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

---

OIL OCEAN

Sonic was jolted awake by the harsh and loud movements of the train, its carriages screeching and grinding against each other. It had happened innumerable times during the night, which, combined with his nervousness and agitation, did not serve to rest him very well. He mused that his ride in the metal basin of the empty cargo carriage had given him a much healthier night's sleep than the padded passenger bay.
It might have had something to do with the SWAT-bots who stood around him, watching his every move. His feet were tied together with a heavy chain, so any possible escape would have been made via enthusiastically walking to safety, a method he doubted he could pull off with any great success. His speed was clearly infamous, judging by the precautions his captors had taken.
It was morning, now. He could see the light filtering through the cracks between the wooden planks composing the carriage. Drowsy, he lifted his head to see if the robots had moved at all since the previous evening. They hadn't.
The train stopped completely soon afterwards, and Sonic was marched outside by his robotic guards. The Barren Quarter was thankfully far behind him, but now he found himself in a desert of concrete and metal. He had been taken to some ambiguous facility, the purpose of which he neither knew nor cared to know. Beyond the train station was a building surrounded by razor wire and a large open concrete platform covered in painted yellow circles and lines. He was being taken towards this platform, and he went willingly - resisting arrest by these machines had earned him nothing but bruises for his effort.
There was a strange chopping noise coming from above, and Sonic looked up to try and locate its source. A black dot in the sky to the east slowly grew as it came towards him. When he was able to discern what it was, he realised it was a helocopter, though no kind he had ever seen before. It was sleek and dark blue, with no angular parts whatsoever, and no visible landing gear. He couldn't quite work out what looked so queer about this contraption, why it seemed so different and wrong. It was painted with a logo that Sonic remembered vividly - it was the Acornex logo, he had seen it at Prince Martin's chemical plant in Station Square.
The helicopter descended as it approached, and three legs slid out gracefully from underneath. The sound of its rotors was distressingly quiet, even as it landed on the concrete pad mere meters from where Sonic stood. As he pondered this, he all at once realised why the helicopter looked so weird. It didn't have a windshield. The opaque blue metal covered the entire machine with no openings save for the single door in its side. He wondered idly how the pilot saw where he was going, but knew that it was a stupid question to ask considering his present company. This was just another robot, its mobian pilot made redundant. Sonic was suddenly overcome with a fierce sensation of loneliness. He was interacting with machines, unthinking golems driven by nothing but base physics, no different to the rocks and the concrete. There wasn't anything capable of thought for as far as the eye could see. He now had a glimpse of what life would be like in Mobitropolis if the rebels had their way, and he shuddered at the image.
A lone SWAT-bot accompanied him onto the chopper, and it lifted off again, flying east in the direction from whence it came. There was a small window on the door through which Sonic could see out. After a few minutes, the coast came into view beneath, and the pilotless machine followed the edge of the ocean in ominous near-silence.

"You can't actually understand me, can you?"
Prince Martin Acorn stared at one of the robot guards that stood sentry outside his quarters. The SWAT-bot, one of thousands of identical machines mass produced on the assembly line at the Iron Ward, fearless and unmoving, did not respond.
These contraptions sickened him. Their necessity was clear to him, and he knew that their role in the coming events was about to be brought to the forefront. That didn't mean he had to like them.
"Do I really want to make half of my kingdom like you?" he asked. Again the robot offered no wisdom on the subject.
Robotization. The final castigation. The full surgical removal of the most debilitating affliction of a worker's body - his free will. For that was what stood between empires and their greatness. There was no propoganda in existence powerful enough to fully remove a mobian's ability to say "I don't want to work". Indolence was Mobitropolis' disease, and the Kingdom of King Martin was the final cure.
He stepped inside his office, his eyes moving over the volumes of historical texts in his personal library. He sat down at his large antique desk, brushed his hands habitually across the dustless surface, and looked out into the city. The sun was rising over Mobitropolis. He couldn't help musing with a smile that it would never set again.
A shout of surprise at the door startled him, and he saw that the robot guards had caught somebody trying to enter. It was Rhes el Carrion. The vulture grunted with frustration and tried to reclaim his limbs from the vice grip of the SWAT-bots.
The prince snorted and gave a hand gesture, forgetting that he was addressing machines. When the gesture didn't work, he shouted a little too loudly, "Release him, you idiots!"
The robots complied, and Carrion composed himself, straightening his tie and brushing the dust from his suit. He carried a briefcase into the prince's office and took the liberty of sitting down.
Martin, denying his visitor the honour of his full attention, took instead to perusing his vast collection of history tomes. "What do you want?" he asked. He slid a book from its place in the shelf and took it with him back to the desk.
"I wanted to go over the specifics of our arrangement," Carrion replied, "Now that my work is almost done."
"Where is the hedgehog?" Martin asked. He cracked open the book and never made eye contact. "This 'blue blur', this filthy thief."
"He's on his way to the rigs, I saw him off myself. Are you going to try to usurp King Acorn?"
The question shocked the prince into looking directly into the vulture's eyes for the first time. "What did you say?"
"You heard me."
What followed was several minutes of staring, a silent war between them. Martin blinked first, which only intensified his growing rage. His face flushed to an alarming degree.
"How... how dare you? How dare you make an accusation like that? What would make you think that I would do such a thing? To my beloved father?"
"These rumours get around, Princey," Carrion replied, "People talk."
"And what would you care!?" Martin shrieked, "I'm not paying you to be political, I'm paying you to dig up emeralds! You told me that you were impartial!"
"True, and I stand by that. But there's a little problem, you see. My home country has a political alliance with Mobitropolis, and that spells trouble when you start talking about civil war. I can't help but think about what's going to happen if you try to start a rebellion and you bugger it up. The government is going to start arresting people who have fingers in this pie, and after they're done in Mobitropolis, they're going to start hunting blood abroad. The next thing you know, I'm being extradited for high treason."
"You're mad," the prince said, "You're completely mad! There is no rebellion, Carrion! What do you want, assurances?" He was near hysterics at this point, an intimidating sight to behold.
"I'm beyond that, now," Carrion replied, "What I want is insurance. It's going to take a lot more money to make me comfortable with this deal. And I can't work unless I'm comfortable. I'm afraid I'm going to have to double my price."
The prince's rage seemed to drain away in an instant, like a bubble that had been popped. A look of bewilderment covered his face for a moment, and then he almost seemed amused.
"For what?" he asked, "What have you done for me so far, Carrion? I asked you to find me two more emeralds, and instead you lost three. In fact, my patience with your work is beginning to wear thin."
Carrion responded by lifting his briefcase and sitting it on his lap. He worked the lock and clicked open the clasps, opening the case and displaying its contents to the prince.
The case contained four Chaos Emeralds. They lay snug in a bed of styrofoam wrapping, and glowed with all the brilliance they always had. The mouve, the green, the grey and the red.
"Four emeralds," Carrion said, "You still have another two, those are freebees. Just out of the kindness of my heart. There's one more still buried and that makes seven. I know where it is, so if I get excavation started today, I can put the whole collection in your hands by Sunday evening. Signed, sealed, delivered, just like I said. Or, I can walk out of here right now and go straight home, give you a shovel and let you do your own treasure hunting."
"And what makes you think I need you?" Martin asked, "I have the echidna. He knows where the emerald is, and I don't even have to pay him."
"I don't think you quite understand, Martin my boy. If I walk out of here, I'm taking these emeralds with me. I put six years of my life into digging these things up, so I'll be damned if I'm leaving with nothing."
Martin's eyes narrowed. In the time he had known Carrion, he knew enough about him to know when the vulture was having a lark and when he was deadly serious. This was one of the latter occasions.
"You're starting down a road, Carrion," the prince said, "You should stop now and think very carefully about where you're going, because there might be no way back."
"That sounds like a threat," the vulture replied. He snapped the briefcase shut. "That's not a good way to negotiate, it might just be a dealbreaker."
"There is no deal," Martin corrected.
"You're really going to let these just walk out of the door?" Carrion stood up and began to march out of the room. He turned just before the door and waggled the briefcase dramatically for Martin's benefit. "The emeralds are walking, Princey."
The prince and the archaeologist locked into a battle of intimidation, staring icy daggers at each other from across the room. This time, Martin didn't blink.
"Majesty," he said, under his breath.
"What?"
"You will call me Majesty, you lowlife charlatan."
An extra presence in the room made Carrion turn his head, and now the two SWAT-bots who had been standing guard outside the prince's quarters were inside the room, motionless behind him like massive golems. Carrion was taken aback, he guffawed in disbelief at the prince's gall.
"What are you going to do? Arrest me?"
"It's better than cutpurses and thieves deserve," Martin replied, "You're no better than any other pickpocket on the streets of this accursed city. The only difference is that you make a show of it."
Rhes el Carrion laughed again, turning to leave. "See you on the front page, Lord Fathead. Take your money and shove- hey!"
The robots grabbed him by the arms, the shock of his seizure making him drop the case. It broke open, and the emeralds spilled onto the floor.
"Vile things, no class about them at all," Martin commented with a chilling cool about his visage. It seemed as though his fury had overloaded his emotion, melted down his soul into so much scrap, and now he was disturbingly calm. "Disgusting. Idiotic, but wise. They serve me with all their energy. They know better than half the living things in this kingdom, but that is going to change."
Now it was Carrion's turn to lose his temper. "You can't do this!" he shrieked, "I'm an expatriot! You can't touch me! This is against international law, the king will crucify you!"
"I am the king!" Martin yelled back, "I am the king! I can do anything I want! I have the power, you rodent! I am the King of Mobitropolis!"
The robots dragged the writhing, shrieking vulture away until his shouts could no longer be heard. The prince stood, breathing heavy, staring down at the glowing emeralds, all his once again. The red emerald, his favourite, throbbed closest to his foot, and he reached down to pick up the phosphorescent gem and caress its smooth warmth.
"Long live the King," he muttered to himself.

Sonic was struck with a distinct sense of de'ja'vu when he saw the commercial headquarters of Acornex Oil rise above the surrounding coastal sprawl. The building decor was exactly the same as that of Acornex Chemical in Station Square. He wondered just how far Martin's empire actually spread, how many corners of Mobius were already choked by his corporate tentacles. How much power he already held, throne or no throne.
The building was vast, and it backed onto the waterfront, where a massive shipping dock was constructed. There was already a ship in port, and Sonic expected to see robots swarming all over it. To his surprise, it was flesh and blood mobians who were unloading barrels of oil from the ship and driving them on forklifts into the building. The automated helicopter didn't stop here; it continued flying, out over the ocean. Sonic squinted at the horizon, suddenly afraid that they were taking him into another country, or worse, preparing to dump him in the middle of the sea without a parachute.
No, he could see that there was machinery out there, over the water. It was distant, and clouded in haze, but he could see three distinct objects, stretched miles apart. Of course, oil rigs.
"Where the hell are you taking me?" Sonic asked, although he knew it was only for his own benefit, his SWAT-bot escort didn't value conversation highly. Why would the prince take his prisoners to offshore rigs? And why did that seem so familiar to him? Wasn't there a Chaos Emerald on one of these rigs?
As the chopper approached and began to slow, he could see more features on the rig. A crude looking contraption, no reason to try and paint it up nicely for the public when it was so far out to sea. Just a maze of crosshatched steel bars and cages sprouting from the water housing unpainted metal buildings, cranes and other contraptions. The centerpiece to this industrial sculpture was a massive pump, one of the biggest machines that Sonic had ever seen. The enormous slanted arm, with one elbow halfway along its length, slowly flexed up and down with a deep motorised grunting. The hedgehog noticed that once again, somewhat oddly, the rig was crawling with living mobians as well as robot workers. The robotic revolution seemed to have not reached quite this far yet, which stirred some feelings of relief and optimism in Sonic's gut. These people worked for Martin and would probably be hostile, but at least they breathed and dreamed. Mobians could be reasoned with, and even hostile company was better than the company of soulless contraptions.
It was then that the hedgehog noticed something odd below, and he had to look several times to make sure that it wasn't just some kind of illusion. It seemed at first that the water below him, in the shadow of the rig, was darker and more ominous, but the size of the dark patch was too big to account for mere shadow. Then he thought that there was a greater amount of machinery under the water that was making it look darker, but then he saw that the darkness was actually moving on top of the water, moving with the waves. There were a greater concentration of workers around the base of the construction, most of them shirtless, wet and dirty from hard labour.
Things were not moving smoothly on this rig. There had recently been a fairly serious oil spill. The crude fuel spread out over the ocean in a thin expanse of black film.

Robotnik removed his round spectacles and cleaned them on the collar of his shirt. He tried to squint enough so that he could read the statistics on his monitor unaided, but it was a futile endeavour that resulted only in a pain in his forehead. His sight was going the same way as his hair. He replaced the glasses and raked one hand through his moustache.
"This is simply unacceptable," he muttered.
Somebody appeared in the doorway to the musty and mildewed office, and Robotnik turned to prepare for a confrontation.
"Hey Eggman," the worker remarked, "Transport's on the way."
Robotnik frowned, but retained his patience. "How many times am I going to have to tell you? My name is Robotnik. Doctor Robotnik."
"Aw come on mate, it's all in the name of fun," the worker replied, and he smiled, showing a large gap between his front teeth. "We've all got our nicknames here."
"Oh? And what is yours?"
"Gimp. Gimp's me." The worker smiled even wider and extended a dirty hand for Robotnik to shake, but the ill-humoured minister and politician did not grant him the honour.
"Tell me then, 'Gimp'," he said, "What exactly is the extent of the damage in sector seven?"
Gimp pulled back his hand, covering up his attempt at a polite handshake by pretending he was only moving to scratch his head. "Looks bad, Doc."
"I see. Looks bad, does it? And is that a precise figure or just an estimate?"
Gimp gave a kind of half hearted shrug.
"These figures," Robotnik went on, "Are telling me that we're losing a megaliter of oil every hour. This is an unacceptable amount. I came here to investigate a minor malfunction, this is a full scale disaster. What the devil happened out there?"
"Well, some of the boys, they've been thinking sabotage," Gimp replied, "The first explosion, we figured it was just bad wiring, you know? But there's been two more explosions 'round the rear. Looks like something that's, you know, deliberate. Like someone's been laying charges or something."
"And who would do that?" Robotnik pressed, "It sure as hellfire can't be Sonic, he's on that transport."
"Who?"
Robotnik didn't respond. He watched the transport intently as it prepared to land on the rig. The quiet helicopter banked up a little as it prepared to make its final descent.
"I want the men to stay away from that chopper," he said at last, "Don't approach it, let the SWATs handle matters on their own."
"But... what?" Gimp appeared confused, "Why?"
"Do it!" Robotnik shouted. The expression on his face showed that he wasn't in the mood to have his authority questioned.
"Hey, okay, okay," Gimp threw up his arms and stormed out of the office, but not before throwing one final comeback at the science minister.
"I voted for the other guy, you know!"
Robotnik sighed and turned back to the computer monitor. "I wasn't voted in, I was elected by the senate," he mumbled, "Stupid flaming idiot." He observed the chopper again as it readied its landing gear. "I'll see you in a while, hedgehog. Don't you go anywhere."

The SWAT-bots made no effort to be gentle when they hauled Sonic out of the chopper, and the hedgehog was dismayed to find that he was once again dealing only with robots. He had hoped to meet some mobians who could have been reasoned with. He could see several workers some distance away watching him with interest and confusion, but nobody was willing to approach. So much for that.
The robots forced him down a curving metal stairwell and into the catacombs of the rig, where long, black pipes and wires stretched along the walls. Sonic could hear the deep grind of machinery even here, like the beating of a mechanical heart within some inorganic behemoth. Further and further they descended, until the metal walls closed in around them and Sonic could faintly hear the sloshing of water all around, and then the heaviness of silence. They were far below sea level by the time the SWAT-bots finally took him to a storage chamber of sorts. They threw the hedgehog into the chamber and closed the thick metal door before he had a chance to make a run for it. He couldn't imagine what good an escape would do him, anyway, not here, miles out to sea on this mechanical island. He was in the enemy's cage, for better or for worse, his walls comprised of more water than he had ever seen.
"When I get back," he promised himself, "I'm taking swimming lessons."
Sonic didn't know how long he was trapped in the storage chamber, but he knew it was a number of hours, and quite a few at that. All he had was his own mind for company, and he pondered his situation at present and in the future.
More than once it crossed his mind that he should detonate the bomb that - through either inattention, carelessness or miracle - still hadn't been taken from him. The prospect of a pointless suicide stayed his hand and he knew he couldn't go through with it, foremost because he wanted to live, and further because he realised that wasting his one and only chance for destruction on some isolated oil rig that was already falling apart made for a terribly pointless and irrelevant death. He was determined to make his already failed mission count for something as long as there was breath in his lungs.
(you've been in this position before...)
There was something distinctly familiar about the situation Sonic found himself in now. There were memories at the very back of his consciousness, bleeding through into his foremind, and he had to chase them to see what they were, but they ran away from him just as fast as he could persue. It was like trying to remember a dream after he had awoken, the harder he concentrated the more vague the memories became, and it was a phenomenon that he had grown accustomed to. But this time he couldn't merely ignore these images. They needled him, taunted him, threatened to drive him mad like an itch in the centre of his head.
There was a wall inside Sonic's mind. That is, he had come to imagine it as a wall. Its bricks were sooty and old, and its mortar was chipping away in places. Behind this wall lay his long term memory, the records of his entire past, like an ocean of knowledge. At night, in his dreams, the bricks became as tinted glass, just transparent enough to see through into the world beyond, but not enough for any of it to be lucid.
Until recently, this wall had been sturdy and impenetrable, a construction so solid that no amount of force he could muster would have been enough to shift it. But as recently as this past week, something powerful had driven itself at this wall, cracking the bricks and dissolving the mortar. The wall was still mighty, but it was creaking and shifting, puddles of memory dribbling through it and offering the first tantilising tastes of his past life.
Sonic looked at this wall now and realised for the first time that he might actually be able to summon the strength to demolish it. He knew he had been trapped like this before, he knew that he had made a miraculous escape. Although the point of his existence had always eluded him, his will to live must at one time have been immense. That was what he needed now.
"I'm going to do it," he said aloud, "Right here, right now. I'm going to remember everything."
Sonic lay on his back with his hands by his sides, spines splaying out all around him like a spiked rug. He moved his hands onto his belly and clasped them together, took a deep breath, closed his eyes. He found what few memories he had reclaimed, and focused on them.
What did he know? He knew running. He thought about running, imagined fear. Running for his life in some dark place to escape from... what? Running and-
(tortured)
Yes, that's right, he was being tortured and enslaved by- Ghosts? Shadows? These formless entities which once commanded him and always dominated his dreams the way they had once dominated his life. Entities that had once appeared so terrible to him that his mind had opted to hide their true identity from memory.
He had been running. He remembered his legs aching - no, hurting. A stabbing, almost unbearable pain. He had been running too much and it had hurt the muscles in his legs. The ghosts always forced him to run, more than his body could stand. It was ironic - he was running to escape the torture of having to run.
The shadows all at once began to elucidate. They began to emerge, to coalesce, to take actual shape. Sonic became excited and made the mistake of focusing too hard and too suddenly at this memory, and it retreated from him like a spooked animal. Just formless ghosts again. He took a breath and calmed down, tried again.
So. He had been running. Running from what? Something that had tortured him, caused him extreme misery. He summoned this image and tried to make out details. It was a corridor he was running along. It was dark. The ghosts behind him were shouting incoherently. He focused on this one scene and tried to embody his past self, put himself in this panicked hedgehog's shoes. When he was sufficiently focused, he turned his head to try and see what he was running from.
(snakes)
Crack.
His eyes opened as a stabbing pain struck him between the eyes. A success! He had chipped away at the wall, made a crack in its surface, and the wall had retaliated, sending a dart of pain through his skull. He was caught by surprise and lost his concentration, but not before he had caught a brief glimpse of what was on the other side of the wall. It was a familiar image from his dreams, an image of two snakes coiled around each other, one red and one blue. He had been deathly afraid of these snakes, had run to escape from them and from the ghosts associated with them. The image was too brief, too fleeting. What did the snakes represent? They were a very important part of his memory. He had to know more, he had to try and see what was behind the screen memory that his mind was trying to deceive him with.
Sonic tried again. He relaxed as much as he was able, knitted his fingers together on his chest and descended into his mind, breathing steadily and slowly.
Running. From snakes. And ghosts. And torture. Sonic was young, just a child, and he didn't understand what was happening. All he knew was fear. He ran for his life from his dark master... he didn't know who it was but he knew that he had once known this ghost as his master and that it radiated a very intimidating aura of power. He was afraid to run from it, afraid to defy it, but his little body had been driven to the brink of its tolerance and he would rather have faced death than face the snakes even once more. So he had chosen to face death.
As he drifted back into his state of deep meditation, Sonic resumed constructing the scene that he had almost seen clearly before. He saw himself running down that dark corridor, heard those impossibly coloured snakes hissing behind him, felt his fear and the omnipresence of the ghosts. Sonic didn't know, but with the steady rhythm of his breath, his comfort and his hovering just above the threshold of sleep, he was actually entering into a state of hypnosis. Rather than his usual attempt to watch his memories like movies, he was trying to interact with them and move around within them, and he was constructing a lucid dream that worked to dissolve the wall between his consciousness and subconsciousness.
He saw himself running, and suddenly he felt it as though it were happening right there and then. He felt the ground beneath his feet, felt the sharp and burning pain in his leg muscles, heard his harsh breathing, tasted his own sweat.
Now he could understand what the ghosts were shouting. It was his name. "Sonic! Sonic!" He willed himself to stop running from them.
(NO!!!)
The resistance was intense. This hedgehog child was far too scared of his persuers to listen to the frightening advice of his future self. All he knew was fear, he had to keep running, keep running. He was so frightened that he tried to block out the knowledge of what was happening. He tried to forget, to forget it all.
"No!" Sonic commanded, "No, damn you, stop!"
(i can't or they will catch me)
"You have to. Your fear is creating a blockage in my mind, do you understand?"
(but it feels better to forget, reality is too frightening)
"Face them! They can't hurt you, they're just shadows!"
(no! i have to run away from them! i have to forget them forever!)
"Look at them, you little coward! Stop running and just turn around! Just look at them!"
Sonic's pace slowed. His resolve weakened, his fear began to fade. As it happened, the ghosts began to coalesce again, to merge into one another and take form. They screamed his name, and the sound of it threatened to reignite the fear in his gut. He wanted so badly to run. What the hell was he doing? This wasn't the time to be brave and stupid, this was the time to run like he had never run before. To escape the pain and forget it.
But Sonic wrestled with his instincts and brought them under control. Slowly but surely, he slowed to a stop. He heard the snakes behind him and expected them any minute to coil around his neck and choke the life out of him. The ghosts behind him were no longer ghosts. They had become fully substantial. He felt their presence. All he had to do was turn around and see them.
(no! if i can't see them they can't hurt me)
"Look at them!"
(mustn't... mustn't give them form...)
He felt their breath on the back of his neck. Felt their claws raking at his skin.
"Look at them!! Look at them!!"
He turned... trembling, he turned and faced them, and saw the thing behind him for what it really was.
CRACK!
This time a migraine wracked Sonic's head, and he snapped fully awake with a cry, throwing his hands up to his head, which still throbbed with echoes of pain. Still, he had seen! He had punched a hole in the wall, had looked through it for the first time, looked right through it, beyond all its curtains and veils, and had seen a horrid image from his past. The image still frightened him, for he had seen one of these ghosts and knew what it looked like. He had seen some jagged and hideous, henious thing staring at him with its dull silver skin and bright orange eyes like spotlights in a sharp and oversized skull. It didn't seem like something that should rightfully exist, but it did. He didn't remember what it was, but he had seen it almost as clear as day, just for a fraction of a second.
How long had he been meditating? Sonic realised all at once that his spines were in disarray and there was a stream of drool from the corner of his mouth to the floor. He had willed himself into a full dream state, but it had felt as real as the room around him did now.
As he pondered this, there was movement outside his cell. A pang of fear ran down his spine as he realised that the metal door to the store room was being unlocked and opened. His enemies had finally decided it was time to face him.
"Here comes the idiot brigade," he said aloud, "Here to drag me somewhere else, I suppose."
"Sonic," the figure in the doorway replied, "I'm hurt! Is that any way to speak to someone who's here to save your big blue butt?"
Sonic cried out in shock and relief, and Kethriel smiled at him with the comic grin he was known for.

Martin Acorn, until recently the Crown Prince and heir to the throne of Mobitropolis, sat reflecting upon his life.
This was his favourite place to sit and think. It was a place where he could surround himself with the legacy of his ancestors. This was the soul of Mobitropolis, the heart of the kingdom. The treasure rooms of the palace, with their glittering contents adorning the walls. Martin sat before the crown jewels, gazing at them as lovingly as one might gaze upon their dearest love. With his hands he softly caressed the red Chaos Emerald as it was nestled in his lap.
And he pondered.
Soon he would be king. In his own mind he never doubted that it was strength that had brought him here. The strength to never back down in the face of the mightiest adversity. And it was strength that was needed now. For only a mobian of great strength could hold together a crumbling empire.
His legacy began, he supposed, with the screaming miscreant on the red carpet, an experience which stuck in his mind even now and which he regarded the turning point in his reawakening as a proper monarch. He had been seven years old, his sister only six, and his father still proudly guiding his devoted wife with one arm hooked around hers in a most regal manner, her posture so elegant that her disability was barely even noticable. Although Sally claimed absolutely no memory of the day, Martin carried the image in his mind so clearly that he still remembered the faces on the crowd, the birds in the sky, the smell of his dear mother's perfume.
It wasn't so rare in those days for the royal family to step outside the palace and step into the world they dedicated their lives to ruling over and protecting. Martin loved those excursions. He loved to listen to the adulation of the crowd, loved to see the beauty of the fairy-tale kingdom that was Mobitropolis. Horse drawn carriages, greystone streets, the greenest of greens in the grass and the bluest of blues in the water and the sky. To his juvenile eyes it had always been a utopia, and it was the glory of the House of Acorn that kept it that way.
The queen had died later that year. Then everything began to change. The paranoia against technology still ingrained in the minds of the people even so long after the end of the Android Wars ensured that there was no way of detecting the queen's disease until her body was so riddled with it that her muscles melted away as well as her mind. Nothing but a screaming lunatic thrashing on the royal bed in that final week. The same disease that had taken her eyesight by the time she was thirty had gone on to take every last living part of her. She wasn't an iota of the fairytale queen that she had once been while she was lying on that bed, screaming nonsense about demons and bees and dust bunnies. If Martin's illusions weren't already shattered by then, then they certainly were afterward.
The royal family rarely left the palace grounds together again. In fact, the king himself only ever left the palace three or four times in all the years since that fateful day. The prince treasured his memories of those excursions all the more after it became apparent that the golden years were over. This was one of their final visits to the city, and the people still screamed from either side of the barriers, stretching out over the red carpet with splayed fingers, desperately trying to touch royal skin.
But amidst the adulation, there was one very different sound. Martin heard it, even though one voice speaking out over thousands of others was almost futile. Martin heard that voice before anybody else.
"BOOOOOOOO!" somebody was screaming. A whole kingdom full of people shouting praise until their lungs gave out, and one single objection. Even so, it was like an orange atop a bushel of apples, like one flat note in the middle of the sweetest symphony. To Martin it was the loudest scream of all. "BOOOOO! BOOOOOOO!!"
He looked about the crowd to find the villain who dared to try and spoil such a fabulous day. His poor blind mother appeared agitated too, now, and she cocked her head even though she would never see the interloper's face. All at once the sound grew louder, and even the crowd dulled their cries. Somebody appeared at the barrier, shaking his fist at the monarchs, booing and cursing. A wolf, his pelt matted down with filth and mange, scraps of material draped around him as though he were the victim of a deranged tailor. He shouted ever louder, appearing to revel in the attention. All at once he began to climb over the barrier, and the king grabbed his children by the hands to keep them from walking towards the miscreant.
The wolf stumbled onto the red carpet, and Martin felt offended by his presence, this filthy, disgusting creature who dared to set foot on royal ground. The guards began to move in on him immediately. The crowd was fully silent by this time. There wasn't a single sound apart from the booing of this dissenter.
"All hail the Acorns!" the wolf cried, "Sitting in their warm palace with their billions of dollars and their gold plated thrones! Three hot meals a day for you, Majesty! I bet you've never had to worry about where the next mouthful is going to come from!"
The guards carted the struggling miscreant away, who continued screaming. "Kick off one of your shoes and it'd feed me for the rest of my life, you greedy disgusting sons of dogs!"
Martin remembered questioning his father later that day. He asked why that filthy wolf hated them so much when everyone else loved them. The king had replied that there were, in fact, many people who felt the same way. Martin wondered why anybody would want to spoil such a beautiful day with heretic and stupid ideas like that. He asked his father why they didn't have the wolf thrown in prison for the outburst. The king had said that it was because everybody had a right to their opinion.
But how could this lunatic's opinion possibly hold the same weight? He didn't see the beauty of what the Acorns had accomplished, what they were still accomplishing. He contributed nothing to Mobitropolis. By the look of him, he was a scavenger, a blight on the city's clean image. How could an uninformed, misguided and obviously crazed opinion have as much right to exist as the learned and experience-driven opinions of intelligent mobians?
Martin had developed a passion for history from the moment his tuition on the subject began. Even at seven he had some knowledge of the concepts of civil war and treason, and he knew how such conflicts always began. The rulers of nations always faltered in their control, regulations were relaxed, corruption seeped into the system. All it ever took was one misguided individual, one screaming, booing miscreant, to shatter thousands of years of glory and reduce a nation to anarchy. It worried Martin that his father would show such a weakness in ensuring the stability and the security of Mobitropolis. Today's miscreant was tomorrow's terrorist. It was the first time that Martin had ever questioned his father's leadership. It would by no means be the last.
Although the young prince grew to bitterly dislike his father's concept of constitutional monarchy, his democratic parliament, he found himself gravitating towards the company of one such politician. He was only a senator at this time, just a face in the crowd, but Ivo Robotnik was one of the more outspoken members of the panel, and his politics fascinated Martin. He still recalled his first private conversation with the professor. He was only eight years old when, on the way back from the bathroom at a high-profile palace ball, he came across Robotnik in the halls, and they began the conversation which would eventually lead directly to current events. It was then that Robotnik had pledged allegiance to the young prince, and confided to him that he was planning something revolutionary for Martin's eventual reign, something which would bring Mobitropolis back to its former glory and ensure total security for years to come.
Of course, that was all back when Martin was still his father's chosen heir. That much had changed soon after the queen's death. As the years rolled on, the king, miserable and lonely, had developed an ever growing attachment to his daughter. He saw her mother in her eyes. Just another bad decision in his father's inept reign, Martin realised. It was to be his last.
The prince stared at the crown jewels through the glass. Now, the plan which he had developed for the past decade, developed until he thought it was flawless, was beginning for the first time to show signs of weakness under the strain of its own complexity. Things were going wrong. Emerald thieves continued their assaults. His facilities were compromised by sabotage. Now the leader of the emerald project had been taken out of the equation, and he had no way of organising the excavation of the final relic.
And yet, despite these problems, he was only days away from the revolution. He could count the hours. He looked at the ceremonial crown behind that glass, stared into the Eye of Mobitropolis. The deep blue gem stared back at him.
He clutched the red Chaos Emerald and thought long and hard. It was imperative that the next few days run smoothly. Everything he had fought for so passionately was about to become his. All he needed was to get his hands on the final emerald. It was the one hurdle left for him to overcome.
He looked down at the red emerald which glowed in his hands and produced a little warmth against his skin. A little fire burned in its heart. He looked up again at the Eye of Mobitropolis, the sacred gem encrusted in the peak of the ceremonial crown, a deep blue jewel with an eerie luminescence of its own and a strange resemblance to-
The prince's eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat. The crown's Eye reflected off his pupils which shrank to points to limit its glow.
"My stars..." he muttered. "Gods above..."
The red Chaos Emerald fell from his hands and rolled across the floor until it came to a stop against the adorned wall of the treasure chamber.
"I've won," he said, "I can't believe this, all these years... all these years..."
The seventh and final Chaos Emerald was not lost after all. In fact, it had chosen the most invisible place of all to hide itself - in plain sight.

"Nobody will find us here," Kethriel assured Sonic. The two hedgehogs sat together on a metal outcrop just above the waves. Sonic watched the water below, a black film of oil coating the surface for as far as the eye could see. The oil ocean lapped sublimely at the side of the rig, everything beneath those waves obscured by perpetual shadow.
"And look," Kethriel added, "Real food! Here, get into that." He handed Sonic a couple of sandwiches, which the blue hedgehog began to eat almost before they were fully given to him. He hadn't realised how hungry he was. "Plenty of Mobians on this rig," his companion said, "Which means actual food, not just oil and spare parts. Plenty more where that came from, kid, don't be shy."
"I sure am glad to see you," Sonic said between mouthfuls, "I mean, really glad. I was starting to think I was all alone in the world. Man, I've got some stories to tell!"
"I bet you do, kiddo, I bet you do." Kethriel smiled and also endulged in a sandwich, though not with Sonic's vigour. "Now's probably not the time and place to discuss such things, though. We're behind enemy lines, so to speak. Best to keep a low profile."
"I didn't expect to see you again for ages," Sonic said, "Actually, I have to admit I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again. Heck Kethriel, what are you doing here?"
"Well, Sonic, first of all, I think you've done me enough favours to earn the right to call me Keth, like everyone else."
"Oh..." Sonic stopped eating and looked suddenly quite glum. "No, I haven't done you any favours. I don't know if you know this already, but I lost the emeralds, Keth. I dropped them right into one of the prince's trains. It wasn't my fault, there were these gangsters, and this fox kid... oh hell, of course it was my fault, you trusted me and I failed you. I tried to warn you that I wasn't cut out for this..."
"Whoa, whoa, slow down there, kiddo!" Kethriel exclaimed, laughing a little, "You stop right there. You haven't failed anybody, in fact you've done more than we could ever have hoped or expected. The Freedom Fighters and I are all very, very proud of you."
"How come?" Sonic asked.
"Well, you see... you... well... I have kind of an admission to make. There's something I didn't tell you when I explained this plan to you. I told you what you had to know at the time, you understand, but the rest of the Freedom Fighters haven't been sitting idle all this time. Nobody wants to put the burden of the fate of Mobitropolis on your shoulders, Sonic. Each of us has played our own part during the past week. Your role has been to divert attention, and you've done it brilliantly."
Sonic could hardly believe what he was hearing. "Are you telling me I'm the bait?"
"No!" Kethriel exclaimed, "No, kiddo! Nothing like that at all! Believe me when I say that if not for you, Martin would have won already. You've kept the Chaos Emeralds out of his reach all week. It's not a bait situation, it's an ambush. While the prince's cronies have been chasing a blue blur around the continent, the rest of us have been gathering intelligence for a reasonable counter-attack. It doesn't matter so much that the emeralds are back in his control, because now we know enough about the master plan that we might just be able to tear it down from the inside."
Sonic wanted to burst out laughing. "Thank heavens! I thought- I thought I'd screwed up for sure. I was on my way to... actually I don't know what I was going to do."
"You've done enough for now, that's for sure. That is to say, you don't have to do anything alone anymore. Stick with me from now on, we're going to wrap this up together, you and I."
"Is there really hope for Mobitropolis?" Sonic asked, "Do the Freedom Fighters have an upper hand?"
Kethriel thought for a moment. "Think about it like this," he said, "This whole thing is like a game. Just a great big complicated board game. Prince Martin doesn't know all our moves, and we don't know all of his. But there's one thing that we're hoping gives us the advantage, and that is that we know we're playing a game. Martin doesn't. You see, Martin's plan from the very beginning has been to sweep the rug right out from under everyone. Everyone's supposed to go to bed on Monday night thinking everything is completely normal, and wake up Tuesday morning and find that the empire has been overthrown and half the population have been turned into robots. It's a quiet revolution. Quick, clean and easy. Robotnik's superweapon, the Robotizer, is waiting just out of sight. There's a SWAT-bot every ten meters in the city, and each one is built with a loyalty clause that binds them to the will of their makers. Technically, the city is already Martin's. Once he has all the emeralds together he can flick a switch and take control. By the time anybody knew what was happening, it would already be far too late."
"But you said the emeralds don't matter!" Sonic said, confused.
"Ah yes, and that's true," Kethriel replied, "For you see, we know one thing that Martin doesn't. Our friend the prince is just about to find out that the last of the Chaos Emeralds, the one he still thinks is buried, is actually already in Mobitropolis. In fact, it's been right in front of him the whole time. It's one of the crown jewels, and it's locked away very securely in the treasure vault of the palace. Only King Acorn himself has access to it. And this puts a significant wrench in Martin's plan. In order to retrieve the final emerald, he's going to have to strike Mobitropolis early. His forces must siege the palace and take the emerald before he can power up the Robotizer and make his final assault."
"So... how does that help us?" Sonic asked.
"It helps because it opens up our window of opportunity," Kethriel said, "Instead of an instant and clean takeover, Martin's war is going to last at least a few hours and is going to be at least a little bit messy. It's going to be sloppy, ill-planned and badly conceived. In other words, it's going to be the weakest point in Martin's strategy since the whole thing was put together. This is where we must strike. We've been planning for this all week. We're going to intercept the prince's war and stop him before he can get to the emerald. Shut down his military and regain control of the city, and without the emeralds he can't strike back with the Robotizer. We can get him in checkmate, Sonic. If we play these few hours right, we can nail him."
"Great!" Sonic exclaimed, "That's the best news I've heard all week, Keth!"
"I thought it might be," the other hedgehog replied, with a wink.
"And you know what you could say that would make this news even better?"
"Yeah? And what's that?"
"You could tell me that we're going home as soon as we've finished these sandwiches."
Kethriel laughed. "I hear ya, kiddo. Unfortunately there's one more stop to make."
"I was afraid of that."
"I didn't actually expect to meet you here," Kethriel admitted, "Our contacts in Mobitropolis informed us that you had been captured, and I knew they couldn't take you to the city in case you blew the lid off the prince's plan. What I assumed is that you were on route to Zero Seven."
"Zero what?"
"Zero Seven. It's Ivo Robotnik's primary robotics facility... just this massive, massive factory where the professor has all his clunkers manufactured. It's also where the prince sends most of his private prisoners. People who have gotten too close to the truth and have to be taken to an out-of-the-way place where they can't cause any trouble if you know what I mean. That's where I'm headed next, and I was going to intercept your entourage while I was there. I just came here first to cause a bit of mischief."
"Hey, are you responsible for that?" Sonic asked, and he pointed to the jet black water below.
Kethriel chuckled. "Yeah. I was just trying to make a bit of a diversion. One of the Chaos Emeralds was here and I planned to do a bit of emerald thievery of my own, just to be a further pain in the prince's neck. Unfortunately for me, it turns out that the emerald has already been moved. They're all on route to Zero Seven, I guess that's where they're going to be collected when it's time to take them up to the space station. Meanwhile, my mischief here attracted Robotnik to fly out here and inspect things, and after he landed he requested that you be sent out here as well. It's very strange, Robotnik seems to be even more interested in you than the prince is. I'm not sure why."
"And is that why we're going to Zero Seven?" Sonic asked, "To make another move on the emeralds?"
"Not this time," Kethriel replied, "That's what they're expecting us to do, so that's where most of the security is going to be focused. Just another thing working in our favour thanks to you, kiddo. All I need to do in Zero Seven is gather a bit of information, anything we can find that might help us to disable the SWAT-bots before Martin can assemble them against Mobitropolis."
"Great," Sonic said, "Just one more question."
"Shoot."
"How do we get off this freakin' rig?"
Kethriel smiled. "Oh, come on. You can't think that I haven't considered that one."
"Even smart people can overlook the obvious, Keth. That's one thing I've learned."
"I choose to take that as a compliment."

"He was here," Robotnik said, "Because I saw him."
The science minister stood before the open door of the empty storage cabin which had briefly encapsulated the fugitive Sonic the Hedgehog. Gimp stood beside him, picking his nose and staring into the unremarkable room with an expression of disinterest. "Well shucks mate, I wouldn't rightly know," he said, "On account'a not being allowed near him and all. Robots make lousy eyewitnesses."
"I saw him," Robotnik reiterated, "And my robots do not make these kinds of mistakes. There's only one explanation for this. The hedgehog has friends here."
"Well he ain't my friend, that's for darn tootin', I don't know any hedgehogs."
"No you idiot, I mean he has allies." Robotnik sighed under his breath and brought one callused hand up to his mouth, pointer finger stroking his moustache. "It's all coming together," he muttered, "The sabotage, the emeralds... he's not working alone, he's joined with the Freedom Fighters."
"The freedom what-now?" Gimp asked.
"Never mind. Cease all outgoing shipments as of right now. If the hedgehog and his friend are still here, then they're stranded. The Flying Battery is en route, and when it arrives I'm taking it to Zero Seven. From the time I leave, this is a quarantined rig."
"Hey, that ain't fair!" Gimp protested, "How long is that gonna hold? This team's rotation is nearly up! We're going home in two days!"
"It will hold until I say otherwise," Robotnik replied. And with that, he turned and walked away, though he continued talking to himself as he walked. "I know this won't stop you, Sonic," he said, "But I just want to see for sure. Keep experimenting. It is, after all, a passion of mine."

"Why are there so many people here?" Sonic asked as they watched a number of workers from the shadows, "I mean, everywhere else uses robots, now."
"Yeah, that's progress," Kethriel replied, "This is one of the last old-fashioned companies left with the Acornex brand, the robot revolution just hasn't fully caught up with it yet. It doesn't matter, in a few days the question will be irrelevant either way. Robotics will probably be outlawed again after this coup is thrown out. Come on, we better get going before the good doctor sees that you're missing and raises the roof."
Kethriel led Sonic away from the workers and towards a small dock at the side of the rig. The water lapped just below his feet, and it dawned on Sonic that he didn't want to touch the oily, slimy-looking water if he could help it.
"Don't you tell me that we're swimming to shore," he said, "Because in that case I'm taking my chances with Robotnik."
"You're hilarious, Sonic. Actually, I had a much more stylish transport planned. We'll get off this tin can the same way I got on in the first place. If you will just direct your attention to the shadows under that girder."
Sonic squinted into the darkness and saw that there was some kind of small boat tied to the dock and hidden in the shadows. Kethriel pulled on the rope that bound it, and Sonic laughed when he realised that it was a jet powered water-ski.
"You're kidding me," he said, "Where in the heck did you get that from?"
"What do you mean? I'm best friends with a princess, I can have anything I want. Now, are you climbling aboard or will you be dining with the professor?"
Kethriel climbed onto the machine and started the engine. It spluttered and roared into life, its pilot waggling his eyebrows and sporting a wry grin. Sonic clumsily boarded behind, and instantly realised why hedgehogs rarely sat behind each other.
"Ouch!" the younger hedgehog exclaimed, "You're slicing me to pieces, here! Next time, I get to drive!"
"Trust you with my brand new toy? Not bloody likely, kiddo!"
He revved the engine twice and then took off. The jet-ski skipped across the waves with a loud buzzing-churning noise that rattled Sonic's skull, and the spray from the black water of the oil ocean splattered against his body, although he realised that Kethriel would be getting most of it.
It was then that he noticed the silk bag around his neck, pinned between his chest and the other hedgehog's spines. One of the greatest mysteries of this adventure, and he hadn't thought to bring it up.
"Hey Keth!" he shouted over the engine and the splashing water, "What's inside the silk bag?"
"I'm glad you kept it with you!" Kethriel shouted back, "We might still need it before the week is out!"
"But what is it? Is it a bomb?"
Kethriel didn't reply for a moment. Then he said, "You understand why I haven't told you everything, don't you? That sometimes you actually do more good if you don't know the full story?"
"Yeah, I think I understand."
"Well, let's just let this be one of those things. Suffice to say that, if you're ever really in a jam, there's something in there that might just give you the strength and incentive you need to keep fighting."
"You're lucky I have self control," Sonic replied, "Or else I- hey! Holy crap! Keth, what's that?"
A huge, dark shadow was passing over the water, and Sonic was pointing to the sky, his outstretched arm throwing the jet-ski a little off balance. Kethriel asked him to put his arm down and tried to crane his neck up to see what was in the sky above them.
The object Sonic had seen was larger than anything he had ever seen airborne. An absolutely massive craft, the size of an aircraft carrier or larger, was soaring over their heads, travelling in the direction from whence they had come. Such a thing seemed to defy the laws of physics with its sheer size, flying through the air as though it were weightless.
"Flying Battery," Kethriel said.
"What?"
"That's the Flying Battery battleship. The prince bought it recently to beef up his military. You can relax, it won't attack us, probably hasn't even seen us."
"This is going to be a hard fight, isn't it."
"Hard and bloody. I can't deny that. But we'll win."
Sonic was silent. He was going to ask Kethriel how he could be so sure, but Sonic already knew what the answer would be.
They would win because they had to.