DunBroch
Morning had arrived and the sun shone all throughout the kingdom. Even though the sun's rays of pure light made today seem like it was going to be a grand, wonderful, and glorious day, how the day would really progress was just the opposite that.
'Merida' had just now woken up, a smile stretched out on her face, but not just any smile, an evil smile. "Today is the day," she said before hurriedly jumping out of the bed and quickly went down the stairs. The sound of a door slamming shut woke up the triplets. By the time they got out of their beds and opened their door, 'Merida' was already downstairs.
Harris led his other two brothers to their supposed "sister's" door and slowly opened it. He had to make sure "Merida" had really gone, which by the sight of her not being there and a messed up bed proved that to be true. As he led his siblings back out into the hallway, he sat on the ground, looking down. "What are we going to do about this?"
"Mommy and daddy probably won't believe us if we tell them that sissy isn't really sissy," Hamish said.
"And if we do even tell them, then sissy will probably hurt us or do something worser if she found out," Hubert replied.
"There's nothing we can do," Hamish said sadly. The three toddlers simply sat on the floor, each of them trying to get their five year old brains to somehow think up a solution to their problem.
No one was downstairs yet, probably cuz the King and Queen wanted some extra minutes of sleep before starting their day, so 'Merida' had no problem making it out of the castle. As she started down the path that led her to a split path. The right path would take her to the village that was behind the castle, which was Lord Macintosh's, while the path to her left would lead her to Lord Dingwall's village. She decided to clockwise around the kingdom, so she started down the left path. Before she entered the town, she decided to change her appearance to that of a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties. 'Here goes nothing,' Mercilla thought as she entered the village.
Once Mercilla entered the village's town square, she immediately started her plan, so she called out to everyone, getting the whole village's attention. As the people looked at her, she knew they were thinking she had better have a reason for stopping whatever they were doing that was of some importance to them. "I heard that Lord Macintosh considers Lord Dingwall to be an incompetent brute with the mind of a goldfish." This caused the reaction Mercilla was hoping for: irritation and anger, although it was in a few of the villagers, a little was a lot better than nothing. "Also, the King and Queen have been planning to kick this village out of the main three and make it the main two now due to all of us to be pains in the rear end." As more of the villagers became madder, a slight evil smirk appeared on Mercilla's disguised face, but made sure to hide it from the villagers. "And MacGuffin agrees with this plan, thinking that we're all just worthless liabilities who can't do anything right." The villagers were now all mad at this, and were swarming throughout the village. Mercilla managed to duck into the crowd and sneak off to the next village, which was Lord Macintosh's.
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Once at Macintosh's village, Mercilla, now in the guise of young man, did the same thing as before. "I found out that the King and Queen are regretting their daughter's choosing of Lord Macintosh's prince. They wished she would have chosen either Dingwall's or MacGuffin's prince instead. Namely because they don't wanna work with our beloved lord." Like before, some of the villagers reacted angrily to this so Mercilla continued. "MacGuffin thinks that Macintosh is simply a tribal native in need of taming." The villagers became madder by that comment. For the final touch, Mercilla added this: "Dingwall also thinks that he and his villagers can whip the whole lot of us in a tussle." Now these villagers were steamed and peeved. No one dare insulted their ability to fight. Mercilla once again slipped into the angry mob and continued to her final destination.
Mercilla was already spreading her false rumors in MacGuffin's village, this time in the guise of a middle-aged woman in her forties with the same blue tattoos most of the villagers had on their bodies. "Dingwall considers us to be blue fools who need to wash this garbage off our bodies and actually wise up." After hearing the villagers shouts of anger, she continued. "The King and Queen simply think we're all dumb apes that resemble an ignorant ancestor of humanity." Louder shouts followed that insult. "Macintosh is glad that princess Merida chose his prince instead of ours, mainly due to the fact that now Merida won't suffer being married to the fat lard we call our prince." As the villagers all became mad, Mercilla slipped away into the crowd once more, this time to return to the castle and watch her maddening plan all unfold.
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The rumors spread all over the kingdom, every village hearing what their lord said about their's and what the King and Queen said, which caused some small fights to break out between villagers of different villages. Finally, the rumors reached the lords' themselves, who didn't take them too kindly. "THEY SAID WHAT?" shouted MacGuffin, slamming his balled-up fist onto the arm of his throne angrily. "The other two lords and the King and Queen themselves said many insulting things about you and us," said the villager who broke the news to MacGuffin. "Well lets just beat these lies out of their heads and put in the truth. Tell everyone to prepare for war!"
The same reaction was held by Dingwall when a villager told him about the rumors about him and their village that were floating about. "So I'm incompetent, eh? Lets just see if they can hold off an incompetent brute with a goldfish brain! We'll get the King and Queen first since they think they can kick us out of the kingdom!" Dingwall shouted.
And at Macintosh's village... "They won't get away with these insulting things. We'll show them all what a bunch of tribal-minded people can do. Start the war, we won't stop until either we win or... well, we won't stop until we win."
As the day went on, each of the lords' armies advanced through the villages and began battle in the heart of all three of them. Many smaller battles broke out, which were both vicious and grueling. The battles enveloped nearly all of the kingdom's villages, some parts getting close to the castle. Arrows and spears flew through the air, as did large boulders that were fired from wooden catapults.
As the battle commenced, 'Merida' watched with glee and utter happiness as her plan to rule was slowly unfolding in front of her. Her smile was that of eagerness and pleasure. 'Hopefully the dummies will do what I think they'll do,' she thought to herself. A main part of her plan was for the lords to somewhat team up and take out the King and Queen before going back to their own separate battles.
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Dr. Eggman's Fortress, Hallway leading to the Control Room
The three heroes, Sonic, Tails, and Merida charged down the hallway, sort of surprised by the fact that they hadn't seen any of Eggman's robots guarding the hallway or anywhere in sight. It was kind of confusing, but none of them complained about it. At least it wouldn't be too much of a problem getting Merida back home. Just as they were thinking that on their approach to the entrance to the control room, a sudden flash of whitish-green light appeared before them, basically out of nowhere, which forced them to stop and shield their eyes from it due to the intense brightness. Luckily, the light didn't last for long. Once they returned their arms and hands to their sides, they saw that standing in the light's place was a silver-white hedgehog, roughly about Sonic's size.
Sonic and Tails instantly recognized who the mystery hedgehog was while Merida stared at it. "Hey Silver, what are you doing here?" Sonic asked.
"I'm on a mission to save the future from–" That was when Silver saw Merida standing with them. "You!" he said, a little bit in surprise and anger. He didn't expect Sonic to be actually helping Merida. He shot his hand forward and made his psychokinesis energy flow out of his palm and surround Merida, causing her to lift off the ground a few feet and trap her in a kinetic energy prison.
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Merida struggled to at least move one part of her body, but found herself unable due to some invisible force that binded her. "What's the big idea? I didn't do anything to you, I mean, I don't even know you!" Merida protested, still trying to break free.
"What's going on Silver?" Sonic asked angrily. Silver wasn't going to do any harm to his new friend, at least not while he was around. Tails looked at the silver-white hedgehog both in confusion and anger. Sonic suddenly took off at Silver, so Tails did the same thing. The both leaped at Silver and were about to do a Spin Attack, but suddenly Silver quickly used his free hand to make a sweeping motion, which caused more of his psychokinesis energy to knock away the two aggressors. Sonic and Tails quickly got back up, but just like Merida, they too were trapped in Silver's psychokinesis hold.
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"Sonic, you can't help her. She's the reason the future is such a disaster and is in ruins... well at least one part of the world is," Silver said, trying to make Sonic and Tails understand why he was doing this. "She has to be stopped."
"What are you talking about, I would never do anything to harm or destroy or cause anything bad to happen to anyone!" Merida shouted, feeling angered by her situation.
"She's telling the truth Silver, she wouldn't do that to anyone. We should know. Me and Sonic have known her long enough," Tails said.
"But in the future, she will use the weapons she got here to kill the ruling parties of DunBroch in the past and take leadership for herself," Silver replied.
"Wait, wait, hold up. Where did you get an idea like that?" Merida asked, now really confused.
"It wasn't an idea. I read about it in the EFF's main database."
"What's the EFF?" Sonic asked.
"The EFF stands for the Europe Freedom Fighters. As time went on, DunBroch became a tyranny-filled kingdom, under the rule of Merida and the rest of her warlord lineage. DunBroch slowly conquers everyone around it, eventually controlling the whole of Europe in my time. Now that Europe is under DunBroch's control, our intelligence officers report that they now want to take over other countries on other continents. I just can't allow that to happen." Silver turned to Merida. "Time to end this."
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Merida grunted and let out a yelp which increased in volume as she felt her invisible bondage tighten around her, starting to squeeze her tightly. This Silver guy wanted to squeeze the very life out of her. "Please stop!" she shouted as the oxygen started departing her lungs at an incredibly fast rate. "I would never ever do that." Her mind began racing with all the possibilities that could have caused the future that Silver said occurs, when suddenly it hits her: Mercilla. "Wait, stop, I'm not the one you want to dispose of. I know who's really behind this."
Silver looked at her, curious, but not stupid enough to free her just yet. He gently let up on his squeezing and looked at her closely. "Who was it then?"
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"I was brought here by Mercilla, who is a wise woman in my kingdom. She teleported me here using some of her mystical powers because I sort of wanted to get away from my kingdom to relax a little bit and I always wanted to see the future. Anyways, she said she'd take my image and basically be me while I was here, so if it's anyone that causes what you say will happen, it's her."
He studied her closely, trying to see and make sure she wasn't lying to him about this. "How do I know you're telling me the truth?"
"Believe me Silver, she's telling the truth. Just trust us, okay. Would I be with her if she had some evil plan in mind to destroy her family and lords?" Sonic said.
The white-silver hedgehog took a moment to think about this, mainly because what he does right now could determine how the future turns out. He trusted Sonic and if Sonic trusted what this Merida said, then he should too. "Alright." With that, he released Merida and Sonic and Tails from his hold, allowing them to return to their original positions. "I just hope I made the right decision," he said to himself.
Sonic went over and gently patted the hedgehog's shoulder. "You did, trust me."
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After feeling came back to her body, Merida's face instantly turned into a scowl. "How dare she kill my family and the lords. I should have known she would have tried to do this. Who knows what else she's also done if she's going to do this," she growled as she stormed down the hallway.
"Well, we'll get you to Eggman's machine and I'm sure we can take you back to your–" but Tails stopped talking as Merida marched into Eggman's control room. "Time." With that, the three animals quickly dashed down the hallway and went inside the room, not knowing what Merida would try to do in her angered state. As soon as they got inside, the first thing they saw was Merida aiming her bow, with an arrow currently loaded inside, right at Eggman's face. "Take me back to my right time. Now," she said in an angered, yet stern voice.
Eggman, who had been sitting in his chair the whole time, was somewhat startled and confused by how this archer girl managed to get into his control room, but decided not to ask due to the dangerous situation she now placed him in. Although he wouldn't mention this, but he was pretty freaked out by the situation. One moment he was searching for where the intruders were in his fortress, the next, a red-head with a bow burst into his control room and began threatening him. "Um, okay... just don't hurt me or anything." He slowly got up and walked over to the time teleportation machine as Merida, Sonic, Tails, and Silver followed. The egg-shaped man started typing on the console, starting up the machine. "I need a location and a time period."
Merida lowered her bow and put the arrow back in her arrow case. "I know I want to go to DunBroch, but I have no clue which time period I'm from."
"Well you better find the answer quick archer girl or you won't be going anywhere," Eggman replied, annoyed by this.
"She needs to go to DunBroch in the 10th century," Silver said.
"Okay," Eggman said as he put in the correct coordinates. After a few seconds he turned back to the group. "It's finished, so get out of my base before I call in my robots."
Eggman's Storage Room #32, Eggman's Fortress
As Team Dark quietly approached the corridor leading into the entrance archway of the storage room containing the Chaos Emeralds, Shadow quickly took a peek at what was waiting around the bend. What he saw was a group of four robots, Egg Pawns to be specific. They weren't too hard to take down, so getting into the room should be no problem. Shadow looked at the other two members of the team and began discussing his plan. "There are four Egg Pawns guarding the entrance, so to go and get the emeralds, Rouge is going to distract them before I take them out." The black hedgehog then turned to Omega. "You are going to keep a watch for anything that comes down that hallway. If something does come, fire at will. We'll probably have the emeralds if that happens so we don't need to worry about a sneaky exit," Shadow continued. "Affirmative," the hulking robot replied before making his way over to his post, starting to scan for any approaching Eggman robots. Shadow and Rouge departed, the bat heading over to the robots while Shadow stayed hidden behind the corridor.
Once the robots had Rouge in their target sights, they quickly aimed their guns at her, but for some odd reason couldn't find the urge to fire on her. This was all a part of Rouge's charm she had. It could affect anything, even machines. "I seem to be lost, so can you show me the right way to get to the control room? I'm one of Eggman's newest recruits," Rouge said, acting like she really was lost and telling the truth about it. As the robots looked at one another, they were trying to figure out what to do with her. After a few moments, one of the robots shrugged its shoulders and walked towards her, the other three following it, and decided to lead the bat to where the control room was. Rouge quickly walked back over to the corridor, but as soon as the first Egg Pawn came in, Shadow sprang into action.
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The black hedgehog's right fist thrusted forward, nailing the robot in the face, which sent it hurtling back into the other three who were following close behind. The robots quickly got back to their feet and charged at Shadow, but the black hedgehog teleported out of the way and reappeared behind them, round-house kicking the last one in the back of its head. This caused the robot to fall forwards, creating a domino-effect with the others. As the robot got back up, it reached out and caught Shadow's arm, which promptly caused the hedgehog to punch the robot's face repeatedly.
Hearing the action in the corridor, Omega swiftly turned his attention to the fight, keeping his scanners on so that if something was coming from behind, he wouldn't be taken by surprise. The first thing he saw was three Egg Pawns about to unload their weapons on Rouge and the last one holding Shadow, so the red and black robot quickly charged at the robots surrounding Rouge, grabbing one and using it as a bat to knock away the Pawn to the right. The Pawn to the left tried to make a lunge at Omega, but it received a swift punch, sending it back into the hallway where it crashed into the corner of the hallway entrance wall.
Shadow quickly continued hammering on the robot's head, which now was completely dented and almost going inwards, but realized that this wasn't doing anything except slowing it down, so he slammed his right foot against the chest plate and used it to bounce out of the robot's hold. Using the quick seconds he had, the black hedgehog quickly revved up into a ball and Spin Dashed through the robot's chest, bursting out of the backside. Shadow uncurled himself as the robot fell lifelessly to the ground with a clang. He turned to the others and saw them trying to fight the remaining two Egg Pawns, which had just gotten back up from Omega's baseball swing, and yelled to them. "Forget the robots for now and lets get the Chaos Emeralds!" He quickly charged his hands up with Chaos Energy and let loose a Chaos Spear attack, blasting the doors wide open and ran inside.
Rouge and Omega were about to follow, but suddenly, gun fire from the robots zoomed by their heads, causing them to turn around and see the Egg Pawns charging at them. "I'll handle this," Omega replied, quickly activating a set of mini barrels around his right hand. He began firing small rounds at both the robots, causing chunks of metal to fall off with every shot.
Shadow looked around the room, quick as can be. He knew he didn't have much time before those robots would reach him, but once he heard the sound of gunfire, he knew Omega was taking care of it. He should have been mad by the fact that Rouge and Omega were disobeying an order, but right now, he could hardly care less. His eyes quickly darted around the room, searching high and low over tons of shelves, consoles and old machinery in his search for the emeralds, when something sparkling caught his eye. He looked to where it was coming from and saw that inside an old console were the Chaos Emeralds. 'Very clever, hiding them where no one would even think to look,' he thought to himself. He smashed the glass, grabbed the emeralds and ran back outside. Once out of the room, he saw Omega's right hand mini-barrels smoking and the two Egg Pawns laying on the ground, many pieces of their metal skin laying on the ground around them.
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"Sorry to not follow an order Shadow, but these things were shooting right at us and were about to get–" Rouge began to say, but was interrupted by Shadow. "It doesn't matter. All that matters is that we've got what we came for and can now go back to G.U.N." Shadow walked down the hallway, turning to Omega. "Any robots coming in our direction?"
"Scans show that a large group of robots has been alerted to our presence and are now closing in on us," Omega reported.
"When will they reach us?" Shadow asked.
"In approximately t-minus 5 minutes."
"Lets get moving then." With that, Shadow dashed down the hallway, Rouge and Omega quickly following behind him. Once they reached the 4-way hallway intersection, Shadow and Omega started to sprint for the hallway in front of them, but Rouge stopped once she heard some talking coming from the direction of the control room hallway.
"Hey, wait a sec guys, I think I heard something," she said, causing both Shadow and Omega to stop.
"Yeah, it's the sound of Eggman's forces, so lets get going," Shadow retorted. He didn't have time for this.
"No, it sounds like talking. Omega, use you audio device thing to see what's going on," Rouge said.
"We don't have time for this," Shadow said, huffing angrily. "Just go ahead Omega. I can probably hold off any of those robots that should come our way."
Omega did what Rouge said and began an audio pick-up frequency and listened in on the conversation. After a few minutes, he spoke of what was going on. "It is a conversation between Merida and Eggman, along with Sonic and Silver."
"Sonic can deal with Eggman himself. He doesn't need our help," Shadow said.
"Mention of DunBroch in conversation," Omega replied.
"DunBroch..." Shadow was now interested in what was going on in there. "The same DunBroch that has most of Europe under its rule?"
"Precise. Conversation is about time travel and teleportation."
"Hmmm." Shadow began thinking about why Sonic would want to travel to DunBroch. 'Maybe he wants to stop DunBroch from taking over Europe so he's going to go and change the past,' he thought. Whatever Sonic was doing wasn't his concern, however, bringing down a tyrannical empire before it even became one was. "Lets go," Shadow said before changing his direction and walked towards the control room.
"But what about returning to base?" Rouge called out to him as Omega walked past her and followed Shadow, not saying a word.
"The chance to possibly stop DunBroch from holding the greater part of Europe under it's rule holds more precedence than simply returning Chaos Emeralds," Shadow answered, still walking to the control room.
Rouge simply shrugged her shoulders and began to follow. 'Maybe they'll have some precious jewels I can take,' she thought happily as images of brilliant colored gems filled her mind.
Just as Merida and the others were about to enter the teleporter time machine, Team Dark came into the room. "We're coming too," Shadow said, causing everyone there to look at them. The way he said it made it clear that he meant business and there was no way of making him stay or change his mind.
The first thing Eggman saw was that the Chaos Emeralds were in Shadow's hands. "Why do you have my Chaos Emeralds? How did you even find them?" he shouted angrily.
"They belong to you as much as they belong to me," Shadow retorted, a scowl on his face as he and Team Dark approached Sonic and the others.
"So those are the Chaos Emeralds," Merida said as she gazed upon them. She had never seen anything so beautiful before. Their colors and they way they sparkled made her feel amazing, unlike anything she ever felt before. Along with that, she could feel they all held an amazing power.
"These emeralds are under G.U.N. protection Eggman and we're just taking them back after you stole them," Shadow continued. "And after we get back from Highlandera, they will be returned to G.U.N."
"You aren't going anywhere without me," said a familiar voice.
Everyone turned back to the entrance, and there stood Knuckles. "Hey there Knuckles. 'Bout time you showed up," Sonic remarked as the red echidna approached them.
Merida looked at Knuckles, slightly confused by his appearance here. "I thought you had to guard the Master Emerald on Angel Island?"
"I was going to do that, but then I started feeling bad that I didn't come with you to Eggman's fort. Besides, now that I know a certain 'someone' isn't around to try and steal it," he looked directly at Rouge. "I knew it would be safe."
"Hey knucklehead, you better hope you can reach your little island before I do or you might just find your precious emerald gone," Rouge replied.
"Why I oughta...," Knuckles began, taking a threatening step towards Rouge, right hand balled up into a fist, but Sonic quickly intervened.
"Okay, enough, both of you," he said, getting in-between them.
Knuckles took a deep breath of air and continued speaking. "As I was saying, I came here to help. Seeing from the vast amount of junked metal you really didn't need me."
"Yeah, Eggman sent his clunkers out to try and stop us from coming to visit him to throw him a welcome back party," Sonic said.
The insult 'clunkers' caused Eggman to get offended. "Hey, my robots aren't clunkers. They just have a couple of bugs in their systems. Sooner or later I'll make some robots that'll finally rid me of you."
"Eggman, everyone here knows that will never ever happen," Sonic replied.
"Guys, can we please stop fighting. We need to get to DunBroch so that we can stop Mercilla," Merida said.
"She's right. Time to save the future," Silver replied.
Merida quickly leaped into the teleporter time machine, followed by Silver, Sonic, Shadow, Tails, Rouge, Omega, and Knuckles. After the heroes went inside, Eggman simply sat in his chair, staring at the machine. Inside his mind, a plan was already formulating.
The evil genius wanted to help stop DunBroch from turning into a tyrannical empire, but was disgusted by the fact that he would essentially be helping those goody-two shoes heroes. Luckily, the reason for his need of DunBroch's future to be changed was much, much different. Eggman wanted to conquer the world, but since DunBroch has vastly more power and influence than he has, along with much better robots that he's sure were copied off of his and G.U.N.'s own robots, he would have no chance of taking this world. 'If I can take out DunBroch in the past, they will no longer be the thron in my side they've always been,' Eggman thought, a thin smirk filling his face. He got up, an evil laugh escaping from his mouth, and approached the main console, activating the fortress intercom system. "Attention all Eggman robots. You are to report to the Egg Carrier for transportation immediately."
It didn't take long for nearly half of Eggman's army to reach the Egg Carrier. The Egg Carrier was a massively huge airship that was very long. Colored red and black, the stream-lined appearing ship had four wings, two pointing upwards and two pointing down. Connected to the wings were large missile launchers, capable of firing a variety of missiles. The airship waited for the underground hanger's ceiling doors to fully open, causing some of the sun's rays to land on the airship.
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Once the doors were all the way back, the Egg Carrier gently lifted up into the air and continued upwards until it was a safe distance away from the ground and began to head straight forward. The pace of flight was slow, but that was only because it was waiting for its means of transportation to appear.
On the ground a good distance from it, the ground started to open up, causing a large machine-like object to rise up. Its appearance was that of an arch-shape, but as soon as the machine roared to life, a large, swirling vortex appeared in its center. This machine was actually a larger version of the teleporter time machine.
From the Egg Carrier's bridge, Eggman sat in the captain's chair and watched as the vessel got closer and closer to the swirling vortex. He quickly typed in the interfacing codes for the machine, so he would be able to transmit the commands he was about to type to the machine. After sending the commands telling the time period and location, the swirling portal started to swirl counterclockwise and began a color change pattern. Eggman's evil laugh rang out as the Egg Carrier plunged into the vortex, disappearing in a flash of white light.
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End of Chapter 8
A/C: Can Sonic, Merida and the heroes stop Mercilla before the kingdom is entirely destroyed by Mercilla's meddling? What will Eggman do to DunBroch once he reaches there? Find out in the next chapter.
