Sand Blast City, Sand-Blasters HQ

September 21, UC 0079

0029 Hours, PDT

Though much of Sand Blast had gone to sleep, Jack Rabbit stood by himself before a wide window, brooding. His boys were still licking their wounds after the latest episode of their feud with the Baron. A moment of calm. An uneasy one.

Waiting to see if the DEL would make a move was the worst part. The EMP Beacons would be enough to prevent a ground assault, but there was always the possibility of a ranged attack. Addressing such a situation at the moment would be stretch.

The door to the office hissed open. The noise of footsteps filled the air, accompanied by a somewhat deep rasp: "Not exactly a convenient time for an appointment."

Jack turned to look at his guest. It was a mole with metallic-grey fur, white muzzle, and a pink nose. He wore boots, a bandolier, and sported a pair of goggles. His eyes didn't match; the left was bright green and the right an icy blue. It could be said that he had a cold, "whatever" demeanor about him.

"I take it that you're the one they call Death From Below?" asked Jack.

"Yes," said the mole, coldly. "From what I've been told, you can't handle a single DEL chapter."

"Don't start with me," said Jack. "After Flex and Jitters stabbed us in the back and wrecked our shit, I am not going to hit the Baron again head-on."

"So you went for a merc. Not surprising. What's the job?"

With the passage of time, the blackness of night gave way to bright morning. One could easily make out the rugged badlands and metallic towers among them.

The Oil Ocean Refinery, headquarters of the Great Desert Chapter of the Dark Egg Legion. Despite the name, it was too far inland and unconnected to any body of seawater. Instead, its name derived from the large lake of crude oil it was constructed on. As things stood, this base was in a constant state of war with Sand Blast City. Some time ago, it had suffered damage from an incident involving two Freedom Fighters, but by now, most of it had been repaired.

In a strange twist of fate, the chapter Grandmaster was shaking hands with a blue hedgehog who was officially an enemy. "Y'all don't know how much I prefer not seeing the princess there as a robot," he said.

"I feel the same way, Baron," said Sonic. "It was a hell of a time getting her back and I can only imagine how pissed off Eggman could have been."

"It's odd," said Beauregard, "there's really been no communication from his end the past couple of days."

"We were a bit worried about his being a no-show ourselves," the boy admitted. "We were almost certain the Death Egg would have been coming our way after we got Sal back, but there hasn't been a peep from home."

"But if things are like that, what're you doing way out here again?"

"Bunnie," said Sally. "You're really the only lead we have. If she came here, she's probably told you already."

"About what happened to that D'Coolette boy?" Beau asked, knowingly. "Yeah, she told me all about it."

"Is she still here, Baron?"

"She is."

Blood oozed from the neck and mouth of a legionized doe, lifeless and slumped against a large steel drum. Her eyes had been replaced by a visor to enhance vision. Her Legion robe had been procured by her killer.

Since Julian Kintobor's putsch, this sort of thing was second nature to him. With an enemy uniform now his, he just had to complete his new ensemble: a pair of silver bowl-like devices to go on his ears. A good enough disguise to help him pass as a Legionnaire, but they had a different purpose. "Set frequency. One-two-zero-eight-eight. Come in, Jack Rabbit, do you read?"

A few seconds passed before a response came. "I read you, Reaper. What's the status?"

"Insertion successful," said the hitman, raising the cowl. "Proceeding to second phase."

Beauregard, Sally, and Sonic travelled by elevator to the top of the Medical Building. The doors hissed open, revealing a hallway with a long, single-panel window the length of the room on the right with a big view of the large body of oil outside.

The trio noted a figure toward the other end of the hallway gazing out into the bright morning sky, as if something were on her mind: a gold-furred rabbit with long hair. The opening of the elevator caught her attention, but she couldn't believe her eyes when she saw the occupants. "S-Sally-girl?"

"Bunnie!"

The two comrades rushed toward one another and each wrapped her arms around the other in a happy, even tearful, reunion.

"You've been deroboticized," said Bunnie. "How—?"

"After you left, the Freedom Fighters were split into two groups," Sally explained. "Sonic led a party to find Eggman and recapture me. If it wasn't for him…"

Sonic noticed his friend as well. When she had left New Mobotropolis, her legs and left arm were flesh, fur, and bone. Now those portions were shiny metal, similar to those she had gained during Robotnik's half-successful attempt at roboticizing her. The difference aside from the new look of her cybernetics was the fact that her hip area was still organic, unlike how it was before Naugus restored her. "Bunnie, you… have robot limbs again," he said. "Did you get legionized?"

Bunnie grimly looked at her robotic left hand. "After what happened to Antoine, I ain't gonna let anyone else I love get hurt on my watch."

"Well, yeah, I get that," said Sonic, completely feeling her, "but those Legion parts make you a bomb. There hasn't been a peep out of Eggman, but if he found out about this, it would play right into his hands."

"Pretty much told Buns the same thing," said Beau. "She wouldn't budge."

"Bunnie," Sally said, trying her best to keep from breaking down, "it was my fault all this happened. Eggman tried to roboticize the whole world and I had to turn turn his machine on myself to stop it. I… might have been involved in the explosion that injured Antoine." A hand came upon the princess' shoulder, a metallic one.

"Don't blame yourself," said Beau. "I saw you in action as a robot. There was no conscience at all. The Doctor doesn't give a crap about life, just victory at any cost."

"We're going to make damn sure that there's not going to be any more Antoines," Sonic added. "We chased the Death Egg all around Mobius trying to get Sal back. We finally boarded the thing at the North Pole, but…"

"What happened?" asked Bunnie.

"It was when we finally recaptured Sally," said Sonic. "During the fight, Eggman must have panicked and started another Genesis Wave. That messed up space-time and formed a pocket universe between ours and another. He was trying to rewrite reality as he saw fit. I used Chaos Control to try to fix everything, but he screwed with my work at the last second. Everything seemed to be back to normal at first, but then we started noticing cities that didn't exist before pop up, land and water in different places."

"That light during Buns' surgery," said Beau. "That was the Doctor?"

"Bingo," said Sonic, "and this knot's only going to get more tangled. Those cities I brought up? Human cities. I've counted their fingers, they ain't Overlanders."

"But how can there be so many humans?" asked Bunnie. "They're all in Station Square or in Yurish. Ain't this still Mobius?"

"It's Mobius, alright," Sonic confirmed, "but let's just say it's an older make and model. Remember the Xorda and how they said it used to be called Earth? Because Eggman was such a sore loser, we've been composited with Mobius in the past... before the Xorda spammed it with Gene Bombs. How far back, I don't know, but there's this thing called Zeon that's running this place. They sound like bad business and if Eggman tries to strike an alliance with them, it'll be a world of trouble."

Beau stroked his chin, "First time I'd ever heard of anything called Zeon…". Before he could continue, though, the buzzing of his commlink gained his attention. "What is it?"

"There's an emergency in the prison block, the power generator is offline. The high-voltage floors are out of commission and the cell doors are unlocked."

"Get every man you can manage to that area and lock it down," the Baron ordered, as a siren began blaring in the distance. "I don't want a one of them getting out." He hung up with a growl. "Jack again, no doubt. Thought Tilly's brother spanked them hard enough that Sand Blast would lay off for a spell…"

"Tilly?" Sally asked.

"Matilda," Beau explained. "A little Mercian girl who got kicked out with the rest of us. Just met her brother for the first time since she was a little shaver, him and that Squirrel boy he was with."

"Squirrel?" said Sonic. "Wait, you met Mighty and Ray?"

"Yeah. She got banged up during the last fight with the Sand-Basters and is still recovering from her wounds."

"Uncle Beau," said Bunnie, "let me help. I can fight."

"No, Buns," said the Baron. "You're still weak from the surgery. You fighting would be a real stupid move. Besides, y'all got yourself into a heap of trouble just by coming here."

"Then I'll help," said Sonic.

"I appreciate the offer," said Beau "but keep out of it."

Sonic looked as if he'd been punched alongside the jaw when he'd heard this. "But that… I can't let anything that asshole Jack did slide!"

"I don't like him either," said Sally, "but right now the most we can do is protect Bunnie."

The hedgehog snarled. If he could get involved, this intruder, whoever it is, would be sent packing by the count of ten. Knowing Sally, she would have probably told him that doing so would constitute aiding the enemy. But now, the Sand Blasters had gone after Mighty and Ray; leniency was out of the cards.

California Base: a massive network of naval and aerospace installations, twenty in all, stretching along the coast from San Diego to the San Francisco Bay. Prior to the war, this amalgam was home to the Earth Federation's largest military shipyards, but as of March 13, it had fallen firmly under Zeon's thumb.

When he wasn't lounging around his collection of upscale homes across the United States, Garma Zabi would often be here surveying his portion of the Earth invasion. At this time, things were going pretty slowly, allowing the young commissar to record a video message.

The lights on the camera before him blinked red three times before finally going green.

He was on. "In about two months," he said, "I will return to Zeon. But before then, I'll make sure to have an exploit to my name, father. I don't want our people to laugh at me, saying I only got promoted to General or Admiral because I'm your son. I look forward to seeing you again."

The recording ended there.

Just as Garma finished, a shrill beep came over the small monitor on his desk. He was being paged. "Yes?"

"Major Jeanne Ionescu. Commissar, the 19th Dopp Division has detected a large mass of oil above ground near the Mexican border. Coordinates 32.5, -113.1."

"Are you certain about this, Major?" Garma asked.

"We're sending the recon photo to you right now, sir," said the officer. "Ever since that white-out a few days back, there's been a series of reports about undocumented locations."

"You have a point. It's a pity that satellite photography has been impossible since the war started, so I'll have to take reports like this into consideration." Would that… Eggman know anything about this?

She continued. "We've also received reports of… a small city within the Grand Canyon."

"How funny," Garma remarked. "A walled city with a castle randomly appeared in Shenandoah Valley. Notre Dame Base sent an aerial of it and we've begun drawing up further investigations of the area. Notify Phoenix Base, Captain Sablin's going to be quite busy."

Klaxons blared throughout the refinery. Robed Legionnaires rushed about, many of which were armed, ready in case they came across the intruder. An automated voice blared across the loudspeaker: "Warning! Fire in Administrative Building 1! Warning! Fire in Administrative Building 1!"

The procession of DEL mooks was eventually divided as one of their own emerged from a sub-hallway, nursing a wound in his right side and stumbling about as if he had to make a bad bowel movement. Six gathered around their comrade, revealed to be a male prairie dog with an open gash on his forehead.

He spoke in heavy breaths. "The intruder… dressed like us… get away…!"

No sooner had he uttered "get away" did a large fireball erupt from within his body and consume the surrounding Legionnaires.

Only one survived the blast, a Pomeranian with metal legs. Half-dead, he could only claw away from the blast amid the fire-retardant foam the sprinklers were spraying.

Another Legionnaire silently approached the mess of blood, foam, bodies, and tissue. He came directly for the dog, giving him not a hand, but a foot. The boot came down hard on the wounded grunt with all the might of its wearer. There wasn't a hint of pity in his voice and he and only one question: "Where is Beauregard?"

Transport trucks for supplies and wounded personnel were being loaded in a basement garage. Among them were Beauregard and a young green-shelled Armadillo in a wheelchair. With things going south so fast—the intruder, the prison break, the hit-and-run attacks—it wasn't safe for weakened friendlies. They would have to be moved to the auxiliary base while able-bodied Legionnaires would have to deal with the crisis.

"I'm sorry Matilda," said Beauregard. "I can't come with you."

"Baron," the girl said, with a bit of characteristic flatness, "you're not that strong either. Shouldn't you come?"

"You know I'm the Grandmaster of this Chapter," he said. "I ain't gonna leave my men."

"But you might…" she paused. A twinge of fear came over her heart. Many who'd seen Tilly before could say she seemingly had no emotion, but that seemed to have changed after meeting the brother she never knew about.

"I know," said Beau. "Listen here, Matilda. A lot of us prolly ain't getting outta here alive. I want you to promise me something. You listening?"

Matilda's were dead set on the Baron's face.

"Don't let 'em kill you," he said. "All y'all need to get to the Red Rock outpost."

"What about Mrs. D'Coolette? Will she come?"

D'Coolette. She referred to Bunnie by her surname. Beau frowned a little when she said this. "She prolly ain't gonna be with us much longer, now that Sonic's here," he told her. "Tilly, I took care of you like you were my own kid. I ain't going to always be there anymore. Y'all need to be strong and keep your chin up. You gotta make it outta this. Promise me."

"I promise."

The Baron wrapped his arms around the young Mercian. It was a for only a moment, but it was so final for him. Like watching a loved one leave and perhaps never return.

The truck had to move, regardless. Rolling forward and up the incline for the ground-level. Beau stood alone, watching the truck drive away and the gate close behind it.

Silence followed. Then, hushed footsteps whose echo became louder as the seconds ticked by.

Finally, it was quiet again. It was soon broken by a smooth, raspy voice, like an evil twin of a movie trailer narrator who wants to see everyone in it die. "Hello, Baron."