Chapter 1 – The Sea of Ruin
"They have razed our world. Razed it all."
_ The Shattered had taken our planet, and we were hopeless to stop them. Their plans to lock Mobius in perpetual nightfall would not be stopped. And so, we retreated, in fear that they may wipe us out completely. We regrouped and together, we built the Stronghold, our main base of operations, our last bastion... our last hope of ever reclaiming our fallen planet. It is here we regroup, rearm, and plan our counter-assault. If the Stronghold falls... ...
We called them The Shattered. Their arrival changed us for the worst. They came, raining from the skies and wreaked havoc on our cities and turned them into smoking rubble and debris. Great cities collapsed, defence systems rendered useless, our losses amounted severely, and before we knew it, we lost, and all that was left on the surface was dust and echoes. The Shattered had won, and that was the end of everything; our Golden Era, our quest never-ending for knowledge... our hope. All was laid to waste in their inexorable genocide.
_
There is something to be said about the colour grey. The colour grey is not bright, not vibrant. The colour grey is not the colour one thinks of when they hear the word "life". For many, the colour grey is like lifelessness.
Just like the conditions on Mobius after the first invasion of the Shattered; no longer teeming with life, no longer vibrant, no longer colourful, no longer filled with happiness and laughter. After the invasion, the planet was nothing but a shell of its former self, now covered in dust, ruin, destruction, and misery. The Mobius everyone knew was gone. The bright and colourful Mobius was made the opposite; just grey. In short, Mobius had collapsed, fallen, and ruined...
...and yet, a glimmer of hope still remained for the survivors of the invasion.
Amidst the sea of ruins and debris and what looked and felt like a thousand years of entropy of a once prosperous city stood a yellow twin-tailed fox, a stark contrast from the sea of grey that surrounded him. His sapphire blue eyes took in the destruction. Ruined buildings barely held up, broken glass littered the debris, crushed cars lay under large chunks of concrete and steel. In the distance, the fox could see a bridge missing most of its support, ready to collapse, just like Mobius did. Silence was all that could be heard grey, the only colour that could be seen, smoke, the only thing that could be smelled. So much like the opposite of what the city was once like.
'What happened?... We had everything, and now, we have nothing...' the fox thought to himself.
Sunlight barely penetrated the thick black smoke that filled the air, and what little light it could cast on the surface was barely enough to illuminate the surroundings in a pale greyish-yellow light. The Sun was the only thing standing between illumination and darkness. Every time the cloud blocked the Sun's light, it seemed as if night had come early. Pillars of sunlight pierced through whatever gap in the thick smoke and heavy clouds, and it looked as if the pillars of light are the only support for the seemingly heavy skies above. The world around looked lifeless and barren.
Much like the fox's spirit at that moment.
It was almost certain he would not be able to find anyone still alive in the ocean of concrete and cement, but he still held on to the hope that someone, maybe someone was still there, hanging on and waiting for help. The thought of that drove him to continue his search. He wouldn't let innocent Mobians and humans die. Enough lives have been lost already, he wasn't ready to let any more lives slip away, and so, he pressed on.
He tread lightly and carefully on the broken concrete – one false step could break the now fragile slabs. Navigating the ocean of destruction felt akin to going through an obstacle course; having to jump here, climb up there, slide down here, run fast here, walk slowly there, it was tiring for the fox - on top of having to search for survivors, he had to navigate what was essentially a gruelling obstacle course . After thirty-five minutes of running and jumping and sliding and searching, he stopped to rest under a slab of concrete sticking out of the pile of other concrete slabs next to him. He cursed the fact that the Shattered had suppressed their powers and weakened their stamina and strength.
"Tails, come in," a voice interrupted the silence.
The fox raised his wrist communicator to his mouth, "Yeah?"
"Any luck?" the voice asked.
"...No. Nothing so far," Tails replied
"...All right. Keep searching. Round up any survivors if you find any and fall back to the Stronghold. Stay safe and stay low,
buddy. Anything happens, don't hesitate to shoot."
"Understood, Sonic... I'll try to find someone..." he clicked off the communicator. "...while I still can," he added to himself.
He continued his search, doing what he - and others like Sonic, Shadow, Knuckles and other able-bodied survivors - was doing, looking under piles of debris, searching inside half-intact buildings that somehow managed to withstand explosive power of the Shattered's orbital ballistic missiles (Tails saw this act of firing missiles from orbit as very pusillanimous). However, all he managed to find was the same thing - rubble, ruin, wreckage and decay.
He only searched for about seven minutes before he heard the roaring sound of an engine overhead. It didn't sound anything like a Mobian-built engine. Which only meant one other thing.
The Shattered. They probably saw him and are probably on their way to kill him.
Tails cursed under his breath and immediately dashed for the nearest piece of cover – a broken slab of concrete jutting out of the debris – and hid himself under it. Adrenaline rushed through the fox's veins and his heart raced as the sound of the engine crescendoed to a deafening roar. They were landing.
'They were watching me!' Tails thought. '...Okay, stay calm... Maybe they will pass by...'
The engines cut and whined down. Tails heard a hiss and the mechanical clinks and clanks of an automated pressurised door releasing its complex locks, and the next sound he heard was a hum as the door opened and the dropship released its cargo of a squad of Shattered soldiers.
Tails tried to control his breathing when he realised that he was taking very shallow and quick breaths in his anxiety.
'If anything happens... don't hesitate to shoot...' he thought of Sonic's advice. He readied his weapon.
He picked up the sound of footsteps headed towards his hiding spot. The sound of them turning over every loose and light pieces of debris, and the sound of an unfamiliar language that the Shattered spoke broke the brief almost-silence. From the way they were speaking, they sounded annoyed and irritated, almost as if they were dropping invectives in their sentences. Their vexation amused Tails.
'Heh, good luck finding me,'Tails confidently whispered under his breath.
At least, he thought he whispered it. The first sign that made it clear that Tails' sentence was not at all spoken quietly as he thought was the fact that the Shattered soldiers suddenly stopped talking. The next sign was the sound of footsteps going closer to Tails' hiding spot.
'...Me and my big mouth.'
His heart raced faster as the Shattered soldiers approached his hiding spot. He heard one of them bark something that sounded close to "It's your time!" (the Shattered had picked up the English language in their invasion) in a distorted growling voice that sounded like rocks scraping against each other on a deep ocean floor.
He was certain that he would have to fight them.