Author's Note: This chapter was originally written in 2012, in the midst of a creative writing phase in my youth where I basically succumbed to bad fanfic writing tropes if I believed they would be cool for any given scene. I've since slumped because of schoolwork and exposure to truly artistic video games, but as I grew older, I realized just how mediocre some of my decisions ended up being-particularly the bit at the end where I spontaneously changed everything into a 'script fic' just to match up with 'Believe in Myself'. Since I still plan on returning to my Sonic adaptations, the thought of that marking the beginning of a brand new series is abhorrent-to the point where I feel it alone may be halting my progress. So as of now, February 2019, I've completely scrapped, rewritten and restyled that portion to match up with the rest of the chapter. Hopefully that should make the decision to continue a bit easier.

I'd also like to take this space to not only drop the usual disclaimer-I don't own Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Team and Sega do-but also to restate that this fic-no, this hopeful series-was inspired by the work and feedback of Saphroneth, who proposed a couple of interesting headcanons in his story collection Fox's Family back in, yes, 2012. Since then, I have expanded the scope of the novelization series past Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 2006; Unleashed and Forces may also get their own novelizations whenever I get around to them, although since I don't plan to cover Generations, Forces will be more focused on the mainline Sonic and an OC Avatar stand-in, when I get to that point of course.

Chapter 1
Air Raid Tails

June 18th, 2063
Near Mystic Ruins Train Station, planet Mobius
3:43 PM Mystic Ruins time

Two blurs flew through time and space, chasing each other in a game of cat and mouse; one red, the other cobalt blue. They'd been there for quite some time-eleven minutes, to be exact-though observers wouldn't know that from how fast they were moving, or how they collided with each other on occasion, causing one to fly backwards and into one of many assorted objects. Their battle bore a great prize-two of the most valuable gems on the planet, the Chaos Emeralds, the key to one of Dr. Ivo Robotnik's latest world domination schemes. The blue one had them, but the red one sought to take them away under the misguided belief that the former was hunting for scattered parts of the planet's largest Emerald, the Master Emerald.

"Those Emeralds are mine, you hear me Sonic?! I don't want to hurt you any more than I have to, so give them back!" Knuckles the Echidna, Guardian of the Master Emerald, swung at the blue blur with what would have been a vicious right hand... had the intended victim not bounced away like a rabbit.

"Hey, we need these more than you do, Knucklehead! You never complained about them before, so why do you need 'em now?!" Sonic the Hedgehog flipped backwards as he approached a cliff face at his signature high speed, using his motion energy to propel himself off it like a guided missile targeted for the Echidna.

Knuckles turned around to spot the approaching hedgehog missile, giving him little time to prepare a counter. "Do you think Angel Island looks better in the ocean or something?!" The only thing he got in response was a grunt-well, both of them gave off grunts as they prepared to attack, this could have been the final, decisive blow for both parties involved-as he launched a straight punch with his left hand aimed right for his assailant's skull.

Both attacks had been relatively well-timed. While Sonic did make contact with Knuckles' body and knocked him down, the Guardian managed to exert enough force on Sonic to lessen the impact and send him flying backwards. The Blue Blur landed with a thud some feet/meters away from where the two of them had been just a few seconds earlier.

"Sonic!" A certain two-tailed fox kit ran towards his best friend's side. He was still okay, but his senses had been temporarily kicked out of him. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Tails, just give me a second..." He shook his head multiple times to regain his bearings as he sat back up. "Good thing the Chaos Emeralds are still intact..." Suddenly, it came to him-something that strong would have easily knocked the Emeralds out of wherever he was hiding them. "Wait a minute, the Emeralds!" he cried. "Where'd they go?" Sonic looked around frantically for a couple seconds before his eyes settled on the only two Chaos Emeralds they had left-one as blue as Sonic's quills, the other a very bright green. Apparently, they'd been knocked back farther than he had! "Okay, they're still here... Thank Aurora."

Relieved for the moment, Miles 'Tails' Prower's attention quickly turned to Knuckles, who was just getting back onto his feet. "Well, if you wanna grab 'em, you might wanna make it quick-looks like Knuckles just got his second wind!"

However, Knux's mind wasn't on the downed Sonic nor what he was supposed to have. It was the sheer mention of Chaos Emeralds that got him thinking. "Chaos Emeralds? He didn't say anything about Chaos Emeralds..."

Sonic's head turned back towards his rival. "He?"

The unmistakable sound of Dr. Robotnik's evil laughter-and three jet engines-seemed to answer that question. He'd been lurking behind a piece of scenery, watching the fight from a small drone camera hovering at least fifty feet above the combatants' heads. Unfortunately for him, Knuckles had inadvertently disabled it roughly two minutes before the fight ended, when he attempted to throw a rock at an airborne Sonic and missed, forcing him to expose himself earlier than he had anticipated. However, he'd picked the perfect time to make his presence known; from what he could tell, the foolish Echidna had succeeded in doing part of his dirty work for him, just as he planned.

Now, if Sonic hadn't been momentarily dazed, he would have snatched the Emeralds back up before 'Ro-butt-nik' could say anything, but being punched in the cranium did more harm to his reaction time than it did good, though temporary. "Eggman!" he growled. Within a second of seeing him swoop in like a vulture to the carcass of a dead animal, he was building up steam for his signature Spin Dash, fully intent on avenging past mistakes that had caused them to lose two Emeralds the day before.

However, by the time he let loose, the madman had already positioned his Egg-O-Matic over the Emeralds and was beginning the process of retrieving them. A green tractor beam fired from the underside of the craft, lifting them off the ground and into his hands just before the Blue Blur could speed underneath it. He could practically see the Emeralds disappear as he flew by, rendering his efforts vain. Not wanting to make an already bad situation even worse, he stopped himself before flying into the nearby pond, but the damage was already done. He could only watch as his arch-enemy took their hard-earned Chaos Emeralds from right underneath their noses.

"Muhahahaha! Just like taking candy from a baby!" Robotnik declared at the top of his lungs, hoisting his prizes up high. It was the first time in years things were starting to go his way, and he liked it. The only times he'd been thwarted so far were relatively minor, and in one case actually brought him an Emerald. If ever there was a time Lady Luck chose to smile on a villain, this would probably be it.

Rad Red spent those few seconds in relative disbelief-not every day someone fools him-but shortly after Robotnik made his boastful declaration, he just had to step forward to voice his discontent. "You told me these two stole pieces of the Master Emerald! Those were Chaos Emeralds they were carrying!"

More laughter from the Doctor. "You're far too easy to fool, Knucklehead! If I knew that little piece of rubbish would practically give me two Chaos Emeralds, I would have told you long ago!"

Knuckles growled in response. This wasn't the first time he'd been tricked, and it definitely wouldn't be the last. When was he ever going to learn his lesson?

Sonic's first response was to dart around to the side facing the fat man. Stealing the Chaos Emeralds back was far too risky-there was always the possibility he'd ascend out of reach before he was even so much as able to scratch the Egg-O-Matic's paint job, not to mention the possibility of self-defense mechanisms.

There was also one other pressing matter... The Knuckles problem.

He skidded to a stop a couple feet/meters from Knuckles' left. "Hold it right there, fatty! There's no way you're gonna get away with this!" he shouted at Robotnik. He was outnumbered, no question about it. Sure, Buttnik had technology and firepower to aid him, but was it going to be enough to stop three Mobians who knew how to work together? Probably not. Not wanting to waste any time, he quickly turned to Knuckles in an effort to get some form of an explanation out of him. "Knuckles, don't tell me Buttnik tricked you again!"

"Yeah!" Tails piped up. "Don't you ever realize when you've been tricked?"

"ME?!" Knuckles replied, going defensive. "What about you?"

Now it was Sonic's turn to capitalize. He was nowhere near as gullible as Knuckles was, and when Chaos Emeralds were at stake, he had to be on the top of his game. "Way to go, Knucklehead!" he retorted-and for a moment, it looked like they were about to come to blows once more.

The sound of even more laughter from the Doctor brought the three back to their senses. "Now, the tables have turned once again! I have four Chaos Emeralds now... And I know just what to do with them!" He got to his feet as if he were about to make a speech. "Chaos!" he beckoned. "Come forth and reclaim your birthright!"

The all-too-familiar sight of a bright blue puddle of water appearing to rise from the soil caught Team Sonic's eyes once again. This time, however, the drop was much larger-and what it coalesced into was a much more threatening beast than the first time it had taken an Emerald for itself, and indeed than when Sonic first saw the 'big drip.' Its left arm had gained some bones, in which the Emerald they lost outside Casinopolis was stored, and its head had moved farther down than when the Blue Blur had last seen it, taking on a shape similar to that of a hammerhead shark.

This wasn't the first time Knuckles had seen this creature, however. They'd fought in Station Square's hotel while the others were out cold, resulting in the latter's defeat... which was par for the course when it came down to his combat record against Sonic and his friends. It was there that Ivo fed him the misinformation that had caused this whole mess in the first place. "Hey, it's that Chaos thing again!" the Guardian exclaimed.

This got surprised looks from Sonic and Tails. "You've seen him before?" Tails asked.

Knux nodded, but didn't expand on the story. There was nothing they could do now but watch.

You see, Dr. Robotnik didn't seek the Emeralds to fuel some deadly superweapon. Every time Chaos absorbed a Chaos Emerald, his power would grow, changing his form and abilities as a result. Without any Chaos Emeralds, he was nigh-powerless except for immunity to weapons-a human SWAT team back in Station Square found that out the hard way. His plan, then, was simple-find all seven Chaos Emeralds and then feed them to Chaos, who would then in return wipe out Station Square, allowing Ivo to lay the foundations for his future Empire.

And now Chaos was about to receive two more of them. "Here!" Ivo commanded as he threw the blue and green Chaos Emeralds into Chaos' body. "Eat up!"

As the Emeralds sunk into Chaos, they triggered a massive reaction that caused widespread mutations throughout his body. The sheer amount of energy was enough to emit a bright light-but 'Eggman', fortunately equipped with sunglasses, was able to see the entire transformation, despite being relatively short.

For starters, his legs fused together, creating something resembling a fishtail structure. What appeared to be fins then sprouted near it, possibly helping to provide stability when swimming. Bone structures then grew in his midsection and ran down the tail, which appeared to encase its newly absorbed Emeralds in armor. A shark fin grew near its neck, menacing in appearance, though providing little notable effect that the author can recall for stability other than to look cool. Its hands and head were relatively unchanged, save for the fact that the hands were minus one 'finger'.

When all was said and done, a much more shark-like version of Chaos appeared in front of Sonic and friends, a formidable reminder of what they were up against. This form was more suited for aquatic movement-right now, it just appeared to hover in midair. Needless to say, reactions were... shocked. "Ugh! He just transformed again!" Tails exclaimed.

"Aw, great." Sonic replied. "No one cuts us any slack!"

Knuckles, still angry at himself for falling for another one of Robotnik's tricks, punched the storage shed next to him. Being made of wood, it collapsed relatively easily-but it didn't matter. They could rebuild it in due time.

These sort of antics and responses amused Robotnik to no end. Nevertheless, his evil laughter didn't last much longer than his previous boasts-he still had business to attend to, things like commanding what was now known as Chaos 4 to grind Sonic and his pals to dust. "Aha ha ha ha! Now, Chaos; your time has come to take revenge on that blue hedgehog and his friends! Attack!"

Chaos leapt into the water-its form's dominant area-and waited for them to leap down there as well. Not wanting to miss out on fighting that 'big drip' again, Sonic went after it almost immediately, leaving Tails and Knuckles to watch him take it to the cleaners... Figuratively speaking.

Chaos 4's attack pattern was simple, really-first it'd whip its tail around, creating a shockwave effect that could knock Sonic back quite a ways. Then it'd charge directly into one of the large lilypads littering the battlefield, which would cause him to fall into the water if he were standing on top of the affected pad. If he was far away, it would emerge from the water and perform a backflip, creating hazardous explosions of water that would knock him into the water if he wasn't careful. It would also sometimes devolve into four little balls of water that just bounced along looking for their target, but this usually resulted in tactical evasion on Sonic's part. Eventually it would surface to take a breather, much like a dolphin, revealing its weak point-the brain, which had been that way ever since it lacked any Chaos Emeralds. All Sonic needed to do then was hurl himself-usually off the rocks, but he would sometimes use his newfound homing attack just to show off-at it, which broke it down to component parts. They'd then recoalesce into one, allowing Chaos to continue the fight and starting the cycle all over again.

While the two of them were going at it, Robotnik was preparing to make his exit. Regardless of who would win, he still needed to find the other Emeralds-Chaos could easily restore himself to form after being defeated, he just needed time to get back into shape for further usage-and the closest, he found, were out of the country. He was able to reach all the Emeralds so far with just his Egg-O-Matic, but his base of operations for this plan had to be mobile to avoid being around when Chaos 7-or whatever he'd be called once he had all seven Emeralds-attacked Station Square. It also had to fly itself; if he had to be away to get the Emeralds, he needed it to find him instead of the other way around. He flipped on his pod's beacon as soon as he saw the direction the fight was taking-more in favor of Sonic than Chaos-and began to wait.

It had been about seven minutes since the fight had started, and from what the Blue Blur could tell from Chaos' movements, it was close to being on its last legs. That meant it had to be attacking much more strongly and more frequently in an effort to keep him at a distance. All he had to do now was keep out of its way- chances were it would exhaust itself and leave the brain wide open.

And there it was. One of Chaos' attempts to sink the lilypad he was on had caused it to shudder as if he'd hit a brick wall-a sign that it needed to take a breather. On instinct, it broke the water's surface, idly floating there like a dead fish as it tried to gather some more stamina. This was Sonic's best chance to end the battle quickly-there was no telling what he'd miss if he let it drag on. "Alright, you overgrown shark," he said, "it's time to meet your maker!" Immediately thereafter, he jumped into the air and curled into a ball, launching himself at the beast with a large amount of forward force.

Suddenly, his target exploded. And I'm not talking like an attempt to launch another set of homing water globes at him, I mean a literal explosion, like the kind you'd expect a bomb or grenade to make. Instead of slamming into that squishy brain, which would have made Chaos 4 fall apart for the final time, he found himself flying through high explosive heaven-including the gas created by the TNT explosion-before landing on a lilypad that had just resurfaced. Chaos was nowhere to be seen.

Curious, he started looking around to determine the source of the explosion. His eyes eventually settled on Tails, who was just standing there with a cute 'wasn't me!' kind of look on his face. "What?" the fox asked. "You didn't say I couldn't help!"

"Showstealer." Sonic replied.

They didn't have much time to themselves after the hedgehog got himself out of the pond and back onto the dry land above. The roar of large-even Tails couldn't guess what they were at first, but he was leaning towards ion-engines coming from the south signified the approach of something... Something BIG. Even the human archeologists that had stopped what they were doing to watch both battles started quivering in their boots when they first heard them coming. Whatever it was, it wasn't good.

And then they saw it. A bright red, black and yellow flying battleship crested the horizon at top speed, headed straight for Robotnik's position. The noise of all seven of its engines at full power was enough to cause small tremors in the earth as it approached, but its altitude was high enough to help lessen the effects on everyone's hearing. Eventually, its oddly pointed nose angled upward to bleed some of its speed, and thrusters at the bottom of the warship-by now definitely confirmed to be ion-kicked in to put the ship into a hover mode. The main engines began to idle so as to not nudge it forward, making it much quieter than it had been before. All that could be heard was a distant whine from the thrusters-and Dr. Robotnik's laughter-as everything below its menacing hulk sat in shadow.

"Behold, my floating masterpiece: the Egg Carrier!" the good doctor boasted. "It's by far my most powerful creation-only the Death Egg could have come close to its magnificence!"

Tails was awestruck. He'd heard Robotnik was working on another one of these kinds of battleships, but never had he seen one that was powered by ion engines; or so heavily armed. He counted at least fifteen missile batteries on the underside alone. Why would he need so many weapons? he wondered. If Chaos is gonna do all the work, what's the point of arming his ship?

"But, of course, even this beauty of a ship is no match for Chaos in the slightest. This is only the flagship of my newborn empire!" He then tapped a button on his remote command menu for the Egg Carrier, telling its onboard tractor beam to beam him back up. "Farewell... Until we meet again, my friends! Ahahahaha!" A green beam similar in constitution and strength to the one mounted on the bottom of the Egg-O-Matic soon appeared from the bottom of the ship, scooping Ivo up from the ground and pulling him into the vessel's hull.

Now, there was no way Sonic was going to let this madman retreat into the safety of his big freakin' battleship. A few seconds after the fat man's ship left the ground, he leapt up and propelled himself at the tractor beam in an attempt to follow the Doctor into the vessel, only to discover to his dismay that it only brought up whatever it locked onto, and wouldn't lift anything else. Like before, this meant he could only watch as the Egg Carrier switched to flight mode and began to fly off into the distance at a rapidly increasing speed.

"Aw, shoot! He's getting away!" he grunted.

"Like heck he's not!" Tails exclaimed.

Sonic turned to his friend, noticing a rather cross look about his face. Why was he so defiant all of a sudden? "Tails?" he asked.

"You don't have to run on water to get to him. If we head to my workshop and take the Tornado, we should be able to catch up to him in no time at all!" Tails explained. The kit was a skilled pilot-there was no denying that. Flying was his passion, second only to invention. If there was anywhere Sonic needed to go that was across water, Tails could easily take him there.

Sonic gave his trademark smirk in response. "Yeah! Good thinking, Tails!" he replied. He didn't need feet-they had a plane of their own, and it was well capable of chasing that big bulky battleship down.

However, Knuckles had prior engagements. He still needed to find the rest of the pieces of the Master Emerald-since they turned out not to have any, there was no sense in hanging around them any longer if he wanted Angel Island to return to the sky again. "You guys get after him!" the Echidna commanded. "I've got some unfinished business down here-the Master Emerald isn't just gonna fix itself."

Of course, Sonic was willing to let him go. If there were things he had to do himself, then they had to be done himself-no exceptions. "No problem Knuckles! We'll take care of 'im, don't you worry!" With that, Knuckles darted off in the direction of what he guessed to be Red Mountain.

"C'mon, what are we waiting for?" Tails shouted. "Let's get mo-"

Sonic had already vanished. Just on the horizon, the fox could see him climbing the stairs to his workshop, the little showoff.

"...Or you could just take off without me," he sighed. "That works too."

A short run later, Tails joined his adoptive brother by the workshop hangar, ignoring the hedgehog's smug grin for about as long as it took for him to tap his self-generated passcode into the keypad he'd installed next to the door-just in case Sonic ever got any bright ideas. "You wait here for a second," he commanded as the electronic lock clicked. "I still need to get 'er started."

"Like I got a choice," Sonic laughed. It was true; like Tails had said, he couldn't run across the ocean forever.

Smiling, Tails slipped inside and closed the door behind him. Unlike the underground hangar the second (and last) Tornado II prototype was stored in, this hangar felt most like a car garage than an aircraft hangar, even with the crimson and white Great War-era biplane on full display in the center.

But then again, this plane was his pride and joy, and had always been a real pleasure to work on. He still thought it hard to believe that it was built nearly a century ago, especially considering that, even with the 'modern enhancements' he added to the fuselage, including, most recently, a pair of microjet engines, it still looked great for its age.

Part of it, he had to admit, came from the new paintjob and some of the various 'quality of life' improvements he'd made to the cockpit, but still, in spite of everything, it still flew as well as the day it came into his life!

"HURRICANE," he spoke as he clambered into the cockpit, hoping the AI he'd created to monitor this place in his absence would listen, "where's that airship going?"

The hologram projector he'd mounted into his workbench spat out an translucent azure version of the logo prominently displayed on the hangar door. "Oh, so you noticed it too?" it spoke. "I was just about to consider informing the Federation Air Force about the UFO above our workshop."

"Yeah, well, it's not," the kit grumbled, slipping his arms and legs through the parachute harness he always kept on the seat just for this sort of occasion, being sure to clip together and tighten straps where needed, while also making sure his survival pack was safely seated on his chest. "It's Robotnik's, and he just stole two of our Chaos Emeralds. Sonic and I are going to get 'em back."

"Then I expect you will make good use of this information," HURRICANE replied. "There is a high probability that your quarry is making for international airspace as we speak, at bearing 176. I shall deploy the runway for you."

Countless hours spent reading the Tornado's start-up procedures reflected themselves in the speed at which he ran through each and every switch in the cockpit, the Drummond and Griffith rotary powerplant coughing to life within seconds. "Alright, thanks," he replied with a nod. "Look after the workshop while I'm gone, okay?"

"Only thing I can do now, Tails. Opening hangar door."

The steel plate door before them gave way almost immediately, natural light filling the hangar as the sun slowly sank from its throne high in the sky. Outside, the massive palm trees that once dominated the north side of the workshop had moved off to the side by way of concealed hydraulics to make room for it as it came out of the ground, making room for a massive concrete runway. While the Tornado would have been perfectly capable of taking off from a dirt runway, Tails' workshop was built on quite literally the longest cliff he could find-at about half a football field before the drop-off if one were to run from end to end and manage to not fall off the edge, it would have given the Tornado just enough time to reach its optimal take-off speed but not enough time to slow down after landing. This concrete runway's job, then, was to help provide a means for it to slow down-wires were placed at about the average point simulations indicated its wheels would touch ground, which the recently-added tailhook could grab onto to help slow the craft to a manageable speed.

Sonic could only stand by, just as he'd been told, and watch in awe as this structure literally popped out of the earth. Honestly, who could blame him? Even Tails would have agreed that this was by far his finest engineering feat-other than the Chaos Energy reactor in the Tornado II, of course, but he couldn't make that public yet.

He nudged the throttle forward just a smidge and disengaged the parking brake; slowly but surely, the Tornado rolled its way out onto the runway. "Sonic! Hop on!" he cried.

His Blue Blur shook his head to force the awesome sight he'd just witnessed into his memory banks, quickly clambering onto the back of the fuselage from the starboard beam. "You got my 'chute this time, Tails?" he asked.

Tails peered back with a stern expression. "No time for that, I'm afraid," he answered. "'Sides, remember the Flying Battery? If things don't go well, I'd rather be sure you're on that ship."

"Heh. Yeah, alright," he crossed his arms and looked back down at the cockpit. "Thanks again, buddy."

"Don't mention it. Now let's get this crate moving!" He pushed the throttle as far forward as it would go, switched on the microjets, and grinned the widest grin as his old bird rumbled down the runway and into the sky. Now it was time to take this war to the sky.

If only he had known what adventures awaited him on his way out from home.