Read and Reply.
Chapter 1: Realization of a Dream
Sonic is currently running around the surrounding area looking for a Chaos Emerald. They were scattered recently when one of Eggman's machines went crazy a few days ago. Sonic has been searching a very large, grassy plain that seems to extend as as the eye can see in broad daylight. His special watch which is made by Tails contains a Chaos Emerald tracker. Sonic has just been running around the place all day in order to catch a signal, but comes up empty. After about an hour searching, Sonic stops once his watch vibrates. He looks up into the cloudless sky to see a blue jet approaching quickly. It flies right in front of him. Sonic times a jump onto the left wing of this jet. Tails is the pilot with Knuckles flying in one of the passenger seats. He opens the hatch to let Sonic in who sits in the last seat.
"Why did you pick me up," Sonic asks Tails. "Is there an emergency or something?"
"You are not gonna believe this," Tails explains while piloting the jet. "I received a transmission from Eggman a little while ago. It sounded as if he was in pain, and he was asking for help. I decided not to go, but Knuckles thought that we should at least check this out."
"It's obviously a trap, knucklehead," Sonic replies.
"Well excuse me for actually wanting to help a person," Knuckles yells.
"We should go anyway. He probably has a Chaos Emerald that we can take from him," Sonic says. He starts staring out the window once they get above the ocean. The sun's reflection off of the blue water is pretty bright. They actually are able to see some dolphins on the way to Eggman's residence. This time they are actually going to his house and not one of his many bases located across the planet. Eggman doesn't actually have any current plans for world domination at the moment. He is on a vacation at his actual home which is located on a very large island in the middle of the ocean. It takes Tails almost and hour to find the place. There is actually a landing strip on the western part of the island so Tails lands his jet here. Sonic is the first one to hop out once Tails opens the latch. He start stretching immediately.
"That was a long ride. Where do we go from here," Sonic inquires. After he says that, a very loud, booming noise is heard off in the distance with a mushroom like cloud rising into the air. Sonic takes off to the location with Knuckles and Tails right behind him. Once they finally reach the other side of the island, they stare in shock and awe the the burnt remains of what seems to have been Eggman's house. The place has been destroyed with pieces of the actual house floating out into the sea. It seems that everything which was once in the house disintegrated. Among these ruins is Shadow. It's pretty obvious that he caused this since he appears to be unscathed. He is staring at them who are all still shocked.
"What happened to Eggman," Knuckles growls. He is ready to fight.
Shadow looks down at the ground. "I was angry for what he did to me. I decided to take matters into my own hands. To think he was only using me for promise that he would revive my memory. I got it back, but with the help of friend. After my shocking realization, I made it my dream to go after Eggman and kill him for what he did to me, and I have now accomplished that. I shall now take my leave," Shadow replies. He turns his back and beings to walk away.
"Hold on," Sonic orders. "I have been warning you about this for months now, and you were too dumb to see it. I know and feel your hatred for Eggman. As a matter of fact, we all hate Eggman but you took it too far. You didn't actually have to kill him. Did your friend put you up to this? Anyway, even though Eggman was a bad person, he didn't deserve death. As a matter of fact, he was helpful at sometimes. Because you killed him, I demand that we fight right now. I will not let you get away with kill anyone, even Eggman."
"Sonic's right," Tails agrees. "You were way out of line."
"I'm not wasting my time on a pointless fight," Shadow says. He snaps his fingers. A trap rises up from out of the ground which surrounds Sonic and Tails. Knuckles was standing just out of range from this. Shadow pulls out a Chaos Emerald and uses Chaos Control to get away before Knuckles could even have the chance to attack. Sonic and Tails are surrounded by plastic walls which encloses them in a square. It's open from the top, but it too high for Tails to carry Sonic and fly out. He tries five times before he gives up. Knuckles tries to punch open the plastic dome, but that doesn't work either. After all three of them finally give up, something sparkly and shiny begins to descend on the plastic prison's opening through the top. They are all looking up into the sky to stare at this. What's clear so far is that there are two parts to this thing. They are shaped like rings. They now start to fall faster on Sonic and Tails. Sonic and Tails have both separated into a corner on the opposite sides on the plastic square. Knuckles wants to help, but he can't do anything except watch this happen. One of the rings of light wraps itself around Sonic's left wrist while the other wraps itself around Tails' right wrist. A chain of stars forms between them. Now a voice begins to speak out of nowhere. It's clearly female.
"Those two rings are the Rings of Fate," the voice explains. "The bond can never be broken unless you find the the only thing that break them which is the Key of Fate." The voice stops after that.
"You know, that voice kind of sounds familiar," Sonic says.
"Same here," Tails replies. "Either way, we are kind of stuck together now."
"Yeah, this is bad. We should find a way to kill this as soon as possible," Sonic orders. "We need to get out of this place first. I got an idea. Can you fly to the top of this place without carrying me? Do that and will plant myself down here. Maybe this thing is stretchable?"
"Good idea," Tails agrees. He is able to make it to the top without having to carry Sonic. Tails holds on to the edge of the glass wall. Sonic releases his grip. The elasticity of the rope allows him to bounce up out of the glass enclosure and land outside on his feet. This pulls Tails down. He ends up landing face first instead. Knuckles runs to them.
"Woah," Knuckles exclaims. "You guys are stuck together by the Rings of Fate. This happened to me some years ago."
"Really," Tails says. "You know were the Key of Fate is?"
"Nope. It scatters after you find it and use it," Knuckles explains. "By the way, that voice that explained everything kind of sounds like, uh, I can't put my finger on it."
"You don't have fingers," Sonic replies as he laughs.
"You know what I mean," Knuckles says. "Can you guys slide the rings off of your wrist?"
"I'll give it a shot," Sonic answers. He can't pull his ring off so struggling gets him nowhere. Tails tries to pull his off but that doesn't work either.
"We just have to find that key," Tails explains. "Maybe I can do some research on it back at my place. Back to the jet."
Sonic takes off running like he would normally do. Knuckles and Tails both stands still to watch his stupidity and absentmindedness. Tails firmly plants his feet on the ground as he watches the elastic star band begins to stretch. Once it reaches it's limit, Sonic trips and falls flat on his face while the star band pulls him back to his position on the side of Tails. Knuckles and Tails are laughing at the sight of Sonic being dragged on the ground face first. Sonic stands up and rubs his head.
"I forgot about this," Sonic says as he looks at the ring on his wrist. "Why didn't you run with me? You can keep up with me, right?"
"Well yeah, but it's been a while since I had to do that so I'll need some practice first," Tails explains. "I forgot how to spin my tails at the right and angle so I can use my flight power to accelerate horizontally instead of vertically."
"I didn't understand a word you just said. To the jet!" Knuckles orders.
Once in the jet, Sonic had to seat in the seat behind Tails this time because of the star band. They made an interesting discovery from this. The star band can go through and such. It's currently going through the chair that Tails is sitting in while he pilots the jet. They make note of this for the future. Knuckles fell asleep during the ride so Sonic and Tails got out of the jet without waking him up once they made it back. Sonic and Tails comes up with a plan to wake up Knuckles. Sonic backs away from the jet far enough so that star band would reach it's retraction point. Tails flies towards the jet so he won't make a sound. He floats over Knuckles head and slaps him pretty hard causing Knuckles to fall out of his seat as he wakes up. Sonic draws Tails back to him while Knuckles stands up to frantically look around. Sonic and Tails are killing themselves with laughter.
"No more jokes," Knuckles orders.
"Whatever," Sonic says.
"Ah," Knuckles exclaims. "I just remembered something. When I was stuck to this thing a while back, I was stuck with Vector, Espio, Charmy, and some other person but I forgot who. You might not have to do any research. They might remember more than me."
"Hold it," Tails says. "How can you be stuck to more than one person at a time?"
"They were interchangeable. The ring was always stuck to me, but I was able to switch partners at will," Knuckles explains. "There is way you guys could do this too, but you need to find leader if I recall correctly."
"What's the leader," Sonic asks.
"I'll try to explain it, but it's pretty hard to. Let me use you two as an example. Let's say that I wanted to give Tails the Ring of Fate. He would then be the leader. The person with him at the time would be secondary and just an interchangeable partner. See what I'm getting at," Knuckles explains. "To make it easier to understand, we have to find the person who did this to you and get them to reveal who the leader is. You guys will be able to separate then, but the Ring of Fate will be stuck to the leader until the key is found. Anyone who touches the leader's hand will be bound to the leader for a day. The leader has the power to unbind the partner. The partner doesn't have any control over the process. The weird thing though is that when we got rid of the Rings of Fate some years ago, we sent them out into space. I wonder how they got back?"
"I get it," Tails says. "Shadow can't be the person who did this to us or he would have told us who was the leader when he saw us, so who did this?"
"His special friend did this to us," Sonic replies. "Someone who was probably in space."
"Only Eggman could pull that off besides us and Shadow killed him so it can't be him," Tails thinks. "Also, Shadow was furious with Eggman so it seems like he wouldn't do it either although he did set us up."
"This is a real problem," Sonic says. "We don't have any leads besides Shadow, and it doesn't seem like he would do this to us since he really doesn't care about us. Now what do we do?"
"First thing we should do is call Espio," Knuckles requests. "He probably could really help us out here."
"Okay," Tails says. He walks over to the jet and uses it's communication feature to call Espio while Sonic and Knuckles discuss this matter in the background. After a few minutes of waiting, Espio appears from the jet.
"Never seen this in a long time," Espio says as he examine the rings. "The main thing I remember about these things is that you can pick out the reason for why the ring was attached to you by it's color. This star band is pink, and if I'm not mistaken pink means that someone who loved you did this to you."
"Uh oh," Sonic replies. "I know who did this now."
"Oh yeah," Knuckles remembers. "Didn't you finally set Amy straight the other day as to your relationship?"
"Yeah," Sonic explains. "That's right, I never told you guys about it."
"Spill it, now," Tails orders. "I want to know."
"I think it was last weekend," Sonic says. "I think the weekend before that, I helped her do something but I forgot what. Anyway, she wanted to repay me and show her gratitude. I was sitting down next to that tree over there in the distance with my eyes closed while relaxing. I heard someone walking towards me, so I open my eyes to Amy with a picnic basket. She made lunch for me that day, and it was pretty good. I won't go into details about what she cooked for me since I want to keep this short, but it was a lot of stuff and all of it was excellent. Anyway, you know how Amy starts going crazy when she's around me and wild accusations of us being a couple and stuff. Even though I really don't show it, it kind of angers me that I have go through that on a daily basis or every time Amy sees me. I finally decided that I had enough that and the fact that she would grab me every time she would see me. I told her then and there that we will always shall be friends and nothing more. It's not that I don't like her, it's just the fact that I'm not really a fan of her personality and she's to aggressive and demanding. She hit me on the head with her hammer and walked away in disgust. I never seen her after that."
"Lame," Knuckles replies. "That story was lame." Espio agrees with Knuckles.
"I think that even though Amy is mad at you she still wouldn't do this to you. I mean, no matter how angry you make her or whatever you say to her, Amy still loves you in the end," Tails explains.
"But I've never told her something of this magnitude," Sonic says. "I basically told her that she doesn't have a chance of being anything more than just friends with me."
"True, but Amy can't get into space without coming to me for help so it's not her," Tails says.
"Can't believe I forgot that. It can't be her," Sonic says. "This is will be hard to crack. Espio, you have any idea as to how we can find the key?"
"We need the Chaos Rings in order to retrieve the key. There are five of them I think," Espio answers. "We have to go to Ring Mountain. It has the power to give us clues as to who caused this as well."
"Alright," Knuckles says. "We have to go to that place. I remember the place now and I know where it is."
"Same here. It's a huge, gold ring the size of a mountain. The sun constantly reflects off it producing a blinding light that requires shades," Sonic explains. "I thought it was just a weird place and I never gave much thought of climbing it since I can't. It's huge ring so it's impossible for me run up it. We have to fly over it and jump down on it."
Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles get back into the jet.
"Um, can I come with you guys," Espio asks. "I need some time away from the two idiots I usually hang with."
"I guess," Tails says. Espio takes the last available seat next to Knuckles.
Next Chapter: Realization of a Dream II
Hint: Main antagonist is not Amy (she would be too obvious based on the clues given in this chapter, and it's not Shadow either...)