18:40 HOURS LEFT / THE LETTER
Despite being a robot, Doctor Charles Hedgehog, Sonic's Uncle Chuck, was having difficulty in undoing merely a small wire wrapped around his wrists. He had thought that he could have snapped it easily, working on hydraulics and pistons now instead of aging muscles. His captor was pacing back and forth in the small room that had been Chuck's prison for the past few days.
"Where's Robotnik, then?" he finally decided to speak to the time-traveller. "Aren't you gonna bring him to me; uncover the spy? That's your plan, isn't it?" Chuck attempted to spit at the boy's feet, but all that came out was a small invisible chunk of carbon monoxide. The time-traveller shook his head.
"No, Sir Charles. I've only done this to stop you telling the freedom fighters," he said, and Chuck almost heard a hint of apology in his voice.
"That you actually serve Robotnik? They'll figure it out! My nephew isn't the brightest, but he's not that stupid!"
"I know that they'll figure it out eventually. I just need time."
The time-traveller then turned and broke the old man's metallic heart; he began explaining his purpose. He told Chuck about the present, and the future. Every attempt Chuck made at speech just became stunned, horrified silence: the time-traveller's idea was irrational but made perfect sense; it seemed like a paradox, and the risk that it entailed was great. Yet as his plan continued, Chuck spotted flaws, errors in the boy's calculation, and he began to doubt him - there was an obvious bias, and that would affect the outcome more than the child would realize. He spoke up, protesting the time-traveller's idiocy, but the boy turned a metal remote on the old hedgehog. He had used the same remote to disable Chuck's arms and legs before to bind him for almost an entire week, which had caused enough problems with stiff joints already. Chuck reluctantly shut his mouth.
"Sir Charles, which would you choose?" the time-traveller asked softly, as if the question had no consequence. But it did. Charles understood that his answer could ascertain his freedom, but was that the right thing to do? Lie, and be like the time-traveller, to get what he wanted? He would lose all respect in himself should he betray somebody's trust, so he chose the answer he believed was righteous.
"I would choose neither!" Charles spat.
"Then you sympathise with me," the boy said simply.
Charles paused, astonished, but looked directly into the time-traveller's eyes and shook his head. The boy didn't seem to have noticed. Instead, he was walking around behind the pole around which Chuck had been bound. The hedgehog struggled to turn and keep an eye on him, but could barely see the boy kneeling down behind him and not much else. Chuck was about to ask what the time-traveller was doing when the boy spoke again. "For my plan to work, the following message must be relayed exactly: that the Deep Power Stone Sonic threw into the lava was actually the real one, and that both are now ineffective. You must also say that the Doomsday Project is deploying in 18 hours and that they must be ready to infiltrate Robotropolis no less than 2 hours before it begins."
Chuck felt the string snap suddenly and he pounced to his feet, spinning around ready for a fight, before noticing the time-traveller wielding a small pair of wire cutters. The boy stood up straight and placed the cutters on a console beside him.
"I'm giving you a chance, Sir Charles. I hope you understand the severity of my situation... Please write the letter."
Chuck clenched his metal fists. "I refuse. You would risk the lives of hundreds for this, your selfish obsession?! Look at me! I have lost my body to this war, as well as many other things. My nephew puts his life on the line every day to keep people like your family safe! The whole war is about selfishness and selflessness, and with your attitude you're no better than Robotnik."
"I can correct my mistakes. I have the Time Stones."
"You need to grow up and accept your losses, your failures!"
This seemed to anger the time-traveller a lot, but he kept his face almost expressionless as he stared at the floor like a pouting child.
"What if," Chuck suggested desperately, "just your appearance even once changes the fate of the world? Haven't you heard of the Butterfly Effect?"
The time-traveller finally displayed some emotion and snorted with contempt. "I have no time for theories. I deal with reality!"
"Did you still have to destroy one of the Power Stones? Even if they might have been abused before, that does not mean they will be again!"
"I can't guarantee anything! Time changes, but people don't."
"How can you be so ignorant? People do change! Look at yourself! When you were born, you would have been an innocent and kind young child, but now you are selfish and heartless, doing anything to save himself!" Chuck finally exclaimed, letting out all his contempt for the foolish young boy out at once. It didn't feel good.
"You know that isn't true, Charles! You were too stubborn to encrypt the Robotisizer files fifteen years ago and now you're still too stubborn to WRITE A DAMN LETTER TO SAVE THE WORLD!" the time-traveller suddenly roared, turning and pushing his face into Chuck's metallic moustache. The two glared at each other for a while before the boy snapped his head away. "I can't trust people like them. That's too much of a risk."
"Then why am I any different?"
The time-traveller wiped his brow. "Because I thought you would understand why what I am doing is right. I thought I could trust you, even a little."
"It's not right. You're risking so many lives by doing this."
"And by simply leaving it, I risk millions. Write the letter, Charles."
"I won't."
"Then the deaths of those millions, even the entire planet, are on your shoulders."
"I refuse to take any part in your madness."
"Then I shall write the letter for you," the boy said, then picked up a quill and piece of paper from the desk in front of him. Chuck felt rage filling him and he charged at the time-traveller, grabbing him around the chest and wrestling him away from the desk. The time-traveller struggled to grab the remote from the desk before he was yanked away from it and thrown across the room by Chuck with a crash, landing heavily against one of the control panels and flicking plenty of switches, turning a few monitors on beside him. The kid groaned in pain as he rolled onto the floor, and put his hand on his back. Chuck snorted with contempt and moved to the desk to take the quill and snap it, before the time-traveller suddenly pointed the remote at Chuck and pressed the button. Chuck felt his limbs cease to be under his control, and he rigidly fell to the floor.
The time-traveller eventually got back to his feet and limped over to the desk again, picking up the quill and paper that he had dropped.
"You're a dirty fighter," Chuck scowled.
"The world is dirty, Sir Charles, and if I wasn't writing this it would soon be a lot dirtier."
Chuck rested in furious silence on the floor as the time-traveller continued writing. He finished, then rolled the message up and looked towards the mechanical courier pigeon. Chuck followed the time-traveller's gaze, and watched as the boy picked up the courier and dropped it on the floor before lifting his knee and stamping on it. There was a faint squeak as the metal bent and compressed. A couple of bolts fell out of its open beak. Chuck sighed as the time-traveller lifted his boot off of the small metal bird - that thing had kept him company while he had been stuck in there, paralysed by the remote like he was now.
The time-traveller left shortly after, and it wasn't long after that when Chuck's motor functions returned in his arms and legs. He pushed himself to his feet and stretched out – something which, despite being a robot, still felt great. The quill was still on the table, along with some more paper, so Chuck instantly pulled up a chair and started writing.
The pigeon courier squeaked a little, drawing a quick glance from Chuck, but he turned his head back to the paper. "I'll have you fixed up soon, little buddy."
18:00 HOURS LEFT / THE WATCH
Snively woke up somewhere in the Great Forest.
He had no idea where exactly at first, but it was a forest, and he couldn't see anything but forest for miles around, so that was the most likely guess. With a yawn, he sat up and took a worried look around him. There wasn't much but trees and bushes for as far as he could see, and the height of the trees made him feel even smaller than usual. He remembered suddenly why he hated this place.
However, as his eyes scanned the surroundings slowly, he spotted one little clearing, where there appeared to be a small stone bridge... with a constructed wooden banister passing over a quietly flowing river. Past that, if he focused, he could see many big thatched-roof huts.
'Knothole!' he thought, and despite having never seen the place he had no doubts at all that he was in Sally's freedom fighter headquarters. 'But how did I get here?'
He stood up stiffly and brushed his clothes, sweeping off little brown clumps of dirt and grass, before raising his hands in front of his face and looking at them. Dirty, with green marks. For a moment he wondered how long it had been since he had seen himself covered in something natural like this. He rolled his eyes – he had been covered in oil only yesterday after that meddlesome time-traveller had 'accidentally' walked into a worker bot and pushed him into the oil lake they had discovered...
The time-traveller!
It was the only plausible explanation. Snively had reserved his doubts about the boy from the start, but warning Robotnik was useless. The time-traveller had bought Robotnik's trust when he'd shown the oaf a bunch of undiscovered oil lake locations. Even then, he'd just kept coming up with new ideas that all helped, like improving efficiency rates and SWAT-bot AI. Everything went in favour of the time-traveller, and Snively was left in the shadows. Not that he wasn't used to that, but this time it was a lot more personal.
Snively began to walk cautiously in the direction of Knothole, deciding that running away was a bad option – he'd have more of a chance getting back to Robotropolis using the Freedom Fighters than fleeing blindly into the Great Forest. He instinctively looked down at his wrist but his watch had gone, another sign that the time-traveller had done it – he would have known that the watch was able to geo-locate his current co-ordinates. As a matter of fact, Snively had designed it himself as part of a failed attempt to discover Knothole through scrapped SWAT-bots, and was quite proud of it. Losing it was almost like losing a friend. Snively sniffed.
As he made his way closer to the camp, he ducked behind a tree as he finally felt the gravitas of the situation. He was literally metres away from something he'd spent almost 10 years looking for, a place that had caused him sleepless nights and misery without end after Robotnik's incessant demands. He tried to change his train of thought and devote his entire attention to the present circumstances. If he'd been kidnapped, then why did the time-traveller leave him outside Knothole? Did the freedom fighters even know they had him? If they did, why didn't they have him tied up and under close guard? The only logical explanation seemed to be that they didn't know he was there. He let out a heavy breath, then peeked out from behind the tree.