EggAmy

= The Empress: Amy Robotnik =

Prelude
Amy had moved in to an apartment. It had been some time since her last time spent, being a captive of Eggman and Metal Sonic, and getting rescued by Sonic. Her dabbling into the occult had shown her she was to meet them, and she had set out to the place dictated by fate. After that day, she had lost contact with Sonic, but the cards of fate had showed her where to go. She knew she would meet him again. The cards showed it could go a few different ways. One path led to an endless struggle in her quest for love, and another had led to great power. It was unclear to her which path led where.

She went to the indicated places, and just as expected, ran again into Sonic and Tails. They were running around as usual, not paying much attention to her.

One day while walking along the street, she encountered a small green crystal. She picked it up, and could sense it held power. She tried to use the power of the crystal to see what it could say about the passage of time, instead of the future saw glimpses of the past. Her actions lead to a flash of energy. This flash got the attention of a young Rabbit named Cream, who could also sense its energy. Cream had been in town shopping with her mom, Vanilla.

Cream had a Chao with her named Cheese, who recoiled at the sight of the crystal, but Cream was soon enough able to calm him down. Amy then closed her hand around the crystal, and it sparkled and disappeared. Cream looked intently, shocked at the disappearing crystal. "Where did it go?", "Wouldn't you like to know." Amy then demonstrated another of her abilities by holding out her hand, and with a swirling of sparkles summoned a large hammer. Cream and Cheese were amazed.

Amy said, "I got this hammer one day from my cousin, Rob, before I first met Sonic. It was an item passed down in the family, given to him by our maternal grandfather, Charles." Cream, "Is it heavy? It looks heavy." Amy, "Not really." She sets it down on the ground, and as soon as she lets go, the concrete under the hammer cracks. Cream tries to pick it up, but is unable to move it. Amy reaches back down and picks it up, and says, "It is a bit large though, so I store it in my own special place." The hammer then sparkles and disappears. Cream, "Where does it go?", "It is not somewhere easily explained.", Amy reaches out and touches Cream on the shoulder, and after a flash Cream sees a place. It is initially dark with a bright light above a see of swirling fluid. After a moment, Cream can see into the space, seeing the hammer along with a lot of other stuff floating in this space. It then slowly changes into being more aquatic looking, with the fluid more water like, in a space which continues to swirl and deform. Cream can almost see hints of people and places, but as she reaches for them they warp and disappear. The fluid within the space seems to be flowing into and through the crystal. As she touches it, it flows onto her arm and then into her body. She feels 'different', and after a moment begins to panic, and tries to run away from the fluid flowing through her. After another flash she finds herself up in the air, about 5 meters above Amy. Amy is looking up at her, with a surprised expression. Rather than falling to the ground, Cream finds that she is slowly gliding, feeling the breeze on her ears. Trying to move her ears, she finds that she can control which direction she moves. After a short while, she makes her way back to the ground. She asks Amy, "What was that?!", "It was just a little glimpse. But when I tried to bring you back, suddenly you were up in the air."

Cream was still a bit confused, and neither knew how she was able to glide. Cream didn't complain too much though, as now she had something else in common with Cheese.

After a while, Vanilla came up to retrieve Cream. Amy was surprised as Vanilla was Mobian, yet much larger than a normal Mobian. After some funny looks from Amy, a normal Mobian nearly half her size, Vanilla feels slightly self-conscious about her size. She admits to Amy that some of her ancestry may have included humans. Amy has some reservations about the idea of such relationships between humans and mobians.

Later on, they meet up with Sonic and Tails, with Sonic being aloof as normal, but Tails and Cream hit it off, with Tails describing the Tornado and some of its various features, and Cream showing off her newfound ability to jump up in the air and glide to the ground (initially prompting surprised looks from Vanilla, who had no such ability). Tails similarly demonstrated his anatomy-defying ability to use his two tails as a propeller and gain flight.

Cream ends up regularly visiting Amy, and Amy quietly teaches her how to hold her own in a fight, which she keeps quiet from both Sonic and Vanilla, Amy realizing that Vanilla doesn't much approve of the thought of her daughter being involved in armed combat. Vanilla has enough of a hard time as-is with tails and his propensity for being covered in grease after working on engines. Both Amy and Cream find that they have something in common in that in some ways they need to keep up a facade. Despite appearances, Cream isn't as meek as she looks, and Amy isn't quite so innocent.

Encounter with Eggman
Amy and Cream were walking back to Amy's apartment after going out shopping. On the way, Amy encounters a bird with a rather oversize necklace, which fell down and hit Amy's head on the way down. The bird seems to be unconscious, possibly from hauling the weight of such an over-sized necklace.

The bird then regains consciousness, and chirps chaotically at Amy, but Amy doesn't understand. "Hey little birdie, I don't speak bird." Cream says, "What are you saying little bird, do you even have a name?" Amy responds, "Hey, why not call her Birdie?".

Shortly thereafter, they encounter a robot. The robot says to her, "Give me the bird." Amy says "No!" She then grabs the bird out of the air, and runs off into a diner. She hides in the diner, and the robot seemingly heads on by. She then walks outside, encountering the robot waiting just outside the door. The robot responds by grabbing Amy, and then flies off while carrying her. As she is being carried off by the robot, she sees Sonic on the ground looking up at her. Sonic watches her being carried away, but seemingly does nothing to try to stop the robot. As she gets further away, Sonic begins running, but seemingly back in the direction towards the Mystic Ruins.

Amy is then forced to go into a cell. She is then put off by the dreary appearance of the cell, and her thoughts about food. The cell is a dimly lit cage with steel bars. Outside the cell, she sees some other cells, and some random pieces of disassembled machinery strewn about. She tries to grab the bars to break out of the cell, but as soon as she touches them she feels the strength leave from her arms, and finds she unable to bend them. As she falls back on the floor, she notices that her hands are covered in salt. She tries to pull out her hammer but finds that she is unable to do so. As she tries harder, the salt begins to crackle and pop. She brushes off her hands, and her arms start feeling a little better. She tries to summon her hammer again, but when it hits the bars it suddenly becomes heavy and then disappears again.

After a short while, another robot approaches. It says, "Give me the bird." Amy responds, "No!" The robot continues, "Give me the bird.", and Amy continues to debate with the robot over the wellbeing of the bird. The bird then flies up to the robot, and begins tweeting at it. The robot looks confused. The robot then turns and begins to walk away, and the bird follows. Amy yells out "Birdie, wait!" before sitting back on the floor, disappointed. The robot then again briefly looks at her briefly on its way out the door.

Eggman sees the bird, and walks over and grabs her, then squeezes her necklace. Her necklace pops open, and it ejects a chaos emerald several times larger and heavier than the bird. The robot says to Eggman, "A request was made that you not cause harm to the bird." Eggman looks confused, he did not program Gamma to think for himself. "Please explain the nature of your request?" Gamma responds, "The prisoner felt strongly that the bird should not be harmed, and believed that you intend to cause harm to the bird, yet the bird seemed to willingly follow me out here. Why? How would it know that you would not hurt it, and not take the safer option of staying in the cell with the Girl?" Eggman saw the point, though was mildly intrigued that Gamma would be able to have this level of thought. Normally his robots are limited to basic tasks not requiring a whole lot of intelligence short of being linked with a sentient lifeform to serve as its wetware. The E-100 series robots had used Flickies as their wetware.

Previously Gamma had brought Eggman a frog, which when Eggman squeezed it spit out a chaos emerald. Eggman then threw the frog and chaos emeralds into Chaos, and instructed Chaos to deal with that pesky airplane. As Chaos went on Deck, the Tornado was approaching the deck. Chaos then charged up with chaos emerald power, and shot a large beam from his mouth, hitting the Tornado's wing, causing it to spin and go into a free fall. Chaos then jumped down from the Egg Carrier and began heading towards Station Square.

Eggman then felt cheerful that he had successfully thwarted the hedgehog from ruining his plans. He also decided to try to appeal to Amy that he was not entirely a villain. He went to her cell, and said to her "Sorry about all this. There was a mix up and you ended up down here by mistake. These robots aren't very smart you see.", She responds, "What happened to Birdie?!" He responds, "She is fine, I just needed her help with something was all." Birdie then enters the room, still wearing her necklace, albeit with the chaos emerald having been replaced with a shiny piece of crumpled plastic. Amy responds, "Birdie!". Birdie flies to Amy, chirping at her, "Sorry, I still don't understand what you are saying."

Eggman figures Amy probably hasn't eaten anything for a while, and so offers her food and drink. It is all pretty fancy, so Amy eats a lot of the fancy food, and drinks a lot of wine. He then tries to portray his projects and activities in a positive light, subtly implying Sonic as someone who doesn't really know how to have a good time.

What Eggman didn't realize though, was that he was giving her a lot more attention than Sonic typically does (Sonic always blowing her off and hardly ever returning her affection), and she was getting a bit overwhelmed with all the attention she was getting from Eggman, combined with being a little bit wasted. She really didn't care as much about his projects one way or another, and had her feelings swayed by the large petting zoo he had aboard the ship (it was actually a holding pen, but with a few quick cosmetic changes), where she had petted some goats and gave them food pellets, with their tail wagging in excitement as more pellets fell out the other end.

Suddenly, Amy hopped onto Eggman and started making out with him. He didn't exactly fight back, as he hasn't really had a whole lot of luck with the ladies, and this was kind of a new experience for him. Amy continues to squirm and fondle him, wrapping her legs around him, undoing his pants and moving her panties aside, and, suddenly, he was in. He laid back as he was ridden by Amy, she felt too good for him to fight back now, he felt her hips and her breasts some, before finding release. She continued on for a little longer, before laying down on top of him and stroking her hands on his face before passing out.

The next day, Amy wakes up, feeling the effects of her night of drinking. She feels herself, remembering what happened the night before, and feeling a mild sense of shame, but at the same time, it wasn't all bad for her.

Eggman comes in, offering her coffee and breakfast, and to drop her off back at her apartment. She then agrees, and is dropped off back at her apartment. Her friends are happy to see she is back, and she tells them that her being captured was basically a mistake, albeit she did leave out some of the details.

Next Months
Life seemed pretty normal right then. Sonic battled Chaos and won. It was not all fun and happiness, as Big holds Froggy after his extended time inside Chaos has rendered him unable to survive on his own. Big cries out Froggy's name as Froggy breaths his last breaths before passing away in Big's paws, and then proceeds to quietly sob and mourn Froggy's loss. After this, Big became more distant, choosing to spend his time by himself, always fishing but never catching anything. As he does so, he continues to mourn Froggy's loss, left that one day a still living Froggy would just so happen to get caught on his fishing pole.

As part of Amy's part, she takes some of her fur, and some fur stolen off of Sonic, and a few drops of her blood, and tries to brew it into a love potion. Despite her efforts though, it never worked. It would just turn black and foul smelling, which by conventional wisdom, was the potion telling the caster that there was no way it could work. She also tried making effegies of her and Sonic, with bits of her and Sonic's fur, and placing them in the scenarios and acting them out as she wanted to take place. This was seen as a possible way to try to appease fate, to convince it to take the course of actions depicted to it, rather than follow its own normal course of events. She didn't really want to face the course of events which were laid out in front of her, what would happen, and who she was to become. Amy still held out hope, but despite her efforts nothing she could do would seem able to change the outcome.

Amy continued trying to come on to Sonic, a little more overt than before, but continued being rejected. Eventually, she had to admit something to him: She was going to have a baby. His response was then "Why are you chasing after me then, you know it is not mine." Her feelings were hurt, and she didn't want to admit who's it was. Lacking any one else, she tried to pass it off on Knuckles. Sonic was like "Yeah, whatever." She tried coming off on Knuckles, but his response on seeing her was along the lines of "I know you all don't think too highly of me, but I am not that stupid.", "But, can't you just pretend it was yours?", "No." Knuckles didn't want to admit openly about Rouges' advances on him, but personally he would much rather pick Rouge over Amy, finding Rouge to be much more reasonable and respecting his boundaries. Amy, however, will tend to push and pester until she gets what she wants. Even if it were all pretend, it would invariably come back to bite him later, and that was not something he wanted.

Tails overheard their conversation, and mentioned it to Sonic, Sonic responded "I thought as much, but this does raise the question of who it was. Let me know if you find out anything."

Lacking many other options, she eventually got back in contact with Eggman. They then ended up meeting now and then on the side, with Eggman responding favorably to the new found attention, as well as the notion of having a family with her. Tails, was keeping watch from the side, noting how they interact in Station Square, and their occasional public displays of affection.

Tails goes back to Sonic, "Yeah, she's been, uhm, f***ing Eggman.", "Seriously?! F***ing Eggman?!" For many other people, Sonic might not have cared too much, him tending to see Amy's advances as more of an annoyance, but for him, going at it with Eggman was going a bit far.

After this point, Sonic generally refused to talk to her, with Tails being the go-between. This didn't last for long, and Amy ended up moving in with Eggman aboard the Egg Carrier.

As for Eggman, since his encounters with Amy, he had started rethinking things, and had been moving towards non animal-based cores for his robots. Installation of the new core would copy some of the essential elements from the animal, which would then be released. Gamma was assigned a mission to find the various other robots and install the new cores. Upon completing this mission, Gamma replaced his own core, and a bird emerged. Eggman had modified and concealed some of his older records which had shown some of his older and less than humane methods for incorporating animal wetware into his robots.

Birdie and her family were reunited, and continued to hang out aboard the Egg Carrier, realizing that anymore Eggman wasn't such a bad guy, though they had mixed feelings about their time spent in the robots.

Next Years: Rise of the Eggman Empire
Shortly thereafter, Amy and Eggman had married and Amy had given birth to a daughter, who they had named Zilia. She looked mostly human apart from her pink ears, long pink hair, and tail. Her face was also human, her having two separate eyes, more like her father. Amy became known as Amy Robotnik, and given she was prone to the occasional fits of rage and was none too kind with those she was angry with, she became known as The Pink Terror by her enemies, but went by her self-proclaimed title Empress Robotnik.

Amy had since become distant with her old friends, scornful and bitter about the rejection she had faced before. She showed little pity when they fought in battle, her seeming to get some level of satisfaction from getting back at them. When Amy started to get out of control, Eggman would often start monologuing about things, and would try to calm Amy down to moderate her fits of rage. Eggman seemed often more concerned with the technology used to face Sonic, and would tend to engineer limits into his technology to allow Sonic to be able to prevail against them.

His relationship with Sonic was complicated, in a way Sonic was partly his creation. He had at one point encountered the young Sonic, who had gained considerable speed after Eggman had him hold some of the Chaos emeralds. His power was a bit unstable, so he worked on some shoes to allow Sonic to better utilize his abilities. Things went bad between them when Sonic found out about some of Eggman's "other" projects, and when he refused to stop his pursuing his research, Sonic vowed to stop him. Not long after, Sonic began destroying his robots.

Metal Sonic was created as a means to try to battle on more equal terms with Sonic, but Metal ultimately proved ineffective on this front. He was a robot, but built to match Sonics' capabilities. Metal's AI partly relied on a neural interface Eggman had covertly implanted into Sonic prior to bringing Metal online, in addition to having a neural link back to Eggman. This allowed Metal to sense and act on Sonic's motivations, as well as to better follow Eggman's will, but even as such, Metal managed to seemingly have a will of his own, thinking and deciding on actions beyond those dictated by Eggman.

Early on Metal had held Amy captive, and at Eggmans request, had pulled Amy close. Metal then exposed Amy to the power from his Chaos Drive. She struggled as Metal's energy flowed into her, and seemingly of his own volition Metal said to her, "See, I too have a heart!" (much to Eggman's confusion as to what he meant by this). Eggman was curious if she could develop super-speed similar to Sonic, but was initially disappointed when it appeared as if nothing had happened. However, that night, Amy tried to run off and as Metal tried to grab her, she jumped up into the air and disappeared. She reappeared somewhere else a short time later, and metal had noted on recapturing her that her strength was considerable. When Sonic came along to rescue her, she returned to acting cute again and downplaying her abilities. Metal had on his own decided to race Sonic, with Amy as the Prize. Sonic won the race, and he and Amy had fled Little Planet.

After the events on Little Planet, Eggman had no other option but to put Metal Sonic in stasis, as he continued relying on more stable and predictable robots with non-sentient animals being used as wetware.

Eggman took notes of his experiences with Metal and the E-100 series, trying to find a way to devise an AI which was a little more, human.

Sonic didn't think about things too hard, taking for granted that Eggman's robots were made largely out of a mix of plastic and cardboard parts. He mostly just figured Eggman was cheap, however, many of these same models which were sold to the United Federation had used primarily metal construction, and as a result were much harder to beat. These robots tended to have neither strong AI capabilities nor wetware, as the Federation and G.U.N saw the robots purely as military equipment. Eggman in turn gave them simple state-machine AI's, as fitting for a dumb machine. There is little to gain in giving a good AI to people who were unable to appriciate its abilities.

Amy had also gotten involved with the robotics side of things. She put her touch on many of the robots, them now coming in pink and other vibrant colors, vs the more dark and neutral colors Eggman had usually preferred, and varying the designs.

Sonic was initially confused on encountering big pink girly-looking robots, or ones looking like tea cups or kitchen utensils, but soon enough he got over it, realizing he could destroy them just as quickly as the others. This pushed Amy further, as Sonic had not only rejected her, but was now taking pride in destroying those things she had worked hard on helping to create.

Not liking Sonic breaking her designs, and contrary to Eggman's preference for cheap easily defeatable robots, she began to deploy all-metal robots to missions where Sonic and friends were involved, making them much harder as Sonic found himself largely unable to easily destroy the robots.

She began to refuse sending any robots after Sonic if they failed the test of being able to withstand blows from her hammer. Soon enough, this all but destroyed Sonic's ability to win agaist them, causing Eggman to go and quietly hide more power ups and rings around in the various zones to make it more of a fair fight.

She came to overlook the little things for sake of the bigger picture. After all, it wasn't really her doing anything wrong, she just sat back as the robots did most of the work.

Her methods became a bit more harsh, as she more often met frustrations with a fit of rage and later trying to candy coat her bitterness with nice sounding words. Sonic preferred to avoid her robots, preferring not to have his ass handed to him as Amy tried to rationalize her behavior and give a candy-coated explanation for why it was really her and Eggman doing good for the world.

She said to him, "What are you hoping to achieve in all this? You are living in a world of struggle of pain. Me and Ivo hope to bring peace and order to the world, to rule in the name of kindness and justice. Fighting us only brings pain and destruction. Do you think people like having their personal property destroyed merely so you can save a few seconds? Have you forgotten how much we all have suffered under the hands of the United Federation? Are you aware how much pain Ivo feels, being expected to pledge obedience to those who took the lives of his family from him, leaving him fighting against these cruel authorities in the hope of trying to redeem the image and legacy of his grandfather?".

Sonic disagrees, having seen the harm caused by Eggman's ways. Metal Sonic also wasn't quite so much the nice and friendly robot that Amy seems to remember him as. "Has she forgotten the time she was held captive by him. This wasn't a case merely of misunderstanding his intentions."

6 also expands into Agribusiness and Personal Care products, advertised using a mix of paid models and androids. Based on his earlier work with Metal Sonic, Eggman Enterprises expands into humanoid androids with more advanced AI capabilities, gaining a near monopoly in many of these areas. Few competitors seem able to match Eggman in terms of product quality or price.

Amy earned a supply contract with the United Federation via a front named Rose Precision Dynamics Incorporated to supply them with much of their military equipment to battle against Eggman's forces.

A lot of the Rose machinery followed her designs and color schemes, but was also available in the more traditional G.U.N color schemes. In tests, the robots gave considerably better performance than the United Federation's own mecha, and also showed itself superior performance in tests to compared to Eggman Enterprises mecha (using robots originally built to battle against Sonic fighting against production level Rose robots). Many of the Rose robots had many advanced features and demonstrated superior AI capabilities to their Eggman counterparts. The United Federation was sufficiently impressed that they replaced many of their units with Rose's mecha. It seemed to them like, with these mecha, their victory was all but guaranteed.

Using their influence in the United Federation, they are able to restart Project Shadow, as well as resuming operations aboard the Space Colony ARK. Things continued on like this for a number of years, continually beating back Eggman's forces. Eggman seemed worried that, at this point, he may be defeated, but Amy reassured him, "They wont truly be able to beat us with those mecha. It will only look like they can."

During a fateful battle where Eggman's forces are all but destroyed, Amy and Shadow emerge on the field. The soldiers are confused, as she begins to laugh maniacally at them. She lifts her arms, and with a swirl of sparkles a large hammer materializes in her hands. She lifts her hammer in the air slowly, then swings it down hard enough to release a large shock wave. At this point, all the Rose robots... stop... It seems to the soldiers that she has managed to cause all of them to go into a hard reset, seemingly inoperable. After a few moments, the robots then proceed en-masse to join up with Eggman's forces, and begin attacking the other G.U.N units. This extends well past this battlefield, with all the Rose robots in the various bases coming online and beginning to attack whatever forces are left. In this single attack, the United Federation's forces are all but destroyed, and they are forced to surrender.

Later on, people at the United Federation make a public apology for the prior mistreatment of Gerald Robotnik, this information having come to public attention after having been released by an unknown source, and being faced with public outcry that such things had been allowed to take place.

Not long after, government control falls to Eggman and Amy, who become Emperor and Empress of the newly formed Eggman Empire. Shadow takes kindly to Zilia, and ends up devoting a bit of time in teaching her the ways of using Chaos Control from an early age.

The Black Arms show up and begin leading an invasion, after an extended battle, the power of the Eggman Empire drives them away.

Shadow uses the Chaos Emeralds to go into Super Shadow mode and drop-kick the Black Comet back into deep space. However, a conversation occurs between Black Doom and Shadow: "Shadow, have you ever heard what happened to your father?", "I heard enough. I heard that the United Federation killed my father.", "No, Shadow, I Am Your Father!", "No, It can't be possible!", "Listen to your blood, You know it to be true!", "No, Noooo!" Then the ghost of Maria comes up and speaks, "Shadow. Shadow! Shadow!!! Don't listen to that crap, drop kick his ass back into space." Ghost of Gerald, "Though, he isn't entirely wrong. You are sort of the product of a multi-way genetic engineering experiment. And Black Doom did send a few samples our way." Shadow has heard enough, and proceeds to drop-kick Black Doom. Some random dude ghost shows up: "Oh, and by the way... Did you hear about the giant cockroaches we sent to Mars... Errm, nevermind, wrong giant face in the sky hallucination."

In this time, 8 years have passed.

Soleanna
Sonic and friends flee to Soleanna, seemingly the only ones left in the area who stood against Eggman. Soleanna opposed the rise of the Eggman Empire, welcoming Sonic and friends to joining their cause against the empire. Many of Soleanna's soldiers have since started using powered armor to be more evenly matched against robotic forces, but Sonic and friends were more easily matched.

They worked along side the Soleanna military, and reported their efforts to Elise.

Elise then showed Sonic and friends some secret weapons they had been building to battle Eggman's forces. "We call them Armored Combat Units, while they are built using some technology reverse engineered from Eggman's mecha, they are primarily our own technology." In the room were long lines of roughly 10 meter tall robots. Some were reverse knee bipedal robots, others were quadruped or tank based, and yet others seemed to be equipped with large boosters for legs.

Sonic asks, "Are you sure Eggman or Amy wont be able to hack into their AI?", and Elise responds with a smile, "We are fairly confident they wont be able to. You see, they are based on his older mecha. As for AI, No, We don't use AI."

At this point, a few soldiers walk in. As-if suddenly realizing what was about to happen, catching a glimpse of the robots, the soldier in the middle began to scream and tried to run. "Nooo! Don't put me back in one of those! Things!", the soldiers by his side grab ahold of him, and in his struggle he knocks their helmets off. This reveals, however, that the other two solders merely look human. They have what look like human faces, but the head underneath their helmets is made of metal and their face hangs over the edges like a rubber mask. Sonic has seen this sort of thing before though, the look of their heads is not that of a traditionally manufactured robot. They were human at one time, at some point, presumably against their will, forced to undergo the roboticization process, a technology so cruel and irreversibly destructive that even Eggman had largely condemned its use on sentient lifeforms.

The terrified solder is carried up and shoved into the cockpit of the robot. A number of straps come up and wrap around him, securing him in place, as a number of tubes and cables snake around him, seemingly connecting up to things, and some tentacle-like tubes go into his mouth and nose, as he struggles and convulses violently. His expression has since gone blank, as a headset lowers over has face, and mechanical whirs are heard as screws on the headset and straps spin in place, locking things down. The occasional pops and hisses of pneumatic devices are also heard, and by this point the pilot is fully entombed in a mass of tubes and wires as plates are lowered into place and then automatically screw down, as the cockpit then closes up around him.

The robot's eyes light up, it proceeds to come to life, stand up, and then walk out of the room with lots of mechanical noises and clomping. The remaining two solders walk back, picking up and putting their helmets back on, once again appearing to be normal humans.

Sonic looks none too pleased at the prospect that these technologies are being used on humans. Elise looks at him, realizing his displeasure at what he had just seen, and responds, "Well, you see about that. We are in a war, and don't really have the luxury of an overwhelming military force, and are not as strong as you Mobians. We were forced, whether we like it or not, to make a few compromises here. Please try to understand."

The sight of all this was a bit too much for Cream, who then begins to cry. Tails is by her side and tries to hold and comfort her, and kisses her as reassurance. Sonic and friends then take their leave.

Upon leaving the room and wandering outside, Elise sees a young girl who appears to be lost and wandering around on the base. She goes up to the little girl, who is looking down with a hooded sweatshirt covering her head. She kneels in front of the girl and asks if she needs help finding her mommy and daddy. The girl looks at Elise, and lowers her hood to reveal her long pink hair, ears, and bright green eyes. Elise says, "That is some pretty hair, why, aren't you a cute one?... I am Princess Elise, by the way." The girl's frown changes to a grin as she looks at Elise, revealing her hedgehog dentition. As she looks at Elise, she says, "My mommy and daddy want a word with you." Zilia then grabs Elise's arm, and raises her arm in the air to reveal she is holding a Chaos Emerald. Elise suddenly starts trying unsuccessfully to pull her arm free of Zilia's grip, as a swirling ring of sparkles forms around them, and Zilia can be seen quietly mouthing the words "Chaos Control". In a a sudden flash, both of them are gone.

A few soldiers saw what had happened, but didn't have enough time to respond given how quickly it had happened. Sonic was immediately contacted and informed of what had happened with Elise.

Elise awakens finding herself restrained, as Ivo and Amy stand looking at her, with Zilia standing between them and leans against Amy with a pleased expression. Amy says to her, "Good work Zil.". Ivo says to Elise, "You see, you have been causing a bit of trouble for us, but lets not get off to a bad start. Maybe we can help each other out. I would like to offer you a truce, in exchange, you can help us with something.", "Help you with what?", "Well, we see, we know you have a special power. You may know what we are talking about." She responds, "The flames of Disaster?..." He adjusts his glasses, "Yes. You see, I could really use this power in a little project I am working on." He then releases the restraints, and shows her a machine. "With this machine, we can go between time and place, or between this timeline and another. Whatever, and whenever, we want can be open to us. But, you see, we need some of your power to help us make it work.", "You realize though that this power nearly destroyed Soleanna? Expecting me to help you with something like this is asking a bit too much." He responds, "Maybe, but you will come around."

He has Shadow take her to a room with a nice view. The room is nicely lit and decorated, with a seemingly translucent wall and floor that allows seeing the ground moving below the ship. She reaches down and touches the floor, with a tap revealing that it is a solid metal bulkhead, and with a good loud tap, hearing the sound of the heavy steel plate and internal I-beams, and the glow against her finger and shadows revealing that the view is caused by some sort of optical projection nearly parallel to the surface. She feels around, and at least the drapes, nicely upholstered furniture, and bed are real. She can't really see the walls to her cell, but reaching out she feels what feels like a smooth plastic. Rubbing her finger on the wall, a visible smudge appears on the surface. It is a high quality optical plastic with an anti-glare coating, nearly invisible to the naked eye. She proceeds to tap on the wall, the sound revealing it to be a single large sheet approximately 9mm thick.

Zilia brings her some food. Zilia, looking at Elise, can see that she isn't really happy. Zilia smiles at her, and says, "Sorry about all this, but they really needed to see you. If you help them out, I am sure they will let you go free." She then proceeds to walk up to the wall, and with a little bit of waving and distortion proceeds to walk through the wall and carries the food to the table. Elise is dumbfounded, and taps the wall, revealing it to still be a solid piece of plastic.

Zilia says, "Neat, huh? Uncle Shadow showed me how. He says I am really good at it, but I am nowhere near as good at it as he is. When he walks though, you are not even aware that it is there.", "Really?", "Yeah! You didn't see it when he brought you in here? But, here it is, you and him just walked right through it as if it were not even there. But, this wall was always there. You can't get in or out of this room unless you walk through it."

Elise asks, "Is there a special trick? Could I do it.", Zilia responds, "I don't know, maybe not. Daddy can't walk through by himself without Shadow or his jacket, and even Mommy has a hard time doing it after Shadow showed her. They don't really come in here all that often, but they say it makes a good room for our special guests, so please try to enjoy your visit."

Elise says, "Say, can you take me on a tour of the ship?", Zilia responds, "I don't know, I would need to go ask Mommy.", Shadow enters, starting to wonder what had been taking Zilia so long. Elise, "Come on, please, it would be fun to go look around the ship.", Shadow states bluntly, "No. Zil, something has come up, please come along.", Zil says, "Sorry... Maybe some other time!" as she proceeds to run off back through the wall and follows behind Shadow.

Elise, disappointed, taps the plastic some more, then presses on it finding it to still be reasonably solid, though maybe a little softer than before, but this could just be her imagination. Whatever the trick is, it isn't really obvious to her. She sits down at the table, and looks at the food. While falling short of being the highest quality in cuisine, and with reasonably lackluster cooking skills, it isn't really all that terrible either. On the plate are some creme filled pastries, a small cup of caviar, a marinated steak with some sort of lemon and honey flavored sauce, and some random bits of parsley thrown on top. Given Elise hasn't eaten recently, she isn't too much inclined to complain about the shortcomings of the ships chef, she just needs to think up some way out of there.

After the wait, some random crashing and explosions are heard, along with some rumblings in the hull.

She sits, and sees a flash of blue by the door. After a moment, it comes back, and then Sonic is standing in the door. He says, "Hey! Elise, come along! We're getting out of here!" She looks, and begins to speak up, "You see, there is this wall...", Sonic rushes forwards towards her at high speed, getting stuck in the wall, and exclaims "What is THIS?!" as he struggles stuck half-way into the wall of plastic, struggling as if caught in a net. Elise grabs his hand and tries to pull, but Sonic struggles and pulls back, with his other arm managing to grab hold of the door frame. With a good pull, he breaks free, in the process pulls Elise through the wall. She is through, albeit with some damage and tearing to her dress, but Sonic isn't one to complain about that. He picks her up and heads out of there at high speed.

Eggman and Shadow then show up to her room to check on her and try to reassure her that everything is under control. They see that the room is empty with the plastic wall beat to crap and warped, but otherwise still intact. Shadow says, "Well, crap. Sorry for my failure to better secure things here." Eggman responds calmly, "Don't worry about it too much, Sonic was around, something like this is bound to happen. Just have someone come up and fix up the plastic and trim before Amy notices, and maybe try to come up with a good excuse, preferably not involving Sonic, for how she was able to escape unnoticed.", "Well, we can't blame Zil, that wouldn't be fair, and I am not taking the fall for this." Shadow tries in vain to grab onto and straighten the plastic.

He then catches notice of something, spotting bits of pink fur embedded in what was left of the food, and this gives Shadow an idea. Amy then wanders up, starting to ask how Elise enjoyed the cooking, but upon seeing the damage to the room and that Elise has managed to escape, exclaims: "What the hell has happened here?!" Shadow then says to her, "Well, it appears as if after eating she gained the ability to pass through the wall while releasing flames. She got stuck partly through. In her struggle she caused the warping you see here, and tore the trim off the door while pulling herself through. She then got fire wings and flew away while emitting balls of fire.", "And you are sure this is how all this works?", "Yes. I saw it happen." Amy, now right and pissed, stomps off. Eggman quietly says to Shadow, "That is the best you could come up with? It seems a bit far fetched." Shadow, "Well, it worked didn't it? No one takes blame and there is no mention of Sonic having been here." Eggman: "Yeah, probably sufficient."

Upon heading back to Soleanna, they stop in a green field. Sonic is concerned about what he had seen at the base, but could also see that Elise was concerned as well. Elise says to Sonic, "Do you think I am a bad person? After all, it was under my authority that those things were done." Sonic responds, "Well, of course not. After all, you did what you had to do. It is a war after all. Don't worry, just smile.", "Just, Smile? What do you do?", "Yes, Smile. Also running, running is good." Sonic pulls her along, and they run for a bit, but Elise can't really keep up. She has been trying to run in heels, and then stumbles. Her and Sonic end up rolling down a grassy hill, with them ending up in a position where she is straddling Sonic. Her dress is now torn up worse, and at this point isn't really concealing a whole lot. She has a few reservations, but doesn't object too much to the thought. After a brief delay, they make it like rabbits, before heading back to her castle in Soleanna. They explain that her clothing was badly damaged in their escape from Eggman's airship, making slight embellishments as to the level of resistance they encountered while making their escape.

Snively
Elise meets with Lord Regis and Dr. Snively (who also goes by the title of Lord Julian), for an update of how things are going on the front lines. They assert that while they have the resources and production capacity to continue making Armored Combat Units, they have a shortage of usable pilots, and their front-line forces are wearing thin, and may not be able to continue on at this rate. They stressed that being forced to surrender to the Eggman Empire would not be acceptable.

Later that night, a decision needed to be made as to whether to take more people from the homeless shelters and refugee camps and press them into service, with Elise having doubts as to whether or not this is really the right coarse of action. The wording is a bit unclear, but Snively assures her that only a small minority of those in the camps are likely to be effected. Under some pressure from Snively, she signs the new laws into effect.

Those who are suitable for pilot duty and loaded into the mecha. They are evaluated both psychologically and physically, with those who are likely to function well inside of a mecha being used. For correct operation of the mecha and resistance to external tampering, they need to be both neurologically and physically intact.

Many of the rest are loaded into powered armors, typically with Neurocyte Units installed to make them better soldiers. The neurocyte being a procedure where a small hole is drilled into the skull, and an implant is injected which modulates cortical functions via a branching network of fibers which works its way through the cortex immediately following installation. After the fibers are in-place, the cortex will then largely transform into metal over the course of several days. The point of installation then becomes the location of their primary cortical node. They are then wirelessly linked with a number of servers, which will manage and modulate their behaviors and motivations to keep them in-line with being a loyal soldier. The process of installation is generally very painful and violent and will destroy the personality of the person in the process. They become essentially mindless drones who are commanded from a remote location.

Those who are otherwise in too poor of health to make good soldiers in their natural form and sent in for roboticization. In this process, their bodies become largely replaced with mechanical equivalents. Missing or deformed limbs may be replaced with a new functional limb, as well as most of their internal organs being replaced. If damaged, a person who has undergone roboticization, will bleed a blue-white liquid which is thick and oily. They may be fitted with a rubber mask made to resemble their original face, to keep up the illusion that they are still the people who they once were. The process typically also requires the installation of a neurocyte, as otherwise those who have undergone the process will tend to go berserk as a result.

A review of the roboticization process shows a person being placed onto a platform, where a large tube lowers around them. Once inside, a number of latches lock, and sprayers activate showering them in a dark green fluid. Once a certain amount of this fluid covers the floor of the tube, the sprayers stop, and lightning bolts begin to appear. Generally at this point, the occupants will begin to scream in plain as their bodies are transformed into metal. At the same time a cloud of dense dark slightly greenish gas will form, mostly consisting of byproducts and spent nanomachines. This is extracted via a vent at the top of the tube, and the remaining nanomachines are safely deactivated using UV before being discharged. Once complete, the tube raises, revealing the now roboticized soldier. They are then briefly observed to determine whether or not a neurocyte will also need to be installed.

Elise reluctantly mentions her observations with the hedgehogs and the plastic to Dr. Snively, who had fled to Soleanna during the rise of the Eggman Empire. He had brought the roboticization process with him, which had originally been developed by Gerald Robotnik and Charles the Hedgehog as a possible means to life extension, however they had soon all but abandoned it due to its inhumane side-effects. Charles' earlier research had been classified as top secret by the United Federation, but was later discovered and quietly and the technology was recreated by Dr. Snively, and he had saw great promise in the potential military application of the technology, and developed the neurocyte as a result of experiments trying to fit a miniature roboticizer into a bullet. During the collapse, he took their research and his prototypes and fled to Soleanna. After a number of successful demonstrations, and the increasing desperation in their war against Eggman, Snively quickly rose to a position of prominence in Soleanna's military, in the process earning his title as Lord Julian.

He is very intrigued at the premise that such a thing might even be possible. They express some skepticism at first, but as an illustration she tries tapping on a piece of the clear plastic she had brought with her from the ship, which had somehow got stuck to her dress during the escape. To everyones' surprise, including her own, rather than stopping on the surface, her finger proceeded to pass into the plastic. She then continued, leaning into it with some force, pushing her arm part-way through the plastic, and then proceeded to pull it back out. The scientist observed that there was no hole in the plastic, and that it was, in fact, still solid.

They have her touch a piece of plate glass and a piece of sheet metal, observing that they were still solid to her.

Shadow had been sneaking around and watching things to see how the situation was going, and after seeing this was surprised that some of the random crap he had made to appease Amy was actually coming to pass. Shadow then proceeded to send a short message to Eggman, who felt slightly relieved in a way, but similarly unsure how this could work given Elise is human, and this ability has thus far only been seen in hedgehogs for a limited time after making use of Chaos Control.

Shadow then catches sight of a thus far unknown white hedgehog wandering the streets apparently looking for someone. Shadow then decides to start keeping watch on him as well. He is then seen talking to a purple cat. Through their conversations, Shadow determines that their names are Silver and Blaze.

The next day, Shadow sees Sonic and Silver in the same general area. Sonic appears to be getting food, and Silver takes note of Sonic's presence. Suddenly, tables start lifting up near the white hedgehog and flying at Sonic. Sonic then quickly eats what is left of his chili dog, before responding "Hey! Dude! What gives!". Silver responds, "You! You are the Iblis Trigger! I must destroy you to protect the future!", Sonic responds, "I really have no idea what you are talking about." This continues on briefly before Shadow lowers down and bitch slaps Silver into the side of a building, with him saying "Why do you hurt me so?" before falling into unconsciousness. Shadow says to Sonic, "Luckily for you, I happened to be here.", Sonic responds, "I could have handled him without you. Meanwhile, why are you here, don't you have some a**hole duties to attend to.", "I am here on business. Not really related to use in particular.", "Spying on Elise?", "Well, sorta. Some things are anomalous, and the Eggman Empire sees little reason this pointless war should continue.", "What, we should just surrender to your authority?", "No, you may not have heard, but we have offered to make truce. Soleanna will be able to retain its sovereignty, we just need some assistance from her with a few things."

Sonic has mixed feelings about this, torn between trying to convince the people to make peace with someone like Eggman, and that in all likelihood it is probably a trap, weight against the sorts of nasty things the military had been resorting to in order to keep their war effort afloat. But, just sitting in the streets, it didn't really look all that bad. For the most part, things were nice and clean, not a vagrant to be seen.

Sonic says to Shadow, "Pretty quiet today it seems.", Shadow responds, "You may not have seen, but they have been gathering up many of the people in the streets, taking them into the base. People are herded in, ranks of soldiers and armored units walk out. Even you can't claim ignorance over what has been taking place here.", Sonic responds, "Elise wouldn't allow this, she isn't like that."

Some time later, Sonic and Shadow confront her about it, and she collapses in tears, fully aware that she had just authorized the act allowing all this to take place. They call back to Eggman, who after checking with Amy, calls all units to temporarily switch to defensive action. This time, with a bit more cooperation, Shadow uses Chaos Control to take them back to Eggman's ship, as Silver runs towards them being like "Hey! Wait! Oh Damn It!". Silver then ends up running from a group of newly roboticized soldiers who had began quickly approaching him, struggling and breaking free as one of them tried to grab him.

After dropping Sonic and Elise off on the ship, Shadow then also went back and retrieved Tails and Cream. They were initially uncooperative, but came along after Shadow informed them of the situation, as they too were being surrounded by a group of roboticized soldiers, some with expressions of terror and fear permanently embedded into their now metal faces.

Family
Aboard the Ship, Eggman says to Elise he wants to run a few quick tests, and allows Sonic to come along to verify he is not up to something devious. In his medical bay, he uses a machine which takes a small blood sample from Elise, and then runs analysis. He then has her touch a piece of the plastic, nothing happens. He reveals a Chaos emerald, and has her hold it. As she does so, her other had immediately starts falling through the plastic. "Yes, I see, very unusual." Eggman looks back at a screen where the blood analysis has concluded. He looks at her and says, "Thought so.", and then making a big grin says to her, "Well, Welcome to the Family." Elise looks perplexed by this statement, whereas Sonic figures it out a lot more quickly, and proceeds to shake his face into his hand. This isn't exactly the outcome he was going for. Elise, "Whaaa?", Sonic, "Do I have to explain it? When has it last been 'that time of the month'? ...", She thinks for a moment, and tries counting on her fingers, before saying, "Oh!", and then starts hugging Sonic. Eggman looks back at his results, and also says, "And I can also say with a fairly high level of certainty who the father is. Congratulations, Sonic!". Sonic then continues to face palm some more. This isn't exactly what he was going for.

It wasn't much, but there was enough mobian present to allow her to utilize some chaos related abilities. These abilities were likely kicked into effect via her direct exposure to chaos control in addition to her time aboard the Egg Carrier III, which makes extensive use of chaos powered technology.

Elise asks, "What exactly do you mean though by, 'Family'?" Eggman then adjusts his glasses, and pulls up some graphs on a screen. He switches between them, each graph showing numbers of red and blue bars between pairs of individuals. He explains, "Blue shows where they are unrelated, and red shows where they are. As you can see, Amy and Sonic have a fair bit of overlap, as do Amy and Shadow. Likewise Sonic and Shadow have a fair bit. Well, why is this? Well, they are all not so distantly related. For Sonic and Shadow, they are related via the brothers Jules and Charles. Charles had been involved as a junior researcher with Project Shadow alongside Gerald Robotnik, and Jules was Charles' younger brother, who also supplied a fair bit of Shadow's genetic material, effectively making him a half-clone. Jules was also Sonic's father. We don't know for certain with Amy, as she was raised as an orphan, but it appears she is descended from Charles the Hedgehog. This is also why I let Zilia call Shadow 'Uncle Shadow', as for what it matters, he is." Elise asks Eggman how old Zilia is, and he pauses for a moment to think, responding "Right now, she is 8, but will turn 9 a few months from now." She thinks of it, well, Sonic is 31, Tails is 24, Cream is 22, and Knuckles is 33. Elise is 34, and Amy didn't look much older than she is.

Some other graphs are visible, and curiously it seems Eggman had also done analysis of Tails and Cream, noting they also had some overlap with others in the group. One curious tab catches Sonic's notice, "Ivo vs Cream", Sonic thinks to himself, "What could they have in common?" He can see through the translucent blending effect in the GUI, that there is in-fact some red there.

Elise begins to speak, but Sonic, as if having a sudden sense what she was about to ask, cuts her off, quietly saying to her, "Don't go there, just don't, but if you are really wondering, Amy is 29, and Eggman is a fair bit older."

Amy walks by, seeing them all there responds, "What, The, F***! Sonic?! Why is he here!", Eggman responds, "Please stay calm, things have gotten a bit complicated over there. But, hey, check this out. He takes a sheet of plastic and hits it on Elise's hand, and her fist goes right through, "Neat, Huh?". Amy: "Yeah, she did this yesterday, right? Next up you will be saying she has fire breath.", Amy then walks off, somewhat annoyed. Her woman's intuition isn't fooled when she knows he has been talking crap, and is just trying to cover his ass when it just happens to actually work. She had already known that Sonic was there yesterday.

There is an incoming call, which Eggman takes on a nearby viewscreen. "This is Lord Julian, We demand Elise to be returned immediately!", "She came here willingly for diplomatic reasons. Wouldn't this normally though be handled by Lord Regis?", "Lord Regis is old and weak-minded. I am now the acting Lord of Soleanna.", Elise: "Under who's authority?!", "Under MY authority. Return at once, or you will be declared an Enemy of State!", "As Princess I will ask that a cease fire be called, and that all roboticization of civilians be halted." He responds, "You have made your position clear. There will be no cease fire, and there not be a halt to the roboticization process." Julian then hangs up.

Base
Sonic and Shadow then decide to infiltrate the Soleanna base and destroy the roboticizer before this can continue much further. After they transport back to Soleanna, they find the place largely deserted and in ruin. The tables are still upturned from Silver's attack earlier that morning, but much of the destruction is worse. There is debris in the streets, and many windows are broken. After breaking into the base, they find Silver restrained, "Help, they have done something to me!", as he twitches on a gurney. Something is wrong with him. Shadow quickly takes Silver back to Eggman, who after a quick scan has him placed on the table where machinery sets to work. A plate lowers onto his head, and a large 'Thump!' is heard as Silver convulses and loses consciousness as many of the metal objects in the room shake. Some scans continue, showing a real-time brain scan of Silver. A probe extends into a small hole in Silver's head, and removes a small metallic object with fibrous tentacles. Eggman says, "Luckily, we got to him in time. Much later, and it would have been too late to save him. Still, we will need to keep him under observation for a few days to make sure his condition is stable."

Back at the base, the condition is looking dire. Sonic is being swarmed by soldiers, but has also been joined by Blaze who has also set her intentions on destroying it. She is then able to lob some grenades into the roboticizer before they make their escape. The roboticizer explodes, leaving them with at least a temporary victory. The grenades appear to have also taken out a critical server, as the soldiers then largely stop moving and fall to the ground.

However, no one else is found. Apart from the base, all the buildings appear to be deserted. As sonic stands back in the square where they had arrived, Zilia flashes in with a swirl of sparkles and grabs both of their wrists. In another flash as the sparkles collapse back in on them, they are all back aboard the ship.

Eggman checks everyone over just to be sure there isn't anything amiss. What all he has just seen is a bit much even for Eggman to not be at least a little worried.

They start planning their next mission, to secure Soleanna and capture Dr. Snively.

Amy's Office
Elise asks, "How could all this happen, can he really do this?" Eggman responds, "You might want to talk to Amy about this. She already knew about Snively's plans and what was about to take place, and had wanted to stop him. Capturing you yesterday was our last ditch effort to stop his plans from unfolding. Sonic rescuing you was all but inevitable, and so it seems, so to was me and Shadows attempt to lie about it, to hide the fact that the plan had in-fact failed. It may not seem like it sometimes, but she has a pretty good eye for detail."

Elise is then shown the way to Amy's office. It is a large room, very well decorated. Like in the room she was in before, it had a prominent view of the outside. Large pink drapes were in front of what appeared to be a massive window to the outside. To the side of the windows were stone columns covered in ivy. Chairs were placed around the room, and there was also a large pink semicircular sofa. Much of the floor was covered in a dark green shag carpet.

Amy sat in a chair in front of what looked like a oak dresser with a very large mirror. Amy directed Elise to sit, which she did, though finding the chair mildly uncomfortable as it was a bit small for her. Amy said in brief, "No, sit on the sofa. It is larger, and has a better view of the mirror." Elise could see her reflection, but at first didn't see the point of looking at a giant mirror.

Amy then extended her arm slightly, forming a shape like she was holding something. At this moment a ring of sparkles formed around her fingers and a stylus appeared. She then tapped the stylus on the mirror, and suddenly it seemed as if the mirror, and the space in front of it, turned into a large holographic display. In the display, were large numbers of documents from Soleanna. Amy proceeded to tap on a few things with the stylus, and a number of sections of text expanded out of various pages from the documents.

Elise leaned forwards to read them, but there didn't seem much notable in them. Many had to do with civil service and administrative concerns. A few related to which lords will take over duties when those normally responsible for them are absent. Amy then pulled up another document, which Elise more quickly recognizes: It is the document Snively had pressured her into signing. But, the section of text shown, doesn't really seem to say anything in particular. Elise is confused, Amy then proceeds to draw a bunch of arrows between the passages, and uses her stylus as a highlighter for various words. It doesn't help. Amy, realizing Elise doesn't get it, responds "These are loopholes. Essentially, what Snively had you sign, irrevocably transfers sovereign authority over all matters of administration to himself. You, Princess, are now little more than a figurehead. As far as the laws of Soleanna are concerned, Snively is the new ruler. Furthermore, it waives any accountability for any criminal acts committed under his command. Or, in other words, he can now legally do whatever he wants, and there is nothing left we can do short of removing him by force."

Elise responds, "Can I revoke it? After all, he needed me to sign it, and normally I have the option to repeal laws which turn out to be unfavorable." Amy responds, "Not in this case, in granting himself authority, he also granted himself sole discretion over which laws are created or repealed. While in theory we could challenge him in court, this is unlikely to work out so well, given he had already had neurocytes installed in the judges which cause them to now act only in accordance with the laws as written, in accordance with a previous anti-corruption act. In a strict legal sense, we don't have a valid complaint against him, as all of his actions during his rise to power have been in accordance with Soleanna's laws."

Amy continues, "For the time being, we have made spaces for you and your friends aboard the ship. We will set you up with apartments upon our arrival back at Station Square, and after this will head to Center City." Elise asks, "Do you mean back in the room I was in before?", "No, unless you want to. You are free to move around the ship, and even if we did put you back in there, it wouldn't do you much good." Amy does a gesture like she is tossing something, and a clear ball appears in her hand as she does so. The ball flies towards Elise, but as she tries to catch it, it passes right through her hands and lands on the floor. Amy does a gesture and the ball disappears from the ground and reappears in her hand, and as Amy closes her hand and the ball sparkles and disappears. Amy says, "This was just a demonstration, and a test, but it seems that recently you have been exposed to enough Chaos energy to render that type of cell ineffective.", "You have others?", "Yes, we have cells with steel bars, as well as those where the bars are filled with sea salt.", "Sea salt?", "Yes, sea salt can be used to redirect or disrupt the normal flow of chaos energy. Putting sea salt in the bars makes them much harder to destroy for those of us with Chaos abilities."

Thinking of it, Amy decides to do another little test. She extents her hand and the Piko Piko hammer appears, which she then casually swings at Elise. Elise then moves very rapidly and blocks the hammer in mid air. The hammer then disappears, with Amy satisfied by the results. She says to Elise, "A normal person would not have been able to block that attack." Elise asks "What if I had failed?" Amy declines to answer, and instead offers to show her to her room.

Refuge
They then leave Amy's office and head down the corridor. By this point a lot more people are present, though she doesn't see any other humans apart from herself and Eggman.

Like the room she was in before, it is pretty nice and reasonably well furnished. A little ways down the hall, Sonic is complaining with Eggman, "Why do I have to share a room with Tails, don't you have a lot of space of this ship?", and Eggman responds, "We have a lot more people to pick up, so space is short. Would you rather I have you share a room with Knuckles?", "Well, no, not really." Elise shouts over to Sonic, "You can share a room with me!", and Sonic responds "OK!" Amy's expression shows that she is annoyed at this, but keeps it to herself. Eggman then says to Tails, "OK then, now you can share a room with Knuckles!", Tails responds, "Or with Cream!", Eggman stalls for a second at the thought, before responding, "OK then, either way.", then says to Knuckles, "Well, it looks like you get a room to yourself then." Knuckles says, "OK!", then looks briefly into the room before saying, "Man! This room sucks!" Rouge then goes up to him and says he can stay with her. Eggman is satisfied that the room issue has resolved itself. Vanilla then walks up and asks where Cream's room is, and Eggman points to it. As she approaches, she is dismayed by walking in to find Tails and Cream are already making out, and Cream is mad that her mom walked in without any prior warning. Vanilla then turns around and walks off.

As Amy was standing in the hall looking over things, a human girl walks by. She is dressed in the way typical of a resident of Soleanna, but upon seeing Amy, stops and solutes her. Amy responds, "At ease. Status?", she responds, "I had continued how things were going with my brother, but lost track of him during the chaos once he commenced mass roboticization of the population." Amy responds, "Good work, agent Hope, please write up a report of any findings. That will be all." Elise catches note of this, and asks Amy, "What was all that about?", and Amy responds, "That was Hope Snively, the younger sister of Julian Snively. We were able to win her over to our side during the campaign against G.U.N, She was one of a few people to discover the trick behind the Rose robots, and it would have gone very badly for of if she were to have reported this to her superiors. We just had to show her that the future was brighter with us than it was with G.U.N, and she joined our cause. Afterwards we mostly had her work to keep tabs on her brother as they fled to Soleanna. However, we had to evacuate her with everyone else as there was no telling she would be safe in all this, and things would quickly be compromised if she had ended up roboticized."

Eggman checks back on Silver, who is now awake and has some monitoring equipment strapped to his head. Silver is disturbed by his current inability to use telekinesis. The medical bay has also since become a lot more populated with those injured during Snively's rise to power.

Eggman asks Silver about himself, not having encountered him prior to a few days earlier. Silver says that he had traveled back in time to prevent Sonic from leading to the release of Iblis, a powerful monster which had been busy destroying things in the future he had come from. The most effective way he could think of, was by trying to assassinate Sonic, but this had failed spectacularly. Eggman responds, "So, lets get this straight, You got a powerful monster, who will be released from Elise if she falls into despair, so you have come back in time to kill her boyfriend before he causes her to fall into despair. You, sir, are an idiot.", Silver tries to defend himself, saying he didn't really know the specifics, just that this weird-looking crystal guy with no mouth told him to do so. Eggman still wasn't particularly impressed.

Eggman also asks Silver about his abnormally low heart-rate, telekinesis, and ability to speak a number of languages. He asserts that pretty much everyone from 300 years in the future has these abilities. He also has a key fob that allows him to quickly return people to his own time, however, a natural consequence of time travel is that their clothes and any objects they are carrying will disappear in the process.

They soon arrive at Station Square to offload refugees and prepare for the coming battle. Before arrival, everyone is given tags granting them access to their new apartments.

Cream and Tails
Cream and Tails opt to move in together, deciding that for them, they are now officially together. Their new house is located next to an airstrip, and Eggman was also nice enough to transport the Tornado there for him (though in the process, Eggman had quietly added a tracking device and a kill-switch for the engine). The next few days for them are fairly uneventful. Cream and tails are busy setting up their new house, and Vanilla shows up a few times to help out.

Vanilla then makes a request to them, "In all the chaos recently, my sister and her husband need somewhere to stay for a while." Tails, "Can't they stay in an apartment?", Vanilla, "She is someone who may sometimes need access to someone with mechanical skills, and Antoine, well, he is not so good at this sort of thing." Tails has a confused look, and then they wander up. Cream then exclaims "Aunt Bunnie!" Tails then gets a look at her, and then starts to see what Vanilla means: Bunnie is a cyborg, with over half of her body being mechanical. Vanilla explains that Bunnie ended up partially roboticized at an early age due to medical complications. Tails asks, "Who was it that had this technology?" Vanilla responds, "The procedure was performed by Dr. Charles the Hedgehog. It was originally researched by him and our great grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, as a possible treatment for our aunt Maria aboard the ARK, but she had passed away before the research was complete. Following these events, Charles had continued the reasearch, and it was latter used successfully to save Bunnie's life, although with the side effect that she is as she is now."

Tails and Cream look surprised at this revelation. Tails, "So, you and Eggman are related?", "Yes, to some extent. Our mother, Sari, was half-human, and was also Eggman's cousin and Maria Robotnik was her older half-sister. Both Maria and Bunnie had inherited a neuro-degenerative disorder which could prove fatal if left untreated. In Bunnie's case, an earlier attempt at treatment had gone wrong, and partial roboticization was the only way left to save her."

Antoine shows up carrying something, and then says some stuff in an awkward French accent, dropping some items and saying some stereotypical phases. Tails quietly asks Vanilla, "Why does he talk like that?", and Vanilla responds, "I really have no idea, he just does." Unpacking some stuff, Cream manages to step on some bubble wrap, causing Antoine to jump and hide behind a box, peaking out thinking there might be danger. Bunnie, annoyed, points at the bubble wrap, and he reluctantly comes out from behind the box.

Vanilla continues, "Sari's ands Maria's father was Geraldo Robotnik, who was also Eggman's uncle. Maria was born to his first wife Meredith, who died not long after the events aboard the ARK and her daughter's death. Geraldo later ended up marrying his second wife Sandra, who was a mobian."

Tails asks, "What about Eggman?"

Vanilla, "His parents were Ivan Kinto and Bertha Robotnik. When younger, Ivo and his sister Mariam ended up living with Geraldo after their parents were taken away, treating Sari much like their sister. Over time though, things became more distant between them, and everyone went their own ways. Sari later married Rotamax Rabbit, and Mariam later married Colin Snively, with Julian and Hope Snively being their children. Ivo went off by himself, eventually becomming the Eggman you know today."

Thinking of it, Vanilla sends a quick message to Eggman, there is something he should know.

Clues to the Past
Eggman gets a message from Vanilla, which says something a bit unexpected: His parents may not actually be dead. He had assumed they were, as when they were captured by G.U.N, he never heard from them again, and had not seen anything as to their present whereabouts.

Vanilla's message, however, had hinted that their last known whereabouts were on Prison Island. They were never listed as having been released, nor were they were listed as having died. He didn't like the idea that they might just be there, having been left imprisoned when he had the power to release them years earlier. He then went there, but didn't see them listed in any of the cell blocks either. Accessing the database, he did eventually find some records: They had been put in cryogenic stasis.

He went to the lower reaches of the base, near where he had found Shadow, and there they were, among a number of other prisoners. After checking the roster more, he found that most of those contained here were political enemies of the former Federation government, many put into statis as a way to silence them into an indeterminate time in the future.

Eggman then began reviving the prisoners. He started with his parents, Bertha and Ivan, as well as a number of mobian prisoners. Among them were the royal family from the long since defeated Kingdom of Acorn, which included King Max Acorn, Queen Alicia Acorn, The young prince and princess, Elias and Sally Acorn. He also revived Charles the Hedgehog.

After their conditions were stable enough for transport, he had them moved to the Egg Carrier, where he began informing them of the present situation. They assigned Sally under Zilia's care, where Zilia could serve as a "Big Sister" and help her adapt to life aboard the ship.

Zilia gave Sally a small crystal, which was essentially a miniature copy of a Chaos Emerald with a smaller amount of energy. Zilia tried to show Sally the basics of using Chaos abilities, quickly found that she didn't seem to have any abilities. As sally looked around, she started to take a liking to the technology and robots around, this being rather different than what was around in the castle before she was put in stasis roughly 30 years earlier.

As sally began running around and looking at all the stuff, the crystal started to glow, implying that its energy was being used somehow, though it wasn't really obvious to Zilia what she was using it for.

Ivan had been a lawyer, but came in conflict with the Federation over their conquest and subsequent elimination of the nearby nations, and whether G.U.N being used to stomp kingdoms into effective non-existence was legal under Federation laws. He was fairly imposing, but not one to readily get involved in a fight.

Bertha had been detained "on general principle" in addition to her association with Ivan. She was a large heavy set woman with considerable strength and a quick temper. She wanted Eggman to address her as "Momma", despite this being a bit awkward given the otherwise formal setting.

Things started to get heated when Amy walked in. She walked up to Eggman, and he then put his arm around her, introducing her as Amy Robotnik, his wife. Bertha then had an expression which was clearly angry and disapproving. She started to speak, "But, She... Isn't... Human!!!" At which point she slammed her palms down on the table, causing the wood table to explode against the floor. King Max had a sudden shocked expression as he started to exclaim "Oh, Sh...!" and then ran out of the room.

Amy yelled at her, "You got a problem with that!", "Yes, I, Do!" Momma tries taking a punch at Amy, who jumps into the air and dodges the hit. Amy then summons her hammer, taking a swing at Momma, who blocks the hammer with her palm and threw Amy back some distance. She speaks, "I should have suspected something with Zilia, as she looked a little off! To think her mother was some sort of pink rat!" Amy, "But, she is your granddaughter! Can't you at least accept this much!" They go at it for a while, but having just recovered from stasis, this level of activity is a bit much for Bertha.

She begins to get tired and calm down, gradually becomming more accepting of the idea that her daughter in law, and by extension her granddaughter, are not exactly human. Though, at the same time, Amy seeing Bertha in a fight, is left to wonder if Bertha is excactly all that human either. She looks about human, but her strength and movements make Amy half wonder if the is instead some sort of gorilla, seeing as how she had moved back and forth using her palms and knuckles to help maneuver, while grabbing and flinging parts of what was left of the heavy wood table.

Though, in a way, it isn't too much of a surprise. Despise his not particularly athletic figure, Eggman had also been capable of speed and strength well outside the normal limits of a human. She had figured it was probably some sort of enhancement or due to his long term exposure to Chaos energy. However, Bertha presumably hasn't been in direct contact with a Choas emerald in probably a very long time, if ever, so it is a mystery where this power has come from.

Ivan was fairly tall and imposing, and didn't really seem all that surprised or effected much by this outburst. He continued drinking a coffee even though the table was gone, and most of the dishes and silverware were smashed and on the floor. He looked pleased, seemingly pleased at Amy's ability to hold her own against Bertha. He sees little reason personally to object to her being his daughter in law. Most lesser creatures would have been smashed flat under her fists with her raging this hard.

The fight having concluded, Amy and Bertha then end up with an informal truce.

Eggman stands at what was left of the table, seemingly in shock that his mom could so quickly and easily make such a mess of the place, observing that in a few places, she had managed to throw large chunks of timber through the steel plate used for much of the interior walls and bulkhead.

He starts to have second thoughts as to whether it had really been such a great idea to revive them.

Zilia walks up with Sally, and is surprised to see the room destroyed like that. Looking at Zilia calms down Bertha more, as Bertha is left to admit to herself that Zilia really is a cute girl, even despite being mixed.

Eggman then meets back up with Charles and King Acorn in another room. Before they were captured, Charles and Max were working together. The kingdom of Acorn was having problems with a local population of humans. Conflicts had broken out between the humans and the predominantly mobian population of the kingdom. Under the advise of their royal advisor and wizard, a move was made to expell any humans within the kingdom who didn't pledge loyalty to the king. This, however, only made matters worse, and there can be be widespread civil unrest among both the humans and mobians.

Charles had advised the king to try to find a peaceful compromise, but Max instead chose to persue the option of using of military force to forcibly expell all those who went against them.

Those who had rebelled against the king, primarily humans with a mobian minority, had sought the support of the Federation, and as a result G.U.N forces got involved in the conflict. The conflict took a turn for the worse, and the royal family was imprisoned and put in stasis, with the Kingdom of Acorn being all but eliminated. Mobotropolis continued on under Federation leadership once the conflict ended.

Roughly 30 years later, the former kingdom is nearly all but forgotten by the local populace. Max wants to reclaim his position as monarch, which Eggman advises against for the time being. He had already had a public opinion poll performed as to the matter of "What if King Max were to return?", but the results came back overwhelmingly negative.

A disturbed Zilia barges in, followed by one of the Rose Dynamics robots, "Sally is in there?", "What happened?", "I don't know, she just got in, and now it is walking around!" They pop a panel off, and Sally's crystal is glowing brightly. She is sitting on a bundle of wires, looking rather pleased with herself. When they try to pick her up, the robot moves according to Sally's will as she holds on to a cable, putting up a resistance to them trying to move her. Eventually, they convince her to come out and the robot stops moving and shuts down.

Sally then goes over to another smaller prototype robot Eggman had been working on, and as she touches it, it springs to life. She holds her hand on it for a moment, and as she does so it begins to speak in a rather human-like manner. It consists of a spindly skeleton which can collapse into a box, essentially useless for combat. Eggman is disturbed as the robot appears to have sentience and a personality, but its AI was never completed. It appears as if Sally was somehow able to both complete its AI, and as well make some improvements.

Armor
Elsewhere, the hunt for Snively continues, with Sonic and Elise back exploring Soleanna. Soleanna appears to have been largely abandoned. Its population is gone apart from the industrial areas, where the manufacture of combat units continues via a roboticized workforce. The main base remains destroyed and appears abandoned, as it appears its military forces have been moved elsewhere. They check in the hangars and various rooms in the base. Everything is empty, as it appears it has all been moved elsewhere.

When they were about to head back, Snively shows up wearing a large powered armor. The armor is partway between a conventional powered armor and a combat unit. It is approximately 5 meters tall, and appears to be a composed of a combination of organic and mechanical parts, with sections of exposed flesh visible between the armor plates. Sonic attacks the armor, but is unable to do much damage. His attacks do cause minor damage to some of the exposed fleshy regions, which when injured ooze a pink slime. After a few seconds the area gains a metallic scab, which then dissolves away leaving the flesh as it was before.

Snively flees realizing that his armor could still be damaged. A number of Armored Units descend on their location. Eggman then sends in a number of his robot to help out as Sonic and Elise evacuate. A large battle commences between Eggman's and Snively's forces. The ACU's demonstrate high levels of maneuverability and combat abilities, each ACU destroying a large number of Eggman's units. As a result of the battle, a number of larger Rose units are deployed, which can fight on more even terms with the ACUs.

Many of the units employ low altitude hovering via their booster legs, and so can move at high speeds. These units are typically equipped with lasers and energy weapons, as these are lighter weight. Other slower units use a quadruped configuration, and while slower, can be equipped with much heavier weaponry, such as missile launchers and heavy machine guns. The choice of weapons effects what sort of reactors are present (many units using combustion engines, gas turbines, fuel-cells, or nuclear reactors), which in turn relates to the type of cooling system used, as well as the cost of the mecha. For example, the gas-turbine and nuclear ACUs are typically hover based units, making use of large cooling/exhaust ports, and extensive use of heat sinks to keep the reactor from overheating during flight.

The actual flight is generally provided by plasma boosters, where an incoming air-stream is heated into plasma via coupled microwave antennas and directed out the "feet" via large electromagnet coils. The coils direct enough plasma to create a net vacuum at the intake, so more air continues to flow inwards to be converted to plasma. Others combine the use of ionic plasma with the use of a ducted fan, where the microwave energy is directed into specially designed serrated blades. The intake blades cutting through the air will additionally ionize it, and a voltage difference between the intake and exhaust blades pulls the ions towards the exhaust blades (in addition to the use of embedded magnetic coils). The combination of ducted fan and ionic technology then allows a significantly higher thrust with less size and weight vs a conventional ducted fan.

The much heavier and less energy demanding quadruped units will more often use Wankel rotary engines, as these are cheaper and more durable and reliable, if albeit with a worse power-to-weight ratio, vs a gas turbine or nuclear micro-reactor.

Most of the ACUs are built with standardized interchangeable parts, allowing for considerable amounts of customization for a given task. This is in contrast to the Eggman and Rose units, where more of the parts are specific to a given model of robot, and thus there are relatively few configurations within a given model.

Eggman's forces ultimately prevail, and Snively's forces retreat.

After Sonic and Elise come back, a Beam comes out of nowhere, and Sonic is shot dead. Elise leans down and cries over him. Iblis is then released by her crying. She hears Sonic's voice say "Hey, Elise, what's going on?!" and looks over to see Sonic standing there confused. She looks back at the Sonic she had seen killed, but this is Mephiles, who then absorbs Iblis and sinks into the ground. Sonic says he had heard something and ran off to check on it. When he came back, he saw Elise leaning there crying, but he did not see the fake Sonic or Mephiles.

Luckily, Sonic and Elise had been wearing monitoring devices to detect abnormalities. Upon their return, Eggman examines the data, quickly recognizing the energy patterns from Mephiles as something he has seen before.

Mephiles and the Boo Busters
With some assistance from Tails, they modify a weapon to be effective against Mephiles. They call this weapon "The Proton Pack". It is a bulky backpack, with a specialized gun (a "proton gun" or "neutrena wand") attached via a cable. On the other side, there is a metal box also attached to a cable, known as a trap. Eggman describes its operation, "To capture Mephiles, you need to fire the gun at him. This will fire a beam, which should temporarily restrain him. After this, you throw the trap onto the ground, and when activated it should pull him into it. Once he is captured, return him here and we can put him in a special tank. Mephiles has a negative charge, and the positive energy from the proton beam will weaken him and hold him in place. The backpack is actually a small self-contained particle accelerator, with a nuclear battery powering it. The battery has a half-life of around 5000 years."

Sonic asks, "Has this thing actually been tested before?", "Not on Mephiles, exactly, but we used it before to capture King Boom Boo, and it is pretty effective against Boos.", "Is that why it has a picture of a Boo on it?", "In short, yes. The data you and Elise brought back implies that Mephiles is essentially a much more advanced type of Boo." Eggman also hands them some brown jumpsuits, also with pictures of Boos on the arm, saying "These will give you increased resistence against Boos."

Sonic, Shadow, Tails, and Knuckles then go in to fight Snively and Mephiles. Upon Arrival, they find that Mephiles has taken over control of Snively, and his powered armor has since turned into a monstrous entity merged in with Mephiles form. They then ask him if he is still Snively, and he responds, "There is no Snively, only Mephiles. However, I will give you the chance to decide your own destruction." Shadow says, "Hey, everyone, don't think of anything!", but Mephiles says anyways, "The choice has already been made!". They see a giant humanoid mass of Chili-dogs wandering towards them (Knuckles exclaims, "It's the Charlie Dog Chili Dog Man!"), at which Sonic exclaims, "But, really, I was hungry! I only thought about it for a moment!" Sonic and Knuckles try in vain to eat all the Chili dogs, but quickly find that there are too many Chili dogs for them to eat, and it nearly stomps them flat.

At first they all try firing their Proton Packs at the Chili Dog Man, but it doesn't work. He seems to be immune to the effects of the Proton Packs.

Shadow and Tails then fire their proton packs at Mephiles, but he is resisting. Shadow says, "Maybe we should try, crossing the streams.", at which Tails responds, "But you never cross the streams!" They do it anyways, and it seems to end up working. Sonic and Knuckles join in, also firing theirs into the combined beam. This successfully holds him in place, as they throw down their traps.

Epilog
Mephiles is then trapped, and Snively remains also incapacitated. They take them back to Eggman, where Mephiles is emptied into the tank containing King Boom Boo and a bunch of other Boos. Similarly, Snively is locked away in a cell.

Eggman comes to visit him, saying, "Ah, how your plans have failed you, my foolish nephew!". Elise returns to ruling Soleanna, with Eggman's support and Sonic by her side, albeit Soleanna is now a semi-autonomous zone within the Eggman Empire.

Then Elise has half hedgehog babies, and somehow retains chaos abilities. She has a son, which looks like a more human version of Sonic, and a daughter which looks like a more hedgehog version of herself.

Not long after, Tails and Cream marry, and have a son they name Rameros. He has some oddly human features, namely a larger size and relative absense of fur, despite being mostly mobian, though he also has long ears and a tail. With his combination of ears and tail, he is able to get airborne and fly easily, using his ears as wings and his tail as a propeller.

And everything is nice and happy again, or is it?