"Life never stays slow around here for long! Thank goodness. Watch out, Eggman! I'm coming at ya full speed!" – Sonic the Hedgehog, May 6th 2006
"…. Hey doc!" Sonic called. "You asleep?" Night-time was overstaying its welcome. Sonic had been sitting awake for some time, with his eyes closed, willing his mind to shut down.
A grunt came from the darkness behind him.
"I can't wait to get my hover pod back," the injured Dr. Eggman muttered, shuffling his back against the bark of the tree which Sonic had flung them both under, whilst they waited for night to end. "If it's not acorns or twigs then it's bark and branches!"
"Or Prison Island," Sonic added truthfully, opening his eyes. "Sorry, but it's take what you're given with me. I was aiming for as far away from GUN as I could, and given where we are, I'd say that one deserves a 'Job well done'."
The hill where their resting post stood, rose up above the shrouded canopy of the surrounding forest, and a second greyish-black canopy of cloud spread out above, hiding the night sky. The trees and clouds carried on into the dark until they joined up at the horizon. Wherever the lights of Empire City were, back the way they'd came, the hedgehog couldn't see them now.
"But I'm never carrying you again."
"Vermin," said the doctor's voice.
"Egghead."
"Cocky."
"Rotten."
"Maniac."
"Megalomaniac."
"Washed up," Eggman said firmly, "washed up and floundering in the kiddy pool until I can come and toss you a lifeline!"
Sonic's tongue caught before he could retort, not knowing the best way to respond. He closed his eyes again, and silence resumed. The oak bark dug into Sonic's back as he rearranged himself again. Everything around felt cold and wet.
"… I know why you saved me," came the voice through the tree again. The hedgehog didn't respond.
"It's because you wanted me around, wasn't it?" the voice continued.
"You want me around, but the world wants me gone, so you try to please both sides by dropping me off here."
No answer.
"And do you know what the worst part about that is. It's that you'll get away with it, because the world needs you to be their hero and me to be the villain. They need you to be infallible, or else what in this damned world is certain, if we don't conform to their idea of good and evil? Peace? Stability? Certainly not whilst we're around, Sonic."
A sound finally came back through the trunk, a long drawn out snore, followed by a breath out. Sonic had gone to sleep. The doctor crossed his fingers.
"Did you really think Prison Island could hold me if it couldn't hold you, blue boy?" he mused, then pulled himself to his feet, wincing as he put more weight on his injured leg.
"But I'm feeling tired, and this leg will take at least a month of TLC. I think it's time to take a break. You'll have to wait for the next plan, I'm afraid. Even we geniuses need time off. But don't worry. I'll make my next plan a doozy. You're going to love it. Promise. It may even teach you something you didn't know. I'll see you again when it's ready."
The sound of a few heavy steps slowly faded away into the dark.
Let's see how long you can take peace and quiet before it makes your ears ring, hedgehog. "Hehehehe…"
Three years later
The first rays of an autumn sun shot out across the ocean to a mist covered Mobius. The high streaks of cloud in the sky were set alight in orange and violet plumes, while the shadows fled as far as they could stretch. They carried over the countryside's natural seam lines of exposed hills and fields, and along littered forest trails, and up to the top of a faraway hill, where they gathered and hid under the old boughs of a solitary oak and joined the dishevelled hedgehog, who was just waking up from the roughest night's sleep he'd had for a long time.
Quickly shaking off the trance, Sonic pulled himself up and ambled out from under the tree's shade. He spread out his arms and let the sun hit his streamlined form: blue quills, swept behind his head in thick points; thin limbs; tired feet, standing in wet sneakers; and large green eyes, squinting to take in the misty spectacle.
"Wish all mornings could be like this," he said to himself. "I could do with this more often."
Sluggishly, he brushed off the grass that was sticking to the back of his legs, and memories of the prior night started to come back to him.
"Boy, have these last few years been quiet," he mused, jogging on the spot to ease the ache in his legs, prepping them ready for the return journey. "It's the most peaceful I've ever known. No Eggman to ruin the day and it feels like the whole planet's mellowed out."
He glanced behind, half expecting to see the doctor under the tree, opposite side of the trunk to where he'd been sleeping, as if three long stagnant years hadn't gone by since Sonic had rescued him after foiling his previous grand scheme. But nobody was there; just shadows and greenery, swaying in a growing breeze.
"Well… At least 'no Eggman to ruin the day' means there's nothing to worry about on the way home. All right wind, feel like having a race?" he said, looking at the woods below his hill.
He'd run himself ragged last night. Who knew how far from home he was? But he could already see a path forming ahead of him. From over the hill, strong winds were shifting his weight on his toes.
Sonic called out to the wind. "First one to the ocean gets to choose where to go. Don't think this'll be easy though!"
And through the oak leaves came the whoop of a super-sonic hedgehog, doing what he loved best -
"WOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo…!"
The leaf litter was flung high in Sonic's wake as he hopped and sped and slid along the forest paths. The sun guided his footfalls with patchy beams stretching to reach the forest floor. Roots and thickets, natural ramps and new paths lay highlighted to guide him. Then up he sprang into the canopy, catching the sky before tumbling downwards again, following the branch's twists at breakneck pace.
The excitement was breath shaking and gaspy. Clearing the woods with a blast of bracken and bush, he made a straight beeline seaward, rushing over the land he'd seen from the hilltop. The ridgey rolling hills and misty fields sloped and rose and bumped downwards perpetually, and the run felt more like a rollercoaster ride as he swapped lanes between the hill channels and swerved round and across and up and down and down further still. All the while the wind raced with him, keeping pace, keeping up, and keeping Sonic on the balls of his feet as the first milestone drew closer. Sonic yelled out to his competition.
"Come on! Faster!"
He already had a good idea of how to find his way home. Somewhere back down the coast in either direction, there had to be the mystic ruins; he couldn't have crossed the sea in the night. He and Tails had their lodgings near the site, and the Tornado was parked there too. The runway couldn't be missed if one kept to the coastline. Only question was which way?
The sea had seemed a world away from up on the hill, but the distance quickly shortened under his sneaker step and soon it was right before him.
Pausing at the cliff-tops, he looked back along his line of descent, retaining the view. He'd find his way back someday, who knew for what reason? It didn't matter. Then the wind picked up again, blowing to his right, down the coast. Sonic shrugged.
"That way it is then. Bet's off though, you agree? Let's you and me go home together!"
So with the bumpy edge line of the coast on his left, he started running south, but not before giving the hilltop a final wave. Steep cliffs cut his path as he went, and he and the wind switched places as they sped along. Eventually the woods crept out, pushing him off the cliffs, and the ocean surface met Sonic's feet. The spray on the water's top soothed his legs and cooled him as he kept going, casually keeping to the sea for longer than he normally would, until eventually the desire for traction beckoned him back to boulder hopping.
He knew what he'd do first when he got back: get himself and Tails into the Tornado and discuss things, namely what their next direction would be. He hoped he hadn't been missed during his overnight excursion. If any of his friends found him gone from his house, he could have some answering to do.
In his head he could already imagine the conversation he'd have to face.
I just wanted to run-
"In the middle of the night?" Tails's voice said, unconvinced.
I couldn't sleep-
"So you slept under a tree!?" came the angry voice of Amy.
I was far away, and I may have been tired!-
"What you really mean is, you got lost, and collapsed." This was from Knuckles, and Sonic relented.
Maybe some despondency had crept up on him last night, or maybe it was just the changing of the seasons, but he knew he'd done what he would've done, back when being a hero had kept life exciting. Who could really blame him lapsing every now and again with no archenemy around?
I'll just settle for 'I wasn't in a good way last night, he thought. "Besides, I can't remember the last time I felt this free."
With a renewed will, the rising sun above the ocean, and the promise of home further down the coast, Sonic picked up his pace.
Tails was late up this morning. Having defaulted to his usual spot in his workshop, the Tornado hangar, he was making some repairs and adjustments. The servicing wasn't really needed. Tails had done all that he possibly could do to modify the plane long ago, but its the mileage had slowly wound down over the last three years the point that she'd barely seen the sky in several months.
"Poor girl," he thought, giving the Tornado a forlorn glance. "She's been cooped up for weeks. I could fly her through a lightning storm now and she'd come out without a scratch. But why would I ever do that, unless Eggman came back?"
He remembered enjoying the relief and victory celebrations for the first few months of eggman's disappearance, along with everybody else. Then G.U.N had kept him busy with gutting the remnants of Eggman's bases, before they too shut their doors and left him and his friends to their own devices once again. There had been little for him to do this last year, and inspiration to make new gadgets had been few and far between. He'd asked GUN if he could borrow a chaos emerald or two, to test their powers on some of his own tech. They hadn't got back.
Tails sat down, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. "Maybe if Sonic calls round we can take her out and go cruising again. Just like the old times. Maybe we can go somewhere far away for a change."
He was startled out of his train of thoughts by the sound of a knock at his front door.
"Could that be Sonic? No. He never knocks," he wondered aloud as he hurried to his front door, and glanced through the window to the outside. There was nobody there.
Tails shook his head. "Was I hearing things?"
A cautionary hand on the door, he glanced around outside. A large tube parcel was on his doormat, but there was no sign of a deliverer.
"…Or has it just been there all morning?" Tails frowned at it wearily, before reaching down and bringing the parcel inside. He heard something slide along the inside as he did so.
"What could this be?" Tails scrutinized it as he headed down his hallway: 'To Sonic the Hedgehog and Co.' could just be made out. But no sender name on the tube. The contents also had a bit of weight .
Returning to the workshop and nudging away some tools on a free workbench, he popped the tube's lid, briefly peered inside, before turning it upside down. Several coiled sheets of dark paper slid onto the desk – some type of blueprint – followed by a chunky object, which looked like a motherboard, and finally a white, flat object, which missed the desk and fell to the floor; an envelope.
It was only then, as Tails leaned down to pick it up, that one of the prints unrolled enough for him to glimpse the insignia emblazoned on it. His heart skipped a beat, he did a double take, briefly forgot about the envelope, remembered about the envelope, lost his balance, and stumbled up a second later, planting the envelope on the desk and almost ripped the sheets as he ferociously unrolled them, to stare at the Eggman technology that was printed there…
He swore a couple of times, and then picked up his goggles, a white marker pen, and a letter opener.
It was a good hour or so later when Sonic arrived at the workshop, but Tails had spent most of it pacing the floor, or peering through his magnifiers.
"Hey Tails. How's it going buddy?" the hedgehog called breathlessly, letting himself in, his sneakers wet from sea spray and his muzzle flushed. "Tails! You here?!" He poked his head inside the workshop.
Tails was instantly in his face and he pulled Sonic over to his workbench. He thrust the note underneath Sonic's nose.
"Hi Sonic, you need to read this!" he said, and then pointed to the workbench. "Then you need to look at these!"
Sonic was taken aback, but he took the message that Tails was holding out to him.
"This a new gadget?"
"No it's a lead! An Eggman lead, just came in today!"
"From GUN!?"
"No, this came straight here! I don't know who it's from!"
"Then how do you know it's not fake?"
"That's why I waited for you! Give the letter a read, then come take a look at this and help me decide. Because I really don't know what to think about this one!"
"Okay, where can I sit?" Sonic asked, tired from his return journey, as he dusted off a stool and held up the creased letter.
He read message aloud:
"Sonic the Hedgehog, read this message thoroughly. It concerns a lead on Doctor Eggman, and information you'll find hard to believe.
In the package you received, there should have been two items contained along with this message, yes? Two items, which I think you'll quickly assert, are genuine pieces of Eggman technology. Use them to judge the validity of this message, since I can't reveal my identity here, or personally vouch for the accuracy of the account that follows.
Three years ago, you brought down the doctor's last grand plan, everyone chanted your name, and Eggman retreated back into obscurity… and never came back out again. We all anticipated his return, some of us even looked for him; but time has gone on, nothing has happened, and everything has started loosening again. Many now believe that the doctor is gone for good. You may even be starting to believe it yourself.
Well I think I've finally found him. Listen closely, as you'll find the next part hard to believe. I've been searching into the whereabouts and plans of the doctor long after everyone else has abandoned the task, and I've made a discovery that has changed everything we previously thought, and opened up possibilities that I've never conceived before.
Doctor Eggman is in another world. A second Mobius in a dimension beyond the reach of normal chaos control. I can say this because I'll be there by the time you read this. I don't know how he got here, or what he's up to yet, but I believe he may've been in this new Mobius for years, which is why none of us could find him.
If you still want to find the Doctor, and uncover what he's up to, I need you to find a way of reaching me. This blueprint is your best lead for doing this; they were found inside Eggman's computer data-space. I couldn't decipher the prints, but you have a friend who can.
Tell him to use the motherboard as a starting piece, and tell as few people about this as possible, before you can be sure what the machine does.
I leave the rest to your judgment, Sonic the Hedgehog, but consider these two things before you disregard this letter.
First, you and your friends have full power over how you use these pieces of information. You can dismantle the machine if it proves dangerous, you can disprove this message if it's false, and trace it to its forger. Or otherwise you may well find your way to this new Mobius, and once there you can thwart the doctor's plans before he can enact them. There's nothing to lose from following this lead, and all to gain.
And secondly.
You know Doctor Eggman better than anyone else. In your own heart, do you really believe he's gone for good, or does going into hiding sound more like the beginnings of a new plot, which he wants nobody to know about until it's too late? An unknown enemy is always the hardest to defeat, after all.
This is all I can do for you. Be careful as you go, since this is Eggman technology after all. If you somehow succeed in reaching this new Mobius, find me straight away. I'll be easy to spot, since I'll be the only person you'll recognize there.
I can sense the power of chaos too. It's faint, but it's there.
Good luck," he finished.
"I didn't know what to make of it," Tails admitted, remembering other false leads they'd received. "It had me properly rattled. There's nothing to say who it's from, and the whole message is pretty suspicious."
"Yeah, suspicious is putting it mild," Sonic agreed as he finished, realising he'd stood up again, and had paced away from the stool where he'd initially sat down.
"To their credit though, they went big with that talk of another world. It would explain why none of us have seen old Egghead for so long."
The letter had the hallmarks of a prank. But something inside him was telling him 'no'. A quivering had started in his gut, and adrenaline was pulsing through him. It was a feeling of excitement, apprehension. Feelings that told him maybe, possibly, something tremendous was lying in wait for him.
He dangled the letter from his pinched finger and thumb, looking sideways at Tails.
"So… You think it's a prank then?"
"Well. Actually, I didn't get the chance yet…." Tails led Sonic to the workbench, where the blueprints were pinned down with various heavy tools. He tossed the motherboard to the hedgehog before smoothing the sheets out to explain.
"These are what are blurring the lines for me right here. The design and specs of these blueprints are unmistakably Eggman's," Tails said with certainty. "That motherboard even has the logo engraved. This is definitely Egg tech of some kind. They could just be recycled, but I'd have trouble believing these came from a prank lead, since GUN confiscated all the tech we managed to find."
"So you think whoever sent this is correct about that parallel world, and about Eggman?"
"That's the part I'm sceptical about. I'd like to say no. Everything in there was conjectural. But I just… There's a lot about it that bugs me," he said. "What do you think? Should we pursue this? We're not exactly busy."
Sonic took several deep breaths and sat down next to the blueprints.
"Could you make this, Tails? Could we even follow up on this, how far have you gotten through that plan?" There was a hint of urgency in his questions.
"I was waiting 'til you arrived before I made any decisions. But by the looks of the diagrams, we'd maybe be looking at a week or so of hard building, but if you help out, we could make it a few days."
Sonic sucked in a breath as he pondered, cracking his neck to the side.
"Uhhh, what the heck! A few days and what do we really have to lose in that space? We waste a day or two, else we find Eggman through a lead as crackpot crazy as he is!?"
Sonic held out his fist for the fox to bump, grinning maniacally.
"Hahaah, shoot! What do you say, buddy? Feel like being a bit reckless? Let's do something a little more exciting for a change."
A look at Sonic's face was enough to provide an answer to Tails, and he bumped his fist into Sonic's own, grinning but still looking sceptical.
"Should we tell Knuckles or Amy about this?"
"About how we've become Eggman's factory boys, because of a mad letter and our own mad gut feelings?..."
"…Yeah, guess not. All right. Let's see what we can make."
Several days later the machine was complete, and Tails stood scowling at it.
"I feel like this machine is calling me a moron," he said. "I don't know if I should be worried or not. It looks too harmless to be harmless."
The machine looked in every sense like a rudimentary stasis pod. The base supported a horizontal chamber, with a transparent cover. Inside were a tangle of wires, connected to where the head would go, and straps to keep the body in place. A console on the base initiated the stasis sleep. The fox had found nothing dangerous in the schematics, save for the motherboard.
"Well I've learnt never to question your machinery, buddy," replied Sonic, who looked more assured. "It's not my field to judge, even if it's Egg-tech, I'm just surprised we actually made something that works."
The construction process had given Sonic some time to think about the letter's sender. His gut instinct and some thought had given him two conclusions: Either this was a trap, Eggman had sent the lead and set the whole thing up; in which case Tails was more than ready to pull the plug on the machine.
Or the letter was telling the truth, which meant someone he already recognised had sent it; but thinking who that might be had left him even more confused, at which point he'd given up and decided to simply see what happened. Trying not to think too much, he approached the pod and began to climb the steps.
"Guess it's time to give this thing a go."
"I'm not so sure about this," Tails said.
"I know that, buddy. But you know how it is. And besides, I've got you here to bail me out if something's not right."
This didn't quell Tails's worry, but he understood well enough to know that once his best friend decided to do something, nothing would stop him. He simply nodded and opened up the pod, allowing Sonic to climb in.
"You know, Tails," he said as he strapped himself down, "I've been thinking. If this doesn't lead to anything, what say you and me do some globetrotting? It's high time we found our own adventures, instead of relying on these empty promises of Eggman returning."
Tails gave a laugh, and a big nod.
"Sounds like a great plan."
The pod closed over the blue hedgehog, as Tails stepped down to check the console.
"Hey, Tails," Sonic called from inside the pod, his voice faintly audible, "I'll be back before you know it. Just watch," and he gave his friend one of his trademark half grins accompanied with a wink. Tails felt a little better as he commenced the stasis and started the machine up. He watched Sonic's eyes close and his cheerful expression turn to one of peaceful sleep.
"Good luck, Sonic," he said quietly, as the machine whirred to life, and a great suction attacked Sonic's brain. He felt his senses being pulled away, leaving his body and smashing to tiny pieces as they gathered speed and spread out through the empty space of an impossible, technicolour tunnel-scape, which contorted and writhed around him like a mad snake. A slew of sharp, bendy lines and pin-wheeling lights chased and tangled and flung and threw the shreds of sense around before the fragments reunited and reassembled Sonic's mind, leaving him in euphoria and his memory a hazy muddle of moods and actions.
Then suddenly the dots and lines slowed their flits, mingling together and arranging themselves with utmost precision around him. In a matter of moments Sonic's body was stitched back together around his senses, substance forming between the gaps. He felt his ears prick, and his feet craving something to run on, and he now saw that there were other bodies floating around him. Mobians like him: two legged, short, not quite animals. They became more and more real with every moment passing, and he saw them claw at the space around them. A multitude of tiny buzzing chaotic sparks whizzed through their bodies, pulsing from their heads, along their criss-crossing lines, to the end of their fingertips, as they reached out to the hedgehog, trying to pass the spark on.
Then Sonic's eyes shot open. The apparitions vanished, the tunnel fell away in front of him, now surprisingly solid. and he toppled forwards, warm liquid spilling down around him in torrents, onto a hard red-metal floor, nothing like the concrete of Tail's workshop, as the idea of a second Mobius began to realise itself around him...
THE HEDGEHOG BROTHERHOOD
Welcome to what is probably the most difficult-to-make piece of self-indulgence I've ever wanted to share.
What follows is my effort to turn a playground game into an epic story, featuring Sonic the Hedgehog, of course!