Awakening

by Shax Davis

After a runin with an old enemy, Sonic uncovers an ancient plot that puts more than just Mobius in danger's path. Over the course of his adventure, he will face new challenges, and learn that the greatest enemy he will ever have to conquer is himself.

5. Five: Day of the Supervillains

AWAKENING
S Peter Davis

All characters (C) SEGA, Archie and SP Davis 2004 (unless otherwise noted).
Used without permission

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Five:
Day of the Supervillains

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This is it now,
Everybody get down,
This is all I can take,
This is how a heart breaks.

- Rob Thomas

Oh no, not you again.

- Australian Crawl

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DISCOURAGEMENT

I

"Well, I hope you're happy," Niles Wilkinson-Price said bitterly, his arms folded across his chest, "We have officially located the most insignificant whistle-stop hick town this side of the Westerican border. Five weeks we've been on this road, five weeks, and for what? Anticlimax of the blinking century. If this is a one horse town, then the horse died of loneliness."
"Don't blame me," Sonic replied, "I picked this place out of your brain. Besides, I'm sure this isn't all of it. This is probably just an... outer suburb."
"Nope." Espio said, rounding the corner to meet them, "This is the whole deal. Welcome to Desolation, guys, biggest little town south of nowhere and east of nothing. For the first time since we left the Crux Desert, I feel at home."
"Peh! Desolation is right!" Niles said, "The only name more appropriate would be 'Cesspit'... or perhaps 'Trashcan'."
Espio whispered in Sonic's ear, "Whose idea was it to bring this guy?"
Sonic just shook his head. "He's just not an outdoors guy, that's all. He just needs-"
Niles threw his arms up and screamed at the sky. "Why, God? Why do you mock me?"
"-to get... to get accustomed to things. That's all."

II

(You may see their trunks arching in the woods years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground)

The journey after Stratosphereon, the City of Clouds, had been at once easier and more difficult than it had been before. For the first time since leaving home, Sonic had completely lost his twin's trail - Cinos might have been anywhere on Mobius, for all he knew or cared, for his desire to see his otherworldly twin again this side of Judgement Day was remote to zilch. They would cross paths again, of this Sonic was certain, but Cinos' absence to persue business elsewhere was at least a temporary reprieve for Sonic, who was looking forward to fighting his brother from a distance for a while.
No matter what Cinos was doing or where, Sonic was for the first time privy to knowledge that had been denied him thus far: He knew where to find one of the Runes of Awakening. He wished that he might have known the locations of all of them, but even just one was an exciting breakthrough. There were five stones in all, and only two had ever been found and documented by science. Cinos had stolen one of these in Stratosphereon, as well as one of the unfound runes, which had been kept by the Chameleon Cabal in their underground chambers. Two were still buried somewhere, but one had been dug up and written about, and Sonic knew this because Niles had known this. Not exactly consciously, but Niles was a very avid reader, and most of the information he had picked up in the course of his life was still catalogued in his mind, in one form or another. Few computers in the world could rival the mobian brain in terms of information storage capacity; it was memory that was below standard. If any one person could bring forth every piece of information he kept in his mind at any one time, his sanity would likely suffer.
The method by which Sonic had accessed this information was one that he still couldn't explain, and didn't like to think about it for very long. All he knew was that he and Niles - and Espio, too, by the same token - had shared a very powerful bond. More powerful than any of them.

(Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair before them over their heads to dry in the sun.)

Their escape from the City of Clouds had required their slippage into the antiverse, an experience that wasn't particularly pleasant for any of them. Sonic found to his dismay that one could not slide twice in quick succession, at least not without some degree of practice that he simply did not possess, having slid only twice under his own power. The immortal storm raged on for the two days that they were stuck in the antiverse, Sonic trying desperately to gather the focus required to get back. By the end of the second day, both he and Niles were beginning to worry that their passage back to familiar territory was in some way prohibited, and that they would have to brave the storm for however far it raged, which was almost certainly too far. But finally Sonic managed to break the membrane of time and space, to slide back through the four-dimensional curtain that seperated these twin worlds from each other, and mercifully, the sky was blue on the other side. The clean, blue ocean of their native universe lapped against a white, fluffy beach, seagulls squawking and diving into the sand for crabs. Sonic and his allies screamed at each other unnecessarily for hours while they grew accustomed to the absence of the concert hall roar of rain and thunder every moment of the day and night.
But there was another problem. One that was becoming a growing weight on Sonic's mind. Espio had fallen victim to the so-called libria treatment in Stratosphereon, a drug-induced state of unnatural and unbreakable mirth and contentedness. The chameleon's behaviour was two parts flower-child and one part acid-trip, irrational and unbearable. The sickening thought that began to occur to Sonic was that the libria drug was irreversible, that Espio had been forever ruined by the wayward, unethical and highly illegal practices of the City of Clouds' governing body. Between Espio's intolerable happiness and Niles' intolerable misery, the first week back on the road seemed to Sonic to be almost as long as all the months he had travelled before.
But that was nothing compared to the second week.

(But I was going to say when Truth broke in with all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm)

After about eight days, the libria had passed, and Espio crashed. Hard.
The drug's withdrawal process, they all came to realise, was horrific. Sonic first began to realise that Espio was less chirpy than usual, less excited about the journey ahead. He spoke of his mirth less often, and the long periods of silence were as obvious as the most deafening of sounds. This only lasted long enough for Sonic to bring it up for discussion a single time.
"How's it hanging over there, Esp?" he asked.
Espio looked up at him with a very strange grin. "I'm going to throw up," he announced, not without an air of excitement about even this fact.
And then he did throw up. And didn't stop for thirteen hours.
The three travellers hadn't come across a major settlement even once since they began their journey southwest from the ocean; This was the Cape of Torion, a largely unsettled wasteland of what the libric Espio referred to as exciting swamps, delightful deserts and adorable mountains of marshy filth. There were a few people living here in the wilderness, none of them very receptive to guests, but it was through them that Sonic had managed, not without difficulty, to wrangle directions to the town of Desolation, their eventual goal. It was supposed to be a three week journey, and they might have made it in two and a half if not for the horrid second week that stretched it out to a gruelling five.

(I should prefer to have some boy bend them, as he went out and in to fetch the cows)

After Espio's bout of sickness had passed (Sonic at first took it as some virus he had picked up in a swamp somewhere, and hoped it wasn't contageous), they camped and slept. An entire day's journey had been wasted, and unfortunately it would turn out to be the first of many. Espio refused to wake up the next morning. He slept like the dead, resisting every effort to rouse him. And what could they do? They couldn't carry him. They couldn't leave without him, though Niles threatened to somewhere in the area of thirty thousand times. So another day was wasted, Espio snoring face down in the dust and Sonic assuring that it was for the best, that they should give him the chance to get it out of his system so they could all reclaim their health and sanity for the journey ahead.
This turned out to be too much to ask. The next day Espio was awake, but had changed the colour of his scales to a very dull blue-green, and said very little about anything, except that they should get going already because he was sick of this stupid desert. He added that Sonic had promised to take him out of the desert, and had only succeeded in bringing him to another one. He cursed Sonic for removing him from his comfort zone, and accused him of being little more than an egocentric prude who liked to think that the world orbited around his personal crusades. He added that he had nothing left to live for now that he was alone in the world except for an arrogant hedgehog and a pompous prick of a librarian, and thanks very much.
This was about as cheerful as Espio got for the next seven or eight days. He walked slowly and moaned almost every minute. At night he cried himself to sleep, and every morning he slept four hours longer than anyone else, a dead sleep from which nobody could resurrect him until he was ready. More than once he threatened to kill himself, and Sonic was worried that he actually might. Niles complained bitterly about the presence of such dead weight, and it had led to several heated arguments. They covered about seventeen days' travel in seven.

(Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, whose only play was what he found himself, summer or winter, and could play alone)

Luckily, Espio had recovered. His complexion brightened day by day until it was once again a vibrant mouve purple. He spent the first few days of his recovery apologising profusely to Sonic and Niles, explaining that the libria drug was like the hydrogen bomb of mood-altering substances, and that he had never experienced such emotion imbalance in his life. Both understood his situation and neither blamed him, but it couldn't reverse the impact of two and a half weeks of bad blood. Any journey can be irredeemably ruined by too much bitterness and tension, and friendships that begin with such problems rarely develop, having been poisoned at the roots. The three travellers eventually arrived in the town of Desolation with the seeds of asperity brewing within, and this was largely responsible for the way the energies of Desperation were able to gain such a powerful hold over them over the coming days.

(One could do worse than be a swinger of birches)

III/Cinos

Thousands of miles to the south and the east of the town of Desolation, over fields and deserts, across an ocean, a deep and untamed jungle stood foreboding and ancient. Exotic birds of a species found nowhere else on Mobius chirped and squawked in the tall, archaeic trees. The constant buzz and chitter of insects large and small filled the air.
Then, the unmistakable crack of a pistol shot ripped through everything, ceasing all.
Panting, gasping for air, a dirty and haggard young porcupine half-ran and half-stumbled through the wild growth, his eyes wild and filled with fear. He tripped and cried out, falling onto the hard jungle floor and scraping his elbows. Madly, he scrambled for footing.
Another figure came bolting out of the foliage behind him. Rasputan Nethergate, descendant of the tribal inheritors of the antiverse, whooped and danced when he came within sight of the scrambling porcupine, waving a gun above his head.
"Hoo-boy!" Rasputan shrieked, "Almost got away from us, there, didn't you feller! You might wanna reevaluate your course of action, you've seen what this thing can do!"
"Please, sai," the fallen porcupine spluttered, "The Wood Devil owns these lands! He will destroy you and I both without a second thought for our trespass!"
Rasputan laughed. "Phooey! The Wood Devil might claw you up a little, but he can't put you full of lead like I can."
"You are a fallen one, Rasputan Nethergate," the fatigued porcupine moaned.
As he tried to pull himself to his feet, he was kicked in the side and dropped again, though the attack hadn't come from Rasputan. When he hit the ground again with a pained grunt, he opened his eyes and saw nothing but a filthy red and white high-top sneaker, worn full of holes, and the lower half of a blue leg.
"Now, now," came a dark and raspy voice, "No need for name-calling."
The jungle sounds slowly began to return to the wild. Quite suddenly, above them all and some distance away, there came a piercing animal call.
"Wibble-kee!"
"His servants," the porcupine lamented, "They come..."
"I thought you'd have figured out by now that the Wood Devil is the least you have to worry about," said the owner of that blue leg and tattered shoe, "We're much more dangerous, especially if you don't do what you're told. This is the last time I'll ask you, kiddo, get up and take us where we want to go. Pronto."
"Mercy," the porcupine grunted, picking himself up, "Mercy by on my soul..."

IV

In comparison with the other settlements of the Cape, Desolation was a large town. One wouldn't have thought so, being as it was in the centre of nowhere, but it was, and Sonic noticed quite fast the lack of law enforcement within.
This would perhaps not be such a sudden surprise, if they hadn't just travelled from the over-enforced and merciless stronghold that was the City of Clouds. The city was built into a ring of cliffs in the middle of an arid desert of red rock, tumbleweeds and prairies. So remote was it that the people here would probably experience some difficulty in importing necessities from outside, and as such they would have to be fairly self-sufficient. Sonic had hoped he might be able to send another letter home while they were here, but by the look of this place, he would have been surprised if they had a mail service. He remembered the desert town of Newton, where he had run into his old arch-nemesis Mecha Sonic, and sighed. People in little remote desert towns had a reputation for being jerks.
"I'm telling you, I have this feeling," Espio insisted, "We're being watched."
"I don't doubt it," Sonic returned, "If these guys have had even one visitor before us in the past decade, it'd surprise me. They'll either throw us a party or lynch us with pitchforks, just you wait."
"I've had this feeling for a while now, though. Like, even back on the road."
"What the devil is that?" Niles demanded, and he was pointing straight ahead.
They had been following the main street in the town, in search of some sign of authority, and had come to what appeared to be a central plaza of some form. This was a strange sight in such an insignificant burgh, a monument with a statue in the centre and a well-kept fountain to honour it. The whole thing sat beneath a black water tower with the faded name of the town painted on it in white.
"What a weird statue," Sonic commented, "Look."
The sandstone carving depicted three robots striking a pose. None, Sonic was happy to discover, resembled Mecha Sonic. All three were of a unique design; one looked like a stone golem with oversized cannonball fists, another resembled a tank with machine-guns for arms. The third, and the largest, looked something like a fast food mascot, a walking rubbish-bin with arms and legs, and with an upside-down bucket for a head, a cartoon smile-face scrawled on it.
Espio kneeled to read the inscription at the monument's base. "In honour of The Justice Brigade," he read, "Keeping Desolation safe."
"The Justice Brigade," Niles snorted, "I say."
"This is nuts," Sonic said, "Let's just get our business done."
Espio pointed across the road. "Look, there's a shop. And it's open. We should ask if there's a museum or something in town. If the rune's here, it'll probably be on display somewhere, I bet."
"Sure," Sonic replied, "Come on."
They walked together across the dirt road that constituted Desolation's main thoroughfare, and approached the general store with the 'OPEN' sign on the door.
After they turned away, another figure stepped out from behind the monument. His black and red metal feet thudded heavily in the dry dirt, kicking up brown clouds with every step. He stood and observed the three travel-weary adventurers as they walked.

V

A few people mingled inside the general store, mostly old folks with antique-style clothing. Much to Sonic's surprise, nobody seemed too shocked or interested by the presence of newcomers to the town. Most people just glanced at them for a moment and then went back to what they were doing, indifferent. Bored, even.
"What an overwhelming welcoming bash," Sonic said, "I'd like to see this place when it really gets cranking."
"Allow me," Niles said, "You'll be glad you brought me along, for, if there is one person on this planet most suited to extracting information, it's Niles Wilkinson-Price."
"Go for it," Sonic said, then to Espio he muttered, "Good to know he's useful for something." The chameleon smiled and winked.
"Excuse me, good sir." Niles got the attention of the shopkeeper, a very overweight wolf, who looked up at him slowly with droopy eyes.
"Meh?"
"My associates and I are investigating something in your fine little town, and I was hoping you might be able to assist us. We have heard rumour of the presence of a particular artifact in your town's possession, a stone of sorts, with a mysterious symbol printed on it. This object is of great interest to us, you see, and we have travelled very far to observe it. Might you point us in the right direction, so to speak?"
The shopkeeper looked up at him for a moment, speechless. Then he shook his head.
"Mister, I ain't got the darn-tootinist idea what's it you just said."
Niles spluttered in disbelief, stumbling backward as though struck. Sonic stepped in to take up the slack.
"A stone," he said, "A rune, a rock. A special rock, with a picture on it."
"A rock," the shopkeeper replied, and shrugged. "I ain't seen no rock with no pitcher onnit. You guys gonna buy something?"
Sonic sighed. "No, no. Thanks anyway."
"Just glad I's to be of service to you folk."
The three left the shop and returned to the street. Niles was still flustered.
"Simpleton!" he exclaimed.
"Well, I wonder if there's anyone else around here who might know any better?" Sonic asked.
A few people milled about in the street, wandering from one place to another, but it was hardly a crowd. People walked slowly, with their heads down and their feet shuffling. One mobian sat on the curb with his head in his hands.
"I say," Niles said, softly, "I think you'll both have to agree that there is something decidedly... discomforting... about this town."
"I'll say, it's not exactly tourist central," Espio replied.
"It's not that... What I mean to say is... do you think that the people here are somewhat... unnaturally crestfallen?"
"Well sure," Sonic replied, "It's just a really boring town. It just seems odd to you because you've spent so much time in happyland."
It was true that Desolation seemed to the discerning eye almost to be the exact polar opposite of Stratosphereon. In this town, depression and agitation seemed to be the rule that governed people's lives.
"It's not right," Niles said, "There is something discomforting about it."
"Snortzworth and the City of Clouds are behind us, now," Sonic assured him, "There's no dictorial government here throwing people in prison for mood crimes and drugging them into depression. You're being paranoid."
Niles shook his head but said nothing more on the matter. Mood was contageous, that was one important lesson he had learned from his time in Stratosphereon, and he had no desire to stir the pot of discontent, lest he fuel another unnecessary argument. Though he was annoyed, more than he should be, that the hedgehog and chameleon refused to take him seriously. There was an unusually strong desire to give them both a piece of his mind.
"Talking about paranoid," Espio said, "I'm getting that feeling again. That we're being watched."
"Oh all right," Sonic said, exasperated, "If you're that worried about it, we'll-"
He didn't have a chance to complete the sentence. Even as he spoke he was vaguely aware of an increasingly loud roaring-burning sound like a lit bottle rocket from an indeterminate direction, and more quickly than he was able to react, Espio and Niles were thrown halfway across the width of the street in opposite directions, and something collided with Sonic with what felt almost like the force of a car. He was thrown into a wall and whatever had hit him was still on him, one hand around his neck and breathing like an asthma sufferer.
Sonic's head hit something hard and dazed him, and he went slack for a moment in shock. Time slipped a notch for him and he wasn't even sure how he got to be where he was, wedged against a wall with something hot and clad in metal with a death grip on him, something alive that wheezed and snorted against his ear. People began to gather in the street to observe the spectacle, but nobody seemed willing to help.
"My, my, my," the attacker gruffed, "I caught myself a blue fish, and man, is it a big one! Slowing down in your old age, Sonic? Reflexes not what they used to be? Oh how the mighty have fallen."
Sonic wriggled in the assailant's grasp, he gripped the enemy hand with both of his, finding that it was clad in a glove of thick, hot rubber like a bicycle tire. At the wrist it vanished beneath a cuff of steel and a sleeve of the same. Sonic kicked out and struck only metal, searing hot in the midday sun and agonizing pressed against his body.
Who had caught him so unawares in this sleepy town? Not Cinos, and although his assailant carried the armour of a robot, Mecha Sonic was destroyed and so it wasn't him either. Besides, those gloves gave away the fact of the live organism inside them - a creature who, although he sought to emulate every aspect of a robot, had been unable to devise a metal sheath to follow unhindered the delicate movements of a living hand.
Sonic didn't have to think very hard. He knew exactly who it was who went so such an effort to conceal the shame of his fragile mortality.
Zero Tolerance, tightening his grip on Sonic's neck, pulled him off the wall and held him high in the air, displaying him like a trophy to those who had gathered around to observe.
"Take a look!" he shouted, "Take a real good look! There isn't a mobian alive who can cross me and live!"

VI

Sonic the Hedgehog had racked up an impressive list of enemies in the years he had been a Freedom Fighter, but few were so mysterious in both motive and method as the black-spined young hedgehog who called himself Zero Tolerance, though even that was surely a pseudonym. Zero's persuit of Sonic was relentless, though it went beyond simply wanting him dead. There were hundreds of rogues across Mobius, certainly, who would have loved to have been the one to kill the blue blur, simply for the challenge of it. But Zero clearly wanted him to pay, wanted him to suffer. He had a grudge, a vendetta, and would not rest until he had satisfied his hunger for revenge.
What disturbed Sonic was that he hadn't the faintest clue what he had done to cross wires with a hedgehog he had never met. For the very first time he had come into contact with Zero Tolerance, he was already on the hunter's black list. What was worse was that Zero knew the art of emotional attacks better than anybody, and nobody Sonic loved was safe from being used as a tool against him. Sally and Amy both had been unwitting means to an end in the past, mere utensils for Zero to solicit as much pain out of his enemy as possible.
Of all Sonic's many rivals, Zero seemed to him to be the most dangerous. This was because, of all Sonic's many rivals, Zero was the one who he understood the very least.
Held up now as he was, gripped by the neck and facing his attacker, Sonic saw that Zero had once again upgraded himself. The black hedgehog seemed to have a vulnerability complex, a live mobian who felt naked without his robotic suit of armour. Every time he hunted Sonic down, it seemed he had spent his absence upgrading this ensemble with new improvements designed for the single unwavering purpose of catching and killing the fastest thing alive. His suit, originally the gutted outer shell of one of Dr Robotnik's E-100 series mechs, had been resprayed a vibrant black and red, and reassembled so often as to be unrecognisable from Robotnik's original vision. Zero's smokey grey grinning maw was just visible under a metal helmet he wore to cover his entire head. Sonic tried to meet his attacker face to living face, but all he saw were two camera-lens eyes zooming in and out to focus, red points of light in the pupil of each.
Zero brought Sonic back down to Mobius and spun him around, embracing him from behind while retaining the powerful grip on his neck. Sonic was only able to feel the barrel of the enormous gun that was now against the side of his head.
"I thought you were dead," Sonic choked, trying to keep his wits. With Zero behind him, he could see the crowd of people who had gathered to watch (and, evidently, just to watch) the spectacle. Niles and Espio were the closest, neither sure how they should proceed.
"Amy didn't take too kindly to being kidnapped," Sonic continued, "She told me she beat your head inside-out."
"Oh, I'm a resilient one, got a reputation for being hard to kill," Zero returned, "Got the heart of a real trooper beating inside me, don't you know. Your girlfriend spoiled my good looks, but she didn't do me in, not completely. She's going to wish she did, though. Young Amy Rose has earned her way good and proper into my black book, Sonic, and after you're gone I'm going to hunt her down as well. Why don't you dwell on that for a while? Imagine her expression just before I take her head."
"You're sick," Sonic growled, "Why are you following me?"
Zero tapped him on the top of the head with the gun barrel hard enough to hurt, then aimed it again at his temple. "You haven't been using that noggin of yours, have you. There's nowhere you can run, nowhere you can hide. As a matter of fact I was only out of town so I could have a few words with our friend Mecha Sonic. Imagine my surprise when I found the two of you together in the same dump town in the middle of nowhere. Two birds with one stone! Two kills for the price of one! So I finished my business with the robot and now I've come to finish my business with you. This has been a long time coming, Sonic."
"You've come a long way just to kill me, Zero, I wish I knew what I did to deserve it."
"Oh, no no no no no!" Zero chuckled, but it was a forced laugh. "I haven't come just to kill you, Sonic. In fact, I'm not going to kill you until you ask me to. It's making you ask that's the fun part." He leaned in and whispered in Sonic's ear: "I'm going to make you wish you were dead. Then, I'm going to grant that wish."
Sonic looked out over the crowd and began to resent them for standing in place and watching so placidly, as though this were a stage show. If he was murdered in cold blood right here on the street, he could easily imagine the crowd giving a polite applause and then stepping over his body while they went about their business. There was something eerie about the way they stood, as though this were as common a spectacle as the sunrise.
One civilian in particular stood out as unique. While the others seemed almost bored by the display, there was one bespectacled youth, a tall and thin teenage wolf, who stood on the front line holding a sketch pad and scribbling madly, looking up with frequent gestures to observe Sonic and his captor.
This was a farce.
"Hey Sonic," Espio called out, "Uh, is this another friend of yours from back home?"
"You could say that," Sonic replied.
"Oh, we go way back," Zero added, "Don't we, Sonic? And what's with the holiday, by the way? Did the Freedom Fighters finally get sick of your ugly mug hanging around, screwing everything up?"
"What I'm doing here is nobody's business but my own, and especially not yours," Sonic replied, dismally. "Put me down, Zero."
"No, no I really don't think I will," the armoured hedgehog said, and jammed the gun barrel against his temple so hard that his head was pressing on his shoulder.
It started so slowly and quietly that he didn't even know it at first, but Sonic began to notice a rhythmic clapping coming from the crowd. The entire town seemed to be watching, now, and almost every single one of them was clapping their hands together in a steady beat that was growing in frequency.
"What on Mobius is going on here?" he asked aloud.
Zero himself seemed suspicious, now, of the strange behaviour of the people of Desolation. His false smile having drained away to a scowl, his eyes darted back and forth over the crowd.
"Who are they cheering?" he asked Sonic, "Who is it, do you think? You or me? Because I know I always hedge my bets for the one with the gun."
The crowd parted now, still clapping, and stood either side of the road. Sonic could see the central plaza with the strange statue. Lo and behold, underneath the stone representation of the three robots, there stood two of the robots themselves. The bulbous walking garbage-can and the tank-thing began to advance along the road toward Sonic and Zero, cheered on by the crowd. The teenage wolf flipped a page in his sketchbook and started another frantic drawing.
"Stay back," Zero warned them, "You'll find that I'm not playing a game, here. Keep away and nobody has to get hurt." He hesitated, then corrected himself by tapping on Sonic's head. "Well, somebody does."
"Halt!" shouted the tank-robot, "The Justice Brigade demands that you surrender immediately."
"Oh!" Zero cried, "Well, since you asked so nicely!" He frowned and pointed his gun at the newcomers. "Or how about I blow you all away? How about that? This isn't about you, any of you, it's between me and the blue fleshbag!"
Sonic had de'ja'vu, remembering the gang leader in Chagrin Las Mortis who had called him blue spinebag.
"Where's the third one?" he asked aloud.
"The third-" Zero shrieked, and something grabbed him from behind, pulling the gun safely away from Sonic's head and allowing him to twist free of his captor's grasp. He ran well out of the black hedgehog's reach to join his friends, and then turned to face the action.
Zero hadn't been taken helpless. While the golem-bot had grabbed him from behind, a mechanical third arm had emerged from Zero's suit and grabbed the robot around the waist with a giant claw. Zero threw the robot over his head with a yell, flinging it at the other two. All three robots were knocked over, but the tank-bot flipped itself up rightside and began launching small missiles.
Zero had two large black mechanical arms hovering over his head, now, giving him almost the appearance of a space-age eastern god. He rushed forward, roaring, and the arms actually snatched the missiles out of the air as they flew toward him, and he threw them away like discarded toys. They exploded when they hit the ground, and people ran out of the way, screaming.
"I am not somebody for you to screw with!" Zero screamed, and activated his rockets. He blasted straight up, smoke bellowing from beneath, and then hovered above the ground, mechanical claws still floating menacingly around him.
The tank-bot shot at him with some kind of automatic weapon, and Zero held up one of his own arms to protect him. A shield emerged from his suit with a hissing sound, and deflected the bullets.
He really has gone all out, Sonic thought with a shiver, He installed all of this stuff just so that he could kill me? That's more than an obsession. There's no word for what that is.
With a loud boom, Zero rocketed across the sky and tackled the tank-bot, knocking it head over wheels. He then turned and landed in the road, panting and growling like an enraged animal. He didn't turn in time to dodge a blow from the golem-bot, which threw a punch with its giant cannonball fist, and hit Zero on the side of his helmet. The hedgehog toppled backward and snatched at the robot with his mechanical claw-arms, but the robot ducked them and engaged Zero in hand-to-hand combat.
Zero had trouble shielding himself from the attacking blows, as the robot was clearly built for the purposes of this kind of combat, and he was beaten backward, shouting and cursing. He locked one of his mechanical claws around the robot's waist and threw it aside, but even as he did, he was attacked from behind by the tank-bot, who snared him in some kind of net. Zero swore and wrestled with the mesh web, but it tightened and closed in on him. He fell over, thrashing and screaming like a child in the throes of a tantrum. One of the mechanical arms flailed about in the air, the claw snapping at nothing, but ultimately the black hedgehog in the robot suit had been struck powerless.
A mighty cheer rose up from the crowd of townspeople. The three robots stood together and almost seemed to pose, like they posed in the statue that had been carved to their likeness.
"That one didn't do anything," Espio noted, and pointed to the biggest robot with the painted cartoon face.
The robots siezed Zero and took him away. He was screaming something, and Sonic realised the curses were directed at him. "I'll get you, Sonic you rat, this isn't over, we still have business, you and I!"
Espio shook his head in disbelief. "Sonic, everywhere we go, somebody wants to kill you."
Sonic laughed uneasily and rubbed his temple where Zero had rammed his gun barrel. "Yeah, I know... My nickname should be E. Coli, because everybody seems to want me dead. I can't even go on a holiday without assassins tracking me down, what does that say about me? Come on, I want to sit down somewhere and rest."

VII

Sonic, Espio and Niles sat outside a small cafe when they were approached by the young wolf in spectacles who Sonic had seen before. The youth was carrying his sketch pad under one arm and his pencil behind one ear.
"That was pretty awesome!" the kid exclaimed, "Rack another one up for the Justice Brigade! Boom! Pow! This'll make great material for the next edition!"
"Next edition of what?" Niles asked, and frowned. "Who are you?"
"Hey, ease up on the kid," Sonic said. "Hey. Name's Sonic. This is Niles and Espio."
"I'm Orlando Winterburn, author and illustrator of the Justice Brigade official comic!" the kid exclaimed, and he opened his sketch pad for the others to see.
Sonic was taken aback. The kid was clearly a prodigy. On the page in front of him was an excellent sketch of Zero Tolerance in his robot suit, grinning with a gun against Sonic's head. Sonic wasn't particularly taken with a picture of him looking so helpless, but he couldn't deny that it was very good.
"Just what I needed," Orlando said, excited, "A new villain. The old ones were getting stale. What was his name?"
"Villain?" Sonic asked, "What, you mean him? Uh, Zero Tolerance he calls himself. I don't know his real name."
"Oh, zing!" Orlando exclaimed with some enthusiasm, "What a great name! Pow!"
Niles looked up and down the street, as though fearful that any moment another unsavoury character in a mechanical suit was going to appear and try to kill them. "Excuse me, but I must say, I am a little confused as to what exactly is going on here. Who were those brutal characters and what are they doing here?"
"You mean the Justice Brigade?" Orlando asked, and he flipped to another page in his sketch book, where he had drawn pictures of the robots who had intervened in Sonic's rescue.
"The Justice Brigade! Defenders of peace and freedom in Desolation! Combaticon! Arsenal! Rustbucket! Pow!"
"That one didn't do anything," Espio reiterated, and tapped the picture of the robot Orlando had called Rustbucket, the bulbous robot with the painted face on its bucket-like head. "What's his special power?"
"Oh, Rustbucket is the most powerful of them all," Orlando confided, "He only fights the really tough villains."
"Of course, because he's so wretchedly intimidating," Niles said. "Is this all some kind of a joke? Am I on one of those hidden camera programmes?"
"Not at all!" Orlando replied, "Desolation is a black spot. Criminal activity here is rife. The Justice Brigade were built by a kindly old professor to safeguard the people against the very bad things that happen here. They fight all the villains... Toxic Sludge, The Marksman, Warhead, The Commando... and I tell the stories! Zing!"
"I see," Sonic said with a trace of humour, "And where is this kindly old professor now?"
Orlando shook his head, and the pencil fell out of his ear when he did. He reached down to pick it up. "Sadly, he was killed a year ago. Murdered by The Commando during one of his dastardly plots. The Brigade thwarted him, but too late." He sighed. "That was my best selling issue. Since then, nothing much has happened around here, it's been real boring. All the surviving villains are behind bars, and I've run out of stories." His ears pricked up, and the pencil fell out again. "That's why it's so great that you guys came along with this new villain! A new adventure at last for the Justice Brigade!"
Sonic wasn't sure he liked this kid very much, the way he spoke of death and pain only in terms of how well it benefited him, and figured he wasn't quite old enough to understand how serious these things were, real tragedies that affected real people. He had to remind himself that he had been this reckless too, once upon a time. Although he retained his sense of humour, he had matured enough to appreciate peace rather than let it bore him.
"Say, did the Justice Brigade ever have an adventure that had something to do with a rock? A stone with a symbol on it, that had a strange power to it?"
"Huh?" The young fox appeared puzzled, "No, nothing like that... Hey! It's a great idea for a story, though! Pow!"
"Quite," Niles muttered with distaste. "Until you're living it."

VIII

The sheriff of Desolation was a crocodile with half his teeth missing, and he grinned at Zero when the robots hauled him into the watch house, strung up and stripped of his armour. The black hedgehog scowled at the sheriff and his deputy, a short gecko, who both chuckled.
"Well well well, we caught ourselves a new playmate for the freakshow," the sheriff said, "Good work, fellers. Haul his butt into the playpen."
"Justice prevails again!" announced the robot Combaticon.
A short time later, Zero stood naked in a small prison cell, hugging his shoulders, his spines still unfolding in the open air.
"I can't believe this always happens to me," he snarled, and his eyes shrank to slits in the dull light. "I'm getting tired of this, so very tired."
He grabbed the bars of the cell, with one hand, and the other clenched, then loosened, then clenched again.
Zero wasn't alone. He was quite aware that there were others crammed into this cell, talking about him with some interest, but he made a point of ignoring them. He was too occupied with his fierce anger to concern himself with anyone else
Soon enough, he was finally approached. An opossum walked up beside him and looked him over.
"Watched you fight the Justice Bozos," he said, "Took quite a beating, didn't 'cha. Pretty crappy armour if you ask me."
"I didn't ask you." Zero grumbled.
"Hey!" The opossum stepped back and held up his hands in surrender, "Fair enough! Just speaking my mind, it's something I can't help. The name's Axel Gear, the Rocket Knight, one and only. How about you? Gonna introduce yourself, or should we just call you John Doe?"
Zero looked up at the opossum and scratched the back of his neck. He found him to be unsavoury and arrogant, and had little patience for conversation. Eventually, though, he brought himself to answer, not without venom. "Zero Tolerance. By name and nature."
"Attitude, attitude, everyone's got an attitude," Axel replied, "Well, do you wanna meet the gang? We have one policy here in Desolation Prison, and that's to keep off each other's nerves."
"Whatever." Zero muttered, and for the first time he turned to observe his cellmates.
The first thing he noticed was that one of them was female and considerably attractive. Almost instantly he forgot his outrage and a crooked grin crept onto his face. This was something about himself that he still didn't understand.
"Okay, let's do this left-to-right," Axel said, "We haven't got many newcomers in here, so a fresh face is always welcome. First off the bat, this is Shred the Raptor. Shred, Zero. Zero, Shred."
Shred was a velociraptor, and curled up in the corner he looked quite ferocious and very dangerous. When Axel spoke his name, he opened his eyes, and Zero saw that the eye on the right side of his head was fake, just a painted ball squeezed into the socket.
"Pleased to eat you." Shred hissed, and then started chuckling, "Heh...heheh...heheheheheh..."
Then Axel motioned to the next in line, who was the attractive girl. She was an anteater, and she wasn't looking at Axel or Zero, but out through the bars of the cell.
"This," Axel said, "Is Kardot. That's all we know, and we don't know no more. We don't know where she came from, how she got here... in fact, we're starting to believe she doesn't even know that stuff herself. Go figure."
Zero walked up to her. She was rather ragged, a bit tattered, and very distant. He put his hand up in front of her eyes and waved up and down. She didn't even flinch.
"What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" he whispered.
There was no reply.
"How's about we bust ourselves outta here sometime and run away somewhere?" Zero probed.
Slowly, there was movement. Kardot's eyes moved to fix on Zero's, and she raised her left hand to where he could see it. He was shocked to discover that the pointer finger on that hand was missing, and the stump was sparking. Kardot was some kind of android, and a very realistic one.
"I don't like your tone," She told him, "And if I were you, I'd move right along. I don't know what reality I'm in, but back in my world, anybody who spoke to me like that didn't live to see another day, do you understand?"
Zero snorted and backed off. Axel took him and whispered into his ear. "She's a little crazy," he confided, "Keeps rambling on about parallel realities... lizards with wings... robot echidnas, that kind of garbage. Talks to herself a lot. Probably a short circuit, we're guessing. We don't speak to her much... let's just move along, shall we?"
Zero nodded, (Don't think I like her anymore, anyway, he thought) and looked at the last jailbird in the line. He was a squirrel in a dusty army uniform, and he was sitting in a ditch, playing with his own beard, twisting it in his fingers.
"He's been here the longest out of all of us," Axel said, "He's called The Commando."
"Welcome, soldier." The Commando droned, and gave a small salute.
"We all have one thing in common, in here," Axel announced, "How we got here is always different, but we're the same in the way that we all fought with the Justice Geeks and lost."
"How poetically awful," Zero murmured, "But I don't intend on sticking around in this cell for the rest of my life. Even to the end of the day, if I can help it."

IX

With Orlando Winterburn as their guide, Sonic and his companions soon checked in to the only room-for-rent in town, a three-room bed and breakfast run by a quiet old squirrel whose only words to them were the price of the room and what time breakfast was being served. She looked like somebody who was waiting to die. Orlando had pestered the three of them for their life stories and was particularly interested in Sonic's many adventures, but they managed to shoo him away for long enough to settle into their room and get some rest.
"So, what do you reckon Cinos and his trusty companion are up to right now?" Espio asked, lying on Sonic's bed.
Sonic stood at the window, looking out at the quiet town. "I dunno," he replied, "Dunno where he went. He's somewhere out there, looking for runes... with nobody there to stop him."
"Which brings me to a point that you to have yet not considered," Niles announced.
"What's that?" Sonic asked.
"Dear hedgehog, if your mysterious rock really is in this town, and you find it, where exactly do we go next?"
Sonic looked at him for a moment, then shook his head. "Aaah, I dunno. I never think that far ahead."
"Exactly. So, while we're here, we also need to find..."
"Another library."
"Precisely."
Sonic scratched the back of his neck and groaned. "The City of Clouds had the biggest library on Mobius, but this place? Do these people even read?"
Niles sighed, "Comic books, certainly."
"Well, what we're after isn't in any comic book."
"Oh! I think I saw an atlas in here somewhere, just before!" Espio exclaimed, jumping off the bed, "That might be helpful!"
"Just what we need!" Sonic exclaimed, "Maybe we can work out where Cinos was headed!"
"Here it is," the chameleon said, and he pulled a large book out of a drawer. It was a little old and a little dusty, but atlases have a tendency to remain up to date just as long as the world remains the same shape.
Niles took the book and put it on the floor, and the three of them sat in a circle around it. The fox opened it and flipped through the pages until they came to something familiar. It was a full-page representation of Westerica and the southeastern territories.
"There's where I come from," Sonic said, pointing just below a large star labelled 'Mobitropolis'. "It hasn't been called Mobitropolis for a long time, though."
"Well, you certainly are a fair way from home, aren't you," Niles said, and he pointed to another dot more than halfway down the page, a tiny pinpoint labelled, in tiny letters, 'Desolation'.
"Whoa..." Sonic gaped, and compared the distances, "How long have I been on the road now? I don't even know."
The spring monsoons had been underway in the Great Forest when Sonic had left his home and set out north. He remembered the way that summer had made his days wandering the Crux Desert seem so much longer, and he was sure that the leaves on the trees had since lost their summer lustre and dulled to autumn. Beyond that, it was hard to tell. Was autumn still over the horizon, or were they so far into it that winter was in sight? The new year had certainly passed since he had been on the road, and the duration of his journey could have conceivably been anywhere from four to six months.
"They'll be worried about me at home," he said, "It's just as well that I sent a letter to Sally." Sonic had no idea that the letter he thought he had sent had been intercepted by Mecha Sonic and had never been delivered.
"Here's Sun Port and Storm Port, where Stratospherion docks," Niles said, pointing to two more tiny stars, "Sonic, where is it you say you've found these... rocks... of yours?"
"Do either of you have a pen?" Sonic inquired. Niles handed him a pencil. Sonic studied the map and began making marks. "The first was here in the desert, somewhere... the second was on Stratospherion, but I'll mark Sun Port... the third is supposed to be here, somewhere, and Cinos went off in that direction."
He put three 'X' marks on the map, and an arrow to show where his evil twin was headed - southeast, back over the Crux Desert and then to the subcontinent of Kirandul.
"That's odd... that's the direction we've just come from. I wonder why he'd go back there?"
"Hey, what's that?" Espio asked, and he pointed to a dotted ellipse that was printed onto the map. It was just off the coast of Westerica, vaguely where Sonic's arrow was pointing, and it was marked 'Annual Isle Last Seen Here'.
Niles looked at it and chuckled. "I'm surprised they even printed that," he said, "It's a silly story. Years ago, some delirious explorer reported that he crash landed on some island, after he was trying to get home from a long uneventful journey and his ship, he said, was attacked by a sea monster. He said there were a bunch of natives there - porcupines, for heavens sake! - who nursed him back to health and sent him home. Since then, there have been a couple of buffoons looking for fifteen minutes of fame who swear they, too, saw the island, and that it only 'appears' for a short time every year. It's bollocks, there isn't an island there and there never has been."
Sonic's interest piked. "Porcupines? You're kidding!"
"Yes," Niles replied, "I know. 'Tis ridiculous."
"No, no. I mean, the porcupines were the people whose religion Cinos has tapped into. They were the ones who practiced the Old Ways, back when the Ways weren't so Old. Cinos called them the 'mother-race of Mobius'. They're the ones who made the Runes."
"Were," Niles corrected, "Not a single porcupine has walked Mobius for thousands of years. They're all quite dead, I'm afraid."
"Cinos' guide is a porcupine," Sonic said, "Rasputan. Granted, Cinos found him in the antiverse, but the antiverse mirrors this world, and where there are porcupines over there, they're likely to be here as well. Although, how they've avoided detection I've no idea. Do you think Cinos believes the story of the Annual Isle?"
"I wouldn't have a clue, dear hedgehog, but if he does... well, he's only going to be disappointed."
Sonic nodded and looked back at the map. "Well, say I do mark it, anyway... these four points are very orderly, aren't they. If there's a pattern here, we might be able to figure out where the last rune is."
"Well I can't see a pattern," Niles snorted.
They stared at the map for a while, and then Espio shrugged and said "Four points make an arrow."
"Yeah," Sonic replied, "Yeah, you're right. But pointing in which direction?"
For a while, he tried connecting up the four points to make an arrow, but every way he tried it, the tail was wonky and it didn't point anywhere at all. After a while he sighed and threw the pencil at the map in frustration.
"This is stupid."
"Well let's not worry about it today," Espio suggested, "The day is wearing on, and we need some sleep. We'll find the rune tomorrow and figure out what to do then."

X

Night fell heavy over Desolation like an ebony cloak.

Zero was woken easily from his restless sleep. It was cold and he was naked. So were they all, but nobody else seemed to be affected, probably being that they had all been imprisoned for so long. He looked about, muttering curses to himself, to see who was making so much racket.
A steady clanking-knocking noise filled the watch-house, like somebody hitting wood with a hammer. Of the other four prisoners, only Kardot remained awake.
"Stop making that freakin' noise," he barked at her, knowing full well that it wasn't she who had been making it. The sound came from outside the prison. Kardot did not indulge him with a reply, she merely stood and watched the moon through their one window.
"I... don't... sleep," she had growled when Zero had earlier brought up the subject. And Zero didn't doubt it - after all, what did a robot need with sleep? Just another disadvantage to being a walking prime cut, a biological meatbag, he had decided. No machine was so inefficient as to need a full eight hours of recharge after merely sixteen hours of even basic operation. As a biological, his downtime was a full third of his life, and he despised it.
Clank... clank...
"Well, someone better stop," he said, gluggy with half-sleep, "Or else I'll stop them."
The sound revealed itself to be footsteps, like someone was wearing a large pair of metal shoes, and the perpetrator was only visible as a wide silhouette who entered the watch-house and stood a few feet from the bars.
"Day of the supervillains..." a voice whispered in the night.
And with that, the figure turned fully around and clanked away again. The footsteps grew quieter, quieter, and faded away into the night.

Sonic could not sleep either. His companions, too, slept just as soundly as he wished he could. Espio and Niles, either side of him, breathed lightly and rhythmically. Sonic stared at the ceiling and listened to it.
Desolation was not a pleasant town, and it made him uneasy. Perhaps it was in part an environmental issue, but Sonic's mood had been doing bizarre and frightening things since they had arrived here. Sometimes when Niles spoke in that pretentious accent, he just wanted to clip the fox across the jaw with the back of something heavy and blunt. Whenever Espio made some sarcastic crack that implied Sonic was being naive, he wanted to bend the chameleon's arm back until it went 'snap'. And from where did these disturbing thoughts originate? He was not used to them, not fun-loving easy-going Sonic the Hedgehog. These were not Sonic-thoughts. These were Cinos-thoughts.
Sonic closed his eyes and made a determined effort to go to sleep. Every time he found a comfortable position in which to lie, he would find that it became uncomfortable fairly quickly and he would need to turn again. It is difficult, as most know, to sleep when you are tossing and turning enough to stir up a tornado.
After some time, Sonic did indeed find rest. It wasn't sleep, though. He opened his eyes and found that the room was gone, the bed was gone, and he was lying under the stars.
How could this be? He stood up and looked about for some indication of where he was. The town of Desolation was nowhere in sight, but about five hundred metres from where he stood was the base of a single building; a construction unlike Sonic had ever seen.
"Where am I?" He said it aloud but it seemed only half-real. He wasn't quite here at all, but it wasn't quite a dream either. He sniffed the air and found that it had a dirty, smoggy quality that he associated only with the antiverse. In his efforts to sleep, he had either slid between worlds, or his mind had. In either event, he hadn't come all the way, and things took on the incorporeal feeling characteristic of dreams.
The building he saw was a massive tower, round, painted black and so tall that he wasn't sure whether he could see the top of it or whether what he saw was the point at which perspective's patience for distance ended.
The world was silent, here. The wind blew softly and calmly, and nothing grew close to this dark tower as though the building itself forbade life. He looked around in the dark for any other sign of settlement, but knew instinctively that there was none. This tower was the only building for miles, the only sign of civilisation for a very long stretch, and so was the little town on the other side of the coin, the aptly named settlement of Desolation. In fact, what Sonic thought he understood was that Desolation was here because the tower was here.
Every Rune has a Tower, he thought to himself, and the Tower marks the spot where the power of the Runes bolts the antiverse to the universe. It's like a great big interdimensional rivet. People in my world are drawn to the Tower, even though they can't see it, they feel it and they have to stay. Stay and build.
Sonic looked down from the quiet tower that stretched to the stars, and saw that Cinos was standing at its base. This shocked him at first, but it didn't take more than a moment to realise that some aspects of this little trip into the antiverse really were full-dream.
"Ssssonic," Cinos hissed, "Dear brother."
"Not afraid of you," Sonic told his evil twin, "I'm going to stop you and this madness, if it takes another year of my life, or two, or a dozen."
"Not gonna happen," Cinos said, "You'll fall for me, that's what'll happen. You'll fall for me, and we'll rule heaven and Mobius together, as brothers, as it should be."
"No," Sonic said, but not very convincingly.
Cinos laughed. The white tendril-head of a worm poked out of his mouth. "The Whitewyrm will take us both and make us one. Let's not fight anymore. Fall for me, Sonic."

Fall for me.

"What in blue blazers is going on out there, I say?" Niles screamed out the window.
Sonic snapped out of his dream-travels as quickly as if a bucket of cold water had been dumped on him. He moaned and sat up in bed. "What's the problem, Jeeves?"
Niles pulled his head back inside for a moment, "Can't you hear that? Some group of inconsiderate sods is out there playing their infernal rock music, it sounds like!"
Sonic could hear the sounds as well, now. Not like music at all, of any kind, but like somebody was beating pans and buckets with metal poles. Sonic pulled himself out of bed to look, but by the time he got to the window, they had stopped.
"Weird," Sonic said, squinting in the darkness, "If that happens every night, we ought to make sure we find the rune tomor-"
There was an explosion like an atomic bomb going off.
Espio fell out of bed with a shout and a heavy thump.
"Cripes!" Niles yelled, shielding his eyes from the blast of light, which disappeared in moments. Then there was more silence, but this time it lasted.
"What was that?" Espio demanded, and he looked like he was about to throw on a military uniform and stand to attention. His eyes were as wide as dishes.
"Beats the heck out of me!" Sonic exclaimed, "But it sounded like a jumbo jet just crashed into a bullet train!"
"Unlikely analogy," Niles commented, "But, knowing you, you're going right down there to investigate, I suppose?"
"Egh. In the morning," Sonic replied, "I need my beauty sleep."

XI

When morning did arrive, just about everyone in Desolation was investigating. In fact, Sonic was possibly the last out of bed.
"What's the ruckass about?" Espio asked, trying to see over the tops of the heads in the crowd.
"Well, someone's found something," Sonic replied, "Niles, you're tallest. What do you see?"
Niles was standing on the tips of his toes, peering into the gathering.
"A smouldering mess," He reported at last.
Orlando, the town's resident artist, was on the scene already, scribbling madly in his sketchbook as was to be expected.
"Hey kid," Sonic said, and squeezed in beside the young wolf. Indeed, the ground was strewn with twisted, black bits of charred metal. He could still feel the heat of some of the larger chunks, still smouldering.
"Sonic!" Orlando exclaimed, "You're just in time! Something's gone down, and the Justice Brigade are no doubt on their way to sort things out! Pow!"
"Uhm..." Sonic murmered, and he picked up a barely recognisable chunk of debris, "I think this was the Justice Brigade."
Orlando stopped scribbling instantly, mouth slightly slack and eyes narrowed. "Buh?"
Sonic held up the twisted object. Having been somebody who had dealt with robots for much of his career, Sonic was pretty sure he knew a robot's arm when he saw one. The ex-arm had been reduced to bent, blackened and smouldering wreckage. Sonic could still feel its warmth.
"It's true!" someone in the crowd exclaimed, "That's all that remains of Combaticon of the Justice Brigade!"
"It's not true!" Orlando shrieked, and he dropped the sketch pad as he brought his hands to his face. "The Justice Brigade are unstoppable!"
"Dude, they're just a bunch of robots," Sonic said, but instantly felt sorry for the youth. He fell to his knees before the remains of the town's protector, looking like a kid who had just discovered that Santa Claus didn't exist.
There was a loud commotion from the crowd, and Sonic saw that the other two robots had arrived. The tank-bot, Arsenal, and the other one, Rustbucket. The people of Desolation parted and allowed them to approach the remains of their former ally.
"Status report, Combaticon!" commanded Arsenal.
It was answered with only a resounding silence from the scorched debris. Sonic looked at the twisted metal and tried to recall the fight it had put up against Zero and his powerful machine suit. Hard to imagine, now.
"Dead!" Orlando exclaimed, "I can't believe it! Combaticon is dead!"
"SYNTAX ERROR," replied Rustbucket, and it was the first time Sonic had heard the walking garbage can speak. Its voice echoed with bad acoustic quality, tinny and monotone. It was exactly the kind of voice that one would expect from something that looked like a child's impression of a robot, a bulbous metal husk whose head was nothing but an upside-down bucket with a smiley-face painted on it.
"THE JUSTICE BRIGADE CANNOT BE DEFEATED," the robot insisted, reiterating Orlando's point.
"See for yourself," Sonic said, "This thing has battled its last villain."

XII

"So what's your grudge with Sonic the Hedgehog?" Axel Gear asked Zero. The black-spined hedgehog, who spent most of his time staring outside, turned to his fellow prisoner and cocked an eyebrow.
"What?"
Axel and Shred were sitting on the floor of the cell, rolling Shred's glass eye back and forth to each other idly. Axel smirked and shrugged.
"Blue guy, kinda short, runs fast-"
"Yes yes yes, Sonic," Zero snapped, "I know who Sonic is, what I don't know is how you know him."
Axel and Shred both laughed (Shred's laugh was little more than a serpentine hiss) as though Zero had just said something amusingly naive. It infuriated Zero no end.
"He made a dire mistake in crossing me," he growled, "It's his fault I'm like this. And his girlfriend too." He ran a finger along the ugly pink scar that ran down the right side of his face. "I don't care who he is, he will die by my hand."
"Oh, sure," Axel returned, "Dude, if grudges against Sonic the Hedgehog were kittens, then we'd never be able to kick them all."
"What does that mean?"
Shred picked up the glass eye and popped it back into his open socket. "It means, you overzealous bag of bolts and bones, that the delicious blue mammal poncing around out there is the bane of our collective existence. Heh...heheh... It don't serve us too well to seethe about it."
"We've all had our run-ins," Axel added, "We've all seen what he can do. Only thing you can really do is to let it go, man, just forget about him and try to get as far away from him as possible. That's what we did." He snorted. "We didn't get far enough, apparently."
Zero looked up at Kardot, frowning. Kardot frowned right back.
"You too?" the hedgehog asked.
"In a manner of speaking," she replied, "This is the first I've seen of him in this world, though. I was rather hoping he didn't exist here... he and his ugly echidna friend who got me killed."
Axel rolled his eyes and made a twirling gesture with his finger near his temple. Zero, however, flared his eyes and gasped a little.
"Yes, yes, yes!" he shrieked, "He had me destroyed too! How did you come back? How did you cheat it?" He narrowed his eyes. "The shaman?"
Kardot laughed, and it was the first time he had seen any expression other than the darkest contempt and bitterness on her face. By the looks on Axel's and Shred's faces, he could tell that it was a new thing for even them to witness.
"There are other worlds than these, babe," Kardot said, still amused, "If they're not infinite, then they may as well be. Like levels on a big tall tower that stretches on forever. There are many passages between these levels. Death is just one of them. But only if you're lucky." She smiled wider. "Tell me. Has that stupid cow Zephyer gone and gotten herself killed in this world yet? Because I would like that very much."
"Who?"
"Knuckles' ugly girlfriend... or perhaps she doesn't exist in this world. Very interesting."
"No, no!" Zero shook his head madly, "I don't care, I don't care! I want to know about Sonic! Sonic! Tell me his weaknesses! Tell me now!"
Kardot's smile faded and her face hardened. It again struck Zero that the android anteater was very easy on the eyes, despite the fact that the small-town prison's conditions had not been kind to her once painstakingly groomed features. Her physique was almost perfect-looking, her figure easily the calibre of a fashion supermodel. Whoever designed her was clearly an artist as well as a genius. Zero closed his eyes and frowned. Experiencing biological attraction was offensive to him, as far below him as the other animal acts he was reduced to in this suit of flesh and blood.
"Forget it, buddy," Axel said, "Move on. If we ever get outta here, your best bet is to set yourself up in a nice little town somewhere and have fun causing as much havoc as you can. Just try not to choose one with a bunch of superheroes."
"I can't do that," Zero snapped, "I can't. I-" He clenched his fist and ground his teeth together in what appeared to be a moment of serious emotional turmoil. Sweat dripped down his face from where it had begun to form on his brow. "I can't!" he roared, and Axel's smug visage slipped into one of vague concern, as he developed the impression that this may just be the most deranged and most dangerous individual out of the bunch of them.
"Tell me," Zero growled, "Just tell me that you wouldn't exact the bloodiest and most severe vengeance against that blue freak if you had the chance, if you really had the chance."
"Oh sure," Axel replied, "If I had the chance."
"Without hesitation," Shred added, "Heh...heheh...heheheheh."
"Instantly," Kardot said.
"You!" Zero exclaimed, and pointed to the fifth prisoner, the squirrel who called himself The Commando.
"Never heard of him," he replied, "Leave me out of this."
"There will be pain for Sonic," Zero snarled, and looked out the window again with his face contorted in spite. His right eye and the side of his lips twitched steadily. "There will be pain and death, and if I could bring him back just to kill him again, I would. I know of no other way to acheive release from this prison of anguish."
He grasped one of the bars with one trembling hand and lightly touched his temple with the other.

XIII

The day wore on in Desolation. Concern was building in Sonic's heart and gut, for despite he and his companions spending the day questioning the residents of this town, they were no closer to finding out the location of the Rune. Nobody seemed to have any idea what they were talking about, and it seemed they were wasting their time and going in circles.
What began to concern Espio, however, was the changing state of Sonic's mood as the morning progressed. The hedgehog was less chirpy, less easy-going and thoroughly less fun to be around. His contempt for the people of Desolation was growing as quickly as his mood was dropping, and he began cursing them as 'rednecks' and 'hicks' and 'halfwits'.
"Are you okay, Sonic?" he asked at one point, and the hedgehog looked at him as though confused.
"Well, not really," he replied, "I'm sick of this stupid town and all the stupid robot-infested towns, floating cities and lunatic cults." He lowered his voice and Espio thought he heard him mutter "I just want to go home."
"Hear hear," Niles responded, unsurprisingly.
The three wanderers took a much-deserved break at about one in the afternoon, in the cafe where they had rested the previous day. It was the only cafe in the small town, but the coffee was cheap and Espio thought that Sonic could use a caffeine hit, if nothing else.
"I skipped breakfast this morning, that's all it is," the hedgehog said, his spirits brightening slightly. "Man. You'd think somebody would be able to help us in this little town."
"Dear hedgehog, how do you know that this rock of yours is even here?" Niles asked.
Sonic shook his head. "I just know," he said, "You've got a darn good library in your head, Niles, the information is reliable, I just don't know how old it is. It's possible they've taken the stone somewhere else." He didn't mention having half-dreamed the tower in the antiverse, the dark construct that marked this town as the original resting place of the ancient rune. Some things were better left unsaid, especially when they might possibly make the speaker sound more than a little crazy. Espio never really believed that the antiverse existed, even when they had actually been there. Conveniently for him, he had been under the influence of a powerful drug at the time, and fobbed the entire experience off as a libria-induced halluscination. Curse his stubborn ignorance! How could someone be so level-headed and yet so stupid? He just wanted to grab the chameleon by the scruff of the neck and beat it into him until-
"Three capaccinos," announced the waitress flatly as she arrived with three cups of steaming coffee.
"Say, miss," Espio said as polite as possible, "Do you know if there is a library or anything in town?"
The waitress thought about it for a moment, sighing deeply as though to complain that answering questions was not in her job description. "In the town hall," she said at last, "It's not much of one."
"Thanks," Espio replied as she walked away. "Well, that's something."
Niles made an unpleasant choking sound and pushed his coffee cup away with the tips of his fingers. His lips were pursed and his brow furrowed.
"I say, must be the new Mud Blend," he said, "I'd ask for tea instead but I'm actually frightened for my wellbeing."
Sonic sipped his coffee. It tasted fine to him. "People aren't very friendly here, are they."
Espio grunted. "Hey, maybe they blame us for killing that robot they loved so much."
"Oh yeah, they're real devastated," Sonic replied, and pointed to a poster that was mounted in the cafe window. It was a full-colour sketch by Orlando Winterburn, depicting the robot Combaticon in a heroic pose, the text underneath reading 'JUSTICE BRIGADE COMICS: THE DEATH OF COMBATICON! THE BIGGEST ISSUE YET! COMING SOON!'
"I bet Orlando has another bestseller on his hands."
"I'm telling you," Niles insisted, "There is something wretchedly unnatural about these town. All these shady characters and whatnot-"
Sonic was about to raise his voice to Niles, to tell him that for the very last time he should stop spouting paranoid conspiracy theories that did nothing to further their cause, but he never got a chance to get past the first word.
The town was rocked by a massive explosion that rattled all the windows and overturned furniture. It was the same sound once again as had been heard the previous night, although this time it was surely closer. Sonic felt the heat of whatever it had been. He heard the waitress scream. Espio dropped his coffee and it drenched the table top.
"Whoa!" the chameleon exclaimed, "Sounds like there's more action going down!"
Sonic was already out of his seat. "Let's see if we can catch what's going on!"
"Oh yes," Niles said, unenthusiastically, "Let's."

XIV

The robot that the people of Desolation had named Arsenal was spectacularly more thoroughly disintegrated after its destruction than Combaticon had been, and even though Sonic jogged at a speed most people couldn't even sprint, he didn't arrive in time to witness it. The assailant had fled the scene once again, and the only resident to beat Sonic to the remains was the robot Rustbucket, whose emotion could not be gauged as he or it stared at the smoking crater with sightless, painted eyes.
"Wow... another one bites the dust," said Sonic, though his sympathy for the fates of robots was negligable.
Very little of the former tank-robot was recognisable for what it had been. The dirt road was blackened in an elliptical crater, with lumps of red-hot metal scrap in the bottom of it, sizzling. The robot's head was more or less intact, but the rest of the metal had effectively been deprocessed into utter oblivion, returned to the ground from whence it came.
The town quickly degenerated into panic mode when it was discovered that the second of their loyal mechanical protectors had been destroyed.
The sheriff's wide crocodilian grin was absent when he appeared on the scene, pushing his way through the crowd with recognised authority. He stood at the top of the crater, chewing gum slowly and peering into the smoking hole with some kind of contempt. He then shifted his gaze to Sonic with the same.
"You see what went on here?"
Sonic shook his head. "Sorry. But whoever did it can't have gotten far, surely."
"I'll say," replied the sheriff, and narrowed his eyes. "Seems you were the first on the scene, stranger. Come to think of it, seems that this all started happening right after you came to town."
"Oh come on, why don't you say it straight out?" Sonic asked, flustered and annoyed. It seemed his temper was a foot shorter since stepping into Desolation.
The sheriff didn't reply, he merely stared at Sonic a moment longer and then looked up to glare at Espio and Niles, who had just arrived.
"Ask him," Sonic insisted, pointing at Rustbucket, "He was here before me, he must have seen who did it. Even if he didn't, he can at least tell you it wasn't me."
"IT CANNOT BE ASCERTAINED," Rustbucket announced.
"Oh, right. Thanks, buddy."
The sheriff stepped away to take care of some other business, and Sonic's companions approached him so they could see into the hole.
"Dude," Espio said.
Niles frowned and kicked some of the soil with his shoe.
"I say. Glass."
"Whazzat?" Sonic asked.
"Glass, dear hedgehog, the soil has been fused into black glass. And the metal has been melted into a lump. I shudder to imagine the kind of heat that could manage this."
"I have to say," Espio added, "That I'm starting to get a bit worried about staying in this town much longer."
"Oh, come on you guys!" Sonic protested, "So somebody with a vendetta is knocking off members of the Justice Brigade. What are they gonna do to us? Why would they? Once we find this rune we won't have to stick around for long, anyway."
"Hey, I was just saying-"
"Yeah, you were just whinging," Sonic cut in. "Have a bit of faith in me for once, okay? That fool sheriff already thinks I'm the one causing all of this, I don't need you on my back too."
"Okay. Whatever." Espio crossed his arms and kicked at the dirt.

XV

The sheriff and the robot Rustbucket, the last surviving member of the Justice Brigade, entered the watch-house and looked over the prisoners as one might look over a family of cockroaches in the kitchen sink.
"All right, you scum," the sheriff exclaimed, "Time to extract some answers."
"The cowboy asserts his authority!" Axel gear shouted from the other side of the bars, "Yee-haaaw! I didn't think you had a real job, pardner, not with these robots running the show. Coulda sworn that star was made of aluminium foil."
"Shut up!" the sheriff snapped.
Shred chuckled softly to himself with that raspy, halted laugh. Zero, cross-legged on the floor, looked up darkly and without amusement. He looked the robot in what passed for its eyes, and had no way of telling whether it had the ability to look back into his.
"Now," the sheriff continued, "There's trouble happening in my town. Big trouble. And I have the distinct impression that you scum have something to do with it."
"Barking up the wrong tree," hissed The Commando.
"You shut up, you're the worst, if anybody here is behind this, it's likely to be you." The sheriff frowned and dipped a hand into his pocket. He brought out a large set of archaeic keys on a ring. "Here's what I propose. The first one who spills his... or her... guts about this gets a significantly reduced sentence."
Rustbucket's head swivelled so that he seemed to stare at that set of keys. Although the robot had no readable expression, Zero looked at the bulbous mechanical regulator and found that he suddenly understood everything.

"The town of Desolation, population six hundred and seven. Yet a comfortable, homely town it is not. For Desolation is a Black Spot, a magnet for the criminal elements. All manner of scum and villainy from the world over makes its way here, attracted to the town as ants are to sugar. A black town - and a black day. For today evil threatens to prevail. The Justice Brigade, three heroic machines whose only job is to protect Desolation from its onslaught of villainy, have been all but defeated by a force unknown. Combaticon and Arsenal, champions of justice, brutally destroyed. The fate of the town now rests in the hands of Rustbucket, the one surviving member of the Justice Brigade, the once powerful team of valiant robots created by the kindly and virtuous Professor-"
Orlando Winterburn sat with his sketch-pad out in front of him, writing dialogue for his next comic adventure. He knew that it would, in all probability, be his last.
"A crying shame," he said, "Now what am I going to do with my time?"
"Perhaps you should find yourself a respectable profession," Niles suggested, but Espio poked him hard in the ribs.
The three wandering adventurers had found Orlando in the cafe after the crowd had dissipated. The wolf was depressed, but appeared more upset about the impending death of his livelihood than by this new, strange and frightening threat to the town.
Sonic was still steamed up about being accused by the sheriff, and things had been icy between himself and his companions. But as irritated as Espio was, he was every bit as concerned. He could tell that Niles' sentiments were similar.
"Hey kid," Sonic said, "I know I've already asked you this, but we're starting to get desperate. Are you sure you've never heard anything about a special rock in town, a stone, a rune, that has a special significance to it?"
"Huh," Orlando replied, but his attention was almost entirely focused on the task in front of him. "I dunno. I seem to remember something like that here years ago, but that was before the Justice Brigade. Some kind of research centre was here... they shut down because of all the crime. That's why the Professor built the Justice Brigade... Oh look, you've made me lose my concentration."
"Fine," Sonic snapped, "I'll leave you to it, then. I'm going to find this library."
Sonic left the cafe in a huff, unimpressed by the teenager's stories of heroes and villains. He thought them childish and pointless, but the irony was strong in this impression - for had he taken more of an interest in Orlando's tale, he would have been alerted much sooner as to the real nature of the trouble afoot in the town of Desolation. Had he known these things, he may even have seen it coming. As it happened, it took all of them by surprise.
Orlando put his head down and continued composing his narration:
"The fate of the town now rests in the hands of Rustbucket, the one surviving member of the Justice Brigade, the once powerful team of valiant robots created by the kindly and virtuous Professor Ivo Robotnik..."

Rustbucket stared at the sheriff's keys with hungry interest while the crocodile dangled them in front of the imprisoned criminals.
"I know you want to get out of here," the sheriff said, "You've all been here a long time. The question is how badly you want this."
The robot took a step closer to the sheriff, who didn't even notice, but Zero Tolerance grabbed a hold of the bars and gawked unblinking, with equal parts fascination and disbelief.
"Day of the Supervillains," Rustbucket whispered, and only now did the sheriff turn his head, his eyebrow cocked and eyes slightly glazed in confusion.
"What did you-"
Rustbucket glocked the sheriff across the jaw with one heavy metal fist, hard enough to knock the crocodile unconscious before he even hit the floor. The keys flew upward into the open air, clinking against themselves quietly, and were caught by the other hand of the attacking robot. There he stood, keys in one hand, sheriff at his feet, painted grin smiling at nothing and for nobody, although to Zero it no longer appeared to be a happy grin so much as a grin of absolute, irreversable and unrestrained insanity.
"The tides have turned," the hedgehog rasped, "There is a God. My stars, there is a God, and He is the God of Vengeance."
"What just happened?" Axel asked, "Can somebody explain this to me?"
Rustbucket took two hulking, loud steps towards the prison, his movements were primitive and stilted, like a robot in an old-time science fiction film.
"THE JUSTICE BRIGADE HAS BEEN DELETED," the robot stated, in a hollow, oily voice.
Shred perked up, staring at the robot with his good eye. Zero looked around and saw that the attention of all the prisoners was undivided. Even Kardot was attentive, though inexpressive.
"THEY SAY THERE IS NO MORE CRIME."
"Well, that's just fine and dandy," Shred replied, "But-"
"NO! IT! ISN'T!," Rustbucket screeched, and now his voice sounded like rusty gears that badly needed to be greased, "ALL OF A SUDDEN THIS TOWN HAS TURNED INTO A HAPPY-HAPPY LAND! CRIME NEEDS GOOD AND GOOD NEEDS CRIME AND NO CRIME EQUALS CHAOS WITHIN ORDER!"
The robot raised the keys to the lock of the prison door.
"THE DAY OF THE SUPERVILLAINS IS AT HAND!" he screeched from a location behind his painted, unmoving lips.
Zero Tolerance clasped his hands together, his heart beating like a kettle drum, spittle flying from his mouth from each rasping breath. The sound of the keys clicking inside the lock sounded like Sonic the Hedgehog's death rattle.

XVI

Niles was ecstatic, beside himself with glee, even though there weren't many books in what this town passed as its library. Three shelves stood over him, around a single small table with four chairs, and a desk with a librarian, who just glimpsed up at him and down again at her book.
Sonic and Espio entered a few seconds afterwards, Espio panting softly
"Hey Niles, how come you bolted like that?" the chameleon asked.
Niles turned to them. "Books!" he announced, "Reading material! Oh, what joy, after all this time tramping through the desert, over the hill and vale, finally something to-"
"Shhh," the librarian hushed, "This is a library. Please be quiet."
"Ohh, how lovely," the fox replied, as he clasped his hands together over his heart.
"Excuse me," Sonic asked, "But do you know where we might find some information on porcupines?"
"Sure," the librarian replied, and she pointed vaguely over towards the furthest shelf on the right of her, "There used to be a really big porcupine research setup here, but they lost interest after the artifact was stolen. They never did interpret that symbol, either. Rotten shame."
"Hey, what?" Sonic asked, his eyes widening, "What did you say? Stolen?"
"Yep."
"Oh no! How long ago?"
"I couldn't say. A year and a half, perhaps. After the professor arrived, but before he built the Justice Brigade." It seemed that the residents of this town all measured time relative to the various deeds of this professor and his crimefighting robots.
Sonic slapped his forehead and groaned. "What a waste of time, we've lost another one!"
"Hang on Sonic, that's a good thing!" Espio replied, "If we can't find it, surely Cinos won't be able to either!"
"Yeah, unless it's he who stole it."
"That can't be true, you've been following him since he set off."
Sonic shook his head, "Only since he set off from the Great Forest. He's been planning this for a while, now, he could have taken it before I even knew he was up to something."
"Shhhh," the librarian hushed.
"Well, what now?" Niles asked, keeping his voice down.
Sonic threw his arms up in the air. His expression betrayed a bizarre, anguished set of emotions that neither of his companions could read, like a bunch of emotions tried to march through a doorframe at once and got stuck there. "Why should I always be the one who has to say what we do and what we don't do? Why do I have to be in charge of the situation every single time some psychopath tries to take over the world? Did I ask for this burden? Did I ask to be the only person who does the right thing by people, just because I can run really really fast? No way! Heck, you can take my speed! I don't want it anymore!"
With that outburst, the hedgehog spun around and stormed out of the building.
"What was that all about?" Niles asked, after a moment of uncomfortable silence.
Espio shook his head. "You were right," he said, "There's something going on here, more than this just being a depressing place. It's affecting us all, and it's gonna get worse unless we figure it out."

XVII

"Take care of Amy," Kethriel said.
The Shambler, Robotnik's deadly assassin prototype, sank its claws into Kethriel's leg and tore it apart as the machine climbed.
"My sister, take care of her. She doesn't have anybody. Okay? Tell her I love her."
But was it really a robot down there, its orange eyes aflame like the core of the sun? It was dark down there, and Sonic's vision was distorted with tears. All that he could really see was the silhouette of something that came vaguely in the shape of a hedgehog. In his mind's eye he looked down and saw Cinos climbing his friend's leg and ripping it up. His evil twin cackled and snarled as he dangled over the edge of oblivion, the Whitewyrm coiling around his body in intimate harmony. He looked up at Sonic and held out his hand, laughing amidst Kethriel's cries.
"How about a hand, dear brother? Take my hand, Sonic. Your friends are all going to die, you're too useless to stop it, you might as well contribute instead. You'll see. You'll fall for me, you'll come around. It's inevitable."
"Listen Sonic," Kethriel said, "You're the best thing that's ever happened to the Freedom Fighters, I know it. Sally knows it. You- you're going to win this for us."
Sonic burst into tears. "Keth, what if I can't? What if I can't? What if I can't?"

The blue hedgehog ran through the town, almost crying, almost screaming, almost collapsing into the dirt and pulling his spines out by their roots. Whenever he dared open his eyes, he saw Cinos standing before him, grinning and holding up the runes he sought to collect, and which slowly but surely he was collecting.
"You can't win, Sonic," Cinos told him, "I have the advantage and I will beat you every time. Don't even try."
Sonic fell to his knees and hid his face behind his hands. This was it, this was some kind of nervous breakdown, an emotional collapse. Years of holding the world upon his shoulders had caught up with him and he had lost his sanity, right here in the middle of nowhere, in search of a rock so well hidden in this town of rocks that he might well still be looking for it when Cinos ascends to the throne of God and knocks the deity off his own pedestal, if that was indeed his ultimate ability.
He felt as though some demon had taken over his mind. He was a mess of dark thoughts and incapacitating emotions. Before his eyes he witnessed a cinematic rerun of his every failure, culminating in the violent demise of his onetime friend and mentor Kethriel Rosethorne, who never should have died.
Culminating, catastrophically, in the fall of Mobitropolis to the machinations of Ivo Robotnik.
"I only delay the inevitable," Sonic said to himself, "I'm a pest, not a hero. When have I ever really fought a successful fight?"
All things tended toward the path of least resistance in this world, and that path was the way of evil. It was more difficult to be virtuous than conniving, easier to succumb to lust and vengeance than to take control of one's emotions and strive for something more. Similarly, a virtuous life was always doomed to failure, for destruction would always be the easier way. Mobitropolis had taken thousands of years for noble mobians to build, and less than an hour for a single crooked mind to destroy. What was this if not the same situation on a larger scale? How could anyone ever hope for a different result?
Cinos had beaten Sonic every single time the two of them had gone head to head, and with this knowledge in his mind and in his heart, and with his motivation in a puddle around his feet, Sonic gave in to the misery of complete impotance.

XVIII

"'The Rune of Dark Thoughts', it was called," Espio said. He and Niles sat before an open book in the Desolation town library. "Oh my... this is pretty bad."
As it turned out, Desolation had once been the hub of porcupine-related research across all of Mobius. Famous researchers (None of whom Espio had ever heard; All of whom Niles had) from all over the world had come here and written books. The one that lay open before them now was a textbook written by a big-time archaeologist named R. Carrion, documenting the study of the artifact they had dug up here in Desolation - one of the only physical artifacts that had ever been found of the long-dead porcupine civilisation, and an object widely regarded to have been somehow cursed.
The Rune of Dark Thoughts. An almost ordinary-looking stone, flattened on one side and marked with an untranslatable symbol - three strokes, two straight and the third waved - an image that some reported hurt to look at it. The stone was found by a farmer who dug it up from its resting place forty feet below the ground, while he was digging a hole for a well. It was more than dumb luck that he found the unique object among so many ordinary rocks; he claimed he was drawn to it, that some unnatural force compelled him to find it.
One week afterward, he committed suicide by throwing himself down the very same well.
It was the first of many tragedies to become associated with the ancient artifact. In the few years that followed, there were seven suicides in Desolation, all of them people who had been closely associated with the Rune, four of them important researchers. Many of the people who worked with the stone complained of nightmares, depression and stress. There were marriage breakups, mental illnesses and even fistfights among the research team.
The town itself suffered from the stone's discovery, as well. It was only a year after its excavation that Desolation's economy began to dry up. Surprisingly, it had once been a rather large town, and despite the publicity generated by the porcupinian research industry, which should have put Desolation through an economic boom, it nevertheless went into a great depression and shrivelled into something that might eventually become a ghost town. Crime and unemployment shot up to uncanny levels, and lowlifes from all over Mobius began to show up in town as though they were called there by some irresistable persuasion. The kinds of career miscreants to which Orlando Winterburn would lovingly refer as villains for his comic series, eccentric and overzealous criminals with all sorts of quirks and trademarks, all seemed to wind up in Desolation eventually. It was as though this small town were a beacon that only the rogues of Mobius could clearly see.
"That's the answer," Espio said, "These Runes... there's something about them that affects the minds of the people in their proximity. I'd bet that's why everywhere we've found one of these things, the people around them have been like in the thrall of some kind of spell."
Niles shook his head. "My dear lizard, your assertion is based on fallacious reasoning. I believe you have misinterpreted cause and effect. The people of Stratosphereon, for example, were corrupted by a particular drug, not by any magic stone."
"But cause and effect are tricky," Espio replied, "Every cause is really just the effect of another cause. You have to wonder whether a system of government like in the City of Clouds would even have emerged if not for the Rune in the middle of it all. The people who come here aren't crooked because of the stone, either, they're already criminals. My people would probably still be deeply religious even if there wasn't a Rune where they settled. The point is that these things all come together somehow, and that it's more than a coincidence. It's like these stones pick out a particular emotion in people, an emotion that's already there, and just stir it into a frenzy, radiate it until it becomes cancerous. That's what's happening to Sonic right now, his doubts and his anger, his dark thoughts, are turning malignant. And can't you feel it, too? Don't you feel like your fuse has shortened since you've been here? I do. If it was just me, I would think it's just a residual effect from the libria treatment, but it's not just me. It's this whole place, this whole town. And you know what else it means? The Rune hasn't been stolen at all, just hidden. It's still here, somewhere."
"I find it all very difficult to believe," Niles admitted.
Espio let out an uneasy laugh. "Believe me, I know. I'm the most skeptical guy in the world. I tell you, though, I've seen things over the past few months that have rocked my world, kept me awake nights. I mean... did he do that... thing to you? That thing with his... mind?"
Niles appeared uncomfortable, but said nothing.
"In any event," Espio said, "I don't know what this is. If there's a rational explanation under all of this, then so be it. If there's not and I'm just going crazy... well, that's fine too, it's something. Right now, though, we have to find Sonic and wrench him back into a normal state of mind, somehow. Before it's too late."
Even as he said this, he was aware of a significant clamour outside the small library, in the town hall. It sounded like riotous laughter, though with a sinister and malevolent edge. Espio and Niles turned their attention wordlessly to the doorway that led out to the main hall, both of them already realising that the situation just became much more complicated.

XIX

The prisoners of Desolation's Justice Brigade - and one of its members - stormed the town hall with all the rambunctiousness of a gang of youths up to mischief, but it was clear that they had much more than mischief on their minds. Most of them had been reunited with weaponry and other items which had been taken from them upon their arrest; The Commando cradled in his arms a ridiculously large chain-gun, its bullets formed chains that were flung over both his shoulders. He wore a helmet with a telescopic sight over one eye, and huge black metal boots that strapped to his shins and announced his arrival for yards with every step. Axel Gear wore a full set of dark violet medieval-style armour, complete with a visor that obscured his eyes. A rocket jetpack was attached to the back of it in a bizarre meeting between history and the future. A longsword was holstered on his hip.
Zero Tolerance was most happy having been reunited with the robotic suit he had so lovingly and painstakingly pieced together over the years. He had laughed heartily when he flipped the switches of its motherboard and heard the various components powering up, one by one.
They had strung up the sheriff and dragged him from the watch-house to the town hall in a humiliating display of vengeance, cackling and whooping all the way. Townsfolk stayed inside their homes and observed from the windows, terrified. Never had so many notorious rogues been free in Desolation at once, but that was not the most frightening fact. What chilled most people right to the bone was that the Justice Brigade would not fight for them this time. Two were dead, and in a heartbreaking act of betrayal, the third seemed to be working with the enemy. This was possibly the darkest day that this town had ever known.
Shred the Raptor wore the sheriff's hat upon his head, the silver star badge pinned onto it, and led the procession of villainy across the town's square to its centre. The statue of the Justice Brigade stood tall and proud, and each of the rogues took turns laughing and sneering at it. The Commando reached behind his back and withdrew a rocket launcher he carried like a sling, resting it on his shoulder with a satisfied hiss.
"There's a new order in this town!" he announced, and fired a missile at the statue. A fiery, ground-shaking, window-rattling explosion ripped through the town square, and the noble statue with its fountains and plaques blew apart, raining marble and flames all around. The six rogues cheered and barked laughter.
"Sexy," commented Kardot, idly tendering a medium-sized pistol with her long, sharp-nailed fingers. Zero sneaked a glance at her as she watched the flames in thrall, not sure whether he had really hoped to find that she was referring to him. Kardot was entanced by the explosion, as though it had awakened a lust for destruction deep in her semi-artificial chassis that had long lay dormant and extinguished.
"That's right," he whispered, "That's what it's like to rediscover your calling as a machine of war. How badly I have missed that."
"To the town hall, ladies and gentlemen!" Axel proclaimed, and he held his sword high like a military commander of old, "Time to introduce this town to the new reign of the Injustice Brigade!"
"Hear hear!" Shred hissed, "Hah! Hahahahah!"
And they had gone. Banded together, they dragged the sheriff to the steps of the hall and tied him to a pillar, while The Commando blew the main doors off their hinges with another rocket attack. The few staff inside the building fled in panic, and the rogues had only to step inside to claim the hall and the town for themselves.
"MISSION: COMPLETE!" Rustbucket screeched, his unbearably loud and oily voice echoing through the hall.
Woe and behold, for the tide had indeed turned for the worse in the black spot town of Desolation.

XX

Sonic's heart was a black spot all of its own. The hedgehog sat alone in his hired room with his head in his hands. Only once before had he known depression like this, so intense, so crippling and heavy - that had been the day he had learned the truth about his creation at the hands of Dr Robotnik, a genetic anomoly with no purpose but to be a biological blueprint for a robot built to think it was alive. This hadn't been a cause for depression for Sonic for a long time, and the robot in question was very recently deceased, but the root of the difficulty was the same; Uselessness.
This time, however, it was everything that Sonic stood for that was held to question. In their last confrontation, Cinos had told him that, in the end, evil would always win, because evil had less to lose. Evil had nothing to fear, and that made it strong. Evil loved nothing, and was devoid of the tactical weakness of love. When two opponents were matched in every other respect, it was the one with less moral concern who would reign victorious. It's easier to merely protect oneself than to protect anything else.
And how did this theory hold up to scrutiny? How did it test against Sonic's experiences? In the short term, Sonic was used to winning. He was strong, powerful, agile. He could take anything that was thrown at him, had beaten every opponent he had faced. But had this saved Mobitropolis from one evil mind bent only on destruction?
Sonic was quickly beginning to realise that what he dealt was only a parody of justice, a satirical and self-defeating crusade that failed to truly achieve any real end - Sonic won every battle but lost every war.
He looked out the window and was unsurprised that there was nothing happening in Desolation. He wondered if it might not suit him to settle down and live in a town like this. Not this exact town, where comic-book adventures seemed to entertain the locals on frequent occasions, but one where he could disappear and make his life anew, super speed or none.
"Fate is a joke," he said aloud, "If there is a God, then He must be having one big hearty laugh, looking down on us like this. Giving His subjects the ability to choose good from evil, then making evil more powerful. Hah."
There was a knock on the door, and Sonic barely had the energy to shout that it was open.
The handle turned slowly, and the door creaked open just a little. A familiar teenage wolf poked his head through and looked at Sonic with an expression of exasperation.
"Sonic, you gotta come!"
"What is it?" Sonic asked, uninterested.
"The supervillains!" Orlando replied, "They've taken over the town! It's terrible! And Rustbucket... He seems to be working with them!" He looked both ways, as though there might be spies around, then whispered, "I think Rustbucket killed the rest of the Justice Brigade."
"I don't care," Sonic mumbled.
"Quick! If you act now you might be able to- What did you say?"
"I said I don't... care."
Orlando looked as though he had been struck. "What do you mean? You're the closest thing we have to a superhero, now that the Justice Brigade are gone! You have to do something!"
"Oh, get your head out of your comic books!" Sonic snapped, "There's no such thing as superheroes. I'm just a hedgehog, and your Justice Brigade were just a bunch of stupid robots. Those people out there are just people. They wear armour and masks and like hurting people, but they're not supervillains and there's no reason to believe that they somehow have to be defeated just because they're bad. That's naive."
"But- but- the Justice Brigade said that justice always prevails!"
Sonic snorted. "Oh, yeah. And that attitude helped them out a whole lot, didn't it."
Orlando for a moment looked like he might cry. His eyes receded into their sockets, veiled by a wall of tears. But he blinked them away and frowned.
"I thought you were a hero," he spat, and promptly left the room, slamming the door behind him.
"They all do, kid," Sonic said glumly, "They all do."

XXI

The supervillains of Desolation made the most of their freedom by trashing the town hall and making it into their own private party house. Axel Gear took about sixteen seconds to locate alcohol, and the other flesh-and-blood members of the party were quite happy about this.
Zero wasn't quite sure. He opened a bottle of bourbon and sniffed it, then scrunched his face up and made an unimpressed choking sound.
"You actually ingest this stuff?" he asked.
"No, you swallow it," Axel replied, "What's wrong with you? Haven't you ever had a drink before?"
Zero raised the bottle to his mouth and took a small swig.
"How does it taste?" the opossom asked, amused.
"Like fuel," Zero replied, frowning.
Axel laughed and took the bottle from him. "I'll mix it with some cola for you, it'll go down better. We need ice, too. Oh man, how long has it been since my last drink?"
He turned to look for the kitchen, and saw The Commando, readily smashing everything in sight with an unhealthy enthusiasm for destruction.
"Hey there!" Axel exclaimed, "Settle down, you're going to bring the whole place down on our heads. What's wrong with you?"
"I hate this town," the squirrel replied, and to punctuate the sentiment he smashed a sculpture against the floor. "You have no idea how much. These idiot people and their stupid robots made things bad for me, and they're not so innocent, either. They used me as a scapegoat, spread lies about me so their little comic book would sell better. I never killed their beloved Professor, either. After he built the Justice Brigade he nicked off and left the town alone, in search of these emeralds he was always looking for. He didn't care about this town, not a bit." He looked at Rustbucket and narrowed his eyes. "Matter of fact, I'm not at all surprised that his robots went bad. I'm even inclined to think that's what they were supposed to do. Everyone loved him so much, but he' a bad egg, that Professor. I get the feeling he's worse than any of us. Now that's irony."
Rustbucket clunked around the town hall with none of the vigour of the others. It was as close to a peacock-strut as he could manage, but looked much more like a penguin-waddle, if the penguin was wearing pants made of lead. He observed the scenery with his painted-on grin.
"AT LAST THIS TOWN IS ALL MINE OH THE JOYNESS!" the robot screeched.
"He's got an ego on him, that droid," The Commando gruffed, "Gonna talk itself to extinction at the end of my gun real soon, just you wait."
At this moment, Shred the Raptor came barreling through a door at the back of the hall, and all of his teeth were showing in a grin that could scare children to death.
"Check out what I found!" he exclaimed, "Fresh meat! They were trying to get out a back window. I'm going to roast them for my dinner. Heheh."
In the raptor's claws was a rope, and it was tied around the necks of a glum-looking chameleon and a terrified fox. Zero recognised the captives immediately, and his two mechanical claw-arms snaked out from the back of his robot suit, seeming almost to dance in the air like the tails of two excited animals.
"Well, well, well. The friends of Sonic the Hedgehog. Now this is a lucky break."
"Where's the kitchen?" Shred asked.
"Oh, there'll be no cooking of these two tonight," Zero said, and with one thick rubber-gloved hand he grabbed Espio by the jaw hard enough to leave a mark. "They're our guests of honour. They're going to help us with our hedgehog problem." He pulled his face close to the chameleon's, and smiled. "I'm going to kill your friend Sonic," he said, "Just like I promised. I will pull out his spines and use them to poke out his eyes. This is one robot he's never going to get the better of."
"You're not a rob-" Espio began, but in a sudden spike of fury, Zero punched him in the side of the head before he could even finish the word, and the chameleon fell over sideways.
"Loosen up," Axel suggested, and handed the black hedgehog a glass of bourbon and cola with ice cubes floating on top. Zero grabbed it without taking his eyes off the fallen chameleon, swallowed it in three gulps and then crushed the glass in his hand.
"I think I'll kill Sonic's friends while he's still alive," he said, "I want to show him what pain really is. I want him to suffer like he's never suffered before. I want him to be crying when he dies."
The day wore on into afternoon and then into night. The newly freed villains of Desolation partied loudly and enthusiastically, gorging themselves on food and drink denied to them for so long, digging out important-looking documents and defiling them in creative ways, and otherwise causing irrevocable damage to the symbols of justice and freedom that the people of this town regarded so highly.
More dignified was Kardot, who stood out of the way and observed the behaviour with an eye of contempt.
"Boys will be boys," she muttered, "Biologicals will be biologicals. They have no idea what idiots they are making of themselves." She turned to Rustbucket, who stood sentient beside her. "Not like you and I, honey." She kicked over a half-full bottle of dark spirits, and watched idly as it dribbled out onto the tiled floor.
Zero sat in a dark corner, brooding. His head lolled one way, then the other, his eyelids drooping. He raised a glass of bourbon to his mouth (almost missing the target) and sipped at it, puckering his lips at the burning-sweet taste of it. He placed it on the ground and tried to pick himself up, but he tittered to the side and kicked the glass over, its contents splashing onto the tiles and down the wall. Standing and trying to walk, he stumbled and leaned against the wall for support.
"Hey, whoa!" Axel laughed, surly, and stumbled his way over to the struggling hedgehog, "Need a hand there, Tipsy McStagger? I think you need another drink!"
Zero turned around lightening-quick, his mechanical arms rising above his shoulders like monoliths, and launched himself at the drunken opossum. One of the robot arms took Axel around the neck, and the other held itself inches from his face with a bladed attachment swinging back and forth threateningly. Axel was too surprised to do anything but cry out and flail his arms.
"What have you done to me?" Zero demanded, and his voice betrayed his heavy state of intoxication, his words running into each other and coming out flat and barely coherent. "You've poisoned me. My reflexes are shot, my muscles are lazy and sedated, my mind is racing so that I can't focus on a single thought. I- I can't even see properly, I'm shutting down, I'm going to die. I'll kill you first."
"You're wasted!" Axel shrieked, watching the blade that threatened to take off his head, "You're plastered! Toasted! Off your face! You've had a little too much, man, come on!"
Zero squinted one eye closed so hard that the other one nearly threatened to pop out, and the mechanical arms lost their grip on their victim and swayed back and forth like two cobras. Whatever means that Zero used to control them had also been affected by his drunkenness, and he had lost the concentration necessary to make them work properly.
"I hate this flessssssh body," he slurred, "This tipsy, uncoordinated-" He gulped, and then stumbled outside to be sick.
Shred the Raptor laughed so hard that he fell over, and his false eye popped out and bounced away. The red glass ball, with its reptilian slit-pupil embedded in its center, rolled to a stop against Espio's foot, and the chameleon picked it up and observed it with obvious disgust.
"Do you think we could get away if we made a run for it?" Niles asked, careful to speak softly enough so as not to be heard. Some of their enemies were still sober, and he didn't trust the sadistic glint in that anteater girl's eyes.
"I think our chances are pretty slim," Espio replied. "We probably have a better chance of survival if we stay put, anyway. That black hedgehog seems to want us alive to use against Sonic. I don't want to make anyone angry enough to forgo their plan. I just hope that Sonic can get the better of all these guys."
"I do believe a bigger concern is whether Sonic will come around from this episode of his," Niles replied.
Espio shook his head. "He will," he said, but he didn't look so sure. "He has to."

XXII

Zero Tolerance opened his eyes late the next morning. They were dry and bloodshot, and he felt mildly fevered. His stomach was flipping somersaults while a team of council workers conducted roadwork in the center of his skull.
"What... is... wrong... with... me..."
"Hey, wakey wakey," Axel called from somewhere in the swirling void of the world. "Got a bit blotto last night, didn't you? At least now we know why they call you Zero Tolerance."
"My head-" Zero pawed at the scar on his face, suddenly sure that his injury had cracked open again, as this was the worst pain he had felt since Amy Rose had broken his skull with a mallet. His hand was still thickly gloved and he felt nothing, but at least it came away without blood.
"It's called a hangover," Axel said, and Zero managed to put the world back into focus. He was feeling seedy and not at all well. Axel stood over him with his hair in a mess and his own eyes bloodshot, drinking milk out of the carton. Shred lay a few feet away, fast asleep.
"I am never partaking in that activity again for as long as I live," the hedgehog said.
"Sure," Axel replied, "That's what you say this morning. Tonight you'll be reaching for the grog again, trust me."
"That makes no sense."
The opossum shrugged. "You're right," and walked off. With a weak grunt, Zero picked himself up (his armour felt as though it weighed a thousand tons) and squinted in the late morning light.
Axel returned a few moments later with two glasses of red fizzing liquid. He handed one to Zero and drank the other in two gulps.
"What's this?" Zero asked.
"Medication. Specially formulated for those big nights on the town. Drink this, and plenty of water, and you'll feel just fine in an hour or so.
Zero drank it. It tasted sour and vile. He threw the empty glass over his shoulder so that it smashed against the wall.
"Where are the droids?"
Kardot spoke from the dark corner where she had been standing motionless. "I will assume for now that you weren't just referring to me, because anybody who calls me a droid generally has more than a hangover to worry about."
"The tin can with the clown face is out back somewhere," Axel added, "Or maybe he's gone, or broken. Who cares?"
"All right, soldiers!" came the booming voice of The Commando, and the main doors to the town hall were thrown open. Zero and Axel cringed in the sunlight, and the khaki-clad squirrel was sharply silhouetted against the morning sky. "Eleven hundred hours, you scum! Stand to attention!"
Shred was awake, now, squinting and hissing, although it was common knowledge that it was better to let sleeping velociraptors lie.
"Close those doors!" Axel demanded.
"Negative!" The Commando replied, "The time for laziness and drunken tomfoolery has passed! Who do you think had to guard you fools all night while you were passed out like sitting ducks? As you amatuers clearly do not have the makings of true criminal masterminds, it is left to me to take the reins of this operation! Now stand to attention!"
"I don't like being pushed around, honey," Kardot said darkly.
"Well, you're just going to have to live with that. An army needs a commander, soldier, and I have more experience than the rest of you in these matters."
"GOOD MORNING FRIENDS AND EVILDOERS!" came the shrieking, tin-muffled voice of Rustbucket, and the robot came clanking into the middle of the standoff as though nothing was amiss.
"And this," The Commando continued, grinning, "This is the first of our problems. This walking watering-can, this bulbous catastrophe of badly-assembled junkyard shrapnel who helped put each and every one of us behind bars. Who decided that this thing should be free to walk among us as our equal? It's an insult of the most degrading kind."
Behind Rustbucket's hull came a series of clicks and whirrs, apparently the sounds of complex calculation from the depths of wherever the robot's mind was truly situated. Finally there was a happy bell chime, and Rustbucket spoke. "YOUR TONE HAS BEEN RATED: UNACCEPTABLE."
"And what are you going to do about it?" The Commando asked, "Just a pile of weak, rusting scrap that I wouldn't even give to a child to play with, surrounded by some of the most notorious criminals on the face of Mobius. I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like a bit of target practice." He reached behind his back and drew a large semi-automatic firearm.
"YOU WILL CEASE THE FOLLOWING ACTIVITIES:" Rustbucket announced, and proceeded to list The Commando's infractions, "VERBAL INTIMIDATION. THREATENING USE OF A FIREARM. DISRESPECT OF AUTHORITY. LITTERING." Zero was standing quite near the robot, and noticed with some interest that Rustbucket was radiating a lot of warmth. His metal hull seemed to be heating up to an alarming extent.
"What's the matter?" The Commando asked, and took a step forward, a twinkle in his eye and an animal grin on his face, "The Justice Brigade aren't around to back you up this time, are they? You're all alone, surrounded by enemies, all armed to the teeth. And what are you going to do? Rust on us?"
"WARNING! DEFENSIVE MEASURES UNDERWAY IN FIVE! FOUR!"
"Oh! Oh! Watch out!" The Commando burst into uncontrollable spasms of laughter. "The trashcan's going to fight back!"
"THREE!"
"Go on, then!" The squirrel hopped from one foot to another, and Zero had to take another step back from the robot because the heat emenating from its chassis was unbearable.
"TWO!"
The Commando's smile faded and he pointed his massive gun at the robot's crudely painted face.
"ONE!"
"Eat lead, you hunk of-"
A square door with a rusty hinge mounted on Rustbucket's chest squeaked open like a medicine cabinet, and The Commando stopped silent mid-sentence, staring into the open compartment with an unreadable expression. It was the last expression that face ever displayed, and if it were to be analysed it might be concluded to be one part horror to three parts confusion, with some amount of humour thrown in for good luck. Nobody else was in a position to see inside Rustbucket's bulbous belly, and this would prove fortunate for everybody, except of course The Commando.
The sound that followed seemed almost loud enough to make a person's ears bleed like bullet wounds, the light almost strong enough to flash fry a whale carcass. Zero didn't even know what was going on until he realised that his already throbbing head felt as though it was being ripped apart with giant hooks, and he was flying through the air towards the far side of the hall. He heard screaming, then a kind of thick droning deadness like a distant dial tone in an empty cave, that welled up inside his head and covered his ears like a heavy blanket. For an alarming few seconds he thought his accursedly fragile biological hearing had been forever broken, but slowly that drone faded and the sounds returned to the world.
When he sat up, he saw Rustbucket standing sentry where he had been all along, but The Commando was gone. All that remained in his place was a pile of black ashes and a pair of smoking military boots.
"Whoa," Axel sighed, looking back and forth between the robot and the ashes. He looked as though he had just witnessed a horse hatching from an egg.
"DISSENT HAS BEEN DISCRETELY ELIMINATED!" Rustbucket bellowed, "NOW IF THERE ARE NO MORE OBJECTIONS WE SHALL SALLY FORTH AND PREPARE THIS TOWN FOR THE GLORIOUS REIGN OF LORD ROBOTNIK! LET EVIL ONCE AGAIN RULE!"
"Uhh... heheh... what do we do now?" Shred asked.
Zero continued gazing at the remarkably, and surprisingly, powerful machine that had been disguised as something vaguely resembling a cereal box mascot. His head had begun to clear and he narrowed his bloodshot eyes.
"Hedgehog hunting."

XXIII

"I've got it! Crisis of conscience!"
Sonic looked up from his cup of bad coffee, irritated, to find Orlando Winterburn looking down at him with a grin in the tiny cafe.
"What?" the hedgehog snapped.
"Crisis of conscience! You know, when the hero goes through a period of discouragement? You're searching for yourself and you need help to recover your senses so you can take on the bad guys! Zap! Pow!"
"You know, you're really starting to annoy me."
"You've become detached from your powers by an onset of existential angst!" Orlando pressed, "You need to do some serious soul-searching, dude! Zing! And... uh... can you get it done pretty fast?"
"Look, go away, will you?" Sonic insisted, "I'm going to find my friends and then I'm going to go home. Cinos can have his stupid runes and everyone can run around playing supervillain as much as they want. Nothing I do matters here, don't you understand that? I'm done fighting bad guys, I'm done fighting anything."
"You're in denial!" Orlando said, and winked.
"Scat!"
The teenager left Sonic in a worse mood, for not only was he depressed but now he was angry as well. Why were his dark emotions bubbling so easily to the surface lately? He had no explanation but for the cumulative stress of a life of playing the hero and never making any difference in the world. His cup had simply run over, what else could it be?
He sensed someone approaching and a shadow draped across his table. Sonic, figuring Orlando had returned to bug him again, prepared to unleash the full force of his anger on the kid.
"I told you to-"
But it wasn't Orlando who approached, it was a stranger, and Sonic was struck dumb by the figure standing above him. A breathtakingly attractive anteater girl with a not-entirely-innocent smirk. Dark brown fur, almost black, with a lashing of blonde in her fringe. The rest of her hair was just below shoulder length. Not anyone he had seen around town; in fact, it was rare that he ever saw anyone proportioned so well, even in the boundless depth of his imagination, it was almost unnatural. She smiled sweetly and cocked her head at him, and even his depression was momentarily forgotten.
"Do you mind if I sit here?" she asked softly.
Sonic tore his eyes from her long enough to have a look around at the three completely empty tables in the cafe, then looked back at her, this divine beauty who was requesting permission to share his table as though it were the only space available.
"Uhh... sure," he stammered, then cleared his throat and looked embarrasedly down at his coffee as she sat down across from him.
About thirty seconds passed in silence, and he looked back up at her. She was staring at him, just sitting quietly and staring at his face. It would be unspeakably rude, were she not so attractive, and Sonic hated the hot flush that he felt creeping onto his face. Say something, you stupid hedgehog, don't just sit there looking at her like she's an artwork in a museum.
"The coffee here is terrible," he said.
The anteater smiled, didn't blink. "I don't drink coffee."
"So, uh, what's your name?"
The stranger seemed both surprised and entertained by the question, and it was around this time that Sonic considered that the situation took its final flaming plunge from the flattering to the frighteningly bizarre.
"Kardot... Mori," she said slowly, mapping his reaction with her haunting perfect eyes.
"I'm Sonic."
"Yes, I know."
There was another moment of uncomfortable silence, after which Sonic snorted laughter and shook his head in bewilderment.
"I'm sorry, do we know each other?"
A smile that went beyond the realm of mischevious crept onto Kardot's face, as though she knew some immense and life-changing secret that granted her powerful advantages over him. Even considering the beauty of the face that held it, this wasn't a smile that Sonic was comfortable with.
"I may never completely get used to this," she said, "You really don't recognise me at all, do you? These worlds are utterly different, and yet you seem to be the keystone, the skewer that holds it all together. The Tower and the Hedgehog."
"I'm sorry, I really don't know what you're talking about," Sonic admitted.
Kardot rose from her seat and moved around behind him. Sonic was nervous and now a little afraid. The stranger did seem a little familiar to him, in a way, but not in the way that a person remembers people from their past. It was more like a memory of a distant dream.
"You're tense, babe," she said, and put her hands on his shoulders from behind. As she began to softly massage his neck muscles, he saw her hands and became more unnerved. Her nails were long and sharp like talons, and one of her fingers was completely missing. The stump sparked, and he flinched. Was this a robot?
"You know nothing about Konya, either, I suppose?" she probed, "Of Talon, I mean? Or the biotic wars? Leviathan ring any bells? Zephyer? Knuckles?"
"Knux-" Sonic stammered.
"Aha, a hit? Did I just sink your battleship, Sonic? You want to know something interesting? You'd probably have a hard time believing it, but I find it interesting nonetheless, the possibilities. In another world, I mean, another reality, you and I could have been friends. We could have been married, even. Would you like that? We could work together. We could even be the bitterest of enemies, Sonic, and you wouldn't... even... know."
"You're freaking me out, here."
Kardot leaned down to whisper in Sonic's ear.
"Dying hurts, Sonic," she said, "And killing you might be little consolation for me, especially since it's Knuckles who I despise, but if it's the only little revenge I get then so be it."
Sonic, hopelessly lost by the conversation, had only a second for his reflexes to register that something very bad was about to happen, and if he didn't move immediately he was going to die. Luckily, he was Sonic the Hedgehog, and a second was more time than he needed.
Sonic threw himself to the ground just as the wall of the cafe collapsed upon itself, and something massive ripped through the building like it was made of paper. The ceiling was gone, tiles raining down. The walls cracked and then burst as the powerful object tore down the entire construction like a wrecking ball, which was at first what Sonic thought it actually was. But when the object came to rest, he saw the faded word DESOLATION painted in white lettering upon it, felt the cool water pooling around him, and knew that it was the water tower that had stood above the central plaza of the town. The water tower had fallen onto the cafe.
He stood and looked to where it had once stood, through the new hole in the side of what remained of the building. The strangest thing was that, considering where the tower had once stood, it would almost have to have been thrown at the cafe.
The other shoe didn't drop all the way until something came down from above and shoved him back inside the building with an unnatural strength.
He looked up to see Zero Tolerance, using his mechanical claw-arms as stilts, towering above him.
"Sonic!" he hissed, cackling, "I forgot to yell 'catch'!"
"You almost hit me with that thing!" Kardot screamed, but Sonic took little notice of her.
"Leave me alone, Zero, I'm not going to fight you anymore," Sonic said, "I'm done, do you understand? I've given up, just do what you want."
"Given up? Given up? Is this the same Sonic I know?" Zero demanded, "Not that simple, I'm afraid, my old friend. We've got some business to take care of first, remember? This isn't over until you're over!"
Zero dropped to his feet and picked Sonic up in one of his claws, then threw the hedgehog to the ground again. "Fight me, Sonic, you coward, stand and fight me!"
"Why?" Sonic screamed, "What did I ever do to you? I don't know you, Zero, I've never had any contact with you and I've never done anything to hurt you, don't you understand that you idiot? You've got the wrong-"
Zero picked him up again, twirled him in the air and threw him across the street. Sonic landed in a spindash and rolled until he hit a wall. Zero was already trundling toward him again.
Sonic had lost the will to fight for justice, but not the instinct to fight for his own survival. When he saw Zero, insane with anger and excitement, come out of the shadows and debris to take the fight into the open, Sonic ran to clash with the other hedgehog, his speed an advantage. Before his opponent could predict his movements, he kicked Zero in the head and chest, and grappled with him. Zero cried out and snapped at Sonic with his mechanical claws, finally succeeding in grabbing him and throwing him away again.
Zero wanted to keep Sonic at a distance, this was how he always fought. Sonic knew his tactics by now, they were as simple and predictable as those of a machine. Zero would keep his distance and attack with ranged weaponry. Just as expected, the moment he hit the ground again (on his feet, this time), Sonic heard the discharge of an automatic weapon, and poured on the speed to evade Zero's bullets. The black and armoured hedgehog saw Sonic coming at him again, and promptly turned on his jets to rocketed out of reach.
Sonic dug his heels into the ground and searched the sky for his enemy. "You wanted me to fight you!" he yelled, "Do you want a fair fight or a farce? Come down!"
"All I want is for you to die!" Zero shrieked, and roared down from his hiding place in front of the sun to tackle Sonic head-on. The blue hedgehog was knocked hard, but rolled onto his feet again, just as Zero threw some kind of force grenade at him that detonated and knocked him another ten feet backward.
This time, he was left in considerable pain when he landed. He doubted that the grenade had broken any bones or burned him in any way, but it wouldn't do him too well to be hit with too many of those.
Zero was laughing. "Get up, Sonic!"
And Sonic did, with a grunt. Before he was even on his feet again, Zero was shooting some kind of bladed discs at him from a gun attached to his arm. Sonic dodged them all with some difficulty and a fair dose of luck. Then Zero was at him with the machine gun again, two barrels roaring.
Sonic took a chance at getting close to Zero again, back to a range where he could reclaim his advantage. Still aching and running low on stamina, he managed to dodge two waves of bullets and get close enough to attack Zero hedgehog-to-hedgehog. But before he had a chance to launch a physical attack, he almost collided with Espio and Niles, who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.
Yelling and skidding to a halt to avoid hurting his friends, Sonic fell over backwards and landed on his backside. Zero held Espio and Niles above his head, one in each mechanical claw, and panted.
"Sonic!" Espio cried, "Don't let him get to you!"
"And here we see Sonic's greatest weakness, exposed and naked!" Zero announced, "He slices, he dices, he runs and he spins, but put the knife to his friends and he turns to quivering jelly! How many times have we been here, Sonic? How many times?"
"Too many, you disgusting freak," Sonic spat.
"Sticks and stones!" Zero cackled, "Now do you see why you can never beat me? I am the superior fighting machine, Sonic, and you're just a weak biological insect, trapped by your own emotions. I know that pain, insect, and that's why it's me who will pull the trigger at the end of your life, be it today or not. Because I know how to get to you."
Sonic could almost have believed it was Cinos giving this speech, his evil twin standing there and telling him about how it was his sympathy for others that made him weak, and how the desire to protect was brittle under the power to destroy. His resolve was weakened once again, and he clenched his fists in anguish.
"No!"
"Yes!" Zero shrieked, and started shooting at him again. Sonic jumped and leaped and twisted like a circus performer as the bullets thudded and pinged around him. The black hedgehog threw another grenade, but Sonic caught it in mid-air and it didn't explode. He fell to his knees again, panting and gasping.
"How the mighty have fallen," Zero said, "The hero is down for the count, ripe for the picking."
"Oh dear," Niles moaned from his wavering perch, grappled by Zero's supplementary limb. Espio, held by the other, shouted at his fallen friend.
"Don't worry about us, Sonic, you can take him! Come on! Snap out of it!"
Zero sarcastically mimicked the chameleon, putting on a high-pitched voice and clapping his hands together. "Oh yes, Sonic, don't give up! Don't give up!"
"Okay, Zero," Sonic panted, "Okay. Cut me a deal. You set the terms, I'll give you anything you want. Okay? Anything you want. There must be something you want besides my death."
Zero's grin faded and he seemed to think about it for a moment. Sonic's spirits lifted as the black hedgehog seemed to give in to reason.
"Okay, Sonic, here's the deal. You give me my old life back, make me whole again, and we'll call it even." He scowled. "Oh, wait a second... that's right, you can't do that! Nobody can! It's beyond even your power to change."
Sonic buried his head in his hands and sobbed. "I don't... know what... you're talking about!"
The point of something sharp jabbed his chin and he lifted his head again. He almost didn't believe what he saw, and fell over backwards, crying out.
Axel Gear stood before him, only his grinning muzzle visible from within his violet medieval armour, and he held out his sword as though inviting him to duel. Axel, the wisecracking brother and nemesis of a rocket knight named Sparkster, had raided Knothole several years ago while trying to track down his sibling. Sonic still wore a scar on his upper thigh where Axel's blade had slashed him.
Beside Axel stood Shred, the velociraptor who had once taunted and terrorised Sonic and a few others, all of whom had been kidnapped by a powerful otherworldly being and forced to undertake difficult tests of agility and cognition. Shred was the only creature Sonic had ever encountered who was able to run faster than he could.
And then there was Kardot, whose animosity toward him was a complete mystery, and in that way she was very similar to Zero himself.
"No, Sonic," Zero said from behind the three rogues, "The only thing I want from you is to die and to have a very cheap funeral. My colleagues all agree."
"What is this?" Sonic asked, "This Is Your Life?"
"Nothing of the sort," Zero replied, "It's more like This Is Your Death. So let's get on with the show."
Sonic picked himself up and examined the situation. Severely outnumbered, and running was not an option, despite having always been taught that these are the situations from which it is wise to run.
"I will kill them, Sonic," Zero reminded him, referring to his captive friends.
Sonic carefully examined each of the faces of the villains who had cornered him. Each was sure that he was a dead hedgehog walking, and each was just about sadistic enough to make it as painful as possible for him.
There was a saying that Sally had used once, one of her rules of tactics, and that was that you should never overlook the elephant in the living room. Meaning, don't be so caught up with the difficulty of a task that you miss the most obvious solution. Sonic had been trying so hard to figure out how he was going to fight four fully-armed supervillains at once that he forgot that he was still holding the force grenade that Zero had thrown at him and that he had caught.
"Hey Zero, batter up!" he exclaimed, and hurled the object at Zero's chest.
"What-" Zero began, but the object detonated on his armour and threw him off his feet. Even better than Sonic had expected, the other three enemies were also blown over by the explosion, and running almost purely on instinct, Sonic leaped toward the ringleader of this operation and landed on Zero's prostrate metal-clad body.
"Get off me!" the black hedgehog screamed.
"Let go of my friends," Sonic replied, but even as he said this he realised that Espio and Niles had already been relinquished in the confusion.
"Run!" Sonic shouted at them, "Run towards shelter!"
They didn't need to be told twice. Niles was already halfway across town before Sonic finished speaking, and Espio was scrambling toward the nearest (and most secure) building he could see. Sonic didn't have a chance to follow, as Zero grabbed him around the waist with one of his mechanical claw-arms.
"I'll rip you apart!" Zero growled, and the other claw attached itself with some force to Sonic's face. Sonic managed a spindash, tangling the claw-arms together and forcing his release, but Zero was already firing at him with every projectile weapon he had on hand. Sonic hit the ground running, weaving and jumping to avoid being shot full of holes.
He escaped Zero's range and took to fleeing the scene, weaving behind buildings and down alleys until he couldn't hear the gunshots anymore. But as he ducked behind an old wood mill, something heavier and moving even faster than he was hit him from behind and threw him down into the dust.

XXIV

"Tasty morsel," hissed a guttural and reptillian voice from above, "Heh... heheh... heheheh..."
The heavy weight shifted and removed itself, allowing Sonic to pick himself up with a groan.
Shred the Raptor paced back and forth in front of the wood mill that cast its shadow over the both of them, showing all of his dozens of teeth in a wide, sharp grin.
"Shouldn't you be in a zoo, somewhere?" Sonic asked, "I think you're late for the four o'clock feeding."
"I've got my four o'clock feeding right here!" Shred roared and pounced, his deadly six-inch-long toe-claw kicking out for Sonic's gut.
Sonic ducked out of the way, but just in time. He heard the claw whiz past his ear and the loud click of Shred's gnashing teeth. Shred was a very dangerous opponent to engage in melee combat, but right now Sonic had little say in the matter. He quickly ran toward a large wood pile that stood against the wall of the mill. Shred came galloping after, and with his uncanny predatory speed he quickly regained his lead and lowered his head to pounce again. Sonic couldn't see his persuer behind him, but knew that if Shred pounced again, he'd open Sonic like a packet of crisps.
Sonic grabbed for anything he could use as a weapon, and found a woodaxe in relatively decent condition. He swung it around and caught the side of Shred's head with the heavy and blunt back of the axe, just as the raptor was rearing up. Shred yelped, and his glass eye flew through the air to land in the grass somewhere, but the thick-skinned and muscular reptile was barely hurt. He reared up again, gnashing, and Sonic pounced at him instead, ramming the handle of the axe crossways between Shred's teeth. He wrestled with the raptor head-to-head, always wary of that flicking claw, but Shred was much stronger and managed a powerful swing that threw Sonic and his axe back into the woodpile.
Sonic landed hard, but managed quickly to reclaim his makeshift weapon and scramble to the top of the woodpile. Shred, running to catch his meal, skidded to a halt at the base of the pile and looked up at Sonic.
"What are you doing up there?" the raptor demanded.
"Staying away from you," Sonic replied. He knew that one of Shred's tactical weaknesses was that he lacked the ability to climb. The velociraptor paced back and forth at the base of the pile, keeping his one good eye on Sonic at its peak.
"You can't stay up there forever, delicious," he warned, "Heh... heheh... Yer trapped."
"We'll see about that," Sonic replied, "Catch." He threw a chunk of wood that glocked the raptor on the top of the head. The lizard hissed in response, and gnashed his teeth as though he expected them to leap out of his jaw and chew Sonic up by themselves.
Sonic was so busy taunting Shred that he barely noticed when Axel Gear landed on top of the woodpile behind him. He heard and smelled the rocket knight's jets, and tried to hide the fact that this ambush situation frightened him.
"Hey," Axel said, and unsheathed his sword with a metallic scrape.
"Hey," Sonic replied.
"I never liked you a whole lot."
"That's a pity." Sonic took one step back, mindful that too many would see him sliding down the woodpile into Shred's open jaws.
"You remind me too much of my brother." Axel advanced a step.
"And how is Sparkster?"
Axel smirked. "Disgustingly healthy."
"Good to hear."
Sonic brandished his axe as a sword. Axel almost half-heartedly swung his own weapon and sliced the handle off an inch above where Sonic held it. Sonic nodded understanding and threw the small chunk of wood he still held, which bounced harmlessly off Axel's armour.
"Nice try, though." the opossum said.
Sonic took another step back, and stole a quick glimspe at the ground. Shred was sitting back on his haunches, drooling and watching the proceedings.
"So why are you hanging around a loser like Zero Tolerance?" Sonic asked.
Axel smiled. "You could say we share an interest."
"So I see." Sonic took another step back, but he was as close to the edge now as he could get. "And what, you got together and started up the Vengeance Appreciation Club?"
"More fun than knitting," Axel replied, and seeing that Sonic was pushed to his limit, he thrusted with his sword. Sonic dodged the attack, but almost overbalanced. In a stunning display of accuracy, Axel slashed back and opened another wound on Sonic's upper thigh - right above the scar that the same person had given him years prior.
"Thought we oughta start again where we left off last time," Axel said, and laughed. When Sonic had regained his composure, the rocket knight truly began to attack, thrusting, slashing and parrying against the completely unarmed hedgehog, aiming for a kill shot. It didn't seem really to be in the spirit of fencing.
Sonic dodged as best he could in the tiny space he had, and just as things looked bleak, Axel made his first and last mistake. He went for a hard thrust forward, too confident that he could skewer the cornered hedgehog through the gut, and Sonic leaped all the way over the rocket knight, landing behind him and kicking him in the back. Axel shrieked as his momentum sent him over the side of the woodpile, and he landed square on top of Shred, who had his jaws open for the wrong victim and got only a mouthful of stainless steel. Sonic fled before his two enemies could reassert themselves.

XXV

Sonic found Espio and Niles hiding together in a barn on the other side of town, and they rested there only after making sure that nobody had seen them.
"Oh thank goodness!" Niles exclaimed, "Dear hedgehog, we'd thought you'd abandoned us for sure!"
"He thought you'd abandoned us," Espio clarified, "Welcome back to the land of the living, Sonic."
Sonic was out of breath but at least he was on his feet again. He thumped his forehead softly with the heel of his hand and sighed.
"It feels like I'm missing an enzyme," he said, "The one that makes me want to get up in the mornings. I'm on a high now, but I feel like throwing in the towel so badly. I mean, what do I do in this world that even matters?"
"It's this place," Espio said, "This town is like a prison for the mind. Any feelings of inadequacy you have are thrown into overdrive. I think Cinos said something to you that hit a nerve, and coming here just made it take over. And it all has something to do with that Rune."
"Of course," Sonic replied. All the pieces came together for him in his mind. "And that means it's still here somewhere, still affecting us."
"I do believe we have more pressing issues to be concerned about," Niles said, "Such as, and this is just an example, not being murdered by the psychotic inhabitants of this insane town."
"Zero has stirred into a frenzy some old enemies of mine," Sonic explained, "None of them can exactly be considered an arch-nemesis, and I don't think any of them are too interested in harming me except for the sheer sport of it. They're excited to be out of that little prison, I represent the kind of mentality they hate so much, and they outnumber me four to one. As far as I can tell, the only really dangerous one is Zero. He wants me dead so bad, for some reason, that he's willing to follow me all the way around the world just to do me in. If we can deal with Zero, I have a feeling the others will leave us alone."
"And how, pray tell, do we do that?"
Sonic sighed and shook his head. "I have to face him. He has some kind of score to settle with me, and he won't stop until he thinks it's settled. I don't want to kill the guy, but... if that really is the only way, if he's determined that it'll be him or me... then I guess that's the way things will have to happen."
"And if he wins?" Espio asked, "What if you fight him and you lose?"
Sonic shrugged. "Today I came to the conclusion that evil always wins. It seems like it's the only logical outcome. So I just have to hope that logic takes a holiday."
"Oh, brilliant," Niles said, throwing his arms into the air. "Let us all put our lives in the hands of faith, then."
"Faith is what's kept me alive this long," Sonic said, and rose to his feet. "So wish me luck."

XXVI

"That was humiliating!" Axel yelled, kicking a wall, "That was the worst defeat I've seen since my hack brother brought down the Lizard King!"
Kardot pricked up her ears. "Lizard King?"
"Detrious Kimodo," Axel explained, "Lord of Konamia. I was his chief of assassins." He grinned proudly.
"Hmh." Kardot flicked her hair. "Another link between our worlds. I knew a Lizard King. Leviathan. He had a Final Solution for Mobius." Her voice became distant, as though she were talking to herself. "I never did get to see whether that panned out."
"I am the Lizard King!" Shred roared, and clicked his teeth together as he mauled air.
All at once, the doors at the entrance to the town hall were ripped off their hinges and crashed to the ground. Zero Tolerance stepped through, his hands fisted at his sides.
"Someone's peeved," Axel whispered.
Zero's face was contorted into a scowl and he looked back and forth between the others who stood before him.
"Four of us," he growled, "Why can't we catch him? Why can't we kill him? Why won't he die?"
"Cool your jets," Axel told him, "It's like I said before. The hedgehog... he won't be beat, he's like the common cold. There's no cure. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'm heading west. Maybe I'll get lucky and I'll find another genocidal dictator who might take me under his wing. They seem to be a dime a dozen in this world."
"No!" Zero snarled, "You have to help me with Sonic."
"You're obsessed, babe," Kardot said, rolling her eyes.
Zero was about to throw back a retort, but Rustbucket entered the chamber and stood between them.
"ARE YOU ALL BEING EVIL?" the robot asked.
"Yes," they all replied in unison.
"EXXXXXXXXCELLENT!"
Rustbucket turned and walked back to wherever he had come from.
"Excuse me for a minute," Axel said, and he began to follow the robot, unsheathing his sword as he went.
"Wait." Zero grabbed him with a mechanical claw and dragged him backward.
"Hey, what?" the opossum demanded, "It's for the best, trust me!"
"Leave us," Zero said, "If you would leave, then leave. It doesn't matter. By the end of the day there won't be enough of Sonic left to fill a bottle. He glanced at the pair of boots that stood near the hall entrance (and which presumably still contained The Commando's feet, although nobody had checked) and the few ashes which hadn't blown away through the course of the day.

XXVII

The plan and purpose of Rustbucket was truly unclear. Had he fried a curcuit and gone insane, or was he actually programmed to snap at some point, murder his colleagues, free the villains he had collected over the months and years, and then stomp around doing little of anything? Rustbucket had been built by Dr Robotnik during some brief (and purpose unknown) liason in this town, and so Zero considered the answer most likely to be the latter. It was just about the most perfect example of the professor's sociopathic sense of humour that he could imagine. It was very fundamentally like him to make such a cosmic joke out of the concept of good and evil, to raise people's hopes and smash them in such a way, to deliberately betray people, not for apathy or personal gain, but for the intrinsic enjoyment of betraying people.
Zero, after all, knew the Doctor very well. And although Rustbucket's purpose was to some extent a mystery, it was a lucky turn that he should be here at all. And an interesting and somewhat ironic turn of events, that this afterthought of Robotnik's career, this ridiculous scrappy thing that was without a doubt the least dangerous assassin he had ever built and so inferior that he might even have forgotten having built it at all, was about to become the instrument of Sonic the Hedgehog's final demise.
The robot, his original purpose evidently exhausted, took to merely wandering around the place with that ridiculous painted smiley-face and occasionally checking to make sure that evil people were being appropriately evil and not slacking off from their evilness. He would presumably do this until he stopped functioning one way or the other. He was clearly not a complex learning machine, so had no understanding of boredom. Free of his orders, he would continue passing the time with triviality until such time as somebody gave him something else to aspire to.
He stood completely motionless in the corridors (a bizarre place for anyone to stand for any reason, a nowhere-place, like someone who, in the process of doing something or going somewhere, merely stopped, set down his business, and stood), and did not so much as twitch when Zero came looking for him.
"GREETINGS," he said, looking eerily like some theme park mascot. It was easy to imagine him relaying a prerecorded message about ticket prices and kids discounts.
"Rustbucket," Zero said, and smiled. The robot said nothing, and smiled back, although technically he had no choice.
Zero approached the robot and stood face to face with its caricature expression. It was impossible to tell where the robot's visual sensors were located, for surely this painted bucket was only a way of personifying what was otherwise a walking heap of junk.
"The town is ours," Zero said, "From border to border, every scrap of it, under our control."
"INDEED! JOLLY GOOD PIP PIP AND ALL THAT ROT!"
"But really... the town is yours, wouldn't you say?" Zero smiled as he walked around behind Rustbucket and placed a rubber-gloved hand on his shoulder. "After all, it was your scheme that put all of this together. You are the mastermind here, and we tremble beneath your evil prowess."
"YOUR ASSERTION IS ACCURATE," Rustbucket announced, "LOGIC DEFINITION SYSTEMS HAVE ATTRIBUTED THE FOLLOWING RATING TO YOUR THEORY: SOUND. SYSTEMS HAVE CALCULATED THAT THE FRUIT OR VEGETABLE THAT BEST REPRESENTS YOU IS: BANANA. YOUR LUCKY NUMBER IS FIVE."
"I have had the pleasure of working with many criminal geniuses," Zero continued, "But, might I say, you are the greatest of them."
"YES YOU MIGHT SAY THAT!"
"I wonder, though, if you might be setting your goals a little low."
For the first time, Rustbucket moved. His head swivelled about ten degrees to the left.
"FURTHER EXPLANATION IS REQUIRED," he said.
"I mean that you have the town in your grasp," Zero replied, "But why not have... the world?"
"WHY NOT INDEED, I WILL PONDER THIS. PONDERANCE COMPLETE! THE ANSWER IS SEVENTEEN."
"You could have it all if you wanted it. Everything. Mobius could be yours. You would bring about not only the Day of the Supervillains, but the Age of the Supervillains."
Rustbucket moved his head again. "THAT WOULD BE A VERY EVIL THING TO DO," he reported.
"It would."
"THEN IT WILL BE DONE!"
"But there is a problem."
"A PROBLEM?"
"A problem."
"THAT IS INDEED A PROBLEM. I WILL PONDER THIS PROBLEM."
Zero sighed. "The problem, Rustbucket, is a superhero problem."
Rustbucket let out a digital squeal that almost forced Zero to block his ears. After it ended, he realised that it must have been some kind of laugh.
"THE JUSTICE BRIGADE HAS BEEN ELIMINATED," Rustbucket said, "I SAW TO THEIR DELETION PERSONALLY."
"Oh no, not them," Zero replied, "There is another one. He just arrived, as a matter of fact. His name is Sonic."
"SONIC!" Rustbucket emitted that horrible squeal-laugh again. "I HAVE ATTRIBUTED THE FOLLOWING RATING TO THE NAME 'SONIC': RIDICULOUS!"
"Indeed. But he is a problem nevertheless."
"A SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM REQUIRES FORTHWITH COMPUTATION."
"The solution is simple," Zero announced. There was an empty beer can nearby, lying discarded on the ground. He pointed to it, and the robot's bucket-head swivelled to look.
"That can represents Sonic."
"YOU MAKE AN INTERESTING POINT," Rustbucket replied.
And this," Zero said, "Is what we do."
He stood back, put his arm out in front of him, and pressed a button on the side of it. Some kind of small gun emerged from a compartment and lauched a small missile at the can. There was an explosion, and after the smoke cleared, the ground was blackened and very little remained of the can.
"I BELIEVE I UNDERSTAND," Rustbucket said, "IF THE METAL LIQUID-HOLDING OBJECT REPRESENTS SONIC, THEN IT WOULD APPEAR THAT YOU ARE INSINUATING OUR SOLUTION LIES IN THE MURDER OF THIS PARTICULAR INDIVIDUAL BY WAY OF EXTREME FORCE."
"Now you're catching on," Zero said, and smiled, "Sonic must die. At any cost, Sonic must die."

XXVIII

Orlando Winterburn sat completely entranced with his work, the sketch pad laid out in front of him, and with a practiced speed he transcribed the events unfolding in the town of Desolation.

"The hero braced himself for the final confrontation with the forces of evil. Sonic the Hedgehog, brave defender of the innocent and the helpless, stood alone in the street and awaited his showdown with those who threatened to destroy all that was just and good. The tyrants who had callously murdered the Justice Brigade - and Rustbucket, who had betrayed them - strove to take control of the town and turn it into the villainy capital of the world. Only Sonic stood between them and their goal. In the name of liberty, he knew that he must succeed.
The hedgehog stood taller than anyone else in town, with great flowing locks of red hair and eyes as deep blue as the ocean. His muscles rippled like waves under the leather jacket he made himself with the skin of wild bulls he had killed with his own bare hands.
"He had travelled far to reach this point, both in terms of distance and of spiritual enlightenment. Now he was primed and ready for action. Nobody was getting past him this day. It would end here.
"Zero Tolerance, the warrior demon from the south who had persued Sonic so far in the name of vengeance, arrived and stood twenty feet ahead of his nemesis. Zero's eyes glowed as red as the fires of the underworld from whence he came. His two tongues darted in and out of the black pit of his smoking maw. His biomechanical battle-suit screeched and clanged, two nightmarish tentacles rising from his back like snakes rearing for attack.
"This was the endgame, and both adversaries knew it. Only one would be getting out alive."

Orlando was known for some degree of creative liberty in his details, but the thrust of the story was the same.

XXIX

"Are you ready to taste my steel, Sonic?" Zero shouted from one end of the road.
Sonic, facing his adversary, could see Zero standing like an asterisk twenty feet ahead, legs and arms spread with his mechanical claws rising above his shoulders.
"This ends today!" Sonic shouted back.
Zero laughed. "I know it does! I'm as sick of this as you are! It's time to put this to rest once and for all! It's not going to be very pleasant for you though, I'm afraid. I'm done playing!"
"I don't want to hurt anyone," Sonic said.
"Well, that makes one of us, Sonic. You're going to hurt plenty."
"Sonic, look out!"
This warning came from Orlando, and Sonic let his reflexes rule him and leaped to the side without a second thought. Before he even hit the ground, an explosion ripped through the air that might have injured Sonic's ears if he had been standing any closer to its source. With it came the sound of windows shattering all around, and a bright light that hurt his eyes as though he had glanced at the sun. It lasted only a moment, but the sound reverberated for a second longer in the inside of Sonic's head as well as throughout the town.
Sonic was disoriented and startled, and did not land on his feet as he otherwise would have, but fell into the dust. From this vantage point he could see something that looked like a primary school representation of a robot trundling toward him, and found it beyond difficult to get his head around the idea that that uncanny attack had somehow come from this walking garbage can. It was Rustbucket, and somehow Zero had bent the robot to his cause.
"SONIC THE HEDGEHOG!" Rustbucket exclaimed, "YOU HAVE BEEN TARGETED FOR DESTRUCTION!"
"Oh why me?" Sonic shrieked, "Why can't everybody find someone else to target for destruction?"
"THE AGE OF THE SUPERVILLAINS WILL NOT BE DENIED! YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIME!"
Sonic rolled out of the way just in time to avoid being skewered by Zero's mechanical claw, as it plowed into the ground with a bladed attachment glistening in the sun. Zero snarled like a wounded beast and unholstered one of his guns.
"Your speed won't save you for long, Sonic, you have to slow down some time. You're made of meat, and meat gets tired."
"So are you, and I bet your meat gets tired before mine!" Sonic replied, but this seemed to enrage Zero even more, and he thrust out violently with both of his mechanical claws, as well as firing his gun in a highly random spray of bullets. Sonic found this to be ironically more difficult to avoid than an aimed shot, but didn't wish to reveal to Zero his trouble. Instead he retreated from the storm of projectiles, leaving Zero in his dust.
"Come back here!" Zero screamed, and shot a small rocket at his enemy. It struck the ground just ahead of Sonic and blew the hedgehog backwards. Sonic was momentarily disoriented, but knew he had to keep his head or Zero might blow it off.
"This is ridiculous, Zero!" he exclaimed, "Can't you see how stupid this is?"
Zero shouted a reply, but Sonic didn't hear it properly. Instead he was forced to narrowly dodge another loud energy blast from Rustbucket, feeling the heat of it singe his fur. I'd better remember to keep an eye on both of them, he thought, or else it's char grilled hedgehog on the menu tonight.
When the light faded, he saw Zero already trundling toward him, using those mechanical claws as stilts to enhance his stride. He reached Sonic in no time, two guns already blazing. Sonic ran under the hail of bullets and attacked his stilts, knocking the black hedgehog over with a string of loud curses.
"SYSTEMS UNSTABLE," Rustbucket reported, his voice falling into a lower register than usual, but Sonic paid no attention to what the insane robot was saying. Much more important to focus on dodging those energy blasts.
He looked over his shoulder and saw that the residents of Desolation were coming out of their homes to watch the epic battle. Clusters of people were gathering around the ruins of the town square, the hall, the saloons, the remains of the cafe where the water tower lay on its side and turned much of the main street into mud. The sheriff had been freed and stood with the rest of them, and Sonic saw several other vaguely familiar individuals in the crowd, including Espio and Niles, and Orlando Winterburn who frantically transcribed the unfolding events into his sketch book. A steadily increasing number of people were rhythmically clapping in the way that they did when the Justice Brigade had fought. They were cheering him on. Sonic was their hero, now.
And what was more, many of them were smiling. Such a simple thing that one ordinarily might not even notice, but here in Desolation it made a difference. Had he seen so much as a single smile since he had been here? Zero's insane grin and Rustbucket's immovable painted-on expression didn't count. How long had it even been since these people had smiled?
The clapping was more distinguished, now, and it lost its monotonous quality. It was uplifting; genuine.
Rustbucket let loose another of his devestating blasts, and a nearby building burst into flames. A whole section of the wall disintegrated where the beam had struck it, and Sonic hoped that nobody was stuck inside. Looking over the faces of all of these hope-filled innocents, he realised that he should attempt to lead the villains away from the town, or else collateral damage would be inevitable.
One of Zero's claws grasped him around the waist and threw him haphazardly like a rag doll. He hit the ground hard and struggled to his feet. Zero was already hurrying in persuit.
"If you want to kill me, you'll have to catch me!" Sonic shouted, and he turned on his heels and sprinted out into the desert. He heard his own breath in his throat and his heart thudding in his chest almost in sync with the clapping of the crowd that faded behind him as he ran. Then it was drowned out by the sound of Zero's rockets as his enemy took the bait and persued him.
The only problem with the open desert was that there would be nothing between himself and Zero's weapons, should he want to take cover. And it would be almost impossible to escape the battle if he found he was losing. This really would be the end for one of them.
If not for both of them.
Sonic slowed, intending to turn around to face his attacker, but Zero was closer than he expected and the armoured hedgehog spear-tackled him in midair and plowed him into the ground like a football.
Zero landed ahead of him and turned, hurling one of his force grenades. Sonic slapped it away, and it detonated in the dirt at a safe distance.
"Last chance to give up this nonsense, Zero. Don't make the mistake of thinking I'm too soft to kill you, because I will. If you leave me no other choice, I will."
"You'll never get the opportunity," Zero spat, "I'll fight you until you wear down, and then I'll rend you limb from limb while everbody watches. I've waited for this for so long. So long."
And Sonic could see that he was telling the truth. He was smiling in premature success, so sure of the outcome of this fight that he could already see his victory playing out before his eyes. The end was in sight, and it was like Christmas morning for Zero Tolerance.
Sonic figured that his certainty was probably due in part to an inability to conceive of another defeat. For Zero, it might have seemed that such an outcome would tear his mind apart.
And so, out here in the desert, Sonic and Zero clashed again. Leaping, kicking, running and shooting, the adversaries wrestled in the dirt, all flailing limbs, mechanical claws and zipping bullets.
Sonic was again thrown to the ground, and looked up in time to see that Rustbucket had persued them into the desert, waddling in some atrocious excuse for a run.
"RESISTING ARREST IS A FELONY OFFENSE PUNISHABLE BY MEANS OF STRAWBERRY CHEESECAKE SEVEN DOLLARS FIFTY!" the robot exclaimed, and unleashed another massive energy blast before screeching, "FUEL CELLS OPERATING AT SEVENTY PERCENT CAPACITY AND DROPPING, THIS IS A LEVEL SEVEN WARNING! SEVEN! HEAT LEVELS CRITICAL, MONKEY LIVES IN TREE."
"Die, Sonic," Zero rasped, and resumed his onslaught.
They clashed again, in another brutal, almost animalistic round of combat. Every so often Zero would land a fairly decent wound on his enemy, and for the first time Sonic began to genuinely worry that the black hedgehog would tear him to pieces before he could deal a serious blow. That armour, after all, gave Zero some significant protection, and this wasn't another of those occasions when Sonic could use the environment against his enemy. This was hedgehog against hedgehog, and Zero was packing more heat.
Zero clamped onto Sonic's head with one of his claw-arms, and spun him about violently in the air. Sonic had to grip the claw as tightly as he could with all of his limbs, afraid that his neck would break. At last Zero threw him to the ground, and Sonic had to roll quickly to dodge the other claw, which came stabbing down like an attacking viper. He used the momentum to spin-dash at Zero's feet, toppling the black hedgehog like a bowling pin. Zero, however, quickly caught himself using those claw-arms (curse those wretched things!) and followed Sonic with another rain of bullets.
"FUEL CELLS OPERATING AT FORTY-THREE PERCENT CAPACITY AND DROPPING," Rustbucket warned, "THIS IS A LEVEL SEVEN WARNING!" He blasted again, and this time Sonic was almost hit. He felt a scorching, unbearable heat for a moment. Any closer and he might have been done some damage.
He rolled onto his back and looked up at Zero, standing sentinel over him with a hungry smile and his rubber-gloved hands being drawn into fists again and again.
"What are you going to do once I'm dead, Zero?" Sonic snapped, "What are you going to do when your life's quest is over?"
"Can't say I'm exactly sure," Zero replied, "I haven't really thought about it. All I know is that your death is the only release I know. Your death will let me live. Maybe I can even gain some control over this new mind of mine. But not while you're alive, Sonic, not while you're still walking around."
He fired a missile at Sonic, who shot onto his feet and dodged backward. The explosion rained dirt and dust on them both.
"I'm stronger than you, Sonic."
"I'm faster."
"I'm better armed."
"You'll run out of ammo soon."
"Then I'll beat you to death."
Sonic leaped at Zero, grappling onto the chest plate of his armour, and used one hand to rip the helmet off his opponent's head. Zero's snarling face emerged unobscured, and Sonic caught a good look at the pink scar that ran from brow to jaw. Zero roared at him, and he punched the black spined head with all his strength, again and again, until his fist came away bloody. Zero grabbed him with a mechanical arm and threw him to the ground again, standing above him with blood dripping from his nose and lip, and one eye already puffing up in a bruise. Sonic expected another lecture, but all he heard was a scream from Zero, the scream of somebody who was thoroughly losing his mind.
Zero drew his guns again, but there were only three blasts and then the weak clicks of empty chambers. Nevertheless, he continued pulling both triggers for an eerily long time, as though he expected the guns to fill up by themselves and the game to be on again. Finally, he threw the guns at Sonic and advanced with his mechanical arms swinging.
"FUEL CELLS OPERATING AT SEVEN, AT SEVEN PERCENT CAPACITY AND DROPPING!" Rustbucket screeched, "THIS ONE GOES OUT TO ALL THE GROOVY LADIES AND COOL CATS IN FUNKYTOWN! THIS PUPPY'S GONNA BLOW! DROP WHAT YOU'RE DOING, PUT YOUR HEAD BETWEEN YOUR KNEES AND KISS YOUR BUTT GOODBYE!"
Zero slapped Sonic hard with one claw-arm, and used the other to pick him up, shake him and throw him down again. Before Sonic could pick himself up, he was struck again. At last he managed a spin-dash away from the frenzied attack, and took off running. Zero engaged his rockets in immediate persuit.
This was it, Sonic thought, the moment of truth. He was limping as he ran, bleeding and panting. He had taken about as much of a beating as he could handle, and this battle was taking its toll on him. If he couldn't think of a way to deal some damage to Zero now, then his frenzied enemy might actually succeed in his mission. But he couldn't think like that, he wouldn't. He didn't survive Cinos just to be slaughtered by some random with a grudge.
(There's an elephant in the living room, Sonic, don't overlook it. What are you missing? What can you use?)
Sonic was slowed by his injuries, sprinting with a limp, he could feel a charlie horse building in his thigh, preparing to send a crippling spear of pain through his leg, and he could hear Zero gaining ground behind him, could almost feel his breath on the back of his neck, and he knew that the next time he was caught he might not be able to get back up. Zero would rip him to pieces while he lay exhausted in the dirt. He turned to throw his enemy off, but he knew that Zero was right on his tail and this race would end soon.
He turned again and found himself running toward Rustbucket, and the robot was clearly on his last legs. He shook and rattled violently, and his metal shell was blackened with its own radiating heat. The painted face on his bucket-head had melted, and he was no longer smiling. A very long, liquid frown now marred the robot's expression, the paint sizzling and popping on the hot metal. Sonic could feel his heat even from this distance.
"DAY OF THE SUUUUUUUUUUUU-" Rustbucket droned, but his voice had slowed down like a stretched-out audiotape and he never finished the sentiment. Sonic bared down on him and watched as a rusty compartment door squeaked open on his chest and the massive lens of his blast-weapon poked out like a joey out of its mother's pouch.
The lens had a smiley-face painted on it as well.
Sonic heard Zero approaching him from behind, roaring toward him with both rockets on full blast, accelerating. He thought he felt Zero's fingers grasping at his spines from behind. He knew what he had to do, but timing was crucial. If he moved too early or too late, this would end in his death. He had one shot, just one, and only faith to lean on to get him through.
Please, oh God let me do this right-
Sonic jumped. He shot upward like an athlete and curled into a ball as he did, if only to reduce his surface area as much as possible.
An instant after he left the ground, Rustbucket fired his final blast of energy, and with it he exploded. The blast struck Zero directly, and with an agonized scream he was lost in the subsequent explosion. Sonic flew over the catastrophe and hit the ground rolling, unwilling to stop, hoping to get as far away as possible.
The blast was catastrophic. It shook the ground like a quake, and Sonic felt its heat as he rolled at an excessive speed across the desert floor. To some degree, it even propelled him.
Finally, after a dizzy length of time, Sonic came to a stop and sat in the dirt to rest his aching limbs.
A plume of smoke not unlike a nuclear mushroom-cloud sat on the horizon like a grey buckle that taped the desert to the sky. The blast crater must have expanded for a diameter of at least a kilometer, by the look, and Sonic was slightly worried that he had indeed been irradiated. Rustbucket was more than a robot, he was a walking bomb. Sonic knew nothing of the fate of Zero Tolerance, but he wasn't about to trek into the heart of this blast radius again to find out.
Meters from the resting hedgehog, an old bucket with a face painted on it fell from the sky and bounced, clanging, across the desert.

XXX

The people of Desolation cheered when a beaten and bruised Sonic limped back into town. The shouting, the laughter and the adulation was such that it was hard to believe that these people had been some of the most depressed on Mobius only a day ago. Complete strangers approached him to shake his hand, which he did with a smile.
Espio and Niles pushed through the crowd to find him, expressions of concern on both of their faces.
"I say," Niles said, "Dear hedgehog, I thought you were done for!"
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Sonic replied.
"We heard an explosion... is he-" Espio began, but trailed off when he noticed the smoke plume on the horizon.
"Dead? I'd think so," Sonic replied, but grimly. He found no pleasure in having to extinguish any life, no matter how dastardly. Murder had been Zero's game, not his.
Sonic sat down with a grunt, still amidst the exaltation of the crowd. "Where are the other villains?" he asked.
"Nobody knows," Espio replied, "In hiding, probably. The general attitude in town has shifted a little, as you can probably tell. I don't think these people would be prone to mercy if they caught any stray supervillains hanging around."
Sonic nodded and looked over the townspeople who stood around him, smiling despite the ruination of a large part of their town. "I have a feeling that things are going to be all right for Desolation from now on."
"Yes," Niles replied, "Jolly good. Now, if you and your friends are finally done playing epic battle, do you suppose we can get back to the task for which we actually came here? That is, if you're sure that nobody else is going to jump out of the bushes to try to kill you, at least for today."
"Good idea. This is probably the best time to find that rune and take it away, in case its power takes hold again."
Orlando Winterburn was standing beside Sonic with his eyes full of stars, and Sonic feigned happiness to see the teenage artist.
"Pow!" Orlando exclaimed, "That was the most exciting battle that's ever happened here! Boom! Wow! That even beat when the Justice Brigade took on Cac-o-Jack the Destroyer! Pow! Zap!"
"Well, I'm certainly glad that you were entertained," Niles scoffed, "That makes this whole bloody ordeal worthwhile."
"Check it out!" Orlando exclaimed, ignoring the fox, and opened his sketch pad, shoving it under Sonic's nose. The hedgehog took it and cocked his head as he looked at the page. There was a drawing of a tall blue hedgehog with a flowing mane of red hair and a thick suede jacket posing on a cliff at sunset with his hands on his hips. Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, read the banner over his head.
"It's... like... looking into a mirror," he muttered, glancing at Espio who was trying to hold back a snigger.
"The Justice Brigade are gone, but my new series is going to be even better!" the wolf exclaimed, "Zap!"
"Good for you, kid," Sonic said, and handed the sketch pad back, hiding a look of vague distaste. "Come on. Let's see if we can't rustle a free meal out of these adoring masses before we get back to work."

XXXI

Desolation darkened into the soft ambience of twilight, and Sonic and his travelling companions were indeed treated to a banquet fit for kings, or heroes. Sonic was more tired than he was hungry, and after a modest meal he left to go to bed, although Niles and Espio stayed behind to devour as much food as they could possibly fit in their bodies. After all, it might have been a long while before they could eat this well again.
Sonic made his way alone to the bed and breakfast they had rented for their stay (and the old squirrel who ran the place was much more spritely tonight than ever, smiling and offering to make him a cup of tea). After a short hot shower, he retreated to his room.
A cold breeze bit through the little bedroom that made his moist and wounded skin cry out for mercy. The one window was open, and the curtains were billowing. Sonic hugged his shoulders, walked to the window and closed it.
He started to turn back to his bed, when somebody attacked him from behind, cracking what felt like a rock over the side of his head.
Sonic fell over backward with a startled and pained cry, grasping his temple where he had been struck, and the blood already began to ooze between his fingers.
Zero Tolerance stood in Sonic's room, naked without any of his armour or gadgets, and looked down at Sonic with cold, hard eyes. Without his mechanical suit, it was easy to look at Zero and feel sorry for him. He was scrawny and showed signs of malnutrition, his ribs visible through the corrugated slate of his chest. He was unbathed and unkempt, and looked very much like someone without the first clue about how to take care of himself.
What was more, there were patches on his body that were missing hair, and the skin underneath was red and badly blistered. They were burns, and they didn't look comfortable.
"Get up, Sonic," he hissed, "Get up and face me. Come on."
He was holding something in his fist, the rock he had used as a weapon. Sonic didn't have to see the symbol on it to know that it was a Rune.
"Zero," he said slowly, "You need medical attention. I can-"
"Get up and face me you piece of trash!" Zero screamed, and he kicked Sonic in the gut with all his might. Sonic recoiled, winded, but did not move to attack this emaciated corpse of a hedgehog.
"It's over, Zero. You need to stop this, it's not doing you any good."
"It'll never be over."
Sonic pulled himself to his feet and chanced to approach the battered intruder. Zero was edgy, but stood his ground. Sonic put out his hand.
"Where did you find that?"
"It's something valuable," Zero spat, and he clutched the stone against his chest like a selfish child with his favourite toy. "It's Rustbucket's heart. It powered his weapon, and when I figure out how it works I can build one of my own. Then you'll die, Sonic, you'll-"
He fell back against the wall, and Sonic saw that his hand was trembling badly.
"Why-" he stammered, "Why won't you die?"
"Listen to me," Sonic said, "There are things happening right now that are more urgent than me and you. Please, Zero. Please, talk to me. What is this all about?"
Zero shook his head and stared at Sonic like he was something incredible. "How do you do it, Sonic?"
"Do what?"
"How do you feel," Zero demanded, "Without falling apart?"
"How do I feel? Don't you feel, Zero?"
"It's such a fantasy. Mecha lost his mind wishing for life, wishing he could be just like you and live in a fleshy body. That's why I was built in the first place. But Mecha was an idiot. Life holds no rewards for a robot."
For the first time, Sonic began to catch on to the reality of Zero's situation. It seemed an impossiblity, and yet it answered so many questions, unveiled so many mysteries long denied to him.
"Imagine your soul," Zero continued, "Your consciousness, ripped from your body and uploaded into a completely alien processing system. Flooded, Sonic. That's how I feel. Flooded with too many new sensations to possibly control. Pain, emotion, need. I'm drowning in it, Sonic, and the only way I can think to stop it is to kill you. Because you killed me."
"Cyber Sonic," whispered Sonic.
"Cyber no more, I'm afraid," the other replied.
"But how?"
"You think I know that? You think I asked for this, like that idiot Mecha? They put me in this body and left me to sort myself out, so that's what I have to do, the only way I know how. So you see, Sonic, you are my destiny now, and you must die by my hand so that I can finally live."
"The hurting won't stop, Zero," Sonic said, "You can kill me, you can kill everyone who wrongs you, but you'll never be satisfied. You only think you will be, but that's not the way emotions work."
"I don't take advice from you!" Zero snapped, "You are my enemy! You are a talking animal, what would you know?"
"About emotion, more than you. And it's all clear to me, now, I understand your hatred. I know how I hurt you, and I can see how ruined you are now. And Zero... I am sincerely sorry. I want you to know that.
"You're sorry?" Zero shrieked, and moved to strike Sonic again. Sonic shrank back, but the attack never came. Zero trembled even more violently and fell to his knees. The rune fell from his limp hand and rolled under the bed. Sonic could see that tears were welling up in the black hedgehog's bruised eyes.
"What h-have you done to me?" he sobbed, "My eyes. I'm t-trembling, I- I can't-"
"Let it out."
"It's a trick. You've p-poisoned me. How?" His face screwed up, his eyes vanishing behind walls of tears, and he collapsed on the floor with his limbs coiled into himself. "What am I going to do?" he whimpered.
"Live a life," Sonic replied, "Get in shape, do something you enjoy, save yourself. Just live. It's not like being a robot in Robotropolis, you're not a slave to your own programming."
Zero didn't respond, he merely lay in a fetal position and cried with his back to Sonic. The blue hedgehog got on his belly and felt around under the bed for the Rune. He found it, and looked at it. Just a normal-looking rock with a symbol carefully carved into its smoothed face. Just two straight lines, and another one waved, arranged in rows.
He hadn't seen one this close before. Cinos had beaten him twice to these stones. Had Sonic only won the third time because Cinos wasn't present? The dynamics of good and evil and their power remained an enigma for him to puzzle over. Despite his long day, he wasn't feeling quite so tired anymore. And it was just as well, for he wouldn't be sleeping here. This room, at least for tonight, belonged to Zero.
He looked back at the sickly skeleton-thing who was one of his fiercest enemies, sobbing and crying like an infant, curled up on the floor. He stared for a little while before leaving quietly and closing the door behind him with a soft click.

---

ZERO:
The Fifth Interlude

I've travelled the world from sea to sea and seen remarkable things,
The falls of empires, the rise of mountains, the legacies of kings,
But never again in all my life have I been able to find,
A being with a body of flesh, trapped with a robotic mind.

Life is such a precious thing, a gift from heaven above,
A body that can feel the sun, a heart that can feel love,
These gifts are not for metal things, not for created machines,
Only for the born of flesh, the minds of God-made beings.

I met him on my travels once, a creature full of hate,
He wanted all his enemies to meet a dismal fate,
A mind that could not comprehend compassion, forgiveness or mirth,
He cursed the very circumstance of his unusual birth.

I asked him, "Why do you persue such venegence, Dark of Heart?"
He answered me, he said, "Our very minds are leagues apart,
My emotions are too strong for me, I must put them to peace,
I feel I must appease them or my life functions will cease."

I said, "But Dark of Heart, life is of choices, not commands,
Emotions are not things to obey, but things to understand."
His reply, "I know nothing of choices, I was never taught free will,
I was built to merely follow commands, to persue, and pillage, and kill."

I've travelled this globe all over, oh the lessons I have learned,
The cultures I have visited, great empires overturned,
But what a lesson I have learned from one without control of his own heart,
He lived without a purpose while his soul was torn apart.