As promised, here's the new chapter. This one took me a lot of time and effort to write, and it's the longest chapter to date. A few moments of brotherly fluff and friendly quarrel.
It came out quite nicely in my mind, but I'd love to hear your opinions.
Also, congrats if you know how to crack the code. Kudos and many thanks to ABCSonicKirbyWarriors for your time and support.
Chapter 7: Escape
Inside the Egg Citadel's control room…
Eggman was busy with his full-scale war on the major cities of the world. He didn't even bother to direct his gaze at the security footage of the maze, and thus oblivious to the mysterious message Sonic had received.
Inside the maze…
Sonic was still trying his hardest to decipher the message, but it was more difficult than he thought. A bunch of random numbers really made no sense to him no matter how hard he tried.
"What the heck is the deal with these numbers? Is somebody trying to help me out, or planning on giving me a major headache of a lifetime?" said Sonic to himself as he paced around, "Argh, I can't think of anything. Tails is the genius, not me...Tails...is..." The cobalt hero quickly shook his head to clear his mind and got back to the matter at hand.
After using up more grey matter than he had ever attempted in a long time, the hedgehog decided to ask his red buddy for help. Sonic opened his communication wristwatch and contacted Knuckles.
"DID YOU FIND THE WAY OUT?" boomed the voice of the ecstatic echidna through the speaker, which made Sonic fall flat on his butt in surprise. Said hedgehog had to cover his ears for a moment to block out his friend's sudden outburst.
"No, not yet, but...maybe" said Sonic.
"I'm not in the mood for your stupid games, Sonic. Did you or did you not find the way out?" growled Knuckles on the other side. In his mind, the red echidna thought that Sonic was being annoying again, and he had good reasons to do so (as clearly shown in the previous chapters).
"I think I may have found something, or it found me," said Sonic as his voice got softer as he spoke.
"What do you mean?"
"Just, come to my location. Press the red button on your watch to use the tracking application."
"The one with a skull mark on it?" asked Knuckles innocently, clearly clueless when it came to technology.
"Yeah sure, if you want to the watch to explode in your face," yelled Sonic's annoyed voice through the echidna's speaker, "And you call yourself a treasure hunter?"
"Hey, I don't know that much about technology, okay. I thought the meanings of warning signs were the same as what I'm used to."
"What do you normally do when you see a sign with a skull on it then?" asked the hedgehog as he raised an eyebrow questioningly.
"Walk right in, of course. When people put up signs like that, it means they have something to hide, and it's my job as a treasure hunter to dig up their secrets" exclaimed Knuckles proudly as he hit his chest with his hand. Being an adventurer and treasure hunter had pretty much twisted his sense of what was safe and what not (Spending his entire on Angel Island seriously did a number on his concept of danger).
Sonic shook his head and smacked his it with his hand, "Sure. Leave it to old Knucklehead to conclude that a red button with a skull mark is safe to press" thought Sonic irritably, "I'll have to tell Tails never to let Knuckles go anywhere near his inventions, ever, especially the ones that have self-destruct buttons".
Sonic really wanted to speak some sense into his pal, but quickly decided against it. Neither hero had time for this meaningless argument at the moment.
"Just...stand there, and I'll fetch you" said Sonic as he cut off.
No sooner had Knuckles put his hand down than a blue blur encircled him and grabbed him by the arm. The next minute, the red echidna found himself the intersection.
Sonic then proceeded to showing Knuckles the cryptic message on the screen and asked if he could make head or tail of it.
"So, what do you think?" asked Sonic, hoping that Knuckles, with all of his knowledge and experience, could solve the riddle.
"Why do you think this message can get out of here?" asked the guardian as he rubbed his chin, thinking about a way to solve the problem presented to him.
"I don't know. I just...know, okay. Call it gut feeling, or intuition, but I think there is something about this message that can help us find the exit."
"Gut feeling?"
"It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact." said Sonic as he closed his eyes and acted like a lecturer in philosophy, much to the red echidna's surprise.
"Sherlock Holmes? Really?" asked Knuckles with eyes as wide as saucers.
"Hey, I read, too you know. Well, more like being forced to read" muttered Sonic under his breath, but the echidna had heard him quite clearly, and it intrigued him greatly.
"What do you mean, 'forced to read'?"
"Back when I took Tails in, he kept talking my ears off about different theories, formulas, literature and all that jazz. Also, the little guy was a bit scared of sleeping in the dark room alone, not that I could blame him though, so, I let him sleep in my room for the first few weeks, and the kid kept nagging me to read him bed time stories of his choice."
"And of all the stories out there, he picked Sherlock Holmes?" asked Knuckles in bewilderment, and Sonic just nodded. The echidna couldn't decide which was weirder: that Tails had a seriously unusual picks for bed time stories, or that Sonic was the parenting type that the echidna just couldn't imagine. "Apparently, the hedgehog ages in reverse, "though Knuckles.
"Yeah, the entire collection to be exact. He used to love fiction as much as science. After all, Tails is not exactly your average fox, with his fre..." Sonic was about to say 'freakish', but he quickly slapped himself (hard), much to Knuckles' surprise, before continuing, "extremely high intelligence and all. Thanks to that, I can pretty much quote every line in any Sherlock Holmes book without even trying."
The cobalt hedgehog chuckled to himself as the memories of their time together resurfaced in his mind. Those were happy times for both of them, just spending everyday in the companionship of each other and playing together to their heats' content, despite their dangerous hero's duties. He could almost hear Tails' happy laughter echo in his head and his sweet, childish voice calling his name affectionately.
The hedgehog then remembered their fight again. Once again, he trembled visibly at the thought that no more happy memories would be made with his best friend because of his stubbornness and big mouth. Sonic looked down at his feet, and once again, guilt overtook his mind. Once again, Knuckles noticed.
"I told you already. Tails'll be fine. We only need to get out of this place, beat Eggman to a pulp, then you can go back to his workshop and apologize to him for being an annoying, insensitive, stubborn, egotistical, insufferable, idiotic jerk with a motor mouth. That's all." Knuckles said as he released all of his pent-up frustration at the hedgehog in his 'soothing' words.
"Jeez, thanks a ton for the pep talk, bud" said Sonic as he glared at the chuckling echidna, half happy and half pissed off by his 'profound' words, "But the question is how do we get out? It's not like you've come up with any answer to this little problem here." Sonic said as he pointed his finger at the message on the screen.
"About that, I've already figured out the answer while you were busy telling your back story." Knuckles said as he crossed his hands and smirked confidently.
"Really? You've got it?"
"Oh yeah. I'm a treasure hunter, so I naturally know how to deal with codes. This one is nowhere near as hard as the ones I have had to deal with."
"Alright, do enlighten me, oh great one" said Sonic as he pretended to bow his head respectfully.
"The key to solving this message is the Alphabet" said the echidna as he began to 'enlighten' the clueless hedgehog, "The numbers here represent the order of the letters in the Alphabet. We only need to know the numerical order of each letter, and this message is as good as solved. For example, number twenty is letter 'T', since it's the twentieth letter in the Alphabet. Just use that method and we'll have all the letters. As for the dashes between the numbers, I believe they connect the letters and form a word, while the space between each series of numbers represents where a new word starts. So, following method, we have the following letters."
Knuckles then picked up a piece of metal and began writing (or carving) his findings on the opposite wall.
The translated message
T-I-P-S
T-H-E-R-E I-S A M-O-T-I-O-N S-E-N-S-O-R O-N T-H-E B-O-A-R-D
T-H-E W-A-L-L-S M-O-V-E W-H-E-N Y-O-U C-R-O-S-S I-T
L-E-F-T M-O-V-E-S R-I-G-H-T
U-P M-O-V-E-S D-O-W-N
S-L-I-P T-H-R-O-U-G-H T-H-E C-R-A-C-K-S W-H-E-N T-H-E-Y D-O
"Alright, now try reading it for yourself, oh clueless one" said Knuckles mockingly.
Sonic glared at Knuckles for a moment before doing so. The hedgehog squinted his eyes and read out loud the carved message, "Tips: There is a motion sensor on the board. The walls move when you cross it. Left moves right. Up moves down. Slip through the cracks when they do."
"Basically," said the guardian, "This motion sensor *pointed at the one with the message* moves the walls of that corridor *pointed at the opposite corridor to where they were*. The same can be said about the left and right. The motion sensors make the walls move to create new dead-ends. No wonder we can't find the exit, since it doesn't exist in the first place. Eggman really managed to make things difficult for us for once."
After a brief 'Ooooh' moment, the hedgehog hugged the unsuspecting echidna next to him.
"Knucky, you're a genius, I can just kiss you right now."
"Try pressing your lips against my face and you'll go to the dentist's 24/7 for the next few years to get a new set of teeth after we're done here, hedgehog" threatened the guardian as he struggled to break free of Sonic's bear hug.
"You know your threats are nowhere near as scary as Shadow's, right?"
"What did he threaten you with?" asked Knuckles curiously. "Maybe I should ask Shadow to teach me how to shut this guy up" thought the echidna as he continued to struggle out of the tight hug.
"Well, he said something about putting a grenade in my mouth and pulling out the safety lock." Sonic shuddered at the memory of the dark hedgehog pulling out a real grenade after he had said his threat.
"Ouch!"
"Yeah, that's what I thought. Knowing Mr. Ultimate Light Bulb (Chaos Blast and Chaos Spear, anyone?), he might just do it for real."
With that, Sonic finally let go of Knuckles and allowed the echidna some fresh air that his lungs were practically screaming for.
Once Knuckles had calmed down, he directed his gaze at the message and frowned in consideration.
"So, should we try this?"
"Why not? Looks pretty legit to me. I say we give it a shot." Sonic said as he looked at Knuckles with a determined look in his eyes.
Knuckles was a little skeptical at first, due to the dubious and highly questionable nature of the message, but he decided to give it a try. Besides, it wasn't like they had another choice in the matter. Sonic and Knuckles then began to devise an escape plan.
"I'll trigger the motion sensors." said Sonic, "You go back to the wall you marked and wait. When the walls there move, use your brute strength and hold them apart. The space between the walls when they move is our way out of this stinking hellhole."
"Worth a shot." replied Knuckles.
After that, they stood up and began to set their plan in motion. Once Knuckles was in position and confirmed with Sonic via the wristwatch, the blue blur walked to the intersection, careful not to cross the electronic board just yet. The hedgehog stopped before he crossed the motion sensor. He drew a deep breath and calmed his nerves down.
Once that was done, Sonic crossed the board and quickly made his way toward the next motion sensor on the opposite corridor (the one that moved the walls of the corridor where Knuckles was at), which was opposite to the one where Sonic had come from. He turned moved his feet in front of the electronic board and quickly ran back to Knuckles' position.
True to their plan, when Sonic triggered the target motion sensor, the walls of the passage where Knuckles was standing began to move at an impressive speed. Not wasting his precious chance, the echidna quickly stepped in and used his strength to keep two walls apart, jamming the entire maze's systems and creating a small space just big enough for one person to move through one at a time.
Sonic came back a moment later and saw that their plan had worked.
"It worked." exclaimed Sonic.
"Yeah, but I can't hold these walls apart for too long. Get out now, Sonic before the exit closes."
"What about you, knucklehead?"
"I'll be fine, now go!"
Sonic thought for a while. He could go escape, but that would mean leaving Knuckles behind, and he really didn't want that. Knuckles was starting to get tired. The walls were really thick and heavy, so the task was taking a toll on him.
"What are you waiting for, hedgehog? GO!" yelled Knuckles.
Sonic thought for a little while, and a smirk crossed his muzzle.
"I have an idea to get us both out of this maze, but you're going to have to man up, Knux." Sonic said with a devious smirk on his face, ready to get back at his pal for trash talking him a few minutes earlier. Knuckles was about to ask what he was planning, but Sonic beat him to it. The hedgehog curled up into a ball and started spinning to gain momentum.
At this point, the guardian's eyes opened wide as realization kicked in. He knew what Sonic was about to do, and he did NOT like that plan.
"Sonic, no…It's a really really really bad idea…Don't you dare…"
The Guardian's words fell on deaf ears as Sonic decided to go for it anyway. The cobalt hedgehog launched himself at Knuckles at a blinding speed, hitting the echidna squarely on his back. The force of the impact made Knuckles fall forward a few feet, effectively pushing him out of the maze.
Knuckles slowly stood up and gingerly massaged his back and growled at the smug hedgehog standing in front of him.
"Told you it would get us both out." Sonic said with the same mischievous smirk on his face.
"I'll get you back for that one, hedgehog." said Knuckles angrily as he slowly stood up and dusted himself off. Finally, the heroes looked around and saw that they were really out of the maze, and that the huge maze they had been in a few minutes ago was just a tiny dome inside Eggman's fortress.
"Can't believe we were trapped in that tiny place?" said the echidna, "Now I want to find Egghead and give him a piece of my mind." Knuckles cracked his fingers and started walking toward the door.
"That makes two of us. My shoes have an appointment the Eggman's butt, and they don't want to be late."
With that, Sonic and Knuckles made their way out of the room and headed to the Egg Citadel's control room.
I suppose many of you will find this part a little bit boring, right? If you do, I sincerely apologize. Also, I mean no disrespect to Shadow, just trying to make Sonic in-character.
As for the Sherlock Holmes' reference. I put it there for a number of reasons. Firstly, I personally love Sherlock Holmes. Secondly, Sonic's world has One Thousand and One Nights, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, so why not Sherlock Holmes. Finally, it fits the mood. Thus, your argument is invalid.
Maybe I should do a fanfic in which Tails is sucked into the books of Sherlock Holmes and plays the role of the world's greatest detective while trying to find his way back to reality. Knuckles could be Dr. Watson, Sonic could be Mycroft Holmes, and Blaze/Cream/Amy/Wave could be Irene Adler...On second thought, nah. That will just come out a mess with my writing skills. Too busy with another in-progress project already. Just a thought, though.
Well anyway, please comment and tell me what you think about this chapter, beside it being 'freakishly' long for a chapter. Thank you and stay tuned, everybody.