Author's Note: did anyone else's page views get messed up for the last three days? It says no one read my fic during that period and it wouldn't let me access it until now, even though in all likelihood at least one person must've read it in that time. Oh well.
I was originally going to have Tails come up with the evacuation plan, but I think having Cosmo come up with it works better for a number of reasons. First of all, it gives her some immediate usefulness, and I think it suits her imaginative/creative qualities to come up with a plan for a situation that's different from the usual "defeat Eggman" scenarios that the team has dealt with in the past.
Things are finally going to start picking up here, and hopefully you'll agree.
Rouge was at a loss for what to do. In spite of his eagerness, Knuckles was in no condition to go anywhere. Still… she couldn't just leave him here. Before she could give this any further thought, she heard heavy footsteps approaching. She shoved him behind the terminal and told him to keep his trap shut, which was no easy task.
She peered through the space between the terminal and the floor and saw several pairs of feet enter the room. They were all identical, except the pair in the middle: they were human. The fool must have come here personally. This was a choice that he was going to regret. All she had to do was rush him and threaten to break his neck if his robots didn't do what she asked. This was her ticket out of here.
Rouge vaulted over the terminal and flew for the human's head, but was quickly tossed aside and slammed into a wall. The retinue of robots threatened to blast her if she dared to move again.
"Oh come on, you can't be that good at fighting," Rouge pouted.
"Maybe I wasn't when we last met," her intended target replied.
"Wait a minute… Topaz?"
"People call me the Major nowadays," the hardy soldier said as she removed her helmet.
"How'd you get in here?"
"We took the back door."
"By plane?"
"What else would we use?"
"I asked because I have a wounded partner who needs evac."
"Who are you calling wounded?" Knuckles demanded.
"Don't start with this whole 'tough guy' act; you're hurt and you're just going to slow me down," Rouge scolded him.
"I'm not leaving this time. I'll drag my way to the master emerald if I have to."
One of the hunters (a relatively primitive automated soldier designed for combat support and little more) gave the echidna unwanted assistance and reported: "the child's vitals seem less than optimal."
"Child?!" Knuckles could barely contain himself.
"Well, you sure do act like one," Rouge reprimanded him.
"Ok, that's enough," Knuckles growled. "You're all forgetting that without me you can't find the emerald: that's what's powering this thing, and I bet that the old fart isn't too far from it. So, what's it going to be?"
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"How's it coming along, you two?"
"We almost have it up and running. It took us a while to find it in all of these huge hangars."
"Any sign of Omega?"
"No sir, we couldn't find him anywhere."
"I wonder if perhaps Julian had dismantled him as a precaution."
"It's a safe bet, sir. We'd be lucky to be dismantled if we ever disobeyed you," Decoe chirped.
"Uh oh… uh oh!" Bokkun cried in a panic.
"What is it?"
"Look! Look!" Bokkun pointed to his monitor hookup.
Dr. Eggman gave the tiny TV a stern examination. It was Sonic, and Julian was waiting for him in the next room. The moment had finally come. Now was the time to go through with the backup plan that he had cooked up during his imprisonment.
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Sonic wasn't sure why Shadow had insisted on splitting up earlier. He was a little worried that his dark counterpart knew more about the layout of this place than he did and that Shadow simply wanted him to get lost.
To some degree he was worried about Tails and the others, but not to the extent that he felt he should be. What happened back there? Are they still here, just outside the station, or did they get left behind? Everything was so bright and sudden that he couldn't remember. He wasn't even sure who he was trying to keep track of. He saw two planes, so he figured that Tails must be in at least one of them. Everyone else was uncertain; after all, just about everybody had a chance to pilot some type of air or spacecraft during the Metarex campaign.
Sure, he was pondering these questions, but their implications didn't seem to faze him. The only thing that he could do was channel these concerns into drive for his work. All that he could think of was his task: Robotnik needed to be stopped, even if he wasn't sure what the particular reason was this time.
After an uneventful journey that had cost him a night's sleep, he finally came across one room that was different: a cozy study. It was the only room in the entire complex that didn't have chrome-colored fixtures. Instead it had old-fashioned furnishings, more like in the cottages on Mobius.
The fireplace was crackling; a redundant heating system that was merely for show. On the desk were stacks of parchment and hastily-scribbled notes. Half-finished scraps of food and cold mugs rimmed with coffee residue lined its perimeter. Now he understood what this meant: now was the time for the villain to make a speech and then spring some sort of trap. Sonic was ready this time, he wasn't just going to sit back and let someone else do all the talking.
Julian could have easily gone with a less predictable approach, but he was fond of the classics. His appearance was haggard from the effects of the age correction that resulted from his recent interdimensional travels. His face had a leaner, crustier look to it. He was cozy in his armchair, reading a musky notebook.
"Alright, Robotnik, where's Tails and everybody else? What's your game?"
"Mobians…," he recited dully from his old travel journal, "less mass than full-grown humans, but much more durable and athletically developed with no major drawbacks in brain capacity. Phenotypic traits vary wildly. At the expense of these benefits, Mobians require more food-per-pound than humans. Mobians are also less successful at producing offspring and have a shorter lifespan."
"Just what exactly is your problem with us, anyway?" Sonic was only half-interested in the answer.
Julian continued dryly, talking in a distant and ironic manner. "In spite of these obvious genetic drawbacks, most of you live carefree lives. Food is abundant and overpopulation is still a distant concern. Prior to the Metarex, your chief conflicts arose from an eccentric madman whose escapades have yet to inflict a single casualty. With the exception of your little 'adventures,' you've all lived lives devoid of any hardship or meaning. It disgusts me to think that people as spoiled as yourselves exert such a great influence on my culture. What do you have to teach us? You know nothing about real world concerns. A life without struggle is no life at all, and I doubt there's a single meaningful lifetime between the whole lot of you."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," Sonic tried to sound uncaring; his tune quickly shifted to one of slight agitation. "As far as I know, it just means that I'm doing my job. And FYI, we never asked anyone's culture to be influenced by us."
"It doesn't work that way, and even if it did you seemed to voice no objections when my people started to worship you."
"People can do whatever they want, as long as they aren't stopping anyone else from doing the same. That's what it means to live free."
"Funny, your human followers must not have been in favor of the 'living' part when I met them. Their recklessness nearly wiped out the human race."
"Then they must've gotten the message wrong."
"They were no different than you; it's the circumstances that were different. In a stable and peaceful world, it's easy to champion ideals and think that there can be a happy ending to every story. But when times get tough, morality isn't so clear-cut. An entire generation was influenced by your presence in this world. At first your 'movement' was just a fad: a form of youthful rebellion, but as time went on and this generation aged, these 'witnesses' to your 'inspiration' became the ones to fill the roles of leadership in my country. Senators, judges, and even a couple of presidents cited you as the dominant influence in their lives."
"Sounds like you're just jealous," Sonic forced a biting chuckle.
"There was a time when I admired some of them, until I saw how they handled the Flames of Disaster. When I first saw this creature in action, I knew that our lives on Earth were over. It was run or die. For them, however, this was unacceptable. They couldn't fathom the thought that we would have to give up our homes. They felt that we were entitled to them. They stood and fought, and they mocked me while I begged them to re-commission the portals that they outlawed years ago."
"When trouble comes, it's usually best if you run toward it, rather than away. Better to face it head on, rather than have it chase after you," he said unflinchingly.
Julian blinked for a couple of seconds in disbelief. Sounding somewhat surprised, he continued: "That's exactly how they sold it to the public, word for word, and everyone ate it up. The flaw with this concept is that it doesn't apply to forces of nature. A typhoon won't stay away from a city just because you shoot at it; an earthquake won't stifle itself if you drop bombs on it. But, of course, when you're idealistic you don't know how to compromise or make exceptions. Iblis's consumption of the Master Emerald produced magnetic fields that rendered automated soldiers and unmanned vehicles useless. The peoples' response? Send in real soldiers: it was like shoveling coal into a furnace. The majority of the casualties weren't from unprovoked attacks or accidents: they came from our own planned assaults. Needless to say, when we were on the brink of extinction, none of these followers of yours were left to voice any objections as I brought humanity's remnant to relative safety."
Sonic pondered this for a time. He managed to reach a tentative conclusion, although he wasn't completely satisfied with it. "Sometimes you can't always win. If someone wants to fight for what they believe in, let them. If others think it's best to leave, let them."
"If only we had that kind of freedom when it came to science," Julian snickered. "Freedom is a great thing to believe in, but many people don't know why they believe in it, and I imagine you're no exception. For them it's an infallible truth, and by extension their own interpretations and misinterpretations of that truth are also seen as infallible. They have faith in their beliefs, and faith, by nature, is irrational. They somehow have this notion that a lack of evidence or justification for their beliefs somehow makes them more genuine: I think religion is to blame for that mentality. Ultimately, those who have faith aren't open to discussion and only very rarely can they be convinced that they're wrong about anything."
"If we didn't have faith in something, our actions would be aimless."
"And that's exactly where the divergence of our opinions lies. Faith is simply an excuse not to think. When you say 'I have faith' in this or that, you're essentially saying 'I'm right no matter what the evidence says'. It's a dangerous line of thinking, because when you have faith in something you shut yourself off from reason and dissenting opinion. Should someone who thinks their moral intuition is God's whim be placed in control of a nuclear arsenal, for example?"
"I'd rather have a few stubborn people than have an entire population that doesn't have faith in anything at all. Some people believe in harmful things, but there are just as many who believe in good."
"The problem with unshakable convictions, whether malevolent or benign, is that they discourage progress. When people become obsessed with right and wrong, time becomes their enemy. To them, as time passes the world becomes more corrupt, and the ancient truths are in turn corrupted or forgotten. And don't try to chalk that up to hyperbole on my part, either: I've known plenty of people and… other beings who would gladly watch the world burn in order to fulfill their apocalyptic fantasies.
For people like me, however, the future is something to look forward to. I seek enlightenment and a more advanced age, rather than yearning for a distant time that we move farther away from. It was never my idea to travel back in time in the first place. When I stumbled upon time travel while tinkering with alternate dimensions and word got out to the public, people left and right begged me to undo the horrors of history. The only thing that made me want to destroy Iblis was the fact that it slowed down human progress with all of the devastation that it caused, but as far as I'm concerned you're far more detrimental in that respect."
Sonic was taken from behind by some sort of feral creature. It was roughly his size, but his bones felt like they were about to shatter when it pinned him down. He shook himself loose and threw it into the desk.
It was a machine covered in syringe-like spines. It took him a while to recognize it. This was because this robot didn't have any eyes for him to make contact with; the doctor had personally made that "redesign" a matter of days ago.
Other than the gap in the top half of its face, Metal Sonic's missing and damaged components had been completely replaced with sharp-looking implements meant for close-range fighting.
"If you weren't so intent on defending your ego and getting a word in edgewise, you could have easily killed me. Oh well, too late now. You know," Julian said in a smart-alecky manner, "when I was a kid I used to watch a lot of action cartoons. I always used to wonder: 'if the antagonist's plan almost worked the first time, why should he abandon it just because of a fluke failure?' Iblis isn't here to interfere this time, so I hope you'll forgive me for this rerun. I'd love to stay and watch, but I'm already starting to see another fluke develop in my plan, and I have to put a stop to it."
"At least Eggman was more original," Sonic added spitefully as he grappled with the monstrosity.
"Oh come now, I'm still the same enemy at heart; I'm just better at playing the role. Besides, as they say: repetition is the foundation of learning, and learning is the foundation of knowledge."
Robotnik made his getaway while the technological terror overpowered the perfectionists' poster boy.
As they wrestled, the doppelganger uttered its first and only words in a malevolent, coarse tone: "Put your mind at ease. I will liberate you from the pain of living soon enough."