Eggman was being given a tour of his uncle's old headquarters. In several rooms was the machine that gave the old man his claim to infamy, the robotosizer. "They still work quite well," Sleet said when he noticed him admiring them, "We acquired a prisoner recently just for a demonstration. Follow me sir." He led him to the largest robotosizer room in the catacombs of the whole place. Two large swat bots dragged a kicking and screaming rat mobian. "You bastard Sleet," it screamed, spitting at the bounty hunter's feet, "Queen Aleena will kill you just like you deserve. You don't deserve to walk free!" Sleet merely rolled his eyes at the spitball that fell short in front of his feet. "Shove him in," he said blaisly, "he will just be trading one master for another." The bots tossed the rat in and the machine slammed it's metal shutters down trapping it inside.
You could hear him banging on the sides of the machine as Sleet gestured to the control panel. "Well sir," he prompted, "it is your birthright isn't it?" Eggman hesitated before flipping the switch. He had never heard screams like that before. When the shutters raised, the newly made mobian rat shaped robot gave him the chills. Despite the smiles and the praise being heaped on him, Dr. Eggman didn't feel very safe. "Now sir we need to speak about your blue annoyance and his family," Sleet said, taking the lead again to the main computer. It brought up a wealth of information for Sleet to explain.
The eldest prince is your familiar blue blur Sonic. His medallion features a two necked guitar. It's magic when used solo has much more limited abilities. It can merely suggest an action for someone, and they can fight it off quite easily anytime unless they are considerably weak minded. It has minor control over wind allowing him to boost the speed of others to his level or blast fighters off their feet. He was a member of the rebellion long before any of his siblings and, while never receiving true combat training, has made himself quite formidable over the years.
Sonia is the next in line after Sonic. She was once a ward of nobility before she joined the rebellion. She is the one with much more proper schooling even if most of it doesn't translate into fighting a war. Her tactics became quite deadly over the years of fighting us all. Her piano's magic gives her many skills to strengthen her allies. Manic is the youngest of the three hedgehogs and a bit of a jack of all trades. Growing up in the east end, he was surrounded by all different kinds of unsavory people. He has become the main muscle of their small team especially with those drums of his that can move earth. Finally there is our greatest enemy of all, Queen Aleena. She was a tyrant even more ruthless than Robtonik. I would be more afraid to disobey her than your uncle. At least with your uncle you knew what would happen, Aleena just erases you at the slightest hint of betrayal. I doubt even her children are safe given what happened to the last chaos guardian. Eggman was starting to feel in over his head. Most of his schemes had only ever been small time annoyances at best. His uncle had been a real life iron fisted tyrant. Here he was, a man with barely any credit to be an evil scientist, sitting in a very very evil lair being told he basically signed up to fight more than just his normal blue annoyance. He was screwed.
Sonic sat in his room in the palace. He knew there were several guards at his door and window. "For your protection," his mother had said, "I worry so much about you. I only want what is best for you my darling son." What was best appeared to be practically locking him in this room like a prisoner. She would have him appear at lavish feasts with the old nobles that had managed to hang on to their large fortunes after the freedom fighters had practically torn down the economy. He would have sped right out of there if it wasn't for the fact that his friends had never showed. Sonic wasn't sure where she had stashed them but was absolutely terrified to ask. So he smiled and talked, he tried to play the role of heir as well as he could. Every glare at something he did wrong sent a spark of fear down his spine for his friends. Sonic groaned and flopped backward on to the bed. He needed to find his friends.
"We need to find Sonic," Amy insisted to the lion mobius in front of a large holodeck. Tails was off with Manic to repair the ships, and Sticks had joined Sonia as they devoured the information brought back by spies and scouts about the blue blur himself. Cyrus sighed loudly and swiveled his chair to look at her. "We know where he is," he explained yet again, "The problem is that the palace is the single most heavily defended building in mobotropolis besides Robotnik's old one. We need at least a week to plan ahead everything and even then there is a chance we will fail! There is only one way in and it's through the front door!" Amy huffed and Sonia glanced at her sympathetically from nearby. "No it's not," Knuckles said from where he had been previously staring at the wall for the past three days, "There is another way in."
"How do you know that," Amy asked incredulously but Cyrus held up a hand. "I don't," Knuckles answered looking away from the wall with a weird look in his eyes like he was really struggling to remember something. Sonia was practically leaping across the room to take his face in her hands. "Don't struggle with it," she said quickly, "Just the memory come on its own as the first thing to pop into your head. Now where is the other entrance?" "There is a hole in the back moat wall," Knuckles said staring at the spot on the wall again, "Old guardians used it to evacuate old members of the royal family during times of war. It was used during the rebellion to skim supplies from robotnik." Amy and Sticks blinked at how genius that was while also wondering how the hell he knew that. Meanwhile, Sonia planted an exaggerated smooch on his forehead. "Knuckles you wonderful echidna," she exclaimed, "Cyrus get a team together. I'm going to go tell Manic we head out as soon as it gets dark enough. Girls we are going to go get my brother."
Tails had never done an actual stealth mission. He had originally imagined the freedom fighters as ninjas in the night picking of Robotnik's goons. This mission was not the fantasy he had imagined. They trudged through the sewers of the city to reach the palace without being spotted. Manic and Sonia were walking awfully close to Knuckles and Tails was starting to wonder why they seemed to want to ask his opinion on so much. The echidna barely knew where he was most days let alone give advice on stealth missions. The hole was actually there. The stone blocking it would roll aside if the right pebbles were pressed in the right order revealing another stinky damp tunnel. Yeah stealth missions weren't what he thought they were.
He trudged alongside everyone through the tunnel when Knuckles stopped so suddenly, he slammed into the back of him. "What the heck," he shouted, rubbing his sore nose but before he could berate the echidna, Knuckles was running off towards a distant pulsing green glow. Hidden in the tunnels was some kind of glowing green crystal. It pulsed with some kind of power that traveled upward through vein like tubes that were dug into the crystal. "That's mine," Knuckles said a deep anger in his tone that Tails had never heard him use.
Before anyone could stop him, Knuckles grabbed the crystal and began pulling. The veins were pulled from the wall along with the crystal. "Knuckles stop," Sonia hissed, "we don't have time." Knuckles whirled his hand, still gripping the crystal. "No," he snarled, "Aleena has stolen enough from me already. The crystals are mine. They have always been mine! I'm taking this and you can't stop me Snoot!" Sonia looked shocked, "you haven't called me that in... Knuckles are you...you?" "At the moment, yes," Knuckles said, finally succeeding in yanking the crystal out of the wall into his hand, "chaos energy is stronger than your mother hands down. I don't have long though because the moment I let go of this I'm gone again."
"What do you," Amy started to ask but was cut off by Sonia and Manic tackling Knuckles in a hug. "Whoa whoa careful," he shouted, easily catching them with one arm, "I don't want to drop this. Now can we go get Sonic now." Sonia and Manic were dropped from the one-armed hug to wipe their eyes. "Can someone explain to me what the hell is going on," a frustrated Sticks whisper yelled. "It's a long story," Manic said a watery smile still on his face, "and honestly the situation we are in doesn't give us enough time to explain everything to you right now." Sticks looked frustrated with that but Manic was right when he said they didn't have time to argue.
Earlier, Knuckles had no problem leading everyone through the tunnels. He guessed it was because his brain could really only remember the directions around Mobotropolis. Now however, he was so very turned around as the village layout started to overlay his memories of the tunnels. God was his life ever going to get easier. No stop he needed to focus, as hard as it was with the fog from Aleena's spell constantly trying to find its way back into his head, he needed to save Sonic. He owed him for all these years the blue blur had stayed. The Sonic he had known has a wanderer at heart and when they had still been freedom fighters he'd tell Knuckles about his dream to travel everywhere. For him to give up all his dreams and stay in a rinky little village to keep as many people safe as possible and care for his friend was rather huge. The end of the tunnels finally came into view. Knuckles gripped the emerald tighter in his hand. He would save Sonic and protect this one scrap of chaos. It was the least he could do for all of these years as a failed guardian.
Hello I know it's weird to have the first Author note on chapter five but I just wanted to thank people for reading my quarantine word vomit. Please review and tell me what you think so far and if you'd like to know the songs used earlier in the story leave me a message and I will try to get back to.