DEATH'S HAND ARRESTED
A Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction by LazerTH
Author's note:
When I began writing Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction in 2001 I never thought I'd publish nine stories. With the help of Wingless Rain and others, I have enjoyed creating my own version of Mobius over the years. Here at last is the tenth story, continuing the adventures of Lazer and his family.
Disclaimers:
Sonic, Tails, etc. belong to Sega. Lazer, Rebecca, etc. are mine. The Harlequin belongs to Wingless Rain.
888
The universe is a lot larger and stranger than you think. For every choice there is a consequence. Each choice leaves behind unchosen ones, which create their own timelines. As a planet moving through time, Mobius is a fourth-dimensional object, so it leaves behind three-dimensional shadows while it slowly orbits its star.
A long time ago, there was a cosmic entity who was faced with a choice. One of the choices created a timeline where Chaos Emeralds were never united in the seven Super Emeralds. As such, thousands if not millions of these lesser Chaos Emeralds existed in the air, land and seas of the little blue planet. The Master Emerald was still housed within Angel Island, keeping it aloft, and Knuckles the Echidna had sold the seven Super Emeralds to purchase the entire airborne country.
While Knuckles enjoyed the best real estate in the skies above Mobius, on the ground below there was perpetual war in Mercia between the humans and non-humans; the latter faction identifying itself with fur, scales, claws, wings, horns, or tails. Their warfare was centred on the Emerald Lake; a vast green body of water whose glittering depths held a seemingly inexhaustible supply of lesser Chaos Emeralds and Power Rings.
Tails flew the Tornado above Mercia and through the clouds. They were smoky, ashen clouds polluted by the fog of war below. He had gambled with this shortcut because he was delivering a package to Princess Sally. This particular cargo could not wait the extra hours it would take to avoid the warzone. He was flying way above conventional service ceilings, and he didn't have a pressurised cabin or oxygen because such trifles never bothered him.
The magnetic repulsor shield was doing a good job repelling the antiaircraft rounds, which zinged harmlessly away from his beloved red and yellow biplane. He was, however, having problems with the flurry of surface-to-air missiles that both warring sides had fired at him. They were terribly clumsy things - Tails had designed better ones as a toddler - but nonetheless they had locked onto the heat signature from Tornado's afterburners.
"That's bad!" he yelled, but the missiles didn't care for his feelings and continued following. He released chaff but only four-fifths of the missiles were diverted. The other one-fifth could still kill him and, worse yet, harm his favourite plane.
"They sure are throwing numbers at this problem," Tails grumbled with the sinking feeling that no matter how brilliant his defenses, an almost unlimited number of fools were firing at him from below. Why weren't they killing each other? Were they on lunch break? In a last desperate bid, Tails overcharged the afterburners which superheated the air in his wake. The missiles couldn't handle this (clumsy things) and exploded. The repulsor shield dealt with the shrapnel, but the shockwave compounded the strain to damage the Tornado's engines, forcing Tails to execute an ungraceful crashlanding in the middle of a Mercia road. The plane butted cars and trucks out of the way while skidding to a halt. Neither plane nor pilot had been destroyed because he had built the Tornado to be tougher than a freight train.
"Repairs!" Tails shouted, grabbing his toolkit and somersaulting onto one of the smoking, wheezing engine blocks.
He was interrupted, however, by a nest of guns swarming into the street.
"Humans," Tails groaned. They were, on average, between five and six feet tall while Tails barely cleared three feet (he had grown taller during the long war). As such, their human-sized weapons would not put neat little holes in him; they'd burst him to pieces. The non-humans would have at least listened to him before shooting. The humans would do it in the opposite order.
"He's one of ours!" a hidden voice yelled. "Attack!"
Non-human ears and horns poked out of nearby buildings to open fire on the human aggressors, who returned the gesture in kind. At last, both sides were ignoring him! He was caught in the crossfire, though, so he plunked back into the cockpit and covered his ears while automatic gunfire pinged harmlessly off the Tornado's super strong metal frame.
There was sudden, startling silence. Tails perked his ears up, then slowly the rest of his body followed.
The gunfight was still going on. The bullets were flying through the air, but so slowly that Tails could follow their trajectory without moving his head. The combatants were likewise slowed down. There was a new figure dressed in an immaculate white and black suit standing in the middle of the street, in the curious twilight between the chaos and madness of war. A single, glowing eye peered at Tails through his black and white mask. His elegant black gloves had just finished tracing a shining blue X in the air.
"Fake," the mysterious figure spoke the rune word.
"Harlequin!" Tails shouted, then slapped both paws over his mouth. He had met this enigmatic figure long ago, when he was but a wee cub and Robotnik had yet to make his move against King Acorn. The Harlequin had helped Tails survive a nasty plot against the tiny fox's life.
"He is here," the Harlequin said with a soft voice. His words filled the earth and sky, giving Tails the unsettling feeling of vertigo.
He remembered his cargo and brought it out. The metal box was terribly cold to the touch because its contents pulsed with an entropic aura. "This is just a soil sample, but it's deader than dead. It is unlife."
"Go. Warn them," he commanded. Though his words were just on the edge of hearing, Tails felt he could fall into them and never hit the bottom.
Shaking himself violently, Tails set about repairing the engines. Now and then he batted away a slow-motion bullet or grenade shrapnel. The Harlequin and his X-shaped rune kept watch, unmoving, unblinking. Eventually Tails got the engines started.
"Thanks. You saved my life again," he said with fervent praise.
"If you want me, look to my tree on my hill," Harlequin said by way of farewell. He waited until Tornado passed the outskirts of Mercia, then he undid the rune by drawing it in reverse. When the rune disappeared, so did he. On that road, the bullets, explosions and noise resumed their normal momentum, and it was not until half of each side was dead that they noticed the plane and pilot were missing.