Prologue
20 years ago
Deep within a cold cruel lab, many miles beneath the crust of the earth, a hedgehog male of his early thirties strolled down a dark, hard and metallic corridor, strolling quickly past all the other solid steel doors with a swift intent to arrive at his needed destination as quickly as what his body would let him without running. The mechanism that he had designed was finally being put to use to catch one of the most dangerous and feared criminals of all time. No one knew her name. All was apparent was her need for killing her victims in as painful a way as possible with Chaos energy. All knew that she was the most powerful hedgehog currently in existence. All feared and despised her. The hedgehog looked up, immediately seeing the large bulkhead door that he was headed to took his pass out in anticipation in order to open the door. He reached the door and slid his cardkey down the slot on the side. A green light lit up as the massive metal door slid opened.
A wondrous sight was seen on the other side of the door, one that the hedgehog was used to, it was full of complex machinery that all seemed to surround a single chamber in the middle. He quickly scoped the room, almost immediately spotting his assistant. His assistant whom also happened to be his wife… And eight months pregnant. He spoke loudly with a deep slightly gravelly voice. "You shouldn't be in here Alicia. You need to rest." He smiled at her in a concerned way before going up to hug her.
"I could hardly miss watching what happens to the mechanism I helped you build honey." Alicia spoke to him softly and hugged her husband back. She pulled away and looked at him, smiling as she looked into his eyes. "Your child keeps kicking. I think that he or she is going to be as lively and excitable as you." Her husband smiled at her before tuning to the console of the machine and pressing a few buttons. Almost immediately a panel to the left screen above the keyboard opened revealing a dark blue chaos emerald. He pressed a few more buttons and graphs popped up on the screen.
"Seems that everything is in order, power is at maximum efficiency and nothing is damaged." He said to her, looking at the screen as he continued to type. She rubbed her belly gently in an affectionate way as he was talking. He turned around, looked at her and pulled a chair in front of the screen. "Sit there and rest." He said to her in a concerned voice. He walked up to the part of the machine that was the large holding area and breathed in deeply. Sighing he placed his right hand on the containment area. "Start the process Alicia." He commanded in a troubled voice. Alicia looked at her husband, concerned, but obeyed and pressed a few keys. Nothing happened. Alicia frowned at the screen, wondering what was going on while her husband continued to lean on the containment area.
"Steve, what's…" but her voice trailed off as suddenly there was a loud electrical sound and four bolts of what looked like electricity darted from four rods on the ceiling of the containment cell, touching together in the middle. After a few seconds the bolts slowly started moving downwards. A person slowly started to materialise into the containment cell. It was the hedgehog in question.
The bolts continued to slowly move down as more and more of the hedgehog appeared. She had a bored and irritated look on her face; she stared out with dark amethyst purple eyes, eyes boring into Steve's with murderous intensity. She had two helix piercings near the top of her right ear and a scaffold in her left. Her quills were long, coming down to her waist, and coloured mostly black with purple stripes running down them. She was wearing a dark purple tank top which showed of her muscles that were subtly defined in a way that was more appealing than bulky. She wore some dark grey tight skinny jeans and light purple converse. Staring out of the glass she crossed her arms in irritation. "I must admit. I didn't see that one coming." She smirked and disappeared in a green flash. Just to reappear seconds later stumbling backwards slightly. She walked up and placed her hand against it checking its strength. Steve, who had moved backwards slightly when the machine started working, was standing less than a meter away from her; protected by nothing but a thin sheet of glass. "This is unusually strong." She said bluntly. Steve smiled at her in a relieved way.
"You won't get out of that very easily. It's as hard as diamond." Steve told the killer hedgehog. She just stared at him coldly. "The police are coming with Chaos sealing handcuffs. They'll be here soon." Steve looked at his watch quickly before looking back to the murderer, she was smiling.
"How did you manage to pull this off and catch me?" The female hedgehog asked in a sweet way that was clearly under toned with malice and contempt. Steve looked at her unsure. He doubted she would be and kind of threat if he did tell her, but something told him that she'd hunt him down if he did. "Humour me." She said sweetly, without the malice this time. Steve paused, he knew that she set for a life sentence, so calmed at the thought, he felt there would be no harm in telling her. He doubted she would fully understand anyway.
"Well, using the basis of Chaos control as a viable way of teleporting ones self I developed a way of containing it through the very same energy it required to be used." The murderer seemed to understand something from this as her eyes quickly darted around and fell onto the Chaos Emerald. Steve too looked at the Chaos Emerald. "Right on the mark, the Emerald is currently suppressing all your abilities from coming through this glass. It's also how we managed to teleport you in her in the first place. We couldn't have done it without you though. Your last victim you left a single strand of fur behind. Because of that we had your DNA and could get you in here." Steve turned around and found eyes boring into him once again, as if trying to read his mind.
"So luck and a bit of brains." She said mockingly to him. He frowned at her and quickly glance back to see if the Chaos levels on the encasement cell were at normal levels before turning back to the murderer. He was surprised to see her with her eyes closed. Completely calm look on her face, hands pressed against the glass at shoulder width apart. Suddenly an alarm went off. Alicia spun round on the chair and shouted.
"Steve! The levels are overloading. We need to move. Get out of here!" Alicia shouted, quickly trying to get up and rush for the door despite the fact that couldn't move very fast. Steve was very pale and was staring the murderer who now had her eyes open and an evil grin on her face. Alicia tried to open the door to get out, however, much to her despair it was sealed due to the alarm.
"What are you doing?" Steve shouted the murderer over the alarms. "If you do something like this then you'll die as well!" She looked like she considered what Steve said for a second before she started glowing with passionate energy. Her eyes glowing with intense contempt. Steve ran to the door and started trying to pry it open which was a completely useless effort considering it was designs specifically to keep things out... Which in turn kept things in. Steve whipped back around to see a clear white-yellow aura surrounding her person, leaking down the wires of the containment slowly to the mainframe of the system, it was second away from touching it when, as a last ditch effort, Steve grabbed his wife pushing her to the floor behind some a steel table and diving on top of her.
A fiery white light filled the room as an explosion that was probably felt from many miles was unleashed. The bulkhead doors gave way in seconds and as fast as it had started the explosion had gone. There was complete silence for a few seconds before a weak coughing was heard. Alicia groaned before looking at her husband on top of her. His back had been charred from the explosion, he was dead. "Steve?" She shook him gently, not wanting to believe what had obviously just happened. Tears started to pool from her eyes as she grabbed his arm and gently pushed him off her before trying to stand. Pain shot through her right leg like nothing she had ever felt. Looking down she noticed that she had about half a foot left that was gently trickling blood from the parts that weren't sealed from heat, luckily for her, her right foot protected her left from all but minor burning.
Her eyes quickly scanned the area for something that she could possibly use as a crutch. As luck would have it, as long piece of metal with a end smoothed from the explosion was right near her head. She grabbed it and used it to haul herself up before yanking it out the wall using the machine used for cover to lean on. Everything burnt her bare skin but compared to the pain that she could feel in her foot she did not care. Carefully she hobbled over to the now blasted open door and looked outside for a ghastly sight. Every one of the doors nearby had been pushed in, in some areas there was melted metals oozing slowly down the walls. But that wasn't the worst of it because as she saw the state of the room she inhaled sharply, the smell of burnt flesh met her nostrils as she gagged and almost threw up whatever was in her stomach. She was so preoccupied with the desolation she missed what was on the floor. The room was full of demise. Her second name from marriage suddenly disgusted her. Bodies were everywhere, some charred, some with almost completely open wounds. She could here groaning coming from somewhere and could only imagine how bad that person must have been physically. If it wasn't for Steve...
At the mere thought of his name tears once again welled up in her eyes. She knew that she couldn't let go now though and that she needed to persevere. She started moving again, hoping that she wouldn't run into anymore scenes such as this one.
Several minutes later she had hobbled her way through smoke and flames and death, stumbling across several more scenes like the one she had first seen, one of which she did lose the contents of her stomach at, she had finally reached a bulkhead door that was only half burnt. She stumbled and tried to land on her bad foot. This of course caused incomparable pain to her once again as she fell flat on her face, causing her to drop the metal she was holding onto, she swore before stretching to grab it again. Using the improvised walking stick she pushed herself to the side of the door and banged it against it causing a loud racket to fill the air. She dropped the piece of metal and looked at the shiny burns on her hand she received from holding such a hot object for too long. Her foot had all but stopped bleeding now and her adrenaline was wearing out. She could feel tiredness starting to kick in. Her vision blurred and started to fade as she heard the bulkhead door starting to whir. The voice on the other side sounded like barely a whisper through the small crack that had been so far made in the bulkhead doors, she knew it was male, but nothing further than that.
"Looks like back up power is working now. I hope that there are some survivors. I saw what little we could record on the cameras on the minuet amount of emergency power. Wait isn't that?..." He paused, looking right at Alicia "Quick, fetch a medical. It's Steve's wife. She needs her baby checked on ASAP to prevent damage being done." The was scuffling and she felt herself being lifted onto a stretcher.
"Fucking hell look at her foot!" The person at the bottom of the stretcher said, Alicia tried to open her eyes, but she couldn't take anymore and started fading in and out of consciousness. Everything went black.
She was on a table of some sorts. A voice spoke "The baby's been put under severe stress, we're going to have to do a caesarean. Prepare the operating room!"... Darkness.
She had a tube in her mouth and couldn't see down because of a screen. "The baby is barely alive. Put it in the critical care unit while I close up."... Darkness
Alicia was laying in a warm comfy bed it was clear to the hedgehog that she was in a hospital. She placed her hand on her belly to find it was flat and covered in bandages. Immediately she panicked before remembering her flashes of consciousness. As she tried to get up a nurse came in to sort out her covers. "Please lay down Mrs Demise, the stitches may come out. I assure you your child is quite fine." Alicia let out a sigh of relief. "You shall be able to see him soon. Just rest" Alicia laid back down, her chest aching from the rate her heart was pounding at. She knew that something wasn't quite right, But she couldn't quite put her finger on it. She fell back to sleep the second she closed her eyes.
