Not really much I can say here, other than…welcome to Supernova!
What you're reading is the result of over a year's worth of throwing ideas at the wall, seeing what works and what doesn't, and trying to fit it into a meaningful Sonic story. I've been teasing this for about a month, so I hope this first chapter is worth it for you.
PART 1 - SIEGE
From the bridge of the ESS-1, Dr. Eggman had a view of the world.
It was staring him in the face, coming to him through a live camera feed from a satellite orbiting the earth, now flickering and waving on a color monitor built into his console. Fondling his chin in contemplation, he couldn't help but lose himself in the imposing presence of the planet, as blue as the most brilliant sapphire, as smooth as a pearl from the ocean floor, yet as rough as the fibers on his own moustache. And now it was so close he could almost reach out and touch it.
"Master…"
An Egg Flapper, one of the many robotic assistants aboard the ship, took on the dangerous task of approaching its master with a message while his attention was focused elsewhere. It received no response from the doctor, not even a grunt of acknowledgement.
"Look at it. It'll all be mine. All of it," said Dr. Eggman.
The vaguely jetpack-shaped robot pressed on. "Master…"
"All of this. All mine. All of it…"
One more time, this time with maximum loudness factor.
"Master!"
This time, of all times, Eggman noticed. As did Flapper, who was knocked backward when his master threw his arms into the air in shock.
"WHAT…do YOU…WANT?" he said, as soon as he regained enough of his equilibrium to talk.
"The Master Emerald has been fully harnessed, sir," said Flapper.
Oh, yeah…that.
Without a second thought, Dr. Eggman engaged a series of levers and buttons on the command console in a specific order. In one grand crescendo, a symphony of lights and monitors switched on across the bridge, each one providing its own distinctive noise upon start-up. The doctor then pulled a public-address microphone out of the console unit and held the activation button firmly against his palm, ensuring his message would be transferred to every corner of the ship.
"Attention all units, all classes!" said Dr. Eggman. "Clear the deck and prepare for launch! T minus thirty seconds!"
A countdown began on every screen on the wall of monitors in the bridge. 30 seconds.
With the pull of a lever, a series of rocket boosters along the undercarriage of the ship blasted untold amounts of green Chaos Energy towards the ground – just enough to warm up the volatile motors, but not enough to actually achieve lift just yet.
20 seconds.
Dr. Eggman pulled a specially designed four-point harness over his head and fastened himself into his massive captain's chair. He would be the only one restrained, as he had placed enough faith in his ultra-resistant armor to protect his robots against the wild gyrations and inevitable collisions caused by take-off. There was no need to go through a long and complicated checklist before launch; the ship's sophisticated automation system took care of that for him. It was just as well, since the list of things that needed to be checked would have been almost as long as the body of the ship itself.
10 seconds.
This was the moment. With one button push, the restraining bolts clamping the ship down would be released, and the Chaos Energy motors would release one final blast of energy, enough for ESS-1 to punch a hole in the overcast night.
Emphasis on would.
Dr. Eggman's nerves contracted with each tick of the clock. Five seconds. Four. Three.
There was no two.
There was only a senses-shattering jolt below the floor of the bridge, as if the earth itself exploded under Dr. Eggman's feet. Before his mind could even process what happened, he had been shaken completely out of the captain's chair.
Staggering to his knees, he managed to take a brief glimpse back at the tattered remains of his "specially-designed" four-point harness and mentally added the Thompson Seatbelt Manufacturing Company to his ever-growing enemies list. He then scanned the rest of the bridge for any signs of structural damage...all the while wondering why all the lights had suddenly turned red.
The soothing, yet frantic monotone of the female voice synthesizer module would reveal all.
"INTRUDER ALERT. LAUNCH ABORTED. COMMENCING EXTERNAL LOCKDOWN."
Those words were enough to pull Dr. Eggman off of his feet and toward the captain's seat. His first act was to pull up a map of the ESS-1 onto the screen directly in front of him. The map was impressive in scope, almost too detailed to fit on one screen, showing a perfectly-scaled-down layout of the ship from deck to deck.
Impressive as the map was, Dr. Eggman was pretty sure that the blinking red dot on Deck 5 wasn't originally there when he drew it.
With each refresh of the screen – once every second or so – the red dot had advanced just a little bit further toward the very core of the ship. Even after the lockdown, the voice synthesizer's warnings grew faster, louder, and more frequent.
"INTRUDER ALERT. INTRUDER ALERT. INTRUDER ALERT."
The doctor gulped at took place on his screen, hoping it would blow over. He wasn't so lucky. Soon, another red dot appeared on the map, following a similar path to the first one. Moments later, a third dot appeared, this one ascending from the supposed entry point on Deck 5 to Deck 6.
Eggman pulled up live security camera feeds from the decks onto each of the monitors on his command console. Each screen carried a different camera; each camera captured a different angle and position; each position was far away from the other, leaving the entire ship covered.
Within seconds, out of the corner of his eye, Eggman noticed a break in the still, unmoving picture on camera one. A tiny blip, no larger than a few measly pixels across, had emerged on the screen for a split-second, only to disappear just as quickly.
A tiny, blue blip.
It…it can't be…
"Computer! Rewind camera one!" said Eggman.
The footage from the first camera was rewound to a few seconds earlier, at such a speed that no blue blip was visible at all during the process.
"Zoom in and enhance!"
Moments later, the blue streak reappeared on a video screen to Eggman's right, appearing and disappearing before his brain could even give the signal to his eyes to move in that direction.
"Master?" asked Flapper. As usual, Dr. Eggman ignored him completely, choosing to focus on the security footage.
"I SAID ZOOM!" repeated the doctor, pounding the control panel.
It would all become a moot point. Camera five – which occupied the largest screen on Eggman's wall of monitors – would reveal the answer.
A figure…that's all that could be made of it…had poked its head in from the right side of the picture. The security cameras were specially built by Eggman himself to ensure quality capture of the most detail and color, neither of which he was seeing on the screen. The mysterious form was so close to the lens that the camera's auto-focus had difficulty coping with its subject. Eggman seethed as the picture seemed to come into focus, only to reverse itself time and time again.
"Grrrrrrr…FOOOCUUUUUSSS!" he said.
Eventually, through the hazy patchwork of pixels, a clear face finally began to emerge. A familiar face.
A mocking face.
"I…is he…?" said Eggman.
The figure on-screen was sticking his tongue out at the camera. Or more accurately, at the camera's owner.
Soon after, Dr. Eggman watched as a white glove, possibly belonging to the intruder himself, reached over the very same unit that was broadcasting the images. Suddenly, the angle tilted sharply toward the ground, as if the camera was being pulled off its hinges. It was the last image camera five would ever transmit.
The unit did, however, survive just long enough to finally give Dr. Eggman a clear image of his tormentor. Flapper could practically feel the heat radiating off its master's face as he made the match.
Of all times…that accursed hedgehog…
"Arm all missiles," said Eggman, through clenched teeth.
It was a race against time. Not that Sonic the Hedgehog was fazed in the slightest bit. As far as he was concerned, he had this race in the bag.
A series of constantly-changing blurred lines formed his entire world. His movements followed an almost computer-like synchronicity as he flicked each leg in tune with the other, letting his arms drift behind him like the wings of a jet. His feet didn't contact the ground so much as they skipped, bounced, lightly brushed against it, almost as if they never touched the floor at all. The only sounds were the syncopated pounding of his own feet and the rush of wind that formed a futile act of resistance against his legendary speed.
And the occasional roar of a heat-seeking missile, like the one passing by on Sonic's right.
Of all the places on this entire barge he could've smashed through to get inside, it had to be the one where Dr. Eggman was storing ammunition. He couldn't decide if he had the worst luck in the world…or the best.
As the missile ran parallel with Sonic, he didn't shy away from the oncoming threat to his own life. He drifted toward the danger, feeling the adrenaline rush scythe through his veins, embracing the chance that every second could bring him closer to his own destruction.
The flash of a green light on the very front of the projectile indicated that its target was well in sight and the attack was ready. Even with milliseconds to spare, Sonic never diverted from his chosen path. He turned his head toward the right, gazing straight into the weapon of his attempted murder, flashing a friendly wink toward it as he would a passerby on the sidewalk.
Perhaps that gesture alone was what triggered the red light, the signal to finish the attack. Sonic watched closely as one massive blast of rocket fuel directed the explosive weapon straight for him.
Oh, think you're so tough, eh? thought Sonic.
Even though it ventured so close to the hedgehog that he could clearly make out the serial number on the solid propellant rocket motor, he firmly stayed his course, holding back on altering his speed or direction to evade the missile's path. After all, it just wouldn't be fair to the missile, would it?
With absolutely no time to spare before becoming charred remains, the hedgehog revved up for a burst of extra speed. If all went right, there would be two booms sounding at roughly the exact same moment.
Bet you can't keep up with this!
Finally, the heat-seeker struck the ground at its maximum velocity, deploying its explosive payload on the exact spot where Sonic…
…used to be.
Sonic was long gone, untouched. A sonic boom and a cauldron of flaming steel were all he left in his wake.
"Ha!" said the triumphant speedster. "Too easy!"
No sooner had he shaken off that first brush with death than he saw a bright, orange trail of light strike the ground directly in his path, ricocheting off the floor. Whatever it was, it created a harsh metallic ping that resonated off every surface. Sonic stepped off to the right, shifting lanes on the endless steel highway.
Soon, there was another. And another. And another that came from the other direction. Sonic's lightning-quick situational awareness let him put two-and-two together.
First missiles, now bullets? Come on!
Even shifting positions did little to evade the oncoming barrage, as the two rounds of ammunition changed direction with him to converge on his new position. Undeterred, Sonic played along. With one graceful flick of his left leg, he glided across the steel corridor into the extreme left lane, floating mere inches over the hail of gunfire, and landed without sacrificing even a fraction of his previous heading and velocity.
One quick glance ahead told him the source of the gunfire. Small tanks were positioned at each side of the walkway, each tank outfitted with not just one, but three sub-machine gun barrels – all homing in on the hedgehog's position. Even in the midst of the chaos that unfolded around him, Sonic stopped to ponder.
You really went to all this trouble for little ol' me?
Without warning, Sonic shifted back to the middle of the walkway just as he crossed paths with the two tanks, and did something neither of them were prepared for.
He jumped.
At the point where Sonic was exactly perpendicular to both weapons, he had soared far above the point where they could see him, let alone reach him. Too slow to react to the change in position, the hails of gunfire stayed tilted toward the ground that Sonic had previously occupied, while panning forward as if he was still running along at his current speed.
The gun barrels had been pointed at each other.
The ammunition from each barrel tore through the other side's tank like a hot knife through butter. One bullet to the heart of each unit was enough to create friction and ignite the combustible material within. The double explosion that resulted was inevitable.
Still soaring through the air, Sonic never got a chance to see the blast. He didn't need to. The cushion of warm air that propelled him upward and forward was more than enough confirmation.
In a fleeting moment of whimsy, Sonic stretched his entire body parallel to the floor and spread out his arms and legs, like a superhero in flight. He had only just reached the apex of his jump, and he almost wondered if he would ever come back down…or if he ever wanted to. He looked down on the scene as it passed by below him like a blurred brushstroke. This was the scene he created, and its effects still echoed around him.
Explosions. Bullets ricocheting off the walls. And of course, the wind rustling his quills.
This was chaos. Chaos that he controlled. This is what he lived for.
But Sonic knew he would have to land sometime. Seeing a rare open patch of road, he seized his opportunity, and curled his body downward at just the right angle. By the time he hit the ground, he had transformed from supersonic hedgehog into the world's deadliest bowling ball, rolling down the corridors in his very own Super Sonic Spin maneuver.
If he was going to have to land, then why not do it in style? After all, sometimes he felt like he had all the time in the world...
Just then, Sonic's flight of fancy was shattered by a harsh, discordant crackle deep within his left ear. The noise gave way to the anxious voice of a young boy, someone who was not physically present at the scene.
"Sonic! Sonic, can you hear me?"
Sonic had almost forgotten about the miniature radio receiver he had placed in there to help coordinate the mission…the same mission he was supposed to be focusing on right now.
Heh. Tails. Always could count on ya to keep my head in the game.
"Read ya loud 'n' clear, buddy," said Sonic, regaining his footing.
"What was all that racket down there?"Tails asked.
"Just some cleanin' up I had to take care of. No biggie."
Sonic wasn't sure, but he thought he could hear a sarcastic scoff on the other end of the line.
"Uhhh…say, do you mind tellin' me where you ran off to?" Sonic asked.
"I'm on the next deck up. I'm not exactly 100%, but I've got a good feeling the server room isn't too far away."
"Good work, buddy! What's the plan?"
"Well, we get inside, and we pull whatever data we can from the main computer."
"Good, good…WHOA!" In the middle of his conversation, Sonic realized he was still racing at subsonic speed…toward a concrete wall.
As it turned out, he had reached a fork where the road split off into two paths. Luckily, his reflexes were enough so that he made the proper left and right turns to keep moving without losing a step.
"What was that?" Tails asked.
"Sorry. Got kinda distracted there," said Sonic, adding a sheepish laugh at the end. "Anyway, what was the rest of the plan?"
"Uh...that's about it. After that we just…kinda wing it."
Sonic beamed. "Now this is my kind of plan!"
Nothing further was heard from Tails, other than a faint sigh that was barely picked up by his in-ear two-way radio unit. Finally, Sonic was free of distractions, free to focus on what lay ahead.
This jungle of chain-link walkways and intricate metal pipes was entirely foreign to him. It blended in with every other monochrome, dull, silver and grey interior that he had torn through in his battles, yet this one, like all the others, was unique in the way that the dullness was all arranged. There was no sun, no sky, no stars, no visual reference for north, south, east, or west. For all he knew, he may have taken a wrong turn somewhere, causing him to veer back toward the hole he had entered through to get inside the ship in the first place.
It didn't matter. His heart told him this was the way to go. And so it followed.
The visual and auditory functions of Sonic's brain sent him more signals in one second than anyone else could dare experience in an entire day. Naturally, the hedgehog had to be selective of which ones to follow at which time. The ever-changing, blurred lines in his field of vision always had some semblance of order and connection to them in some places more than others. On his left, right, and above him, were the most frequent changes in those lines – mere distractions that he had long since learned to ignore. All that mattered to Sonic was the road in front of him. The road was his visual guide, the one constant of supersonic travel that he could always rely on.
Except when he couldn't.
Whoa! What happened to the road?!
Sonic had come across something he hadn't found on his journey so far, something he wasn't willing to accept existed to him: a dead end.
He had no way of knowing it, but he had reached what was supposed to be a maintenance bridge connecting both ends of Deck 5, accessible only to Eggman's robotic assistants. Unfortunately, since Eggman himself had never gotten around to starting its construction, it was accessible to no one. Progress had only made it as far as painting black and orange stripes where the bridge was supposed to start.
On the other side, where the bridge would've ended, lay a conspicuous security door that led to nowhere.
Wow! Great design job there, Eggman!
A cursory glance indicated that deck 5 wasn't the only one afflicted. As far upward as the eye could see, there existed security doors with no possible means of entry, with no floor or bridge for anyone walking through, all floating in a straight line that traveled all the way down the ship, all surrounded by a glossy concrete wall. It seemed as if their only purpose was to serve as memorials to construction projects that never started.
Sonic's options were few. No roads in front of him, no roads above him, no roads below him to break his fall. The hedgehog was careering into what was essentially a giant hole in the middle of a starship, and it was far too late for him to put on the brakes. There was only one option left: jump the gap.
At the speeds he was traveling, the door on the far side of Deck 5 could be reached with little more than a mere hurdle. So Sonic did the most logical thing possible.
He aimed for Deck 6.
He just couldn't help himself.
By the time Sonic had come to his decision, there were only two steps left before he reached the painted stripes that separated life from death. Not that it mattered. One was all he ever needed.
With one mighty flick of his right leg, Sonic propelled himself skyward. There was no time to consider whether he had gotten the launch angle right, no time to ponder whether what he had just done was the stupidest decision he could have possibly made. He needed to attack, and he needed to attack now.
Nearing the midpoint of the jump, Sonic curled himself into a somersault, each revolution of his body exponentially growing in velocity and force. Within seconds, he had lost all semblance of his hedgehog form, transforming into a whirling, gyrating cannonball of death and destruction. From here on in, the hedgehog closed his eyes, taking everything in as seconds seemed to turn into minutes. From his unique perspective on the world, he would have no idea if he had reached his target or not until the impact.
All was calm. The wind buffeted him from all angles, whistling innocently against his ears, perhaps to distract him from what was to come. All was calm. All was calm—
CRASH!
The hedgehog felt every bone and muscle in his body shudder as the inevitable impact finally occurred. The natural daredevil had plenty of experience crashing into solid fixtures before, but this was different. His momentum was curtailed, but it wasn't broken. Whatever he had crashed into, it had buckled. It had moved.
Yes! A direct hit!
Though the initial impact was made with his forehead, the sheer speed and power of his super-spin ensured that his entire body would make contact repeatedly. Whatever he crashed into, it felt like he had crossed paths with a truck. As his momentum continued to carry him, the motion of his super-spin began to carry the crumpled mass of steel around with him, shaping and forming the object around him into a cold, metallic cocoon.
Finally, Sonic's momentum came to a halt. For the first time since he boarded the ESS-1, he had come to a full and complete stop.
It took a few seconds for the hedgehog to gather his bearings. After the directional sensors in his mind realigned themselves, he slowly willed himself back to his feet to dust himself off and wrench his crooked nose back into its proper position. Craning his neck around to take in his new surroundings, the first thing he noticed was the gaping door-shaped hole that a security door had filled not thirty seconds earlier.
That was all the sightseeing that he could handle. Time was running short. His legs were getting jumpy, having gone unused for an entire minute. And there was that…plan he had to keep tabs on…
"Yo, Tails! Can you read me?" Sonic asked, hoping his friend's inner-ear two-way radio would pick up his voice.
Almost instantly, Tails' voice came through. "Read you? I bet I could hear that all the way from the top floor!"
With no visual reference, Sonic wasn't sure if Tails was speaking out of fear, reverence, respect, or a mixture of the three. Nevertheless, he nonchalantly chuckled.
"Oh, don't mind me. Just your average breaking and entering. Nothing too serious." For Tails' sake, he omitted the part of the story where he nearly pancaked a concrete wall in the process. "Hey, you're still on 6, right?"
"Yep! I've just been piecing together anything I can on now this ship works, and it's really cool!"
"Tails…"
The fox could practically hear Sonic's eyes rolling, even on the other end of the line. "Oh…right. 'Don't encourage him'," said Tails, his face turning bright red. The two said no more about it, and shifted the conversation back to business.
"Listen, don't wait up! Just keep up the good work, and I'll catch up with you!" said Sonic.
"Okay! Over and out!"
Two harsh square notes resounded in Sonic's ear, signaling the end of the conversation. With a new destination and a new purpose, and a straight and narrow corridor to guide him, the hedgehog threw back his arms and blasted off.
Sonic was racing against time. So far, he figured he was in the lead by a country mile.
Dr. Eggman had almost forgotten the halcyon days of ten minutes earlier when was ready to launch a starship into orbit. His current focus was on making sure it stayed intact for at least another ten minutes. However, before he knew it, a deadly cycle had started to develop. Just as soon as he dealt with an alert or a warning or some kind, two more appeared on Eggman's dashboard.
EGG UNIT DESTROYED. EGG UNIT DESTROYED. UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY ATTEMPT SECTOR 5B. EGG UNIT DESTROYED.
Another seismic jolt to the ship brought Eggman to his knees. This one was accompanied by its own warning: DECK BREACH.
Each new alert triggered an alarm on the bridge, bathing every angle of the room in red light and a deafening sound ten times louder than the next one. Panic-stricken assistant robots ran – or flew – helter-skelter across the bridge. There was no plan programmed into their internal memory for this exact scenario. After the third intrusion, the warnings of the voice synthesizer began to overlap each other, combining with the alarms to create a cacophony of utter paranoia.
"INTRUDERALINTRUDERTALERTINTRUINTRUDERALERT-"
Finally, with the very real threat of losing his hearing on top of everything else, the captain took some action.
"SHUUUUT UUUUUUP!"
All alarms and vocal warnings on the ESS-1 obeyed their master and ceased. Out of sight, out of mind.
With his mind cleared…or at least as cleared as it could be…Dr. Eggman marched away from his command console. Every last one of his robotic assistants had been conditioned from years and gigabytes worth of stored memories to expect some kind of explosion of their master's temper. Chairs thrown across the room, keys and buttons on the command console smashed into powder, self-destruct buttons "accidentally nudged"…all were known to happen on his better days.
And yet, today, nothing of the sort happened.
Instead, despite everything, ever so subtly on Dr. Eggman's face was a roguish smile. Flapper's built-in facial expression recognition system told it something was amiss.
"Come along," the doctor said. "We're not licked yet."
Floating along with trepidation, Flapper asked, "But…master…the hedgehog?"
Eggman whirled his head in his assistant's direction, shooting a glare icy enough to bring any CPU to a shuddering halt. For many of Flapper's distant ancestors, that same glare was the last image they saw before they were forcibly scrapped to make the spare parts to build their descendants.
"Come now, Flapper! Have you already forgotten about my…secret weapon?"
If this story seems kinda slow at first, don't worry, because things are gonna get somewhere real soon. It'll just take a bit of time to develop.
If you read this chapter to the end and have any thoughts, don't hesitate to leave a review! Even if you can't think of anything to write, just write whatever comes into your head and leave that as your review. Trust me, I'll take any praise/criticism I can get!