Day 01 – 16:34 – Undisclosed Location Underground – Station Square, California, USA

"Why?"

"Why?"

"Oh, why is it that I can never beat Sonic?"

DOCTOR Ivo Robotnik, alias "Dr. Eggman," was slumped over the computer console of his master control room. Once more, he had been thoroughly thwarted by Sonic the Hedgehog, resident hero of Station Square. Eggman's usual response to defeat in battle against his arch-nemesis was to retreat to a new hide-out and suffer through a long sulk. He was well underway in the brooding phase of his post-defeat ritual.

The Doctor grumbled aloud in his chair, with his forehead cradled into his left hand as its elbow was propped up on the arm of the chair, while his right hand freely drummed the opposite arm rest. Whilst he grumbled, Eggman massaged his forehead.

Robotnik had earned his nickname, though no one is exactly sure how he came by it. Some might believe that he earned it when he was an up and coming robotics engineer that so astounded his colleagues some of them resentfully referred to him as such an "egg-head" and that he would "crack-up." Indeed, it is a pity that he either lost his moral-anchor or willingly cut it loose so that he might attain to goals greater than that of a "mere" engineer. Be careful what you wish for. Then, again, he might have taken the name, himself, to reflect his hard-boiled nature and that, like a hard-boiled egg, he could mentally stand up to the intense pressures of genius. But, the widely believed story is that his arch-foe had given him the name out of spite and that, in a childish game of one-upmanship, he adopted the name. Though different people swear by different stories, no one knows for sure how he came by his infamous moniker.

Regardless, Eggman did match his name physically. With a broad waistline and an upper body that seemed to taper off to the "point" that was his head, his torso fit the vague description of the ovular image. The fact that he shaved his head furthered the image of a man-sized egg. Since his mind did most of his work for him, Eggman's limbs had suffered, somewhat, from an atrophy that left them proportionally smaller than his larger body parts. The Doctor was something of a caricature of a human; another point that he accentuated with his strange idea of fashion: a red and black suit, with gold buttons, yellow jacket cuffs and white horizontal stripes. Further "eccentricities" were displayed in his clothing choices of white gloves, pince nez sunglasses, and an easily noticed handlebar mustache that had gone out of style perhaps fifty years ago.

In the midst of one of his emotional eccentricities, Eggman still fumed about his enemy, "Just- What is it about Sonic that I haven't figured out, yet? Eh? I've tried and tried, for years now, to do away with him, beat him, bring him to his knees, whatever it takes to break his will to fight. What am I doing wrong?" Eggman snapped upright in his chair, and slapped his left hand down, palm open on the arm rest. With a resolute will and a determined look on his face he declared, "I need to get my mind off of him, for a minute. I need something, anything."

With that, Eggman leaned forward and brought his personal computer out of sleep mode and booted up the HDTV television-viewer program. Tapping the up and down arrow keys, he casually flicked through the various feeds. Soap opera, reality television program, game show, televangelist, talk show, talk show, home shopping network, and so on and so on; one would be disappointed to truly reflect upon the thousands of unwatchable things that go onto television. Finally, Eggman came across what he felt might actually be beneficial: the news.

"I'm Scarlet Garcia for Station Square News: at the top of the hour, earlier today, Sonic the Hedge-"

Eggman cut the newswoman off, "Not even."

"Sonic-"

"Bah!"

"Dr. Eggman was defeated-"

"At least that one mentioned me, first."

At that point, Eggman came to a political commentator, known in wider circles as a "pundit," "If you ask me, this whole 'Dr. Eggman thing' is overrated. I mean, who thinks he's a threat? He gets beat by a hedgehog, for crying out loud!"

Eggman growled as he changed the channel, again. This time, however, he quickly typed in some new commands that would change the frequency his television receiver picked up; anything to get away from a West Coast feed. Unfortunately, things did not go so well there, either. Again, the Doctor was forced to sift through various, inferior programs on the Midwestern stations. Talk show, talk show, home shopping network, cartoons – several stations' worth of those – children's programming, made for television movie, and finally some more news shows.

"KFMB Channel 4 News, featuring Linda Park, Mark Summers, sports reviews by John Longman, and weather with Nancy Roberts," thus the announcer introduced his co-workers at the station.

"Finally," Eggman resignedly quipped, "something that doesn't have to do with Sonic."

"At the top of the hour," Linda Park began, "KFMB will bring you the latest election results for the city council, today's winning lottery numbers, reports of the governor's trip to Washinton, and how you can save more at the grocery store, as well as your sports highlights and weather for the weekend."

Eggman sighed a little, in relief, at the soothing tone of the anchorwoman, as well as the hedgehog-free news items she brought to the public – mundane, though they were. He had begun to edge away from his earlier despondency as the camera cut over to Mark Summers, the co-anchor.

"But first," the thirty-something newsman interjected, a tone of mild excitement in his voice. Eggman recognized that kind of excitement in a reporter's voice. Eggman knew it as the tone that reporters handled when something "interesting," usually dangerous, has happened. "We have coverage of the daring assault on a gold shipment, at the Keystone City rail-depot, earlier this morning." Eggman put all of his attention to this, since he was an aficionado of all things "extra-legal."

"This morning, a familiar gang of criminals attacked a gold shipment that made a last minute detour through Keystone City; the detour, itself, being part of the larger plan to steal the gold. The gold in question totaled to a full fifteen million dollars." The newsman's well-kept face was replaced with somewhat grainy footage of a train yard.

"As you can see here," the anchor's voice spoke while the footage rolled, "by this surveillance video obtained from the Keystone City Police Department, the notorious Rogues, self-styled super-villains, who have been terrorizing the city for years were the perpetrators responsible for the attack." What followed on screen caused Eggman to lean forward in his seat, very much focused on what he saw. For several minutes, what proceeded was a fantastical display of events that defied everyday logic.

A thick white beam flashed across the camera, striking the train as it approached the depot, and froze it in place; no surprise since the beam, in fact, was an intense blast of ice and cold that quickly "welded" the engine to the rails. The train stopped and three men stepped forward, each of them clad in outrageous clothing – costume, actually.

The first one wore a blue parka, with matching pants – something out of place in the middle of July. To accentuate the incredulity of the out of place winter-wear, the hood and shoulders of the parka were covered in a white material, obviously some form of cloth material, rather than any ice or snow. Not as strange, perhaps part of a disguise, the cold-themed assailant wore a visor that obscured his eyes. Beyond that, his accessories were fairly normative: a pair of white gloves and boots and a yellow belt with twin-holsters. The holsters, of course, were empty, with both of the weapons they housed wielded in the parka-man's hands. The twin guns were fairly bulky for pistols, but pistols they were. Eggman was impressed with the weapons. Though he, himself, had worked with cryonic weaponry, in years past, Eggman had never been able to make his weapons so compact, nor had he ever escaped the need to rely on liquid nitrogen, or other such refrigeration technology. Yet, there they were, a pair of pistols, capable of freezing a locomotive to its rails, as well as incapacitating any and all security personnel that came toward the gunman. Eggman hummed a thought or two about what he watched. That is when he noticed another of the raiders.

The second "Rogue," as Eggman remembered the name mentioned beforehand, wore an orange jumpsuit – perhaps it was a full-body leotard, or something of that nature. Around his head, he wore an odd style mask, green in color, with large holes cut out for his eyes and mouth. His large belt and boots matched the hood, along with a pair of arm bands and green holsters on his thighs. When confronted by other security personnel that flocked out into the train yard the man in orange produced small green tiles from his belt. He then tossed them on the ground, in front of the guards. Eggman was perplexed to notice that the "tiles" were in fact small hand-mirrors. Eggman went from confusion to shock when the security personnel began to fall into the mirrors. In spite of all appearances of their size, the mirrors, when stepped on, swallowed up the security personnel, with no problem. When the danger of the mirrors was made evident, the remainder of the guards sidestepped the reflective traps and aimed their weapons at the orange-man. Unfazed, the mirror-thrower pressed a switch hidden in his left armband, whereupon a large group of holograms flashed up out of the mirrors, the spitting image of their target. Eggman chuckled at such versatility for simple mirrors just as much as he was set in a good mood by the look on the security personnel's faces.

The third Rogue, when he made himself fully visible, was hard to miss. There was no way to describe this man who was dressed in such garb as to make the other two men seem common. Firstly, he wore a cape, something that put off Eggman's sensibilities of style and dignity. From there things got stranger as his whole costume was nothing but a striped shirt, with likewise pants and curly tip shoes. It was strange to see this man and his, frankly, circus-style clothing. But, after he took a moment to reassess his own predilections for carnivals, circuses, and other festival-themed devices and robots, Eggman's surprise passed, for the moment. What guards were left soon became the victims of this blond man whose identity was thinly disguised by a small mask that obscured his eyes. Smiling like a madman, this fugitive from a circus reached behind his back and under his black cape and pulled out a weapon of his own. By then, Eggman was not surprised to see that it was a set of juggling balls, puzzled, but not surprised. Taking a moment or two to juggle the items about, the performer tossed them in an erratic fashion at the guards. When they struck ground, the spheres exploded into yellow clouds. The cloud of unidentifiable dust soon proved itself to be a bizarre mixture of eye and skin irritant that drove the guards to itch and scratch and rub at their skin and eyes. Eggman laughed once, heartily, at the "trick," "Ha! Itching powder!"

The most impressive thing about all this was the speed with which everything had taken place. According to the built-in clock of the security cameras, the elapsed time was little more than ten minutes. Though it was short, Eggman thoroughly enjoyed the show, his earlier frustrations with Sonic quite easily forgotten. It was at this moment in the film that the news anchor cut back in to comment on the situation.

"As you can see here, the unfortunate security guards were quickly overpowered by the Rogues known as 'Captain Cold,' 'Mirror Master,' and the 'Trickster.' Their one good bit of luck was that none of them were seriously hurt, as the Rogues proceeded to rob the train of its sizeable gold shipment. You'll even notice that the three of them were able to breech the armored train cars with Captain Cold's 'cold gun' and a weapon later identified as a 'seltzer bottle loaded with a powerful acidic compound.'" All of this happened on film, in conjunction with the audio observations. "Now, you'll notice, once the cars were opened they began using Mirror Master's special mirrors, the same ones you saw him capture several of the guards with earlier, as some sort of storage containers."

Eggman was in a very good mood as all of this went on before him. But, he also took a little time to memorize the names the newsman tossed out. "Captain Cold, Mirror Master and Trickster," he repeated them a couple of times, "Captain Cold, Mirror Master and Trickster."

"Thankfully," the newsman's chipper voice interrupted. Eggman did not like that; since the commentator had been unsympathetic to such masterful, albeit "petty," outlaws, the Doctor knew that anything positive that would be said would not be directed at the trio. It only took a second for the Doctor's prediction to be rendered reality. "Thankfully, Keystone's own Flash was able to arrive in time to stop the thieves before they could get away, or take too much of the gold."

Eggman grumbled at this statement. He was not pleased with the notion of something that interrupted such a daring and capable performance as that of the Rogues. Sadly, so he felt, it was true, there was an interruption; but, not just any interruption. A streak of red flew through the train yard. "What!" the Doctor snapped. Could it be? Did his eyes deceive him?

To Eggman's horror, he relived a moment he felt all too familiar: defeat. How many times had he done it? How many times had Sonic rocketed into his plans, threw all of his careful preparation into chaos, only to dash right back out, free as a bird and having "saved the day?" Eggman did not have to see, or pay attention to what went on before him. Oh, the Rogues put a valiant fight, but the scarlet lightning bolt that raced around the train yard easily overcame cold guns, mirrors and holograms, and a menagerie of circus-style traps. It was as if, somehow, Sonic was still ruining his day. But, it was not Sonic. It was this "Flash" character. That was all Eggman wanted to see; all he could stomach to see. His sulking rage bubbled back up into his soul, again. Suddenly, Eggman did not want to learn tips for saving on groceries or to hear about last night's baseball game – though he was a fan of the sport. No, he simply switched the television receiver program off.

Eggman slumped back in his seat, as he had earlier, with feelings as low as he had earlier. "Why?" the Doctor asked the blank computer screen, "Why is it that such troublesome pests must exist in this world? After all, though they're men of smaller ambitions, the Rogues have the same problem that I do."

It was at that moment Eggman was struck by a sharp realization, like a gust of brisk air clearing away a thick cloud. Eggman quickly brought up his personal Internet browsing tool, Egg-Web, and launched himself into a research project that lasted for the rest of the day and well into the night, while he chuckled about his sudden burst of inspiration.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Sonic the Hedgehog and all related characters and trademarks are copyrighted by the SEGA Corporation.

The Flash and all related characters and trademarks are copyrighted by DC Comics.