Disclaimer: I do not own or claim to own any characters or trademarks owned
by Sega or any other franchise. If a new character appears in the story
that has no previous history with Sega or Archie then it is a good bet that
I have designed and own them. The poem "Fire and Ice" has been used without
the consent or knowledge of the author Robert Frost.
Update: This first chapter has been updated to and changed to
become the first book of the Gear Shift Saga so
many changes to storyline and character development have occurred.
Gear Shift Saga Book 1
Heroes of the Last Stand
Chapter one: The Power of One
---------------------------------------------
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction, ice
Is also great,
And would suffice.
---------------------------------------------------------
Under a dark, moonless sky, a black wave of destruction washed over once golden fields. Metallic feet rhythmically and tirelessly crushed the slender stalks of the wild wheat as the robotic forces of Doctor Robotnik effortlessly crossed the distance from the doomed city to the sleeping forest ahead.
Amidst the sea of darkness, a miniscule island of red was cut off from all other colors in the inky tides. The engineering genius himself rode in his hover pod among his mechanized army to the slaughter that lay ahead, yet he was not the only living being finding refuge upon the small island. Carried in a similar smaller pod perpendicularly connected to Robotnik's own was a very young rabbit child.
The innocent girl looked up at the doctor with eyes filled with wonder and innocence. In her sweet, soft voice she smiled at Ivo and said, "Dr. I, thank you so much for coming to help us stop that horrible man Mr. Eggman."
Robotnik involuntarily twitched, but the enamored girl, in her childish infatuation, failed to notice his reaction to her words an had continued on, "I'm sure Aunt Sally is going to be so happy when she sees all the people you're bringing with you to help us."
"I'm sure Sally will get a big surprise from this, my dear Cream," Robotnik said with a greedy grin as he patted the little rabbit on the head. "I'm very sure Sally and Sonic will just love it to death, my dear."
Cream looked up at him and smiled, and Eggman chuckled at the true meaning of his joke. The pitiful band of rouges wouldn't know what hit them and he will finally put the Acorn's last pitiful legacy to rest.
It had only been too easy to manipulate this little innocent creature into showing him the fiercely guarded, secret whereabouts of knothole. One of Robotnik's sentries had found her during a scouting mission near the border of the forest, and the bot had brought her before the tyrant himself. Normally he would have robotized the child without a thought until he realized just what kind of child sat before him.
Usually the catch of the day was one of many pitiful wretches dressed in rags that roamed the streets of Robotropolis that caused no end of headaches for the doctor. This marvel that was sitting in the pod beside him had came before the tyrant not dressed in rags, but instead in a well mended and cared for dress that had shown it's fair share of years. The rabbit's dress had been like a neon sign boldly stating that she was not from the city.
Seeing the perfect opportunity lay out before him like one of his schematics, Robotnik had tried to comfort the crying child, but she had shrank away from him in fear saying that he was the evil Eggman. Robotnik had introduced himself as the brother of that evil genius and that he was Dr. I, a fellow rouge, who was also trying to eliminate the threat of evil from this world. He, seeing Cream's eyes still full of doubt, had promised that he would make sure that the evil Dr. Eggman would never harm her.
Cream, blindly taking stock in his cock and bull story, had readily agreed to help Robotnik in his quest to find the freedom fighters.
Robotnik, after assuring her assistance, had wasted no time in summoning the swat-bots and especially the robotized friends and family members of the resistance. The little worms could fight against him, would kill him at any chance they received, but could they stand to destroy what was once their own flesh and blood?
Under the cover of the trees, Robotnik signaled to his main swat-bot forces to standby as the he and his robotized forces rushed through the trees at top speed. Unseen by both him and the girl, some of Robotnik's best assassin robots were already well ahead of them heading for a date with a certain princess. Once Robotnik had located the village they would infiltrate the village during the attack and search out Sally.
Cream noticed this and yelled through the rush of wind that was whipping her long ears about her face, "Dr. I! What's going on?"
"I think that Eggman has located us," he cleverly lied. "Hang on, Cream! We have to get to knothole as fast as possible before he finds us! Which way is it?"
Cream, yelling directions into the howling wind, directed Robotnik towards the village of knothole. All around them, warning torches were lit and warning alarms bellowed the coming of his forces. The warning only served to drive the citizens of the village into a full scale panic as Robotnik's forces flew into the clearing like the wind of death leaving the dead and dying in its wake.
"You lied... you're not Dr. I! You're Eggman!" Cream cried in realization as she saw the robots begin to attack the defenders set the grass huts aflame. Cream feebly stood up in the rocking pod as she prepared to jump from the vessel.
"Excellent observation, although a tad late I'm afraid," Robotnik grinned as he activated a domed and metallic mesh cage to cover the pod and trap Cream inside of the pod. Robotnik, with a flip of a switch, released a vapor cloud into Cream's pod.
Cream struggled to stay awake in the midst of all the strange gas enveloping her. The gas felt like ice in her lungs and made her realize just how long past her bedtime it was. "Dr. I," the girl managed weakly, "You...you promised...."
"Indeed I did, Cream, you have my word that I will not harm one who has helped me so much," Cream slumped onto the base of the pod. Robotnik continued, "For now."
The girl's distraction had reminded him of what he was really here for and how little time he had before that accursed hedgehog would show up to attempt to foil his magnificent plans.
He had given each robotizied robot a special mission; seek and destroy anyone that had, at one time, been registered in its memory banks. The rogues that had prepared for the attack turned pallid at seeing the faces of loved ones once thought dead or lost, and they had lost any resemblance of an organized defense as Robotnik's metallic hordes cut into the exposed underbelly of the resistance.
Units that were unable to locate any person in their memory banks went on a destruction spree, setting aflame many of the simple grass and wood structures and destroying the stronger foundations of the medical and command buildings. The fires that had first only inflicted the huts soon spread and consumed the dry timber forests nearby.
Robotnik's mind flew into action. He noticed the relative dryness of the forest, due to the recent drought and the late summer's heat, combined with the strong northern wind would cause the fires to spread throughout the entire Great Forest. By the time midday approached nearly all of the forest would be reduced to ash, and those freedom fighters that survived would have nowhere to run.
Robotnik then raced across the small flaming village sending electronic commands to any nearby units to join ranks behind the pod. In a matter of seconds he had found the small lake that had long held the object of his obsession. Robotnik hovered above the surface of the lake and directed the units to spread out in a half circle around him.
He activated another consol and directed a robotic arm that extended from the bottom of the pod. Taking as many painstaking precautions as possible, Robotnik carefully lowered the arm beneath the surface and snagged a drowned contraption.
Eagerly, Robotnik raised the arm and nearly shouted in joy. It was the algae covered, power ring creating device he had been obsessed with obtaining for years. Inside the contraption was a yellow stone; his sixth acquired Chaos Emerald. He raised up the contraction and took the stone that was within and, with great care, lifted the machine into the pod. Then, turning his attention to his main prize, he gently rubbed the crystal, taking in all of the Chaos Emerald's sharp facets and lost himself in the magnificent glow radiating from within.
Laser fire erupted from the opposite bank and Eggman's troops fell in the masses from the surprise attack. Robotnik rose into the branched area of the forest as he surveyed the area where his attacker was hidden and sent a distress signal to most of his remaining units. All he had to do was bide his time and his army would take care of this little nuisance.
Persistent laser fire sprayed around the pod as Robotnik flew back to his main forces. He rushed recklessly through the branches, dark with the smoke of the immense forest fires.
And then he entered a large treeless meadow. Cursing his bad luck Robotnik eyed his pursuer as he ambled out of the foliage.
It was that damn fox boy inside a new confounded contraption that walked on two legs. Eggman quickly sized up the mobile suit. His pod was not equipped for combat, he had not deemed it was necessary when he had his legions, but the fox boy had somehow acquired not one, but two of his untested laser cannon assault rifles and had managed to equip them onto some sort of a mobile suit apparatus.
Robotnik searched for a way out of this mess, but there was no were he could run, he would be shot down long before he even made it to the tree line. As much as he hated to admit it, he was at the mercy of the little brat and his silver mobile suit.
Glancing down at his radar, Robotnik sat up and raised his hands. "Alright, boy, you got me. I give up, there's no use in fighting it. You got me fair and square."
Tails opened the cockpit he was in and yelled across the meadow, "Release Cream now, Eggman!"
Robotnik's brow twitched at that accursed nickname, but he wouldn't waste the perfect opportunity that foolish fox had given him. He pretended to be reluctant to agree and he, looking down with his face a false mask of fear and uncertainty, called his now-present units in the woods to flank and attack the fox.
He continued to stall, pretending to frantically search for the right combination of buttons, but the boy wasn't fooled, for he could probably hear the robots footfalls in the woods with his acute fox hearing.
The mobile suit wasn't fast enough, and all the boy managed to do was close the cockpit before the units opened fire and brought the craft to the ground. Robotnik sent a command to cease-fire and to capture the new prisoner.
Robotnik rubbed his hands together hungrily, here was another freedom fighter to interrogate, and then, after robotizing, a possible mech engineer for his plants. There was so much he could do with a child of his talent. Robotnik smiled at the though of what such a transformation of the brat would do the psychic of Sonic. However, the lad was still young, though, maybe he didn't have to robotize the boy in order to get his talents under his thumb. That's it, Eggman thought to himself, then the boy would crush Sonic's spirit with his own two hands.
The victory, as well as his plans, was quickly shattered like fragile glass. A blue wind swept through the robots as easily as a sickle through wheat stalks. Within moments all of his force was destroyed with the exception of himself.
Sonic stopped his mad dash and, smirking, appraised the doctor. Sonic tauntingly waved a dead power-ring above his head and yelled, "What's up, doc? Don't tell me you've finally stooped so low as to actually getting a hostage? Keep it up and you might actually become a big time villain one day." The blasted hedgehog, after lashing the furious doctor with his words, sneered at the doctor and turned to help the fox up from a cockpit.
Frustrated, Robotnik forced himself to think. He was without weapons, his own damn fault, and there was nothing to do about it. All of his forces were also too far away, not like it would matter anyway. The hedgehog would just mow them down.
An idea struck him just as Sonic prepared to make his run against the doctor.
"Stop at once or I send the rest of my army down upon your pathetic village!"
Sonic stopped dead in his tracks, obviously caught off his guard by the demand. After he quickly regained his nerve, Sonic cast a sidelong glance at the doctor and asked, "How much do you want to bet that I can take you down before you can press that button, doc?"
Then everything slowed down in Robotnik's mind. Sonic entered a mad sprint at Robotnik, and the doctors finger slowly, painfully, made its slow decent towards the button. Sonic's eyes flickered away from Robotnik for a split second, and were wide with surprise. Then the world went white.
Robotnik didn't have time to muse over what had caused the flash, but he was not about to let the perfect opportunity of escape flee from him. The doctor turned and fled in the direction that the blinding light came from as soon as he could raise the pod over what he guessed had to have been the treetops.
Then the sound of the explosion, as well as a wall of dust slammed into the craft and sent the two of them rocking around in the air. Not soon after, his nose and throat began to burn with the smoke-filled air, and he realized that he was practically blind with the afterimage of the white light. Yet he would not allow himself to stop; he would not risk the chance of his capture by the hands of the rebels.
Eventually the choking smoke dissipated like a bad dream, and his vision slowly returned, but was still burned with the glowing afterimage of the explosion. He guessed he had made it back to the fields; the fields were his large army was.
Except that, using his weak still-recovering sight, he realized that the army was not there, and the place hardly resembled any field.
The skeletons of brunt wheat stalks were twisted and withered and looked as if they were painfully poking from the burnt ground. The closer he came to the explosion point, the less of the corrupted soil and dead plants he saw. The explosion had been so powerful that the plain's water table had been uncovered and already a deep pit was beginning to fill and was becoming a shallow lake.
Floating in the water and protruding from the ground were all sorts of half molten metallic limbs and weapons. His army had been there, faithfully waiting his orders to march in, and had been destroyed in a second. There was only one person he knew in the rebellion that had such a working knowledge of explosives to even begin to create such bomb; Princess Sally.
And if Princess Sally had been able to do this then that meant that his assassins had failed.
"Don't think that this is the end of this, you little bitch!" Robotnik screamed in his blazing rage to the shadows in the tree line. "You may have survived this petty battle," Robotnik continued as he held up the Chaos Emerald, "but it is I who will win this war."
Update: This first chapter has been updated to and changed to
become the first book of the Gear Shift Saga so
many changes to storyline and character development have occurred.
Gear Shift Saga Book 1
Heroes of the Last Stand
Chapter one: The Power of One
---------------------------------------------
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction, ice
Is also great,
And would suffice.
---------------------------------------------------------
Under a dark, moonless sky, a black wave of destruction washed over once golden fields. Metallic feet rhythmically and tirelessly crushed the slender stalks of the wild wheat as the robotic forces of Doctor Robotnik effortlessly crossed the distance from the doomed city to the sleeping forest ahead.
Amidst the sea of darkness, a miniscule island of red was cut off from all other colors in the inky tides. The engineering genius himself rode in his hover pod among his mechanized army to the slaughter that lay ahead, yet he was not the only living being finding refuge upon the small island. Carried in a similar smaller pod perpendicularly connected to Robotnik's own was a very young rabbit child.
The innocent girl looked up at the doctor with eyes filled with wonder and innocence. In her sweet, soft voice she smiled at Ivo and said, "Dr. I, thank you so much for coming to help us stop that horrible man Mr. Eggman."
Robotnik involuntarily twitched, but the enamored girl, in her childish infatuation, failed to notice his reaction to her words an had continued on, "I'm sure Aunt Sally is going to be so happy when she sees all the people you're bringing with you to help us."
"I'm sure Sally will get a big surprise from this, my dear Cream," Robotnik said with a greedy grin as he patted the little rabbit on the head. "I'm very sure Sally and Sonic will just love it to death, my dear."
Cream looked up at him and smiled, and Eggman chuckled at the true meaning of his joke. The pitiful band of rouges wouldn't know what hit them and he will finally put the Acorn's last pitiful legacy to rest.
It had only been too easy to manipulate this little innocent creature into showing him the fiercely guarded, secret whereabouts of knothole. One of Robotnik's sentries had found her during a scouting mission near the border of the forest, and the bot had brought her before the tyrant himself. Normally he would have robotized the child without a thought until he realized just what kind of child sat before him.
Usually the catch of the day was one of many pitiful wretches dressed in rags that roamed the streets of Robotropolis that caused no end of headaches for the doctor. This marvel that was sitting in the pod beside him had came before the tyrant not dressed in rags, but instead in a well mended and cared for dress that had shown it's fair share of years. The rabbit's dress had been like a neon sign boldly stating that she was not from the city.
Seeing the perfect opportunity lay out before him like one of his schematics, Robotnik had tried to comfort the crying child, but she had shrank away from him in fear saying that he was the evil Eggman. Robotnik had introduced himself as the brother of that evil genius and that he was Dr. I, a fellow rouge, who was also trying to eliminate the threat of evil from this world. He, seeing Cream's eyes still full of doubt, had promised that he would make sure that the evil Dr. Eggman would never harm her.
Cream, blindly taking stock in his cock and bull story, had readily agreed to help Robotnik in his quest to find the freedom fighters.
Robotnik, after assuring her assistance, had wasted no time in summoning the swat-bots and especially the robotized friends and family members of the resistance. The little worms could fight against him, would kill him at any chance they received, but could they stand to destroy what was once their own flesh and blood?
Under the cover of the trees, Robotnik signaled to his main swat-bot forces to standby as the he and his robotized forces rushed through the trees at top speed. Unseen by both him and the girl, some of Robotnik's best assassin robots were already well ahead of them heading for a date with a certain princess. Once Robotnik had located the village they would infiltrate the village during the attack and search out Sally.
Cream noticed this and yelled through the rush of wind that was whipping her long ears about her face, "Dr. I! What's going on?"
"I think that Eggman has located us," he cleverly lied. "Hang on, Cream! We have to get to knothole as fast as possible before he finds us! Which way is it?"
Cream, yelling directions into the howling wind, directed Robotnik towards the village of knothole. All around them, warning torches were lit and warning alarms bellowed the coming of his forces. The warning only served to drive the citizens of the village into a full scale panic as Robotnik's forces flew into the clearing like the wind of death leaving the dead and dying in its wake.
"You lied... you're not Dr. I! You're Eggman!" Cream cried in realization as she saw the robots begin to attack the defenders set the grass huts aflame. Cream feebly stood up in the rocking pod as she prepared to jump from the vessel.
"Excellent observation, although a tad late I'm afraid," Robotnik grinned as he activated a domed and metallic mesh cage to cover the pod and trap Cream inside of the pod. Robotnik, with a flip of a switch, released a vapor cloud into Cream's pod.
Cream struggled to stay awake in the midst of all the strange gas enveloping her. The gas felt like ice in her lungs and made her realize just how long past her bedtime it was. "Dr. I," the girl managed weakly, "You...you promised...."
"Indeed I did, Cream, you have my word that I will not harm one who has helped me so much," Cream slumped onto the base of the pod. Robotnik continued, "For now."
The girl's distraction had reminded him of what he was really here for and how little time he had before that accursed hedgehog would show up to attempt to foil his magnificent plans.
He had given each robotizied robot a special mission; seek and destroy anyone that had, at one time, been registered in its memory banks. The rogues that had prepared for the attack turned pallid at seeing the faces of loved ones once thought dead or lost, and they had lost any resemblance of an organized defense as Robotnik's metallic hordes cut into the exposed underbelly of the resistance.
Units that were unable to locate any person in their memory banks went on a destruction spree, setting aflame many of the simple grass and wood structures and destroying the stronger foundations of the medical and command buildings. The fires that had first only inflicted the huts soon spread and consumed the dry timber forests nearby.
Robotnik's mind flew into action. He noticed the relative dryness of the forest, due to the recent drought and the late summer's heat, combined with the strong northern wind would cause the fires to spread throughout the entire Great Forest. By the time midday approached nearly all of the forest would be reduced to ash, and those freedom fighters that survived would have nowhere to run.
Robotnik then raced across the small flaming village sending electronic commands to any nearby units to join ranks behind the pod. In a matter of seconds he had found the small lake that had long held the object of his obsession. Robotnik hovered above the surface of the lake and directed the units to spread out in a half circle around him.
He activated another consol and directed a robotic arm that extended from the bottom of the pod. Taking as many painstaking precautions as possible, Robotnik carefully lowered the arm beneath the surface and snagged a drowned contraption.
Eagerly, Robotnik raised the arm and nearly shouted in joy. It was the algae covered, power ring creating device he had been obsessed with obtaining for years. Inside the contraption was a yellow stone; his sixth acquired Chaos Emerald. He raised up the contraction and took the stone that was within and, with great care, lifted the machine into the pod. Then, turning his attention to his main prize, he gently rubbed the crystal, taking in all of the Chaos Emerald's sharp facets and lost himself in the magnificent glow radiating from within.
Laser fire erupted from the opposite bank and Eggman's troops fell in the masses from the surprise attack. Robotnik rose into the branched area of the forest as he surveyed the area where his attacker was hidden and sent a distress signal to most of his remaining units. All he had to do was bide his time and his army would take care of this little nuisance.
Persistent laser fire sprayed around the pod as Robotnik flew back to his main forces. He rushed recklessly through the branches, dark with the smoke of the immense forest fires.
And then he entered a large treeless meadow. Cursing his bad luck Robotnik eyed his pursuer as he ambled out of the foliage.
It was that damn fox boy inside a new confounded contraption that walked on two legs. Eggman quickly sized up the mobile suit. His pod was not equipped for combat, he had not deemed it was necessary when he had his legions, but the fox boy had somehow acquired not one, but two of his untested laser cannon assault rifles and had managed to equip them onto some sort of a mobile suit apparatus.
Robotnik searched for a way out of this mess, but there was no were he could run, he would be shot down long before he even made it to the tree line. As much as he hated to admit it, he was at the mercy of the little brat and his silver mobile suit.
Glancing down at his radar, Robotnik sat up and raised his hands. "Alright, boy, you got me. I give up, there's no use in fighting it. You got me fair and square."
Tails opened the cockpit he was in and yelled across the meadow, "Release Cream now, Eggman!"
Robotnik's brow twitched at that accursed nickname, but he wouldn't waste the perfect opportunity that foolish fox had given him. He pretended to be reluctant to agree and he, looking down with his face a false mask of fear and uncertainty, called his now-present units in the woods to flank and attack the fox.
He continued to stall, pretending to frantically search for the right combination of buttons, but the boy wasn't fooled, for he could probably hear the robots footfalls in the woods with his acute fox hearing.
The mobile suit wasn't fast enough, and all the boy managed to do was close the cockpit before the units opened fire and brought the craft to the ground. Robotnik sent a command to cease-fire and to capture the new prisoner.
Robotnik rubbed his hands together hungrily, here was another freedom fighter to interrogate, and then, after robotizing, a possible mech engineer for his plants. There was so much he could do with a child of his talent. Robotnik smiled at the though of what such a transformation of the brat would do the psychic of Sonic. However, the lad was still young, though, maybe he didn't have to robotize the boy in order to get his talents under his thumb. That's it, Eggman thought to himself, then the boy would crush Sonic's spirit with his own two hands.
The victory, as well as his plans, was quickly shattered like fragile glass. A blue wind swept through the robots as easily as a sickle through wheat stalks. Within moments all of his force was destroyed with the exception of himself.
Sonic stopped his mad dash and, smirking, appraised the doctor. Sonic tauntingly waved a dead power-ring above his head and yelled, "What's up, doc? Don't tell me you've finally stooped so low as to actually getting a hostage? Keep it up and you might actually become a big time villain one day." The blasted hedgehog, after lashing the furious doctor with his words, sneered at the doctor and turned to help the fox up from a cockpit.
Frustrated, Robotnik forced himself to think. He was without weapons, his own damn fault, and there was nothing to do about it. All of his forces were also too far away, not like it would matter anyway. The hedgehog would just mow them down.
An idea struck him just as Sonic prepared to make his run against the doctor.
"Stop at once or I send the rest of my army down upon your pathetic village!"
Sonic stopped dead in his tracks, obviously caught off his guard by the demand. After he quickly regained his nerve, Sonic cast a sidelong glance at the doctor and asked, "How much do you want to bet that I can take you down before you can press that button, doc?"
Then everything slowed down in Robotnik's mind. Sonic entered a mad sprint at Robotnik, and the doctors finger slowly, painfully, made its slow decent towards the button. Sonic's eyes flickered away from Robotnik for a split second, and were wide with surprise. Then the world went white.
Robotnik didn't have time to muse over what had caused the flash, but he was not about to let the perfect opportunity of escape flee from him. The doctor turned and fled in the direction that the blinding light came from as soon as he could raise the pod over what he guessed had to have been the treetops.
Then the sound of the explosion, as well as a wall of dust slammed into the craft and sent the two of them rocking around in the air. Not soon after, his nose and throat began to burn with the smoke-filled air, and he realized that he was practically blind with the afterimage of the white light. Yet he would not allow himself to stop; he would not risk the chance of his capture by the hands of the rebels.
Eventually the choking smoke dissipated like a bad dream, and his vision slowly returned, but was still burned with the glowing afterimage of the explosion. He guessed he had made it back to the fields; the fields were his large army was.
Except that, using his weak still-recovering sight, he realized that the army was not there, and the place hardly resembled any field.
The skeletons of brunt wheat stalks were twisted and withered and looked as if they were painfully poking from the burnt ground. The closer he came to the explosion point, the less of the corrupted soil and dead plants he saw. The explosion had been so powerful that the plain's water table had been uncovered and already a deep pit was beginning to fill and was becoming a shallow lake.
Floating in the water and protruding from the ground were all sorts of half molten metallic limbs and weapons. His army had been there, faithfully waiting his orders to march in, and had been destroyed in a second. There was only one person he knew in the rebellion that had such a working knowledge of explosives to even begin to create such bomb; Princess Sally.
And if Princess Sally had been able to do this then that meant that his assassins had failed.
"Don't think that this is the end of this, you little bitch!" Robotnik screamed in his blazing rage to the shadows in the tree line. "You may have survived this petty battle," Robotnik continued as he held up the Chaos Emerald, "but it is I who will win this war."