Hm. I dunno where to start again. I guess I'll just say whatever I remember. The more info the better, right? Especially if you're going to finish what I started.
Heh. Or maybe I'm just making excuses to talk? You may never know.
It all started maybe a year ago, and while far be it from me to call Eggman a bald-headed manchild without a shred of original thought, the weirdest part was just how basic it was.
Eggman stole the Master Emerald.
That's it. No pretending to have been redeemed to trick everyone, no kidnapping someone for ransom, no giant doom weapon or crazy schemes. Ivo "overplanning is just another kind of genius" Robotnik just swooped onto Angel Island with a ton of badnik robots, caught Knuckles (the guardian of the Master Emerald) in an illusion with one of his prototype rubies, and by the time Knuckles had escaped the Master Emerald was gone and the island had crashed into the ocean.
He didn't even stop to gloat.
In hindsight, I probably should have realised something was up as soon as Knuckles called us up for help, but at the time none of us thought anything of it. Not the first time Knuckles lost the Master Emerald, not the first time he called us for help, business as usual for Team Sonic…
Yeah… that's really our name. I'd have called us Team Blitz if it were up to me, but you save the world enough times you get to name teams after yourself if you want, don't judge.
Anyway, yeah, usually a stolen Master Emerald is pretty simple, assuming Knuckles didn't break it, which he's done way too often for being its "guardian". Knuckles and the Master Emerald are linked, so usually he can just "feel" where it is, so we just give him a lift so he can punch whoever took it, sometimes in space. If that doesn't work, we go find where Eggman (well, usually Eggman) is causing trouble, run in, break a bunch of his stuff and take it back, maybe put it back together again. World saved, back home in time for chilli dogs.
This time though? Nothing. By the time we got there, Knuckles had punched every badnik still left on the island and was sulking in the hidden palace where the Emerald is kept in between thefts. After we convinced him we weren't involved (again, the guy has trust issues) he said that he couldn't tell where the Master Emerald was at all. That it feels like it's still on its empty stand… At which point Sonic stood on the altar and started making fun of him. Classic Sonic. He sorta deserved to get hit though.
With no clues to go off, and no sign of Eggman causing trouble anywhere nearby, we took Knuckles with us back to our base to look for clues, maybe check the news for giant flying eggs or something important getting blown up or stolen, but nothing showed up. It didn't take long for Sonic and Knuckles to get bored and start fighting, so I sent them both to… uh… "check out some strange energy readings" over on Christmas Island. Not the first time I've done that for a little peace and quiet, and hey, sometimes they get lucky and find something cool, you know?
It wasn't until the fourth day of searching I found a lead, and it wasn't even because of anything I did. There I was, stress eating mints by the handful while I banged my head against the wall - sometimes literally - trying to find any sign of Robotnik, the Master Emerald, even f the Doctor's usual allies and coming up empty, when I get contacted by Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic's… Friend? Nemesis? … Angsty palette-swapped doppelganger? Anyway, he wanted to come by my lab for a fake emerald, since his chaos powers had stopped working.
Now, I've… complicated feelings towards him, but Shadow's skills as a chaos controller are nothing short of amazing. The only thing Sonic has him beat at is maybe his Hyper level transformation, but as far as I know he's Shadow's never been in contact with the seven supercharged chaos emeralds, so he could have one as well. He does have basically the same Chaos transformation with the normal emeralds after all. And he's a little faster than Sonic with his cheaty shoes. And stronger. And did I mention immortal? And sooo edgy.
Ugh, sorry. Like I said, complicated feelings. It's not like I hate the guy, he's mellowed a bit over the years, and in some ways it's nice to have someone more pragmatic than Sonic around who will actually deal with problems permanently every now and then… Well, you don't need to hear about me complain. It's not relevant anyway.
Anyway, so long as Shadow's within a few zones of a real chaos emerald then he can use their ambient energy to use Chaos Control. They generally don't stay in one place for very long, especially if they're too close to each other, but it's rare for him to be out of range of all seven at once. I saw the connection immediately, though at the time I didn't realise just how
With no leads and the readings on Christmas Island sadly coming up with nothing - meaning Knuckles and Sonic were back now, and that Shadow was joining them in making a mess of my lab - it became clear that we needed more help on this one: Rouge the Bat, unrivalled jewel thief and not infrequent culprit behind emerald related disappearances. I don't know if she's somehow attuned to the Master Emerald like Knuckles, or if her greed for jewellery has somehow turned her into a living gemdar, but the two of them working together had never failed to find results in the past, however much they fight with each other.
Fortunately Rouge took the fact that somebody had managed to steal both the Master Emerald and all seven Chaos Emeralds at the same time as a personal slight, since she's been trying to do the same thing for basically ever. She agreed to help, and her and Knuckles left with Shadow to search the world together, searching for any sign of either the chaos emeralds or the Master Emerald. Thankfully, they didn't find them straight away.
Wait, no, I mean, it would have been great if they'd found them. I was just feeling so useless at this point that it made me feel a bit better is all. Heck, even Sonic was miserable at this point. Not moping around, that's not his style, but he isn't the patient type, and I could tell that being stuck with a problem that needed solving and no way to solve it was killing him. So when something finally happened, a week after Eggman's initial attack at this point, he was already raring to go - a Silver Hedgehog had showed up in New Station Square, broke into a military laboratory and, according to G.U.N, ran out with a bunch of experimental tech.
Now this may seem weird, but we were actually pretty hopeful there. "Silver" is another of those hedgehogs that I mentioned. Super fast, super powered, super special. He's from the future… Or a future? Time stuff gives me a headache.
While Silver's done extreme stuff like this before over the years, he's usually doing it to try and avert some calamity that's going to have far reaching catastrophic effects on the future - which with Eggman running around isn't too infrequent. Basically a less mopey Shadow with weird hair and crazy future chaos powers, like telekinesis. If Silver was around, it was a sign that Eggman was up to something big, but he was probably going to be a big help in stopping it, and would hopefully have some information about what "it" was.
Needless to say we jumped in my plane - Cyclone-3 - and jetted over there to talk to the G.U.N representative… Oh, G.U.N is the military branch of the United Federation. Not to go too deep into geopolitics, it's one of the human countries where I'm from. They don't control the whole world, however much they may act like it sometimes, but they are hugely influential in the human territories and more than willing to throw their weight around. They're well funded, high tech, and they have all the finesse of a charging rhinobot.
The lab was in full lockdown when we arrived, army and mechs everywhere. Whatever it was that was stolen must have been important. Sonic went inside the facility to inspect the security footage while I stayed outside by the Cyclone (G.U.N's agents keep trying to peek at my tech when I'm not looking). We didn't expect much - not many cameras can make out something moving past them faster at five times the speed of sound, but if the mystery hedgehog had stopped moving in line with the camera then we could get a positive ID.
Well, here's where things got weird I guess. Not five minutes after Sonic went inside the Gunbots on the compound went crazy and started shooting at everyone in sight, me included. By the time I'd jumped into the Cyclone a lot of the G.U.N soldiers were already down and I was missing a bullet's worth of fur from my right ear. I'd have lost a lot more if I hadn't been holding a few power rings at the time.
Well, I'm not like Sonic, who can literally outspeed bullets, and I can't really do any of that chaos control stuff like Shadow or Silver even if the Chaos Emeralds weren't missing. But the reason that G.U.N is always sniffing around after my inventions? My toys are way better than theirs. In this case to the tune of one transforming assault mecha with twin gatling cannons, rapid-fire missile launcher, and a laser powerful enough to sign my name on the moon. My biggest problem was just how chaotic the battle was. The surviving soldiers were panicking, and the Cyclone is a giant red walking tank that was gunning down their robots (I may also have been gloating juuust a little over the speakers about how much better my mech was at the time), so half of them decided I was the threat and started shooting me. Meanwhile I was trying to position myself between them and as many Gunbots as possible, so what actually happened was that I ended up taking fire from both sides, and they just kept coming. I think that more must have moved in from other parts of town because I'd run out of missiles by the time they finally stopped. The Cyclone was almost in pieces, broken bots all around me, and I was ringless. Worse, only a handful of soldiers were still standing at this point, and they were all in bad shape and looking at me as though I was crazy.
I'm not sure if the lab had a security lockdown or what, but once the Gunbots were down and the shooting stopped, Sonic came out at top speed. I'll never forget what he said when he saw me.
"Tails, what did you do?!"