Disclaimer: I don't own Sonic The Hedgehog but the following characters I
do own; Eon Squirrel and his family, Sora-Ya and any other echidnas (apart
from Knuckles and Tikal), and Nigel Harrington. Silky Fox belongs to
Electric Kitten and I only use her with EK's kind permission.
Chapter 1 The Future is Now
12:35 am, Tuesday 26th June 2501:
Sonic stood alone watching the Earth. He remembered what Shadow had said during the battle with the Biolizard.
"I am the ultimate life form," he said to himself.
"What's the matter, Sonic?" asked Amy, coming to stand by him.
"Oh, it's nothing," said Sonic with a smile. "Come on! Let's go home, to the planet as cool and blue as me! There's a whole world down there waiting for us!"
Eggman and Rouge departed from the facility followed closely by Knuckles, Tails and Amy. Sonic was the last to leave. As he crossed the threshold to the corridor he turned.
"Sayanora, Shadow the Hedgehog," he said quietly and so departed.
They made their way slowly and sorrowfully through the many passages and corridors of the space colony ARK towards the Star Hangar. Doctor Eggman's space shuttle, which they had hijacked from his Hidden Base, still stood in the landing area; the black fuselage underneath scratched from its impact with the asteroid on the way to the ARK. Tails looked up.
"Before re-entry those cargo doors will have to be sealed," he said pointing at the broken doors on top of the shuttle. "I'll get on it right now! Eggman, could you help?"
There was no reply. The freedom fighters looked around and found no sign of Eggman anywhere in the Star Hangar.
"Where's he gone?" said Sonic. "Eggman!"
"He must have made a dash for it," said Rouge. "Oh well, I don't blame him. He'd only get arrested as soon as we land. It was my job to eventually capture him."
"That's the whole point though!" Sonic growled. "We gotta find him!"
"This colony's massive!" said Tails. "It's one hundred and fifty kilometres wide! So Eggman could be anywhere!"
"True," said Sonic. "But he can't have gone far. I'm going to find him!"
"We've got the Chaos Emeralds, Sonic," said Knuckles. "So he couldn't use the Eclipse Cannon even if he fixed it."
"Knuckles is right," said Tails. "There's not much Eggman can do with this thing now."
It took some heated argument to finally convince Sonic not to go after Eggman and instead he took to impatiently pacing about the landing bay while Tails carefully sealed the cargo doors shut using his Cyclone's laser on a heat setting. When the doors were finally sealed they climbed into the shuttle and took their seats on the flight deck. Like a plane on a runway, the shuttle rolled back on its landing gear and turned around, taxiing through the Star Hangar towards the exit. With a blast of rocket engines, the shuttle blasted out of the space colony and away back down towards Earth.
Doctor Eggman stood in an abandoned research lab. He watched through the window as the shuttle sped away from the space colony. A wicked smile came to his face and his dark glasses glinted in the light. As the spacecraft passed beyond the range of his sight, he turned and strode towards the exit. As he departed he gave out a maniacal cackle of insane laughter.
It was now August and the summer was as hot as ever in Mobotropolis. The capital city of Station Square was bustling with traffic but outside the space centre on the city's outskirts there was a massive crowd of spectators. The space shuttle runway was empty of any craft save one. It was huge. It resembled a space shuttle in the fact that it was mostly white but black underneath and it had large cargo bay doors on top. But this was much larger, the size of a large passenger airliner possibly. This was the new space shuttle, the first ever spacecraft (built for the purpose of good) to be designed to take off and land like a jet plane and to be completely self contained. It had two huge engines projecting from its rear and wide wings tip with the black of the underside along the edges. It immensely streamlined and where the wings joined the main body of the shuttle it was smooth with hardly a joint to be seen. Each section seemed to flow into the next, save at the rear, where the twin tail fins stuck up tall above the protruding engine vents.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" said the shuttle designer, Charles Hedgehog, Sonic's uncle. "The future is now! I present to you the first completely self-contained space shuttle!
"The design of the shuttle is based on its ability to take off from a runway and reach escape velocity when it reaches its optimal height above sea level. The shuttle is very heavy when fully loaded with fuel and cargo so it needs to have wings large enough to carry it. Once it reaches a height of forty kilometres, the jets will cut out and the booster engines will take over and break through the upper atmosphere and achieve a safe orbit above the Earth. Being completely self-contained, this new shuttle will work out more economical than its predecessor, as there will be no need to recover any discarded booster rockets and fuel tanks. It will also be capable of carrying larger loads into space.
"With enough power, the shuttle will be able break orbit and it can carry enough fuel to travel as far as the Moon and perhaps beyond with advanced engines in the future. Being thus I venture to hope that this new spacecraft will prove to be the first concrete step into interstellar space exploration."
Eon sat on the sofa watching all this on the news. The shuttle was due for its first full test this evening. Doctor Hedgehog himself would be commanding the mission to simply take off and orbit the Earth and then return. As the report on Doctor Hedgehog's shuttle finished there was a small closing bulletin.
"In other news, Doctor Robotnik has not yet been found," said the reader. "His Hidden Base in the Sand Ocean has been decommissioned however no trace of the terrorist himself has been discovered. It is believed that he is still aboard the Space Colony ARK."
Eon sighed. Tails was a good friend of his and he had told him all about what had happened on the space colony. He could remember vividly how Eggman had destroyed the Moon with the power of the Eclipse Cannon and even more could he remember the way Professor Gerald Robotnik had announced his horrific to destroy the world by crashing the ARK into Earth. He had been quite certain that all was over when he saw that but then Eon was never really happy or hopeful.
It was the middle of the summer holiday and there was nothing to do. It was too hot to go for a walk and his friends were all doing something. Tails was far away in the Mystic Ruins, no doubt working on a new invention and Katherine Elm; his only other real friend was on holiday on the other side of the world.
From outside the living room he heard a voice. It was his mother, Anna speaking on the telephone.
"Okay," she said. "Right… Yes… All right… Bye! I love you too."
She came into the living room and stood before her son.
"That was your dad," she said.
"I'd have never guessed," said Eon sarcastically.
"He's going to be late home tonight," said Anna. "He's going to an extremely important meeting this evening and it's out of town so he'll be back after midnight. You'll be on your own most of the evening seeing as I'm going to an office dinner party."
"Cool," said Eon. "I can be bored on my own then."
"Why not invite Kathy over?" asked Anne.
"Hello? On holiday!"
"Oh yeah. Well not much I can do. I'm going now or I'll be late. Bye."
She left the living room and Eon soon heard her going out through the front door. The teenage squirrel lay sprawled out on the sofa. He gazed at the ceiling in boredom. He was bored and depressed. The main source of his depression was his loneliness. He had few friends and he had never really enjoyed life since his first day in high school.
As he gazed at the ceiling he yawned, shut his eyes and fell to sleep. His sleep was troubled by weird dreams.
Chapter 1 The Future is Now
12:35 am, Tuesday 26th June 2501:
Sonic stood alone watching the Earth. He remembered what Shadow had said during the battle with the Biolizard.
"I am the ultimate life form," he said to himself.
"What's the matter, Sonic?" asked Amy, coming to stand by him.
"Oh, it's nothing," said Sonic with a smile. "Come on! Let's go home, to the planet as cool and blue as me! There's a whole world down there waiting for us!"
Eggman and Rouge departed from the facility followed closely by Knuckles, Tails and Amy. Sonic was the last to leave. As he crossed the threshold to the corridor he turned.
"Sayanora, Shadow the Hedgehog," he said quietly and so departed.
They made their way slowly and sorrowfully through the many passages and corridors of the space colony ARK towards the Star Hangar. Doctor Eggman's space shuttle, which they had hijacked from his Hidden Base, still stood in the landing area; the black fuselage underneath scratched from its impact with the asteroid on the way to the ARK. Tails looked up.
"Before re-entry those cargo doors will have to be sealed," he said pointing at the broken doors on top of the shuttle. "I'll get on it right now! Eggman, could you help?"
There was no reply. The freedom fighters looked around and found no sign of Eggman anywhere in the Star Hangar.
"Where's he gone?" said Sonic. "Eggman!"
"He must have made a dash for it," said Rouge. "Oh well, I don't blame him. He'd only get arrested as soon as we land. It was my job to eventually capture him."
"That's the whole point though!" Sonic growled. "We gotta find him!"
"This colony's massive!" said Tails. "It's one hundred and fifty kilometres wide! So Eggman could be anywhere!"
"True," said Sonic. "But he can't have gone far. I'm going to find him!"
"We've got the Chaos Emeralds, Sonic," said Knuckles. "So he couldn't use the Eclipse Cannon even if he fixed it."
"Knuckles is right," said Tails. "There's not much Eggman can do with this thing now."
It took some heated argument to finally convince Sonic not to go after Eggman and instead he took to impatiently pacing about the landing bay while Tails carefully sealed the cargo doors shut using his Cyclone's laser on a heat setting. When the doors were finally sealed they climbed into the shuttle and took their seats on the flight deck. Like a plane on a runway, the shuttle rolled back on its landing gear and turned around, taxiing through the Star Hangar towards the exit. With a blast of rocket engines, the shuttle blasted out of the space colony and away back down towards Earth.
Doctor Eggman stood in an abandoned research lab. He watched through the window as the shuttle sped away from the space colony. A wicked smile came to his face and his dark glasses glinted in the light. As the spacecraft passed beyond the range of his sight, he turned and strode towards the exit. As he departed he gave out a maniacal cackle of insane laughter.
It was now August and the summer was as hot as ever in Mobotropolis. The capital city of Station Square was bustling with traffic but outside the space centre on the city's outskirts there was a massive crowd of spectators. The space shuttle runway was empty of any craft save one. It was huge. It resembled a space shuttle in the fact that it was mostly white but black underneath and it had large cargo bay doors on top. But this was much larger, the size of a large passenger airliner possibly. This was the new space shuttle, the first ever spacecraft (built for the purpose of good) to be designed to take off and land like a jet plane and to be completely self contained. It had two huge engines projecting from its rear and wide wings tip with the black of the underside along the edges. It immensely streamlined and where the wings joined the main body of the shuttle it was smooth with hardly a joint to be seen. Each section seemed to flow into the next, save at the rear, where the twin tail fins stuck up tall above the protruding engine vents.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" said the shuttle designer, Charles Hedgehog, Sonic's uncle. "The future is now! I present to you the first completely self-contained space shuttle!
"The design of the shuttle is based on its ability to take off from a runway and reach escape velocity when it reaches its optimal height above sea level. The shuttle is very heavy when fully loaded with fuel and cargo so it needs to have wings large enough to carry it. Once it reaches a height of forty kilometres, the jets will cut out and the booster engines will take over and break through the upper atmosphere and achieve a safe orbit above the Earth. Being completely self-contained, this new shuttle will work out more economical than its predecessor, as there will be no need to recover any discarded booster rockets and fuel tanks. It will also be capable of carrying larger loads into space.
"With enough power, the shuttle will be able break orbit and it can carry enough fuel to travel as far as the Moon and perhaps beyond with advanced engines in the future. Being thus I venture to hope that this new spacecraft will prove to be the first concrete step into interstellar space exploration."
Eon sat on the sofa watching all this on the news. The shuttle was due for its first full test this evening. Doctor Hedgehog himself would be commanding the mission to simply take off and orbit the Earth and then return. As the report on Doctor Hedgehog's shuttle finished there was a small closing bulletin.
"In other news, Doctor Robotnik has not yet been found," said the reader. "His Hidden Base in the Sand Ocean has been decommissioned however no trace of the terrorist himself has been discovered. It is believed that he is still aboard the Space Colony ARK."
Eon sighed. Tails was a good friend of his and he had told him all about what had happened on the space colony. He could remember vividly how Eggman had destroyed the Moon with the power of the Eclipse Cannon and even more could he remember the way Professor Gerald Robotnik had announced his horrific to destroy the world by crashing the ARK into Earth. He had been quite certain that all was over when he saw that but then Eon was never really happy or hopeful.
It was the middle of the summer holiday and there was nothing to do. It was too hot to go for a walk and his friends were all doing something. Tails was far away in the Mystic Ruins, no doubt working on a new invention and Katherine Elm; his only other real friend was on holiday on the other side of the world.
From outside the living room he heard a voice. It was his mother, Anna speaking on the telephone.
"Okay," she said. "Right… Yes… All right… Bye! I love you too."
She came into the living room and stood before her son.
"That was your dad," she said.
"I'd have never guessed," said Eon sarcastically.
"He's going to be late home tonight," said Anna. "He's going to an extremely important meeting this evening and it's out of town so he'll be back after midnight. You'll be on your own most of the evening seeing as I'm going to an office dinner party."
"Cool," said Eon. "I can be bored on my own then."
"Why not invite Kathy over?" asked Anne.
"Hello? On holiday!"
"Oh yeah. Well not much I can do. I'm going now or I'll be late. Bye."
She left the living room and Eon soon heard her going out through the front door. The teenage squirrel lay sprawled out on the sofa. He gazed at the ceiling in boredom. He was bored and depressed. The main source of his depression was his loneliness. He had few friends and he had never really enjoyed life since his first day in high school.
As he gazed at the ceiling he yawned, shut his eyes and fell to sleep. His sleep was troubled by weird dreams.