Chapter 1 The New Menace of Möbius
Within the Sixth Universe, there was the Planet Möbius. This world was very special as it hosted many legendary artifacts and creatures with just as larger than life stories to accompany them. The most popular of them all were the chaos emeralds and the blu blur Sonic The Hedgehog. Responsible for thwarting the mad scientist Dr Eggman's countless attempts at taking over the world and a few other foes that have come and gone, he was loved by most and respected by the few that didn't. The speedster didn't accomplish these feats alone, he had many allies. Miles Tails Prower, a genius fox that was like a brother to Sonic, Amy Rose, his self proclaimed girlfriend, the eternally adorable Cream the Rabbit, her pet Chao Cheese and his contentious rival Shadow The Hedgehog. His most distant friend however had to be Knuckles The Echidna. On most days including today he could usually be found guarding a shrine that held the most powerful artifact in their known universe, The Master Emerald. This gargantuan diamond held even more power than all seven chaos emeralds combined and to its guardian grant the ability to even control the chaos emeralds. Given the duty to protect the magnificent gem by his tribe of echidna brethren and family many years ago, he has since done so with his very life, much of said life alone as well. This near constant watch made it so that he never ventured off his home Angel Island unless it had something to do with sonic and stopping Eggman yet again, half the time because said mad doctor stole the Master Emerald. Today the little red echidna was at his usual post, however he bore a rather sad and conflicted expression. Neither feelings were foreign to knuckles but on this day they were hitting him more than ever before. He stared solemnly at the shrine and the Master Emerald it withheld for probably hours, that was until a sonic boom in the distance got his attention. Knuckles looked out towards the Angel Island ruins to see two pillars of disturbed dirt near the floating island's edge. From out of those two smoky pillars came streaks of something or someone really fast, one blue and the other black zipping through the ruins rapidly coming the echidna's way. The echidna let out a sigh and narrowed his eyes in annoyance knowing exactly who the two racing blurs were. Sure enough within a minute both speedsters had arrived at the shrine the blue one edging out a victory in the race by a millisecond. "Ha! Told ya faker! I'm the fastest out of the two of us!" Sonic shouted out bragging about his win. "Hmph only by a hair, don't get too cocky Sonic" Shadow retorted lightly laughing. "So I guess my sacred homeland is just a race track to you two..." Knuckles remarked in a dry tired tone. "Oh hi Knuckles! How's it hanging?" Sonic greeted Knuckles cheerfully completely missing his friend's displeasure. "Peachy...now would either of you mind not settling your grudge matches here and defiling my ancestors's work?" Knuckles questioned the two hedgehogs sarcastically with a very annoyed voice a vein showing on his forehead. Shadow narrowed his eyes giving Knuckles a nasty glare. "What harm are we doing? It's not like anyone is here living in this dumb. The only thing of real value is the Master Emerald. If you had any common sense, you'd take it and have Tails store it away from harm with one of his chaos energy concealing devices or something, instead of leaving out here in the open for anyone to just waltz right over and take it, as I'm sure you've seen for yourself" Shadow criticized Knuckles's wishes in an exasperated manner not seeing the point of them. Knuckles growled at the ultimate lifeform bearing his teeth growling with more veins showing on his head. "Heh heh he does make a good point there Knucks" Sonic giggled agreeing with Shadow though he recoiled in nervous fear when Knuckles turned his furious head towards him. "Uhhhh Shadow why don't you start heading over to Windy Valley, we'll have another race there" Sonic told Shadow gesturing for Shadow to leave. "Aren't you coming?" Shadow asked raising an eyebrow. "I'll meet you there in a few minutes" Sonic replied waving off Shadow darting his eyes at Knuckles to give Shadow a wordless signal that he wanted to talk to the irritated echidna. Shadow merely shrugged his shoulders, turned away from Sonic and zoomed off to his intended destination. The blue hedgehog then turned his attention to Knuckles who had gone back to his brooding stare down with the ancient shrine. Taking a a couple steps closer Sonic then cautiously asks "you... wanna talk about it?". Knuckles tried to remain firm and unresponsive to Sonic as to not appear weak but his will to hold his front quickly crumpled away and he sighed turning to his side not looking at Sonic but not the Shrine anymore either. "I've had a lot on my mind the past few weeks after we got back from the Starfall Islands" he finally revealed. "When we first met I attacked you because Eggman tricked me into believing you were an enemy trying to steal my people's most prized possession which I believed was my duty to honor because they were noble warriors that created them to benefit the world" Knuckles lamented then lowered his head in shame as he recalled more recent events in his mind. "But then during that Chaos business I learned that my people misused the emerald and the world around them to destroy their supposed enemies which made Chaos into that monster you had to face years later" Knuckles explained further. Sonic's face turned sad but understanding knowing what Knuckles was feeling. "And now I find out that they didn't even create the chaos emeralds! They were brought to this planet by some aliens! So all my ancestors really did were build some fancy architecture and use the emeralds to savagely conquer more land! What does that make me?! Huh?!" Knuckles yelled now becoming angry his internal conflict having risen fully to the surface. The blue blur backed up in fright taken aback by Knuckles's outburst. "I'm sorry knuckles... I can't imagine how difficult that must be for you" Sonic comforted his friend the only way he thought he could. "Sigh... know that's just it Sonic... I don't know what's worse...the fact that my ancestors were not the pillars of wisdom and nobility I thought they were or that you and nobody else can truly understand what that all feels like" Knuckles unveiled calming down but now back to slumping with depression. Sonic's emerald green eyes looked down at the ground feeling Knuckles's internal struggle while musing over how to break him out of it. "Maybe we don't but as your pal, I can help and I'll start by telling you a secret of life" Sonic offered putting on a determined hopeful smile. "Never pictured you as a life coach Sonic but whatever shoot" Knuckles slightly joked with Sonic without looking at the hedgehog still down but open to whatever Sonic had to say. "You shouldn't dwell too much on what your ancestors did, what matters is how good of a person you are, your family's past doesn't determine your life, you can do what they told you to do your own way or decide not to do it, the choice is ultimately yours to make" Sonic explained as best he could to make his point. "I don't know about that, it feels like it does sometimes, besides isn't remembering the past important for the future or something?" Knuckles questioned Sonic uncertain and skeptical of his claim. "True the past should be recognized and learned from but dwelling too much into the past can be just as bad as forgetting it, if you do that you'll never move on, you'll be stuck in one way forever and that's no fun, you'll just be bored and miserable especially when you focus on the bad stuff from the past. I mean look at yourself Knucklehead, it's a beautiful day, sun's shining, birds singing and a cool breeze is blowing, the day is practically begging you to have a nice happy day yet your standing here looking at a fancy building that makes you feel nothing but anger and sadness at yourself and your family and you taking it out on your friends, is that how you want your whole life to be like Knuckles?" Sonic inquired after throughly explaining the many cons of clinging to the past so tightly. Knuckles turned towards his friend in slight surprise and wonder, surprise that Sonic could sound so elegant and serious at times despite his usual teenage like aloof attitude and wonder that he was right. Then again, Sonic still didn't fully comprehend his feelings on the matter and probably never would so what did he know? Still the fastest thing alive's words did strike a chord with him, he just couldn't quite grasp or accept it. Suddenly there was a loud ringing sound erupting from a brown pouch near the steps of the Shrine. It was Knuckles's pouch that he stored the few possessions he had gotten during his rare ventures off Angel Island. Knuckles and Sonic ran over to it, Knuckles reaching into to grab the source of the sound, a communicator Tails gave to him to call him when they needed him. "Knuckles! Do you read me!" Tail's voice called out through the communicator. "Yes I do Tails! Sonic is here with me! What's up?!" Knuckles asked urgently. "Oh thank goodness Sonic's with you! Eggman just launched an army of robots into Spagonia!" Tails informed the two heroes. "Spagonia!?" Both the blue hedgehog and red echidna exclaimed in shock. "What's Egghead doing over there?!" Sonic questioned confused as Spagonia possessed nothing of interest to the doctor aside from Professor Pickle and his knowledge of Dark Gaia and he already tried and failed with that scheme. "Does it matter? We're on our way Tails!" Knuckles said to Tails before shutting off the device and putting it back into his pouch. "Aw yeah! This is happening! Hold on to me Knuckles! Gotta go fast!" Sonic shouted excitedly jumping up and down pumping himself up for the next major beat down of his ungodly persistent archenemy. Knuckles simply nodded and grabbed onto Sonic's arm and the blue blur dashed away to face the threat
A Few Minutes Later in Spagonia
Citizens of Spagonia ran away in panic and terror as the army of thousands of Eggman Robots had begun wrecking their once beautiful home. About twenty percent of the city had already been turned to rubble and/or set on fire and they were helpless to stop it from continuing. "Ha ha ha ho ho ho! Flee you pathetic little maggots! This city is now property of the Eggman Empire and soon from the ashes of this droll city will arise my life's most magnificent ambition! To build my dream! EggmanLand Ho Ho Ho Ho!" Eggman bellowed out manically in his usual exuberant cocky manner hovering over the area in his Eggmoblie. Then abruptly a blur of blue streaked past the front row of the robot army. "Again with the whole EggmanLand thing? Geez Eggster you really need some new material or something" Sonic mocked the mad scientist revealing himself to be the assaulter with Knuckles beside him letting go of Sonic's hand and crossing his arms together. The crowd cheered for their saviors. "Grr you blasted hedgehog! I swear on my Great Grandfather Robotnick's grave you shall be destroyed and-" Eggman monologued for what felt like an eternity. During this tirade the fastest thing alive crossed his own arms lowering his eyes and tapping foot looking at his companion and gave him the "can you believe this guy" look and then as Eggman went on and on he did every kind of body language that expressed impatience and boredom including rolling of the eyes, playing with fingers, staring into the sky, yawning and a plethora of others. "Now prepare to face my brilliant mind's latest creations of world domination!" Eggman finally put a sock in it his last words giving his robots commands to aim their weapons at the hedgehog and the doctor leaned in with a wicked grin to see Sonic's expected look of fear. But he did not get the pleasure of seeing that, rather Sonic had his eyes closed and snored as if he was sleeping. "Huh?!" Eggman gasped at Sonic's lack of fear, Knuckles chuckling at his disbelief. "Huh, so sorry Eggman loser did you say something?" Sonic insulted Eggman pretending to have just woken up from a nap, making the fat mad man growl with anger at Sonic's insolence. "Ohh right you want me to play with you and your toys? Hmmm nah I'm not in the mood for it today Egg mister but my friends look like they will" Sonic said acting tired before grinning mischievously pointing behind him at Knuckles. Said red echidna jumped into the fray literally spinning into a ball destroying another row of robots, then stopped at the other end, made a fist and punched another robot the sheer force making it zoom through the other robots in its row turning yet another row of badniks into a scrap heap. In the distance the last rows of the robot army were being dismantled by two newcomers. "Take this! And that! And this! None of you bucket of bolts are touching my Sonic!" Amy Rose declared furiously swinging her oversized hammer bashing up to ten robots at a time. "For such great technology, Eggman's robots sure are vulnerable to a little emp blast!" Tails remarks smirking as he in his Cyclone fire many blasts of emp's at the robots instantly short circuiting any mechanical menace they make contact with. In the middle of the army, the robots were left intact and undisturbed up-till this point with their destruction, that was until a little rabbit got the metal terrors's attention. "Hi! Look at us! Weeee!" Cream the Rabbit squealed in pure delight with her pet Chao mimicking her motions using her big ears to fly through the sky. This distracted the robots long enough for the ultimate life form to chaos control into the middle of the army and swing uppercut kick the eight closest robots to him sending each flying in all directions exploding lots more of their kind. "Yay! We make great team Shadow!" Cream cheered landing on the ground raising her hand up wanting a high five. Shadow shook his head and closed his eyes but he had a small smile on his face he obliged Cream's request and high fived her back. The five allies of Sonic within five minutes had completely decimated Eggman's army. "Noooooo!" The mad scientist cried out in despair and defeat his Eggmobile then being disabled by a strike by Sonic's spin attack. "Hah! Same as ever! All bark and no bite!" Sonic mocked doing a little victory dance as his allies cornered Eggman. "Face it Eggman! You ain't never gonna win as long as we and Sonic are here to stop you!" Tails proclaimed confidently at the sniffling doctor. "Yeah and now I'm gonna kick your a-" Knuckles's threat was cut short when suddenly the sky darkened and roared with thunder. Everyone looked up to see the previously bright blue clear sky be consumed by some kind of black clouds. The clouds concentrated around the area where the sun shone blocking it out. Before anyone could mutter a word a beam of dark purple energy shot out from the vortex of black clouds and blew up half of Spagonia in a flash thankfully not the half where the heroes were present. Mouths hung open eyes horrified with Cream quickly breaking down in tears digesting the fact that millions of lives were just extinguished. All the heroes then rapidly turned to look at the infamous mad scientist with livid expression on all of them especially Knuckles, Shadow and Sonic. "You've really done it this time! You're dead!" Shadow screamed enraged stomping his way towards Eggman who yelped in terror. "I'll hold him down!" Knuckles offered equally venomous sounding. "Wait wait that wasn't me I swear!" Eggman pleaded his innocence. "Can it!" Knuckles yelled grabbing Eggman by his mouth, then grabbed both of the doctors's arms and held them painfully to his back as Shadow neared him gathering chaos energy into his hands. "Goodbye doctor!" Shadow shouted about to put Eggman down forever with his Chaos slice. "You hoo! Up here!" A voice called out from above. Everyone looked up to their bewilderment to see a man wearing a black and grey gi with a red knot, spiky wild hair and an inhumanly wide fanged grin staring menacingly down at them. "Hello there little fellas he he he ha ha ha!" The man whispered creepily to the group then letting out an evil laugh that gradually escalated into full on hysterics the insanity practically oozing from his being. What was this new threat to Möbius Earth?
