This story's set after the Sonic Universe Mobius: 30 Years Later arc, issues 5-8. The main villain and a few of the characters will be OC's, but it will mainly center around Lara-Su, Argyle, and the other kids featured in the arc. A little later into the story, there'll be a crossover with a story my sister, SuperheroAddict, is making that is also in this setting, so that part will feature a few of her OC's plus Silver and Shadow (yes, I said Shadow, but for the sake of spoiler alerts that will be explained later). Anyways, enjoy the story!

Disclaimer: I do not have any ownership whatsoever of the Sonic the Hedgehog series.

DESTROY.

BOOM! I shot the robot through its center, making its power core combust. "Hah! Take that!"

Two more came up behind me and poised ready to strike. YOU ARE IN UNAUTHORIZED AREA. I flipped up and landed behind them, taking one in a swing and whiplashing it into the other. "Yea– whoa!" A little spin-bot whizzed through on the ground and knocked me off my feet. Another robot hung over me in an instant, gun ready. COME QUIETLY OR BE DESTROYED. Rolling over quickly, I shot a bolt of chaos energy at its feet and made it short-circuit. When I got up, I launched a blast to finish the job. I spun around, ready to strike another robot when the system interrupted me.

TRAINING SESSION COMPLETE.

"Man, I was just getting started!" I grunted as the computer powered down the virtual reality training world.

"Remember, we have that dinner to go to at Castle Acorn," my dad reminded me.

"Right, that. The ceremony for that big treaty with the DragonKingdom. How's that working out, anyway?"

"Fine so far, though I have my doubts. It's important that we recognize them as a nation for Khan's sake, but it could put us in some major trouble with the Raiju. I can tell you they're a lot stronger than people over here like to make them out to be. But that's not my call. Now, about your training session. You were too cocky. You put yourself in a pretty bad position with that robot at the end because you didn't pay attention to your surroundings since you were too busy watching the other two blow up. You got to always be on your feet, and never celebrate victory too soon."

"Alright," I conceded. A few months ago, I would have probably mentioned the fact that it was hard to take a fight seriously when you know the thing is virtual and the robots are all kind of weak, but I knew that dad knew what he was talking about, being, well, the Knuckles and all. Ever since Shadow came back with his little followers and almost destroyed the entire kingdom three months ago, I've been trying to improve my skills to be prepared for whatever else may happen, especially since I nearly failed to protect the royal family last time (more like did fail, since I got bailed out by a time-traveling hedgehog). I had no idea just how soon it would be that I would need them.

The whole ceremony was basically a bunch of fluff, a pre-treaty celebration the diplomatic success of making the DragonKingdom our allies. The next day King Sonic, Queen Sally, the Prowers, and my parents were going to leave for the DragonKingdom to actually sign the treaty with Monkey Khan, their ruler. People here were generally glad and optimistic for the arrangement. Of course, the whole thing was still a diplomatic mess, as the "DragonKingdom" was really by definition the free people, who were once without allegiance but now are united as a nation. However, the Shinobi and Raiju clans still exist, and while the Shinobi has agreed to recognize the free people as long as they get to keep their lands, the Raiju is harder to convince that this is a good idea, and they may go into open war…so, what else is new? To further complicate matters, the Arachni clan has mysteriously disappeared some time ago, and the free people are now living on their ruins. The Raiju could use this to get some other groups on their side to take them down on account of being illegitimate and stealing land. I'm sure Uncle Espio was having a blast with this, but as for then, I was on task of babysitting the royal kids, Manik and Sonia, while their parents were gone. On that first day, the kids begged me to take them to the park to have a picnic, so we there for lunch. It was a rather picturesque day, and the kids were upbeat and full of energy as always.

"Lara-su, Lara-su! Can you play Frisbee with us?" Sonia asked.

"Yeah, yeah, can you?" Manic added.

"Okay, okay, sure." I agreed.

Of course, playing with them meant throwing a super-charged Frisbee 1500 feet and one of them retrieving it in 3.5 seconds, but boy did they love it. I think they kept going with that for about an hour.

"I got it, I got it!" Manic exclaimed.

"No fair, you pushed me!" Sonia protested.

"Did not!"

"Did so! Lara-su, throw another one! Lara-su? Lara-su!"

But at that instant I was staring into the woods. I was sure that I had heard something. Something was coming… "Kids, get down!" Instantly a black lightning bolt flew above our heads. I looked back to see a black creature forming, like nothing I had seen before.

"Lara, what's that?" Sonia fumbled.

"I don't know," I answered. "But you need to get back, now!"

I ushered them behind a hill where they might be somewhat safe and turned back to face the creature, ready to fight it, whatever it was. It had gotten bigger, now with three heads that were spitting out dark balls of energy. Well, I wasn't just going to let it go rampaging now, was I?

"Chaos control!" I cried, blasting that thing with chaos energy.

It fazed out a bit, but still kept on going, now shooting directly at me. It was all I could do to dodge and shoot it with chaos energy at the same time. Of course, by that point, the kids had gotten tired of hiding and wanted to fight the big monster too.

Manic started running in circles around that thing. "Take that, you big monster! You can't catch me!"

"Kids, get back behind the hill!" I uselessly ordered. "It's too dangerous!"

"But Lara-su, we wanna help too!" Sonia protested.

"No! This thing can really hurt you! I need to keep you guys safe!" I'm supposing that is an assumed part of the whole "babysitting" job. But before I could continue that argument, I realized that I needed to keep fighting this monster if I was going to really keep these guys safe. I tried to wear it down, but it just kept coming back. It was like nothing I could do could actually hurt it. I tried to get closer to it, using everything I had.

"Chaos spear!" I lunged toward it, apparently forgetting the fact that this thing was practically immaterial.

Next thing I knew, I was surrounded by some kind of dark mist. I shot chaos energy in any direction. It was probably not the best move, but hey, I never exactly got a training course in "Monster fighting: 101" – I better remember to ask dad to add that one to the simulation. However, at some point I found myself outside again after hearing a strange whistle sound, and the monster had disappeared.

"Lara-su, Lara-su, are you okay?" Sonia asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine." More or less, that is.

"Wow, did you see how big it was? It was huge! So cool!" Manik jumped up and down.

"Yeah, it went like that, and Lara-su went like that, and it went bang and boom, like that!" Sonia exulted.

Well, I guess the kids were fine now, but I still wondered at what that thing really was, and why it attacked us. Of course, it may have not meant to attack us, just go rampaging. However, it could definitely have a reason to attack the royal kids. But did it even have a brain? Or was it being controlled by someone else?

That night, I flipped through the old Freedom Fighter albums to see if I could figure out the villain that might have done that. I know I probably should have told King Sonic and Queen Sally about what happened, but I just didn't want them to worry. Besides, no one else saw it but me and the kids, and there was no trace of it ever being there. It was kind of a wild goose chase, after all. If we were all safe, there wouldn't really be a reason for King Sonic to go chasing after a creature that might or might not even be on this planet, because I know that's what he would do if I did tell him. Anyways, on looking through the album I figured that what most hit the bill for what we saw was a Dark Tribian. They didn't exactly have those kinds of monsters, but they did have shape-shifting creatures that had a dark mist and could take on any form. However, the only problem with that theory was that they got defeated and banished over 30 years ago, along with just about any other villain that my parents and their friends once knew. I supposed that this thing could have just been a straggler, stopping by Mobius to do some damage, but no more.

However, I must say that was not the worst occurrence of the weekend. It was Saturday, and the Prowers had just come back to New Mobotropolis because Mrs. Prower was feeling ill, making them the only other ones at Castle Acorn besides the servants. That day, the kids had really wanted to go to the grand opening of the new Adventureland theme park; it was made a big event and they were going to give away free cotton candy and popcorn. Of course, I also brought a portable scanner to check that cotton candy before the kids ate it – my parents had taught me to be wary of the food in places like this.

"Lara-su, I wanna go on the Loopy Looper again!" Manik entreated for the twelfth time.

"No, not now! I'm hungry!" Sonia protested, ready for lunch. When we got to the food venues, we found that the line was excessively long. After 10 minutes of waiting, the kids were dragging the ground, enormously bored.

"How much longer?" Manik groaned. "My stomach's making noises."

"I thought you weren't hungry."

"Now I am. When will we get our food?"

"Look," I replied, tired of the line myself. "It will probably take an hour to get to the front of line. Now, we're not that far from Castle Acorn – do you want to go there for lunch and then come back?"

"Okay! But when we come back I want some more cotton candy!" Sonia agreed. I already checked out the cotton candy – it was fine. Still need a good scan of the popcorn though…

What we found when we got to the castle, however, was the strangest thing. Inside, none of the lights were on, and there was no one at all in sight.

"Where is everybody?" Sonia asked.

"I don't know….the staff should still be here. Stay close; we're going to look around." I took out a flashlight and we walked through the lower floor, but nothing seemed to be out of place. Suddenly all the lights turned back on, and I was relieved to see the cook coming in through the doorway, looking perfectly fine.

"Ms. Bert! Is everything alright?"

"Oh, yes. We apparently just blew a fuse. Everyone went outside to see if something was wrong. The Prowers are still with the doctor upstairs."

"Doctor? I didn't know they sent for a…"

CRASH!

"Oh my! What was that?"

"Sounded like it came from upstairs. Watch the kids; I'm going to see if something's wrong." It's true that I wasn't sure if I should leave the kids with her, given what happened before, but I had a strong feeling the crash wasn't an accident and something might be wrong with the Prowers. I went up and started to hear a skirmish. Now running faster, I skidded into the room the Prowers were in to see Mr. Prower on the floor grappling with some dog guy with a scar on his face.

"Mr. Prow-!"

CLANG!

I hardly saw what was going on before someone hit me on the back of the head, knocking me out cold…

"Lara-su? Lara-su? Are you awake now?"

"Uhnnnn..." I woke up, feeling dizzy and sore in the head. Hovering over me were the eager faces of the kids.

"You're awake! You're awake!" they chimed.

"What happened?"

"A roofing malfunction," Ms. Bert, walking into the room, answered. "We found you on the floor with a ceiling board on your head. I suppose we need to get that fixed."

"How long has it been? Where are the Prowers? Are they okay!?"

It's been just two hours, and yes, they're fine. They just called. Mrs. Prower was feeling better, so they went ahead and took the next flight to the DragonKingdom. The flight was about to leave in a half hour, so they had to leave in a hurry."

"Leave for a flight? Why would they do that? Mr. Prower is a pilot and has his own plane!"

"Calm down, calm down," she tried to smile reassuringly. "He probably was just tired or wanted to spend some time with Mrs. Prower. Nothing is wrong."

As I looked around the room that was the Prowers' bedroom, it seemed as if she was right. Nothing was out of place; everything was clean; there was absolutely no sign of a struggle. It was as if what I saw – or thought I saw – never even happened.

Now, as if the random monster attack wasn't enough, I had this little event on my mind. Of course, my first thoughts were that some kind of foul play by someone was going on, but where am I supposed to go from there? Any other time I would have told Mom or Dad all about it, but they were both still in the DragonKingdom. As for alerting anyone else, I knew by now that I couldn't say a thing without proof, or a theory for that matter. I was sure I saw Mr. Prower and that other guy fighting, but I hardly got a chance to even assess the scene, as I only saw it for about 5 seconds. What's worse, I found out from King Sonic that the Prowers never even got to the DragonKingdom – he got a call from him saying that they got on the wrong flight and ended up in Downunda. They apparently had decided to stay there for a while to help deal with the recent Dingo uprising, as their kids were currently at summer camp.

Desperate for answers, I left the kids to watch TV so I could rummage through the room that I last saw the Prowers in. I guess I wasn't even sure what I was looking for, but I felt like there had to be something. When I found no left over random memorabilia, I looked for smudges or fingerprints, but to my dismay, the room was clean as a whistle. Then Ms. Bert walked in.

"Lara-su! What on Mobius are you doing!?"

"I'm…looking for my car keys?"

"Where are the children?"

"Errr…watching TV…"

"Then why aren't you there? I do not believe you even have a car!"

Note to self: Learn better lying techniques from Uncle Vector… "I'm sorry, I'll go over there with them…"

"Well, now while you're up I would like you to run a quick errand. Take this to the post office across the street, will you?"

"Uh, sure?"

"Good. I will find whatever you lost, but just don't go dirtying up the rooms I just cleaned, okay?"

As I went to run the errand, I couldn't help but find it odd that Ms. Bert really didn't want me looking around the room so much. I wondered if she might be hiding something, but my thoughts were cut short when a huge truck flew across the road I was passing and almost hit me. Oh, just what I need, I thought. Reckless driving. I looked for a license plate on the thing so I could complain, but all I could read was Core Industries in big bold letters. Still, I could have figured that much. Core is one of the only industries around that still uses ground trucks for transport, I guess because they're in mining and all, so they got some heavy loads. Point is, I lost yet another circumstance for which I could vent to somebody, somewhere. The day just keeps getting better.