FicWad

PROJECT MOBITROPOLIS
S Peter Davis

All characters (C) SEGA, Archie and SP Davis 2004.
Used without permission
To contact the author; trojan_masters@hotmail.com

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MYSTIC CAVE

Legends have a way of spreading, and they spread so quickly that it's soon impossible to contain them. Word of mouth cannot be isolated or quarantined. The legend of the blue blur, for example, was soon something oddly familiar to even the most ordinary of citizens, even those who knew nothing about the political upheaval underway in the government, were vaguely aware of the unnamed scourge that threatened the security of the Mobitropolis revolution. It was a name on the wind. A few people claimed to have seen this blue blur in their backyards, or in the forest at night. It was either a mythological creature from the darkest unexplored wilderness, or a secret military project being tested by the government. Nobody was altogether anxious to rule out alien involvement, either. Few people truly believed the stories (generally speaking, there were no stories to speak of anyway) but there were a few select individuals who knew the truth behind the legend. Prince Martin, his plans jeopardised by this unforseen threat, was one. Ivo Robotnik would soon be another.
Martin was fearful as he descended into one of the palace's most discreet and private sanctums. Fear was not an experience he was used to, and offended him to have to endure it, but he could not help his reaction to this dungeon of dim nightmares. It was a feeling. It hung in the air like an odour, omnipresent and intimidating. Robotnik's laboritory seemed as though it were the spawning place for experiments that would make the devil cringe. For all that was known about Robotnik's activities down here, it very well may have been.
The Prince reached the innermost sanctum and peered around. Some kind of mist was suspended in the atmosphere, making the air milky rather than altogether transparent. Chemicals, neatly labelled and packaged, were shelved in an almost obsessively orderly fashion. To the left of him were dozens of tools hung upon a wall. There was a heat around him, not humid but dry and stinging, as though there was a fire nearby. Much of the laboritory was bathed in the darkest of shadow.
Suddenly there was a red glow to the Prince's right. Trying to swallow his fear and retain some pride, he spun around and barked an exclamation. All he saw in the darkness were two red half-circles of light, shedding a dim luminescence upon their immediate area, revealing what almost appeared to be a face; a smooth, hardened characature of a face.
"I am Mecha," droned a digitised voice from the approximate direction of the face. Whatever this anomoly was, it stepped closer and revealed that it was more than a face. There was an entire body standing in the darkness, but it was no kind of mobian that Prince Martin had ever seen. It reached out to him, and the light fell upon its arm. The Prince had seen enough robots in his time to be unimpressed with the technology in general, but this was new even to him. The polished metal appendage, painted in an almost tranquil combination of black, malign yellow and royal blue, did not jerk or twist in programmed, angular directions. It moved like an arm of bone and muscle, slowly and curiously, smooth and delicate. The only thing robotic about that motion was the electric buzzing that came with each movement, audible in such silence although it was so quiet that it was almost beyond the range of hearing.
Prince Martin stepped back impulsively to avoid being touched by the thing, but another hand fell upon his shoulder and something large and soft pressed against his back.
"Mecha," the voice of Robotnik said from behind him, "This is life. See how fragile it is, how soft and precious. Also sense its power. Analyse its lethe and complex movements.
The thing that was being called Mecha cocked its head to the side and retracted its reaching arm. "I see," it commented. Then, seemingly after a short calculation, "Would you like me to terminate this one? I could cease its life functions in two-point-three seconds."
This was more than the Prince was willing to bear. As the thing in the darkness prepared to advance, he slipped out of Robotnik's grip and stumbled backward into the darkness.
"No, Mecha," Robotnik said, "Not this one."
"Understood."
The Prince slinked his way through a shadowed niche, but fell upon something else that moved also. He shrieked, for the first time allowing fear to take control, and ran back towards the science minister. Something with enormous, bright orange spotlight-eyes clanked after him. It was a short, bulky monstrosity the colour of raw tin, spiked and jagged, and it too moved disturbingly like a living creature, although with nowhere near the grace and delicacy of the Mecha-thing. This one shambled, its bulbous silver feet clanking beneath it as it followed the Prince into the light. Robotnik held its arm out to stop its advance, and it obeyed like a well-trained dog.
"I told you never to come down here," the professor said.
"You don't tell me what to do!" Martin shrieked, "This is my palace! I will go where I wish! And you keep these wretched abominations away from me, do you understand? If one of these things ever comes near me again, I swear-"
"My apologies, Majesty," Robotnik replied, "I mean only to ensure your safety. Forgive my tone, I do get so... wrapped up in my work."
"And don't you ever touch me again, either," the Prince added, "Don't ever forget your loyalties, Doctor. Never forget who you work for."
"Never, Majesty."
The Mecha-thing was gone, slinked into some dark corner. It seemed to move with the shadows as though it were a part of them. Martin was happy not to see its red eyes anymore. The orange-eyed machine with its raw silver hull and loud joints continued to shamble around the laboritory like a curious child.
Martin's gaze fell upon a misty glass tube nearby, which contained a swirling cloud of undiscernable material, lit up with a neon green glow. He peered into the glass, squinting slightly.
"I have come down to see what you are working on here," he said, "I wish to know the nature of your experiments. I want to know that you are using your time wisely, and for the benefit of the cause." He almost pressed his face against the glass, trying to make sense out of the swirling mists. It was almost as though they had order to them, as though the clouds moved with some kind of pattern rather than their natural chaotic drift.
"Nanomachines," Robotnik said.
"What?" Martin tore his gaze away and looked back at the science minister.
"Inside the chamber," he clarified, "You're looking at the first fully automated nanoswarm. Microscopic robots, self-replicable and programmable."
"Outstanding," Martin said, awed, "How do you control them?"
"It's simple," Robotnik explained, "The mechanised components are powered by the green light. They cannot travel outside of it, and if the light is switched off, the swarm stops functioning. See here."
Robotnik reached over and lifted the tube from where it was situated, like lifting an overturned jar. The light remained, produced by a laser panel beneath, and nothing stood between the Prince and the nanoswarm. Even so, the mist was contained as though the glass was still there.
"Extraordinary," Martin began to reach towards the green light, but Robotnik grabbed his arm before he could touch it. "That is a bad idea," he said, and replaced the glass container.
"I told you a moment ago never to touch me," the Prince hissed, and gazed into the light again. "By the way," he said, "I thought you might be interested. We have a description of this 'blue blur', the rat mongrel who has been taking the stones. I saw him yesterday afternoon, caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. A hedgehog, with blue spines. Must fancy himself a superhero, I suppose."
Robotnik was silent a moment. He stared into space, and although he had been idly stroking his virile moustache, his hand stopped its motions and he stood quite still.
"A blue hedgehog?" he asked.
"Yes. Quite blue."
"And you have him?"
The Prince frowned. "No. Luck was kind to him. But we have his face, so everything else will be on our records. He will be vanquished and the stones recovered in due time."
Robotnik nodded slowly. "Yes," he said, "I have a feeling this blue hedgehog is out of his depth."

Sonic awoke not so much because of the sun, but because of the heat it produced. Its rays imposed themselves upon the train carriage, and the black metal absorbed the heat until it began to work very much like a frying pan, and that wasn't a condition conductive to slumber. It would be unbearable before too long, and so he sat up and shielded his eyes from the brightness of the fiery ball in its unobstructed place, three-quarters of its distance across the stratosphere.
There had been no dreams that night. Just a flat, heavy coma from which he remembered nothing. Two full nights with only microsleeps to allieviate his fatigue had put him into a powerful and deep rest, despite his uncomfortable bed. The demands of his body were beginning to feel like his biggest enemies on this journey. He would be hungry soon, too, and once again he had no food and no access to any. It was ironic that he'd just received more than enough for another week and a half, a gift from the eccentric aviator Flightless Joe, and had promptly lost the whole package, along with three of the Chaos Emeralds he had been sent to recover.
(damn that fox) a voice in his mind croaked, (backstabbing turncoat little...)
(and whose fault is that?) another voice replied, (who drove him away?)
The train was stationary. It seemed to have reached its final destination. Sonic had slept through the whole night, the whole morning, and most of the afternoon. His first thought was that it was morning, but it was far too hot. The sun had been shining on Mobius all day, and it was in the western sky, not the east.
He climbed the inner wall of the carriage to have a look around. They were in the desert somewhere, a vast landscape of red dirt and only the occasional skeletal plant or spinifex clump. The train was so long that Sonic couldn't see the front of it. He only saw a distant plume of black smoke where the engine must have been. With the hedgehog's feeble grip on geography he couldn't be certain, but he had a suspicion about where he was. Much of the continent - about a quarter of it, in fact - was devoured, he knew, by a sparse and empty wilderness. It was called the Crux Desert, officially, but it had a nickname as well, and one that was truly appropriate. People called it the Barren Quarter. That he might be stranded in this wasteland was a terrifying thought indeed, but he consoled himself with the logical conclusion that, if the train took him into the middle of the desert, then it would take him back out again.
The train wasn't moving, though, and there were still enough daylight hours left to make the discomfort of his vessel a pressing concern. Already it was becoming difficult to touch the surface of the carriage, soon enough it would become unbearable. As the dark metal absorbed the heat of the sun and reflected it back onto him, he could feel his skin beginning to cook. The uncomfortable options were on the table - flee the carriage, brave the desert and risk missing his ride out, or stay and chance frying to death inside what was quickly becoming an oven on wheels.
"Hey!" he shouted to nobody in particular. His voice echoed off the metal. "Get this tin can moving! What are you waiting for!?"
What, indeed. It seemed inconceivable that anybody would take a train into the middle of the Barren Quarter and park it there. It brought another possibility to Sonic's attention - that the train may have broken down. This was probably the least attractive of the possibilities, because it suggested a lose or lose situation. Wandering through an unknown expanse of desert alone with no food or water wasn't an option he wanted to seriously ponder. He knew that following the tracks would eventually lead him out, but the nearest civilisation could have been an hour's walk away, or three weeks' journey.
It was at this time that Sonic saw something on the otherwise flawless horizon. There were hills not too far away, about ten degrees to the left of the train's vanishing point, and what appeared to be a cave etched into the side.
(you can make it there) that voice returned, whispering not through his ears but direct to his mind, (it's probably the only shade for miles)
"Yeah," Sonic replied, "I'll get there, the train will leave and I'll starve to death in some dumb cave."
(you'll die of thirst before you starve) the voice said, as if that was at all helpful.
Of all his indecisiveness, it was the heat that made the decision for him. The heat was the most dire concern, and it simply had to be rectified. If he was doomed, he figured, he'd rather be doomed and cool. Once his skin stopped blistering he could worry all he wanted about what to do next.
Sonic crawled out of the carriage and landed awkwardly on the hard, red dirt. It was more solid than he had expected, much of his knowledge of deserts being that they were made of sand. He picked himself up and began to jog towards the outcrop of rock, hoping idly that it was really there and not just some kind of halluscination. Sonic had heard about mirages, the way a desert could play with a wearied mind and create holograms, of water, shelter or whatever one desired the most. But the closer he came to it, the more real it seemed, until he actually placed a hand on the rock and stepped into the refreshing cool of the cave. He was sweating like crazy, which he knew wasn't good because it would dehydrate him before long, but at least he was out of the sun. The best news was that he wasn't as far from the train as he thought he would be. If he made sure to watch the train carefully, he could run towards it at the first sign that it was moving again, and climb aboard.
However, it didn't take long for boredom to eat away at Sonic's plan. He watched the train for perhaps a half hour, cross-legged on the floor of the cave, with only his uneasy mind for company. His thoughts turned inevitably to the object he was wearing around his neck, Kethriel's drawstring satchel. He couldn't help wondering what was inside, and why he had been instructed not to open it and see. So many possibilities occurred to him. Some kind of communication device, or emergency rations, even a weapon of some kind. But none of them really made sense, because none of these would explain why he wasn't supposed to look. The temptation to take a peek was very strong, but it was the possibility he had come to realise must have been correct - the only explanation that made sense - that stopped him from doing so.
The object inside the bag, he now knew, was some kind of bomb. It was a last resort, some final means of defense that he was supposed to unleash, should things turn out that badly for him. He didn't know whether opening the bag might trigger some form of detonation, so he curbed the urge to look. The Freedom Fighters were a group of militant rebels, after all, and although it was morbid, it made total sense that his death, should it come to that, should be made to inflict as much destruction upon the enemy as possible.
The hedgehog sighed and looked up again at the completely inanimate train. "The public transport system around here sucks!" he shouted at it. The train made a mechanical hissing sound, as if in reply, but ultimately the thousands of tons of dark metal remained motionless. Sonic stood up and wandered deeper into the cave.
It only just occurred to him that it was actually quite deep. Just beyond the mouth of the cave was a hole in the rock that gave access to a dark tunnel. Sonic checked the hole out for a moment, and then looked back to the train.
(it'll take a while to start up again) the voice in his head told him, (you'll hear it starting up long before it's too fast to catch... go on, explore, this is an adventure after all)
The hedgehog squeezed through the hole and found himself in a steeply declining tunnel. His eyes adjusted after a while, and he saw a beautiful cavern of red rock stretch out before him. He peeked out through the hole and could just see the top of the motionless train. Then he turned back to his exploration, his adventurous spirit drowning out everything else.
The cave was tranquil, sublime, almost mystic. It was somehow cool despite the heat from above and below, and the thought occurred to him, to his growing delight, that there might be water nearby. As it went deeper into the rock, the tunnel also descended in a fairly steep decline. Sonic was careful to keep his footing as he explored. The cave took him quite a distance before the ground leveled out. The fact that he wouldn't be able to hear the train from here ceased to register with him. He found himself in a dark cavern with a low ceiling, and ducked his head to move about.
It took him a while to actually notice what he was hearing subconsciously for quite a while. There was a rumbling sound, very deep and very soft, and he couldn't place where it was coming from. He crouched, and then put his hands on the rocky ground. There were soft vibrations below. It reminded him of the earthquakes in the Kirandul range, but it was different somehow, almost mechanical.
(the train!)
He picked himself up at the spur of the moment and fled towards the mouth of the cave, suddenly afraid that his idle curiosity may have gotten him stranded in the Barren Quarter to die in the tunnel he had left his post to explore. He didn't get more than two steps, however. Something gave way beneath him. The floor of the cave, it turned out, was not the immovable slab of solid rock he had expected it to be, but it was thin and insubstantial, like walking on a wafer. The stone cracked open underneath his feet and he dropped into a deep hole in a shower of debris. It was a long fall, and it was only luck that he wasn't injured when he hit the bottom.
Bruised and cut, he lay on his back, staring up at the hole above. It took a few moments to register that what he was lying on was wood, and that there was light around him. Not natural light, but the flickering orange light of many lanterns. He sat up and felt around beneath him. He was sitting on sleeper boards. The mechanical sound was louder, now, and unobscured.
He realised he had stumbled into a mine shaft.

Hundreds of kilometres away in the grand palace of Mobitropolis, as the clock ticked down to catastrophe, an oblivious monarch and his ill-at-ease daughter shared an idle conversation away from the ever pressing concerns of the state. It was the subject matter that disturbed Sally, made her want to up and blurt out every detail of the secret rebellion behind the scenes of the city's stable facade. "Father," she wanted to say, "My brother is about to implement a plan to snatch the kingdom from you by force. Part of your government has defected to him, and soon they're going to tear this city apart from the inside and start a war against your own people."
Looking into the old king's eyes, however, she held her tongue as fast as she always had. Her greatest fear was that he wouldn't believe such a thing, that a rebellion led by his own flesh and blood would be too horrible a premise for him to handle. It would shatter his fragile heart. But whether he truly believed or not, there was one thing that she knew as certain as anything - He would confront Martin personally, handle the situation as he handled every problem as king: directly and without being evasive. Such a thing might change Martin's strategy in untold ways, even trigger a war to begin immediately and be more disasterous than it otherwise would have been. For these reasons, Sally remained silent about her role in these dark events.
It tore her up inside, though. She felt as though she were committing a minor betrayal of her own. It could be said of the naive old monarch that, to some degree, both of his children were conspiring against him. But she stood by her painful decision to wear her veil of secrecy for a while longer, even hoping that the situation could be resolved without him ever knowing that she played a part. It was with this hope that the princess revealed a degree of naivete of her own.
The king smiled warmly and genuinely. "You grow more beautiful every day," he said, "A fairy tale princess, that's what you are. The fairest in the land."
"Oh father, stop it," she replied, fighting back a childish giggle, "You're being silly."
"I mean it," he said, and then his smile faded. He looked over his daughter's face as a master sculptor looks over his greatest artwork. "Do you remember the time I told you that you would be queen one day?"
Sally hesitantly nodded. She remembered only too well - for it had been that very conversation so long ago which had triggered the wheels of revolution to turn in the first place. King Acorn reached for his daughter's hand and held it between his.
"Your brother has grown so distant lately, from me and from his responsibilities to the crown. Have you noticed this?"
"I couldn't very well say. Martin and I don't get along, Father. We haven't spoken much, not in years."
"Yes... I know..." The king sighed and stared into space as he was habituated to do when he was deep in thought. "How do you feel about him, Sally?"
"I love him," she replied. It was the truth.
"I think he loves you, too," her father replied, "I think he loves us both, and the kingdom as well. But he has such grand ideals, your brother. Ever since his obsession with research, he's had such great ambition beyond his ability to achieve. I think he's frustrated by impotence, and he masks it with agression." He paused. "This is a bad virtue for a ruler to have."
"He's in too deep," Sally added, "I'm sure of it. He's a puppet to his own ideologies, I don't even think he can control himself anymore. I'd give anything to be able to help him, you know."
It dawned on her that she had almost given away too much information, but if she had planted any suspicions in her father's mind, he didn't show it.
"This is lovely," he said instead, frisking a jewelled necklace that she wore around her neck. Sally blushed a little. "I bought it from a merchant," she said.
"Lovely," he repeated. He thought for a moment. "I want to show you something."
She followed him out of one of the palace's many offices and towards one of the most secured areas of the palace. The treasure rooms, as they had come to be known, a series of vaults containing the most prized possessions of the Acorn clan. They moved past the regiments of faceless SWAT-bot guards and into the heart of the treasury. Ahead of them was the master vault containing the Crown Jewels - the ceremonial items never touched except during the inauguration of a monarch. The ceremonial crown, a golden scythe and flail, a torc, and a heavy necklace like a rosary in the shape of an ankh (a symbol representing enduring life). The crown was the most beautiful thing Sally had ever seen, and she was consistantly taken by the awe of it no matter how many times she saw it. A tall, sparkling tube of pure gold, arched on the front and encrusted with all manner of delicately shaped jewels. The largest was set in the peak of it, and it was a deep blue stone that almost seemed to have its own glow.
"These jewels have been passed down for centuries," the king told Sally, "Passed down for so long that nobody remembers who made them. These items are older than the Acorns, possibly even older than the Greyblack wolves who ruled before us. A lot of history was destroyed in the Ridgewars, so nobody remembers who came before the Greyblack clan. I don't even think Martin can tell us that. These relics are an unchanged tradition, they are one with the history of Mobitropolis, and that is why they are special. But one item is particularly special."
He indicated the blue gem encrusted in the crown's peak. "This is the Eye of Mobitropolis. They say it holds great power. The legend is that it is magical, that it protects the city against harm. They say it was donated by God Himself. This is a legend that has been passed from ruler to ruler as long as anyone can remember. It's probably as old as the jewels themselves."
"Why are you telling me all of this now?" Sally asked.
Her father looked at her with a very serious countenance. "I need to tell you these things," he said, "If I am to make a queen out of you."
Sally stared into the misty depths of the blue jewel, unblinking, for a moment unbreathing. "You're serious," she said after a while, and tore away from the Eye of Mobitropolis to look into those of her father, also blue, as an unbreakable bond at once sparked between them.
"On Sunday night," he said, "There is a feast being organised to celebrate the thirteenth century of Acorn rule. There will be a large gathering, and I am to present a speech after dinner. It is then that I intend to name my heir. I fear that Martin may create a scene, this is probably unavoidable, but I have nevertheless made my decision. I look at you and I look at your brother... in your eyes, I see the future of this kingdom is bright, and I see peace and benevolence for the next half century. I look at him, and I see nothing but chaos. I have nothing but love for my son. But my responsibilities to this kingdom run deeper. Nobody is going to take this news well, your being so young and your being female are going to shake up the traditionalists, but I don't want this ancient crown to touch anybody else's head but yours the next time it's taken out of its case."
A tear ran along Sally's petite snout. Again she contemplated telling her father everything, but she quickly dismissed the thought. Martin, she knew, was indeed going to make a scene. He was going to make enough of a scene to raze an empire.

Sonic didn't have a lot of room in which to move around. The ceiling of the shaft eventually descended to the point where it was impossible for him to even stand, and so he crawled along the tracks of what seemed to be a tunnel into infinity. The sense of mining such an arid wasteland was lost on him. What were they looking for? Sonic knew little about minerals and mines. He knew that oil was found in the desert, but that was drilled, not mined. He raked at the wall for a moment, half-expecting to find gold or jewels. Nothing came away but clumps of ordinary dirt and a few rocks.
He heard something behind him, and almost disregarded it until he realised that the sound was coming from the very same shaft that he was crawling through. A distant rolling-clattering, like a bowling ball on an aluminium roof. It was getting closer, and very quickly. Sonic sped up his crawl, but the lack of space meant that he couldn't just get up and outrun the approaching object. With his natural speed but unnatural movement he looked like an injured cheetah. At last he found that he was able to stand upright, but before he could sprint away, something came out of the darkness behind him. It was some kind of motorised trolley, an empty cart travelling along the tracks at a phenomenal speed. It struck him on the shins and barrelled him over backwards. Crying out, he landed inside the cart, and for better or worse he went with it.
The tunnel ended, and Sonic propped his head over the side. The cart was running on a rail bridge over a massive underground chasm. He was blown away by the scale of it. Something had simply eaten thousands of tonnes of soil and rock, tore it out of Mobius' crust in one greedy scoop. This was not a delicate operation, but an obliteration. There was something under the Barren Quarter that was of great worth to somebody, and they were clearly willing to move the planet aside to get to it.
It didn't take long for Sonic to realise who was doing the digging and why. He saw mighty machines in the chasm below, ripping and churning into the ground, drilling and scooping. Robots populated the caves, heavy bipedal walkers with tools for arms, smaller utility droids scurrying about like worker ants, stout half-upright monstrosities with caterpiller wheels instead of legs and drills on their arms and faces. The very cart that Sonic was riding inside was its own pilot. Sonic had stumbled into one of Prince Martin's robot-run emerald mines, and if there was anything alive within a dozen kilometres then he was yet to see it.
The cart traversed the bridge and reached the other side, entering another tunnel, although this one was braced with metal and there was machinery around him. The cart stopped (the action so sudden that it almost threw out its hedgehog cargo) and before he knew what was happening, a hole opened above him and a load of dirt was dumped on top of him. It hurt. He cried out, but he was quickly muffled by a mouthful of grainy soil. Buried alive, Sonic clawed at the dirt which was thankfully loose enough for him to burrow out of it fairly quickly. He coughed and spluttered, and almost threw up. "Sure am glad I'm not a worm," he commented, "I wouldn't be able to handle the diet."
The cart started moving again, and Sonic felt like a houseplant growing out of a pot of dirt until he was finally brought to an open cavern and he climbed out. The cart vanished into another dark tunnel, and Sonic watched as a dozen more followed. He was now able to figure out why empty trains were being driven into the middle of the Crux Desert and parked. All this missing dirt had to go somewhere. He was suddenly grateful for having bailed out of the empty train's carriage when he had the chance - having his own weight in dirt dumped on top of him was one thing, but a hundred tonnes of it was entirely another.
He walked through a winding tunnel and found himself walking along a braced ledge over the great chasm. There was very little between him and a dizzying drop into what could have been the centre of Mobius, and he quickly learned that looking down was a bad idea. Across the abyss, along the far wall, were many rows of ledges like his own, each lighted by many flickering lanterns. He realised that the paths through this cave were like corkscrews, a series of twisting ramps descending all the way into the pit. He stood at the railing for a moment and tried to take it all in.
It was then that Sonic saw Knuckles the Echidna for the first time, though by no means the last. The blood red mobian stood much like he himself did, at the railing alongside a ledge on the opposite side of the chasm. He looked pensively downward into the black gorge. Sonic didn't know what race this strange figure belonged to, but yet he had seen it before.
(the red people!)
In the underground ruin, Sonic had been shown brief visions of these people, running and dying in their hundreds, a deeply disturbing image that he had disregarded as a dream. Were the red people just another factor in the fragmented memory of his past? The hedgehog stood dumfounded at the physical manifestation of what he had hitherto regarded a product of his overactive imagination.
Shaken from his awed state, he suddenly realised that he was as visible to the red person as vice versa. The stranger wasn't looking in his direction, so he ducked away before he was spotted. The red person wandered back into the darkness of the caves.
Sonic decided it was time to figure out where he was going and what he was doing. What he needed was a ride out of the desert, and so his best course of action was probably to find a path to where the trains were being loaded. He stood at the railing again and looked around the caves. As he did, he became aware of a buzzing noise, its origin ambiguous, growing steadily louder. Concerned, he tried to figure out where it was coming from. It seemed to originate from the chasm itself. Looking down, he saw something small and fast flying up toward him. It was like a very large insect, but with a sweeping searchlight emitted from the front, it revealed itself as just another kind of robot. There were several of them now, zipping about, scouring the area with their lights. This mine didn't lack its security measures, it seemed.
Opting not to be seen, Sonic ducked into the darkness, but in his haste he slipped and began to slide down a steep trail. Something strange happened as he tumbled - a kind of defensive reflex that had never happened to him before as far as he could remember, which was admittedly not very far. He pulled his knees up either side of his head, crossed his arms between them, and rolled. His body slipped into the position so easily that it was as though his body was built for it. In this perpetual spin, he picked up speed and virtually dashed down the incline. It felt like falling, and it was now that he remembered he had indeed done this once before, only the previous day, spin-dashing across the field after leaping from Joe's Tornado.
This was perhaps not the most ideal environment for such a stunt. He struck rocks as he dashed, and they hurt. But he didn't feel as though he were entirely in control, as though his body's instincts were calling the shots now and all he could do was let the auto-pilot run and sit back and take it.
His direction changed noticeably. Now he was falling straight down. His body uncurled itself and he saw he was freefalling into the darkness. He had just enough time for the possibility of death to cross his mind before his head struck a rock and the darkness filled him like water in a sinking ship.

The wheeled and drill-limbed robots that Sonic had seen earlier were known to the biological members of the mining crew as grounders. Bulky and unintelligent, the grounders moved slowly and tank-like on caterpillar wheels, gathering wherever they were needed and using a number of powerful drill attachments to bore through rock and clay.
A congregation of grounders numbering in their dozens were gathered at an eastern point of the caves, working to break up a particularly resiliant wall of stone. Behind them, two massive bipedal drillwalkers moved into place, and a vulture in overalls, dirt-encrusted and dripping with sweat from head to talon, smoked a cigar and shouted abuse at the robots as they went about their work.
Knuckles approached from behind, cringing at the loud noises. It was a particularly enthusiastic digging operation.
"Carrion," he shouted, and the vulture turned around to meet him.
"These things are great!" Carrion exclaimed, "Swear at them all you like, it doesn't faze them a bit. They just go right on with their work. Try it!"
"No thanks," Knuckles replied.
"Come on you mongrel things, put some sodding effort into it! You dig like a one-armed grandmother with a damned teaspoon!" Carrion screamed.
"Bad day?" Knuckles asked.
"Like you wouldn't believe, my friend," the vulture replied, "Bad day, bad week, bad month. I suppose you've heard about the blue blur."
"Uh, vaguely. I usually hear the term accompanied with some amount of venom."
"Not surprising. He's a threat to this whole operation, some damned blue hedgehog souped up on steroids and stealing emeralds."
This got Knuckles' attention. "What do you mean, stealing emeralds?"
"Just what I said. While we're digging Lucky Six out of the ground, the Blue Pest is zipping about the continent and stealing the ones we've already found. Just collecting them, like bottlecaps. A million laser-shooting robots can't even graze him."
"Why would he want to do that!?" Knuckles demanded.
"Hired, probably," Carrion replied, "There's a lot of treasures on Mobius, and sometimes the treasure hunters go rogue and give in to the highest bidder. I had a colleague for a while, Nack was his name, complete loon. We were working together on the Time Stones recovery project, this was almost a decade ago. We found the stones intact, and as soon as my back was turned, the nutbag took them for himself and escaped overseas, never saw him again. Sometimes people just have no honour at all, Knux. This blue blur is one of them, and it's a problem for me because His Snooty Majesty the not-quite-King of Mobitropolis says I don't see a cent until I hand over a perfect seven."
His last few words were masked by the cacophonic din of the stone wall giving way from the pressure of the drillwalkers. Three grounders were crushed by falling boulders, and many more were knocked off their wheels.
"Well it's a problem for me, too," Knuckles replied, frustrated, "I'm co-operating with these people under the strict condition that I get the emeralds at the end of it all. What the hell kind of operation is this anyway? They tell me to be careful who I talk to, or to play it safe and just not talk to anybody. They have me moving under cover of darkness. Now the emeralds are being spirited away by some mysterious blue hedgehog who nobody knows anything about?"
"I don't ask questions," Carrion replied, "I never ask questions. Does seem like a little more than just a scientific research project, though, doesn't it. Now hello, what do we have here?"
The vulture stepped into the cavern that had been uncovered behind the stone wall, all the while puffing on his cigar.
"Isn't that dangerous in a mine?" Knuckles asked.
"What? The smoke? That's another benefit of these dumb robots, Knux, they're better at detecting gas leaks than any canary on the planet."
The cavern turned out to be a massive chamber, and not a creation of nature. Murals covered the smoothed walls of the cave, pictures of echidnas, animals and gems.
"My stars..." Knuckles was instantly spellbound upon entering the chamber. Carrion was ecstatic, almost jumping about with excitement, laughing and shouting.
"Bingo!" the vulture exclaimed, "Bingo! Hot damn, Knuckles, we did it! You did it! The sixth emerald chamber! By god, it would have taken me another year to find this!"
There was a brilliant green light filling the ancient room, emitted from a pedestal in the center. The sixth Chaos Emerald to be recovered was the most brilliant thus far. Knuckles was stunned by the concept that this stone had been filling this tiny room deep under Mobius' surface with its brilliant green light for thousands of years, and it was still so bright. The echidna noticed that the walls themselves had a glow of their own, glittering with their own multicoloured light. He pressed his face and belly against the wall, running his arms and hands over its smoothness. "The glittering walls," he said, "Just like on the island."
"The walls are cemented with emerald-rich soil," Carrion explained, "It's less pure than the Chaos Emeralds, but the shards are the same substance. We call it emerald, but it's not really." He picked up the green Chaos Emerald and admired it. "It's an element known to science as Entropium. Possibly the rarest naturally-forming element in the known universe, definitely the rarest on Mobius. It has a half-life of a billion years. Doesn't occur naturally on this continent at all. But somehow, the echidnas found so much of the stuff that it was worth less to them than sand. To us, however... every brick in this chamber is worth enough on its own to make me salivate."
Knuckles couldn't hear Carrion talking anymore. It seemed to him that he could hear his ancestors whispering to him from these stone and emerald walls. A tear ran down the echidna's cheek as though he had found his way home after a long time away.

Sonic climbed a ladder in his dream.
It was a long and winding ladder into infinity, so long that it vanished into a point in both directions, disappearing into the all-consuming blackness. One side was a bright blue, the other red, and the rungs were a gradient compromise. Not a straight ladder, but one that curved around and around as he climbed. It made him nauseus, but he couldn't stop. He could never stop.
Something was chasing him. It was the Master. Sonic was finally making his escape from this torturous prison, and he couldn't let the terrible beast, the bringer of woe, to catch him.
But as he climbed, the ladder became difficult to hold on to. It swayed and flexed, twisted and squirmed out of his grasp. He looked up and realised his terrible mistake... there were no rungs, just two squirming tubes that reared up and twisted back upon him - snakes. Thrashing, furious snakes. They hissed their outrage at his transgression and moved to devour him at once.
The hedgehog woke up sweating. His emotions wracked by the invasion of another horrible nightmare. And he did consider it an invasion, these unwanted glimpses of a repressed past, memories that he had locked away lest he go mad.
And yet he was curious. There was an itch within him that he couldn't seem to satisfy, a desire for knowledge, a kind of closure. What were the snakes? Why did they haunt him? He racked his brain for a moment. He didn't know anything about dream psychology. Was there something significant about blue and red snakes?
The Prince of Mobitropolis, now that was a snake. He suddenly realised where he was and what he was doing - certainly not the time or the place for a self-analysis. How long had he been knocked out? Five minutes? Five hours? It didn't seem like it had been a long time, but then it was hard to tell with no sunlight in the caverns.
With what little light he did have, he inspected the immediate area to see where he was. He saw something wet on the ground, and touched it... sticky. It was red on his fingers. Blood. Tenderly he touched his head and found a swollen and very painful area behind his left temple. He remembered now that he had fallen some distance, and checked his body for damage. A few bruises, but no broken limbs or gashes. His head had stopped bleeding. It mustn't have been that far a fall after all. Lucky.
He didn't get the feeling that he was very deep underground. The air was stale down here, and it was much darker than the rest of the mine, there not being nearly as many lanterns nearby. Sonic squinted in the dark to try and locate some clue as to where he was. He saw several very large wooden boxes, like shipping crates, packed atop one another. A storage area? The walls were reinforced as though this were a more permanant room than most of the tunnels in this mine. What was being stored here he didn't know, and wasn't even particularly interested. He just wanted to find his way out and back to civilisation.
Sonic grasped Kethriel's secret bomb, still tied around his neck. His head throbbed a deep, dull pain, and his thoughts turned to the increasing frequency - and disturbing complexity - of his nightmares. The changes taking place in Mobitropolis and the world, they were much bigger than he was. He had been seeing images of his own past, but he couldn't help but think that the images coming to him also related to a terrible and near future.
But for now Sonic wandered about the caves without an immediate destination. He left the storage area for another tunnel, this one much more brightly lit, and walked slowly in a completely random direction, idly dragging his fingers along the wall. There weren't any mechanical sounds nearby, so he figured nobody was digging anything around here. This area seemed built for a different purpose. Administration, perhaps. His sighting of the mysterious red person revealed that there were indeed organics down here, running this operation.
He heard a buzzing sound that almost made his heart sink. He supposed that it had been naive to think that his short spin-dash and resulting fall had done anything less than call attention to his presence. Looking back towards the warehouse he had fallen into, Sonic saw three points of light trailing his path. Three of the robot beetles, mechanical fireflies with spotlight beacons, had followed him, and were currently engaged in an inquisitive quest to discover just who he was and what he was doing here.
Stunned momentarily, Sonic froze in place and was caught in their searchlights. Three beacons shone over themselves and focused on him - a deer in their headlights, or a hedgehog to be precise.
But Sonic's idle surprise didn't control his body for long. He soon discovered that he was not a hedgehog built for fear. It was not in his nature.
"Hi!" he exclaimed, and gave them a wave.
The sentries buzzed, and their beacons brightened as red lights on their sides began flashing and pulsing computations.
"Bye," Sonic said, and waved farewell. Without a moment wasted, he turned tail and fled down the hallway in a cloud of dust and soil. The drones followed without hesitation, and Sonic quickly learned that, at full blast, they travelled almost as fast as he did. They didn't shoot at him, but he figured they had another equally sinister purpose which would probably become apparent soon enough. Speed wasn't going to suffice - he needed to lose these bugs.
As luck would have it, a door was embedded into the wall of the cave. It was wooden and rickety, quickly constructed and just as expendable. Nevertheless, it would help. Sonic threw it open, his inertia almost ripping it from its hinges, and slammed it shut, listening from the other side.
As he had hoped they were, the fireflies were insufferably stupid. He heard the buzzing approach, pass, and die down.
Relieved, he began to open the door to step out again.
There was a click behind him, and a voice said simply, "I wouldn't."
Now Sonic turned for the first time to see where he had found himself. He had stepped inside some kind of office. The foreman's quarters, he realised. There was a desk with a computer and an assortment of stationary. All of it had the air of a temporary setup. Behind the desk sat a vulture, and in the vulture's hands was a gun. He reclined casually and pointed the weapon in such a way as it looked like he had little intention of using it.
Sonic recognised him after a moment. The same vulture had threatened him with the same gun just the previous day, at the hill top bunker. He was a crony of Prince Martin.
The hedgehog again moved to open the door and flee, but the vulture reiterated his warning.
"Run away," he said, "and in ten seconds I will have a million robots so far up your rear end that you'll be able to taste metal."
Sonic closed the door.
"Word is that you can dodge bullets," the vulture said. Unexpectedly, he stopped aiming his gun, and insead placed the weapon on the desk in front of him. "The terrifying and mysterious blue blur, bane of my existence. I saw you move yesterday, quite a pair of legs you've got on ya. Maybe you can run right over here and grab this gun before I have a chance to snatch it back, maybe you can't, either way there's not much a gun can do for either of us down here. The way I figure it, there's not much that threats can do for us right now, all we can really do is talk."
Sonic was a little surprised, and he considered the vulture's dare to grab the gun from the desk.
"You want to shoot the breeze?" he asked.
"Why not? I was hoping I'd get a chance to talk to you. I suspected you'd show up here, now that there's an emerald to be had. I'm a little surprised that you came bursting into my office like this, but it's all good."
"I was raised never to talk to strangers," Sonic commented.
"Why be strangers?" the vulture asked, "Heck, it feels like we're the best of friends already. Allow me to introduce myself. Carrion's the name. Rhes el Carrion. And so it finally comes down to the big important question: Just who, the bloody hell, are you?"
"I'm Pennywise the Dancing Clown," Sonic replied.
"Cute," Carrion said. "Whoever you are, you've caused quite a ruckas. The robots even have a codename for you, now. 'Priority Hedgehog'." He reached under his desk and withdrew a packet of cigarettes. "Smoke?"
"No thanks."
"Got addicted to the things back in high school. Don't get me wrong, I can quit any time I want. I've quit about ten times now, as a matter of fact." He clamped one of the cigarettes in his hooked beak and lit it up.
"Look, what do you want from me?" Sonic demanded.
"Understanding," the vulture said, "Mutual understanding. Heck, maybe we can even work something out, a compromise, wouldn't that be something. The truth is, you're a thorn in my side. I work for a living, and I've worked too hard and come too far to have you just screw it all up for me now."
"Well that's just too bad. Seems as though you're in the wrong line of work."
Carrion dragged on his smoke. "I was hoping we could do business, you and I. Everyone has his price, even a scoundrel like yourself. That's probably why you're here in the first place, is it not? Perhaps I can offer you a better deal."
"What are you talking about?" Sonic asked.
"I'm talking about a share in the profits," Carrion replied, "At this point I'll be happy to finish this job with any payment at all. It's been one disaster after another, even before you came along and started buggering up all my years of blood, sweat and tears. Someone other than His Royal Narkiness has his eye on these emeralds, that I know for sure. Just let me know how much he's paying you and maybe we can arrange a better deal, you and I. If not, then we're just going to have to do things the hard way."
Sonic took a moment to try and comprehend what Carrion was talking about. Then it dawned on him, all at once. "You think I'm being paid to steal the emeralds for someone?"
"Well?" the vulture asked, "Aren't you?"
"Wait a second." Sonic ignored the question. "You're not a part of this. You're just another pawn in the game..."
"Hey there, whoooa, this bird is no pawn, pipsqueek."
"You really have no idea what you're doing, do you."
Carrion scowled, for a long time glowering at the hedgehog in silence, trying to figure out how to react to the strange turn that this conversation had taken.
"You listen to me," he said at last, "I know what I'm doing better than anyone on Mobius, alive or dead, has ever dreamed. Rhes el Carrion knows his relics. I know them better than you, of that you can be assured."
"Okay then," Sonic ventured, "So you know what you're doing."
"Darned straight."
"But do you know why?"
"Damn why!" Carrion exclaimed, "'Why' is the question that hinders prosperity! You want to start asking questions, the next thing you know, you don't want to do anything for anyone in this stinking world. People have been whining about my involvement in this for six years. You know what? I tell them the same thing every time. I do this because I love the work, and I love the pay. Nothing else matters."
"So I guess you wouldn't care if I told you that Prince Martin plans on using these emeralds to wipe out thousands of people in the most degrading and horrible death you can imagine."
"Says you," Carrion replied, "But you haven't exactly proven yourself trustworthy. What kind of game are you trying to play, here? Trying to appeal to my conscience so that I'll just hand over the rest of the emeralds to you so you can have the full set?"
Sonic threw his arms up into the air. "I lost the emeralds!" he exclaimed, "I don't have any of them! It wouldn't do me any good to try and start again now, the prince probably has all seven of them in his desk drawer as we speak."
"Six," Carrion corrected, "I'll have you know that the seventh is still buried, and that's one gem that you're not going to get your grubby hands on."
"I'm just trying to tell you the truth," Sonic said, "I'm just trying to give you a chance-"
"Read my beak," replied the vulture, "I. Don't. Care. My policy is unbiased equal oppertunity. My hands are clean, you're the thief, take your own advice. And if I can't negotiate with you, I'm afraid I'm going to have to take you down, buddy. I switched on the silent alarm about ten minutes ago, and I think the cavalry just arrived."
"What?"
The rickety door swung open on its hinges, and two SWAT-bots pushed through, another three waiting outside, and probably countless more out of sight.
"Priority hedgehog!" the SWATs droned, "Apprehend!"
"No!" Sonic shouted, and backed up against the desk.
"Sorry, kid, but I have to protect my investment," Carrion said.
Sonic, enraged and desperate, swung around as fast as his body could move, and in considerably less than one second, he had snatched the gun from the desk, and had the barrel pressed against Rhes el Carrion's forehead. Everyone stopped moving, robots, vulture and hedgehog. A few grains of ash trickled from Carrion's smoke to the desk.
"Not smart, kid," the vulture said, "The SWAT-bot rules of engagement are very simple, and in hostage situations they're programmed to shoot to kill."
"Call them off!" Sonic shrieked. He began sweating profusely - he'd never threatened somebody's life before. He wasn't even sure he knew how to fire a gun.
"Or else what!?" Carrion shouted back, "That thing isn't even loaded! You think I'm stupid enough to point a loaded gun at someone who can dodge bullets? Why don't I just shoot myself in the head?"
The SWAT-bots, apparently understanding that there was no danger, marched forward and grabbed Sonic's arms and legs with iron strength. The hedgehog swore and cursed, fighting the machines like a child throwing a tantrum. His captors were as calm as stone as they carried him away.
Rhes el Carrion sat back in his chair and smoked. He watched the open doorway for a long time, and pondered.

Knuckles the Echidna sat in a large, open room in a well-lit cavern, sheets of paper spread out before him in a wide arc. He concentrated on the archaic rubbings printed on them, runes and symbols, heiroglyphs and pictures. Messages that only an echidna, heir to the knowledge of the ancients, could understand.
"North by northwest," he muttered, "East as the crow flies, then straight on through the valley of shadows." He consulted a giant modern-day world map he had spread out to the side, and began scribbling markings on it.
There were already markings printed on this map, and he had pinpointed each one with dedicated precision. Six crosses, spread all over the continent in a seemingly erratic and patternless chaos. It figured. Chaos was appropriate.
One cross was scrawled over a featureless area of the Crux Desert, the words 'green here' scribbled almost illegibly beneath it. Now the echidna made some new markings, and consulted the glyphs again.
"Bingo!" he exclaimed, and turned back to the map to scrawl another cross. His pen stopped halfway, though, and he frowned as he inspected the map more closely.
He was about to mark a cross directly on top of the city of Mobitropolis.
"Odd..." he said to himself.

It was an hour later when Carrion walked about in the blazing heat outside the emerald mine. It was about five thirty in the afternoon, and he was speaking to Prince Martin on his cellular phone, the prince miles away in the comfort of Mobitropolis' royal palace.
"Nothing but good news for you today," Carrion declared, "We dug up another emerald. Pretty green one, perfect condition just like the others. Not only that, but I've caught the blue blur, the Priority Hedgehog himself. He's just waiting to be put somewhere."
"Excellent, excellent," Martin replied, "And you've recovered the three that he stole?"
"Well, uh," the vulture paused, "Uh, no... they weren't on him, I don't know where they are. The kid says that he's lost them, but I dunno for sure unless-"
"Lost them!?" the prince shrieked, "He's lost them!? You idiot! Find them!"
"Did you just call me an idiot?" Carrion asked.
"Yes! Make no mistake, Carrion, I'm starting to regret hiring you for this. Your job is to find me the emeralds. How many times do I have to remind you of that? Find them!"
"And what more, exactly, am I supposed to do here, Princey? If I had a magical emerald detector, I would have found you all seven of them years ago."
"I don't care what you do!" the prince shrieked, "You have the hedgehog there, interrogate him!"
"Interrogate him yourself!" Carrion snapped back, "You're so good at it, you're the one who threatened to break his fingers and toes."
"No..." Martin replied, "No, I can't have him here..." He thought about it for a moment, then, "Send him to Robotnik."
"And where, pray tell, is Robotnik?"
"Acornex Oil. Rig number... seven seven six. There was a problem there recently, and he's gone to sort it all out. There's a transport heading out there tomorrow morning, make sure the hedgehog is on it."
"Aye aye, Captain Wacko," Carrion replied, but the prince had already hung up the phone. Now Carrion stood alone, watching the sun as it began to kiss the horizon. The rail loading station was nearby, and a train began to slowly pull away as the mining operation wrapped itself up. Steam burst from the engine in a hissing roar, and the train picked up speed. Carriages laden with minerals hauled past him.
Knuckles approached, a suitcase by his side.
"I've located the seventh emerald," he said, "You'll never guess where it is."
"Hold that thought," Carrion replied, "Wait here and I'll bring the jeep around."
"Okay."
The vulture shambled off through the dirt and sand, past the rail station and toward his jeep. It would be very good to see the last of the Barren Quarter, scorching and desolate as it was. As he lit up a cigarette, he spotted something glittering out of the corner of his eye.
He stopped to look. It was coming from a large pile of garbage that had accumulated here. The robots had just dumped all their waste in one place without even trying to be discreet or keep it out of the way.
There was something interesting lying amongst the wrecked robot parts, gaskets and rags. It was a brown bag, a backpack of some kind. Carrion approached it and poked it with a stick.
He almost swallowed his cigarette when he saw that the bag contained three slightly dusty but otherwise radiant Chaos Emeralds. The mouve, red and grey emeralds sat together in the discarded bag as if waiting to be found.
"Stupid robots," Carrion murmured to himself. He looked to the left and the right, but nobody was watching as he snatched the bag and held it under his arm. The train blew its final whistle as it chugged away towards the sinking sun.