I do not own Sonic the Hedgehog, Fate/Stay Night, or any of their related Media. All Sonic the Hedgehog Characters and themes belong to SEGA, and all Fate/Stay Night Characters and themes belong to Type Moon.
Hey all, welcome to the next chapter! Let's make sure it's at least monthly or more frequent this time! Hm, I did it again waaaaay late update. And thank you, I'll do my best to keep posting. I'll survive, that being said I lament to say there is no shoutouts this time (especially since you all are fun to take advice from!) and I think I should specify what this story is to me, I think of this story as both a write (haha pun) of passage as a storyteller and an attempt for me to get a concept I wanted to flesh out straightened up. After all an untold story is the saddest story that can exist. As a final note before I begin with the story; I'm working on this story solo. I'm developing it by myself and do not have an editor/proofreader or whatnot, therefore your feedback is welcomed with open arms!
Enough said, let's peek into what Sonic's dreaming about now!
Green, the same as his last dream, but the dust was much less fine, it seemed to be small shatters now rather than the dust it was last time. "Hmm, I wonder if it has anything to do with the special stage." He wondered this aloud, waiting for a response and as expected Tikal answered his suspicion "That's to be expected, after all the special stages are part of the Master Emerald's system." This time Sonic posed a question "that's true, but what's it doing inside of my dream? I think I'd know if I absorbed something as large and powerful as the master emerald."
Tikal shook her head at Sonic's misunderstanding "it's not that you have absorbed it" she started "rather it's that you're being supported by it, the master emerald is keeping your existence your own rather than making you a copy of yourself, just like how there is only one transcending master emerald It's keeping your existence from being captive to that throne of heroes." Sonic tapped his chin and realized something "wait, so when I go into the special stages it's stabilizing my existence by having me absorb the master emerald?" It felt similar to how he would 'collect' rings rather than grabbing them, he absorbed them.
As if to test this theory he focused and attempted to bring out a shard of the master emerald like he would with rings, and a shard appeared "so that's the nature of it!" Sonic exclaimed as he thought about it "so these special stages are caused by the gathering of the master emerald's dust." This time Tikal nodded, both at Sonic's answer and toward his growth since his first fight with Perfect Chaos "but this is just the start, they will not all be contained within the special stages, you will need your friends for that." Sonic gave a nod and stated "I wouldn't have it any other way." Tikal then closed the conversation with "Our time his up for this meeting, please do your best in the upcoming challenges" soon after Tikal said this Sonic woke up.
When Sonic woke up he was greeted by an inquisitive looking Saber servant staring at him and snarked "I didn't know you had the hobby of watching people sleep." Saber ignored his provocation and asked bluntly "What are you trying to achieve, you must have a reason for participating in this war." Sonic sighed and gave a shrug "I'm not sure what I want exactly, but I guess maybe it's a world where heroes aren't needed? More specifically if there isn't injustice, then there isn't a need for a hero right? I don't mean to end all conflicts, but to end the extremes where a hero is a must have in the situation." Saber seemed surprised at this impulsive hero's answer and insight just before he finished his statement "I never really wanted to be a hero in the first place, I'm just a guy who loves adventure!" Saying that Sonic looked at the sun rise, enjoying the morning breeze as it pushed around his blue and gold quills.
"Hey Saber, could you tell the masters that I'm going to go on a scouting outing for a bit?" As saber was about to ask his meaning he dashed off leaving behind a open mouthed Saber who was less than pleased with his lack of team communication... "I'm beginning to get the feeling that this heroic spirit is a little bit too liberal in his allowance toward his own actions..." with that, Saber entered the residence and went to the living room, dwelling in her own thoughts. "Although his impatience doesn't quite make full sense when you factor in that working together would help this progress smoother... just what is that Archer doing?" With those words Saber entered the dining room and began eating what had been set on the table for her and after verifying that Sakura wasn't in the room addressed Rin "master of Archer, I get the impression that your servant is too liberal with his actions, he went scouting and I assume without consulting you in advance?" At this Rin sighed before stating "unfortunately, I've already gotten used to him doing what he wants."
Sonic, who was running through a forest after thinking about places he hasn't been yet in his hunt for the master emerald, was skimming the forest at a fast pace, but not at a destructive speed, after all he had to keep a low profile. I gotta say though, this forest is quite dark, it's hard to see in here. Sonic stopped at an abandoned house and whistled in awe at how run down it was "jeez talk about neglected property... but at least it's a good place to gather your thoughts, well if you aren't afraid of ghosts." Sonic chuckled at the irony since he was at the moment a magic history ghost "wooooooo~ I'm a ghost, hehehe. Haaah" he let out a sigh and continued "well let's check the interior in the event that a special stage does happen to be in here." And with that he searched the house, and while he didn't find a special stage he did get his thoughts sorted a bit.
"Well, maybe I should try that reality marble thing... or, at least think about it, wouldn't want to drain my master's mana or push too much chaos onto her either." He monologued while thinking. "Well, what would my inner world even look like? And for that matter, do I even have a proper one? I always just left knuckles to the mystical master emerald stuff... wait a second!" Sonic realized something "what if instead of using my inner world I used the master emerald's!" He thought hard about it, but to no avail as he decided that maybe the master emerald wasn't complete enough yet. When he left the house he hear a familiar shimmering sound, that of a special stage ring. "Sweet! Found another one! He hopped in, unaware there was a certain white haired spectator watching him hop in causing the ring to vanish.
"So which special stage is it this time?" Sonic asked, however, when he looked around he couldn't find any clear goal to run to he began tapping his foot impatiently and eventually stopped with a sigh "well, can't just stand around forever, guess I'll look around." and with a sonic boom he was off, running with no goal in mind and no return point to head to, no success no failure just running, so he decided "you know what, lets see how far this place goes!" With that he began accelerating from mach 1 to mach 2 then mach 3 then mach 5 and beyond searching for an end to the stage. After running for nearly 10 minutes Sonic slid to a stop after looking around "it feels like it's around here" more specifically, Sonic could feel it no matter where he went in the special stage, deciding that it was a hard and boring effort he relaxed for a second to stare at the kaleidoscope like sky.
"Man, I wonder why the inside of these stages always looks like someone shoved a bouncy ball inside of one of those light refraction tube thingies..." Sonic never really contemplated it before and always chalked it up to just being chaos. "Well no matter, there's always time to contemplate that after the task is complete... where to look though?" After walking for a couple of minutes while mulling over it Sonic recalled something Eggman had said during one of his adventures, that the master emerald transcends throughout time, and if it vanishes from one timeframe it vanishes from all of them... "maybe that's the reason for the freaky sky in here... who knows?" After some more walking and thinking Sonic rested his fist in his open palm "I got it, if this is the master emerald's inner world, maybe I could control the chaos to get the emerald shard! Only one way to find out" he stated while closing his eyes trying to focus on the chaos energy around him "here goes, Chaos Control!" With this Sonic felt the emerald's energy, and was evicted from the special stage.
"So we should get that fake priest to call an emergency truce?" Was the summary that was formed by Shirou after hearing of Rin's suggestions. "It seems to be the best course of action given the circumstances. After all, a magic using robot wreaking havoc is kind of hard to pass off as a gas leak." that is what Rin replied to Shirou with, and then a qualm was voiced by Saber: "if it's the secrecy of magecraft that is concerning you, then I'm afraid to say that your servant doesn't seem the type to care much about consequences as long as he feels things turn out well in the end. If that is the case you may want to keep a more focused eye on him" a concern Rin was well aware of, however there was not much she could do about that aside from wasting another command seal on him which, in fact, would possibly limit her options later when taking into account that he would be free to cause any sort of uncertainty he wants to if she were to run out of them. Well, not that he seems all that powerful in the first place, after all his high agility seems to be his only strong trait. "Ok, no time to waste so let's go." Rin stated while beginning to head out with both Shirou and Saber in agreement as they followed along.
When they got to the hill heading toward the church, that was when the white haired master appeared, though it didn't seem that she had her berserker with her. Rin was having a prickling sense of anxiety approach as she saw this master and reflexively stood on guard, and it seems that both Shirou and Saber had the same reflex. Then the little white haired girl spoke "where's your servant, did he go out treasure hunting without you?" Rin was confused but then asked "wait, are you saying that you are having your berserker fight him right now?" The thought shook Rin even more and was close to panic when Saber calmly reassured Rin saying "have faith in your servant master of Archer, I do believe he is stronger than you think he is." Then the girl interjected with "I don't know about that, but if your opponent is stronger than your servant as much as he says, I can't risk giving it the grail by leaving it alone, so I'll cooperate, even if it's just temporary." with those words of confidence the white haired girl walked away letting them to head to the church and speak with the fake priest.
Saber stayed outside the gate while Rin and Shirou went inside to talk with the fake priest. As Rin and Shirou approaches Kotomine he turned around with a calculating smile that no human in their right mind would be able to get used to. Kotomine initiated the dialogue "ah Rin and Shirou, I assume that you aren't just here to speak about holy matters since you're here so early in the day." That was right, the sun was barely in in sky but needless to say, there was something important to talk about "an unknown entity is intruding on the war, and could possibly reveal magecraft to the world if we are not careful, we need a temporary ceasefire to help take care of it." The false priest did not stop smiling his calculating smile, and gave them some cruel, but very real insight "I will see what I can do, however considering the masters in this war, I believe that it may matter not." Getting what they came to do done Rin and Shirou left, leaving the false priest behind and after the two were no longer present Gilgamesh made himself present "How are we going to handle this then? It would be amusing if not for the risk of it stealing what is mine." Kotomine responded "of course, we must do what we can to stop that robot, it gets in the way of our plans."
Sonic was wandering around the Einzbern castle thinking about what him next action should be, berserker following him around letting him use him as a sounding board. "The metal me can copy any sort of abilities, so we really need to save our trump cards, that means whatever your strongest ability is you shouldn't show it to my metal doppelgänger." Berserker grunted, seemingly agreeing to what sonic had said Sonic had a hunch that a servant that lost its sanity was not the same as a servant with low intelligence. Another thing was bothering Sonic though, and it was his own personal issue "man, I wonder how the master emerald stores by buddies so perfectly inside it like that though, well..." Sonic was beginning to have a working theory but he wasn't quite sure "those could be the real them, but..." Sonic shook his head and decided to think about it later, priorities should come first. "Your master invited me here because she said there was one of the rings here, which strangely nobody else could touch? Well, I guess you had to have some connection to chaos energy in order to interact with it."
Sonic found the room with the ring after Illya's maids guided him slightly reluctantly to the room which it was held, Sonic wondered if he could be more efficient about it but hopped in anyways revealing another empty sphere and by this time sonic already knew what to do as he used chaos control to help complete the emerald "just a few more." He stated as he landed gracefully upon reappearing "thank's for your hospitality, but I gotta run and find the rest of these." He was about to run off when one of the maids spoke to him asking a strange question "what do you plan to do by retrieving... whatever it is you're retrieving from these?" Sonic stopped for a second before thinking "well, saving the world one last time doesn't seem so bad. And if it comes down to it, I'll just use a double chaos control to..." to what? He asked himself, he said it without thinking but it felt like he was already thinking of his last resort and decided to dodge that train of thought.
In the end Sonic wandered around the castle a small bit more while sorting his thoughts out to no avail, but he managed to clear his head. After thanking the maids and Berserker he ran through the forest and back toward the city. Scaling to the topmost place of a building he glanced out at the scenery and gave a quick impressed whistle "man, these magicians really have their stuff together with all their holy grail wars and such." He said it rather snarking fashion as he had a hunch he felt a specific gold king nearby "the rodent barks again, how amusing." The king mocked, though it was rather evident neither had the intent to fight in the middle of the day but rather, decided to dialogue to each other hoping to confirm their suspicions.
"So, any unknown threats I should be aware of during this war? Maybe a certain black puddle of evil?" Sonic prodded for information with this sentence receiving a simple "you know things aren't likely to go as planned considering your robot double." Sonic countered with a shrug that said: it's not like I have much of a choice now do I? Though he said it more optimistically "I've faced worse... albeit not much, but definitely worse." Then turning to the gold king he continued "so, are you going to help hunt down my doppelgänger too? Well, you don't seem to have much of a reason to after all. Although, I was under the impression that a king was supposed to lead their people." Sonic shrugged and waited for the gold king's reply which came a second later "what would a mere rat know of leadership?" Sonic smirked "All that's necessary is popularity, the rest just comes naturally!" Sonic gave an abridged answer, though truthful.
Gilgamesh frowned at the rodent's response, it was once again a true answer, but not the right one, and He had a hunch that the blue rodent knew that and intentionally cut his summary short, seeing as he was smirking with a cocky attitude. Then despite knowing better, he pridefully gave his response "know your place rat, a king has to set his subjects straight when they break his laws, and punish invaders to ensure his land is prosperous!" Seeing the rodent's grin he knew what he suspected was fact, especially after his statement afterward "then you'd better get rid of the outsider first, don't you think?" He had fallen right into the rat's trap, it seems the rodent had correctly guessed that his pride would not allow him to permit anyone, least of all an outsider, claim what is his. "Well then, I'll have to put you in your place later, once the intruder is dealt with, I'll have to teach you your place in front of a king" was Gilgamesh's response as he vanished and left "can't wait to see you try." Sonic responded to the now empty air as he began to stretch in preparation for his run to the Emiya residence.
Sakura woke up abruptly, it was that dream again the dream that had been recurring recently where violent and viscous things happened namely murder. "Where did everyone go?" Sakura wondered out loud and a voice replied to her "Shirou, Rin and Saber are probably still out they might be grabbing a snack on the way back." It was the blue rat... no it would be rude to say that about him who has been trying to be kind, but there is something inside her that can't bring herself to like him. He continued talking "well, I should probably inform you of the events going on, I almost feel obligated." He sighed before continuing "alright, so first off a relic of my past woke up and seems to be hellbent on taking me down and ruling the world like its master before it..." his long pause hinted at him contemplating something. "Well, we'll take care of it, it's my problem more than anyone so I gotta clean up my mess!" He chuckled as he danced around an important topic but finally he decided to say what was on his mind "I think all of the world's evils are waking up again... I think I may have agitated it, it probably does not want to face me in it's incomplete state." He chuckled and added "just like my metal doppelgänger, they both learn from their mistakes, I can only pray that they don't combine forces... or worse." Sonic shivered at the thought.
This time Sakura spoke up "why?" Was how she began a simple question but she continued "why are you being kind to me? There are many people that you could focus on more than me, you're even going so far as to hide my involvement in this war!" Sonic interjected with some very sharp and well aimed words "as far as I'm concerned, you are another victim in a war you never wanted involvement in. So the best way to protect someone is to be involved with them and understand their circumstances, but I also feel that if your involvement should be revealed that it should be by your own will, so I'm not going to pry any farther than necessary." Sakura watched the blue hedgehog standing in the doorway and before she could say anything he spoke again "well, you think about what you're going to do from here on, but I can feel them getting close so I'll leave you to your own now." He exited the room and shut the door leaving Sakura to her thoughts "just another victim..." she mumbled those words, though the words were what she wanted to hear, they did not feel quite right "you're wrong, I'm not innocent in this either." With those words muttered out she attempted to go to sleep again.
Sonic took note of the masters and Saber at the entrance, or more specifically he saw them because he was waiting in the entrance while he gave a greeting and waited to hear their side of things. They told Sonic how that they asked the false priest to call a temporary ceasefire, and how the false priest told them that he would try, but that they should not expect good results as the masters this time around seem more concerned with their own plans than the protection of the secret of magecraft. After their chat Rin convinced Shirou not to go to school until the Metal incident is resolved. To which Sonic nodded and added "While school is important, I think we have to discuss the plan of action from here on. Though since I'm the quickest on my feet I'll keep a lookout on the outside and you guys can brief me on it later." Sonic zipped out of the building leaving the masters and servant in the room. "... your servant has no sense of danger." It was Saber who was the first to speak. Rin reluctantly nodded in agreement and said "he doesn't treat this war like he should, I'm worried about weather or not he will be able to fight seriously when the time comes." A long delay and then Shirou spoke up "don't... don't you think he might be trying to stay upbeat because it's a war?" All eyes were on Shirou waiting for him to explain himself, and it startled him. "Well, I mean with the way he acts he doesn't get caught up on the what ifs and does what he can where he can, since he doesn't seem to strategy oriented, maybe he's letting us do the planning so he doesn't have to waste a single second... or maybe not?" Shirou quieted down when he noticed Rin's face that pretty much asked 'what are you going on about?' and Saber's confusion. Saber was the first to react after snapping out of her thoughts and responded with a simple "you don't need to justify a rival servant's actions you know." After a short pause Rin decided to shut down the topic by stating "whatever reason he has, it doesn't change the fact that we need to come up with a plan. So, to start with..."
Sonic sighed while standing at the top of a tall building and looked around, and saw nothing unusual... of course, that was to be expected, it was midday and near a public area no master nor servant would dare expose themselves during the day... well... there was that one impatient master who decided targeting a school was a good idea. That was more of a reason to seek out the special rings, seeing as how he had a feeling he could return to original form using it based on what he heard. "Well, might as well gather my thoughts. I'm a magic ghost created through a system called the holy grail, however due to circumstantial factors, the real me that the master emerald preserved was summoned, or more specifically my spirit was. If this is the case, then chances are the same thing happened to my friends, but weren't selected by the grail as servants." Sonic sighed at the mess that was created due to his failure. "Man, I wonder how much more emerald dust I have to collect before it's complete. Maybe then I could solve this issue." He continued pondering until he reached his last thought on the matter: "I have no idea what will happen at the end of all of this... I just hope it's something good."
Sonic heard a shimmering from behind, and it was a special ring "okay, I guess looking for these takes priority right now huh? which he hopped right in, so he could continue his task. "Soon" a voice bubbled as a black ooze boiled forth near the ring "soon I will make you wish you died back when we fought in space." No sooner than it appeared it vanished not even leaving a hint that it was there. "Unidentified ancient energy scanned, cannot replicate... I must determine a way to acquire the power of this odd sentient energy for myself." Neo said reviewing the unusable garbage data the entity had left him with. "I'll attempt to find ground zero estimated time of search... 60 hours, returning to base to begin search." Neo also left leaving no trace of his presence there. Nobody knew that the events that would happen in the next days, were going to cause more danger, destruction, and death than any corrupt grail alone could hope to achieve. All Sonic, who was unaware of the prying eyes could do was to frantically search and prepare for his showdowns.
After an hour of ring hunting Sonic returned to the Emiya residence and was given a rundown of the plan, which was going to be along the lines of hoping for a good response from Kotomine about the ceasefire while they try to assist in Sonic's quest to get the master emerald repaired, then based on the information Sonic provided about their enemies produce plans and contingency plans and contingency plans for the contingency plans, and for that they would like Sonic's input. Most of the plans Sonic shook his head at giving important reasons like, "Leaving our trump cards for last is the most important thing, so only use them if you have a guaranteed hit" or "prevent metal from getting the emeralds at all costs, if he goes metal overlord it's game over." And the discussion and planning lasted until night. What they ended up deciding on were three important factors; first importance being not letting metal get the emeralds,second importance is preventing all of the world's evils from getting stronger, and third on the list is before and during the time when they fight the robot not to release the trump cards prematurely. After they took a short break Rin rushed back in and with urgency declared "we have a problem."
I'm alive, I swear.
Well, this is awkward, I haven't posted anything for more than a year I think? Yeah, for those of you who decided to tough this one out, thank you for waiting for me, and I apologize for my... less than short break, I cannot promise the next one will be quick, but I can say that I do plan on finishing this story.
Alright let's talk about the game plan.
Phase 1: building up the battles to come
Phase 2: executing the "Boss Attack" arc
Phase 3: ???
Phase 4: ???
Sorry it took a year(ish) I hit quite the creativity stopper. I hope I'm back this time, I am also interested in making a Sonic/Tsukihime crossover, which will explore a few headcanons about Sonic I have for my crossover universes.