The following short story is based on characters created and/or copyrighted by SEGA! Enterprises, DiC Productions, Archie Comic Publishers, Fleetway Comic Publishers, and the Taki Corporation. All other characters were created and copyrighted by Roland Lowery. The author gives permission to distribute this work freely as long as it remains intact and unaltered, and the transfer of monetary units is not involved. Questions, comments, suggestions, complaints? Send them to me at . I enjoy hearing from people who can spell. Chaotic Multiverse Tale #8 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote for the day: "There's all the time there is all the time." -Proverb ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Heroes Returned (Part 4 - Heroes Saga) by Roland Lowery SONIC WAS dreaming. It seemed to be one of his normal nightmares, but a few strange qualities and scenes had been added to it. He was runing across the plains that seperated the Great Forest and Robotropolis. The sky was red and black, broiling like an explosion that had taken up the entire ceiling of the world. As he ran, Sonic hummed a tune, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the grass and far-spaced trees around him were melting into toxic black goo. Suddenly, Sally's voice boomed from the heavens. "SONIC! HELP!" "Sal?" said Sonic. He immediately turned in the direction that her voice had come from and found her being escorted by two ComBots on the other side of a deep gorge. They led her kicking and screaming to a portable mechanizer. Sonic recognized it from when he himself had been turned into a Mecha-Sonic. Sally screamed his name one more time before being placed in the mechanizer's glass tube. He searched for a narrow spot in the gorge to jump over, but it was too wide, much too wide. Sally's mouth opened wide, but no noise escaped the sound-proof glass tube. The only sound was the sharp *tink tink tink* of metal on glass. A hideous mechanical monstrosity was circling the tube slowly, tapping a sharp finger on the glass. The thing was all sharp and jagged edges. Its limbs were angular and its mouth was filled with fangs. It looked away from Sally and stared at Sonic with its glowing red eyes. It laughed, harsh and metallic, then reached down and activated the mechanizer. "SALLY!" Sonic cried out. He then screwed up his face in anger and screamed, "MECHANIK!" He didn't know what the word meant, but he felt that it had something to do with the sharp-edged 'bot. Sally jerked still as the tube filled with red mechanization energy. Piece by piece, her body reformed into metal. Small robotic arms reached from the ceiling and floor of the mechanizer and began to implant weaponry into her arms, legs, head and body. Sonic fell to his knees and banged his fist on the ground in frustration. Mechanik laughed again as it opened the mechanizer. Sally - no, MECHA-Sally stepped out. She looked across the canyon with black rimmed red eyes. "-*WHERE WHERE YOU WHEN THE BRAINS WERE HANDED OUT?*-" her synthesized voice boomed. Her boot jets propelled her into the air and she fired lasers at the cliff facing that was directly under Sonic. The dirt slid out from under him and he tumbled into the gorge after it. He fell for what felt like an enternity. When he finally hit bottom, he opened his eyes. Instead of the floor of the canyon, however, he found himself in a jungle, leaning up against a tree. Suddenly, a purple-haired Mobian weasel filled his field of vision. The weasel put the barrel of a pistol right between Sonic's eyes. He smiled a crooked grin and said, "You let your friends down, Sonic. But what's worse, you let your enemies down, too." Sonic squeezed his eyes tight and waited for the shot that never came. He looked around him and found that he had shifted locations again. He was now standing in a room made entirely of colored glass. In the center of the room, a small green sun shone brightly. Knuckles appeared beside Sonic, and he was wearing a patch over his left eye. "In thy faith," said the echidna in hushed tones, "thou shalt be healed for all time, and thy loyalty shalt be rewarded immeasurably." Knuckles stepped into the green sun and came out on the left side. He faced Sonic and pulled away his eye patch. The eye underneath had been gouged out, leaving nothing but a bloody, empty socket. Even as Sonic watched, though, the eye slowly regrew and the skin repaired itself. Within seconds, Knuckles' eye was healed. Sonic felt a sharp pain in his back. He looked down and saw that a bolt of pure white light was protuding from his chest. It expanded and he felt himself being accelerated past the speed of light, one atom at a time. When he was finally nothing but free floating energy, he felt himself blaze through a barrier that was never meant to be broken, and then and then he became whole again, and he was screaming. Knuckles was screaming, too, and he was holding his head as blood gushed from his left eye socket. Then everything went black. They awoke in the empty sub-basement of the Research and Development plant that they had been sent to check out. Sonic rubbed his head, shook it to clear it, then looked over at Knuckles, who was just starting to sit up himself. Sonic T. Hedgehog felt his heart skip a beat. "D-dude . . . your eye!" he said. Knuckles T. Echidna looked at him groggily. "Wha-? What are you talking about?" Sonic looked around and found a small piece of refelective metal nearby. He held it up to Knuckles' face. The echidna shifted around, trying to get a good look at the eye he found he could not open. "Great Walkers," he breathed when he finally saw the black eye patch that someone had placed on his left eye. "This doesn't mean that . . . Does it?" "I don't know," said Sonic. "How did it happen?" Knuckles shrugged. "I don't remember anything since Bunnie dragging me and Sally out of the tower . . . " He stopped and his face screwed up in concentration. "What?" asked Sonic. "My island!" Knuckles exclaimed as he stood up. "C'mon, we have to go save it!" "But what about your eye? It been gouged out, for Pete's sake!" Knuckles grabbed Sonic by the shoulder and hoisted him into a standing position. "FORGET about my eye for the moment! Don't you understand? We can change the future! We HAVE changed the future already by remembering what we've seen! We have to save the Floating Island!" He moved to run out of the building. Sonic grabbed him and held him back. "Whoa, whoa, there, soldier," he said. "We gotta figure some things out here first! Like, was what we saw real in the first place?" "Did you see a future where everything was dead, and what wasn't dead might as well have been?" Knuckles asked impatiently. "Did you see me with an eyepatch and you with a constant headache? Did you see Sally half roboticized, and Bunnie as a cyborg? DID you?" "Yah, I di-" "Then it was real. I saw it too. Let's GO already!" Jeez, thought Sonic, usually I'M the one in a hurry. He grabbed Knuckles by the wrist and ran out of the building, headed towards Knothole Village. Sonic's burst of speed stirred up some debris, including a note that they had missed. It read: "Dear Sonic and Knuckles, We are dearly sorry that we had to leave in such a rush, but the machine suddenly started acting up and it started up a teleportation beam to take us all . . . somewhere. I'm guessing back home, but who knows? Anyway, you two fell unconscious when the stasis field holding you let go, and I'm sorry to say that we were not fast enough to save Knuckles from falling on one of the machine's many parts. We patched up your eye as best we could, Knuckles, and we are dreadfully sorry for the mishap. I don't even know if you will get this message, but if you do, I and the others want to thank you for doing whatever it was you did that made the machine finally activate its teleport. Many thanks. Phil." The forest was filled with the sounds of birds singing, of squirrels rustling through leaves on the ground and on the trees, of insects buzzing this way and that, and of a bear trundling through the underbrush, searching for a place to nap. Abruptly, all sound stopped. The birds fell silent as the squirrels stood straight and pricked their ears. The bear, too, stood up to its full nine foot height and started to look around. The insects were the only sound left, and they were gradually fading into the background as they left the scene. Another sound replaced them, the sound of something cutting through the air faster than the air could close up behind it. It was a barely noticable noise, a sort of continuous swish. A small blue dot appeared on the small, barely perceptible path that led between the trees. The blue dot grew to include a red dot that appeared to be slightly behind it. These two dots could only be seen for a few seconds as they knifed through the air and sped by at incredible speeds. As soon as they were gone, the sounds of the forest were starting up again. The bear resumed its search as the birds and squirrels began to sing and chatter again. Two seconds later, the sonic boom that had been travelling behind the two speeding dots since they entered the forest hit. The bear howled its outrage at the sudden assault to its senses, and the smaller creatures started falling from the trees, blown over by the tremendous rush of wind and sound. And everything was quiet again on the path that led to Knothole Village, the heart of the Great Forest and the Freedom Fighter movement on Mobius. Princess Sally Alicia Acorn reached up and touched her toes, then touched the keypad of her computer, Nicole. Nicole's monitor automatically displayed Sally's pulse, blood pressure, body temperature, and various other measurements. She let herself go limp for a second as she resumed her original position, then began to bend her legs and stomach. Her controled breathing was the only sound in the hut, save for an occaisional beep from Nicole. Sally's exercises were interrupted when Nicole emitted an attention-getting beep. She allowed herself to go limp again, then said, "Yes, Nicole?" "There is someone approaching the hut door, Sally," said the computer. "Judging by the sound, weight, and gait of the footfalls, it would seem to be-" A loud knock at the door stopped Nicole mid-sentence. "Y'all in there, Sally Girl?" came a deeply accented voice. "Yes, Bunnie," Sally called. "Come in!" Bunnie Elizabeth Rabbot opened the door a crack, stepped in, then quickly closed it. She looked over to where Sally was hanging upside down from the hut's rafters and frowned as she saw the half-dead look in her friend's eyes. For the past four days, Sally had waited for Sonic and Knuckles to come back from their mission in Robotropolis. Gradually, she had become more and more withdrawn from the rest of Knothole, concentrating alternately between patching up Mecha-Sonic's memory core and her exercising. She no longer took her breakfast with the rest of Knothole in the mess hall, but stayed secluded in her hut, eating whatever she found in her cool box. As far as any of the other Freedom Fighters knew, she had stopped sleeping two days ago, and yesterday, she had proclaimed that she did not want to be disturbed until Sonic and Knux returned. Bunnie was suprised that Sally had just allowed her to come into the hut. "How much longer is this goin' t'go on, Sally Girl?" Bunnie asked. "What?" Sally asked simply. "All this heah skulkin' about! When are yuh goin' t'come back outta th'hole you've dug yoahself into?" "Have Sonic and Knuckles checked back in yet?" Bunnie paused for a moment, then shook her head no. "Then I'm not." Bunnie's jaw went slack. "Wh-why not?" she stammered. For the first time in their conversation, Sally's upside-down face gained some expression. She frowned and glared at Bunnie. "Because they're DEAD, Bunnie," she said in an angry voice. "They've been gone way too long without checking in, physically or by radio, for there to be any other alternative! I-" "Ah think someone else maght have somethin' t'say 'bout that," Bunnie interrupted. She gently slid the door of the hut back open, letting light into the mostly dark hut. "Y'see, Ah lahed." A blur of movement blasted into room, accompanied by a cancophany of noise. The blur moved past the speed of sound, then edged upward until it achieved past the speed of light, leaving the afterimage of a blue streak almost five feet behind its actual position. As abruptly as the blur entered the room, it stopped and coelaced into the form of the one, the only, Sonic the Hedgehog. "Heya, Sal!" he exclaimed as he opened his arms wide. "Miss me?" Sally suddenly twisted upward and she unclasped the gravity boots on her feet, then dropped lightly to the ground. She rose, fast as lightning, from the crouched position she had landed in and jumped into Sonic's outstretched arms - - then promptly passed out from a combination of lack of sleep, the blood suddenly rushing from her head, and pure joy. "Er, I guess so," Sonic mumbled. He picked the Princess up in his arms and laid her down on her bed, then quietly tip-toed out of the hut with Bunnie. "Sweet dreams," he whispered softly as he shut the door. "Well?" asked Knuckles impatiently. "She'll be okay in a few hours," replied Sonic. "She just needs some sleep." "WHAT?" exclaimed the echidna. He glared at Sonic with his good eye. "We need her awake, NOW! The survival of the Floating Island depends on it!" "Look, dreads for brains," Sonic said as he pointed a finger at Knuckles, "she needs to sleep if she's going to be any kind of a leader at ALL! Besides, we still have to wait for Nicole to get finished with Mecha-Sonic's brain before we go off half-cocked!" "You can't possibly agree with this," Knuckles asked Bunnie. "Ah'm afraid so, shugah," the rabbit confirmed. "With ol' Sonic back, he takes ovah leadership'a th'Freedom Fahghters 'til Sally Girl wakes up. He's th'one callin' the shots. Heck, while Sonic was gone, AH was in th'driver's seat, an' Ah would'a made th'same decision!" Knuckles threw his arms up in the air and turned around. "I can't BELIEVE you people!" he yelled, more at the entire village than Sonic and Bunnie personally. A few passer-by Freedom Fighters looked up from what they were doing, but continued on upon seeing that it was a core FF dispute. "We can't just sit around an-" "That's EXACTLY what we're going to do, Knuckles m'boy," said a voice that seemed to come from nowhere. "No way, Archy," Knux said up to empty air. "I say we should prepare for Robotnik on our own until these dimbulbs finally decide to join us!" Bunnie frowned. Sonic and Knuckles had still not told her - or anyone else for that matter - what had happened for the five days they had been missing. This mention of taking Robotnik on on their own confused her. "Are you sure that's the wisest decision?" Archy asked. "Do you remember what the Machine showed you?" "Yah," replied Knuckles. "What of i- . . . oh." He bowed his head and started grumbling. Sonic, who had been fuming over the "dimbulb" comment, felt realization hit him as well. "If you don't wait for our help, your island WILL be history," he said. "Oh, all right," Knuckles finally said, "we'll wait. But . . . where are you, Archy?" A huge puff of blue smoke formed and swirled a few feet away from the three of them. The passer-by Freedom Fighters hardly gave it a second glance. They were used to the unusual by now, and if Sonic wasn't worried about it, neither were they. Except, inside, Sonic WAS worried about it. He looked at the huge puff of smoke and wondered just what on Mobius this "Archy" could be. His fears were abated when he saw the smoke disipate to reveal the Chaotix: Mighty Mighty Armadillo, Charmy Albert Bee, Espio Carlos Chameleon, and Vector Tangent Gator. But- "When the hoo-hah did y'all learn t'do THAT li'l trick?" asked Bunnie, taking the words right out of Sonic's mouth. "We didn't, sis," said Vector. He held out a hand, and standing there was a small fire ant wearing a vest, bent-brimmed hat, and claw necklace. "HE did." "And you are?" asked Sonic. The fire ant bowed deeply and swept his hat off. "The name is Archimedes Fire Ant," he said, "and you are Sonic the Hedgehog and Bunnie Rabbot. A pleasure meeting you all. I can already see the question in your faces, and just let me say that I and Knuckles met due to some . . . family business of his. Next question's answer, I found Knothole because I can tune my magic to find Knuckles where ever he may happen to be." "Well, it's a good thing ol' Robuttnik doesn't have any magic," said Sonic. "What are you doing here?" "We're here to help ya prepare," said Mighty. "Archy told us all about the planned invasion of the Floating Island, and we're gonna help ya set up supplies and the like." Bunnie screwed up her face again. "Ah feel lahke Ah'm th'only one here who don' know what's goin' on!" she said. "You're not the ONLY one," said Espio as he looked at Knuckles' eye patch. "Hey, Red, what happened to your eye?" Knuckles shrugged. "Er, nothing," he said. "It'll be fine. Just then, Rotor Boome Walrus ran up. "Hey, guys," he said then looked around with a confused look on his face. " . . . and, er, Chaotix . . . and . . . ant? What's going on here?" he asked Sonic. "Long story, Rote," the hedgehog said. "What've ya got for us?" Rotor held up a commlink and said, "Okay, Nicole, repeat what you told me before." Nicole, who was still in radio contact with the computers in the computer hut, said through the commlink, "The information extraction from Mecha-Sonic's damaged memory core is complete, with 3.45% total corruption of data. All of the pertinant information regarding the mecha's mission on the Floating Island pertains to a full scale invasion of said island by much of Dr. Robotnik's Robotropolis resources, as well as a new development whose details were not in the mecha's memory." "Well?" prompted Rotor when Nicole had finished. "How did y'all KNOW this?" asked Bunnie in a hushed voice. "You mean YOU didn't?" asked Charmy. Sonic stared at each other in silent agreement to work together, no matter what, from now on as Rotor looked around, more confused that any of the rest of them. "Did I miss something?" the walrus asked. Sally woke up in a puddle of sweat. Most of it, she realized as she pulled together her muddled mind, was from her earlier exercise, and it had merely rubbed off onto the bed when she was laid down in it. The rest had come from a strange nightmare that she could not remember the details of. She sat up and reflected on the feelings that the nightmare had caused in her. Instead of immediate fear, like most nightmares elicitted, she felt a sense of deep loss - loss of self as well as loss of possession and control. She quickly recovered, however, and walked over to a dresser. She opened one of the drawers and pulled out a robe. She walked to her bathroom and started to shower the sticky sweat off of her body and out of her fur. Twenty minutes later, she stepped out, wearing the robe, and pulled Nicole from the rafters where she had been placed for the gravity boot exercises. "Status report, Nicole," she said as she laid the computer on her bed, "Freedom Fighters." "Status: general alert, Knothole Village," said Nicole. "By who's order?" "Sonic T. Hedgehog, commander of the Freedom Fighter General Army." Sally nodded to herself. So, it was true that Sonic had made it back, and it wasn't just a part of Sally's elusive nightmare. "When was this order given?" she asked. "At 10:43.05am, 10/17/34, the order was officialy given to sound general alert. The current time and date is 12:37.78pm, 10/18/34." "So, I've been asleep for approximately fourteen hours." "Affirmative, Sally." Sally nodded again as she started opening drawers in her dresser. "What is the reason for the general alert?" Nicole detailed the extraction of the information in Mecha-Sonic's memory core. "The attack on the island will commence at noon, tomorrow," she said as she finished up. Sally rethought her choice of her normal blue vest and boots to wear and prepared to suit up in full camoflauge. She was dressed in five minutes and was out the door with Nicole hanging by an arm strap in eight. "OW! Dammit! Watch it with that thing!" Knuckles yelled. He started to squirm a little in his seat. "Oh, c'mon, ya big baby," admonished Sonic. "Can't take it?" "Why don't YOU come over here and find out what it's like to have needles shoved into YOUR eye socket?" Sonic grinned. Rotor sighed as he realigned the nerve connector he was working with. "Look," he said, "I know I'm not Dr. Quack or anything, but he and all the other doctors are busy at the moment and I'm the only other one qualified to do this, so would you please hold still so we can get this done?" Knuckles continued to grumble, but settled down as Rotor resumed connecting the prosthetic eye. "Just remember that this is only temporary," said the walrus, "until we can get something better and more permenant. The only thing that's going to be holding it on is the small clamps that slip over the bone surrounding the socket. If it gets jarred too often, or too hard, there's a chance that it will pop out. Understand?" "NO," said Knux. "Why can't I get one of those better, more permenant ones right now?" "One, we don't have the time to install it, and two, we don't have one at the moment. You're lucky that we had THIS prosthesis handy. Okay, that's the last nerve connection. Boy, whatever it was that got your eye got it good. My guess is that it stuck in, then you must've pulled back and it staye-" "Please, Rote," said Sonic. "Enough with the grisly details already!" Rotor looked up. "Sorry." He turned his attention back to Knuckles and said, "This is gonna pinch for just a second and tingle mightily for just a minute. You ready?" Knux nodded an affirmative. Rotor reached down, inserted the clamps on the bottom side of the eyepiece into the echidna's eye socket, the twisted the piece until he heard a click. Knuckles sucked air through his teeth as the clamps bit down on bone, then relaxed and reached up to scratch his eye. Rotor caught his hand and said, "No, no, Knux. I know it tingles and itches, but don't touch it. Is it working? Can you see?" The echidna blinked, then blinked again in suprise. "The electronic eye," he said. "It's blinking too!" Rotor nodded. "It's supposed to. Studies showed that people with unblinking prosthetic eyes often started suffering from all sorts of maladies, from nightmares to imbalances in their psyke. The inability to blink throws the brain off because it interrupts an autonomic function, one that happens whether you think about it or not, like breathing." "Nice technobabble, Rote," said Sonic, "but what does that mean, exactly?" "If he doesn't blink, he goes crazy." "Ah. Yo, Knux, can ya see me?" asked Sonic. Knuckles looked over and said, "All too well, spiney." "Good," said Sally as she stepped into Rotor's workshop. She walked up to the three of them as she played her fingers over Nicole's keypads. "Everything and everyone seems to be ready, so I suggest we leave for the island as soon as possible." Knuckles grinned widely. "Finally, someone else knows what they're talking about!" he exclaimed. "Let's go kick some butt!" Mass movement of troops, unfortunately, was not Knothole's forte. The village only had three planes: a small biplane that was used for extremely short flights, a cargo plane - which was what all of the FF troops except the core members were travelling to the island in - and Antoine's newly refitted Turbo-Prop. "Az you can be see-eng," said Antoine Guy DeCoolette as he showed the rest of the core Freedom Fighters and the Chaotix his plane, "we 'ave been enabled to steal many of ze componants of Robotnik's Stealth 'Bots and be do-eng ze incorporaseons of zem into ze Turbo-Prop. We 'ave ze VTOL, Vairtical Take-Off et Landeng. We 'ave ze lasair guided miss-isles. We 'ave ze aircraft to ze aircraft lasair guns. We 'ave-" "Unfortunatly, Ant'," Sonic said impatiently, "what we DON'T have is a lot of TIME! Could we speed it up a little?" "Hmph," said Antoine. "Zome peoples do not 'ave ze appreciaseons of ze fine arts of aircraft!" He sighed and opened the Turbo-Prop's door, letting the others in. "Come along, come along now. Zeemingly, we are not 'aving ze 'all day'," he said sarcastically. After they were all aboard and seated, Antoine slipped his aviator goggles on and took the pilot's seat. He turned on the jet engines and opened the ceiling doors of the underground hangar via radio signal. The underground hangar had been trashed when the Freedom Fighters had found it four years ago. Sonic had stumbled across it accidentally, and found that Robotnik had too, years earlier, and had set off an explosion that he seemingly had thought destroyed it and everything in it. Indeed, Robotnik HAD done extensive damage, but the Freedom Fighters had been able to fix it all over a long period of time. It was fortunate because they had just finished building the original Turbo-Prop from parts stolen over the years, and they needed someplace to stash it. While making the last bit of repairs to the individual plane stalls, they had found one plane, the cargo plane that was now cresting over the clouds in front of Antoine, still intact. The biplane, named the Tornado by Tails, had been given to Knothole by one of the other Great Forest Villages as sort of a present in thanks for Sonic saving them from SWATbot discovery. The flight lasted for almost two hours. Knuckles and Archimedes had led them to the island unerringly. "Vishuals contact made, mah Preencess," said Antoine. "Thank you, Antoine," Sally said. "Take her in." "How'd y'all know where it was?" Bunnie asked from her seat behind Knuckles. "I always know where the island is going to be," the echidna said. "What kind of Guardian would I be if I didn't know what the wind currents were going to do to my home, especially while I'm away from it?" "And I used my magic," said Archy, "though I must say the lad here is a might bit faster at atmospheric calculations that I thought he would be." "Eh." Knuckles shrugged. "What else did I ever have to do when I was on the island alone?" Suddenly, the Turbo-Prop was buffetted by laser fire, effectively ending the conversation. "What the heck is goin' on out there, Ant'?" Sonic yelled. "SWATbots in attack glidairs!" the fox yelled back. "Beginning evasive maneuvers!" "What? Are we too late?" asked Mighty. "DAMN!" cursed Knuckles. "I KNEW this would happen!" Sally looked down at Nicole. "No," she said, "according to these readings, this is only a scout sized force! The real army hasn't come in yet, apparently!" The entire plane shook. "As if THIS isn't enough?" asked Espio. Hundreds of miles away, a short, whiney man was looking down his long, pointed nose at a report currently being filed into the Robotropolis computer. "Sir," said Snively over his shoulder, "you may want to take a look at this." Dr. Ivo Robotnik stepped up behind his whiney assisstant. "What is it, Snively?" he asked. "We're just now getting a report from the scout squad that was sent to the Floating Island." "And?" "They have encountered some . . . trouble, doctor." Robotnik frowned. "What sort of 'trouble', Snively?" "Visual feed now, sir," said Snively as he tapped his fingers across a keypad. "It's the Freedom Fighters, doctor." The control room's main screen flickered to life, showing the view from a SWATbot's patrol pod. Two Freedom Fighter planes were making their way to the Floating Island. One was a large aircraft, the other a small jet like plane. "Magnify the smaller aircraft," ordered Robotnik. "Magnigying now, doctor." The smaller plane jumped into sharp relief on the screen, three times its original size. Robotnik sat back in his command chair and started sorting through files on the small computer console set in the armrest. When he found the one he wanted, he made it appear in the corner of the larger view screen. "Do you see anything unusual about these two, Snively?" he asked. Snively looked at the Freedom Fighter plane, then the file photo. "Barring a few modifications," he finally said, "both of these are StealthBots, sir! How did they get hold of those parts?" "I don't know," said Robotnik through grinding teeth, "but I intend to pull that information from their brains as I roboticize them slowly, Snively . . . Go and make sure the space transport is ready, and call of the scouts at the island. I want to greet the Freedom Fighters personally." "Yes, sir." "What the hey was that?" asked Rotor. "They 'ave broken off their attackings!" informed Antoine in an incredulous voice. "Why 'ave they done thees?" "Forget that for now," ordered Sally. "Damage report, Antoine." "We 'ave taken negligee damage," the pilot said. "Same for ze othair plane." "That's 'negligible', Ant'" said Sonic. "That es what I am saying! Negligee!" Sonic sighed and rolled his eyes. "Whatever! Just get us down there safely, willya?" "Oui, takeng 'er down now." They watched as the cargo plane set down beside the Eternal River, close to the spot where Sonic and Tails originally crash landed on the island almost a year ago, and then set down beside them with the VTOL engines. The Freedom Fighters in the cargo plane had already filed out and were waiting for instructions. "You had no problems landing?" Sally asked the pilot of the cargo plane. "None whatsoever, ma'am," said the pilot. "Unless Robotnik messes it up over here too bad later, we should be able to take off again without a hitch after this is all over." Sally nodded, then said, "We're here for just that reason, to make sure he doesn't mess this island up too much, if at all." She turned to the rest of the Freedom Fighters, took Nicole out of her pocket, and started detailing the war plan using holographic maps. The Freedom Fighter army dispersed and covered the main points of the Floating Island. It was, of course, impossible to cover the whole thing, seeing as how large it was, but they could make good guesses as to what Robotnik was going to do. The core FF and the Chaotix had stationed themselves around the Zoot Chute, the access tunnel to the Chaos Chamber where the island's main Chaos Emerald was kept. Sonic, Knuckles, and many of the other impatient members of the two teams were nearly going bonkers waiting for the first strike from Robotnik. Just when tempers were about to snap, especially between Sonic and Knuckles, a steady thrumming noise filled the air. Everyone looked to the sky, but could not see anything that would produce the noise. A few clouds drifted along in the noonday sky, occaisionaly blocking out the sun, but that was it. "What es thees?" asked Antoine. "What ES eet?" "Chill, Ant'", said Sonic. "Tails, go fly around and see if you can-" Sonic stopped because his jaw suddenly stopped working at about the same time as his brain. He stared up dumbfoundly at the object he had spotted up in the sky. Everyone else followed his gaze. Sliding through a the largest cloud up above them was a monster of an air vehicle. It was egg shaped, and had what looked to be a sort of charicterature of Ivo Robotnik's face. For eyes, it had two large, red tinted observation windows. A long raised section that ran along the middle represented the mustache and was emblazoned from one tip of the mustache to the other with the words "DEATH EGG". Small hangar doors on the Death Egg opened up, and StealthBots, army transports, and SWATbot Patrol Pods spewed forth, all zipping towards the island at Kamikaze speeds. There was a sudden, loud thump that emenated from the Death Egg. A slight whine accompanied it, marking it as the activation of a public address system. Robotnik's voice blared out at almost ear-splitting levels, enough to be heard across the entire island. "Freedom Fighters and citizens of the Floating Island," he said, "this is Dr. Ivo Robotnik speaking. For the past two years, I have been building this, the Death Egg, in Mobius' orbit. If you surrender now, I promise that you will NOT be roboticized, but killed mercifully instead. Any resistance will be met with the deadliest force, but remember that I DO take prisoners!" The doctor chuckled into the microphone. "Do you comply?" A volley of laser shots erupted from the Mushroom zone. They hit a SWATbot Patrol Pod and sent it down to the ground in flames. "I take that as a no," said Robotnik. "All units attack!" Robotnik switched off the PA speaker and looked back across his spacious operation center. "That went rather well, I think," he said. "All fine and good, fat boy," said a high-pitched, slightly nasal voice, "but what about the emeralds?" Robotnik glared at the Mobian, the only truly organic being in ops other than Robotnik himself and Snively, and said, "Never, EVER, call me that again!" "Yah, whatever," said the Mobian. "You gonna answer my question or what?" Robotnik steamed for another second, but managed to cheer himself back up with thoughts of what was to come. "Yes," he said, "I think I will. As you may remember, it is YOUR job to get them. As soon as we get close enough to the island, you will go around to the Sandopolis Zone on the other side, and take them by suprise." "Null persperation. You said the main emerald is in the Toot Chute or whatever?" "The ZOOT Chute, yes. It will be guarded by the core Freedom Fighters, the ones I told you about." The Mobian waved a gloved hand in the air. "They won't be any problem, believe me. Now, if you don't mind, I got some preparing to do." Robotnik nodded. "Dismissed," he said. Nack The Weasel nodded back, then walked across the room, lighting a cigarette along the way. Robotnik turned to Snively. "Call the new model up, Snively," he said. "Let's give those rotten Freedom Fighters a little jolt before crushing them." Snivley nodded and opened a commlink. "Ops to Mecha-Sonic," he said into the microphone. "Mecha-Sonic, Robotnik wishes to see you." "Acknowledged," said Mecha-Sonic's robotic voice. "Ah," said Robotnik, "it's all finally coming together . . . Just a little while longer, and I will have crushed the Knothole Freedom Fighters, AND gotten two Chaos Emeralds to power this machine, and all my other machines as well!" Robotnik laughed for a very, very long time. TO BE CONTINUED Roland Lowery