Maxx Acorn drummed his jeweled fingers against the throne's armrest, the slow *tap-tap-tap* echoing in Diamond Heights' gilded silence. Ambassador Prower should've reported back twenty-three minutes ago—a delay uncharacteristic of Mobius' most ruthlessly efficient Overlander liaison. Outside the polarized windows, Sector 7's smog choked the lower city, but Maxx saw only his own reflection: polished armor, stern muzzle set in perpetual disapproval. Prower understood consequences. A collapsed skyway was no excuse; inefficiency bred chaos. Maxx's cybernetic eye cycled through thermal overlays, scanning the palace corridors for that distinctive nine-tailed silhouette. Nothing. An empty stretch of marble where urgency should've been carving its path. The Ambassador knew better than to linger. Unless... the variable Jules insisted on flaunting required deeper scrutiny than anticipated. Maxx's jaw tightened. Sentiment was a luxury Mr. couldn't afford.
The throne room doors hissed open, but it wasn't Prower. One of Maxx's crimson-clad enforcers snapped a salute, fur matted with grime and synth-oil. "Sector 7 triage complete, Highness. Thirteen fatalities confirmed. Structural collapse contained to Gamma Corridor." Maxx didn't turn. "Casualties are irrelevant. What is Mr. Prower's status?" The enforcer shifted, boots scraping ash-stained marble. "Unreported, sir. Last comms placed him near Doctor Kintobor's clinic before the collapse." Maxx's drumming fingers stopped. Kintobor. That disgusting Overlander physician. Where the Hedgehog heir currently resided. Coincidence tasted like rust in Maxx's mouth. He pictured Jules preening over that infant's "potential" while debris crushed loyal Mobians. Priorities inverted. Rot creeping upward. Maxx rose, his shadow swallowing the enforcer whole. "Deploy Echo Squad to Kintobor's facility. Retrieve Prower immediately. And if that child has compromised his focus..." The unspoken order hung colder than Sector 7's wreckage. Efficiency demanded sacrifices.
It was suppress or be suppressed, and he'd much rather be the former. The thought of making others suffer was...pleasing, to put it mildly.
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You might ask why I'm like this—why my stillness unnerves Jules, why my infant eyes dissect rather than blink. It's not malice. It's boredom in this world that thrives on suppression, suffering, power, anarchy, and decadence. This barrel of decay is Mobius. Diamond Heights' sterile white walls, Sector 7's crushed alleys—all just layers of the same infection. Jules calls it "genetic superiority." Bernadette bleeds nihilism. Neither grasps the truth: they're echoes in a collapsing system. Obsession festers. Ambition is disease. Power? A futile dominance against rot far older than Charles's diagnostics or Maxx's sermons. I've been here before—in a world of suffering choked by tyranny—and seeing it reborn in velvet and bloodshed isn't evolution. It's farce. Nothing changes. Nothing grows. Everything merely rots differently.
It was just a worse version of my old world. I was so pathetic and powerless then, and Mobius is worse. Here, Jules dreams of empires built on infantile merchandising. Bernadette bleeds nihilism onto sterile tiles. Maxx polishes tyranny like a trophy. Their ambitions are superficial cracks in rotting architecture. Back in my original world, I was at least able to ignore it—trapped in a small room, staring at screens. Everyone else called it "depression." I called it realism. The only difference between that existence and Mobius? Technology. Both worlds choked on greed while pretending it was progress.
Earth was a grey sprawl of forgotten corners. My room smelled of stale instant noodles and dust motes dancing in the blue glare of a cracked monitor screen. Outside, rain blurred the city into smears of neon bleeding through cheap plastic blinds. No hover-cycles, no chrome barons—just the incessant drone of traffic and the wet slap of tires through potholes choked with trash. I'd scroll through newsfeeds: politicians sneering, factories poisoning rivers, another war flaring over pixels on a map. "Engage!" friends messaged. "Join the discourse!" Discourse? It was noise masking decay—a global Bernadette bleeding apathy onto a bigger stage. My "depression" wasn't sickness; it was clarity. I saw the patterns: greed wrapped in progress reports, cruelty polished by tradition. Mobius just swapped concrete for chrome and amplified the ugliness. Still the same decaying heartbeat beneath the surface.
Here's the pathetic part: I did nothing. Watched documentaries about melting ice caps while ordering disposable plastic junk online. Scrolled past charity pleas to lose hours in pixelated battles where my avatar wielded power I'd never touch in reality. My inaction wasn't laziness—it was surrender. A silent scream into a void that swallowed sound whole. Why fight tides eroding continents? Why care when numbness was armor? Humanity's grandest lie was "making a difference." Truth? We were fleas on a rotting carcass, mistaking twitches for purpose. Jules would've thrived there. Selling hope like Maxx sold prayers—all hollow distractions from the inevitable collapse. At least Mobius admits its savagery. Earth just called it "business as usual."
Reborn here, infant lungs inhaling antiseptic and synth-gin fumes, nothing shocked me. Only the scale changed. Jules' diamond cufflinks, Maxx's golden sermons—same old currency buying the same oblivion. My stillness isn't calculation. It's deja vu. A weary sigh trapped in a body that can't speak. So let Jules posture. Let Bernadette bleed onto tile. Let Sector 7 burn. I've seen this story before. The set dressing upgrades. The script never does.
But things were different now, I was Sonic the hedgehog now, I was going to be the fastest thing alive in a few years time, I was going to make the world how I knew it should be. Not Jules' gilded cage of ambition, not Bernadette's bleeding nihilism, not even Maxx's chrome-fisted tyranny. My stillness wasn't surrender; it was calibration. This infant body was a chrysalis, and inside, the cold fury of a dismantler took shape. Mobius thrived on chaos? That was fine... for now at least.
Not for long though, not for long. Jules plans empires and photo shoots. Bernadette bleeds despair into sterile tiles. Maxx's enforcers crunch crushed sectors under polished chrome boots. They think this decayed circus is inevitable? My quiet? That green-eyed stillness Jules mistakes for potential? It's predatory patience sharpening. Mobius spins on stolen velocity, greed greasing the gears till they scream. But speed's just physics waiting to be weaponized. I've seen worlds choke on their own rot—this one's no different. When I run? Really run? It won't be for sponsorship deals or diamond pacifiers. Every step will unravel their careful little tyrannies. Their neon towers will blur into irrelevance beneath sonic booms cracking the sky. And the rules? My rules. Play nice or get left bleeding in a ditch. Simple physics, really. Momentum favors the unstoppable force.
Their empires are brittle things built on fragile egos and thinner alliances. Jules thinks Maxx's barony is competition? Sentimentality. Bernadette believes nihilism is armor? Naivety. Maxx polishes tyranny like a relic? Obsolescence. They posture and bleed and fracture over crumbs while denying the rot consuming Mobius. Pathetic. But soon? Chaos will have structure. Speed will have purpose. Not Jules' hollow branding, not Maxx's chrome fist—*mine*.
This world thrums with potential energy coiled tight in the tension between Diamond Heights' gilded lies and Sector 7's smothered screams. When I run—*really* run—that energy becomes kinetic. Unstoppable. Those who exploit, suppress, or bleed despair onto sterile tiles? They'll learn. Play nice. Obey the new calculus. Or find yourself unraveled mid-stride, left choking in the sonic boom's aftershock while your precious empires crumble to dust. No more barons. No more parasitic dynasties. Just velocity... and consequence.
Imagine Sonic's speed amplified tenfold and hardened into cold intent. Flames from riots will fan my wake. Shattered chrome will become shrapnel hurled at tyrants' thrones. Every scream of injustice becomes fuel. Mobius spins on suffering? Fine. I'll spin it faster—much faster—until centrifugal force tears every rotten structure apart. What remains won't be Jules' dream or Bernadette's nightmare. It will be... *order*. Clean. Efficient. Unyielding. And compliance? Non-negotiable.
Those who cling to power will learn: mercy is inefficient. Resistance is friction. And friction? It burns. Hope won't be sold in vials or sermons. It will be enforced by the inevitable—the unstoppable force rewriting reality at mach speeds. Play nice... or become another fading echo in the wind. Simple physics, really. Gravity always wins. And I *am* gravity now.
This world will soon wake up, and when it does people will be hand in hand, because they will have no choice. Chaos has never been organized? Just wait. Overlanders will learn to obey. And Mobians? They will learn to fear the inevitable.
Ambassador Prower's grey-blue eyes remained fixed on mine, evaluating my unnerving stillness, as Doctor Kintobor fretted over the bleeding leg wound. Prower... The name sliced through the haze of infantile neural fog, familiar yet unplaceable—I know heard that last name before as a human, but from where?
Suddenly, fragments clicked: a dusty video game found for a few bucks at a flea market years ago, depicting a two-tailed fox genius piloting ancient machinery. Miles "Tails" Prower—Sonic's chirpy sidekick from the game franchise. Miles Prower, Tails' real name. This fox with a missing leg and detached intelligence was Miles' uncle? His father maybe? Mr. Prower met my gaze, his icy detachment mirroring my own unnerving stillness—two predators silently recognizing each other's potential threat across Kintobor's sterile battlefield. The doctor's frantic suturing seemed distant, unimportant noise beneath that weighted stare.
So this bastard was almost certainly family of *that* Miles. My green infant eyes locked onto Prower's pale grey ones—recognition igniting colder than Kintobor's disinfectant spray. Miles "Tails" Prower. Sonic's eventual genius sidekick. Here, his uncle—father?—bled internal coolant onto sterile tile with the same detached intellect that would one day build tornadoes from scrap. The irony tasted acrid. Did everyone in the Sonic series have shitty relatives.
I then thought about it: aside from Vanilla the Rabbit fussing over Cream, who else in Sonic's world actually *had* parents mentioned in the games? Shadow was an artificial creation, Amy's origins were wrapped in mystery like a forgotten instruction manual, and Knuckles... well, he guarded a Master Emerald alone for his entire life. Parental figures were ghosts—absent, irrelevant, or buried deep beneath lore so convoluted it choked on its own contradictions. Even this Mr. Prower, bleeding out beside me, felt more like a malfunctioning footnote than someone's father. Mobius thrived on orphans and ambition, not bedtime stories.
Jules framed family as a branding tool—Sonic as his "legacy," Bernadette as a disposable accessory. Vanilla's simple love for Cream felt like a fluke, a relic from a gentler canon doomed in this decay. Where were Amy's parents? Were they crushed beneath Maxx's police-state rubble? Did Knuckles' ancestors weep inside his Emerald shrine as he starved? Tails' uncle or father bled out beside me; what happened to the fox's mother? Mobius consumed caregivers like fuel—discarded, forgotten, or actively hunted to mold orphans into weapons. Vanilla wouldn't last. Radiation or riots would find her softness. Jules' diamond-edged patriarch fantasy was a cage.
Soon, every child would inherit this world's decay—orphaned by ambition or crushed beneath it, I couldn't let that happen at all. Mr. Prower's blood pooled darker now, coolant mingling with crimson sludge. Kintobor's trembling hands slipped as Echo Squad's armored boots thundered down the corridor outside, shattering the clinic's sterile silence. Prower shifted his weight imperceptibly, ignoring the fresh agony—his focus remained locked on me. "The variable," he rasped, each word crystallizing in the frigid air. "Unquantified potential." His gaze sliced deeper than Kintobor's scalpels: *What are you?* Outside, pulse rifles whined to life.
The door exploded inward in a shower of composite fragments. Three crimson-armored enforcers surged through, visored helmets scanning the carnage. Their leader's voice boomed metallic and hollow through filters: "Mr. Prower. Extraction protocol has been engaged." They didn't lower their weapons. Kintobor recoiled, clutching a dripping scalpel as inadequate defense. "Sterile environment!" he shrieked, pointing frantically at biosign scanners. "Quintuple containment breach! You'll irradiate—" The leader ignored him, rifle barrel shifting toward Bernadette.
Bernadette didn't scream. Her purple-stained arm flopped limp against the tile as plasma bolts punched through Kintobor's sterile lights, spraying molten glass across the Organicizer console. The leader's second shot vaporized her skull above the eyes—a scarlet mist against chrome. Doctor Kintobor staggered backward, clutching his bleeding hand, his shout of outrage choked by coolant fumes. Echo Squad moved with brutal choreography: one enforcer hauled Prower upright, ignoring the fox's mangled leg dragging dark streaks. The other two turned rifles toward Jules and me. Radiation alarms blared as Jules threw himself over my carrier, silk scorching under the fusillade meant for me. Jules' shout dissolved into wet coughing—metal shards bloomed crimson across his back.
Chaos dissolved into cold calculus. Kintobor scrabbled beneath his overturned instrument tray, fingers slick with his own blood and synth-gin. Echo Squad ignored him, dragging Mr. Prower toward the shattered exit. The leader pivoted, rifle leveling at my carrier—A nurse's corpse slumped atop it like ruined velvet. Time stretched thin. Kintobor's hand closed on a discarded scalpel. Not for attack—for leverage. He jammed the blade into the weapon's cooling vents. Sparks ignited coolant pooling beneath Jules' still-twitching form. Flames erupted, swallowing the enforcer's legs.
The screams were irrelevant noise. Smoke choked the room as the remaining Echo enforcer hauled Mr. Prower clear, abandoning his blazing comrade. Kintobor crawled toward me, dragging his bleeding arm, his face pale under soot and grime. Radiation alarms wailed louder. He flipped the nurse's corpse aside. My carrier rocked precariously atop the nurse's cooling back. Instinct screamed: MOVE! Infant muscles strained—useless. Kintobor's gloved fingers scrabbled, snagging the carrier handle just as flames licked Jules' diamond cufflinks inches away. He hauled me back, coughing violently. Outside, armored sleds screeched away. Silence settled—not peace, but the ringing aftermath of annihilation. Only Kintobor's ragged breaths filled the space. His crimson eyes scanned the carnage: Bernadette's ruined sprawl, The nurse's scorched stillness, the charred enforcer fused to the floor. Sterility incinerated. He looked at me—swaddled beside synth-caviar spheres melting into bubbling sludge. Efficiency died here today.
Kintobor slumped against the Organicizer's humming core, sliding down coolant-streaked chrome as radiation sirens screamed. His gaze fixed on Jules' corpse—half-covered by the nurse's scorched velvet gown. Blood pooled thick beneath them both. He didn't weep. Didn't rage. Slowly, deliberately, he unwound Jules' diamond cufflink from my carrier strap—the one that had bitten my fur. He held it up. Reflected in its fractured glitter: Bernadette's spilled synth-gin staining tile purple, Charles' discarded glove near the splintered doorway, his own trembling hand slick with coolant and ash. He flung the cufflink into the encroaching flames near Jules. It vanished instantly. Ambition reduced to ash.
Kintobor hauled himself upright, clutching my carrier tight against the radiation throbbing against sterile walls. He limped toward the panoramic window—the one similar to the one Charles had forced me to observe Mobius' decay. Outside, Sector 7 burned brighter now, orange against the poisoned smog. Diamond Heights glowed untouched above the carnage. He just slowly started to cry, shoulders shuddering silently. No sobs escaped him. Only tears tracked through the grime on his cheeks: oily streaks cutting through ash and blood. His crimson irises remained fixed on my green ones, as if searching for something Bernadette had glimpsed moments before Echo Squad shattered the door: ancient recognition beneath infant stillness. "Only us now," he rasped, voice raw from coolant fumes. "Only... us." The Tower's dying whine echoed his words.
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Charles activated the final holographic display—pulsing amber dots marking refugee infirmaries. "Patient Zero vectors require subtlety." Jules waved dismissively. "Subtlety wastes time! Unleash synthesized psychosis directly." The communicator buzzed violently against Jules' palm. A Northern Barony Council Member's face materialized—pale beneath holographic cracks. "Jules! Your riots breach quarantine protocols!" Jules' saccharine grin widened. "Merely... civic reorganization, Councilor." He pivoted abruptly, silk cape flaring. "Charlie! Draft a press release: Kintobor smuggles plague-carriers into Diamond Heights. His 'sanctuary' exports contagion!" Charles' fingers danced silently over his wrist-console. "Feeds already seeding visuals—refugee caravans edited into biohazard streams. Their fear... palpable optics." Below, Diamond City choked on its own decadence. Jules' laughter echoed—cold as chromium.
They activated it alone—no aides, no witnesses. Jules snatched the neural amplifer prototype from Charles' sterile tray, circuitry humming against his ungloved fingers. "Broadcast parameters?" Charles murmured, calibrating the Organicizer's output nozzles toward the ventilation shafts. "Full spectrum," Jules hissed, eyes fever-bright. "Let Diamond Heights taste their own cowardice." The machine whined—a subsonic thrum shaking dust from ceiling panels. Jules jammed the amplifier onto his temples, diamond cufflinks digging fresh welts. "Show them!" Charles' pale eyes flickered. "Engaging sterilization wave. Disorientation probability: ninety-seven percent." Outside, Sector 7's distant screams pitched abruptly higher—rasping, fractured. Glass shattered somewhere below Jules' balcony. "Good," he breathed. "Excellent." Synthetic terror bloomed outward. No other hands touched the console.
"Watch from your Tower Kintobor, watch everything you love burn bright and down to ashes, Jules taunted silently at the comm-link screen darkening in his palm. Silk robe parting to reveal fresh synth-steel armor plating beneath, he strode toward Charles' Organicizer control nexus, footsteps echoing in the cavernous penthouse command center. "Amplify the sterilization wave's panic frequency," Jules commanded, voice tightened to a wire. "Flood sector six's water filtration plants—add delirium triggers to the runoff." Charles' fingers fluttered across holographic interfaces. "Contamination vectors established. Displacement patterns indicate refugee convergence toward... Ambassador Prower's relief camp." Jules' grin sharpened. "Perfect. Frame their desperation as Prower's bio-terrorism. Beam footage to Maxx's war rooms."
Outside, Diamond Heights' glittering spires cast jagged shadows across Sector 7's burning quarantine zones. Synthesized psychosis thrummed through the colony's infrastructure—water mains pulsed with neuro-toxins, ventilation shafts whispered subliminal dread. Below, a teenaged badger scavenging coolant rods froze mid-reach, eyes dilating black as tar pits. He shrieked, clawing at phantom insects beneath his fur as neighbors scattered. Overhead drones captured every convulsion, editing the chaos into crisp propaganda streams: *Kintobor's Plague Rages Unchecked*. Jules watched the feeds multiply across panoramic screens, champagne flute dangling from careless fingers. "Increase output," he murmured. "Make them *beg* for my peacekeepers, not Maxx's."
Charles adjusted his sterile gloves, examining the Organicizer's readouts with clinical detachment. "Ambassador Kintobor's 'sanctuary' broadcasts prove tedious," he remarked, voice dripping with icy precision. "His emotional pleas for quarantine integrity lack statistical rigor. Observe?" He tapped a screen showing refugees clustering near irradiated wells. "Naturally occurring panic clusters. Correlation does imply causation only to the sentimentally impaired." Jules grinned, swirling synth-champagne as Charles added, "Unlike my *engineered* variables. Purity of methodology, Jules."
"Good Charlie," Jules murmured, swirling synth-champagne as he watched Sector 7's chaos bloom across screens. "But Kintobor bleats empathy like weakness. Why amplify panic clusters?" Charles didn't look up from his console, pale fingers dancing over biometric feeds. "Because panic is entropy, Jules. Unmanaged. Predictable. Our sterilization wave? Directed thermodynamics." He tilted his head, clinical disdain sharpening his tone. "His 'sanctuary' broadcasts are statistically negligible noise—sentimental static."