. Knuckles himself has the Chaos Ruby and is trying to learn how to use it.

Maria's photograph

The photograph Maria carries is very old. It is of a much younger version of herself with baby Shadow. She is depicted standing before a huge window with a happy smile. A toddler version of Shadow stands beside her, so tiny he has to reach way up to hold her hand. He's sucking his thumb in typical toddler fashion and holding a ratty blue blanket looped over his little arm, and he is also staring at the camera in a quizzical 'what's that' way. He has a cloth diaper on his little butt, for decency's sake rather than any biological necessity, but other than that he's barefoot and buck naked as the day he was born. His big bright eyes are full of innocent, childish sweetness and his great love for Maria is almost visible in them. A few small toys lie on the floor around them. There is a small toy car, a few blocks and a stuffed animal. All the toys look like they were well loved.

Maria's Song / Shadow's Lullaby

Long before the destruction of everything she knew and loved, Maria had been the infant Shadow's caretaker. She fed him, played with him and generally been a mom to him. At night, when it was bedtime, she held the little one in her arms and sang to him. Sometimes she would actually sing and sometimes she would just hum. The song he loved most was a series of nonsense words strung together to a stirring tune, but it was beautiful to him. She loved the song too, and sang it to herself when she was sad. Little Shadow had loved that song so much. Now, with Maria gone, remembering that song only brings Shadow pain and reminds him of how much he misses her. What he doesn't know that Maria lives and feels the same way he does.

How Sonic found Tails

Right after Doctor Eggman's initial attack, Sonic had gone to search for survivors in the ruins of suburban Seattle. All was barren, but all of a sudden he heard the sound of crying. Forcing his way into the ruins of a small house, he found his way into a nursery. A small child, no more than a year old, sat by the charred corpses of his parents, bawling his little heart out. He picked up the little boy, a small two-tailed fox, who immediately stopped crying and clung to him as if for dear life. Looking around the ruined room, he discovered a baby picture of the child he'd just found, underwritten with the words 'Miles Prower'. He took the child along with him when he finally went and joined the Freedom Fighters. Everyone took to calling him Tails as he grew and discovered what his namesakes allowed him to do: fly. Sally all but adopted him at that point, but he and Sonic quickly became inseparable. At first he called them 'Mama Sally' and 'Daddy Sonic', along with 'Uncle Knuckles', 'Aunt Bunny', 'Aunt Amy' and 'Uncle Shadow', but soon he was just calling them by their real names. They're all rather fond of him. Even Shadow likes him, and he lets Tails study his Chaos Emerald and his Chaos Control powers. He was tricked when he first met Metal Sonic at the age of five, thinking him the real Sonic. Oddly enough, the child's love and absolute trust stirred something within the robot and Metal Sonic found that he was unable to harm little Tails. He called the robot 'Not-Daddy' at first, but soon picked up on his real name.

Tails and Metal Sonic

Tails has kept what happened between him and Metal Sonic a secret. Everybody thinks he'd been hiding from everyone. He'd wandered off and gotten lost when Metal Sonic found him. The robot's initial intent had been to use him as a hostage, but that changed over a period of several days. The way Tails sometimes clung to him when scared, they way he willingly followed the robot around, the way he was always eager to help… These stirred something unfamiliar in Metal Sonic. He kept a record of the changes in his behavior for later analysis: his reluctance to leave the child behind, how the thought of harm coming to the child made him feel an unaccustomed sense of fear, the way he tended to the child's needs. Perhaps Doctor Eggman had created him too well. He had been fashioned in the image of a hedgehog, and perhaps he had accidentally been given the instincts of a hedgehog. Anyway, he found himself finding food for the child and seeking shelter when he normally wouldn't care. Seeing Tails being sad and wanting to go home, he finally took him home. It was midnight when he swept into Knothole, Tails held in his arms, carefully navigating with only his heel jets. He found Sonic's hut and set the child down on the doorstep. Telling Tails never to divulge the secret of what had really happened, he left. After he left, Tails quietly slipped into Sonic's hut, climbed up onto his bed and quickly fell asleep there, where he was found in the morning. Tails kept his promise and never told anyone about his encounter with Metal Sonic.

The fate of the echidnas

Angel Island exists in a time warp. A cataclysmic event occurred in Knuckles' early childhood, sending the whole echidna civilization into another universe. Nobody knows if they still live. The cataclysm was spoken of in prophecy and is believed to have some link to the Chaos Crystals. It is also said in prophecy that the echidnas will return someday. There are those who believe that the Chaos Crystals were responsible for the disappearance of the echidnas. If the Chaos Crystals made them disappear, perhaps the Chaos Crystals can also bring them back

Chao: creatures of legend

These little creatures are about two feet high at most, with big dark eyes and sweet faces. Most often blue with yellow feet but also appearing in other colors as varied as the rainbow, their Heart Sphere, which they wear like a crown, shows their emotions. Irresistibly cuddly, they're like little kids, puppies and kittens all rolled into one. Their personalities differ widely, just like people. Some let only one person near them, while others just love everybody. They can swim and fly and run. They love races, they draw and sing and play musical instruments. Some can even talk a little bit. They most often dwell in a place known as Chao Garden, in an area where the energy of the Master Emerald is most concentrated. That energy is essential for Chao breeding. They can only fall in love and have babies when in this zone. Chao exist outside the zone as well, treated more like children and siblings than as pets. The Chao Garden is a secret place known only to echidnas and kept hidden, watched over by a lone echidna just like the Master Emerald. Chao are actually powerful little critters. The guardian god of all Chao is the aqueous being known as Chaos Zero. The echidna in charge of guarding the Chao Garden prays to Chaos Zero, being the only one able to contact the divine being directly under most circumstances. But if the Chao are threatened, it is said, Chaos Zero will arise to defend them, and to defend the guardian. Those who love the Chao are under the divine being's protection, meaning Chaos Zero will defend not only the Chao but them too, but those who dare to hurt Chao will receive nothing save wrath. Those who are indifferent to Chao the divine being also treats with indifference. To ancient echidnas it was bad luck when Chao gathered, for where Chao gather their guardian god is not too far away. The only place where Chao will readily gather is the Chao Garden under most circumstances, but they will also gather when threatened. But wild Chao flock to a faraway place once every year and what they do there is a mystery. Some say they go to breed. Legends say that once a year they go to pay tribute to their protector.

"At the doorway of Chao Garden

Behold me, Lord, for here I stand

Like a watchman ever vigilant,

Ever ready, staff in hand.

I love the Chao, my children all,

And I can tell you even now

From this day forth until forever,

I will always guard the Chao."

Chaos Zero: the protector of all Chao

Nobody's sure what gender Chaos Zero is, so the pronoun that is most often used in reference to the aqueous being is male. He is made of water, so nobody can be sure what he is. In the aftermath of Doctor Eggman's hostile takeover, Chaos Zero sought to protect the Chao by sealing them, the Chao Garden, the echidna guardian and himself in the Master Emerald. He normally is part of the Master Emerald, so sealing himself away in the gem was nothing new. But also sealing away the Chao, the Chao Garden and the guardian as well was something never seen before. He is called Chaos Zero because exposure to a Chaos Crystal will induce a temporary evolution. After the first exposure he evolves from Chaos Zero, his basic form, to his level one form and becomes Chaos One. If he is exposed to a second Chaos Crystal he evolves into his level two form and is then known as Chaos Two. It goes on in that way, through Chaos Three, Chaos Four, Chaos Five and Chaos Six. If he is exposed to all seven Chaos Crystals, he will reach his ultimate form, which should logically be called Chaos Seven but is better known to all as Perfect Chaos. If the Chaos Crystals are then removed from the general vicinity, he will eventually revert to his basic form after a set amount of time. The nature of Chaos Zero's connection to the Chaos Crystals is such that said exposure puts him into an altered state of consciousness, thereby bypassing his normal behavioral patterns and turning him into a crazed engine of destruction. Being made of water, he has the ability to diffuse at will, melting into any available body of water and incorporating said water into his being whenever he darn well pleases. Technically being a liquid, he can get out of anything. No vessel can contain him and no barrier can stop him, and he can use the smallest leak to go wherever he wants. Plus he can handle whatever's thrown at him with no problem for that same reason. And he can control all water. Unlike water, he's invulnerable to heat, meaning boiling him is not an option. Whether or not the reverse is possible is unknown. Can he be frozen? Nobody knows. Of course, being a fluid has its disadvantages as well. Size (volume?) is linked to strength, meaning the larger he is the stronger he is. But said fluid can be removed in varying ways (if you have to weaken any evolution up to and including Perfect Chaos you had better be pretty dang thirsty or have a very large sponge on hand). He likes the Chao, people who love Chao and the guardian, but that's about it. He cannot speak, for he lacks the proper equipment (i.e. a mouth) to do so. He can make varying watery sounds and Perfect Chaos has an earthshaking roar, but other than that he cannot communicate with others. Under certain conditions it is possible for dark forces to take control of him, but such is limited by his very nature to either energy draining or intentionally forced evolution. In matters of intentionally forced evolution, he'll only resist the first time. The level one transformation unlocks a different personality within him, one that is insanely destructive yet obedient to whoever exposed him to the first Chaos Crystal and he also wants to achieve the ultimate form. It can be summed up as follows: Chaos Zero does not want to evolve into Perfect Chaos and destroy everything up to and including the proverbial kitchen sink, but Chaos One does. But if he succeeds and becomes Perfect Chaos all bets are off because he listens to no one in that form, preferring to deal arbitrary death and destruction to anyone and anything within range.