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Chapter 1
The color of the sky
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It was, appropriately, raining. Abby-Si was sitting calmly in the cave. Watching her egg, growing more excited by the second, as the egg started to shake, and then a little fist punched through. She smiled; everybody said it wouldn't work, that her choice of husband wouldn't result in a baby. Then it started to go wrong. Horribly wrong. The fist tried t tear away at the rest of the shell, but couldn't. The yolk or white wasn't all gone. Her baby was suffocating! Desperately, she started breaking the egg herself, another forbidden thing. "If a baby could not get out of its egg, it was too weak to deserve to live." A small echidna tumbled out on the floor. Abby-Si heaved a sigh of relief, and cuddled the baby close to her. She was so content that she didn't hear the sound of the gun being cocked behind her. Abby frowned as she saw what color the echidna was. No echidna was that color. That was her last thought. A black robed echidna spoke into a com unit. "Sir the quarry has been disposed of. She had a puggle, what shall I do with it?" A robotic voice answered "Dump it in the woods. It won't live long." The dark robed echidna picked up the puggle, and turned to leave. Then it stopped, and turned around. It walked back to the body of Abby-Si, and kicked her "That is how we deal with traitors, traitor!" Then it marched out of the cave.
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5 years later
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It was a clear beautiful spring day. The birds were signing, the flowers blooming, the sun a golden color, warming the air just enough. The sky had a few scattered puffy white clouds. All was calm and peaceful, till.
"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhooooooooooooooooooooo!" Sonic cried feeling the wind on his face as he ran by at speeds just below mach 1. Soon Tails followed at a relatively leisurely pace.
"You know Sonic today is just..."
"Don't say it!" Sonic screamed. He halted and turned around clamping his hand on Tails's mouth. "I learned from Sally that whenever somebody says 'today is just perfect' something goes wrong ... Oh... I just said it didn't I?" He released his grip on Tails's mouth.
"Look Sonic, what's that over there" Tails said as he spotted something in a stump, something blue.
"You see, it's starting already!" Sonic sighed. And he walked over to the tree stump, and then peered in. he was surprised to find a little child, who couldn't be more then 6 years old, curled up in a little ball. "I bet that this cute little blue hedgehog is a clone of me made by the dark legion, or Robotnic, or Mammoth Mogul, or somebody we don't even know about, who is here to kill me." Sonic complained, drawling on in a tired monotone. Tails tried repeatedly to interrupt during Sonic's speech.
"Uh Sonic ... Sonic... SONIC!" drawn out of his self pitting Sonic looked at Tails. "What is it little bro?" "Sonic, it isn't a hedgehog it's an echidna!" Tails exclaimed.
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The same time on the floating island, Knuckles was going on a "Date" with Julie-Su. She had decided to take him to the movies and was rather stubborn about it. Knuckles didn't know what was more embarrassing, the murmurs in the crowed about him and Julie, the fact that management gave them the most prominent seats in the cinema or the fact that the movie was about him, and very wrong too. He watched as "he" (Performed by some actor who was years older then him) first dealt with two "invaders" (Who were played by an echidna in blue body paint, and a fox who didn't know how to act and had another tail pinned on) then learned that they were there to warn "him" about the true thieves (An animatronics fat creature of white, red and black, and a bunch of echidnas that were in robot suits). "He" went and whipped these new invaders, well the blue echidna, and the fox cowered in fear. "He" then removed "His" gloves and shook bare hands with the blue echidna (There were no burs under the gloves) then sat down to a meal of roast chicken with the blue echidna and fox. As the crowd applauded he realized that the most embarrassing thing was that the echidnas actually liked the film. There was a sequel to be shown next spring. He had gotten several offers to play himself but he just turned them down. Deeply embarrassed and blushing, Knuckles let Julie lead him from the theater. As he left he saw a familiar face and groaned Vector was there.
"Hey Knuckles, how was the movie!" wheezed Vector. This statement was followed by several guffaws. Knuckles pretended he didn't hear Vector. Suddenly there was a beeping noise. It took Knuckles a few seconds to realize that it was his pager. Sonic's face appeared on the little screen.
"You won't believe what I just saw Knuckles, A blue echidna." He stated excitedly.
"Is everybody gonna rib me about that movie huh? Jeez Sonic it was just a bad paint job" An exasperated Knuckles expelled.
"Movie what movie?" Queried Sonic, with a pained look on his face. Knuckles immediately became attentive.
"Where did you see this blue echidna?"
"We found him in the woods, tails and I brought him with us to Knothole." An agitated look went over Sonic's face.
"You've gotta help me Knuckles, Sally's gone dotty over him!"
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Sonic heard giggles and turned away from the contact monitor just in time to see Sally playing a game of tag with the odd blue echidna. She had caught him, and she had started tickling him. Those were the giggles sonic heard. Sonic waited a while and the little tyke escaped her grip. Sonic walked up to Sally. "Sally come on! Do you have to play with him like that? I honestly don't know what you see in that little brat." Sally giggled. A little while ago, after the little tyke woke up, it had snuck into Sonic's room, where he was sleeping for the night, and started bouncing on his stomach.
"Same thing I see in you, silly, that shade of blue!" Sally teased him. Sonic sighed.
"I'm going for a walk, away from that little monster." He muttered. He stepped out into the predawn gloom, "Tails, I'm going to annoy Robutnick, you coming?" The young fox stuck his head out the door of his room.
"Not right now sonic. I'm trying to invent something that will let us find out where that little tyke came from." Sonic groaned to himself. Tails thought of the tyke like it was his little brother. Sonic himself was starting to wonder about Tails's brother choices. Sonic knew he wasn't very responsible, and that blue echidna "the little tyke" was not exactly mild mannered. Sonic sighed and rubbed his sore stomach.
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Knuckles didn't know what to expect when he landed on Mobius. He had decided to take along Julie and the Chaotix. He had also decided to "Borrow" a stealth airplane from the brotherhood. Although they wouldn't be pleased by the note. He chuckled softly to himself. It was the work of a few seconds to break in to the brotherhood. He did however leave evidence that it was him, so they would know who it was. He relaxed and looked at the rest of the Chaotix. Julie was piloting. Vector was looking worried, and jumped slightly at every jostle. Mighty was curled up in a ball sleeping. Espiro was looking airsick, and had turned a beautiful shade of green. Charmin was trying to comfort Vector, to no avail. As he rode on it started getting darker. Then heard a metallic "Wannnnnnng" followed by a more wooden "Thud". "Julie! What happened" Knuckles shouted.
"Robotnick must have detected us somehow. We've been hit, and lost the main engine; we are on back up systems right now." Julie called back. Both of them had to be rather loud to understand each other over Vector's terrified gibbering. Knuckles saw a forest approaching out the window.
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Sonic was running through the forest, attempting to do by speed what a cold shower failed to do, wake completely up. He was feeling sluggish, and knew that he couldn't possibly be going faster then 150 MPH when he heard the oddest noise. Something large was plowing through the forest fast. And coming towards him. He leapt to the side just in time, as a mysterious plane slid past him. He ran along side the plane, trying to see if he could help any. The plane slid for a long time, thirty seconds, before it stopped. The hatch opened, and a bright red echidna jumped down. "Knuckles!" Sonic exclaimed "Boy am I glad to see you."
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Robotnick sat alone, in his large "egg chair". Though people didn't know it, he did enjoy a joke or two. Despite Sonic's repeated assertions that he was behind it, Robotnick had less knowledge of what was going on then sonic. However Robotnick didn't really care much about that blue guy, he had his own problems to deal with, such as that odd wanderer who had appeared in Robotropolis. He didn't know much, yet. Only that this animal, this THING! Had appeared in the midst of his city, using technologies the likes of which Robotnick had never seen before. Some sort of invisible shield had protected him, one which registered on none of Robotnick's scanners. It had looked around, and then started muttering nonsense in some other language. Robotnick tried to attack it with the SWAT-bots. This was when he learned of the shield, Not only that but the creature had proceeded to blast his SWAT-bots with some sort of wide beam laser. Robotnick would have been in trouble, except the creature noticed something, and looked down, then fainted. Then the shield dropped, and Robotnick put him in containment. He was already testing the lizard, and he was getting very odd results. The DNA analysis had come up as human, and there seamed to be enough power flowing through it's veins to, well to rival Knuckles, but from an oddly different source then the chaos emeralds. Robotnick noticed that his captive was awakening, and decided to pay it a visit.
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Even the dark legion was getting involved with these strange happenings. Demeter Aka Enerjack had been gone a long time, and the legion was still trying to recover from the loss of its leader. The factions were warring amongst themselves trying to find a new leader. They wouldn't be a threat for a while, or at least so the brotherhood thought. However one of the leaders, a cyborg simply known as Knife, had found a way to supremacy. To be frank he had stumbled onto it by mistake. But he didn't dare tell his cronies that. He had found a chemical, Formula 49, which could cause chaos, not just this wimpy "Different levels of order" stuff, but pure unadulterated chaos, which could be harnessed as an energy source, much like the chaos emeralds. In fact if the chemical was heated, and compressed it became a substance which looked disturbingly like an uncut Chaos emerald. Knife was using some of these synthetic chaos emeralds to power his enhancements. To tell the truth, there was very little live echidna left to him, Even part of his brain was replaced with analog computer chips, (Digital could not interface with the brain) The left half, the intellect half to be exact, thusly enhancing it, while leaving him with the power of intuition using his right half. He had monitored the transmissions from Knuckles and Sonic, and had taking note of the large energy bursts near the only large city on Möbius. What was it called, ahh yes Robotropolis. He didn't know what was going on either, but he was piecing together the parts, and would, as soon as possible, take on the brotherhood. After (Of course) uniting the legion. He might even get his hands on this creature, if it proved benificary.
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Another legionnaire was also gaining dominance. An incredible scientist, named by his parents as Jarred which is pronounced as Jer-ad. He was not, technically, a legionnaire. His great-great-who knows how many times grand parents had 'borged themselves, the fools, and then when the gap began, tried to negotiate for peace. However they were sucked into the abyss by Stephan Wolf, along with the others. Because of this, his family hated the guardians, but didn't really want to harm the ordinary echidnas. Solution, stay apart from the rest of the legion, become an anti-brethren strike team, or dedicate themselves to science. His family had chosen all three. He himself could count the number of brethren he had killed on one hand, but that was better then most of the other legionars. He had a store of hidden science, which his family had developed, and had not sold due to nothing being produced which would be good barter for these things. He had however helped his one time best-friend with some of this. He himself had an A.I. chip, a metal skeleton, special nanomeds, and high power hydraulic muscles, anti chaos shielding, but very few outwardly visible mods. His best friend had a vision, a vision for the future of the legion, helping the citizens, guarding the isle. It had one flaw; his friend had wanted to work with the brethren. His friend had pleaded for the help, and Jarred had given it (Twice the fool). He had given the meds, he had given the metal bones, he had given the hydraulics, and then he had made the mistake. He had given his friend the piece of machinery still in work. He had given him an experimental analog brain chip. Then his friend changed. He got more and more violent, demanding more and more upgrades, till Jarred was forced to bail out, with his few supporters left alive. Now he had directly joined the struggle for supremacy. There was going to be hell to pay too.
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Shamaram lay in his cell, wondering what happened to him. He had put himself in stasis, to prevent that odd being from knowing he had recovered yet, and he pondered. Last thing he could definitely remember was putting up a shield, and then destroying some of those odd robots, he remembered looking at himself, finding his legs were reptilian, with a sharp cutting claw, that his belly was scaled, that his fingers had talons. He remembered being shocked by this, but not why. He remembered seeing that fat rotund thing dragging him, by his scythed tail. Then putting him in this cell, and performing some odd tests on him. He then got tired of waiting, and sat up. A monitor on the wall activated, and a large rotund creature appeared. "Truly sorry about locking you up like this you know, but one can never be too careful. The animals here are crazy, and often tried to destroy me. Could you forgive me for thinking you one of them?" Shamaram blinked this was not his language, yet he under stood it. Why? He opened his mouth to speak, and only heard odd chattering, till he got control of his tongue. The doctor's motive was believable. Shamaram knew he looked more animal then anything else.
"Sssssssooooo sssssooorrrryyy fffffoooorrrrr thhhhheeeee iiiiiinnnnnnncooooovvvvvveeeeeeennnnniiiiiiiieeeeeecccceeeee" ("so sorry for the inconvenience") "Good, now I've got some questions to ask first off where did you come from?"
"Iiiiiii doooooonnnnnnnn't rrrrrreeeeeemmmmmmmeeeeeemmmmmmmbeeeeeerrrr mmmmmuuuuuchhhhhh aaaaaaaat aaaaalllllllllllllll." ("I don't remember much at all")
"Well, what are you?"
"Iiiiii'mmmmmmmm nnnnnooooooot ssssssuuuuuurrrrrreeeee." ("I'm not sure")
"Well what do you know?"
"Iiiii knnnnnoooooowwww hhhhooooowwww tooooo fffiiighhhhht" (I know how to fight.")
"Really, well I'll give you much better room and board; call it hospitality, if you will help me with those freaks which I told you about near the start. Especially a certain blue hedgehog." Shamaram tried to think, but his head was too woozy. He decided he liked this fat man's offer. "Doooonnnnnneeee deeeeaaaallll, wwwwwhhhhhhaaaaat hhhhheeeeeeedgeeeeeeehhhhoooooggggeee?" ("Done deal, what hedgehog?")
"It is a blue one which is really fast. This particular one is often guarded by an orange fox."