Kneecaps would simply not stop crying.
"Hush, dear!" His mother, Lara-Le, tried to quieten her infant – to no avail. "Please, sweetie, you have to stop crying…!"
"I swear, if you can't make that brat stop wailing…!" Lien-Da hissed.
"You'll what?" Julie-Su interrupted. "Leave us behind? Trust us, we'd leap at the chance!"
Lien-Da grinned savagely at her half-sister. "You would, I'm sure. But what about those innocent, soft inhabitants of Albion? You think you can protect them in the Twilight Zone all by yourself?"
"We'd be safe from you, at least." Julie-Su rebutted, to which Lien-Da responded by smashing Julie-Su in the face with the butt of her rifle; sending her sprawling to the ground.
"Anyone else have any objections?" She called out to the crowd in a deceptively light tone of voice, her proton gun held up where everyone could see it.
The crowd – made up entirely of echidnas, like the Dark Legion that was corralling them – did not, as it turned out, have any objections. Or at least, none they dared raise to the crowd of gun-toting cyborgs that formed the Legion, who currently had them encircled.
"Excellent." Lien-Da smiled. It was not a nice smile. "Keep moving, people. Despite what this deserter would have you believe, there are worse things in here than us."
Despite having Kneecaps in one arm, and a legionnaire with a rifle right behind her, Lara-Le quickly dashed over to Julie-Su and helped her up. "Here, dear…!"
Scowling at Lien-Da's retreating back, Julie-Su accepted the help. Ordinarily she wouldn't have needed it, but… ordinarily she didn't have her hands cuffed behind her back.
Once sure her prospective daughter-in-law was steady on her feet, Lara-Le leaned in close. "Is she telling the truth, dear…?" She whispered.
Julie-Su looked away. "There's more than just us in the Twilight Zone, she was right about that much." She whispered back. "And most of them don't care for echidnas one bit. But we should have a long ways to go before we run into any of them. She left that little tidbit out."
Lara-Le studied Julie-Su closely, even as she bounced Kneecaps up and down in a desperate attempt to calm him.
She knew intellectually that Julie-Su had once been a part of the Dark Legion – had been born into it, in fact – and had grown up in the prison dimension that the Legion had been banished to, many generations ago. Had grown up in this dimension, where it was always twilight despite there being no sun, and the only ground to be found was a series of floating islands much like the one her first son, Knuckles, had dedicated his life to guarding. But seeing her now, scowling at every second hill with what could only be bad memories…
"Keep moving!" The legionnaire behind them barked. Julie-Su glared back, but she and Lara-Le started walking.
"Of all the dimensions in existence… why did Thrash have to banish us here…!" Julie-Su cursed under her breath. "I never thought I'd ever have to see this place again…"
"The Zone Cops probably would have rescued us by now, if it were anywhere else. At least, I think so? I… can't really say I know much about them." Lara-Le stared off into the starry expanse that surrounded them. The only reason she even knew the Zone Cops existed was because of stories that Sonic had told Sally, who had told Knuckles, who had told her.
They marched for several more minutes, not saying anything more but certainly not in silence. Even setting aside Kneecap's cries, several thousand echidna civilians were simply incapable of moving quietly. The air was filled with groans and grunts and the general sounds of exertion.
Lara-Le had no idea where they were going. Lien-Da seemed to have a definite destination in mind, but she wasn't really the type to explain herself.
"…I'm really glad you're here, Julie-Su." Lara-Le admitted.
Julie-Su let out a slow breath. "Don't start relaxing yet." She warned. "They've made sure to keep us separate from Remington and your husband, and I still haven't seen any sign of Saffron or Knuckles…"
There was movement at the edge of the crowd. If she stood on her tip-toes, Julie-Su could just barely see legionaries converging on someone, accosting them.
Julie-Su elbowed Lara-Le, nodding her head in the direction of the scuffle. Lara-Le bit her bottom lip in worry, but nodded reluctantly. The two made their way through the crowd as best as they could, until they were close enough to hear what was being said:
"Unhand me, I say! Do none of you brutes recognise royalty when you see it?! I am Princess Alucion, and I demand…!"
Two legionaries jumped the shouting echidna lady at that point, attempting to dogpile on her. To Julie-Su's faint surprise, the self-proclaimed princess was giving nearly as good as she got – whacking the two legionaries over the head with a long golden staff.
She was wearing a simple dress with black leopard spots, and a golden crown with large orange feathers sticking up from it, and a big grey gem set into the centre.
Only when a third legionnaire pressed a gun barrel into the back of her head did Alucion go still.
The other two legionnaires quickly snatched her staff away, cuffed her hands behind her back, and viciously struck her in the face. Alucion swayed with the force of the blow but stayed upright, spitting out a bloody tooth afterwards.
One of the legionnaires raised a fist again…
"Still only able to beat a girl when their hands are tied, Greh-ilk?" Julie-Su spoke up, her tone hard.
The legionnaire in question spun around, staring in disbelief at Julie-Su. (How she was able to recognise him with his black robes and face-covering hood on, Lara-Le couldn't begin to guess.)
"Julie? Er, I mean, deserter! You're here?!" The legionnaire spluttered.
Julie-Su rolled her eyes. "Naturally I'm here, idiot. Unless you think Thrash somehow forgot about me?"
"Thrash, you say?" Came another new voice.
Julie-Su turned, and let out a surprised "Doctor Finitevus?!", before realising her mistake. While the echidna before her had the same white fur, that was the only real similarity. Finitevus dressed all in black, to match the colour of his sclera. Finitevus was a young man, this echidna was very obviously old. Most importantly though, Finitevus was not a cyborg; despite having joined the Dark Legion for a time.
This echidna was a crude gunmetal grey all down the right side of his body, with plates taking the place of dreadlocks. One eye had been replaced with an unblinking orb with a mismatched iris, and his right hand had been replaced with a blaster of some kind (with a Dark Legion clamp currently locked over it).
Julie-Su, as a former member of the Dark Legion herself, was also a cyborg – but her cybernetics were much more subtle. Her artificial left arm was easily dismissed as a weird sleeve covering, and the radio antenna wired into her skull looked like a decoration around one of her dreadlocks. Julie-Su had seen many inhabitants of Echidnaopolis look at her black tank-top and mechanical-looking boots, and assumed her cybernetics were actually some kind of fashion statement.
(Lara-Le herself was dressed in a simple yellow robe, with white bands wrapped around her dreadlocks.)
The old cyborg continued to speak, even as Julie-Su sized him up. "I take it this… Thrash, is responsible for your being here, miss?"
"No talking!" The legionnaire who had been about to strike Alucion shouted, having apparently regained his mental footing. "Keep moving, prisoners!"
With rifles waved threateningly in their general direction, the four (five if you counted Kneecaps) started marching in the indicated direction; Alucion sticking her tongue out childishly behind herself at her captors.
Julie-Su waited for a moment until the guards weren't paying quite as much attention as before. "Julie-Su." She whispered back at the old cyborg.
"And I'm Lara-Le." Said woman added in her own whisper.
The old cyborg tilted his head. "…what… interesting names." He said quietly back, with an undertone that Lara-Le couldn't identify, but found somehow unsettling. "My name is Doctor Zachary. The 'princess' and I found ourselves in this place, with no idea how we got here. You mentioned a Thrash…?"
Julie-Su scowled. "Thrash, one of the last true Tasmanian Devils."
"What's 'Tasmanian' mean?" Alucion whispered with a raised eyebrow to Lara-Le, who could only shrug helplessly in response.
Julie-Su continued her story. "Our long-distant ancestors experimented on the devils, causing their children to be born as outright animals, with no real intelligence to speak of. Thrash got his hands on a super-charged Warp Ring, and decided to banish all echidnas here, to the Twilight Zone, as revenge."
Lara-Le winced. She could certainly understand why Thrash hated echidnas with such a passion… but she desperately wished he could have seen that the modern-day echidnas had nothing to do with the experiments on his people. Those experiments were legends of legends to the echidnas of today… though she could understand why the devils would remember them more strongly.
Thrash had ambushed Julie-Su and Saffron as they were guarding the Master Emerald, then tricked the refugees fleeing the Dark Legion attack on Albion into taking his Warp Ring without questioning where he was sending them.
How he managed to send the Dark Legion here though, she didn't know.
"Hmm… a former experiment coming back to bite, is that it? I can certainly understand that…" Zachary mused, stoking his chin with his remaining hand. He sounded entirely too understanding for Lara-Le's liking.
"What nonsense are you babbling on about?" Alucion interrupted, sounding rather taken aback. "My ancestors did no such thing! And furthermore, what's this 'Twilight Zone' you speak of? Are you saying this devil merely sent us to another biome?!"
Zachary chuckled mirthlessly. "Not that kind of 'Zone', princess. They mean 'Zone' as in 'Special Zone' – another dimension."
Alucion suddenly stopped walking. "Wait. Are you talking about the TwilightCage?!"
Julie-Su grimaced. "That… is what some call it, but…" She recoiled as Alucion suddenly got up and in her face, peering closely at her mechanical dreadlock.
"What clans are you?!" Alucion demanded suddenly.
"Clan Knuckles." Lara-Le quickly answered, unnerved by Alucion's sudden intensity.
"Clan Knuckles." Zachary said, unconcerned.
Julie-Su grimaced. "Technically… Clan Nocturnus. Technically!" She repeated, as the eyes of the other echidnas suddenly gave her shocked (or in Zachary's case, merely surprised) looks. "The Dark Legion were trapped in here for generations, and my ancestors didn't have many options…!"
"So they joined their blood to Clan Nocturnus?! Were they mad?!" Alucion shouted, startling many of the Albion civilians around them.
"Clan Nocturnus is real?" Lara-Le whispered, horrified. "A clan that developed technology so powerful, so dangerous, that they were cast into the abyss? I thought they were just a story that parents told to their children to teach them about hubris!"
Suddenly, there were screams in the distance.
Julie-Su scowled. "I said there were worse things in here than the Dark Legion, didn't I? They weren't cast into the abyss, Lara-Le. They were cast here."
Julie-Su ran towards the screams, Lara-Le following after a moment's hesitation.
Alucion followed as well, but…
Boing, boing, boing
…rather than walking, she bounced into the air, her legs splayed out in front of her, like she had a pogo stick in place of a pelvis.
"What on Mobius?!" Lara-Le cried, looking up at the princess as she soared overhead.
"I fell in a cauldron of magic berry juice when I was a baby!" Alucion called down, her tone somewhat annoyed.
"I – was that sarcasm? I can't tell!" Lara-Le asked Julie-Su, her voice somewhat hysteric.
"What do you see up there?" Julie-Su asked Alucion, ignoring Lara-Le's question (and declining mental health).
Alucion shaded her eyes on her next bounce. "Looks like those disrespectful gun-toting maniacs are attacking… a door set into a mountain?"
The crowd was moving back now, as ordinary echidnas moved away from the fighting and the Dark Legion moved towards it.
Julie-Su's face went blank for a moment, then she swore loudly. "That idiot! Is she that desperate to return to Mobius?!"
Lara-Le wasn't even bothering trying to calm Kneecaps any more – if anything, she looked like she needed calming now. "What is it? What's happening?!"
"As much as the Dark Legion likes to pretend that we invented our way out of the Twilight Zone – Cage – whatever you want to call it – the truth is that we stole technology that the Nocturnus Clan was already working on!" Julie-Su scowled. "And now Lien-Da is raiding one of their outposts, hoping to leave before the Nocturnus Clan can respond. Alucion, down here!"
Alucion's next bounce left her standing up next to Julie-Su. "What is it, angry shouty –"
Exactly what Alucion was going to call Julie-Su would never be known, as Julie-Su turned around, grabbed the cuffs binding Alucion's hands with her artificial hand, and with a crunch broke them open.
Alucion blinked in astonishment, looking down at her now free hands.
"We'll have to free mine later." Julie-Su gritted her teeth. "Alucion, or whatever your name is. Can you fight?"
Alucion scoffed. "I'm the princess of the Knuckles Clan! Of course I can fight!"
Lara-Le shot a confused look at Alucion's back. As far as she knew, she was the ruler of Albion, where all echidnas not in the Dark Legion had been living until now… And neither Albion nor the Dark Legion had a royal family.
"Great." Julie-Su crouched down. "On my mark… charge!"
Lara-Le didn't have time to raise an objection, or look around for any members of the Echidna Security Team who might back up their mad charge. Alucion and Julie-Su simply shot off towards the fighting – Alucion knocking people down as she bounced on them from above, while Julie-Su simply shoulder-charged them with her metal shoulder. It was all Lara-Le could do to follow in their wake.
Lara-Le could see Lien-Da on the front lines, projecting whips of lightning from her hands into whoever they were fighting. She turned, saw them approaching, and screamed "Stop them!" but there were opponents between her and them, and they ran past her.
Once past the first layer of legionaries, the trio found themselves barrelling through mustard-yellow robots with face-plates that looked like four-pointed stars. The robots also tried to block their path, but were busy fighting the legionaries and only two robots broke off to chase after them.
"What are those things?!" Lara-Le cried, holding Kneecaps tightly in both arms.
"The Nocturnus Clan's fighting robots! They're called Gizoids! Don't fight them, they can…!" Julie-Su called back, but it was too late. With a cry of "Death from above!", Alucion barrelled into one of the Gizoids, knocking it down and smashing its head off.
The remaining Gizoid stared at Alucion for a moment, seemingly uncaring about the destruction of its comrade. Then, it suddenly jumped forwards, and to the shock of Alucion and Lara-Le did a bounce just like that of the princess, barrelling into her in mid-air and knocking her down into the ground with a crash.
Julie-Su winced, leaning backwards to grab Alucion's collar as best she could with her hands bound and continued running, Alucion bouncing off the floor as she was dragged along. "…copy your attacks." Julie-Su finished.
"Anyone get the number of that rockslide?" Alucion said, somewhat deliriously.
Julie-Su tried to keep her eyes on the remaining Gizoid, but it was bouncing all around them now, off the walls and ceiling. They were nearly in… if only she had her hands free, she could…!
Like a meteor from on high, the Gizoid slammed into the ground in front of them, blocking their path.
"Julie-Su…!" Lara-Le cried desperately.
Julie-Su grit her teeth… then looked confused. The metal antenna that took the place of one of her dreadlocks folded out into a tiny satellite dish, which swivelled around for a moment before pointing fixedly on a point directly in front of Lara-Le.
"Down!" Julie-Su cried. She tackled Lara-Le from behind, still dragging Alucion behind her, and the three echidna women went down in a tangle of limbs.
Just as she did this, a pair of pink energy blades stabbed into where Lara-Le was just before, protruding from thin air. As the three crashed down, the blades moved back, a shimmering patch of air seeming to jump back out of the way. With a curse, the patch of air suddenly filled in with colour, revealing a soldier in full-body armour who had previously been invisible.
"Julie-Su…?" Lara-Le asked softly.
Julie-Su grit her teeth again. "Not good. It's one of the Nocturnus Clan's elite soldiers!"
"Correct." The soldier aimed an energy blade down such that it was a centimetre from Julie-Su's nose. "And we do not take kindly to…"
For just a moment, Julie-Su looked up at the helmet of the Nocturnus soldier, just barely able to make out their eyes behind their tinted lenses, and gasped.
The day she had met Knuckles had been the most important day of her life. She had seen into his eyes, and she had seen down to his very soul. She had known, at the very core of her being, that his soul and hers matched, like two jigsaw pieces.
(She'd wondered, once: if she hadn't quit the Dark Legion to be with him, would he would have joined so that he could be with her?)
She'd never thought for a moment that she could ever feel anything like that again – but here she was, seeing another person's soul… and recognising it as being the same as her own.
The Nocturnus soldier seemed to have seen something similar, because their blade dipped down in shock. "Wha…?"
Boom, boom came the sound of thudding feet.
A black metal hand reached over from outside Lara-Le's field of view and grabbed onto the Gizoid. Another grasped onto the Nocturnus soldier.
"Copying the techniques of another is certainly an interesting trick." Lara-Le twisted around to see Doctor Zachary walk up behind the group, flanked by two robots of his own. Those robots had golden spheres as heads – large enough for the echidnas present to sit inside comfortably. The rest of their body was made of spindly black limbs.
"But without some way of increasing its own power, it will still lose to a robot tougher and stronger than it is." Zachary finished, and the robot holding the Gizoid tightened his grip and crushed the Gizoid like an empty aluminium can.
"Zachary?!" Lara-Le gasped. As she watched on, one of the robots reached down and ripped off the Dark Legion clamp over Zachary's arm-cannon. "When did…?"
"Oh, the robots?" Zachary shrugged. "They've been with me since I arrived in this dimension. When you ran in here, I knew I needed to follow. I called them in, and we broke through a wall."
"But you were captured! With me! You didn't have any robots then!" Alucion objected furiously, struggling to untangle herself from Lara-Le and Julie-Su.
The Nocturnus soldier took a swipe at the robot holding them with their arm-blade, only for the robot to catch their arm with its free hand. The second robot backhanded the Nocturnus soldier, cracking their helmet in half and sending the pieces flying. The others could see now that the Nocturnus soldier was an echidna woman with red fur and furious pink eyes.
Zachary shrugged again. "You'd be surprised what people will tell a harmless old man, that they wouldn't tell a dangerous old man with an army of robots." He turned to the soldier, still struggling. "Now, dear…"
"Procurator Shade." The soldier spat.
"Shade, then." Zachary said, sounding distinctly like he couldn't care less. "You fascinate me. You see, there was noClan Nocturnus in my Zone. I had thought our technology to be great… but nobody banished us for our hubris. So, I am left to wonder… what makes your technology so much better than ours?"
"Here's an example." Shade spat.
Her Warp Belt flashed brightly, and Shade disappeared from the robot's grasp to appear behind that same robot, her Leech Blades stabbing into its neck joint. Rather than sever the joint, however, the energy blades seemed to instead pass through without resistance, and pulse. A moment later the robot collapsed to the ground, drained of its energy.
As Lara-Le, Julie-Su and Alucion got to their feet, Shade pointed a blade threateningly in their direction – seemingly ready to fight them and Zachary at the same time.
The sound of more approaching fighters made Shade glance behind herself. Despite the odds, the Dark Legion was apparently making headway into the base, and Lara-Le could hear Lien-Da's furious roars getting closer.
"We need to go." Julie-Su grit her teeth.
"Oh, is that all?" Alucion rubbed her hands together. "Why didn't you say so earlier? One ticket to the Special Zone, coming up!"
Lara-Le and Julie-Su turned and gaped as Alucion clapped her hands together, touched them to the gem in her crown and shoved them forwards. A golden ring formed in mid air, darkness filling its insides.
"You could have opened a Warp Ring this whole time?!" Julie-Su sounded distinctly like she wanted to strangle Alucion.
"Not the whole time!" Alucion let out a hrmph as she snottily tilted her head back. "I had my hands bound before!"
"What?!" Zachary's one organic eye was wide. "But you don't have a Star Post, how did you…?!" He gasped. "The Grey Emerald! That gem in your crown is the Grey Chaos Emerald!"
Alucion smirked at him. "Got it in one, buster!"
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Shade warned.
Julie-Su glared back at the Procurator. "Oh yeah? Why not?"
"Time flows differently in the Twilight Cage." Shade started to explain.
"Yeah, I know." Julie-Su interrupted. "Four generations pass outside for every one that passes in here."
Shade snorted. "It's much slower than that, but you have the general idea. This slowness is because the Twilight Cage has its own time stream – one not connected to the outside world. Which means that certain effects ravaging the outside world don't affect us while we're in here."
Julie-Su narrowed her eyes. "Just what are you –"
"You coming or not?" Alucion demanded. "The ring won't stay open forever, you know!"
Julie-Su's eyes flickered back and forth between Shade and the Warp Ring, weighing up her choices. Eventually she said "We'll take our chances, thanks!"
"You aren't getting away!" Shade shouted, charging at the trio of echidna women.
Julie-Su shoved Lara-Le and Kneecaps into the Warp Ring, leaping in directly behind them. Alucion bounced in after them, her tongue out and an eyelid pulled down. Shade dived as the ring began to shrink away, just barely making it through before the portal closed.
Doctor Zachary glared at the space where the Warp Ring used to be for one long moment, before making a gesture at his surviving robot. Obediently, the robot's head opened up to reveal a snug cockpit just large enough to crawl inside, which Zachary did.
His expression promising bloody revenge, Zachary closed the cockpit and the robot started marching back to the hole in the wall that had served as its improvised entrance.
AN: Well, I did promise all continuities… Princess Alucion is from "Sonic Adventures", the short-lived (as in, one issue only) French Sonic the Hedgehog comics. Not to be confused with the American "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" cartoon. She and her people live in what appears to be the Mystic Ruins, which is really interesting when you realise than her comic came out four years before the game that introduced the Mystic Ruins.
Everything I said here about the relationship between the Dark Legion and the Nocturnus Clan is Archie canon, according to "Sonic the Hedgehog: The Complete Sonic Comic Encyclopedia", page 115 (which is an Archie book).