The Adventure Begins
Annet Myer was jumping from rooftop to rooftop, a normal training regimen she'd taken up lately.
She was now wearing a short blue shirt, a white jacket, a short white skirt, white socks, and blue shoes, as well as long, blue fingerless gloves with gold bracers, and a long headband with a white-and-red triangle pattern. She also had a gold necklace with a red stone set in the center.
'I can't believe it's been three years since that day,' she thought as she stopped to look around, getting a fix on her surroundings.
But soon, she saw a strange light a little ways to the east. "That doesn't look good."
She began jumping rooftops in that direction, to investigate the situation.
At the same time, a young man with blond hair, dark blue eyes, and wearing a black shirt, red jacket, and blue jeans was running along the ground, when a portal opened in front of him, forcing him to stop.
"What's this?" he asked, "What's going on?"
Soon, a bunch of pudgy red robots came out of the portal. They all had a goofy grin on their faces, and were armed with a combination of guns, lances, bazookas, and a few of them had shields.
Before the boy had time to ask them what they were, the ones with ranged weapons opened fire, and the ones with lances charged, prompting him to dodge, reaching behind him and pulling a sword out of its scabbard. The blade was glistening a bright red in the moonlight.
"So," he said, "That's the way you wanna do this. This might actually be fun."
He then charged at the robots, and struck the shield one was holding, getting his sword stuck in it and working to pull it out, as another was coming up behind him.
But as it was raising its lance to strike, a magic bolt struck it hard in the back, destroying it. The young man kicked the robot he was fighting with away and turned to see what had happened, seeing that a young woman had arrived.
"Looks like you've got your hands full," she said, pulling out a pair of boomerangs and threw them at two robots. The way they caught the light told the young man that these weren't wooden toys or anything. These were curved metal blades, which cut arms off of the ones they hit before going back to the girl, allowing the young man to come in and finish them off with some well-placed sword swings.
They repeated this process until all the robots were scrapped. Neither of them appeared to have any real injuries.
"Not bad," the boy said, looking at the girl.
"Not bad yourself," she replied, "Name's Annet Myer."
"Hunter Drake."
"Any idea what those things wanted?" Annet asked.
"Nope," Hunter replied, "and I'm curious as to where these things came from, so I'm going in."
"I'm coming too," Annet said.
"No need. I got this."
Annet put her hands on her hips and smirked at him. "Really?"
"Fine," Hunter said, "I could use someone to talk to anyway."
And with that, they both jumped into the portal.
Hunter and Annet came out into what they thought was a high-tech military base of some sort, with lots of robots like the ones they'd just trashed, patrolling around a large, tower-like structure that appeared to be the primary building of the base.
Luckily for them, the portal spat them out behind a building, out of sight of them, as there were a lot of them.
"Okay," Annet said softly, "any ideas?"
Hunter began thinking, not exactly his strong suit. "Hmmm...If there's that many of them around that large structure, then it's a good bet there's something important in there."
Annet nodded. "I coulda figured that out myself. The question is, what is it?"
"That, I don't know," Hunter said, "but there's gotta be a back way in. You know. A supply tunnel. All we have to do is sneak into the base that way and see just what's in there."
"Okay," Annet said, "Now, how are we supposed to get there? This is the only real cover I see."
Hunter looked around, noting that Annet was right. "Well, I guess I can distract them with something."
"With what?" Annet asked.
Hunter held out his hand, and a fireball appeared. "With this."
He tossed the fireball at fuel depot a little ways off, hitting it squarely and causing it to explode.
The robots all looked over that way and charged, thinking they were under attack from that direction. Once they were cleared out enough, Hunter and Annet ran towards the base, taking out the few robots that stood guard as they entered, and coming up to a split hallway as an intruder alarm began to sound.
"Should we split up from here?" Hunter asked.
Annet nodded, and went right, while Hunter went left.
Hunter ran down the hall, feeling a powerful energy somewhere. He followed that feeling, finding it was above him, prompting him to look for a way upstairs, all while cutting down and blasting any robots in his path that attacked him.
Eventually, he'd find a spiral staircase, and began to ran up it, knowing it would likely lead all the way to the top floor.
Annet followed the hall until she came to an elevator of some sort. Not thinking anything of it, she stepped inside, and rode it to up to wherever it was going to take her.
On the way up she began to think about Darkstone, Essence, and Miranda back in her world, and wondered what they were up to at the moment. She still remembered how they had saved her life, and she still kept in touch with them after that.
But, she soon remembered that this was not the time to stroll down Memory Lane, and focused again on what she and Hunter were here to find out.
On the top floor of the base, a somewhat portly man, resembling the robots Hunter and Annet had fought somewhat, was standing over a console, in which seven gemstones had been placed into specially-designed sockets.
It was then that the alarm went off, and he noticed it right away.
"Well," he said, "go ahead and try to stop me, Sonic. I'm ready for you this time."
He was quite tall, his eyes hidden behind round sunglasses, and with goggles on his forehead. He wore a fancy red coat, white gloves, and black pants that had boots integrated into them. His most striking features, though, was his beak-like nose, and the long, red moustache that extended to either side of his face.
"It's only a matter of time before I can use Chaos Control to transport my base to another dimension, and steal its technology for myself!"
He then caught a glimpse of the security camera feeds from the monitor. "Wait a second. Neither of these two are Sonic! Who are they?"
He then chuckled. "I guess it doesn't really matter. They'll fare just as well as Sonic would."
Soon, the elevator door opened, and Annet was greeted by a few different kinds of robots. In addition to the red ones she and Hunter had fought before, there were similar ones with wings and thrusters instead of arms and legs, with laser cannons fitted to their undersides, as well as large, grey and silver robots armed with large hammers. There were also a couple of robots that resembles wizards, with red robes, staffs, and hats.
"Well," Annet said, "this'll be fun"
She quickly tossed a magic bolt at one of the smaller robots, trashing it and damaging a few around it. But, one of the wizards waved its wand, and the damaged robots appeared to be repaired instantly.
Annet figured those guys were like the healers in a group of adventurers, and therefore were high-priority targets, and began to rush at them, boomerangs at the ready.
She threw one of them at one of the robots, but hit it at a bad angle, and instead of damaging it, it flipped over, its robes folding down due to gravity, hiding the wizard-like form, and revealing a more sinister-looking grey sorcerer-like face. Annet was so startled by the change that she didn't notice it wave its staff in her direction.
Soon, a ring of energy formed around her, and shrank down, pinning her arms. "ACK!" she screamed as the ring bound her arms, struggling to break the energy ring, and not noticing the big robot preparing to smash her with its hammer.
Fortunately, before it could, a fireball hit the wizard-bot in the face, destroying it, and causing the ring of energy to be dispelled. Annet then noticed the big robot and dodged the hammer at the last second, looking around to see that Hunter had been the one to save her.
"Looks like we're even," Annet said, landing near the other wizard and taking it out with her boomerang.
"Guess so," Hunter replied, taking out a couple of the smaller robots with a swing of his sword.
The two of them made short work of what remained of the smaller units, before Hunter jumped on the head of one of the big guys, and Annet jumped onto the other. The two robots both faced each other and readied their hammers, but their foes jumped off of them at the last second, causing the two robots to smash each other's heads in.
Hunter brushed himself off and looked over to Annet. "Well, that wasn't so hard."
Annet nodded. "Now let's keep moving."
Before they could start off again, laughter filled the room. "You two aren't going anywhere!" A voice said, as a large flying mecha descended into the room, piloted by the man from the top floor.
"Alright, old man," Annet said, "You'd better explain how a portal to our town opened on this base."
"What!" he asked, "You mean to tell me you two are from a different world!"
"I guess so," Hunter, "now, who are you, and where are we?"
"It seems only fair that I should tell you," the man replied, "You may call me Dr. Robotnik, and you are currently on the planet Mobius, soon to be the home of my empire!"
"Empire, huh?" Hunter asked, "Well, I think we have a thing or two to say about that."
"We'll see about that," Robotnik replied, as two pieces of his mecha detached, converting into giant hands and clenching into fists.
He sent one of them towards the two of them, and Hunter jumped onto it for the return trip, preparing to swing his sword at the main body. However, when he did so, a barrier came up, blocking his attack completely, and knocking him away.
"Is that really the best you can do?" Robotnik taunted, "I'd have expected that from Sonic."
Hunter simply got back to his feet, neither he nor Annet questioning who this "Sonic" person was, as they both worked on dodging punches from the giant fists.
"Any ideas on how to fight this thing?" Annet asked.
"Just one," Hunter replied, "but we have to see what that machine's palms look like."
Soon, one hand opened up, revealing a laser in its palm that was rapidly charging.
Hunter saw his chance, and threw a fireball at it. However, it didn't do nearly enough damage to disable the hand, and it was able to fire at them, but they were able to roll out of harm's way.
They continued to avoid punches until the hand opened up again, and they both fired attacks at the palm laser. This time, the hand's laser shorted out, and it fell to the ground.
They repeated the process for the second hand, dodging attacks, and hitting it when the palm was exposed, and it fell to the ground as well. They'd hear something power down, as the barrier appeared to fizzle out.
Seeing his chance, Hunter jumped onto one of the downed robots, and jumped off of it to reach Robotnik, swinging his sword hard onto the cockpit of the mech, this time causing damage.
But, as soon as he'd done so, the barrier came back up, knocking him onto one of the hands. Both hands soon reactivated, and the one hand clenched itself around Hunter as they listed themselves back into the air.
"You may have disabled the lasers in my robot's hands," Robotnik said, "but that's not all they can do."
Annet watched as the hand holding Hunter began to tighten its grip, causing him to cry out in pain. She almost didn't see the other one coming right at her to grab her as well, but noticed and was able to fend it off with a well-placed magic bolt.
It continued to attack with punches, which Annet was able to avoid with some skill.
Eventually, the barrier came down, and Annet waited for the hand to try to punch again. She jumped on top of it and rode it to the cockpit, firing a bolt of magic at it and causing damage again.
"Hmmm," Robotnik said, "you two are better than I thought."
Annet landed under the hand, and was unable to react before it grabbed her and lifted her up.
"But pests like you need to be dealt with. However, you two do have one chance to save yourselves. Surrender, and I'll let you both live to be my servants once I create my empire."
"Two words," Hunter said, "forget it!"
"What he said," Annet added.
"Suit yourselves," Robotnik said, laughing as his machine hands began to crush the two of them, causing them both to cry out in pain.
Soon, something struck both hands in rapid succession, causing them to drop Hunter and Annet and fall to the ground.
The two of them looked around, seeing a strange sight. Standing on top of one of the hands was a blue humanoid hedgehog, with green eyes, and clad in nothing but white gloves and socks, and red shoes, with white straps down the middle ending in gold buckles on the outside.
"Now, now, Eggman," he said, smirking and wagging his infer tauntingly, "it's not polite to start the party without the guest of honor."
Robotnik turned and looked at the hedgehog with a comically angry expression, bur composed himself. "I guess you're right, Sonic. Here's a party favor for you."
Beneath the cockpit, a large laser extended, charged, and fired a huge beam at Sonic, who simply jumped over it and curled into a ball, spinning at high speeds, and launching himself at the cockpit of the mech, hitting it and causing it to fall the ground and begin to explode. Robotnik escaped by ejecting in a round hovercraft that had served as the cockpit for the larger machine.
Hunter got up and helped Annet to his feet. "Are you okay?"
Annet nodded. "Yeah."
They both turned to Sonic. "Thanks for the save," Hunter said, "I'm Hunter Drake, and this is Annet Myer."
"Nice to meet ya," Sonic said, rubbing his nose with his index finger, "name's Sonic, Sonic the Hedgehog."
But before they could continue with pleasantries, the explosion jogged the console upstairs, causing the seven gems to glow brightly, and release a huge surge of power, engulfing the whole complex...
Elsewhere, an alarm was blaring in a small ship, causing its sole occupant to fall off of the retractable bed he'd been sleeping on at the time.
"Ugh," he said as he got up, "Okay, alarm off!"
The alarm ceased, and he went over to the console to see what was up, finding that his computer was picking up strange readings from the planet nearby.
"Hmmm," he said, "well, I guess losing sleep over the alarm's the least of my worries. I'd better check this out."
And with that, he sat down in the pilot's seat. He had black hair, dark blue eyes, and was currently wearing a white shirt and blue jeans.
"Alright, disengage autopilot."
"Voice key verified as Obsidian Wolfe," the ship's computer said, "autopilot disengaged."
And with that, Obsidian set a course for the planet, and began the landing procedures. He closed the blast shield over the cockpit, and strapped himself in for reentry.
As his ship entered the atmosphere, the outside temperature climbed rapidly from the intense friction of reentry, while it remained comfortable within the craft. Obsidian paid attention to measurements of both interior and exterior temperatures, so he knew when to engage the thrusters to slow his descent.
The ship soon made a soft landing in a forest clearing, and the hatch came down, Obsidian taking a look around after it stopped. He was now also wearing a black jacket, and had some basic survival gear on him now.
He pulled out a hand scanner to see what direction the readings were coming from, and headed that way, soon coming to what looked like it had been a laboratory of some sort. He entered slowly, cautious of what he may find inside...