Sonic Chaos Underground (Season Four) - Chapter 5 - sleepfiction - Sonic the Hedgehog (2024)

Chapter Text

Though the trees of Great Turquoise were a lovely shade of blue in the morning, at night, the foliage was as pitch black as the night skies outside of the Underground.

It blended in with the sky. The skies on South Island at night was jet black, with a few spots of different colors, almost like stars. Maybe they were stars- nobody on South Island has attempted high-altitude travel before, so it was hard to tell.

Even with the woods being darker than night, the Wolf Pack could see it clearly.

Under the direction of Chief Lupe, who was present with them, the Wolf Pack patrolled the Great Turquoise district, spears at the ready for any sign of danger.

Usually they wouldn’t be out here, but there has been whispers of some kind of monster lurking out here for the last few weeks. When the couriers and delivery people traveled through the forests, they all swore they could see glowing orange eyes staring at them between the trunks of the trees. Or a large, shadowy figure slowly moving far in the distance.

Lupe thought it was a load of nonsense.

Patrolling through the woods, weaving through trees, Lupe was in the center of a line that was sweeping the entirety of the woods surrounding Knothole. She used her spear as a walking stick, unlike the other girls in the pack, unafraid to keep herself open.

A monster… Yeah, right. Even if they had dragons (though Lupe had heard the dragon problem in Green Hill had been solved somehow) there was nothing on this island that wasn’t a living, breathing creature of Chaos. Even then, there wasn’t a single thing on this island that Lupe couldn’t take down if push came to shove.

It was probably just a bear Mobian stalking through the day, socially awkward. The truth would come out eventually, when the “monster” actually revealed itself.

Even if the chief wasn’t worried about some kind of monster stalking these woods, the other girls weren’t like her. They couldn’t just reassure themselves of their strength and be fine, they were constantly on edge as they waited for something, anything to pop out and try to harm them.

They kept what Lupe said before they left in their heads: “if it bleeds, it’ll die.”

One red wolf had her spear horizontal, crouching slightly as she walked. Her eyes gazed around in front of her, keeping track of anything that was nearby. The trees not close to her were shrouded in shadow. Continuing to stalk through the woods, she kept her fur on end.

There was a crack beside her. She turned her body, looking at a nearby bush at the base of a tree. She gripped her spear tightly and crept closer to the base… Using her spear, she swiped at the bush, exposing the space underneath it.

A Flicky was there, which quickly flew away after its small hiding spot was exposed. The wolf jumped a bit, already on edge. She sighed, loosening her grip on her spear, not seeing the shadow lurking close by.

There was a roar behind her. The wolf turned to see two orange eyes looking down at her, and what seemed to be the grate housing a fire like a furnace within it.

Alerted by the sudden appearance of this thing, the wolf stepped back.

The monster; E-106 Eta continued to look down at the wolf with unemotional eyes, the furnace in its stomach burning bright. It raised the jackhammer arms it had, ready to attack at a moment’s notice. This was taken by the wolf as a sign it was about to attack.

The wolf warrioress jabbed her spear right into the open grate of the robot- it didn’t do anything. In fact, it became stuck within the opening, and the wolf was trapped right in front of the rampaging machine.

E-106 Eta swung its arm, hitting the wolf directly, sending her flying back and into a tree. As the wolf crumbled to the ground, Lupe stopped in her tracks, her fur standing on end and blood running cold as she heard one of her pack harmed.

“Honi!”

Chief Wolf rushed to the injured wolf, getting down on her knees next to her. Lupe lifted her up to feel her face and her neck- the wolf, Honi, was fine… But most certainly unconscious- possibly had a concussion.

She heard the robot trudging over. Chief Lupe looked up as she saw the robot starting to head their direction. She grabbed her spear again, getting up after gently putting Honi back down.

With a fire in her body from fury, she charged towards E-106 Eta. She pulled her spear back and aimed it directly at one of the robot’s glowing orange eyes. The red hot end of the spear impaled through the lens of the eye instantly, knocking that sensor out.

There was a small burst of electric sparks from the damage, making Lupe wince. It gave the robot time to launch one of its jackhammer arms directly at the wolf, hitting her in the arm.

The chief was flung backwards, leaving her spear behind as she spun and landed near Honi. The spear fell on the ground, and as Lupe looked up, she saw the robot step on it to shatter the spearhead. The robot’s jackhammer arm slowly retracted back as it stared at her with one eye.

She moved, but hissed- her arm. It felt like she tore something in her arm when the was hit by that… thing.

The other members of the Pack ran up. One called out to her. “Chief!”

Lupe looked at them, then down at the injured Honi.

“Take her. Go.” She commanded. Lupe glared at the robot, which was standing still, and growled one word she thought she’d never say: “Retreat.”

When the chief said that, the lady wolves knew it was serious. They grabbed Honi- one of the wolves helped Lupe get up to her feet as well- and they all quickly made their way towards Knothole.

As she retreated, Chief Wolf glared over her shoulder at E-106 Eta one last time.

East to Green Hill was Blue Marine.

Blue Marine was characterized by water, if the name was any indication. There were many rivers and ponds in this district, and the primary village of that area- Bridge Village- was accessed through bridges or canals as the buildings and homes were stilted in shallow water.

The many bridges stretched out over many different rivers, but a few stretched over some special areas. This included a secluded, cliffed coast that was still within the borders of Green Hill.

This was important, as Sonic and Tails wanted to get away but not leave the district and alert their family.

There was a lot of sand, though it meshed into grass as it got closer to the cliff. There were also a few green trees sprouting out close to the cliff wall, and some flowers with triangular blue petals and pastel yellow disc florets in the center.

Sonic was setting things up to enjoy a nice, relaxing few hours in the warmth of the beach. He was amazed at how many things they had readily available at the shops across the district. He set up an umbrella, one with a small table on it. Sonic even got a nice reclining chair to put right below it.

Sitting on the side of the chair, Sonic took out the sunglasses he had in his jacket and flicked them open, slipping them on next. He turned in the chair, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head.

“Oh, yeah. This is happenin’.”

“Sonic!”

Dressed in swim shoes and blue trunks, Sonic’s teenage companion ran up to stand in front of the chair, holding something over his head. Tails had been working on something all the way to this little secluded beach, even when he was flying. He excitedly showed it off to the hedgehog- it was some kind of board with rockets on the back.

“I finally finished it!” The fox said. “How do you like my jet-propelled body board?”

Sonic pulled down his sunglasses to look it over. “It looks awesome, little bro.”

“You wanna try it out?”

Tensing for a second thinking about falling into the water and drowning, Sonic pushed those thoughts away to focus on relaxing. He reached into the cooler he brought and pulled out a soda- one of the many Chaos Colas he managed to bring when he entered the Underground. He cracked it open and put a straw in it.

“Not right now, thanks.” Sonic sipped his drink.

“Alright! I’ll go use it myself!”

Tails was just like a little kid with his new toy. Sonic smiled, watching Tails get into the water while still sipping his soda. Once Tails activated the board and started to ride through the indigo water, Sonic put the cola on the umbrella’s little table. Taking out his phone next, he pointed it towards a small set of bluetooth speakers he had on the table and pressed the play button onscreen to start up some music.

With an electric guitar’s squeal, some classic rock came out of the speakers. Sonic’s hand returned to rest behind his head, relaxing with a sigh.

It was the first moment of quiet repose that Sonic had since he got to South Island… Over a month ago, actually. Besides relaxing at home with Uncle Chuck and the sibs, Sonic and Tails haven’t really done any classic vacation-style relaxing after crashing down in Green Hill.

It’s mostly been focusing on helping Mission Freedom, or innocent people, as well as the big thing of trying to find a way to get South Island back on Earth. Ever since Sonic and Tails joined Mission Freedom almost two weeks prior, they’ve been working every day to help them with their projects; Tails worked the machines, Sonic helped Sally coordinate project plans.

It felt like the princess was finally starting to come around. After she gave him the rundown of the Roboticizer, as well as other projects done for Green Hill, Sonic retained the information and tried to help provide new perspectives for what they were doing.

It also helped now that they had Dulcy! The dragon was making her own in Mission Freedom as well. She really helped when it came to transporting large objects, and she was currently enlisted to help Chuck test out his elemental barriers using her own elemental breath abilities. She was still a little awkward, but Sonia made sure to stay around so Dulcy didn’t feel as anxious around the other members of the team.

Sonic and Tails managed to get a day off during a day that Rotor wanted to run diagnostics on the Roboticizer, meaning it was shut down. Essentially, most of the projects was put on hold that day. It helped that Sally had to go back home to Gigalopolis for something involving her father.

Relaxing in his chair, Sonic crossed his legs as he listened to the music.

Tails drifted into the water, positioning his board in front of him, and hopped up to put his knees on the pressure plates he placed on the very back. When he did, the two jets activated underneath the board, blasting compressed air to push him forwards.

Unfortunately, he was close enough to the shore that the jets blasted water directly onto Sonic. The umbrella blocked the water from hitting the stuff on the table… but didn’t block Sonic from getting blasted with water.

Sonic was frowning as Tails surfed away. He took a sharp breath in, tensing up a bit from the feeling of chilly water on him, before trying to relax once more with a slow exhale.

It took a second for him to get on the board, but soon Tails had a hang of it, surfing across the water of the coast. He didn’t want to go too far, as he wasn’t sure what dangers lied far outside the shores of South Island, so he stayed within a mile or two of the beach.

The hedgehog on the coast used super-speed to dry himself off before getting back in his chair. He took off his sunglasses to look for Tails… there wasn’t any sign of the teenage fox in the water around him. Well, the cliff on the edge of the beach curved around, he was probably just out of view.

He returned to his previous position, relaxing in his chair.

^”Sonic!”

Sonic paused. He opened his eyes, peering through his sunglasses after he swore he heard someone say his name. Nobody was there still. He sighed.

There was a tickle in his nose. Sonic could feel himself sneeze, but squeezed his nose shut, forcing it to subside. Nothing was going to disrupt his day this time.

“…OOOONIIIIICC!”

The screaming faded into Sonic’s ears, which made him thrash and sit up straight, his sunglasses flying off his body. Up ahead, in the water, Tails was grabbing onto the front of his body board and headed directly towards the beach. There seemed to be something behind him though, picking up too much water.

Stepped on the board, Tails pushed off, his tails spinning to help him fly out of the way. His newly made invention steered out of control, before it was snapped in half and destroyed by what was behind it.

Sonic just barely managed to get out of the way of the rocket-powered flying machine as it crashed onto the beach and into the hedgehog’s vacation setup. The owl behind the wheel of the vehicle was laughing as it happened, bouncing off the beach and steering back around.

“Wooohohoho!”

Tails flew over, hovering down, letting his tails blow out the kicked up stand. Sonic was there, rubbing his still tingly nose with a frown in the wake of the vehicle crashing. At least his umbrella and chair wasn’t busted or anything.

“You okay, Sonic?”

“Fine. Just fine.” He sighed. Both he and Tails looked at the bird in the flying machine.

The owl was small from the looks of it, with brown and gray feathers. From what Sonic could see from afar, he had on blue robes and a strange hat- almost like one of those graduation hats. The owl also had on glasses; due to the cracks made in the bifocals, the lens had a kind of spiral shape in them.

He was still laughing. Sonic put his hands on his hips.

“Our beach day was interrupted by some kind of… old man owl?”

“Elder Sophocles!” Tails corrected him. “That’s Longclaw’s dad! Leader of the courier union on the island?”

“Ohhhh…”

They watched as the vehicle the old man owl was trying to control started to smoke, before flames billowed out of the back rudder of the small aircraft. Sonic and Tails both made faces of surprise.

“Uh oh.”

“Are we gonna do something, Sonic?”

“…man, I wanted to relax.”

Tails huffed, but rolled his eyes. He spoke in a deadpan. “Don’t worry Sonic, I’ll interrupt my vacation time to go save Elder Sophocles. Since I’m the one who can fly and all.”

“Cool! Thanks, buddy!”

Sonic got back to working on his stuff. Tails took a second before shoving his brother into his setup, making him stumble and fall across his chair.

“Hey!!”

“That’s for being no help!”

The fox ran away, making Sonic get up and look after his brother with a deep frown, rubbing his head.

Getting to the bag they brought along with them, Tails rummaged through it, slipping off his swim shoes and putting on his normal, souped-up blue Soap shoes. He made sure to float in order not to get any sand in his sneakers… that would definitely ruin this beach day.

Still only in trunks and shoes, Tails flew off of the beach and towards the fiery vehicle.

It looked like the old man owl had no idea what was going on. In fact, he was still chortling as the supersonic fox got closer to the aircraft.

“Hey!”

Elder Sophocles turned his head around, showing Tails his damaged glasses. “Ah, it’s you Tails! It’s nice to finally meet you! My daughter has told me much about you boys! I have some urgent business with Master Sonic, and that’s why I tracked you down today!”

“You got more important things to worry about right now!” Tails yelled back, flying fast enough to start coming up next to the aircraft. “Your rocket’s on fire!”

The elder turned his head around completely, seeing the fire billowing out of the back.

“AH! No wonder it’s getting warm!!”

“Just hold on and keep it going steady, I’ll figure something out so you can land!”

The fox tried to avoid the fire at all costs as he pulled back, trying to reach the top fin of the rocket craft. He touched it, though recoiled that hand as he felt it was burning hot. He didn’t pack his heatproof gloves… In fact he wasn’t wearing gloves. He was so used to wearing them it was strange he didn’t have them on…

Suddenly, the thrusters burst, sending out a blast that made Tails yelp. The fox was pushed back from the blast, flipping through the air as he tried to catch himself with his spinning tails. He shook his head, grunting, looking at the rocket ship that was getting further away.

He activated the Jet Anklets on his heels, boosting forwards at super-speeds through the air to get to the old man owl once more. He saw that the thruster that burst was one on the right side, so without it, the aircraft was now leaning to the right.

Coming up over the left wing, Tails pushed himself down and onto that wing to even out the aircraft.

“Very impressive, Tails!”

“Thanks! The Jet Anklets are still in beta, I’m trying to give myself an edge so I can keep up with Sonic…”

“Lucky me you wore them, I suppose!”

Tails looked ahead to see where he could ground this thing. Instead, he saw that they were barely half a mile away from one of the cliff walls. His fur stood on end, his tails puffing out in shock.

“Sir?! Sir! The wall!”

“Huh? What’re you talking about…?”

Readjusting his busted glasses to see better, the owl looked through the front visor of the aircraft, and saw the cliff that they were bound to crash into within a minute or so.

“WAH!” The elder grabbed onto the wheel tightly.

Suddenly, another thruster burst, rocking the entire rocket ship. Tails lost his footing, left clutching onto that left wing as the fire only grew larger. The aircraft lifted upwards away from the water, still headed towards the wall. Unable to get solid grip, Tails did all he could: he screamed.

“SONIC!”

This time, with no music, and already on edge for what was going on, Sonic heard. His quills stood on end, and he turned around with wide eyes as he heard his little brother’s scream.

With a single boost, Sonic undid all the progress he had with his setup, sending the umbrella and chair flying as he zipped away across the beach. He had very little time to waste as Tails and the Elder were careening towards the cliff’s wall.

He wasn’t going to touch that water at all. As he reached the edge of the beach, Sonic stepped up and boosted onto the wall of the cliff, running horizontally across the surface.

The aircraft was still gaining altitude. There was no salvaging that thing, Sonic felt- even if he could steer the thing out of the way, it would most likely explode and at the very least severely maim one or all three of them. He wasn’t about to let someone innocent get hurt, and especially not Tails.

He steered upwards, running vertically up the wall directly under where the aircraft was about to hit. He spindashed upwards, boosting further again to home in on the rocket. Sonic’s razor sharp quills sliced through the metal, and he unrolled as he crashed through the spot where the left wing met the body of the aircraft.

The whole thing shattered, before exploding against the wall, a massive cloud of smoke puffing out. The smoke was broken as Sonic, holding Tails’ hand and the Elder by his robe’s collar, soared upwards and through the air.

After regaining himself, Tails sighed. “Thanks, Sonic.”

With some extra help from Tails using his namesakes to hover, they all landed back on that beach. They stepped off of the sand, getting onto the grass near the cliff to stand in the shade of the trees.

“Old man, that was super dangerous. You need to take better care of your vehicles.”

“Yeah, or stop riding them.”

After needing a moment to collect himself after being severely shaken from that experience, Elder Sophocles soon turned his head and his body back to Sonic… Or at least what he thought was Sonic.

“What’re you two talking about? I know how to handle them! I know I may be a little long in the beak, but back in my day I was quite the racer, ohoho! Yes, I was quite popular with the ladies!”

The old owl continued to chuckle. Sonic and Tails watched him talking directly to one of those blue and yellow flowers, clearly thinking it was Sonic. The brothers looked at each other and shrugged.

“Didn’t you say you had urgent business with Sonic?”

“Hm? Oh, yes, very urgent business. You see, the king…”

Realizing he heard Tails’ voice behind him, Elder Sophocles turned his head around.

“Woohoho! Oh, excuse me, Master Sonic!” He scurried away from the flower, fluttering over to talk to Sonic directly. “Uhuhuh… Uh, the king…”

Sonic facepalmed himself as he watched the old man owl talk to yet another flower instead of him. Tails walked over, turning the bespectacled old owl towards the real Sonic.

“King Acorn…?” Sonic helped him start.

“Yes, that’s it, that’s it! King Acorn would like to meet with you as soon as you could!”

“You know, it might’ve been easier to send Longclaw out to tell us.”

“Well… Yes, they could’ve sent my daughter too, eheheh… Can you please bring me to her so I can go back home?”

“Of course, old man.” Sonic pat his back. He sighed- so much for relaxing. “Let’s all head back home.”

After Longclaw helped Elder Sophocles get back home for the evening, clearly needing to recuperate after what happened, she joined the Hedgehog clan on their journey to Gigalopolis.

Sonic found himself really, really happy when they left, because the only way to the Silver Plains and the massive metropolis… was all by running. Sonic quickly discovered what those “dash panels” were, and found that they were used to push people to a certain speed in order to make it to Gigalopolis at super-speeds. Without them it took at least half a day at a standard person’s running speed.

“Thank you again for saving my father, boys.” Longclaw said as she soared alongside Tails. “He can be a bit… Frazzled. But he always means well.”

With a revving of an engine, Sonia’s motorcycle came up beside where Sonic was running, with Manic riding with her on the back of the bike.

“I’m jealous you got to have an adventure while relaxing!” Manic said. “How come we didn’t get to do anything cool?”

“We’re just a magnet for danger, it seems.” Sonic shrugged.

“That much is true.”

Chuck was on the other side of Sonic. As opposed to Sonic, who kept his arms back as he ran, Chuck’s arms were kept bent and tightly against his sides. It reminded Sonic of how Aleena would run; it was a real blast from the past for the blue hedgehog.

“I’m excited to see Gigalopolis!”

“You should be!” Chuck said up to Tails above him. “It’s the capital for a reason! Everyone who’s anyone lives there. From politicians, to royal family, to socialites.”

“I should see if I can stop by Mindy’s and visit her.” Sonia added. “I haven’t heard from her in a while…”

“We may not have time. King Acorn is most likely going to inform us of something he needs done involving Mission Freedom. Though why they contacted Sonny and Miles and not me is the one thing bothering me…”

“You never know, unc. Maybe they want something that has to do with our very special set of skills!”

“…I sure hope not.” Chuck mumbled in reply to Sonic. “There’s a dash panel up ahead that’s been said to be defective. I’m gonna juice ahead to check it out and try to fix it. I’ll join you again in a sec.”

Chuck unleashed a powerful boost of his own, and suddenly disappeared far ahead of them. Sonic was speechless- he hadn’t seen that before. He felt a big smile creep over his face at the show of immense speed from his family member.

“Chuck seems off.”

“He’s probably still pissed that Sonic told him off after the Dulcy stuff.” Sonia replied to Tails.

“Hey! I didn’t tell him off! I just… Gave it to him straight.”

“He’s still befuddled after everything that happened with those dragons.” Longclaw said. “I know he’s not upset with you. I hope you know that. He’s just… A little discombobulated. This last month has been a whirlwind.”

“You can say that again.” Tails added.

“I just wish he’d get it. I’m here to help others. I can help others. Doesn’t he understand that?”

Longclaw watched Sonic below, eyebrows furrowed. She tilted in order to fly right beside him, flapping her wings to keep up with the super-fast hedgehog. She looked at him directly.

“You know about my family. The Sophocles clan.”

“Yeah, I just met another member earlier today.”

The owl chuckled a little. “Yes, you did. And though my father can be a little scatterbrained now, when I was young, he instilled in me our family’s motto: familia est in aeternum. Do you know what that means?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“It means ‘Family Is Forever’. It stands for the fact that the people in your clan, whether blood related or your chosen family, are all we have at the core of our beings; family isn’t perfect, but it’s the closest thing we have to honesty, unconditional love, and dedication. That includes the dedication to try to truly understand one another. Chuck believes in that motto too.”

Sonic looked to the ground, thinking to himself.

“I’m not asking you to excuse his presuppositions, or any of that. But think about it from his perspective: in his heart, he just lost the most important person in his life. The only other person he really had after his brother died. He didn’t know that nineteen years ago would be the last time he’d ever see Aleena. And now, her sons are finally back in his life, and they throw themselves into danger at every turn and run the risk of him losing the two pieces of Aleena he just got back.”

“But it’s because I can handle it.” Sonic replied to her. “That’s why I do it. Why can’t he understand I’m not made of glass?”

“He will. He just needs time, Sonic. Just like I know you need time to understand him, too.”

Sonic sighed, returning his gaze forwards. He could see from his peripherals that Longclaw pulled back, returning to fly up in the air above them. The blue hedgehog clearly had a lot to think about.

As they continued to run along the marked path to Gigalopolis, soon they were rejoined by Chuck, who appeared with a boost to run back where he was before, right next to Sonic.

“Dash panel’s working fine. Steel yourselves.”

They all ran across the panel, propelling themselves faster through the path. Up above, Longclaw and Tails passed through a dash ring- another Mission Freedom invention used for the same reason as the dash panels, this time floating in the air for flying folk.

The group zipped towards the city just a few miles away, passing through another star post motion sensor that indicated their arrival, regardless of how fast they were going.

The city was surrounded with a ring made up of suburbs for Mobians to live in, sunken into the ground partially so bridges leading out could stretch over it, allowing speeding visitors such as the Hedgehogs to enter without risk of running over anybody just trying to live. The suburbs led to a station that allowed vehicles and people to be lifted up into the upper city: the sprawling metropolis that was Gigalopolis.

There were six bridges leading out of the upper city, leading to the other districts that didn’t include the Silver Plains district that Gigalopolis resided in; there were bridges headed to Great Turquoise, Blue Marine, White Tundra, Yellow Desert, Red Volcano… and the one that the Hedgehogs were currently running over, the bridge leading to Green Hill.

Gigalopolis was placed smack dab in the exact center of South Hill- this was intentional. Apparently there used to be some kind of monument where Gigalopolis stood, but now the city stood in its place, acting as the central hub of the entire island.

With specific roads for those traveling in vehicles and those traveling through running, Sonia and Manic had to split from the group for a moment to pass into the sprawling cityscape. Longclaw, still flying, passed over to stay above the two on the motorcycle, intending on keeping an eye on them.

Tails hovered down low to fly alongside Sonic, opposite to Chuck.

They got further into the city. There were marked streets and sidewalks with many Mobians walking along them- the buildings were much larger than they were in Green Hill, built to be five to ten stories. There weren’t any skyscrapers here, but the designs of the buildings were clearly inspired by modern architecture, making Sonic and Tails wonder if any of the people who fell in from the modern world gave the people the designs or if they came up with it themselves.

It all reminded them of Station Square. Their amazement had a twinge of homesickness to it.

“This place is awesome!” Sonic said, smiling.

Chuck smiled. “I couldn’t live here myself, but I do love the look of the city. I always have a good time when I come down to visit.”

“I wonder if you’re gonna like Station Square. The buildings go even higher than these, unc.”

“I think I remember hearing about that.”

“Where are we headed to meet the king?” Tails asked.

“Just follow the roads. Like Green Hill, all streets lead to the palace.”

As they passed by, people turned to look at the super-fast Mobians rushing by, some of them happily waving at new visitors to their colony. Sonic waved to some of them as well, just as happy to see them and just as happy to be speeding through a city again.

While following one of the Mobians waving at him, Sonic’s gaze suddenly went to Chuck at his right. He saw that his uncle was smiling, but smiling with his eyes closed, clearly enjoying the rush of speeding as much as Sonic did.

Part of Sonic wanted to say something about how Chuck always advised against him speeding. But a louder part of him remembered what Longclaw said: to look at it from Chuck’s perspective. He probably didn’t get to speed as much as he’d like… And he probably didn’t want to speed because the last time he did, he ended up never seeing Sonic’s mother again.

Though his smile faltered at the thought, Sonic took a second to smile softly seeing his uncle being able to finally enjoy himself. He turned to look at Tails- the fox had been watching Chuck too, and smiled back at Sonic, possibly having the same thought.

At the highest point of the city was the palace. It had a mostly modern look, though definitely came off as a castle due to being made of stone bricks. The roads all ended in a roundabout at the edge of the castle’s property, though had one or two roads to pull up at a porte-cochere in front of the entrance, almost like it was a hotel.

That was where Sonic, Tails and Chuck came to a stop at. After a second, they were reunited with Sonia, Manic and Longclaw as they pulled up there too. Sonia parked her bike, setting up the kickstand.

“Do we need to ask for a valet or something?” Sonic asked.

“Who?”

“Someone who takes a car and parks it for them?”

“There aren’t any parking spots here.” Longclaw said to him. “Most people walk. Sonia’s bike should be fine here as long as we don’t block the way of any larger vehicles that may have business with the royal family.”

“Fair enough! Let’s head inside!”

The front doors were thick and wooden, which meant Sonia was the one asked to push them. They all slipped inside to the front foyer, where they were met with a woodchuck woman with graying fur at a desk. Nearby was a coyote wearing regal blue clothes, standing at attention with their hand resting on the handle of a sheathed sword; they looked an awful lot like Antoine.

When the group walked in, the woodchuck noticed. Her eyebrows raised as she saw someone in particular.

“Longclaw! You’re a sight for sore eyes!”

“Hi, Rosie.” The owl replied, smiling. “How’ve you been?”

“Good! I got your patrol reports just yesterday… How are you? What are you doing here?”

“I’m good. I’m just escorting a one Sonny Hedgehog to meet with the king, as requested.”’

“Oh, yes! Of course! Walk right on through!”

Rosie pressed a button on the desk, making a very loud buzzing sound before the door to the hall to the group’s right, beside the desk, audibly unlocked.

“Thank you, Rosie.”

“Anytime! See you around, Longclaw!”

Longclaw led them to the door in the hallway. As they passed by the coyote guard, Sonic and Tails stared at them- it was like the royal guards they had in Earth’s Soleanna, the ones who were paid to never react to anything.

However, the coyote’s eyes flicked to the pair as they felt they were being stared at.

The gaze was ended as the group rounded the corner. This door automatically opened, granting the group access to the throne room. They walked across a long blue carpet on a reflective, shiny tiled floor. It led to a large set of steps with the throne at the very top. There were flags hanging from the pillars on either side of the group that had an acorn on them.

Sonic looked behind him to see who was opening the door- it was a beaver, dressed in the same royal blue outfit as the guard from the lobby. Looking ahead, he could see another guard by the throne.

This guard… Looked like Antoine. Almost exactly, save for the lighter fur and graying parts on his nose and cheeks. He wore an outfit that looked similar to the other blue uniforms, but had shoulder pads and a few medals pinned to his chest. He held a hand on the handle of a large sheathed sword at his side.

Once the group stopped before the stairs, the coyote guard- who had been looking at the group with contempt- cleared his throat pointedly and spoke, the same French accent on his tongue.

“Presenting his royal majesty, King of South Island and Patriarch of House Acorn and leader of Gigalopolis… King Nigel Kay Acorn.”

Unsheathing his sword, the guard raised it in the air, pointed upwards. With no other fanfare, the sound of footsteps was heard after a moment, before the king stepped in from behind curtains placed on the sides of the throne’s raised platform.

He was a chipmunk like Sally was, obviously. He had tan fur, with auburn tufts much like Sally, though these tufts came out from his chops almost like a mustache. His outfit was a brighter blue, matching the same blue that Sally wore. He had on a simple circlet, which led to a dazzling blue sapphire in the front with three feathers poking out from it.

“Gigalopolis… I never liked that name…” The king mumbled to himself.

The group was left watching him walk to his seat.

“Should we clap, or like…” Sonic murmured to one of his siblings.

“Why are you asking me, dude?” Manic replied, amused.

King Acorn sat down in his throne. He smiled down at the group.

“Hello.” He said. The king’s voice was deep, silky and had an English accent.

Sonic wondered for a moment why Sally didn’t have that accent. He also wondered where he’s heard that voice before… Somewhere from Earth.

He noticed that Chuck and Longclaw were bowing. Sonia and Manic were clearly getting ready to do the same. Tails was standing just as Sonic was.

“Sonny! It’s the king!” Chuck hissed.

“…Yeah, I’m not doing that.”

“Me neither.”

“If Sonic doesn’t, I don’t have to!”

“Me too!”

The siblings all stood. Sonic looked back up at the king- he knew that the man would most likely be upset at this insolence, but… Sonic wasn’t a big fan of royal governments.

Instead, the king shocked all of them and laughed.

“Amusing. I’m happy to see your reputation of fearlessness is true.” He said.

“King Acorn, I’m sorry.” Chuck said as he stood up, nudging Sonic pointedly with a scowl.

“It is no issue, Charles. I’m not upset! In fact I do enjoy being treated with such nonchalance.” The king was still smiling. “I’m sure you’ve wondered why I asked you here today.”

“I’m mostly wondering something else… Have you ever watched Rocky Horror Picture Show down here?”

“Sonic!” Tails whispered to him.

“What? Look at me and tell me he doesn’t sound like Frank N. Furter.”

The king gently shushed them, a finger to his lips. Sonic and Tails shushed, mostly out of surprise of it happening, but also because he didn’t immediately ask for their heads when they didn’t bow- it was only fair that they all listen to why the king asked for them.

“Well then,” He spoke. “I’ve requested Sonic’s help.”

“Sonny?”

“Like me specifically?” Sonic helped clarify his uncle’s question.

“Yes, Sonic.” The king nodded. “I’ve heard through the grapevines that you used to be something of a hero out of the Underground. Yes?”

“…well, yeah.”

“And I also heard that you helped solve Green Hill’s dragon problem.”

“That was mostly a group effort, but you’re not wrong.”

“Excellent! In that case, the House of Acorn humbly requests your assistance.”

“With what?”

The king opened his mouth to speak, but other footsteps suddenly came from beside him. In from the curtain, on her handheld device, was Sally.

“Daddy, I looked over the files we have on Knothole and… Oh.”

Sally stopped beside the throne as she realized they weren’t alone. The coyote cleared his throat again.

“Presenting, her highness, Princess of South Island, heir to the throne, Princess Sal—“

“Jean-Robert.” The king said to the coyote. “Please, enough. Go join your son in the solar, we’ll be fine.”

The guard took a deep breath before marching off. As he passed by Sally, she murmured to him “tell Antoine I’ll be leaving soon”.

Once they were down a coyote, Sally turned to her father.

“Daddy...”

“Hello, Bean.” Pulling on her arm, the king had her bend down so he could kiss her on the cheek. “How are you? What have you been up to?”

“I’ve been trying to look into that Knothole problem.”

“Oh yes! That’s why I’ve asked you here!” King Acorn turned his attention back to the group. “I want Sonic here to investigate reports of a monster that has been stalking the people of Knothole in Great Turquoise.”

“Monster?”

“It’s just a little urban legend,” Longclaw said to Sonic. “The people of Knothole have been talking about being watched by someone in the woods. Seeing eyes, shadows. It’s most likely just a trick of the eyes.”

“Not so, Madame Sophocles,” The king replied to her. “Just last night, the supposed ‘mythological’ monster of Knothole attacked the Wolf Pack.”

“What?! Are they okay?”

“One of their members sustained major injuries.” Sally replied for her father. “Chief Wolf suffered an injury to her arm. She’s currently unable to lead the Pack on another patrol to find this creature.”

“Which is what has led me to request the help of the heroic Sonic The Hedgehog.” The king continued. “If I know Lupe, though she wants to hunt that monster down herself, she doesn’t want to put any more of her girls in danger. I’m taking the choice out of her hands before she does something drastic, and I’m asking for your help in stopping this beast before it hurts anyone else.”

“Are you sure? I mean, Tails and I are supposed to be on vacation…”

“It’s a request from the royal family,” King Acorn said. “You have the capabilities to stop this creature. Are you not willing to use them to help those in need?”

Well, the king had Sonic there. He made a whole point that he had to use these powers to help people in need when it came to Dulcy terrorizing Green Hill… He definitely had the skills to stop this monster, especially with his siblings by his side, but he knew that Chuck was probably stricken with horror at the chance for Sonic to throw himself into danger.

He looked back at his uncle. Chuck’s bushy eyebrows were furrowed, his eyes full of worry. Sonic sighed, thinking for a second before turning back to look at King Acorn.

“I’ll do it,” Sonic said. “But… You owe me.”

“Owe you?”

“I’m doing this on my vacation time. I just got my family back too, I’m sure Sal’s told you.”

When his daughter was referenced, the king looked at her with a raised eyebrow- not from what the hedgehog said, but from the nickname. Sally looked surprised to be called out.

“Yes?” The king asked as he turned his head back to him.

“I’m doing you a favor by looking into this. So the least you can do is do something for me.”

“…I admire your moxie. What is your price?”

“Provide more funding to Mission Freedom.”

That certainly took the others by surprise.

“More funding?” King Acorn asked, eyebrow still raised.

“Yeah. Look, we can only work with what we got. I work as the project supervisor, and we have a bunch of workers there that need to be properly compensated for what they do. Not to mention the cost of materials, coverage for possible medical issues, transport costs if we have to call in people from other districts? We can’t just stand by a lake and wait for a few rings to float to the surface if we need a couple hundred rings for a new experiment. We’re trying to help people and save Mobians here. Double the funding to Mission Freedom or you can find another supersonic hedgehog to do your dirty work.”

Sonic crossed his arms as he finished his statement, letting the ball fall in the king’s court. Everyone’s eyes went to King Acorn, including his daughter’s, while he kept eye contact with the blue hedgehog before him. He thought for a moment.

“…very well.” He said. “Double funding for Mission Freedom. I’ll have Rosie contact Charles about it.”

“Oh golly…” Uncle Chuck murmured, both in relief and out of surprise that Sonic’s gambit worked.

“But you must keep your end of the deal, Sonic.”

“Don’t worry, your majesty, I’ll head to Knothole from here.” Sonic paused. “…I can bring my siblings, right?”

“Oh yes! Yes, of course. I heard that’s how you stopped that dragon after all.”

“Good. I’ll get that issue settled at sonic speeds.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then. It was an honor to meet you, Sonic. And the rest of you, of course.”

“See ya!”

Sonic gave a two finger salute before turning and leaving- this time, his family all rushed to keep up with him, wanting to discuss what just happened.

“That was exhilarating!”

“Sonic, that was way past cool!”

“Nicely done, bro.”

“Dude, I could hardly believe my ears!”

Chuck put his hand on Sonic’s shoulder. “Maybe I don’t like you going after this… Thing, whatever it is, but… Thank you. For getting the projects more funding.”

“Hey, if I’m gonna throw myself into danger, I might as well have something good come out of it. Besides, it’s like Longclaw said, it’s probably nothing. So I still get a chill day and you guys get the money you deserve.”

“I sure hope that’s the case.” Chuck smiled. “Thank you again, Sonny.”

“Anytime, unc.”

The beaver at the door closed it behind the Hedgehogs as they all left. Staring at the door, King Acorn stroked the mustache had had, humming.

“I like him.” He said to Sally, though didn’t look at her. “Certainly what South Island needs. I can see why you admire him so much, Sally.”

Sally sighed. “Daddy… I told you I wanted to try and deal with the Knothole issue.”

“Hm? Oh, yes, well… I heard opportunity knocking. Might as well get on the good side of some kind of speedster superhero as soon as he gets here, yes?”

“But I had it under control! I had Nicole run calculations of what area the monster is residing in!”

The top of the Nicole device flipped open as Sally showed her father.

“Made with seventy-seven percent accuracy, your majesty.”

Slowly, King Acorn used his hand to close the device. He stood, standing before Sally with a smile, adjusting her vest so it looked nice on her.

“You’re so much like your mother,” He said. “Always running off to look for those to help.”

“Daddy…”

“I’m not trying to guilt you. But listen to me, Bean- Sonic the Hedgehog was made to do things like this. You’re a smart young woman, but you’re just a princess! Princesses were not made to run out and fight monsters. In fact, I think they’re kidnapped by monsters in all those storybooks.”

“I want to help.”

“You will. You’ll help me by staying back at that Mission Freedom building. Okay?”

Sally didn’t reply. The king rubbed her arms.

“You know I’m right. I always am.”

“…Fine.”

“Good. Thank you, my dear. Now go collect Antoine and take your leave.”

Sally sighed, putting Nicole in her vest before turning and leaving from the throne room. The king, satisfied with what he did, sat back in his throne with a content sigh. After a second, he recalled what Sonic said, and leaned against one of the arms of the chair.

“Mobians… Hm…” The king stroked his face, thinking back to what Sonic called their kind. “I wonder… How would the people feel about the name… Mobotropolis?”

“What’re you doin’, doc?”

Back at Mission Freedom HQ, on level B3, Doctor Starline was hard at work with his current experiment. Not content with wasting his time working on whatever dead-end experiments the others were throwing themselves into, Starline was close to perfecting his project to present to Mission Freedom.

Once he presented the project, he would be placed in a higher role in the initiative, and with the right funding and conversations in the right places, Starline was bound to boot that senile old hedgehog out of the director’s chair for the doctor to sit in. Then they could start doing projects that would benefit Starline, maybe the public, Starline, and most importantly… Starline.

If he would stop getting interrupted, first.

When the dragon hovered her head over Starline’s work and spoke, the bespectacled platypus jumped. He put his hand over the glove device he was working on, and glared up at the winged creature.

“Don’t you have some babies to eat or something?”

“What? No! I don’t eat babies.”

“Well go do… Whatever maladroit thing you creatures do.” Starline flicked his hand to shoo Dulcy away. “Go. Leave. Find someone else’s time to waste.”

Dulcy shrunk a bit, frowning. “…Okay. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Be useful. Now get out of my sight.”

The dragon turned and walked away dejectedly. Starline rolled his eyes and got back to work, scoffing and mumbling under his breath about people wasting his time.

Awful attitudes aside, it genuinely wasn’t Dulcy’s fault. The only space they could afford to keep Dulcy in for the time being was in one of the storage cells down in level B3, so her interrupting Starline’s work was actually his fault for choosing the storage area as his own lab. The doctor would never admit that though, obviously.

It had been a while since Dulcy had joined Mission Freedom. While most of the project workers enjoyed Dulcy’s presence and actually became friendly over everything, she couldn’t help but feel out of place. She just wanted to feel like she was welcome, and it didn’t help that the doctor constantly made her feel that her new spot to sleep made her a burden. Then again, where could she sleep besides here?

Slipping through the double doors to the stairway reminded Dulcy of the old entrance to her mother’s cave. She crawled up the open center of the stairwell to reach the first basem*nt level, where she knew that others would most likely be.

“From my heart and from my hand, why don’t people understand, my intention?”

As she crept into the labs, Dulcy heard music playing from a speaker. Rotor had been put onto a lot of Earth music from Tails while they worked together. Upon request from the walrus as well, the pair crafted a small music player for Rotor to play songs whenever he wanted.

He was knelt in front of Bunnie, whose arm was opened for Rotor to tweak with. The walrus was softly vocalizing the lyrics of the song to himself as he worked, wearing goggles over his eyes to block the flash.

When the rabbit saw Dulcy, she smiled widely, raising her non-robot arm.

“Dulcy-girl!” She said happily.

“Bunnie, careful! Any movement could mess me up.”

“Aww, sorry sugar. Having these parts for so long makes me forget they’re worked on, I reckon.”

Dulcy smiled again at the warm welcome regardless. She stepped inside, staying low, even though the ceiling was high. Better safe than sorry.

“What’re you guys doing?”

“Rotor’s doing some routine maintenance on me while Sally and Antoine are off to Gigalopolis!” Bunnie replied, still peppy.

“And I’m adding in a feature that was hidden on the parts!” Rotor took off his goggles, smiling. “Alright Bunnie, reach your robo-arm out and stretch your fingers as wide as you can!”

“Sure thing, sugar.”

Bunnie did so. After a second, her arm suddenly shot out- specifically, her arm extended outwards, her hand flying out and smacking against the far wall. After the hand fell to the floor, the loose extended arm slowly started to retract.

“Woo-wee, that sure packs a punch!” The rabbit commented, amazed.

“Your legs can do it too! Just the same but with your toes.”

“Now I gotta ask sugar, these fancypants functions on my robot parts aren’t gonna affect me when I get my normal body back, right? Like I’m not gonna be able to stretch my arm out across the room when it’s all fleshy and furry again am I?”

“No, no, you should be fine.”

“What I wanna know is,” Dulcy spoke up. “How is that gonna become a Mobian fleshy part again? Especially with all those modifications made to it.”

“Though it’s been transformed into robotic matter, the DNA of the body parts are still Bunnie at its core.” Rotor explained. “Think of it like the metal as her skin, the steel endoskeleton underneath as her bones, and the wiring as her veins!”

“Eeyuck! Not a pretty picture.” Bunnie made a face.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Bunnie… How did you lose your arm? And your legs?”

As her arm clicked back into place, the rabbit ran her hand over the smooth metal that made up her arm. After a second, she looked up at Dulcy to talk to her proper.

“It’s… a long story. It involves a pumpjack, and uh… Well, that’s not a pretty picture either, honey.”

Dulcy nodded, knowing better than to pry.

Suddenly, the door slammed open, making all of them turn to look. Now marching into the dormitory and labs was Sally, who looked far from pleased. Behind her, striding in with a hand on his sword, was Antoine.

“Hey, sugar-twan. Hey… Sally-girl…”

Bunnie watched the princess stomp by. She reached one of the cushioned benches at the side of the physical therapy area, flinging herself downwards and burying her face in one of the pillows. She screamed loudly, muffled by said pillow.

The others watched as Antoine came up to join them.

“What happened, Tony?” Dulcy asked the guard.

Though slightly nettled by the nickname, Antoine answered. “She is upset about the king’s decision.”

“Decision? Is this about why she had to travel to Gigalopolis?”

“Oui.” Antoine replied to Rotor. “The king has requested the help of the blue hedgehog, Sonique, to assist with the investigating of the attack in Knothole that, as you say, went down last night.”

“Is this about that monster?” Bunnie whispered. “Y’all, I thought that was just a myth!”

“UGH!” Sally roared, lifting her head from the pillow. “It’s not a myth! The only myth here is the idea that my father can respect any of the effort I put into helping South Island!”

The princess got up, just as her friends walked up to stand around her.

“It’s ridiculous! I try so hard to figure out problems. I solve problems!” She continued to rant, pacing before the four. “You know I was excited when I was called in this morning to visit him? I thought he was going to say something positive about my scientific contributions, ask for my help- I would’ve even accepted if he asked for help involving Knothole’s monster! But no, all he asked was for Sonic’s contact info and why I haven’t been visiting him recently! It’s ridiculous!”

Her friends all looked a varying level of worried for her. Rotor cleared his throat.

“Nicole…”

“Yes, Rotor?” The system spoke from Sally’s vest.

“Can you tell us what happened? Just the short version.”

“King Acorn requested the presence of his daughter, but only to ask for the contact information of Sonic. Sally attempted to run simulations involving the terror of Knothole, but was too late to present her information before Sonic was royally requested to assist. Sonic agreed, and King Acorn asked Sally to stay out of the situation.”

“Well Sally-girl, if you don’t mind me saying, isn’t it a good thing Sonic’s helping out? You saw those videos too I reckon, he’s an absolute superstar when it comes to handling threats to the public!”

“It’s the principle of the thing!” Sally replied, still pacing. “I told him I could find something on this monster, but he didn’t listen! And this isn’t an isolated incident! He does this all the time! He has this saying, ‘you know I’m right, I always am’.” She mimicked her father mockingly. “But he’s not! He’s not right all the time! Do you all know how often he’s wrong? A LOT!”

“Honey, honey, calm down!” Bunnie stopped Sally by holding her arm. “Goodness me, you’re angrier than fire ant’s nest that’s been relieved on!”

“Maybe he’s just trying to protect you?” Dulcy asked. “That’s why mama kept me from leaving the nest.”

“My father’s not like your mom, Dulcy. He doesn’t let me do anything because to him I’m just a little girl! I’m still a little girl to him. He thinks this job I have that’s literally bettering the lives of hundreds of Mobians is just a little hobby of mine! Like I’m a kid going through a phase!” The princess groaned. “He acts like this is some kind of summer camp!”

“Have you tried talking to him about it?”

“That’s all I ever do. But he doesn’t listen or care! Like I said, he thinks he’s always right!”

“If you’ll forgive my trespasses as it is your father I am now talking about, princess,” Antoine said. “The king is truly a fuel if he does not see how intelligent and magnificent you truly are.”

“Thank you, Antoine, but insulting my father isn’t the best course of action here. But… Thank you, again, for the compliment.” Rubbing her eyes, Sally sighed.

“Maybe you could show him how capable you are!”

“…what?”

All eyes were on Dulcy from her suggestion. Though she shrunk a little at the attention, Dulcy continued.

“Y’know… My mama let me go here, and let me prove myself. What if you do the same? You go out there and prove that you’re good enough to help! Or better than Sonic, I guess.”

It was clear that Sally thought about that. It was hard, thinking about disobeying her father… But there was also a deep, deep desire for the satisfaction of proving to her father singlehandedly that he was, in fact, not always right. Honestly, Sally liked doing that to anyone.

She pulled out the Nicole device from her vest, flicking up the screen.

“Nicole.”

“Ready, Sally.”

“Do you still have those calculations of the monster’s areas of interest on standby?”

“Ready when you need them. Just say the word.”

Sally looked ahead, thinking to herself. She looked back up at Dulcy.

“You’re cool with people riding on your back, right?”

“Huh? Oh, uh… Yeah, that’ll be fine. You might need something to hang onto!”

“I can get a harness from in town.”

“Princesse,” Antoine said, exasperated. “You cannot be seriously of the consideration to track down this strange beast!”

“I am. Dulcy brings up a good point- I can prove I’m good enough to help. No offense to Sonic, but he should’ve never been called.” Sally closed Nicole’s handheld. “Unless you have a problem, Antoine.”

After a moment of considering his options, the guard sighed. “No, I am having no rejections… But I must be going with you. You are the princess, but you are also my responsibility.”

“Sure. Maybe you can put that sword to good use.”

“I’ll go too, honey.” Bunnie spoke up. “I’m worried about you. You can use the extra muscle, too.”

Rotor touched the rabbit’s fuzzy arm. “Bunnie, your upgrades are still in beta.”

“This is a good field test then, sugar! Unless… You wanna come with us.”

Seeing everyone stare at him, Rotor slipped his hand under his backwards cap to scratch his head. He sighed. “Oh boy… Fine, fine. I can come.”

“Oh man! Last time I carried a bunch of people was when Sonic and his family were on my back! This is gonna be fun!” Dulcy was happy. “When’re we leaving, princess?”

“I’m going to town for a moment to get that harness. Meet me outside… We leave when I return.”

Chuck and Longclaw returned to Green Hill, to ensure the proper channels were open to retrieve the now doubled funding for Mission Freedom. With their mission now set, Sonic, Tails, Manic and Sonia all raced out from Gigalopolis towards Knothole.

Once they reached the borders of the village, the group all slowed down, with Sonic even putting a hand on Sonia’s bike to leech the kinetic energy out of it and slow it down manually.

There was a strange sense of calm and home that Sonic felt in Knothole. If he wasn’t already bound to Green Hill by familial obligation, he’d most definitely want to live here. Maybe it wasn’t the best place for a runner with all these trees, but he felt secure with all the foliage all above. Plus the community of avian mobians who lived in the treehouses, connected by bridges, would probably never get old to him.

Sonia walked her motorcycle towards one of the Wolf Pack outposts, leaning it against the small hut and poking her head inside.

“…Hello?” She called out. After a moment, she took her head out of the small building to look at her brothers. “Nobody’s in there. That’s weird.”

Leaving her vehicle behind, Sonia stood beside her brothers. They looked around, watching some of the villagers walk by.

Sonic tapped his chin. He pointed at one of the passing people.

“Hey, you!”

The villager, a green pronghorn, stopped in her tracks. She looked behind her and then back at Sonic.

“Yeah, you.” He continued. “Where’s the members of the Wolf Pack at?”

“Uh… They’re over at their headquarters. It’s in the tree marked with the blue wolf’s paw.”

“Oh, cool! Thanks.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Cassia, c’mon!”

“Oh! Coming, Clove!”

The green pronghorn scurried off to join her older sister again.

Sonic looked back at his siblings and gestured them along.

It was mostly quiet amongst the group as they walked further into town, towards the many trees that had businesses and homes crafted within them. Manic broke the silence.

“So what do you guys think the monster is?”

“Manic…” Sonia said. “There’s no such thing as monsters.”

“Tell that to the one-hundred-foot water god that flooded Station Square, Sonia.” Tails commented.

“See, but that was Chaos, the god. Not a monster. Important distinction.”

“Monster is a state of mind.” Sonic said. “It’s a perception made by those who don’t understand the unknown. Aren’t all of us, at some point, monsters?”

“…okay, nerd.”

Sonic’s head snapped to Manic, looking offended.

“Sonic only proves my point, monster is just a title.”

“…who are you doing this for?” Tails asked her. “Sonia, Manic just asked what we thought the monster is. Like the true identity of it. If anything he’s agreeing with you.”

“Oh, well… I think it’s a bear.”

“A bear bear or a bear Mobian?”

“Is there a difference?”

“You haven’t met the Hooligans.” Sonic replied. “Yes, there is a difference. Though Bark doesn’t have any way down here, the whole ‘watching silently’ matches his M-O.”

“It could always just be a Mobian that’s stalking people!” Manic said. “People are weirdos. Maybe it’s just a guy who likes watching other people. From a distance. Menacingly.”

“But it attacked one of the Wolf Pack. That goes beyond weirdo territory.”

“Very true, little bro, very true. I guess we’re bound to find out soon.”

Though they didn’t have any specific directions to follow, walking around for a while in Knothole eventually yielded results- they found a large tree towards the center of the village, with a hanging sign over the open entrance that had the blue wolf’s paw symbol on it.

The area was all open, clearly meant as a one-room building where the members of the Wolf Pack could congregate and others could meet with them.

At least that’s what they gathered in the one second the four had to look it over. As soon as they stepped into the wide open space, spears were all pointed at them, all towards their necks. The warriors of the Wolf Pack had all stepped out from seemingly nowhere, at the ready to attack.

All four of them immediately put their hands up. Sonia tried to step back from the spearhead, but found two were now pointed directly at her neck when she tried that.

“Heel, girls.”

The spears all slowly lowered at the command of someone behind them.

A curtain was pulled back, revealing the Pack leader: Chief Lupe. She had been obscured by the curtain as she was standing by the bed of the fellow Pack member that was hurt the most during the attack of that monster. It appeared that member was now sleeping.

Chief Wolf’s injured arm was placed in a sling. The other members of the Pack stepped back to let her stand before the siblings herself.

“Chief Wolf.” Sonia greeted her.

“Hmph.” The chief acknowledged them. “I was informed of your impending arrival by the instant messaging from the king’s faculty.” She looked at Sonic. “You’re the one he sent specifically, yes?”

After a second, Sonic nodded quickly. “Yes! Yes, he sent me. My siblings are just helping.”

“You’re Chuck’s nephew.” She continued. “I nearly had my girls imprison him when he first arrived.”

“Uh… Thanks… For not doing that?”

“You’re welcome.”

With the conversation currently going nowhere, Lupe turned to look back at the bedridden wolf again. Sonic slowly walked to stand near the chief, also looking at Honi.

“Is she okay?”

“…She will be. She’s resting off the pain and the medicine.”

“I’m sorry, Chief Wolf. I know this has to be hard.”

“You don’t know anything.” The wolf said coldly to Sonic. “It’s my responsibility to protect her, and all of my girls. I took an oath. Honi nearly died at the hands of that… Thing. Now I’m stuck here, unable to help. Have you ever truly failed someone before?”

“…yes.” Sonic said quietly, solemnly. “You can fix your mistake. You can learn from it. I can’t take back the one true failure I had in my life. I can’t undo my mistake. No matter how hard I want to.”

“…maybe I’m wrong, then. Maybe you do know what I feel. But that doesn’t change that I’m simply doing this because I’m forced to. I cannot go out there myself, and the king requested this of me. Whether you all end up like Honi, or you end up gone for good… I will do what’s necessary if the time comes. No matter what happens to my body, I will protect my village and my girls.”

Lupe grabbed the curtain and closed it, giving Honi her space to rest. She walked past Sonic, striding to a table nearby with papers on it. Sonic glanced to his siblings, silently inviting them to accompany him to see what the chief was doing.

They all stood at the other side of the table, watching the chief use one hand to flip through the papers she had on the surface. Lupe’s eyebrows were furrowed, looking for something specific.

“We didn’t get a good look at the beast.” She said. “It was night. All we know is that it has glowing eyes and some form of glowing mouth where its stomach should be.”

“No such thing as monsters, eh?” Manic murmured to his sister.

“There will be an explanation for the creature. I’m sure…” Sonia didn’t seem as sure as she wanted to.

“You two done?”

The siblings quieted down when Chief Wolf called them out. After a moment of silence, she continued to look through the files she had.

“I had one of my Pack travel out and sketch the footprints it made in the dirt. It’s right… Here.”

Lupe pulled out the paper and tossed it forwards, letting it slide to the siblings’ side. Tails picked it up, with his hedgehog siblings all leaning in to look at it- though Sonia mostly stood behind Tails’ shoulder.

His gloved finger trailed over the sketch. Tails turned his head to look at the blue hedgehog nearby.

“Sonic… Look at how these feet are segmented.”

“Yeah, they’re split up into different sections, too.”

“That’s what segmented means, Manic.”

“…oh.”

Sonic and Tails looked over the two-toed feet of the creature, which seemed to have some kind of hinge right in the center. It certainly looked inhuman, and the marked edges of the feet meant that it not only had lipped edges, but that it was heavy enough to make them distinct.

It looked like the feet that would be… on a robot.

“What kind of animal left that print?” Sonia thought aloud.

“It wasn’t an animal.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No.” Lupe replied. “I saw it myself, up close. It had skin made of metal. Whatever it was… It wasn’t one of us.”

The statement made Sonic and Tails’ blood run cold. They looked at each other as the quartet broke up, both of them with expressions of shock and horror.

“Sonic… You don’t think…?”

“No… No, not here. It couldn’t be.”

“Couldn’t be what?”

The cold eyes of Lupe were on the brothers, making them both snap their heads to look at the glowering chief. After a second, Tails put the paper down and started quickly getting the Miles Thunderbolt from his backpack.

“Couldn’t be an animal, just like you said!” The teenager was trying, badly, not to sound worried. “I’m just gonna scan these footprints on my tablet so I can cross-examine them with a bunch of stuff I have in my database… It’ll help me find out what this thing is quicker.”

“Sure.”

The suspicion of Chief Wolf was now placed on the brothers. Clearly, she wasn’t going to let what Sonic and Tails said go. In the moment Tails was pulling out his tri-fold tablet, Sonia and Manic shared a glance as well, wondering what was going on with their siblings.

Tails flipped open his tablet to its full size, letting the screen light up.

“Oooh, cool!”

Before the siblings could question where the voice came from, a small figure swooped in and snatched the tablet from Tails’ hands. The small big-eared bat few to the top of a nearby bookshelf, flipping the tablet up to look it over with a big smile.

“Hey!” Tails cried.

“Nuh-uh, stealing things without permission is my quirky trait, bucko.” Manic added.

The bat was amazed by the tablet, his pupils widened and reflecting the glowing screen as he used his wing to tap on it, just watching it react to his movements. He was so distracted, he didn’t even notice the spear nearby. Lupe used the spearhead to whack the bat, shoving him off the top of the bookshelf.

As he fell off, the bat let go of the tablet to fly off- Sonic zipped over and caught it before it could shatter against the ground.

He handed it back to Tails. “Here you go, little buddy.”

“Thanks, Sonic.”

“That wasn’t very nice!” The bat was upset.

“I told you, Bokkun, stay out of Wolf Pack HQ.”

“Wait… Bokkun?” Sonia asked.

The bat turned as if called upon. “Uh huh?”

“Oh wow… you’re Bokkun.”

“You’re familiar?” Lupe asked her.

“Longclaw’s told me about him.”

“Oh wow! Hope it’s all good things!”

“She said you gave her father recurring nightmares for years, and if he wasn’t short on messengers for his union he would’ve blacklisted you years ago.”

“Ha! Old Man Sophocles was always so funny!” Bokkun snickered. “I should visit him!”

“Please don’t.”

“Don’t worry, I will! Thanks for reminding me to!”

During all the bickering, Tails tried to use his tablet to scan the drawn version of the tracks.

It took the photo, but upon scanning, it got stuck on seventy percent. He watched the loading circle spin around for a solid minute before an error message popped up.

“What? Aw, man.”

“What’s wrong, little bro?”

“My tablet must not be properly connecting to my portable CPU I keep in my backpack.” Tails huffed. “I knew I should’ve tweaked the Bluetooth connectivity instead of the plane this morning… I’d connect it manually with a cable, but uh… I left it at home.”

“I can always just run back to Green Hill and grab it, buddy.”

“No, Sonic. Like…” Tails looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Home.”

“…Oh.” Sonic nodded, remembering Station Square. “Right... Bummer.”

“Oh, if something’s broke, maybe Mister Tinker could fix it!”

“Who?”

“He’s this guy living in my shack!” Bokkun said to Tails. “Well I know he’s a guy but I dunno what exactly he is… Anyway, he’s been helping fix stuff all around the village, maybe you could bring over your cool-shiny-thingy-I-really-want and let him take a gander at it!”

“I dunno… I trust Rotor back at Mission Freedom more than I do some stranger.”

“I… Can vouch for Mister Tinker.”

Lupe’s statement caught the siblings’ interest. She sighed, wiggling her slung arm.

“He put my arm in this, and I can already feel it healing better than it would have.” She said. “He’s strange. But I cannot deny his contributions to this village. He’s gotten us through a very rough patch while we’ve waited for our newest engineers from White Tundra to arrive yesterday.”

“If those engineers are back, then Mister Tinker must be available to help with stuff.” Sonia looked at her brothers expectantly.

“…I leave it up to you, little bro. You wanna give it a shot?”

Tails thought for a second before sighing and closing his tablet. “Fine. We’ll go visit him.”

“Yay! Okay, follow me then!”

Bokkun, happy he could make people follow him, started flying off. The siblings quickly followed, leaving the Wolf Pack behind in their HQ. The chief sighed with relief as that small flying annoyance finally left her work area.

Down the village, in Bokkun’s hut, Ivo was still very hard at work fixing the mistakes and problems of the people in Knothole. Even with the arrival of those new engineers, people still flocked to him to guidance.

He asks again: why was everyone so stupid?

The shack he was in was overflowing with things he’s been given as payment for fixing peoples’ things. Some of it was useful, like the wood he used for his personal passion side project, but a lot of it would most likely just go to waste. This included all the food that was stuffed in the fridge, which many were days old at this point.

Currently, he was working on a loom. Apparently the invention of something like a television was too complicated for these Mobians, but looms and refrigerators were easily accessible to them… Make it make sense.

He had nails between his lips, keeping them there as he reconstructed the loom, hunched over the front side with the yarn that was placed in it still halfway done. As he tried to bang a nail into one part of the center of the loom, the yarn all unraveled and flung itself over the hunched over scientist. He sighed.

“…so then Mister Tinker yells at me to stop throwing water balloons at him while he’s in the shower!” Bokkun’s voice was heard as the bat entered the shack. “His voice got so high, it was funny!”

Ugh. Bokkun. Ivo had become fairly fond of the bat while he was staying in Knothole, but… He was so close to finishing this loom. The guy who was using it would be here any minute, he did not need any distractions.

“Mister Tinker!”

That wasn’t good. Maybe if Ivo kept working, the bat would eventually leave.

“I got some weirdos here to visit you!”

“Weirdos?” Sonia asked, offended.

Ivo scoffed, nails still in his mouth, shaking his head. He remained under the threads, obscured for the moment as he kept working on fixing the broken loom.

Leading the siblings through the kitchen to the back room, where “Mister Tinker” had all of his repairs and projects set up. The four were taken by surprise at the number of handmade objects that were back there- most of them were bartered, but the ones in the very back were ones made by the man himself.

They looked at the loom and the person working in it, whose head was still covered by yarn.

“…is the object Mister Tinker or the lump?” Manic asked.

Ivo sighed. He spoke, voice gravely and low from the nails he had to keep between his lips. “Bokkun, now’s not a good time…”

“They need some help! Don’t you help people?”

The doctor scoffed. “Fine. Just give me a second.”

Since they had to wait, the siblings looked at one another. Breaking free from the group, Sonic and Tails walked together to look at all the stuff along the walls. Things like chairs, or little knickknacks on a homemade table, even something like a stack of blankets.

Sonic and Tails passed by Mister Tinker, still gazing at all the objects. Ivo felt two people pass by him, but stayed buried in the loom, not wanting to be perceived at the moment.

The brothers got to the back, seeing some objects covered by cloth sheets. After giving a glance to one another, Sonic and Tails reached to the sheet in order to pull it up and see what was underneath.

“Hey, if I can’t see that, neither can you!”

At Bokkun’s yelling, Sonic and Tails turned around in surprise. Mister Tinker jumped, smacking his head against the inside of the loom. Knowing they inadvertently caused the inventor to hit his head, Sonic and Tails slowly turned back around to try and act nonchalant.

Just as they did, Ivo pulled his head from the yarn, frowning at the now sheepish bat. Sonia and Manic’s eyebrows went up- this guy was a human. Uncle Chuck had told them about humans, and they’d seen a few on Sonic’s videos from back on Earth… Speaking of, this guy looked kinda familiar. The brother and sister couldn’t place where, though.

“Bokkun, please!” Ivo rasped, voice still altered from the nails he was holding in his mouth. Hearing the man was angry, Sonic and Tails kept their backs to the guy. “Let me finish this in peace!”

“Sorry, Mister Tinker…”

“Well, since we gotta wait…” Manic spoke up. “Can I have some of that food in your fridge?”

“That food is days old at best.”

“So is that a yes…?”

Ivo rolled his eyes, further annoyed. “Fine. Just leave me be!”

Manic did a little fist pump, turning to leave just as Mister Tinker shoved his head into the yarn like an ostrich in sand. When Sonic and Tails heard the tinkerer continue to hammer nails into the loom, they turned back around, spotting the obscured doctor and the still frowning Bokkun.

Sonia was there, but looked back at the entrance to the room. She soon sighed.

“I should make sure he doesn’t eat too much…”

She left the room. Needing someone in the front to speak with Mister Tinker, Sonic and Tails passed over to stand before the loom again.

Before anything further could happen, there was a knock at the door to their side. It was a door made so people could easily access Mister Tinker’s workshop. It opened up, revealing a big Saint Bernard there.

“Hey boss! I came for my loom!”

“Yes, yes, George. I have it right here…”

The tinkerer’s voice was less gravely as there was only one more nail in his mouth. Sonic and Tails’ eyebrows furrowed, finding the voice familiar.

Ivo nailed in the last bit. He sat back, pulling the yarn off of him, though still covered up from the brothers by the heddles of the loom. The doctor gestured for the big dog to take the loom away- as the Mobian he was helping was a big dog, he was strong enough to lift the loom up entirely by himself.

The dog pulled the loom from between Mister Tinker and his guests.

“Thanks, Mister Tinker!”

Sonic and Ivo’s eyes met first, though Tails looked at the same time as the hedgehog. All three of them felt their blood run ice cold. Ivo’s eyes nearly bulged bigger than his glasses’ lenses, his face turning as red as his nose. Sonic’s quills and Tails’ fur visibly stood on end, their eyes widening too.

It was quiet for a solid few seconds.

“…here’s those guys I told you about, Mister Tinker!” Bokkun spoke first.

“U-Uh…” The doctor couldn’t find the words to speak, flabbergasted by the sudden appearance of his nemeses.

“Is this an amnesia thing again?”

“…yes, Bokkun.” Ivo managed to croak out. “Could you go to the other room for a moment and close the door for me?”

“Okays! I can go see if that green hedgehog threw up all that food yet! I hope he did!”

Bokkun was chortling as he flew out of the room. He grabbed the doorknob with his feet and let it swing closed, leaving the three of them all alone in the workshop.

Ivo’s hands pressed together, his fingers to his lips. After a second, he spoke.

“…I can explain.”

“Oh my god…” Tails was exasperated, facepalming. He wanted to believe that the “amnesia” stuff was true, but that statement alone confirmed it wasn’t.

Sonic concurred wryly: “Amnesia, huh?”

“It’s working for the moment!”

“Ivo, what the heck are you doing here?!” Sonic hissed, both him and Tails moving in. Ivo stood, knowing they would need to speak privately; Sonic couldn’t help a little scoff seeing his fully getup, shaking his head. “And what’re you wearing?”

“This is the only thing that could fit me!”

“You think maybe that’s because this place is for Mobians, not humans?” Tails asked.

“Wow. Specist much?”

Both Sonic and Tails had annoyed and bewildered reactions to that.

“Again: what are you doing here?” The hedgehog asked. “How did you even get here?”

“Did you follow us?!”

“That’s… Not entirely false.”

Sonic groaned, running his hands over his face slowly. He remembered what Tails said: be careful what you wish for…

He took a deep breath, clenching his fists tightly. “Ivo, I swear to everything in my body, if you even so far as try to invade anywhere on this island, especially Green Hill…”

“That’s preposterous! I didn’t even know this place existed, much less made up at-the-ready invasion plans I could execute on the go, whenever. I was too busy doing things after the little near-apocalyptic alien attack last autumn to even think about making any kind of scheme!”

“What kind of important things?”

At Tails’ question, Ivo recalled him playing blind man’s bluff with Orbot and Cubot. “…important business things! Things beyond some kind of petty rivalry between Sonic, his annoying little friends and my empire! Believe it or not, fox boy, I did not come here to assault anyone. They don’t even have proper technology I could use anyways.”

“Then what’s over there?”

Sonic pointed to the things at the back wall that were all covered in sheets. The doctor turned to look at the mystery items, pausing as he was called out. After a moment, he sighed deeply.

“…you’re not going to believe I don’t have a scheme unless I show you, aren’t you?”

“You got it, doc.”

“Uh huh.”

“Ugh. Fine! You may see… but if I see this anywhere else, especially recreated, I’m suing!”

Leading the brothers over to the covered objects, he pull the items over, starting with the largest one first. Grabbing the cloth with both hands, Ivo turned to look at the curious duo.

“Presenting…” He pulled the sheet off. “Robotnikland! Name pending.”

As implied, the largest covered object was a scale model of a theme park. It was massive, with roller coasters, a ferris wheel, many other rides of lesser note and very… unique additions that Sonic and Tails hadn’t seen in the likes of Twinkle Park or Carnival Island.

He pointed to one such addition, a large pile of pink and white. “Starting with the tallest, this is Sweet Mountain, which will be made completely by desserts- entirely from preservatives in order for it to keep from expiring forever. Then there’s Aquarium Park, next to Starlight Carnival, where—“

“An… Amusem*nt park?”

“…yes, Tails, keep up. Anyway—“

“No no, we’ve seen enough.” Sonic held a hand up. “You’ve clearly been working on this instead of uh… Anything really evil. What about the smaller stuff?”

“They’re the models for the robots I’m going to have across the park! They’re out there to help greet guests and amaze people to stay longer! Here we have the Motobug, the Caterkiller, and the Buzz Bomber!”

Ivo unveiled all three of the lifesized models of the robots, showing off a ladybug with a wheel under it, a purple caterpillar-like robot made of multiple spheres, and a blue wasp-like robot that seemed to have some kind of cannon on the end of its stinger.

“Caterkiller?”

“Buzz Bomber?”

“You know how young people are nowadays. All they like are those killer robots in those pizzerias.” Ivo rolled his eyes. “These will bring in customers by making them seem dangerous and cool right off the bat! I call them ‘Botniks’.”

“More like Badniks…” Sonic murmured to Tails.

“What did you say?”

“I said ‘more like Badniks’.” The hedgehog spoke louder, uncaring.

“Badniks? I… Hm.” Ivo stroked his mustache as he pondered the new title. “…That’s a much better name. Thank you, Sonic!”

“Nuh-uh, this is not a friendly moment, Ivo. Maybe you’re off the hook for the nonexistent invasion plans, but as long as you’re here, you’re still dangerous.”

“Oh yes? Is that why you came here? To tell me that?”

“…No. Actually we came here because Tails’ backpack wi-fi is acting up.”

“What? What are you using to connect to?”

“A portable computer that links up with my tablet system.”

“Well that’s your first issue. If it’s in your backpack, it’s bound to get jumbled up.” Ivo sighed. “Look, if I fix this thing, will you two leave me be? I have a pretty good thing going on here, and I don’t need to be thrown in prison because you two can’t keep your fat noses out of my work!”

“You’re one to talk about fat noses.”

“And you’re one to talk about… Being blue!” Ivo stomped his foot.

“Enough, enough, I can hardly take these clever comebacks.” Tails deadpanned. He brought his backpack around and shoved it into Ivo’s gut. “Can you look at this or not?”

“Fine! You’re lucky I had my electronic tools with me during entry to this island…”

Bringing a work table over, Ivo sat down and got to work after he located the CPU system within Tails’ backpack. Using the miniature tools, he started to prod.

“Those were… Your siblings, yes?” Ivo soon asked, looking at Sonic.

“…yeah. Those were my twins. Sonia and Manic.”

“Ugh. Even your names are similar. Annoying.”

“Ivo, you really didn’t know that project with my uncle and twins was going on? Not at all?”

“My father was a very… Awful person.”

“That goes without saying.” Tails added in a grumble.

“Yes,” Ivo agreed as he continued to work, eyes on the tech. “But what I mean is that at that time, I was busy attending college to receive my doctorate in robotics. I knew he was arrested for his work on Project Mobius, though had my cousin take the fall… But when he came back, he didn’t speak to me until I returned from college. He knew he couldn’t manipulate and abuse me over the phone and so far away, I suppose.”

“That file was in the GUN vaults, though. I can’t believe they’d do a project like that…”

“Really?” Ivo eyed Sonic again, sounding surprised.

“…Okay, I can believe it. I just can’t believe it happened to my family specifically.”

“Wherever anyone in our bloodline goes, they’re bound to find one another. I’m sure it’s like that in other timelines, and other universes too. I have a funny feeling we’ll be stuck together for a long, long time.”

Sonic scoffed at Ivo’s statement, rolling his eyes.

“Speaking of universes,” The doctor continued. “Where the devil are we, anyway? I fell through some kind of whirlpool and ended up on a beach? The DNA of this place was otherworldly, from what I could see before ditching my tech.”

“Another zone.” Tails answered. “We don’t know the specifics of what happened, but according to who we talked to, South Island was sunken into a pocket dimension they refer to as the ‘Underground’, and they’ve been here long before any of us were born.”

“Interesting.”

“I know, right? Finally, there’s something older than you, Ivo.”

“I am not that old, you blue pest!”

“How old are you, then?”

“…that isn’t the point of this conversation!” Ivo said angrily. He sighed, continuing to work. “…It’s fascinating to think about. Generations and generations of classically formed Mobians, living just beneath our noses. Hidden away from the world… And luckily, from my father. You’re planning a way to get South Island out of this place, I assume?”

“Why would you…?”

“Please, you’re Sonic the Hedgehog. I’d be surprised if you weren’t looking for a way to save everyone like the righteous little annoyance you are. Don’t worry, I won’t be stopping you this time- I want to get out of this blasted pocket zone as much as I’m sure you two do. Hopefully we can do so with little interaction; Speaking of, our time here is finished, much like this backpack.”

Ivo leaned away from the backpack, flipping it closed and sliding it towards the pair. Tails took it, looking at the (folded) Miles Thunderbolt just to check the connection to the CPU system.

“Not so fast, Ivo.” Sonic said. “It’s lucky we ran into you, though maybe not lucky for you.”

“What is it now, Sonic? Are you going to arrest me for hoarding? Your brother seems very eager to partake in the evidence if that’s the case.”

Tails unfolded the tri-fold tablet, turning it back around to show Ivo the photo he took of the footprints of the mysterious monster of Knothole. Ivo adjusted his glasses, leaning in to see the picture.

“What is one of your robots doing on South Island?”

“One of my robots? I didn’t bring any… Unless…” Ivo looked to the side, thinking to himself. His face and mustache fell. “Oh no. E-106 Eta.”

“What-who-who huh?” Sonic asked, confused.

“In the case of any of my aircraft crashing, if I don’t show any signs of life within two days, then a scouting and retrieval robot, E-106 Eta, is automatically sent out to collect me, dead or alive.”

“So that’s the ‘monster’ the Wolf Pack sent us after.” Sonic nodded. “You can take the hedgehog out of Earth…”

“Easy, then. I just send out an EMP blast using one of the Vulcan Cannons and shut it down.”

“It’s not that simple,” Ivo replied to Tails. “E-106 Eta is unlike any of my sleek and modern robots. It runs off of normal fuel- as in it collects burnable objects and stuffs it in a furnace it has in its stomach to power its systems. There’s very little technology within it, and what is in there is primitive.”

“Then we destroy it.”

“Not that simple either.”

“Of course not.” Sonic grumbled.

“I made E-106 Eta out of a super powerful titanium alloy.”

“Dude, seriously?”

“Oh I’m sorry, Sonic. Next time I create a robot to retrieve my possibly dead body from the super-fast hedgehog with razor sharp quills, the hyper-intelligent fox with nanite weapons, the psychic girl with a massive hammer, and the spiked-fist echidna with infinite strength… I’ll be sure to put an obvious ‘off switch’ on it. To make it easy for you.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time…”

“Enough!” Tails said to Sonic directly, and looked at Ivo with the same frustrated expression. “Ivo, how do we stop this robot?”

“Well, unless you have a super-powerful energy saw to cut through it…” After a second, the doctor huffed. “I don’t know, okay? I can’t think of that right now! I made E-106 Eta months ago, and I’ve been preoccupied with nothing but this ever since I got here! All I know is that it won’t stop until it’s found me!”

“Then why don’t we take you to it?”

“The Wolf Pack is already watching me, what will they think if I leave the village?” The doctor replied. “And the robot has primitive technology, remember? It can’t scan faces, it can only do a small wireless check that any of my tech is still active. That means it has to sense one of two pieces of technology: my computer glasses, which were shattered upon entry to this zone, or the computer system connection in my flight jacket… the jacket that has been discarded due to being mostly destroyed, also upon entry.”

“So it can’t scan anything; so we’re screwed.”

Ivo knuckled his mustache. “…Maybe not so.”

“Share with the class, Ivo.”

“My crashed ship is most likely still intact. I know that it was taken to a local junkyard in anticipation of being brought to the island’s massive scrapyard.”

“The Scrap Brain?”

“Is that what they call it? Hm… Wish I would’ve thought of that.” Ivo mumbled. “Anyway, yes. The ‘head’ of my Hawk Ship should still be there, which houses the co*ckpit. In the console of the co*ckpit should be an SD card containing the files to all my robots from the last six months, which includes E-106 Eta. If you can find it, Tails can put it in that egregious tablet of his and maybe you all can find a weak point in the design.”

“Egregious…?” Tails murmured, offended.

“You’re sure this is gonna work, Ivo?”

“It’s better than nothing. Unless you want to spend all day kicking at that robot, hoping to make a dent.”

Sonic rolled his eyes. “We don’t have a choice, then. Alright Tails, let’s head over to the junkyard.”

“This’ll be just like we’re back at home.” Tails replied.

“Be sure to hurry. You never know who that robot can harm next.”

“Trust me, Ivo, if that robot hurts anyone too badly, or universe forbid kills someone…” Sonic stared directly at Ivo. “The only one who’s gonna be hurt is you.”

“Oh, Sonic… You and I both know that’s not going to happen.” Ivo smiled at him. “Run along now. Toodles.”

Whether Sonic wanted to admit it or not, Ivo was right. Not because Sonic was too soft to harm the doctor, but because that would unravel a lot of horrifying truths that could destroy this entire vacation. Somewhere, deep down, Ivo knew that.

“Sonic,” Tails spoke softly to him as they walked away. “We’re not seriously just going to let Ivo stay here, are we? After the robot’s gone and everything.”

“…we kinda have to.” Sonic said. “If anyone finds out who Ivo is, they might not trust us anymore either, especially if he blabs that he followed us here. We need that trust… Plus, imagine what Uncle Chuck will do if he finds out the son of the guy who killed mom is here on the island. We know Ivo isn’t as bad as Julian, but does Chuck?”

“…ugh… Yeah, you’re right.”

“We’ll figure something out later- let’s just focus on one thing at a time. Right now… Let’s try and take care of this robot and do something good.”

As they walked away, Ivo continued to knuckle his mustache in thought. He was taking a risk having Sonic and Tails retrieve that SD card with all his project info… As big of a fan of casinos as he was (he had a massive one in his proposed amusem*nt park, even) he didn’t like the liability that came with this risk. He couldn’t let Sonic and Tails hold all the cards here… At least not for too long.

Leaving Ivo behind, Sonic and Tails strolled into the kitchen, seeing Manic munching on a sandwich. Bokkun was nearby, watching intently- probably to see him vomit- while Sonia was standing a bit apprehensively a few feet away- probably also waiting for vomit.

The sandwich looked wet. It’s probably been in there for a day or two. It was a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich; Sonic was glad some things didn’t change across the dimensional border.

Tails looked disturbed at the sandwich. “Manic… Are you sure you wanna eat that?”

“What, and let Mister Tinker let them rot? At least I’m getting a free meal.” Manic shrugged before taking another bite, chewing.

“Your funeral. Literally, probably.”

“When’s the funeral?” Bokkun asked, tilting his head to Tails.

“No, it’s just a figure of speech.”

“Oh… What’s that?”

The fox sighed at the bat’s juvenile personality. Sonia shivered with disgust at Manic’s insistence with eating the day(s) old sandwich, scooting over to stand beside Sonic.

“Did you get Tails’ backpack fixed, Sonic?” She asked.

“Yeah. And I think we got a lead.”

“Oh, good. Anywhere is better than this awful hoard… This is worse than Sabina’s cave. Did you know he has a massive collection of rubber bands here? Who even has that many rubber bands to give to Mister Tinker?” Sonia sighed. “Where are we going next?”

“The junkyard.”

Sonia stared at her brother in disbelief.

“Oooh, can I come? I like watching the metal getting crushed!”

“No, you can’t come, Bokkun.” Sonic replied. “Stay here with Mister Tinker. I’m sure he’d want your help with some stuff.”

“He wants help with boring stuff! I wanna do fun stuff!”

The siblings all looked at one another. Manic shoved the rest of the BLT in his mouth as he looked around at them, chewing slowly.

“…okay,” The blue hedgehog said to Bokkun. “You can come. But you’re gonna have to go check in with Mister Tinker first, just in case.”

“Oh, okay! Yay!”

The big-eared bat flew out of the room. Once he did, Sonic zipped out, collecting his siblings and carrying them out at supersonic speeds. After a moment of being shooed off by the doctor, Bokkun soon flew in, only to discover he’s been ditched.

“Huh? Where’d they go?”

The junkyard was placed in a fenced-in area close to the beach, where the trees parted. There wasn’t a lot of things in there, but Sonic and Tails could spot the head of the Hawk Ship from Ivo’s fleet in there. It had been there a while- the paint was chipped.

From the looks of it, this E-106 Eta emerged from the underside of the ship’s “head,” judging from the massive exit wound there. However, the group could only look at it through a fence, currently kept from entering by a big rhino.

“Sorry, kids.” He said. “No entry.”

“This is about the monster in Knothole! We gotta get to that weird birdlike head.”

“Nice try. No such thing as monsters, kid.”

“Listen, mister…?”

“Mullock.”

“Mister Mullock,” Sonic continued. “We just need to get in there for one thing. Just let me in there. I’ll be in and out faster than you can say—“

“No.”

“…I was going to say ‘chilidogs’ but that works too.”

“No, I mean no, period.” Mullock said firmly. “If the Wolf Pack hears I let someone trespass and access possibly dangerous materials, they’ll be on my tail. I don’t need Chief Wolf on my case right now.”

“Chief Wolf sent us on our mission to stop the monster!”

“…you might be telling the truth. But if you aren’t, it’s my job and my neck on the line. I can’t risk it. Sorry, kids.”

The siblings looked at one another, trying to gauge what to do next. After a second, Sonic held up a finger to the rhino.

“Can you hang on a second?”

“Uh… Sure?”

The four turned around for another sibling huddle. Feeling that this guy wouldn’t give them the same courtesy that the dragons had before, they spoke in very hushed voices.

“We’re not gonna get past this guy by normal means.”

“Maybe we could get one of the Wolf Pack here to tell him we have permission?”

“They’re not gonna leave the Chief when she’s hurt, Tails.” Sonia replied to him. “The Pack are very intense, whether it means supporting their fellow members or establishing their dominance amongst the members of Knothole.”

“They need to take a chill pill. Especially if they can make a big guy like Mullock scared of the consequences.”

“Anybody got any ideas?”

Sonic’s question made his siblings go quiet for a second.

“…Okay,” Sonia said. “What if you guys run in and get the thing before that guy can catch you?”

“Us? What’re you doing during this?”

“I’m not going into that filthy junkyard! I’ll wait out here.”

“You couldn’t even distract the guy or anything while we do all the work?”

“He might try to fight, and I’m not going to ruin this jumpsuit, Tails.”

The fox sighed, rolling his eyes at his sister’s retort.

Manic peeked back at the guy for just a moment, checking something. “…I think got a plan.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You guys pull his attention to one side and I’ll sneak in behind him.”

“…Manic are you sure that’s gonna work?”

“Trust me, Sonic, I got this. Trust the process.”

“Okay…”

Though Sonic didn’t sound sure, the huddle broke, all of them turning away. Mullock had taken out a notepad from his pocket and was scribbling in it, clearly waiting for the siblings to either leave or talk to them more.

With Manic slowly creeping to try and get to the side of Mullock, Sonic obliged.

“…what are you drawing?”

Mullock looked up from what he was doing. “…I’m not drawing. I’m making my shopping list for when I get off of work.”

“What kind of stuff do you guys eat in Knothole? Is it like… mostly fruits from trees?”

With the rhino’s attention turned to the side, Manic slowly shimmied around to pass behind him.

“No? We have just as much food as you guys do in Green Hill.”

“Sorry, don’t mean to sound insensitive, I’m just new here.”

“How did you even get a job like this anyway?” Tails added.

“Nobody else wanted to do it. Besides, it’s nice hours and nice pay, and I’m usually just left alone.”

Manic disappeared behind the body of Mullock, but didn’t really appear at the other side.

“Uh…” Sonia wondered where her brother was. “What do you do in your spare time?”

“…I guess read?”

“What do you read?”

“Well I’ve been really interested in this one book… Wait a second. Wasn’t there four of you before?”

“Nope!” Sonia replied.

“Only three.” Tails added.

“What brother?” Sonic faltered.

Mullock paused before turning around to find Manic right behind him. The green hedgehog had his hands clasped together, and smiled sheepishly at the rhino staring at him.

“…Hi.” He said softly.

Grabbing Manic by the back of his collar, Mullock pulled the hedgehog around and set him down with his siblings again. The green hedgehog was clearly surprised at how easily he was carried around, the peach part of his face flushed.

The rhino crossed his arms, frowning deeply at how he was almost tricked.

Sonia leaned to Manic to speak wryly. “Nice plan, Manny.”

Manic turned to her, taking one of her hands in both of his. He gently pat her hand.

“Thank you.” He murmured, smiling.

The green hedgehog took his hands away from the confused Sonia. In her hand, suddenly, was a leather wallet- Mullock’s wallet, that Manic lifted from his back pocket.

“Wh…?”

“Hey!” The rhino was upset. “That’s mine! How’d you get that?”

“I didn’t! It was… Eugh!” Sonia held the wallet away with a finger and thumb. “This thing is ragged! You keep your cards in this?” She flipped through. “Oh my Gaia, this thing is absolutely chaotic! How do you find anything in this wallet?”

“I can’t keep track of my wallet all the time. I mean, I’ve been meaning to organize, but…”

“Oh, honey, let me help you.”

Mullock trudged over to stand over Sonia. After a quick spritz to her hands, Sonia started to assist the rhino with cleaning and organizing his gross wallet. The magenta hedgehog’s brothers slowly shimmied away next, now that Mullock was properly distracted.

Sonia got what she wanted- she wasn’t going to travel into the possibly filthy junkyard. At least Mullock wasn’t too mad that Manic stole his wallet.

“You didn’t take anything from his wallet, did you?”

“C’mon, dude,” Manic rolled his eyes at Sonic. “All he had in there were eleven business cards, a photo of who I’m assuming is his mother, two sticky bandages, a license to operate a vehicle on South Island and his Great Turquoise branded ID. What could I possibly steal from that?”

“Just checking, just checking.”

Passing through the fairly empty junkyard, there wasn’t anything really interesting heading up to the head of the Hawk Ship. It was still turned on its side, the torn open underside of the head facing the three as they made their way to it.

Manic leaned down to look at the undercarriage of the hawk’s head. It was empty, only housing some pipes and broken wiring. It was clear this undercarriage was purely for E-106 Eta and nothing else.

“So the thing that’s terrorizing Knothole… Is a robot.”

“Yeah.” Sonic nodded. “Tails’ tablet scanned the footprints and linked them back to this ship.”

“This is the thing Mister Tinker came down on!”

All three brothers were surprised by the fourth voice. They saw a small big-eared bat behind them, fluttering in the air, with a messenger bag around his body now.

“Bokkun! What’re you doing here?”

“I followed you.” The bat said, as if it was obvious. It was, but he didn’t have to say it like that.

“Why?”

“I wanna see the monster! Is this guy it?”

“No, it’s… Something else.” Sonic continued. “Bokkun, you said you saw Mister Tinker come from this thing?”

“Yeah! I pulled him away from it to bring him to Knothole myself!”

“Do the Wolf Pack know he came from this?”

“Huh… Nope! I never tolds them.” Bokkun was still peppy. “Why, should they?”

“No!” Tails said quickly. “No, no. Don’t tell them anything about this.”

“Oh, okay! What’re you guys looking for anyway?”

“We need to reach the console. I think I can see it if I…”

Tails spun his tails, flying up and around to the other side of the ship, looking through the orange-tinted glass. In the moment they were mostly alone, Manic looked at Sonic.

“So the robot… Is connected to Mister Tinker?”

Sonic sighed. “It’s a long story.”

On the other side, Tails pressed his hands against the tinted glass visor of the co*ckpit to gaze inside. He scanned over the front console, looking for a little slot that the card could go into. He soon found it, right next to the main screen on the console.

He tapped the glass, as if to point it out to himself. Tails’ tails whirred again as he lifted himself up to return to his brothers and Bokkun.

“It’s there.” He said. “We just have to get into the co*ckpit.”

“Heh heh.” Manic snickered. “Pit.’

“Maybe I could spindash against the glass and bore a hole in it?”

“I…” Tails caught himself before saying the doctor’s name. “…I’m sure the person who made this made the glass super thick and reinforced to prevent those with sharp quills from breaking through it. So that would probably take a while.”

“Dang. Maybe there’s a way to shatter the glass?”

Sonic and Tails made similar faces to think, fingers on their chins.

At the suggestion, Manic paused. Slowly, he lifted his hands, looking at his palms. He was hesitant to speak, knowing that once he told them… There wouldn’t be any going back. His heart beat heavy in his chest.

“…Guys…”

“Hey, what’s this thing?”

Bokkun’s echoey voice interrupted Manic. The bat was in the undercarriage now, and his question was about a vent cover that was right at the top. Bokkun bumped into it, and the already worn out vent cover fell off, revealing an intact duct.

“A ventilation duct!” Tails identified it. “That must go to the co*ckpit!”

“It’s way too small for us to fit though,” Sonic tapped his chin. “Well, maybe Tails could’ve fit a few years ago. Back before he grew a foot.”

“You’re just mad I’m going to be taller than you one day.”

“If we can’t get in there,” Manic interjected. “Who can?”

They thought for a moment once again. Eventually, slowly, they all turned to the bat who was still looking over the vent cover on the floor. Bokkun soon realized he was being watched.

“…Do I gots something on my face?”

“Bokkun, could you…” Sonic winced as he realized he had to ask for a favor from this aggravating bat. “Crawl into the co*ckpit and get what we need?”

“The co*ckpit? You mean I get to go into this thing?”

“Well yeah—“

“Okay!”

Bokkun flew up and into the duct, grunting as he pulled himself through and crawling inside. Though stunned at the bat’s eagerness to do them this favor, Tails quickly flew up again to return to his spot on the outside of the co*ckpit’s glass, looking in.

After a minute, the vent cover in the co*ckpit popped open.

Now freed, the big-eared bat crawled out and fluttered around in the sideways room. He stood on the side of the chair, looking around.

Tails knocked on the glass, and pointed to the console. “The little slot beside that screen!”

“Little… Whoaaaa…”

It was clear that the bat was amazed by all the shiny technology on the console. He looked over it all with big eyes, his head tilting as he tried looking at it from the correct angle.

“Bokkun, focus!” The fox outside yelled. “The screen! The little slot next to the screen!”

“Shiny…”

Though he was currently getting off track, Bokkun did find the port for the SD card that Tails was asking about. His wing slowly passed over it, which made the fox tap the glass as if telling Bokkun he was correct.

“That’s it! Press into it and grab the little card that comes out!”

Bokkun paused. He looked around- if he was only gonna be in this thing once, he wanted a souvenir for his time… That could be his payment to help. Maybe he could find something that could help with one of his pranks back in Knothole!

Tails sighed with annoyance as Bokkun moved away from the SD card slot to look at the console buttons.

Humming to himself, Bokkun ran his wing over it all. He looked at the shimmering, glossy buttons that Ivo had set up. There were boring ones with letters on them, but there were also cool ones that had words like “FIRE” and “DETACH” and “SODA”

Eventually, his wing found a super glossy, super shiny button. Bokkun’s mouth nearly watered looking at it. It was mostly round, with some spikes sticking out from it, and shimmered so brightly it was probably made of glass. Holding onto it with both wings, Bokkun pulled on the button until it was yanked clear out of the console.

Tails watched Bokkun take the small glass button shaped like Ivo’s face symbol and stick it into his messenger bag, as if it was a collector’s pin. The teenager rapped on the glass.

“Bokkun!” Tails yelled. “The slot!”

“Oh, yeah! Okays!”

Taking all of two seconds, Bokkun pressed on the slot, and collected the SD card that popped out of it. With his task finished, the bat turned around and hopped off the chair to crawl back into the duct opening.

Flying back around to join his brothers, Tails met Bokkun as he flopped out of the vent opening. The bat happily gave the fox that SD card, looking back over the glass Robotonik symbol he stuck on his messenger bag’s flap.

“Coooool…”

“Alright, you got to look.” Sonic scolded him. “Now go back to Knothole. And stop following us!”

“Okay!” Bokkun was satisifed. “Smell ya laters!”

Almost as soon as he arrived, Bokkun flew away, back into the azure foliage of Great Turquoise.

Tails stuck the SD card into the bottom of the Miles Thunderbolt, watching as his systems started decrypting the files in order to access them. He looked at the hedgehogs.

“Let’s juice and jam out of here.”

Uncle Chuck’s one-liners were clearly getting to him and Sonic, but the brothers didn’t question it. The three walked back through the junkyard, leaving the hawk head behind, and exiting the gated off yard.

Sonia was still with Mullock, having organized and cleaned his wallet. She gave it back just in time for her brothers to walk out of the junkyard.

“Here you go! I don’t know why you keep those business cards.”

“I get them in the mail. It makes my wallet feel fuller.” Mullock shrugged. “Thanks, Sonia. People think just because I work in a junkyard I don’t care about tidiness. This was really nice of you.”

“No problem! But please… Let’s not do this again. Being near the junkyard makes me feel uneasy…”

The rhino noticed Sonic, Tails and Manic leaving the junkyard.

“Hey!” He yelled. “I thought I said you couldn’t go in there! You tricked me!”

“We just needed one thing. We won’t go in again, promise.”

“…Well… You guys clearly didn’t get hurt. And I did get my wallet organized for it…” Mullock huffed. “Fine, fine. Just don’t tell the Wolf Pack and we’ll be fine.”

“Deal! Thanks, Mullock!”

“Whatever.”

Joined by Sonia, the siblings left the area to head back into the woods, waving at the rhino as they did.

“Mister Tinker is that Robotnik guy?!”

“Shhh!” Sonic and Tails hushed Sonia.

Now deep in the woods, Sonic and Tails decided it was a good time to explain what they already knew, and what they couldn’t keep from the others on this mission. Having watched Sonic’s videos a dozen times, both Sonia and Manic were familiar with who Ivo was, though didn’t make the connection when they saw him in his Mister Tinker persona.

Sonia was taking it harder than Manic.

“He’s here. Here, on the island.” She was pacing. “What is he doing here?!”

“We don’t know.”

“Is he going to hurt us?”

“Probably not.”

“Did he come to kill you guys?”

“…undetermined.”

Sonic’s answers only exasperated Sonia. She rubbed her eyes.

“Gaia below…” She murmured. “What are we gonna do about him?”

“Nothing… At least for now.” Tails replied. “The relative tranquility of Green Hill and our family could easily be shattered if Ivo’s identity is revealed. Right now, he has to keep being ‘Mister Tinker’ so nothing is disrupted.”

“So he gets to just be a celebrity?” Manic asked. “Didn’t he like, try to destroy the world multiple times?”

“Ivo loves doing evil stuff, and he can be very annoying,” Sonic replied. “But without all that tech he uses outside of the Underground, all he’s got is his mind. The technology here on South Island isn’t advanced enough for him to create any kind of weapon. At least nothing that would work for his convoluted plans.”

“Besides, Mister Tinker is doing good stuff. I think, as long as we keep him in Knothole where the Wolf Pack can watch over him, he’ll be fine.” Tails added.

Running her hands over her face, Sonia let out a long sigh that turned into a groan.

“Okay… Okay.” She said. “Let’s just deal with this robot and put that plan in motion.”

“That’s the idea!”

The hedgehogs huddled around their brother as Tails opened up his tablet to its full size. The decryption on the files from Ivo’s SD card had finished over the time it took for them to get to this spot in the woods, allowing Tails to look them over. He’d probably download them later.

“Wow, he really likes these E-100 robots.” Tails mumbled. “He made seven of them. Here it is: E-106 Eta.”

Tapping on the file, Tails pulled up the blueprints and diagram of the robot. It was like Ivo said, the robot had very little and primitive tech inside of itself. It was powered through the furnace in its stomach, and made with powerful reinforced metal. They also took notice of the jackhammer arms, which was quoted to reach up to fifty feet.

The outer shell of the robot was thick, all around its body. Even the thinner legs of the robot were made of the same material, making them just as hard to destroy. The only place the metal was thin on the body was, naturally, the grate of the robot’s furnace stomach.

It was noted, as Ivo had said before, that an energy saw was powerful enough to bore a hole into the shell. Apparently this energy saw was made from chaos energy. Tails tapped that note.

“Look. The energy saw thing.” He said. “Sonic, maybe if you generate enough chaos energy, you could spin against the grate and break through it!”

“Chaos energy doesn’t have the best track record of assisting my quills, just sizzling off of my body like a trail. I’d probably have to be going super fast in order to simulate an energy saw. Maybe if we found another kind of blade made of chaos energy somewhere… Does Mission Freedom have something like that?”

Sonia answered. “The only person I know who’s worked on something like that is—“

There was a rustling and thick crunch nearby, alerting all four of them. Something was walking through the trees and foliage, obscured by shadows. The dark figure slowly walked near the area that the siblings were standing in, forcing the group to hide in a nearby shrub.

They were out of time. The ‘monster’ was here… They would most likely just have to improvise.

The darkened creature stepped out into where the siblings were just standing. They couldn’t really see, but the robot looked… bigger, somehow. It didn’t matter, the four would take care of the problem.

“Ready?” Sonic whispered to them. “One… Two… Three!”

Charging out of the leaves, the four blitz towards the supposed monster of the woods.

Dulcy screamed in terror, falling onto her side almost like an ambushed cat. “No! Not again!”

Sonic and his siblings all stopped in their tracks, surprised. After a second, knowing now that she wasn’t in danger, Dulcy slowly rolled back over to all fours, then lifted up to her back legs. She had on a black harness across her chest now.

“Dulcy?” Sonia spoke to her. “What’re you doing here?”

“What are you wearing?” Sonic asked. “Is that a harness?”

“Did you get that from Dale’s?” Manic changed the subject. “I think he charges too much for those things.”

More rustling. The siblings turned to the bushes that were moving around, alongside with Dulcy, who turned her head around to look back.

From the foliage, a hand holding a handheld computer came out first.

“The beast is most likely to appear in this area based on previous record. If we keep patrolling, we’re bound to find it sometime…”

Sally stepped out, joined with Antoine, Bunnie and Rotor behind her. She trailed off as she looked up from the Nicole device, seeing that Dulcy was near the Hedgehog siblings. The group were all stunned to silence, though Manic shuffled away to stand behind Dulcy and hide himself.

After a second, Sonic crossed his arms.

“Well, well, well.” He said. “Long time no see, Sal.”

“I’m surprised you’re here and not sprinting laps around the district borders, Sonny.” She retorted, closing Nicole and slipping it into her vest.

“What are you doing here, Sally?” Tails sounded more confused than anything.

“No offense, but that’s none of your business, Tails.”

“Sally-girl’s here to find that monster y’all were sent to slay.”

“Bunnie!” The princess was flabbergasted. “We’re supposed to do this without them knowing!”

“I want ‘em to know! You putting yourself in harms way and all that, what would your pop do to me or sugar-twan if you got hurt from that monster?”

“Good to know I’m spared…?” Rotor mumbled, scratching the side of his head. His eyes scanned Sonic and his siblings, as if he was looking for someone specific. His eyes met Sonia’s, who sharply turned her head after to continue giving him the cold shoulder.

“You’re after Knothole’s monster?” Tails continued. “Sally, you should probably get out of here.”

“Why, because it hurt the Wolf Pack? They don’t use tech, I do.”

“No, you don’t understand, this isn’t any normal monster. It’s not safe for you.”

Sally huffed at Sonic’s words. “I’m getting tired of people telling me where I can and cannot go. Whatever this monster is, I’m sure it’s either ultimately harmless or can be easily taken care of.”

“The difference is that we can easily take care of it. You need to leave, now.”

“No!”

“Sally-girl, maybe we should listen to the fella.” Bunnie touched Sally’s arm. “He is tryin’ to help.”

“So am I! What could possibly be so horrible that I need to abandon my people and stay in the safety of my own home rather than deal with it?”

The roar of fire caught people’s attention. Across the clearing from Dulcy, stepping out of the brush, was the monster of the hour: E-106 Eta. Using a claw attachment on its jackhammer arms, it ripped up the bush entirely and stuffed it into its furnace stomach as fuel, making it glow brighter. The single eye it had looked over the group of heroes as they all turned towards it.

“A robot?!” Sally yelled, astounded.

“Do not worry, princesse!” Antoine unsheathed his sword, standing in front of her. “I shall protect you!”

E-106 Eta scanned the subjects, until his sensors reached one person of interest- a blue hedgehog. His database had knowledge of all kinds stored within, and one thing was placed the highest above all of them: the identity of that dastardly blue hedgehog.

“Subject identified. Defense mechanisms engaged.”

Raising a jackhammer hand, the robot launched its massive hand at Sonic. The blue hedgehog shoved the people near him out of the way before diving as well- the jackhammer hand slammed into the grass with a massive slam, kicking up dirt and grass.

At the violent launching of the hand, Antoine cringed and yelped, cowering. He turned to Sally, his demeanor changing from fearless to fear. The coyote shuffled her away.

“Run, princess!”

“Antoine!”

The group scattered after the robot fired another jackhammer hand at them.

Bunnie, with her new upgrade, launched her own hand back. Her robotic hand pressed against E-106 Eta’s body, keeping it in place to prevent it from pursuing. However, it wasn’t currently strong enough to topple the whole thing over.

That, however, was assisted by Sonia. The magenta hedgehog swept the robot’s legs, sending it to the side. Sonia rushed to Bunnie as the rabbit brought her hand back to its arm.

“Good job, strong-girl!” Bunnie cheered. “C’mon honey, let’s get the heck outta dodge!”

“Bunnie!”

Dulcy was flying, soaring around. The rabbit, wrapping an arm around Sonia, grappled onto the dragon’s harness with her extendo-arm, pulled away to flee from the monstrous robot.

Nearby, even if the robot was down, Manic quickly scurried around one of the many trees in the forest. He kept himself behind the thick trunk of the tree, though peeked out to watch the rampaging robot.

Rotor, having the same idea, ran behind the trunk of the tree. He was able to get his heftier body behind the trunk and hide it. He slid his hat back around to sit backwards on his head as he watched the robot move. It was such a marvel of technological advancement… He had to poke around that thing if he ever got the chance to.

Currently safe, the green hedgehog and lilac walrus slowly retreated behind the trunk and turned around to find each other before them. Manic and Rotor were hiding behind the same tree, and now they were standing face to face.

Upon seeing each other after turning around, both of them took a step back and let out a gasp.

“Boomer?”

“Manny?”

After a second, the intensity of the moment overtook Manic… That, and the feeling of that many-day-old food from Mister Tinker’s shop crawling back up his throat. He lurched, holding a hand over his throat.

“Oh, Gaia…” He grumbled, muffled. “Lunch is juicin’ and jammin’ it’s way out. Ugh…”

Manic quickly rushed away, both to find a suitable place to throw up and to get away from the situation created by being face to face with Rotor. The walrus watched Manic run off, scratching under his hat in anxious confusion. He sighed once he was alone.

“Well… Not the worst thing he could’ve said to me after a year of avoidance.” Rotor mumbled to himself.

Sonic zipped around a fallen tree, getting down low, soon joined by Tails as the fox hovered down beside him. Tails opened up the Miles Thunderbolt again, looking over the diagram of the robot.

“We’re outta time, Tails. What do you got for me?”

“We still need to find a way to rip through the furnace grate. According to my simulations, if we tear through the grate, it should give way for us to tear the entire thing in half. We need to find a way to slice through that grate ASAP.”

“A-ha!”

The boys turned, finding Sally was nearby, sitting with the still cowering Antoine. While he was covering his eyes in fear, Sally’s eyes were staring at Sonic and Tails in a glower.

“You knew what this thing was! It even identified you!”

“Sally, not now.”

“Yes now!” She replied. “What is that robot? Why did it know who you were?”

“Well, if you watched those videos I had,” Sonic retorted. “You’d know I’ve been chased by all kinds of robots on the surface. This isn’t anything new.”

“So it’s a robot that followed you down here? Are there more?”

“No!” Tails interjected. “There shouldn’t be! We think… It just followed us into South Island to capture us. There shouldn’t be any other danger here.”

It didn’t feel good lying to Sally about Ivo’s presence, but it seemed like she had a point to prove at that very moment, so neither of them knew what the princess would do with the knowledge that a mad scientist was on South Island.

“Sally-girl!”

Bunnie slid in. She was joined by Sonia, who crawled around to get close to her brothers. The rabbit, noticing Antoine, put a hand on his arm reassuringly.

“Y’all alright?”

“We’re fine. Sonic and Tails have info on this robot.”

“Ya do?” The cyborg looked at Sonic and Tails, confused.

“It’s… A long story.” Tails replied. “If you guys really want to help, aim for its furnace grate. It’s the thinnest layer on there, and if we can break it open, maybe we can find a way to destroy it from the inside. Maybe with some kind of detonation.”

“That might cause people to get hurt, little bro.”

“It’s far away from Knothole. As long as we keep it away from the village, we’re fine.”

“Whoa! A freaky monster!”

Sally’s statement was immediately offset by the appearance of a big-eared bat. Bokkun, ever curious and with very little willpower, had been flying through the woods the entire time in hopes to find the monster, or Sonic’s group, or both. He got exactly what he wanted.

Hearing a new subject’s voice, the robot’s head turned around. The single eye scanned the curious bat, looking over its body until it located something of interest: the symbol of its creator on the bat’s messenger bag.

“Ideogram identified. Pursuing small subject.”

“Yipe!”

Bokkun turned to try and flee. E-106 Eta aimed one of its jackhammer arms to capture the bat.

When the jackhammer arm was launched, from one of the trees, Manic leapt to Bokkun and tackled him out of the way. The arm lodged itself into a tree, making it shake and scaring some Flickies out of it to scatter into the air.

Manic got up with Bokkun, who started flying again. The green hedgehog looked at E-106 Eta in shock as he saw the full capabilities of the robot in front of him. He’d been placed in danger before, but this was entirely alien to him.

“Are you okay, Bokkun—?”

He turned, but saw that the bat completely ditched his savior without so much as a thank you. Bokkun was flying through the trees- speaking of, the tree behind Manic that had the jackhammer arm in it started to loudly crack and lean as E-106 Eta started retracting his arm. The tree was yanked from the ground before Manic could see what was going on.

Across the clearing, Rotor yelled behind his tree cover. “Manny!”

Before Sonic could start moving to save his brother, Sally already vaulted over their fallen tree as Rotor called for the hedgehog. Sprinting towards Manic, Sally’s arms swung down to her sides, balling her fists to activate the ring blades on both of her arms.

The princess jumped past the green hedgehog and sliced both blades downwards, cutting the log clean through so the half that would’ve hit Manic instead flew to the ground. The rest of the log sailed by, sparing both Sally and Manic from any harm.

E-106 Eta’s arm retracted fully. It snapped the log clean in half, stuffing one half into its furnace stomach and throwing the other away- which made Sonic’s group all duck to avoid the flying log above them.

Now safe, Manic uncovered his face, seeing the princess before him, staring.

“Heh heh… Thanks, Sally.” Manic said awkwardly.

Sally looked at the hedgehog she just saved with a stern scowl. After a second, she quickly turned her chin upwards and away from Manic with a sharp “hmph!” just the same as Sonia did to Rotor. She quickly passed Manic to return to the fray, leaving the green hedgehog partially deflated.

“Pursuing subject.”

Like other E-100 robots, though unbeknownst to the group, the legs of Eta were equipped with wheels. Bending them backwards, E-106 Eta rolled across the ground, zipping past the princess to continue pursuing the bat with its owner’s logo on his bag.

Sally retracted her ring blades, starting to sprint after the robot to pursue it.

“Sally!” Bunnie yelled after her.

With an annoyed grunt, Sonic jumped over the log next, rushing after the princess to make sure she was safe. The others that were hiding all congregated in the area, looking after where both Sonic and Sally ran off to.

“Princess…” Antoine murmured, worried regardless of fear.

“We should go after them, right?”

“Sprinting? In these shoes, in grass? No.” Sonia replied to Tails.

“I’m not runnin’ either. Forget that.” Bunnie stuck her thumb and finger in her mouth, whistling sharply enough to make everyone else either wince or cover their ears.

After a second, a shadow came across them. Dulcy landed near them, though skidded around on the grass, still unable to properly land.

“I’m here! Where’s Sally and Sonic?”

“Chasing that robot!” Bunnie said, walking up to her. “Can you pick us up and follow it, Dulcy-girl?”

“I think so! Everyone hop on!”

Using her tail as a makeshift ladder, the group all climbed up onto the dragon, with Bunnie in the lead to hold onto the harness and control where Dulcy flew. It would be a fairly tight fit, but they all should be able to get on there.

Towards the end of the group, both Rotor and Manic attempted to get on at the same time, making them both take another step back in shock. In the pause between them, Sonia put herself between the pair, glowering with ice at the walrus and pushing Manic ahead to get on first with the magenta hedgehog between them. Rotor sighed and climbed on last.

Tails stayed off, unfolding the Miles Thunderbolt. “Follow me, Dulcy. I’ve got Sonic’s energy readings on standby, I’ll be able to track where they’re going.”

“Sure thing, Tails!”

The fox’s tails whirred to life, lifting him up to lead the dragon above the woods.

With the entrance of Knothole currently lacking a member of the Wolf Pack, it was easier for stragglers and merchants to sneak inside to continue their way of life.

Holding his recently remade cart with both hands, the fez-wearing monkey Coconuts slowly walked into Knothole, humming to himself. Maybe he’d be able to make some money off of these coconuts today, especially since he’d be far away from those blasted hedgehogs…

As he put down his two-wheel cart to rest for a moment, Coconuts noticed a big eared bat flying past him.

There was a revving behind him, and Coconuts turned in time to see E-106 Eta speeding towards the monkey. He narrowly jumped out of the way, the robot crashing into the coconut cart and shattering it, sending bits of wood and coconut flying everywhere.

“My coconuts!”

The cries of the monkey fell on deaf ears. Running through the wreckage of fruit, Sally was holding the Nicole device out in front of her. She had managed to grab a scan of the robot while she was running.

“Nicole, what do you got for me?”

“That metal is incredibly thick and durable, Sally.” Nicole replied calmly. “The only thing that could possibly tear through it is some kind of energy blade.”

“I could’ve told you that.”

Sally found Sonic running beside her, easily keeping up with the princess.

“Ugh, seriously?” The princess was vexed. “Stop following me!”

“Stop running into danger!”

A scream rang out ahead of them, making them both stop and look at the source.

In its pursuit of Bokkun, the robot crashed through a vehicle on the dirt roads of the village, sending it rolling across the grass. The engine of the vehicle was busted, sending a spray of sparks out, which immediately caught on the leaves and brush all around in this forest-based village.

E-106 Eta launched itself upwards by straightening its legs, flipping forwards to its feet to continue marching towards the little bat. Bokkun was flying erratically in fear, continuing to look back at the robot as if to make sure it was still following him.

The fire started to spread rapidly, starting to catch on the leaves above.

“No!” Sally yelled, seeing her people in danger.

Suddenly, from above, a blast of ice sprayed on the leaves to extinguish the flames. Dulcy swooped in, blasting ice from her nostrils with Sonic and Sally’s friends still on her back.

Dropping down from the top, Sonia hit the ground and rushed to the vehicle. She tilted it upwards in a squatting lift, allowing Tails to hover down and grab the driver, pulling them out to safety.

As Dulcy flew low to continue taking care of the rapidly spreading fire, the others dropped from her back to gather in front of the princess and the speedster.

“Sally-girl!” Bunnie spoke. “What do we do?”

There was a pause as the princess took it in. She looked past them at E-106 Eta, who started smashing through buildings and structures to continue pursuing Bokkun, who was flying through small spaces in order to try and hide from the robot.

She took a breath, centering herself.

“Keep the people safe.” Sally said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

“On it!”

“Let’s blast through with sonic speed!” Tails added.

Leaving Sonic and Sally behind, the group ran off to chase after the robot and take care of the wreckage- even Antoine, who was clutching his sword tightly, was chasing after the group, possibly out of obligation over anything else.

After another second, Sally took a step to go after the robot herself, activating one of her ring blades- however, Sonic quickly grabbed her arm to stop her.

“Sally, you have to stop.” He said firmly.

“Get off me!” Sally snatched her arm away from him. “I can take care of this! My ring blades can cut through that thing!”

“Not unless it’s going super fast, like a buzzsaw!”

“I don’t have time for this.”

Sally started to walk away to chase after that robot.

“Putting yourself in danger isn’t going to prove anything to your dad.”

The princess stopped in her tracks at Sonic’s statement. She turned, her lip curling in anger.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve heard that he can be overbearing, but this is serious. This thing needs something more than just… tech. You’re just running your father ragged.”

The robot forgotten momentarily, Sally stomped up to Sonic to stand face to face with him.

“And what would you know about that?” She growled. “You seem pretty content with letting your uncle worry himself to death just so you get to relive your life up on the surface.”

“That was different.”

“Was it? Tell me, Sonny, did anyone ask you to take care of Dulcy?”

“No, but…”

“So you decided to put yourself in danger to feel big again. Gotcha.” Sally chastised. “Not to mention the entire reason Knothole is put in danger is because that robot was chasing you getting to South Island. So not only are you making Chuck and Longclaw distressed, you’re distressing other people too.”

“I’m trying to fix it!”

“We don’t want you to!”

“It’s not about want, it’s about what needs to be done. I need to do this because I can help.”

“Your help seems to be doing enough already!” Sally gestured towards the wreckage in Knothole. “One of these days you’ll learn that speed is no substitute for common sense.”

“Sally—“

“No! Enough! You think you can just walk in and uproot everything; you can disrupt my projects, you can play hero at the expense of others, and then everyone will just reward you for it! You think it’s all easy just because you can run fast, but I have been spending my whole life to make people see me as anything other than a princess made of glass who needs protection!” The princess poked her finger into Sonic’s chest for emphasis as she spoke. “I can take care of this! You’ve done nothing but cause us all trouble, hero!”

There was a pregnant pause between the two. Sonic stared at Sally, frowning. After a second, he sighed.

“I’m not a hero.” He replied. “I’m just a guy who wants to help.”

The statement made Sally lower her hand, her demeanor shifting to slightly aggravated curiosity. Sonic seemed to shift as well, going from angry or confident to just… tired.

“People up there, humans, they’re like the Mobians down here. They can’t handle massive threats to their lives, especially not threats from people with superpowers. I’m the only one fast enough to stop those threats… But I couldn’t stop the one that really mattered.” The hedgehog said, distant. “I wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to save my mom from being killed right in front of me. I guess ever since then I’ve just been… running. Running to help people.”

“Running so nobody else loses their mom?”

The statement from Sally was soft, finally shifting from anger to something else: sympathy.

“…Sorry to trauma dump,” Sonic continued. “I just… I’m sorry I keep ruining your day. I just don’t want anyone to get hurt if I can help it. And I wanted you to know… I miss my mom, too.”

Sally watched Sonic, her defensive attitude melted away, her eyebrows furrowed from the conversation they had. The single ring blade she had retracted, allowing her hand to reach out and gently touch Sonic’s shoulder.

“Sonny…”

Another shriek from afar pulled them out of their moment, making both Sally and Sonic turn from their moment ruined.

“Oh crap, I completely forgot what was happening.” Sonic said, tensing. “Uh, later?”

Sally paused after looking back at him. “…later. But don’t think this means I’m not helping.”

“It’s your funeral.”

“Or yours.”

“Please, I can dodge whatever comes my way.”

“That’s not what those videos depicted.”

“Ha! I knew you watched them!”

Running together, Sonic and Sally continued to bicker with one another.

Up ahead, in the wreckage left behind from the robot, entire houses were being knocked over. There was debris collapsed on top of many villagers, their days completely disrupted by this rampaging robot.

After spraying her hands with sanitizer, Sonia lifted up a large piece of rubble from over top of a set of kids, her quills starting to glow magenta themselves. Tails, using his Vulcan Cannon, launched a ring tether to wrap around the kids and yank them out.

Though he couldn’t lift them up, he brought the Mobian kids to their feet and returned them to their parents.

Dulcy continued to extinguish fire with her ice breath and the powerful gusts of wind from her lungs, soaring around the trees to help. In the treehouses up above, the ones attached with bridges, some were still ablaze as the dragon hadn’t gotten to them yet.

Down below, Bunnie looked up at the people trying to evacuate the flaming treehouses in horror, watching as a group of Mobians were trapped between two burning houses and stranded on the bridge above her.

“Bunnie!” Rotor yelled from nearby. “Flex your toes out!”

“I don’t got toes with these feet, sugar!”

“Just do it!”

The cyborg huffed but complied, mentally flexing her toes like she would if her legs weren’t roboticized. Suddenly, her legs extended upwards like her arm did earlier, making the rabbit much taller. Her stilt-legs sent her upwards until it reached its peak height, which was just above the height of the bridge.

“Whoa dang!” She said as she balanced herself out. Bunnie looked at the surprised Mobians staring at her. “Uh… Howdy. Y’all need a lift?”

Taking women and children first, Bunnie held two people at a time and retracted her legs down, bringing people down to the ground a bit at a time. She did this again and again, eventually reaching a rhythm, learning how to use these new robot parts in a literal trial by fire.

As she got to the last few Mobians, however, the fires on the treehouses started spreading outwards. The small porch on one side of the bridge started to become damaged, and eventually it lurched forwards, jostling the bridge.

There were far too many Mobians still on the bridge, Bunnie wouldn’t be able to get them all off before the platform collapsed, and if it did, it was a steep three-or-four-story drop to the ground.

Retracting her stilt-legs slightly, Bunnie rushed under the platform, putting her arms up to catch it.

In the wild shaking of the bridge, some of the Mobians suddenly found themselves wrapped around the rope handles of the rickety bridge, with some going around their wrists, their arms and the unluckiest ones getting wrapped around their waists. Those who weren’t wrapped were nearly flipped off the shaking bridge, left hanging onto the rope of the wooden planks.

Bunnie saw this. Though the flames were hot, and she was only half super-strong from her robot arm, she held up the platform with all of her being. She groaned, started to sweat from it all, but she knew that if she let go, the luckier Mobians would make that steep drop- the ones with rope wrapped around them… Well, like Bunnie said earlier: not a pretty picture.

Down below, Antoine stopped under the bridge, looking up at the struggling rabbit. He had been helping shuffle Mobians to safety, staying far from danger, but he was the only fighter from Mission Freedom around at that very moment. Bunnie was in trouble, and so were the Mobians still trapped in the ropes of the bridge.

From the other side of the bridge, opposite of Bunnie, the treehouse on top toppled over to the side, hanging over and nearly touching the ground. Antoine could see that the platform up above was still intact, but it was still far from collapsing. However, the toppled treehouse led up to the platform itself.

Antoine knew what he had to do, but he felt himself wracked with fear. All of this was new- his father had regaled him of tales involving throwing himself into danger to protect the king, but Antoine was always reassured that he wouldn’t have to put himself in the line of fire for Sally.

Yet here he was. Literally in the line of fire.

Adrenaline rushed through his body, still staring up at Bunnie, his breath quickening. Out of everyone at Mission Freedom, while Antoine had a deep fondness for Sally, there was something similar there for Bunnie… at times where both of them wanted to be alone, they were always alone together. Especially when Antoine was shooed away from the labs by Sally to not interrupt her projects.

He didn’t know her full story, but nothing was worth being stuck in this situation. He was a royal guard, bound to the House Acorn, but Bunnie was different: she was his friend.

Unsheathing his sword, Antoine glanced into the reflective surface of its broad side, slipping his thumb and index over the sharp side. It was as thin and sharp as an edge of paper; never used.

Before he knew what he was doing, Antoine ran towards the toppled treehouse at the other edge of the bridge. He climbed up the wreckage, up to the platform, having to jump and pull himself up onto the small porch connected to the bridge.

He needed another moment to consider what he was doing before he acted on impulse again.

Antoine jumped off the platform, to the side of the bridge’s edge, swinging his sword downwards. The blade cut true, slicing through the rope handles and the planks making up the bridge’s walkway, disconnecting it from the other side.

The coyote guard managed to grab onto one of the ropes to swing downwards. With Bunnie still holding up the other side, the bridge fell down from the other side, giving enough slack to unravel the trapped Mobians and swing the hanging ones to the ground. Though they didn’t land softly, the fall was softened from the swinging, giving them a better alternative to what could’ve happened.

Bunnie saw the Mobians were saved. She shoved the platform off of her, letting it smash onto the grass. Her legs retracted, bringing her back to the ground. Bunnie rushed to Antoine as the guard started picking himself back up, sheathing his sword.

“Sugar-twan!” Bunnie was ecstatic. “That was awesome!”

“Yes, well… Twas nothing, mademoiselle.”

More treehouses were catching on fire nearby. She turned serious again.

“Can you help me with the other ones too, sugar?”

“Uh… I am not knowing if I can be the one to—“

“Sounds like a yes to me! C’mon!”

Bunnie lifted the coyote, turning Antoine sideways and carrying him like a book under her robotic arm, running off to save more people- Antoine was left with his face ablaze, unable to stutter out any objection to what the cyborg was doing.

Nearby, Rotor pulled his head out of a vehicle, finishing his work on an engine damaged in the rampage of E-106 Eta. He slapped the hood and gave a thumbs up to the driver, who had a large amount of injured villagers in the carriage. Rotor watched the automobile drive off.

A loud cracking alerted him of something falling over, making the walrus turn to look for where it was coming from: it was nearby, at a stone shack.

A Mobian was trying to get another from under rubble, but neglected to notice that the stone wall beside them was starting to fall over. Both of the Mobians, whether a romantic couple or otherwise, weren’t large enough to keep the wall up if they tried.

The wall fell forwards, but was caught by Rotor, who managed to slip in just in time to hold it up. He looked over his shoulder at the couple he was saving. “Go!”

Grunting deep, Rotor kept the wall up as the couple were escaping the rubble. Though the pair of Mobians were able to escape, just as the walrus was ready to slip away, the roof of the building came down on top of the wall. It hung over his head, threatening to crush him from above even if he let go of the wall and tried to book it.

There wasn’t anyone nearby. Rotor felt his arms starting to give way from the weight- he was told as a child from a fortune teller he would possibly meet his end during a cave-in, and he stupidly thought it wouldn’t happen because South Island didn’t have many caves… Cave-ins could happen anywhere.

Suddenly, the air vibrated violently, as suddenly a green wave of energy hit the rubble on top of Rotor. The entire house toppled to the side from the powerful blast, missing the walrus and sparing him from being crushed. Rotor stumbled to the side, down to one knee, coughing a little after exerting himself for an extended period of time. He slowly got up to his feet and looked at the source of the blast.

Manic slowly put his hands down to his sides again, his eyes fading from glowing blue a second ago.

“…Manny…” Rotor spoke, still catching his breath. “You didn’t… Have to…”

The green hedgehog looked at his open hands, solemn and remorseful. He closed his eyes for a moment.

“Not now.” Manic replied to the walrus. “Just… Not now, Boomer.”

With nothing else to say, the hedgehog hustled away to find his siblings, leaving Rotor there. The walrus lifted his hand as if to reach for him, but instead just watched Manic retreating with a frown, and slowly lowered his hand again.

During all the chaos, far ahead in Knothole, Mister Tinker was working by himself in his workshop without a care in the world. Ivo had heard a few screams in the distance, but assumed it was just because of the Wolf Pack terrorizing their own people… Those guys were intense.

He heard a fluttering nearby. Ivo stood up from his workbench, tilting over to see Bokkun flying in.

“Oh boy…” Ivo grumbled, readying himself for the little bat’s antics. “Hello, Bokkun.”

“Mister Tinker, help!”

“Help?” Ivo watched Bokkun fly in, turning around to see him cower behind the covered replica of his amusem*nt park. “Help with what?”

A smash rang out behind Ivo, making him tense up and lean forwards on instinct. The doctor turned around quickly, finding himself face to face with the single-eyed robot of his own creation crashing through the walls of the shack. E-106 Eta towered over Ivo, clearly scanning him.

“Eta…” Ivo whispered in terror.

“Yeah! He’s gonna ate us!” Bokkun cried.

The robot scanned Mister Tinker over. Though the face was familiar, the lack of technology and the drastically different clothes prevented Eta from recognizing this man as his creator. It turned back up to look at Bokkun.

“Ideogram retrieval to continue.”

The doctor scrambled back, getting in front of the replica that Bokkun was hiding behind.

“No!” He yelled in defense of the bat.

Due to the size of the doctor, E-106 Eta lifted both jackhammers and launched them, intending on getting the large obstacle out of the way.

Sliding in between Eta’s legs, Sally pushed herself back up to her feet and activated both of her ring blades just as the jackhammers launched. The princess skidded to a stop in front of the doctor and brought her ring blades together, letting both jackhammers catch against the crossed blades. Sally slid back a bit from the force of the limbs hitting her, but stood her ground.

Swinging both arms out, the blades disappeared with a small burst of blue energy, releasing a blast to knock the jackhammers away from her. The ring blades reappeared after a moment.

Sonic was next, running in, up the wall, across the ceiling and down the back wall to face the robot next. He dove forwards and hit E-106 Eta with a boosting homing attack, hitting it dead in the center of its body, hard enough that the robot was sent flying backwards and out of the shack again.

On the rebound, Sonic uncurled and landed near Sally and Ivo again.

“No dice. I was hitting like, mach speed!”

“It’s like Nicole said- that thing could only be cut by an energy tool. One going super fast, according to you.”

Sonic paused, and eyed one of Sally’s ring blades. “…those use chaos energy, don’t they?”

“Yeah? That’s why I’ve been trying to jam this thing into it.”

The blue hedgehog looked at the robot picking itself up back in the grass, but his gaze soon passed over the massive amount of rubber bands that his sister had mentioned earlier. Sonic turned to Ivo, nearly calling him by his real name but catching himself.

“Mister Tinker.”

“Hm? What?” Ivo blinked out of his daze.

“Is there a slingshot ride in that amusem*nt park of yours?”

“Oh! Well…” The doctor cleared his throat from being put on the spot. “Yes. Why?”

“Think you can make a replica real quick?”

Ivo saw the rubber bands too and realized what Sonic was asking. He twiddled his mustache.

“Quick like you? No. I can do it within the minute.”

“Hey!”

As Mister Tinker started getting things ready, E-106 Eta was getting itself to its feet on the outside of the shack. As it picked itself up, the side of the robot was barraged with energy blasts from Tails, who was flying nearby.

The robot turned and tried to launch a jackhammer towards the flying fox, but it was suddenly shoved from behind by Bunnie, who extended out her foot and arm to interrupt what the robot was doing. When the robot turned around again, it was sliced from behind by Antoine.

“En garde!” The guard yelled, though his voice was wavering. When the robot turned its head around to scan him, the coyote retreated quickly in fear.

With a “hiya!” Sonia bypassed her distaste for touching foreign objects by lifting her brother by his shoulder and the back of his waistband. Swung forwards by Sonia, Manic kicked both feet into the distracted robot, hitting hard enough to make E-106 Eta stumble.

Tails launched a ring tether grabbed by Bunnie, and swung the rabbit cyborg towards the robot. Bunnie flipped in a ball and brought a leg down in an axe kick, hitting hard enough to make the robot only stumble more.

Rotor came in close, swinging an empty cart and hitting the robot in from the side, smashing it against the thick metal body of Eta. Sonia, though still icy with the walrus, left Manic behind and kicked the robot hard enough to knock it over.

E-106 Eta pulled itself up once more, aiming its arm at some of the heroes and launching the jackhammer out towards them. They scattered, and the jackhammer sunk itself into the trunk of a very thick tree.

Close by, Antoine rushed in and swung his sword, impaling it into the tree within the space of the robot’s jackhammer limb to keep it there. When the robot tried to retract its arm, jiggling the sword, Bunnie and Rotor came in and grabbed the handle with the guard.

“We got your back, sugar-twan!”

The robot was blasted from the side by Tails’ energy balls again. Diverting its focus from the trapped arm, E-106 Eta aimed its other jackhammer towards the teenage fox and fired.

This was what Tails wanted though, inspired by what Antoine did. The jackhammer slammed into the trunk of another thick tree. Tails launched a ring tether from his hand, wrapping it around the jackhammer and the trunk to constrict it there. Sonia and Manic, similar to Bunnie and Rotor, rushed in to help their brother hold the hand there.

E-106 Eta was stuck, perfectly positioned in front of the shack.

Ivo finished the “replica” of the slingshot in record time, using posts he was given in the shack to loop the rubber bands around. He was left with a massive band made up of multiple ones, and grunted as he pulled it back. Wanting to help, Bokkun pulled Ivo back by his collar slowly.

Sonic hopped into the pulled back band, intending on being its ammunition.

“Sally, get on!”

“You can’t be serious.”

“You wanted to destroy this thing, here’s your chance.” Sonic held his hand out to her. “You trust me?”

Sally paused. After a second, she put her hand in his. “Yes.”

“Then let’s do it to it!”

The princess climbed into the crook of the rubber bands, right next to Sonic, holding his hand. Ivo grunted as he continued to hold the bands back, but once he got the nod, the doctor knew to let go.

With its arms still held down by the Mission Freedom fighters, the robot turned to look at Sonic and Sally, its one eye focusing on them to scan the situation.

Ivo let go of the bands. Sonic and Sally were thrown through the air at high speeds- as they flew, Sonic grabbed onto Sally, boosting forwards and spinning both of them at super-high speeds in a ball. Sally’s ring blades activated, making a glowing razor sharp spiked ball of sky blue and cobalt blue that streaked through the air.

The scan was complete just as the Sonic-Sally spindash hit the robot in the stomach. Though it looked like the robot could handle the spindash for the moment, the grate soon gave way to the power of the combined force between princess and speedster creating a makeshift buzzsaw of chaos energy.

With one extra boost from Sonic, both he and Sally tore through the robot, tearing it in half. The jackhammers being pulled away split the robot completely in two, with each half of the robot landing near the feet of the teams of three holding the limbs against the trunks.

The force of the impalement launched the head of E-106 Eta into the air- already nearby, Dulcy blew a concentrated stream of fire into the head as it was in the air. When the robot’s head came back down, it was a heaping pile of molten metal, slapping against the grass with its remaining eye sliding out of its head.

After they came out of the robot, Sonic and Sally immediately unfurled from the spindash. They both landed close to one another, tumbling across the ground.

Abandoning their spots, both groups went to their respective leader.

“Sally-girl!”

“Sonic!”

“Are you alright?”

The questions of concerns were waved off from both Sonic and Sally. They picked themselves up- Sonic’s energy from the spindash was enough to protect Sally from any long-lasting damage caused by colliding with the robot’s metal shell.

Both groups coalesced as the pair started to catch their breaths. Suddenly, clapping came in from around them- the villagers in Knothole, all saved, started to cheer for the heroes that saved them. Dulcy came down to stand behind the group as well, as she was finished with extinguishing fires.

Nearby, Bokkun fluttered down to look at the melted head of the robot.

“Whoa, cool…”

“Bokkun, stay away from that.”

Mister Tinker walked up to the group himself, joined by the small bat after a moment. Sonic and Sally turned to look at the doctor, who stood before them with a displeased look. Clearly he didn’t like having to rely on Sonic for something.

“Thank you for saving me. It was very… Kind.”

“You’re welcome?” Sally was confused by the man’s withdrawnness.

Sonic grinned a little. “Happy to help, buddy.”

Ivo scoffed a bit, but suppressed from rolling his eyes, knowing he had to keep the charade up… for now.

“That. Was. Awesome!” Bunnie said, grabbing onto Sally’s shoulders and shaking her slightly. “You tore that thing a new one, honey! Hoowee, that was crazier than a bull and a hawk fighting over a strawberry!”

“You were so cool, Sonic!”

“Thanks, little buddy.” Sonic put an arm around Tails. “We couldn’t have done it without you guys, though.”

“I agree with him.” Sally added. “You all really helped… You too, Dulcy. Don’t think I didn’t see you jump into action like that. You helped a lot of people.”

“Thanks, princess. I just wish I could’ve saved the houses before they got too burnt…”

“Better a burnt house than a burnt body.” Rotor replied to Dulcy, patting her side.

“They can rebuild. Don’t worry about it, Dulcy.”

Sonia came up beside Rotor to pat the dragon’s back to reassure her too. Though she still looked fairly cross with the walrus, it appeared that she let it go, her eyebrows furrowed but giving Rotor’s arm one or two “reassuring” pats. She soon recoiled, intent on sanitizing.

“What about the innocents who are still trapped under the many rubble?” Antoine asked.

“The Wolf Pack will probably help us find any others.” Manic answered him. “Where is the Wolf Pack anyway? Shouldn’t have they helped deal with this?”

“Salena Madeline Acorn!”

Everyone tensed up as the king’s voice rang out. They turned, seeing King Acorn walk towards them, escorted by Chief Wolf. That was clearly what the members of the Wolf Pack was focused on.

“Not the government name…” Tails murmured.

Sally grimaced but broke free from the group. She walked briskly up to her father, who stopped and crossed his arms, scowling at the princess.

“Uh… Hi, daddy.”

The king hugged his daughter tightly, but was still very upset when he pulled away.

“What were you thinking?” He scolded her. “I told you to let Sonic handle it!”

“Well… I mean… I could’ve helped handle it too. I had Nicole bring up those reports!”

“It doesn’t matter! You still disobeyed me- and what’s worse is that you not only put yourself in harm’s way, you also put your guard and your friends in danger as well!”

“Daddy…”

“You could’ve been killed.”

It got quiet between them. The king reached out to touch Sally’s arm.

“I just… Didn’t want you to get hurt, Bean.” He spoke softly. “I’ve already lost your mother. I don’t want to lose you too, Sally. You mean the world to me- more than this kingdom, more than this island. I can’t afford to have you place yourself in danger.”

Sally sighed.

“You know I’m right. I always am.”

“Are you though?”

Both were alerted to Sonic suddenly at their sides. Both king and princess blinked in surprise.

“Oh! Sonic!”

“Sonic…” Sally growled a little, though mostly out of worry of him intervening.

The blue hedgehog wasn’t fazed, and continued. “Look, maybe this thing got a little out of control, but… Sally didn’t get hurt. She handled herself. If she’s fine, what’s the issue?”

“I appreciate your reassurance, Sonic, but she still disobeyed my command.”

“What are you, her sergeant?” He retorted. “Sally is smart, strong and most importantly she’s brave. Very, very brave. She was going to try and destroy this robot herself and I really think she could’ve found a way how without my help. Sally isn’t the little princess stuck in a tower you think she is.”

“Stuck in a tower? I don’t…” King Acorn’s eyebrows knitted. He looked at his daughter. “Sally… Do you really think I look at you that way? That I think of you as helpless?”

“…Well…” Sally struggled to speak, but sighed. “Daddy, ever since mom died, you’ve been treating me like I’m fragile. You’ve treated my work like it’s a hobby, you’ve treated the idea of me going out there to explore as a silly child’s dream. I’m doing stuff to better this island, but it feels like you’re just letting me go play or something. I’m not a little girl anymore.”

The king looked at the princess, his face still tense with concern.

“Sally…” He said, speaking softly. “…I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to treat you in such a way. I suppose… Your mother’s death affected me much more than I expected. She fell ill so fast and perished so quickly, I guess I realized how easy it was to lose someone. With that… I seemed to… No, I did treat you like a child again. I was so ready for you to eventually come back to take your duties instead of staying out there, outside of Gigalopolis that I never realized the extent of what you were doing… And how brilliant you were.”

“…and?” Sonic asked, expectantly.

“…I was wrong.” The king concluded. “I was very, very wrong. I love you, Sally. But I shouldn’t have let that love affect how I treated you. You deserve to let your light shine true.”

“Daddy…”

The father and daughter shared a hug together, the king tightly hugging Sally and stroking her back.

“…I’ll be sure to keep the funding for Mission Freedom high.” He said after they parted. “But only after I see what you all are working on. I’d like to see the projects my daughter’s been helping with.”

“It’s a start.” Sally said, though was elated.

The king stepped away, with Chief Wolf taking the floor. She looked at the king, before facing Sonic and Sally again. The others came up behind the pair, so Lupe could speak to all of them.

“Thank you… For helping Knothole, when the Wolf Pack was unable.” She said, less uncomfortable and more distant. “We’re grateful for your help.”

“The royal family will assist in rebuilding. Funds, mostly.” The king commented.

“Is Honi okay?” Sally asked Lupe.

“…she woke up earlier, but she’s resting up now… Thank you for asking.”

With that, Chief Wolf turned around and started to walk off, clearly intending now on instructing her girls to help look for anyone else who were trapped and to start the process of rebuilding.

The king looked at his daughter. “Sally, do you wish to come back home with me?”

Sally glanced at the others before answering. “…I’m going back to Mission Freedom with my friends. But… I’ll come by and visit tomorrow. If you’re okay with that.”

“You’re free to do whatever you’d like, Bean. You’re the princess.”

With one more loving touch to Sally’s cheek, the king turned around and walked away, headed further into Knothole to return from whence he came.

“What now, Sally-girl?”

“Dulcy,” The princess looked to the dragon. “Can you take us back to Mission Freedom HQ? I’ll grab some supplies and return here to help them start rebuilding. Anyone’s free to come back too if they’d like.”

“I might come!” Tails spoke up. “I think I can recreate the schematics for the buildings so they can keep them on hand… Where’s my…”

Not finding his tablet on his person, he turned around to look for it- he found it in the claws of Bokkun, who was sitting on the ground and messing with it using his wings again.

“Hey! Give that back!”

Tails took his Miles Thunderbolt away from the bat.

“Awww…” Bokkun flapped his wings and flew away, returning to Mister Tinker’s side.

Sonic took a glance at what Tails was doing, but changed his attention to Ivo. He thought he saw the doctor take something from the little bat, but wasn’t completely sure.

The hedgehog slowly strolled up to Ivo. The man shooed his bat companion away.

“So,” Sonic began. “Exciting times, eh?”

“Too exciting. Here I thought this was a vacation.”

“Vacation for me. You’re the one who’s interrupting it.”

“Don’t you worry, Sonic. I’ll be sure to stay here. No use leaving something good.”

“You got that right. Something really good. One that could land you in a dungeon if it’s ended.”

“Oh I know. But we both know you won’t say anything.”

“I won’t, I won’t. But not because I don’t want my vacation to turn sour…” Sonic smiled at him. “Because it’s so funny to watch you have to do something good. You’re causing me discomfort with impending family drama… I’m happy I can return the favor.”

Sonic had Ivo there. The doctor raised an eyebrow, before his mustache turned downwards, and he grunted. He turned to walk away.

“Goodbye, Sonic.”

“See you around, Mister Tinker.”

Watching the man walk back to Bokkun near the shack, Sonic soon turned around to return to his own group. The heroes were fairly scattered- Sally was the closest, and noticed Sonic walking up, turning so she could speak with him.

“…is he alright?”

“Mister Tinker’s fine. He won’t be bothering us for a long time.” The hedgehog replied. “…Hey, uh… Sorry for everything that happened. Everything.”

“No, no…” Sally sighed. “I’m sorry. I was on the defensive because my father was so coddling… I was rude to you right off the bat, when you got here. Even if you did deserve it.”

“Sorry again. About the turret…”

She waved her hand. “Water under the bridge. And thank you, for standing up for me. Maybe you’re just a guy who wants to help, but you’re a hero to these people. You’re a hero to me.”

Sonic’s chest swelled with pride. He slowly smiled, which was matched with a small smile by Sally.

“My father likes you, by the way. Nobody in their right mind would ever speak to him like you did.”

“Good thing I’m not in my right mind!”

“You can say that again.”

The pair started walking next to each other. Sonic nudged Sally.

“C’mon, you like that about me.”

“I like when you focus on the situation at hand and not on going fast.”

“But I gotta! I gotta go fast! It’s been the slogan forced on me for the last like, twenty years!”

“Maybe instead of thinking with your legs, you can use that brain of yours back at the lab.”

“I retained all that stuff you told me! I’ve been helping out, haven’t I?”

“Yes, but you’ve only been working on current stuff. I’d like to hear a project suggestion from you, for once.”

“Maybe you can find a way to make some more chilidogs! That seems like a really good use of Mission Freedom’s resources, Sal.”

“You’re so dumb.” The princess rolled her eyes, chuckling.

“No I’m not. Tell her, Nicole.”

The handheld in Sally’s vest beeped. “Sonic’s cool, Sally. Way past.”

Sally laughed lightly after Nicole spoke. “What did you do to her, Sonic?”

The pair walked away together, into the leftover wreckage of Knothole, wanting to help.

In an hour or so, the group managed to secure an open-top carriage for Dulcy to carry with her feet. It was almost something like a basket, made of metal, and it was given to the dragon so she could carry items and people much easier.

While Sally’s group rode on Dulcy’s back, Sonic and his siblings stayed in the carrier down below. It was better not to put all eight of them on the dragon’s back- plus it would probably be awkward between Manic and Rotor for reasons Sonic and Tails still didn’t understand.

It was quiet for a bit. Tails watched the island below as Dulcy soared high above the ground.

“So… We’re just gonna let this Ivo dude stay in Knothole?” Manic asked.

The question brought attention to him. Tails turned around to join.

“What other choice do we have?” Sonic replied. “Whether people find out he made that robot or that he’s the son of Julian Robotnik, either revelation will send people here into a frenzy. And one truth will lead to the other being found out, too.”

“On the bright side, he seems to like that bat!” Sonia added. “Bokkun? It seems to be keeping him in check, taking care of Bokkun. That and it keeps the little twerp from harming people like he really loves to do.”

“I have to agree with what Sonic said earlier. After everything Ivo’s done, it’s funny seeing him forced to do good things under penalty of being found out and thrown in prison.” Tails smiled a bit.

“And you’re sure he won’t make any more robots while he’s here?”

“Don’t see how he could, Sonia. He doesn’t have the tech to do it. Besides, we still have his files…” The fox took out his Miles Thunderbolt. He tapped on it for a while, before his eyebrows furrowed. “…huh.”

“Huh? Why huh, little bro?”

“Uh…” Tails closed the tablet. “Ivo’s files are gone.”

“What?”

The fox turned the tablet upside down to look at the SD card slit. “The whole index is gone. Someone took out the SD card.”

“But who could’ve…?” Sonic stopped himself, thinking back. “…Bokkun. He must’ve grabbed it for Ivo.”

“So let me get this straight…” Sonia said. “This mad scientist you guys have a grudge against, one who’s made robots to kill people… Has his entire catalog of robots back in his clutches?”

“What could he even use to look at it with, sis?” Manic asked.

“Manic brings up a good point. Like we said, he doesn’t have the tech for that right now.” Sonic took a breath to calm down. “Let’s just keep it kosher. We’re at an impasse; we can’t reveal Ivo is a Robotnik, and he won’t reveal himself as one. As long as we keep him away from technology to create robots, and keep him far, far away from Green Hill… We’ll be perfectly fine.”

The siblings weren’t certain of that, but kept it at that, falling into silence as they were carried back home.

On the ground in Knothole, before the king left, he was stopped by the Wolf Pack for a parting debriefing. The king spoke with them about everything

Soon, Mission Freedom was brought up. King Acorn knew that the initiative probably needed more help on the scientific side, and heard that Knothole had gained a few new engineers. Since they had a surplus, the king asked the chief if there was anyone she could recommend to be transferred over to Mission Freedom.

Chief Lupe had one recommendation: “Mister Tinker.”

“Thank you for coming to my presentation.”

Standing in a conference room, at the other end of a short table, Dr. Starline was next to a stand with a large notepad of paper on it. On the other end of the table was Chuck, who was sitting and watching what the doctor (unconfirmed) was showing him.

This study that Starline was showing Chuck gathered information on the three chaos types: Speed, Power and Fly, the same ones that he had told Sonic and Tails about during their first day on South Island.

This was it. This was the project that would catapult Starline to an executive position in Mission Freedom. This would be the first domino to make this dreadful, backwater laboratory into something that would show the world just what Starline can do.

“First page, chop chop!”

Starline clapped twice. At the door, Grounder flicked the light switch. The stand holding the big notepad wasn’t a stand- it was actually Scratch holding it with both hands. He flipped he first page over, letting it drape back over the rooster’s head to show the second page of the pad.

“Chaos is nothingness. It is absence, it is space. And yet… chaos as a concept makes up our very being.” The platypus said, confidently. “All of us that have been mutated by the power of the god Chaos have his power and grace coursing through our body. And as the living essence of life, each of us whose form he’s evolved have become empowered with the three main structures of life: some of us more than others.”

Starline clapped twice again. Scratch turned the big notepad to the next page.

“The first of these ‘chaos types’ is Speed. A vital function that—“

The door opened, making Grounder shuffle out of the way and Starline stop where he was. It was Sonic and Tails.

With the doctor staring intensely from their interruption, the hedgehog and fox awkwardly sat down to join Chuck at that table. They were just getting back from lunch, though Starline didn’t expect them to be here.

After the boys sat, Chuck cleared his throat. “Sorry, sorry. Continue.”

“…right. As I was saying,” The platypus stared at Sonic and Tails as he continued, but soon pulled away from them. “Speed is a vital function for those of us before Chaos’ power evolved us. It allows us to escape predators, or some to catch prey. Running is second nature to many of us.”

He clapped twice. Next page. This one had hand-drawn diagrams in blue of different exhibitions of speed, using stick figures. The word “SPEED” was written in blue as well.

“Because of this, one characteristic that could be improved seen in many of us is our speed. Some of us move very, very quickly- quicker than others. But a key attribute of this type is that this speed is also added to their minds; a speed type is very quick on their feet and quick to action. Moving on.”

Two claps. Next page. Just one word: “POWER,” in red.

“Strength is a very effective means of protection in those of us. In tandem with speed, it’s used to hunt and to protect- ourselves or others. So it’s no surprise that chaos energy enhances this aspect of those who use strength in that way. However…”

Two claps. Next page. More diagrams, this time red and magenta drawings of stick figures using strength, but also getting attacked and throwing a projectile.

“It’s called ‘Power’ as it isn’t confined to simply strength. Those with Power types are much more durable, or exhibit incredible acts of power that make them potentially stronger hitters than other types. The aspect of Power itself is also the will and strength of those to live, allowing them to power through even the most dangerous and damaging injuries.”

Two claps. Next page. “FLY” in dark yellow.

“Lastly,” Starline continued. “Our third and final confirmed type is an equally versatile one. Between fight or flight, one of our natural instincts in danger is to flee. This type assists with that. Fly types are those of us who are assisted in flight with the power of Chaos- not all Fly types are avians, but be well assured that most avians are Fly types.”

Two claps, next page: diagrams of a stick figure flying with wings, jumping high and being agile.

“But to be clear, Fly refers to the most common ability included in this type. Not all Fly types have the ability to fly, but rather have highly enhanced agility supplemented by chaos energy. Furthermore, this chaos energy is shared in a circuit with those that this being can carry; even the smallest of those flying can create a ‘circuit’ of their energy with fellow lifeforms that allows them to lift extreme weight with little to moderate difficulty.”

Two claps, next page: a triangle with “Speed,” “Power” and “Fly” at each point in their respective colors.

Dr. Starline continued. “These are the most likely attributes of each of these chaos types. I’m confident these three represent each of our people as a whole, regardless of their individual supplementary abilities.” He eyed Sonic and Tails again. “Thus concludes my presentation.”

Chuck was quiet for a second. “Is that all?”

“…well, since you’re asking…”

Two claps, one more page: written in pink marker was the word “UNIVERSAL,” with “hypothetical” written below it in parentheses in green.

“I do have a hypothetical fourth type. One who has a mix or combination of all three types’ characteristics- fast, strong and agile… but this is purely hypothetical, as stated. I’d need more research to do that, which I could surely do after this presentation. Lights on, chop chop.”

Two claps. Grounder turned on the lights again. The others at the table winced at the sudden illumination.

“…huh.” Chuck said, looking slightly discomfortable- Starline took that as him taking it in, unable to process quickly due to senility and general lower intelligence.

“Impressive, is it not?”

Starline noticed Sonic and Tails glance at Chuck, but ignored them to focus on the director.

“Well… It certainly is a very extensive study.”

“Yes, it was. So,” Starline clasped his hands together. “I assume my new office will be somewhere close to yours. I was wondering if I could have yours, as I require more sunlight. I’m sure you understand…”

“What are you talking about?”

“…my promotion?” Starline chuckled a little, both in disbelief and embarrassment from Chuck’s confusion. His mind was really starting to go in his old age. “This study is one of a lifetime. I’ve unlocked a very key feature of our kind. Me, alone! Obviously I deserve an executive position.”

Sonic gave Tails a side eye. Starline continued to ignore them to stare directly at Chuck. The discomfort the old hedgehog was showing now had new meaning… he was giving bad news. Chuck rubbed the back of his neck.

“Well… It certainly was an unknown feature… If we didn’t already know about it.”

“Wh…” Starline laughed a little. “What? This isn’t in any science book in South Island, I assure you. I’m the first to present this information anywhere!”

Sonic coughed into his fist, but spoke as he did: “Second.”

Starline’s head snapped to look at Sonic, greeted by the blue hedgehog looking nonchalant. Starline’s face started heating up- out of fear of their boss’ anger, Scratch ditched the notepad and rushed out of the room with Grounder.

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, Starline, but… My nephew, Miles, presented a similar study to me a week ago.” Chuck put a hand on the fox’s shoulder. “I actually invited him and Sonny here to see if anything you found was different than what he had.”

“It wasn’t. Actually, I think there was less there than I had.” Tails spoke up.

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“No offense, Starline, but you confine yourself to your laboratory in level B3. You barely listen to anyone when they talk to you… when were we supposed to share?”

Chuck’s reply only made Starline breathe heavier. His eyes flicked from him, to Sonic, to Tails and back.

“…I appreciate you trying to find this information, Dr. Starline, but… You should probably put your focus on the current projects we have at Mission Freedom.” Chuck continued. “Now that we have a teenage prodigy on our side, your skill set isn’t so unique anymore… I don’t mean to be rude, but you need to start pulling your weight.”

Starline’s fists balled up tightly.

“You need to start participating in the current projects at hand. I’m sorry, Starline, but if this doesn’t change… You’re going to lose your job. This is your one and only warning. I hope you understand.”

The platypus was steaming, still staring at all of them, his face not twisted in anger just yet but his eyes wide, and breathing heavy.

There was a beeping- Chuck pulled out a pager from his cardigan pocket, reading it over.

“Oh! I have to juice and jam out of here. Rotor and I are transporting a few mechatronic re-builders to help assist with Knothole and their construction.” The old hedgehog got up. He gave his nephews a side hug each. “I’ll see you boys later.”

“See ya, Uncle Chuck!”

“Bye, unc.”

The next few minutes were a blur. Starline picked up the notepad and brought it out himself, still ditched by Scratch and Grounder.

Sonic closed the conference room door and locked it, having a master key now that he was a supervisor.

Still in shock and silent, Starline stood in the middle of the hall, only joined by Sonic and Tails.

“Too bad about your study, Starline.” Sonic said. “Look on the bright side: at least you can use your smarts to help improve the community. Y’know… like actually doing your job?”

The hedgehog speaking to him slowly snapped Starline out of his trance. He turned around, his shocked face slowly turning to one of fury. He looked directly at Tails, who was still next to Sonic.

“You… You…!”

“I’m sorry, but if I wanted a junior apprentice, I would look…” Tails circled his hand to gesture Starline. “…far from whatever D-list science club you got kicked out of. Allow the real scientists to do their work in peace. Thanks.”

“Playtime’s over, Starline!” Sonic said as he and Tails turned to walk off. “Better get back to your real job! Chop chop!”

Sonic clapped twice in time with the final two words, before he and Tails walked off, laughing with each other- and leaving the infuriated platypus to stand there, breathing heavily with wide eyes, practically steaming with anger.

Starline’s hands were shaking as he watched the brothers walk away, laughing at him. They were LAUGHING at him. He was the smartest Mobian on this forgettable little island and he was being treated like yesterday’s garbage.

Still breathing heavy, Starline stormed through the facility, his cowboy boots slapping against the floor. He didn’t see anyone else- unknown to him, they were all actually out with one another to hang out. He didn’t care though. Starline marched all the way downstairs to the bottom floor, down to his lab in B3, kicking the door open.

“Hey boss—“

The doctor interrupted Grounder by swinging the massive notepad, slamming it hard enough into the duo assistants that he knocked them both over.

Stomping over to his work table, Starline roared and used both arms to sweep everything off of the surface in anger.

“That little BRAT!” He snarled. “That little two-tailed brat. Of course he gets special priority, he’s that incontinent withered old man’s nephew! The little freak isn’t even RELATED to him!”

Starline slammed his fists into the table.

“A week ahead. A week ahead?! His information was probably dumbed down for a child like he is, mine… MINE was made for real intellectuals. Oh, they’re going to pay…”

Reaching to a small chest under the table, Starline pulled it up, putting in the combination in (his birthday, 11/28) and flipping the top open. He retrieved what was inside and shoved the chest clear off the table.

His newest creation was something he would’ve clued that old hedgehog in on if he had gotten the executive position he deserved. It was a glove, one that fit snugly on his hand, with a small dome on the back of the palm to contain energy and disperse it to the wearer.

It was meant to have three energy cores inside of it, with one accessed at a time at the user’s will. Thus, the name of the invention was clear to Starline: the Tricore.

“They’re going to pay. They’re going to pay.”

Starline whispered the mantra to himself, still breathing heavily in his anger. With the dust settling, his assistants picked themselves up and slowly crept over to stand beside the table.

“…boss?” Grounder called out to him.

The doctor slipped on the gauntlet, opening and closing his hand to make sure it fit snug. He looked at the back, focusing on the part meant to contain the eponymous tricore.

“Boss, you’re scarin’ us! You okay?” Scratch asked, watching him.

With a twist to a screw on the Tricore on the back of the gauntlet, it suddenly flooded with color, flashing brightly in the room. Starline’s orange tinted glasses shielded him from the colors, but it immediately affected the staring Scratch and Grounder.

Wincing a bit from the light, Starline watched the colors of the Tricore flicker out and die, making the dome return to emptiness. He grunted, annoyed.

“Blast,” He growled. “It can’t replicate the chaos types as I anticipated… I’m going to have to get it elsewhere. Most likely… I’ll have to drain the energies from those with the respective types.”

Starline looked over the gauntlet. He suddenly realized that Scratch and Grounder were staring blankly at him.

“…what?” He barked, already aggravated. “You two need to find something better to do than stare at me in awe. Go… Slap each other around or something.”

Before the doctor could turn back to his work, he watched as Scratch and Grounder immediately reeled their hands back and slapped one another.

Starline paused. They did it as if they were puppets… They continued to stare blankly at the doctor.

“…do that again.”

Scratch and Grounder slapped one another a second time as soon as Starline gave the command.

The doctor was astounded. They were doing exactly as he said… no questions asked, no refusal.

They were hypnotized.

A smile tugged at Starline’s beak.

“Again!”

“Huh…” Scratch blinked rapidly. “Huh? What again?”

“Yeah, what again, boss?” Grounder rubbed his eye like he just woke up. “Ow, why’s my cheek hurt?”

Blast it. The hypnosis didn’t last long… He needed something stronger if it was going to last a while.

He looked over the Tricore again.

“…You nincombolts go out and get me more supplies. I have work to do.”

“I thought Chuck wanted you to work on the projects in the initiative, boss!”

“Yeah, what about that?”

“I’ll play along for now. I’m sure in his final years, anything to disrupt Chuck’s flow will make him throw a tantrum. I’ll do what he wants.” Starline continued to fiddle with his gauntlet. “They’ll soon be cowering from me and my genius in due time.”

Scratch and Grounder shrugged and complied with what their boss said, without any need for hypnosis this time. They left Starline alone.

A smile crept across the doctor’s face as he thought about what he could do. They would all certainly pay… Much more than anything they could handle.

They would all be under his thumb. And nobody- not hedgehog, not fox, not anyone- would be able to resist the allure of his power and his genius.

It was all so tantalizing. To have that control over others… the same control he had over Scratch and Grounder.

He only smiled wider as he came to a new conclusion in his mind.

“Then again… why make them cower… when I can make them all bow to me as their new king?”

UP NEXT: Chaotix And The Master of Ninjutsu!