This story arc starts with "Chapter 16: Blue Wave Island".
Chapter 17: Captured
The gang of mobians were sitting in a nearby park, waiting as Sonic went to find Sapphire, as they mulled over what they learned about their new friend.
Shadow had temporarily left to find out who was in charge of the island's branch of military occupation, so he could discuss his grievances with the orphanage.
"Man... Saph had it so rough," Amy finally said.
"A caretaker should actually take care of her children," Vanilla exclaimed. "That's the literal title of their job!"
At that moment, Shadow returned.
"So...?" Amy asked, wanting to know how his discussion went.
"While it isn't normally under their derestriction, the general here will see about getting the orphanage under stricter regulation," Shadow told Amy.
"Good. I hope those kids learn their lesson after this," Amy replied.
"Being an orphan must be really hard, but that does not mean you shouldn't nurture them..." Vanilla added. "And discipline them if needed."
"I hope miss Sapphire is alright," Cream said. "We would never treat her like that."
"It was that awful woman who was out of line," Vanilla replied. "She should have never said those things, making her feel like we don't value her for who she is."
"Sonic will probably find her soon," Tails said. "We just need to-"
"Guys!" they heard the blue hedgehog shouting as he frantically ran up to them. "We've got trouble!"
Everyone turned to Sonic with various expressions in reaction to his arrival. "Speak of the devil," Shadow said. "Where's Ma- Sapphire?"
Sonic stopped in front of the group, saying, "Sapphire's been kidnapped!"
"WHAT!" Everyone else shouted together.
"W-wha- Why? Who took her!?" Cream exclaimed, immediately thinking about what happened with Gemerl.
"Eggman," the blue hedgehog replied.
Shadow immediately approached his look-a-like. "Why did you stop him?" he asked, barely containing his anger. "I thought you were the 'Fastest Thing Alive'?"
Sonic gave him a glare that wordlessly said "don't you dare go there". "The robot that took Sapphire was already flying away when I got there. I couldn't even make out the details, but I knew it had to be one of Eggman's."
"No doubt there..." Tails replied with disdain.
"As much as I would've rather followed them... They were already pretty high in the sky and flying off... and well, we're on an island... I can't exactly cross the ocean to give chase."
Shadow stepped backed, growling, but understanding. No one could just cross the ocean like that, not even Sonic OR himself.
"But why would Eggman want to take Sapphire?" Amy asked.
"I don't know... A hostage, maybe? We've kept her out of the public eye, for the most part, since she's not comfortable with the spotlight, but it's not like it's unknown that she's my apprentice and Sonic's adopted sister," Tails noted.
"I bet you anything that Eggman's been spying on us," Sonic replied. "I won't put it past him."
"The question is..." Shadow began, "where did the doctor take her?"
Sapphire was holding on for dear life. Being this high reminded her of her air ride with Sonic that one time, and it terrified her. Of course, being kidnapped definitely wasn't helping either.
"Please take me back...!" Sapphire begged over the winds.
The Sonic-look-a-like robot did not respond, as he continued to fly further away from the island and Sapphire's friends.
Eventually, they approached something in the sky... a massive flying aircraft that was red in color. The Sonic-bot flew above the craft, so he could descend and land on the deck, where someone was waiting.
He was human, tall, bald with a large reddish mustache jutting out the sides of his face, under a large nose, while wearing glasses complete covering his tiny eyes and a pair of machinal googles on the top of his head. His body was large, but oddly shaped, like an egg. He was wearing a red jacket with yellow cuffs and fur golden, rectangular buttons on the upper chest, which was worn on top of a black uni-suit-boot combo. He also had white gloves.
"Greetings, Sapphire the Hedgehog," the man said. "Welcome to my Egg Carrier."
"H-how do you know who I am?" Sapphire asked. "A-and what d-do you want with me?"
"Oh, my dear apprentice, do you not know who I am?" the tall human replied.
Apprentice? Sapphire thought. But I don't know you...
"I can tell you're thinking about it," he noted. Then he loud a loud, maniacal laugh. "Hohohoho...! My name is Dr. Ivo Robotnik! Better known as Dr. Eggman, the great scientific genius in the world!"
Sapphire reeled back in fear. She had never seen him, but she heard about him, even before she knew Sonic personally. Dr. Eggman, the man who had constantly attempted to conquer the world, only to be stopped by Sonic, time and time again.
"I've been observing you, young hedgehog. I can see you learning under that fox boy, and I realized... I need to continue my legacy. So I figured that you would prefer to learn under someone superior," Eggman explained.
"...S... so you kidnapped me... b-because you thought I'd want to-" Sapphire stopped herself, and attempted to gather some of that courage Sonic always displayed. "I-I wanted to learn under Tails because I admired him not just as a mechanic, but as a hero. Why would- would I ever want to learn ANYTHING from an evil man like you...! You... you... Egghead!"
Eggman's ego would've caused him to get angry and lash out, but he made an attempt to remain composed. This was his new student after all. "Oh, you'll come around, eventually. Once you realize how much more you can learn from me."
Sapphire looked up in fear, but then stuck her tongue out, trying to remain confident.
Eggman smirked. "I admire your attempt to be courageous, Sapphire, but I will not be swayed." He turned to the Sonic-look-a-like robot. "Metal Sonic! Take her to her room!"
Suddenly the robot grabbed and forcefully guided Sapphire inside the flying fortress.
Soon, they reached the room Sapphire was meant to stay, where the robot left, and the automated door locked behind her. For what she knew would effectively be a prison cell... it was nice. Not much, there was a bed (with a red blanket with Eggman's symbol on it, which was just his face), a table with a couple chairs, and a desk with a laptop.
Sapphire immediately went to the laptop. Maybe she could contact Sonic or Tails or someone who could come and save her. To her surprise, there was no security log-in set, and she loaded right in. However... the laptop was connected to the "Eggnet", and had no access to the greater internet, preventing her from sending any kind of email or message of any sort to the outside world. In fact, what access she did have was limited.
Sapphire's hopes dropped. If she knew how, she could hack through the network and get a message out. But she was not a programmer, not beyond basic mechanical coding. She knew how to make machines move automatically, but she didn't know how to break into, or out of, a network.
The yellow hedgehog fell back to a corner, curled up into a ball, and began crying. She was trapped. She had just gotten a good life, and a chance for freedom, to grow. But now, she was ripped out of it.
"Sonic, I'm sorry..." she said quietly, weeping. "I shouldn't have let her get to me..."
After a night of having cried herself to sleep, she was woken up to the sound of a couple of robotic voices.
Looking up, Sapphire found two small, floating robots in front of her. One was red and shaped like an orb, and the other was yellow, shaped like a cube. Beyond that, they were similar. They had colored tops, a pair of blue circular lights for eyes, teeth-like lighting imitating a mouth of the bottom of their heads (the yellow cube bot had a sort of jaw too). From there, they had small, ball-joint bodies, with mechanical arms and gloved hands with their colors, and then a bottom the looked like it could fit on the bottoms of their heads attached to another limb.
"Ah, she's awake," the red orb bot stated.
"Dr. Eggman wants to see you," the yellow cube added.
Sapphire just looked away. "I want to go home."
"Uh, okay," the cube bot replied. "Where did you want to go?"
"You buffoon, the boss will get really mad if we just let her go?" the orb bot warned him, while also smacking him. He turned to Sapphire, and said, "best not leave him waiting."
"No..." Sapphire says, trying to sound defiant, but not carrying the confidence to pull it off. She was too scared.
"Well, that's a load off my back," the cube bot replied.
"You lazy idiot," the orb bot said. "Please, don't make us call take drastic measures. We don't want to have to... force you," he told Sapphire with warning.
Sapphire didn't like it, but it seemed she wasn't going to have a choice.
Getting up, the robots led the terrified girl through the halls of the flying warship, until they entered a workshop room.
"Good morning, Sapphire," Eggman said, waiting in a seat by a table. The table had some plates of food. The mad doctor grabbed one, and offered it to Sapphire. There were eggs, bacon, and French toast. "Breakfast, my dear?"
Sapphire didn't want to argue with him, since she was too terrified. She begrudgingly accepted the food, and sat down in a nearby chair.
Eggman grabbed the other plate of food, and began to dig in. Between bites, he began to say, "I hope my assistants treated you well."
"I... I'm not..." Sapphire stuttered.
"Nervous, 'ey? Don't worry about them. They're morons, but they listen. Hm... go on, eat, it's not going to hurt you."
Sapphire took a bite. It was good, surprisingly. And she didn't feel sick from anything afterward.
But it didn't ease her fears.
"So, I figured that we should just jump right on into the creation of Badniks. There is a lot to learn, so I think we should just dive right on in. Orbot! Cubot! If you will, please set things up for us."
The red and yellow robots from before, now given their proper names (seems their names were pretty on the nose from Sapphire's acknowledgment), scampered (hovered?) off, as the sounds of machinery began to sound.
"Alright, finish up," Eggman exclaimed, "Then we start."
After their meal, Eggman began his lesson into Badnik construction. For all intents and purposes, it was very good. They were advanced, but with the premade building AI, they could be made very, very fast. But there was one detail that bugged Sapphire...
"How... do you power them?" she asked.
"An excellent question, my dear!" the mad doctor replied. "You are aware of the smaller animals that exist in our world, correct?"
Sapphire didn't like where this was going.
"Well, all we have to do is collect these little critters, place them into a Badnik shell, and viola. Instant army!" Eggman continued.
"B-b-but, why...? Th-that's cruel. You're taking away their freedom," Sapphire replied.
"So? They'll serve a better purpose this way."
Sapphire became really upset at this. "Is... there... any kind of alternative power source?"
Eggman paused. "Well... there are chaos drives, but they're regulated by G.U.N. I've done raids on them in the past... one time managed to even dismantle them entirely." Eggman thought of the time where he almost had the entire world in his grasp, thanks to the power of the Phantom Ruby. "But they still managed to control most access to drives. Besides, on such a large scale, they're inefficient. I only use them for my most advanced robots, and even then, I used to use animals for them, too, like my early E-Series."
"E-Series...?"
Eggman laughed. "I suppose I should show you some of my genius. ...Though there isn't much left to show."
The egg-shaped man walked over to a panel on the wall, and hit some buttons. As machinery roared to life behind the wall, after about a minute, the chute opened up, and Eggman pulled out a metal crate.
He placed the crate down on a table, and hits a button, causing it to open up. Inside were some parts for an incomplete robot.
"This was a model of E-Series I started a long time ago. Never finished it," Eggman explained.
"...And does it need animals to be powered," Sapphire replied with a mix of nervousness and distaste.
"No, this model was meant to use those chaos drives I mentioned. In fact, I think..." he opened up one of the parts, and inside were some crystalline cylinders. "Ah yes, seems I left some drives here." Turning back to Sapphire, Eggman said with a malicious grin, "the point is, animals are far more effective for the basic units."
"N-no wonder Sonic hates you..." Sapphire replied.
"Enough of that!" Eggman exclaimed. "Let us continue!"
Eggman's lessons weren't bad, Sapphire was honestly learning a lot. But the fact she was being forced to learn them, on top of them involving kidnapping poor little critters... it didn't sit well with her.
Come noon, Eggman would decide it was time for a break. "Ah, seems it's time for lunch." The large man got up, and informed Sapphire, "Orbot and Cubot will escort you to your room, so you can have your meal. We'll reconvene in an hour." He then began shouting down the hall for the robot pair to come.
Sapphire looked away. She was still terrified, wanting to go home. But how...?
If only Sonic were here...
Then she thought... but, what if I tried to... follow his example. He wants everyone to live free... That's why he fights Eggman. So could I...
She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath... what would Sonic say?
Just remember to be brave, and you'll be fine, he once said. To overcome fear, you need to face it.
I need to face it. Sapphire opened her eyes and took a hard look at Eggman. How do I fight him?
She then looked at the box of E-Series parts. The chaos drives were left out, just sitting there.
Sapphire looked towards her captor, finding that he was still putting his attention towards his lackeys.
Can I do this? He'll probably be monitoring me...
But as she thought that, she realized... It was now or never.
While Eggman was distracted, she took the chaos drives.
Eggman turned to Sapphire as Orbot and Cubot turned the corner. "My dear..."
Sapphire nodded. As she passed the man, she asked, "w-would it... be okay if I had some scraps to work with... in my room."
"Hm... well, I wouldn't want you to make anything you could use to escape. But some parts without any power source, that should be alright."
"And maybe some crystals," Sapphire quickly added.
Eggman raised an eyebrow.
"It's something I work with at home," she quickly explained. "I know I can't power them, but I want to be able to keep thinking about ways I could use them, and working with them, in a mechanics sense... would help me..."
"Ah, yes, the engineer's mind needs to see it to believe it, correct?" Eggman replied.
"Th-th-that's one way to say it..."
"Well, I think it's unnecessary, since my tech, which you'll be learning how to create, is superior in every way. But I'll indulge you. Perhaps, I'll ask to see it, one day."
With that, Orbot and Cubot began to lead Sapphire back to her room. She did it. She got away with taking the chaos drives. She had a power source, now she just needed to use her ingenuity, to take what she knew, and make something of it.
Then she could escape this place.
Author's Note: Now the true villain has been revealed! Yeah, we all knew it was Eggman. And Metal Sonic was her captor. Very Sonic CD of me, I know. But the Egg Carrier's here! So that's very Sonic Adventure of me! (I actually played Sonic Adventure DX on the Game Cube when I was a kid, so I have a lot of nostalgia for the Egg Carrier, so can you blame me for using it?)
I don't have much to say about this chapter, other than in the middle of writing it, I had a change of plans.
See, originally, I intended for Sapphire to reprogram one of Eggman's robots to escape, but then I realized...
Well, if you've seen my profile for Sapphire on DeviantArt, you would notice that she has a weapon, and a means of fighting. But in the story, she doesn't have it. That's because after this arc, she finally gets the confidence to fight, thanks to her gaining the courage to break free from Eggman's grip.
I realized that it would be much more impactful (and make a little more sense) if she made the prototype to her weapon as her means of escape. Tricking Eggman who didn't quite realize what her specialty was when spying on her.
We'll see how this all plays out next chapter, so watch for that.
And maybe sometime, I'll come back to that robot reprogram plot idea as it's own story, perhaps.