Encounters
It smelled of salty water below. A fresh sea wind was blowing into Sonic's face as the blue hedgehog sat with his legs dangling on the Tornado's left wing, scanning the area below the plane. He could see small roads and a town from time to time as the Tornado followed the coastline. "How far is it, Tails?"
"Not long I guess," the fox replied. "It's the next town we'll fly over. It's got a small airport where we can land."
"And then we need to get to this observatory somehow," Knuckles put in, leaning out of the plane to get a look down himself.
"The professor will send us a taxi so we can get to him right away. And then we can look at this Emerald manipulating thing out there much better. I'm curious what it is." Tails' two namesakes twirled excitedly.
"We are lucky you know him, Tails, and that he allowed us to use his lab," Sonic said, his gaze following a small boat that crossed the sea below, bouncing up and down rythmically with the waves.
After their confusing discovery, Tails had called a scientist he knew who was working at an astronomical observatory and the professor had agreed to help them. With the advanced technical devices and especially the telescopes their chances to work out details about the mysterious object were growing enormously.
At least that was what Tails had said.
"I guess I see the town. There's a building with a round top," Sonic pointed.
"Hmm, almost there," Tails nodded.
"It's pretty," the hedgehog noticed. "A nice place to spend the holidays."
The small town nestled up against the hills on three sides, tiny houses almost hidden in the valleys or in groups of four or five sitting on top of the round hills. To the fourth side, the town met the sea, a line of little buildings following a wild beach with high waves, the water turning white around the rocks interrupting the sand. At one end of the beach, the inhabitants of the town had calmed the sea and restrained its wild mood with thick, massive walls. The wave-breakers secured a marina for small fisher boats and a big dockyard with a basin deep and long enough to host even big cargo ships. Around the dock, warehouses to keep the goods the ships brought were lined up, but right now the harbour was almost empty and Sonic wondered if a really big ship would look misplaced against the background picture of this serene little town.
"The beach looks nice with these waves," Tails said, "Looks nice to take a swim there, but at the water is cold as ice. There's some kind of cold current flowing along the coast. It stays freezing cold even in summer." A small smile lit Tails' face as he looked up at the blue hedgehog. "Not that you'd care..."
Sonic shrugged. "We got much more important things to do." He turned back to look down. On top of a hill just outside the village the big white painted observatory stuck its ball-shaped roof into the brilliant blue sky. Behind it, Sonic glimpsed the typical grey lines airstrips made from high up. "I see the airport," he remarked.
Tails nodded and banked the Tornado into a gentle turn.
"Was about time," Knuckles in the rear sear muttered under his breath. Right now he really didn't feel up for admiring the scenery and thinking about holidays. He had a broken Master Emerald left on Angel Island.
He would do whatever it took to restore it.
Sonic leaned through the taxi's window and let some money drop into the driver's hand. "Keep the rest for you."
"Thank you," the taxi driver smiled. "Bye folks."
Sonic watched the taxi pull back out and return to the city, then he turned around and his eyes wandered up the small road. It led to a white painted fence. A closed gate was blocking their path. The hedgehog casually jogged over to the gate where Tails and Knuckles already waited for him.
The fox rang the bell a second time. "Maybe he's busy."
"Hm." Knuckles gazed through the fence up to the observatory. "You really sure he can help us?"
Tails opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by the intercom that clicked in that moment. "Hello?" The voice sounded metallic through the loudspeakers.
"Hello Professor, it's Tails," the orange fox spoke into the small microphone.
"Ah, come inside, boys! Meet you at the door!" With a click, the loudspeaker cut off, a second later the big gate opened up. Sonic, Tails and Knuckles stepped in and made up the path.
The observatory looked as if someone had taken a giant football and slammed it with massive force into a cubic box, then evened out all dents and painted the complex a bright white color. Sonic cast his eyes over the lower part of it, searching for windows and finding them on third look, the bright walls reflecting the sunlight and blinding him. The round roof had to be made of metal, it twinkled in the sunlight. A giant seam showed where it could be opened up to reveal the telescopes.
Sonic's attention was pulled down when his ears caught the sound of a door opening. A creature in a white coat stuck his head out of an entrance, then upon spotting the three visitors stepped fully out into the sunlight, the color of his clothing matching the building he'd just emerged from. He waved an arm in enthusiastic greeting.
"Tails! Good to see you, my boy!", he called when they neared him and reached to affectionately ruffle the fur between Tails' ears. "You've been growing since I last saw you."
"I did?" Tails smiled impishly.
The white coated figure turned to the blue hedgehog at Tails' side. "You must be Sonic, Tails told me enough stories about you to write a novel. If I had any talent at writing, but I make a mess even out of shopping lists so I always forget something." He laughed and held his hand out at Sonic. "Well, nice to finally meet you."
Sonic's gaze wandered over the scientist while he shook his hand. He was a racoon, about as tall as he was, maybe a bit taller. The color of his fur was a greyish yellow, on top of his head the pelt was longer and completely unordered, a chaos of strands falling half over a face painted with a friendly smile, blue eyes behind round and slightly too big glasses resting upon Sonic with an almost childish joy, betraying a good sense of humor. It was impossible to judge his age closer than guessing him something around thirty.
Sonic grinned. "Nice to meet'ya too. Since you already know my name, how about giving us yours? Tails just called you Professor."
The smile grew to a grin matching Sonic's. "Well, that's because most people call me that. By birth my name is.. hold on a sec... ah, yes, now I know! Archibald Charles Franklin Amadeus Fitzgerald Whitherpooth. I always forget it."
Sonic chuckled. "Really? No kiddin'?"
"No, really true. As a kid I hated it, and when I grew older, nobody was able to remember that name. As you've just seen, sometimes not even me. Some people would of course call me Archibald, but at some point everybody started just calling me 'Professor'. So I go with that." He shrugged.
"Maybe we could think about a nickname," Sonic suggested.
"He'd probably forget it," Tails threw in with a grin from one ear to the other. "He forgets a lot of stuff."
"But never the important things!" The racoon smiled. "No, I'm no longer interested in nicknames I guess." He turned to Knuckles. "But I'm being impolite. We were not through with the welcome yet." He offered his hand to the echidna. "You have to be Knuckles then, guardian of the Master Sapphire on Divine Island, right?"
"Eh, not exactly," Knuckles replied slowly shaking the hand. "It's a Master Emerald and it's called Angel Island, but yes, I am Knuckles and I guard it."
Archibald smiled, blushing a little, and rubbed his hand after the echidna's firm shake. "Sorry, you must excuse me, I have a bad memory for people."
"No problem. As long as you can track down this thing up there..." The red echidna pointed at the sky.
"I quite certainly can," the racoon smiled, his eyes glittering as the conversation reached 'his' topic. "With these telescopes and the other instruments we can look millions of light years into space!" His voice sounded as if that was something to save the world with.
"Fine then. How about if we go in and see them?" Sonic tilted his head.
"Alright! Everybody follow me!", the Professor shouted and tore his door back open, disappearing into the building. The three visitors followed him in, through a long corridor to a staircase and then up several floors. The raccoon pointed into one of the corridors on the second floor. "There we got some rooms to sleep, bathroom and a living room."
Skeptically Sonic looked though the door. The blank walls were painted grey, the doors of a slightly darker color, but just as boring. "Somebody every told you that you need decoration? This looks like a warehouse."
Archibald shrugged. "I'm rarely down here."
After taking another stairway up, Sonic, Knuckles and Tails were directed through a single massive door. Stepping through and stopping after a few steps, Sonic's eyes wandered around in awe.
"Wow..." Above his head the round roof span over a room big enough to park fifty Tornados and almost as high as large. In the middle of it, a giant black tube pointed in a sixty degrees angle at the spot of the roof where it could be opened. Along all the walls of the big room, tables with computers, screens and machinery for obscure use were lined up like slot-machines in Carnival Night Zone. Turning his head, Sonic's eyes stopped on a poster-big photo. Interested, the hedgehog stepped closer. It showed stars, also galaxies, more than Sonic had ever seen or even dared to believe existed.
"You like it?" The Professor smiled at him. Or maybe at the photo?
Sonic nodded. "Yeah, it's way past cool."
"It was taken here, through the telescope."
"You mean, when we look through, we can see this?" Sonic stared at the photo. It had little in common with a naked eye look at the night sky.
"Yes, and many things more. The world we live on is so small and there is so much to see out there. Wonders of nature. And we are just beginning to understand what is going on out there." The flicker was once again in his eyes.
"So, can we look at what we came for?", Knuckles urged. Right now he had something more important on his mind than exploring the sky with a long thing to look through.
"Oh, we need to wait until nightfall, you can only see the stars when it's dark. Even with such a big telescope. The light the sun gives us is enormous and so bright it covers everything else." The white coated raccoon made a wide gesture with his arms. "The sun is so big you could put Mobius hundreds of times into it without reaching its mass, the core is so hot the entire planet we stand on would melt to plasma within nanoseconds. Plasma is the fourth aggregate state and needs millions degrees to-"
"Professor?", Tails interrupted his monologue, "I know."
Sonic elbowed Knuckles, eyebrows raised, and leaned over to the echidna. "Did you get any of the fuss he said?", the hedgehog whispered.
Knuckles shook his head. "And I thought Tails talks weird sometimes. He's harmless."
"So we can't do anything until it's dark?", Tails asked.
"Oh, sure. We can adjust all the computers, fill the databanks with what we know, and prepare everything. You help me, Tails. You are an excellent assistant." The raccoon took of his glasses off, brushed once over them with the end of his sleeve and put them back on.
"Oh great," Sonic muttered. "Anybody sad if I take a look around and see a bit of the town maybe?"
"No, no, not at all." Professor Archibald was already strolling over to a table with several screens on top. "Tails? Do you have any idea where I could have put the disc with that filter program?"
"Last time I was here and you searched it you had put it into a box on top of the cupboard in the room where you keep the coffee and the other supplies," Tails suggested. "Can somebody go look?"
"I'm not much of a help otherwise anyway," Knuckles answered. "Where's that room?"
"Okay, have a nice time, guys, see ya!" Sonic waved at them and quickly rushed down the stairs before anybody could ask him to search for something someone who had problems remembering his own full name had lost somewhere in a house as big as a stadium. He really didn't need that!
Down in the lobby, he decided to first take a look around in the house. Maybe there was something interesting to see. The blue hedgehog picked a door on the left, opened it and stepped inside. The dimly lit room was full of machinery, obviously he'd entered the generator room. Sonic returned to the corridor and took the next door to the right.
This time it was a long, big room filled with shelves containing boxes of all possible sizes. Light fell in between them, coming from a small window at the very end of the room. An open window.
Sonic paced the room, wondering whether the professor meant to have fresh air in his storage rooms or if he had forgotten to close the window, but a sound from the left froze Sonic's feet. A loud tinkling sound almost like a plate or a really big bowl breaking came from behind a few lines of shelves and cupboards, followed by a quiet curse.
"Hey, who's there?" Did anyone else work here? Sonic went around the shelves, then stopped when he spotted a silhouette against the light of the window. "Hey you!"
The person whirled around, Sonic glimpsed the outline of up-tipped spikes, then the stranger rushed over to the window at a speed matching Sonic's own and the blue hedgehog had the impression to see the floor under his feet glow for a split second as he paced the room without making a sound.
"Hey, come back!", Sonic shouted, hurrying after him as he jumped out of the open window.
Sonic somersaulted after him, landing on the grass outside. In the same movement he shielded his eyes from the sudden bright daylight, spotted only a dark shape speeding away and broke into a sprint after him.
His eyes had adjusted to the lighting during the few seconds it took the both of them to reach the fence; the jump over it was already a lot more elegant than the blind leap out of the window.
Sonic's gaze locked on the fleeing intruder. He could only guess that he'd intended to steal something, but been disturbed by Sonic's unexpected arrival. He was a hedgehog like he was, only black furred with red markings. His movements as he sped down the road to the city were smooth, his feet sliding along the ground instead of making steps.
"Shadow!", Sonic called.
The dark hedgehog almost seemed to stumble, turned over his shoulder to look at Sonic, then caught himself and accelerated again.
But the second he'd been able to see him had been enough for Sonic, he knew who he had in front of him. At least this would be a challenge. The blue hedgehog sped up, gaining a bit on Shadow. "Hey, what did you want there?"
Still no reply. Shadow slid around a corner, following the street towards the dockyard. His hoverskates enabled him to be as fast as Sonic was running, but they had one weak point the blue hedgehog knew from earlier encounters. They suffered from a leverage problem in sharp turns. Sonic's own feet didn't and after two turns of the road he was running alongside Shadow.
"Come on, since when are you stealing stuff? Even for you that's sick, Shads!"
A gaze like daggers out of Shadow's red eyes hit Sonic. "My mission is none of your concern. I do not know you. The Doctor told me I could get into contact with enemies. I consider you such. I give you this one chance to retreat."
Sonic narrowed his eyes, but still a grin briefly flashed over his face. "Sorry, can't do that. Since when does Sonic the Hedgehog run a fight?"
"Your speed is impressive, but you better use it to return to where you came from. You should not dare challenge me." Another glare locked on Sonic for a moment.
"Wouldn't be the first time, would it?" The blue hedgehog looked back at his black counterpart, for a second he thought he'd seen something like doubt or confusion in the red eyes, then the impression was covered by indifference.
"I don't know about any former times, but I know that you won't stand in my way. I had a mission. It failed because of your interference." Shadow's voice had hardened another bit. In his hand Sonic glimpsed the spark of a summoning chaos spear.
"Hey, hey, hey, easy! The chaos energy is behaving weird lately, you really should be-" Sonic started, but stopped with a yelp as he had to duck forwards to get out of the way when Shadow did indeed fire a chaos spear at him. Spinning on his heels and running backwards for a second, Sonic's eyes shot all the way open at the sight of one of the buildings losing a wall, all of its windows shattering under the explosion of chaos power.
Shadow sure meant business!
The blue hedgehog turned back to him, did three or four of his fastest steps, curled into a spin dash and struck. Together with his black opponent Sonic plunged into another wall, bounced off quite unharmed and regained his feet running, only to find he had to quickly dive for cover. A second lance of chaos energy zoomed by only inches above his head and through the open portal of another warehouse, then crashed into a heap of wooden boxes with a loud splintering noise.
Sonic bounced back to his feet, following Shadow to where the black hedgehog was racing around the next corner, simply blowing up the harbor equipment and machinery that stood in his way. That black idiot is about to destroy half of the city! Sonic bit his lip and pushed himself to his top speed again.
Shadow heard the humming of Sonic's quick feet behind him and turned over his shoulder. "I warned you!"
Dodging another pair of chaos spears, Sonic still gained some more on the black hedgehog. "What the hell do you want, Shadow?! Where's the point in destroying all this stuff?!"
"I did not mean to fight you. This is your fault."
Sonic narrowed his eyes, took a short run-up and leaped to tackle Shadow, but the black hedgehog jumped, too. Instinctively Sonic curled up, two spinning balls of razor-sharp spikes hit in mid-air and the two hedgehogs smashed through another wall.
Shaking remains of splintered planks out of his quills, Sonic's eyes searched for Shadow. For a moment both crouched, staring into each other's faces, then Shadow leaped back through the hole in the wall. Sonic was after him in the same heartbeat.
"What did you want in the observatory's storage?!"
Shadow's reply to Sonic's question was a vague grunt. He stepped out of the way of Sonic plunging at him and sent another spear at the blue hedgehog.
It hit this time, even if not with full force. Sonic was thrown sideways and crashed into a staple of boxes that splintered immediately. For a few seconds he lay stunned and gasping, breath knocked out of him, then Sonic crawled to his feet and freed himself from the broken wood and frozen fish that had been in the box before.
"Not with me, Shadow. It takes more than some stinky ol' fish to get me off your tail," he muttered as he raced after the black hedgehog once more.
Knuckles stepped out of the house, for a moment standing and overlooking the village below the hill, then started to wander down the field of grass that surrounded the observatory building. Tails and the professor had claimed they were almost ready and didn't need him to help them, so he should go and see if he could find Sonic.
The red echidna was glad they had not asked him to get another thing he didn't know out of rooms full of cupboards nobody knew what they contained. So far the less organized person Knuckles knew was Sonic. The professor was multiple times worse. Additionally, Knuckles rarely understood a single sentence of what he said.
But as long as they could find a way to destroy that Emerald-threatening thing up there in outer space with his help, Knuckles didn't care at all if he was talking nonsense or living in an absolute mess. The only thing that mattered was the Master Emerald.
So the echidna was eager to get started. Where the hell was Sonic? Knuckles sighed. Somehow he guessed finding the hyperactive blue hedgehog out here would be as difficult as finding the professor's toys in his big house.
Suddenly Knuckles' feet stopped as his eyes trailed over the docks. From up here he could oversee the entire city and couldn't possibly miss the cloud of dust that now hung over the harbor area, neither could he overhear the sounds like distant explosions.
Knuckles frowned. He would take bets on who he was going to find down there.
"Whaaa!" Sonic yelped and pushed both of his feet into the ground in an attempt of a sliding brake. A mere meter in front of him, one of the loading cranes toppled, the tip landing with a loud splash in the basin. Sonic came to a stop with his hands frantically gripping the metallic stem of the crane. "That was damn close, you know?!"
Shadow looked down on him from where he stood on the arm of a second crane. "This is your last chance to leave."
"No way!" Sonic shook his head.
"Hmph, you asked for it." Shadow had barely finished speaking before he disappeared in a flash of light.
Sonic spun around, trying to see where he would rematerialize, but suddenly he was grabbed from behind and lifted off his feet. He struggled when he saw where to Shadow intended to carry him. "Hey, this – really isn't a good idea, Shadow! I'm sure we can talk about it..."
"Talking's long over." Shadow replied, holding even an in earnest struggling Sonic without any obvious strain over the edge of the dock.
"You d-don't mean to do this... Shadow?!" Sonic stared down on the surface of the dark water. The waves slowly licked up the several meters high walls that surrounded to dock.
"I certainly do." Shadow spun him around, grabbing his throat with one hand. Sonic's eyes widened as his windpipe was squeezed shut. The black hedgehog pulled his blue counterpart a little closer. The tone of his voice was deep and almost indifferent, not a trace of satisfaction or anything else that could have been interpreted as feeling. He simply didn't care. "My mission failed because of you. You delayed me here. You dared to fight me. And now you're going to take a little swim out of this dock. You can crawl back ashore on the beach. If the sharks don't make you their lunch, I suggest you learn from this little exercise not to interfere with things that are none of your business." The black hedgehog stepped all the way to the edge. "Now have a nice swim."
With a smirk on his face, Shadow released Sonic's throat and let go of the blue hedgehog.
Sonic fell.