SONIC THE HEDGEHOG: VELOCITY'S END
A fanfiction by Mythick Voices
Author's Note: Since I've been asked (and can't respond to reviews or messages directly through this website), the events of this story don't follow the events of the comics sequentially prior to this fiction's existence. Rather (as it will become clear why later in the story), the Super Genesis Wave had a non-standard temporal effect that requires some creative thinking. We humans naturally think of time as generally "flowing forward", where events happen in a sequential order. In this story, it's better to think of events throughout the Sonic franchise as individual raindrops that fall into and collect in a bucket. The water in that bucket is this story.
This chapter contains a repurposed scene from Sonic The Hedgehog #252.
Chapter 4
Unlike the lower bailey, the upper bailey was spotlessly clean and organized for invasion. As Sonic stepped through the burned hole in the gate, he nearly tripped over a squat, disc-shaped, robot busy scrubbing the stone floor. The metal walls of the courtyard were all polished to a shimmer, as were the long guns up on the parapets. There were weapon racks—some replete with axes and blades, others with laser rifles—as well as metal tentpoles with attached clotheslines. Large iron hooks had been spaced out along the lines, and from each of these hooks hung a glimmering golden ring.
Sonic grinned. After expending a significant amount of energy wrangling with Mordred's mobian cronies and mechanized enforces, he could use a power up. With a click of his heels, Sonic ran along the inner castle wall, doing a complete loop around the bailey twice. The first time, he lightspeed-dashed, grabbing the rings off the hooks, absorbing their power in a fierce flash of golden white light. The second time, he used his gained momentum to barrel through the weapon racks, eviscerating their contents in a crackle of vibrant blue energy.
Supposedly, the O'Hedge family vaults were located directly beneath the old stone fountain in the corner of the upper bailey. As the hedgehog wandered over to it, he could discern no visible switches, levers, or pressure plates that might open up or reveal a secret passage. Sonic looked down into the murky pool of lilies and leaves in front of him with a grimace.
"Of course, it's gotta be water," the Blue Blur muttered before dipping one of his feet into the fountain, trying to feel for sort of activation mechanism within the small pool. He felt nothing. Taking a deep breath, the hedgehog lifted his other foot into the fountain so that he was standing directly in the center of the pool. At that moment, the stone fountain itself began to shift, a stone column rising slowly from its center, revealing a mechanical device that included a monitor, speaker, and some kind of talk-box cobbled together from a host of different parts. It whirred to life, awakened by the presence of someone in the waters of the fountain.
The crude speaker system blared a prerecorded message to Sonic:
Deep beneath the waves I dwell
In ocean's heart where secrets swell
In silence glide, unseen, unheard
A steel beast, without a word
Sonic had expected something like this. Hiding secrets behind riddles was a common Mercian practice, one inherited ironically enough from the kingdom to which he meant to travel. The hedgehog stopped to think a moment. Water, as it happened, held a fairly high position on Sonic's list of things he liked the least. In fact, he spent as little time thinking about it as possible. Now, forced to recall all he could remember about the oceans of Mobius and other worlds, he found himself wishing he'd unpacked and resolved his issue with liquid a long time ago.
In his mind, the hedgehog recalled some of the past aquatic habitats he'd visited. From the beaches of the Emerald Hill Zone to the labyrinth of underground waterways in the Hydrocity Zone, Sonic could think of no adventure he liked less than the one that required him to trade in his running shoes for flippers and a snorkel. Even regions like the Hidden Palace Zone with its ancient and mysterious crystal formations, or the Oil Ocean Zone with its unscoured wealth of super rings, could not tempt the hedgehog to spend ample time exploring their environs.
The Oil Ocean Zone.
The revelation struck Sonic like another one of the G.O.O.N.'s heavy metal arms. The hedgehog recalled the West Side Island incident, when Eggman dumped thousands of galloons of chemical pollutants into the sea, filling the zone with badnicks and mutants. He remembered that the evil mad scientist had employed his creation, The Eggmarine, in order to more easily navigate the oily sludge his scheme produced. It was a small, bullet-shaped submarine made of storm gray metal, capable of hiding deep beneath the waves, craftily evading Sonic and his friends.
"A submarine!" Sonic guessed at the talk-box.
"Correct! Now hold your breath and prepare to dive in 3…2…1…"
Before Sonic could realize what was happening, the bottom of the fountain suddenly fell away, and both the hedgehog and the water he was standing in immediately dropped into a sloped metal shoot that angled away down into a dark tunnel slide, illuminated only by blue torches.
Sonic gave a yell of surprise, but was able to find his balance quickly upon the waterslide. It was a 45 slope, with a stone ceiling barely higher than Sonic's own height, a chute clearly fashioned solely for mobian use. There were more golden rings on offer as the hedgehog continued his watery descent. These he collected with acrobatic flair as he surfed the wave down into the fusty darkness of the castle sepulcher. Periodically, there were patches of cobwebs in which nests of tiny mechanical spiders gnashed their fangs toward Sonic. The Blur then showed that, even in such dim light and hydroplaning at great speed over water, his reflexes remained undiminished, dodging left, then right, then doing a complete, gravity-defying loop across floor, wall, and ceiling of the chute.
At length, the passage ended, opening up into a massive plunge that fell away into complete and unassailable darkness. Sonic found himself tumbling swiftly through the air down into a gigantic subterranean cavern, at the center of which hovered a large, high-tech, mechanical platform. Orbs of glowing light illuminated a monolith of volcanic glass the color of marbled indigo. For the first time, a moment of panic shot through the hedgehog as his eyes darted frantically around the cavern for a surface to run along or something to restore his momentum.
As luck would have it, the noise of the sudden flush of water from the secret passage into the cavern caused a dozen or so large robatniks to soar down from between the stalagtites above. Mechanized bats that served Eggman either as scouts or helpers during mining operations, these robot cretins had spread to nearly every deep cavern of Mobius, and Sonic was certainly thankful to find them here.
As one of the bats swooped down to attack Sonic, the hedgehog used the very list of his momentum to project himself forward in a homing attack, exploding into the badnik with a burst of blue electricity and heated metal sparks. From there, he propelled himself forward to the next, and to the next, using his balled-up body to ping-pong ball himself from enemy to enemy until he was close enough to double-jump the remaining distance to the edge of the floating platform.
"Still got the moves," the hedgehog huffed, boasting to no one in particular as he heaved himself up onto the dais. It seemed suspended by a combination of a central engine located beneath the platform and an invisible magic force of a kind unknown to Sonic. There were color-changing orbs of light that all changed to blue as Sonic walked past them, approaching the dark glass monolith in the center of the platform. "Sure hope all this was worth it."
No sooner did Sonic approach the monolith did its color immediately change from a purplish black to a complete mirror. It gave the hedgehog pause, for this certainly wasn't the first time he'd stared back at a replica image of himself. Luckily, this instance was only a reflection. The only difference was, the Sonic in the mirror was glowing with a faint-but-perceptible aura of golden light.
Or was it a difference? The hedgehog gasped as he suddenly realized that he too was glowing with the same radiant aura. Suddenly, his eyes widened as he felt the monolith before him pry open his mind like a master thief opening a simple lock. His felt his soul surge as a series of short scenes played back in his mind. He saw the Black Knight, the merging of the sacred swords into Excalibur, and also the Dark Queen. The monolith replayed how he had saved the realm of Camelot from the Knights of the Underworld and, ultimately, the corrupted granddaughter of Merlin the Wizard. Seemingly satisfied, the glowing aura passed from Sonic into the monolith, and the mirror reverted back to black opaque glass. Now, in front of the ancient edifice, a brown, leather-bound book with golden trim floated gently, suspended in the air by an unseen force.
"I wonder how it knew exactly what I came for," the hedgehog wondered aloud. He squared himself up. He was ready for whatever lay beyond. Sally's fate depended on it. With tender hands, Sonic reached out and retrieved the book.
Ixis Naugus, the Mobotropolitan usurper and former court wizard, was growing impatient. The assault on his city by the Battlebird chapter of the Dark Egg Legion had left him exposed, and the political situation in the city was tremulous. He needed to exert absolute control and authority now or never. Naugus had tasked the city's resident AI, the Holo-Lynx Nicole, with the creation of a super ring. With this, he'd be able to consolidate his power here in the city while engaging in his personal quest for a Chaos Emerald. The only problem was…
"First Eggman sends his creations after me, then I learn the Freedom Fighters are reforming in secret?!"
"Serves you right, Wally," Nicole replied from where her digitally-projected form sat upon a console deck. "Terrorizing the citizens! Lying and manipulating your way to the crown!"
"Don't lecture me, and never call me that!" Naugus roared. "This wouldn't be an issue if you made good on your promise, you petulant pack of pixels! Now hurry up and finish making that super ring so I can restore my magic!"
The Holo-Lynx sighed wearily. "I told you—I'm not sure I can make one."
"Then I will find some other way!" the troll wizard shrieked.
"Before Sonic figures out what you're up to?"
"Grrrrr! You'll finish that ring or I'll make you—!" As Naugus snatched the control pad upon which Nicole hovered, a series of visions flashed unbidden through his mind. Images of himself, or rather, alternate version of himself, some hideously mutated, others at the apex of their power, still others locked away in prison cells where no one would remember their names. There were thousands of variations, and it all happened in the mere blink of an eye.
"Nyyyyyyyyaaaaaagh!" Ixis shrieked, hurling Nicole's projector pad straight out the window of his castle office. Panic. Terror. The need to get as far away from the former Acorn residences as possible. It coursed through him like a flood, an unstoppable tide that no magic of his own, even if he'd had it, could have warded off.
"Wh…what sorcery is this? Th-these visions… of another life?" He clutched his gnarled face with twisted claw. "No! I must drive the visions out! Must escape! Must escape!"
The troll warlock dove straight through the office window, landed on all fours, climbed to his feet, then bolted as quickly as his legs would carry him away from Castle Acorn and toward the woods. "Tell the Quickster he can have this place! Aaaaaargh!"
Amy Rose and Tails watched, mouths agape, as the wicked tyrant ran straight past them as they headed in the direction of Castle Acorn. The two had rendezvoused after Tails announced the completion of the repairs to the Tornado. He couldn't wait to announce the news to Sonic, but he'd had much more pressing affairs to attend to. Amy, failing to bring Sonic back, needed to focus on getting together the support they would need to get the few who remained of the Freedom Fighters reinstated as Heroes of the Protectorate. This task, even without Naugus, would not be difficult due to the constant harassment by Eggman's forces and the disappearance of their leader during a time of crisis. When it came to the Acorn Council, it wasn't about speed, but presentation.
"Well… uh… that gets Naugus out of the castle. Should we—"
"One thing at a time, Tails. Dealing with all the malfunctioning badniks and the city's defenses now. Crazy fleeing wizard—later," Rose replied firmly and decisively. "We've got a lot of work to do, and big shoes to fill."
End of chapter four
