Chapter 9 - The Path To Sandopolis
Dear GRACEYlikeAboss: Thanks for reading! So glad you could join the site. :D
I mentioned last chapter that I was drawing a cover for Legacy, and that I'd try to have it up by now. The cover still isn't drawn, unfortunately… I'm having trouble deciding between a few designs. So… I made a poll about it! The poll is on my profile, at the top of the screen. You can only vote if you have an account, but if you don't, check it out anyway, and tell me your answer in a guest review. Hopefully by chapter 10 (10! Holy totem poles!) I will have decided and there'll be a nice image to go with this story. Hope you weren't excited for that. Sorry!
Now, I'd like to devote a paragraph to a shout out. My friend, GRACEYlikeAboss, recently joined Fanfiction! I strongly suggest checking her out. She has brilliant writing talent. I'm not just saying that because we're best friends. It's true! She's writing an alternate universe story about the two well-known YouTubers Markiplier and jacksepticeye. If you like those YouTubers, you should read it. It's great! Anyways, back to my regular notes:
Sorry that this chapter took longer than normal. In order to ensure that I got everything right, I went through the locations used in this chapter in-game. I know what you're thinking. 'Zosonils, you didn't need to do that!' 'Zosonils, you could have just watched a let's play!' 'Zosonils, it doesn't matter if it doesn't fit perfectly with the game!' 'The heck with Sonic Mania, where's Dr. Robotnik's Meme Spinball Fishing Adventure 06: Rise of Lyric & Knuckles?' Well, one: I know I didn't have to do that, but I'm sort of a perfectionist. I like this game anyways. It was fun. Two: usually, Let's Players try and get it done quickly and with lots of points, instead of looking around. I wanted to explore a bit and find new paths to send the heroes on, rather than just hoping the gamer I was watching would walk in that direction. Three: I know it doesn't matter (now what happens, I will never give up the fight… I'm not concentrating). But I wanted to do it this way. So I did. Four: somebody will make a ROM hack eventually. Be patient.
Future chapters won't be as quick to update as the previous ones, unfortunately. I'm always busy these days, it seems. I try to make the chapters the highest quality writing I can, in order to make up for having to wait two or so weeks in between them. Also, I've fully written out a plot for this, so writer's block probably won't slow things down any further, phew. And the plot is 38 chapters long. Ooh boy. This'll be fun…
Now that my typical meaningless drabble is over, story time!
Knuckles snapped a stick off a tree and drew a circle in the dirt with it. "Okay, let's say this is Angel Island," he explained. Drawing a slightly smaller circle within the 'island', he continued, "That's the river." He shaded in a patch through the middle. "Those are the mountains…" He drew a large X at the top. "…that's where we are right now…" He finished with another, smaller X at the bottom. "…and there's the Chaos Emerald." He began to draw a line going from one X to the other, saying, "We need to cross a bit of the jungle, go through HydroCity here, over Lava Reef Mountain here, and around the Marble Garden Ruins here. From there, we reach Sandopolis Desert, where the Chaos Emerald is located. It'll probably take us about three days."
"THREE DAYS?!" Sonic exclaimed. "Hang on, pass me that stick." He grabbed the stick off Knuckles and drew a much shorter line, going around the mountains and straight towards the second X. "Wouldn't this way be a million times faster?"
"Nope. Give me back my stick," Knuckles said, pulling it out of Sonic's hands. "That goes through the Launch Base, where Eggman first set up his stuff here. And since I blew it the absolute hell up with my epic bomb all those years ago, it's blocked off by this wall that fell over and inconveniently got in the way. I've tried to go there, but it doesn't work. One does not simply walk through a mountain of blown up metal. It'd take twice as long. We're going my way, alright? I know my way around. You gotta trust me on this one."
Sonic sighed. "Okay, fine. Are you sure there isn't a faster way? I don't know how long we have to save the world and solve this problem, but three days is a long time."
"If we go right now and don't stop unless we absolutely have to, we might get there in two."
"Come on, it won't be that bad," Tails said brightly. "Let's get going!"
xX*Xx
They set off, beginning to run towards HydroCity. For a while, there was silence as they raced at high speeds through the jungle. Then Knuckles spoke. "So, Sonic. You still haven't actually told me why you look like half a Metal Sonic."
"Are you seriously gonna use that description every time you mention the fact that I'm slowly being transformed into a lethal killer robot against my will and beyond my control?"
"Wow, somebody's acting passive aggressive today… is it that bad?"
"Yep. …That sounded way more morbid than I wanted it to. So, anyways, you know how Eggman said that he had corrupted those fake Chaos Emeralds so that even if I came back, I would become one of his minions? That's pretty much what's happening. Kinda depressing, but at least I'm not dead. Oh, and turns out he's still out there, and he's sending random people after us. Or at least he sent one random person after us. And sometimes he takes control. It's… not good, but we're working on it. It turns out that because the Chaos Emeralds are magically magic or however they work, they bring me back to normal a bit. Actually, Tails, how does that work?"
"I'm not certain, but I have a bit of a theory," Tails explained. "The Chaos Emeralds don't react well with machines. While they can be used as batteries for machines, their energy is much more powerful when reacting with something living. I think that the Emeralds allow your own power to become stronger than the corrupted energy Eggman's using, at least temporarily, hence the restoration."
"Okay, a simple 'their magic adds to my awesomeness' would've been fine, but that also works. Anyway, we're gonna get all the Chaos Emeralds and try to permanently get me back to normal. But just to make things harder, it's speeding up. Apparently, Eggy thought that he wasn't screwing us all over fast enough. But hey, like I said, at least I'm not de-" He cut off abruptly as the three of them stopped at a bridge.
Below them, the clear waters of the deep river stretched out seemingly endlessly. Bricks with a blue and brown colour scheme lined the bottom and sides. "So, we go down there, and then we come up at the edge of the mountain?" Tails asked.
"Uh-huh," Knuckles confirmed. At this, Sonic walked to the tall cliff face at the other end of the bridge, hit his head on it a few times, then stood there. Knuckles sighed. "He's still terrified of water, isn't he?"
Tails nodded. He walked over to his friend. "Come on, Sonic, it's not that bad. We just need to go down, cross HydroCity, and then come back up, and we'll be at Lava Reef Mountain." Meanwhile, Knuckles was scaling the cliff. Tails kept talking. "You won't have to go in the water for more than a few minutes. And hey, there are air bubbles down there."
Knuckles slammed on the button atop the cliff. "Think fast!" he yelled as the bridge Sonic and Tails were standing on collapsed. He jumped and fell with them, holding his hat firmly on his head. "Woo!"
As the echidna began gliding to the upper path, Tails quickly grabbed Sonic, who was screaming extremely loudly, and started flying. They all landed on the higher path. Sonic continued screaming for about ten seconds before he realised he wasn't drowning. He blinked hard a few times, then looked at Knuckles and shouted, "The hell?"
Shrugging, Knuckles defended himself. "Hey, it's not like you were gonna go down there without someone throwing you off. You're the one who wanted us to go as fast as possible."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know."
xX*Xx
The three heroes ran along the path and through a loop. They avoided a crumbling platform, then raced around several more loops. After avoiding a few spikes, they reached a dead end. The only way was down, into the water. Knuckles jumped in and started treading water, saying, "See? It's fi- oh, wait, I can swim, you can't."
"Not helping," Tails told him. He turned back to Sonic. "Come on. It'll be fine. We don't have to spend long underwater."
Sonic took a deep breath, as if it would be his last, and nodded. "Okay… I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm gonna be fine." He edged slowly towards the water, then closed his eyes and fell forwards. He sunk almost instantly. Tails dove after him and started dragging him through the underwater path. Knuckles followed. They kept going down deeper, then made their way through. Knuckles pointed at a spring. Tails nodded and swam to it, still holding onto Sonic, who looked like he was going to throw up. The spring bounced them up, and a layer of fans thrust them the rest of the way, until they hit solid ground again. Sonic fell over and gasped for air, spitting out some water. "That was an awful, awful idea," he decided. "Why didn't we just use the Tornado and fly over?"
Tails blinked, then facepalmed at himself. "I should've thought of that."
"Let's just keep going," Knuckles suggested. Without waiting for agreement, he started to run up the slope leading to the next part of HydroCity. Sonic and Tails tried to keep up.
They continued for a good few minutes before having to go underwater again. Sonic sighed, knowing what was coming. "Tails, can you just drag me under?" he asked. Tails shrugged. He grabbed Sonic's hand again and pulled him under. Followed closely by Knuckles, he continued underwater for some time before finally coming up again. Sonic coughed and shook the water off his spines. "I think I might puke in a second."
"Don't get it anywhere near my hat," Knuckles warned him. "Come on, there are some more fans up here. We're making good progress."
Sure enough, there were more rows of fans just above them, and after a small climb, the heroes were once again caught in the current and thrown up into the next area. They ran through some half-pipes that took them down, then up, then down again. More than once, the pipes briefly and unexpectedly went underwater, causing Sonic to freak out again. He didn't stop running, but he was still coughing up water when even more fans pushed them onwards. Just as he got all the water out of his lungs, the threesome went through more half-pipes and were under again for a moment. It continued like this for quite some time. Pipes, fans, water, loops. A few times, they had to make their way upwards while avoiding spikes. Then the pattern would continue. Run through pipes. Get blown upwards by some fans. Go underwater for a while. Avoid spikes. Run through a loop or two.
"I know you guys are my biggest fans, but this is getting ridiculous," Sonic joked, as he and his friends rose in the air.
"That wasn't funny the last four times you said it," Knuckles complained.
It kept going. Loops. Spikes. Fans. The same pun from Sonic, over and over. Knuckles telling him to shut up. Going underwater. Pipes. More loops. Eventually, they came to a bridge. "Okay, I have to destroy this so that we can keep going," Knuckles explained. "We're gonna go underwater for quite a while again. You okay with that, Sonic?" The hedgehog took another deep breath, closed his eyes, and nodded. "Cool. Three, two, one, bam." The echidna pressed a button similar to the first one, blowing up the bridge below them. The three fell into the water. Knuckles made a 'come on' motion with one hand. Tails swam after him, and Sonic walked as fast as he could.
After a second or two, Sonic's hydrophobia fully kicked in. He could feel the water pressing in on him, threatening to drown him if he stayed under for too long. His every instinct screamed for him to get to dry land. He couldn't breathe, and it was nearly impossible not to automatically try. He tried to get up some speed, but it was useless trying. The water slowed him down to an almost average pace, just to add to the terror. All these thoughts came in the space of another second. Tails looked back at him with an expression that clearly said, You look like you're having a heart attack. Sonic shot back a glare that replied, I AM having a flipping heart attack, thank you very much. Knuckles was using one hand to prevent his hat from floating away, and used the other for a facepalm. He kept going, and Sonic and Tails followed. As the trio came to a certain point, a giant fan extended from the wall and forced them onwards at high speeds. They all grabbed onto some poles instinctively, which stopped them for a few seconds, then broke. Sonic could feel the air blowing right into his face, but couldn't breathe it in. It was torture. Eventually, the fan stopped, and they could move normally (well, almost) again. They kept going, slowly but surely making their way through the dark, watery abyss.
xX*Xx
Finally, after what felt like a million years, the water stopped. The three heroes made it up to the edge of the river. The mountains lay just ahead of them. As soon as he was on land, Sonic gasped for air. He blinked his eyes rapidly, then lay down in a ball of panic. He held up a hand. "Give me a minute, I need to have a quick panic attack." He could still feel the water stinging his eyes, blocking his ears, getting up his nose, filling his lungs, and trying to drown him. For a while, he stayed curled up tightly on the ground, then his heartbeat finally returned to normal. He stood up again. "Okay, I'm good. Uh, you guys saw nothing. Okay?"
Tails and Knuckles nodded. "The sun's going down," Knuckles pointed out matter-of-factly as he squeezed the water out of his hat. The sun was, in fact, setting, and there were perhaps a few minutes before all light vanished. "We should set up for the night and get some sleep. I'm pretty sure there's a conveniently placed cave in the mountain that should keep us sheltered. If we rest there and get up early next morning, we can probably make it the rest of the way tomorrow."
After some searching, the three found that there was a cave close to where they were going next. They decided to use it to protect them from any bad weather overnight. "Well, I'm crashing," Knuckles announced. "Night, guys. Good to have you back." He lay down on the ground and went to sleep.
Tails also closed his eyes. Sonic stayed awake for a while longer. His eyes, out of habit, flicked down to his arm. He suddenly registered what he had seen, and looked down again. This time yesterday, it had been almost entirely back to normal. Now, the metal replacing it had stretched back down, nearly all the way to his hand. He sighed, partially in frustration, partially out of stress. Thinking about it harder, he could feel the technology in the spines on his back, too. Well, that was just brilliant. Sonic reminded himself that it wasn't going to be a problem for long, because he and his friends were going to get the Chaos Emeralds and use them to fix everything. He wouldn't let himself hurt his friends, he was going to kick Eggman's butt for good, he would get his team back together, he'd use the Chaos Emeralds to stop (he couldn't help quoting Knuckles in his mind) looking like half a Metal Sonic, and then everything could go back to normal. Satisfied with that optimistic view, he closed his eyes, and fell asleep.
xX*Xx
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As the morning sun illuminated the cave, Sonic heard Knuckles' voice in his ear. "Get up. Get up. Get up. Get up. Get up. Are you awake yet? I know you're awake. Get up!"
"I'm conscious, and fully aware of the fact that you sound like a broken CD. Give me a minute," he responded. Knuckles walked over to the entrance restlessly. Sonic yawned and stood up. Sleeping on a floor of rock had not been a good idea. He stretched a bit. Suddenly, he noticed a very familiar sensation. He pulled off the glove on his right hand, and his suspicions were confirmed. So much for getting that Chaos Emerald a few days ago. He looked like nothing had changed since he finally got home. Deciding not to panic, he simply took a deep breath to calm himself, then went over to where Tails and Knuckles were standing. "Let's go."
"What's up?" Tails asked, noticing that Sonic was looking uncharacteristically worried. He looked down to the hedgehog's arm, and realised that it had changed back into metal. "Oh, man… it's gotten worse." Sonic nodded and sighed. "Don't worry!" Tails tried to reassure his friend. "Everything'll be okay! We're gonna get a Chaos Emerald, and then we can bring you back to normal!"
"Yeah, I know," Sonic forced himself to smile, knowing it would calm Tails down. "I'm fine, really."
Knuckles was getting thoroughly impatient. "Come on! Aren't you supposed to be the fastest thing alive? If we don't get going, we won't reach Sandopolis today."
xX*Xx
The threesome set off again. They took a path through the inside of Lava Reef. "I remember this place," Sonic commented. "I press this button, and then we can keep going, right?" He jumped up and hit a button. The wall slid upwards, revealing a new pathway. "Called it!"
At the start of the path was a pool of lava. There were a few unstable-looking rocks leading from one side to the other. "This doesn't look safe," Tails pointed out. He grabbed Sonic by the hand and flew him over, then came back and did the same with Knuckles. Now that the lava had been bypassed, there was a flight of wooden stairs. On the opposite wall, there were evenly spaced metal devices. As soon as the heroes came too close, they began to periodically shoot out fire. Once again, Tails helped his friends by flying up and landing them safely above danger.
The small cave opened out, and they were in a much more open area. They jumped over another pool of lava, then avoided crumbling platforms. Sonic pressed another button, opening a door again. There was a tall wooden column which he ran straight down. His speed carried him over a wide pool of lava, and he went flying to the other side. "Yeah!" he shouted. Above him, Tails and Knuckles heard his voice. "Come on, guys, it's perfectly safe!" Tails flew down and over the lava, and Knuckles followed, gliding across.
They avoided spikes, falling magma, and other hazards. There was a drop that led into another closed space. Knuckles hit another button before Sonic got to it. He smirked as the seemingly solid wall slid back to reveal more of the path. "You're too s-"
"If you finish that sentence I will destroy you," Sonic warned. "Don't say it."
"Okay, jeez."
There was another set of wooden stairs, and then a small pool of molten lava. After the three passed those obstacles, below them was a pit filled with extremely hot magma. "Okay, I have a plan," Tails announced. "I'll take Sonic down. Knuckles, you should be able to glide to safety. Then we can keep going." He took Sonic by the hand and flew down, landing them both safely on solid, cool rock. Knuckles jumped off the edge and slowly descended. He glided into the wall above Sonic and Tails, stuck the sharp spikes on his fists into the rock, and climbed the rest of the way down.
For some time, the pattern continued. The heroes climbed stairs, dodged fire, avoided spikes, pressed buttons, and tried not to fall into the lava that had given the mountain half of its name. Along the way, there were platforms with spikes along the bottom that rose slowly, hung in mid-air for a tedious second, then dropped sharply and repeated the process, which they used to get up and continue. Press buttons. Climb stairs. Avoid fire. Jump over spikes and lava. Go up and down through the network of caves within the mountain. Finally, they crossed a bridge and came to the end. A river of magma came into a sort of fiery, dangerous waterfall, falling silently and steadily behind them. Aside from the radiating heat that promised certain death, it was somewhat pretty. "Okay, fun fact time," Knuckles explained. "If you plan to go to Hidden Palace and stop a giant, powerful Emerald from getting stolen, you continue to the 'reef' part of Lava Reef. But if you want to leave the mountain and take a shortcut to the Marble Gardens, you smash a hole in the wall right here." He demonstrated by punching the rocky wall, his fists a blur, until it caved in. The cave was suddenly filled with sunlight, and Knuckles stepped out. Beyond him was the steep descent into the ruins.
xX*Xx
Sonic stepped forward and looked down. It was a long and steep drop, but not so much that he couldn't run down safely. He took another step and was suddenly racing almost vertically along the side of the mountain leading down into Marble Garden. "This is just as awesome as I remember it being!" he shouted as he ran at super speed.
After watching Sonic for a second, Tails and Knuckles jumped after him. They all ran, nearly fell down the mountain, for a while, then came to a sudden stop. Knuckles paused for a moment, then held out his hand to catch his hat, which had fallen off on the way down. Putting it back on, he then punched a wall in front of them, revealing the rest of the path. "Okay, there's a shortcut around here," he explained as they climbed some grassy steps. "Tails, you need to fly us up here and through some spikes, and that'll get us way ahead."
"Alright," Tails agreed. He grabbed Sonic and Knuckles and flew up to a higher platform. There was a clear path to a higher, faster route, but it went directly up a tunnel that was lined with spikes. He took a deep breath. "Okay, here we go." He flew up, clearly stressed. If he went too far in one direction, his friends would hit the spikes. He couldn't let that happen. Tails came out of the tunnel with no injury done to him or his friends, and sighed in relief. "Whew, that was tough."
They went up steps and used a set of inexplicably floating blocks to continue on their way. There was a large gap that they flew over, again with the help of Tails. They detoured through caves, avoided spikes, and ran up and down the side of the hill. It wasn't long before they reached the end.
"Hey, I can see the desert down there!" Sonic said, looking down. Below them were the seemingly endless stretches of sand that had named Sandopolis. The hedgehog started to run down, calling to his friends, "Let's do this!"
xX*Xx
Underground, Eggman smiled. "Good hedgehog. Run along and lead me to that second Emerald." He opened a communications window, like the one he had used to yell at Fang via his computer. This time, he didn't call Fang. He dialled a different number. "Wolf, do you hear me? This is your boss speaking."
The reply came almost instantly. "I'm 'ere. Whaddya want?"
"Did you steal that aircraft like I asked you to?"
"Yep."
"Good, because you'll be needing it. Go up to Angel Island, and land in the desert. Sonic and two of his little friends are going there. Hopefully they'll lead you to a Chaos Emerald. Follow them, then take them out."
"I dunno… three against one? That don't sound too easy."
"Don't stress. I plan on giving you a little backup."
"Well, which of his friends is he goin' with?"
"If he's on Angel Island, he will have found that gullible Knuckles. And from the start, he's been with Tails-"
"I'm in." As soon as Eggman spoke the name, 'Wolf', as he had been nicknamed, knew that he wouldn't miss this opportunity for anything. "How much time I got?"
Eggman considered this for a brief moment. "You should try to get there in about fifteen minutes," he concluded.
"Good thing I nicked a real fast plane, then. I'll get ya that Chaos Emerald, no problem." 'Wolf' disconnected from the call with a click and a beep.
Closing the communication, Eggman returned to working on his computer. He opened another program and began to type in line after line of code. "Ah, it's much further than it was earlier. Brilliant! If I enter this, he'll do that… no, if I put that in, he'll bluescreen on me… ooh, that wasn't here before! Let's add in lots of commands for that! Error? I'll show you 'error', you… oh, wait, I have to put in the pathping code. Never mind. Okay, let's keep coding here…" He continued to type, preparing everything that would be needed to ensure his victory.
And he laughed triumphantly at his own brilliance.
Yay, another chapter finished! I'm loving writing this so much. It's really exciting. Next chapter, we'll have a bit of nice action and stuff. And if you've read a certain other story of mine, you might recognise who 'Wolf' is. No spoilers, though. If you feel as if I spoiled anything, you have permission to throw me off a cliff via reviews. Also, HYPE FOR 10 CHAPTERS! To quote the efficacious Eggman of the past (I'm not sorry): No way! I can't believe this! Well, that'll be it for now, and enjoy your day!
