///////// DATASTREAM FRAGMENT RECOVERED: SECTOR 7-FILTRATION HUB /////////
Jeffrey's stylus snapped mid-scribble as King Maxx Acorn's hologram flickered—distorted by Kintobor Tower's gamma interference. The thermal scans seethed with far too many Overlander heat signatures in his opinion, pulsing like infected lymph nodes around the water filtration vents. Agent Prower's claws twitched toward his sword. "They cluster at lifeblood conduits," he rasped, muzzle crimping at the stench of unwashed refugees wafting through Maxx's environmental filters. "Like thousands of fleas on a dying mobini."
King Maxx Acron's silk robe whispered against obsidian as he circled the hologram. "Precisely Agent Prower." His claw traced Sector 7's ventilation schematics—bronze arteries riddled with foreign heat. "Kintobor's compassion truely is his Achilles' heel. These... *fat parasites* thrive where he bleeds resources on lost causes." The hologram zoomed on a cluster of Overlander children near an auxiliary vent, their thermal signatures weak but persistent. Jeffrey's stylus hovered over casualty projections. Prower inhaled sharply—the scent of irradiated cabbage and unwashed fur thick in his nostrils.
"But my lord, if that's the case, why not simply wipe them out with the neurotoxin we've been using in the Northern Baronies?" Jeffrey proposed, his stylus tapping against projected casualty reports. The hologram flickered—blue numbers dissolving into red as toxin dispersal patterns bloomed across the north. Prower's claws scraped his sword hilt, nostrils flaring at the memory of twitching limbs and foaming muzzles in the quarantine pens.
King Maxx Acorn's tail lashed—once, twice, thrice—before stilling. "It's quite a simple question with a simple answer Jeffrey my good skunk, and that answer is simply Sonic the Hedgehog." The hologram shifted to display radiation charts pulsing from Diamond Heights' ruins—spiking patterns forming jagged blue peaks where Kintobor's shuttle had landed. "Neurotoxins leave many Overlander corpses. Many Overlander corpses leave many mourners. Sonic?"
King Maxx Acorn's claws flexed, slicing air where the hedgehog's thermal signature burned hotter than reactor cores—an anomaly pulsing amid Castle Acorn, "Sonic killed that fool Jules and his hermit brother before he was two weeks old—just by existing and awakening his powers." The hologram flared crimson, radiation decay rates spiraling wildly where Jules' wife—Bernadette's corpse had cooled. Jeffrey's stylus clattered—toxin projections forgotten. Agent Prower tasted copper where his fangs pierced his lip.
"Sonic might not leave mourners if he loses the only person who ever actually gives a single damn about him," King Maxx Acorn murmured, claws tracing the hologram's jagged edges like a surgeon mapping incisions. The radiation patterns pulsed—Kintobor's biometrics flickering alongside Sonic's—a lethal bond neither could sever. Jeffrey froze mid-breath as Maxx's clawtip pierced the hologram's heart, distorting Sonic's tiny form into static. "But grief? Oh, grief leaves scars even gamma rays can't erase."
Agent Prower's missing leg throbbed in phantom agreement. He remembered the scent of Kintobor's disinfectant mingling with hedgehog pup eyes as he was forced to stay in that hospital bed—how the Overlander's mercy tasted worse than the dumpster's rusted edge on his leg. Maxx's hologram flickered, casting jagged shadows across his ruined uniform. His claw spasmed around the sword hilt. "Sonic must see more value in his own kind over that rotund Overlander," he rasped through gritted teeth. The scent of Diamond Heights' burning synth-grain silos seeped through the throne room's filtration system—charred wheat undercut with the sweetness of still-smoldering Overlander and Mobian flesh.
Agent Prower still feared that child—that unnatural cobalt blur with eyes like shattered beryl as if they were the Unholy Anarchy below Diamond Heights' gamma lamps. He'd seen Sonic once—just once—during King Maxx Acorn's seizing, watching the infant writhe in that damn Kintobor's arms as radiation burns spiderwebbed down his own leg. The memory festered worse than sepsis: how Sonic hadn't cried. Hadn't screamed. Just *watched* with those depthless green eyes, absorbing Prower's agony like Diamond propaganda reels absorbed truth. Kintobor's voice crackled through Maxx's comms—"—sanctuary protocols demand neutralized contaminants—" and Prower's phantom limb spasmed. Neutralized. Like his leg. Like his dignity. His claws gouged fresh wounds in his sword's hilt.
Not even Rosemarie managed to make him forget, still somehow seeing him as honorable despite being a cripple, despite being useless—only that damn Kintobor's scent lingered in his nostrils, antiseptic and foreign, mingling with the phantom ache of his severed leg. The Overlander's pity had been worse than the pain. Maxx's claws drummed against obsidian, snapping Prower back to the present. "You," the king murmured, silk robe whispering like a guillotine's descent, "will ensure Sonic understands where his loyalties *must* lie." The hologram flickered—Sonic's tiny form dissolving into static—just as the throne room doors hissed open...
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Sally Alica Acorn was young, but she wasn't stupid as much as her father wished she was—and that was both her curse and her blessing. She was aware on how her father kept her close, kept her *watched*—his agents lounging just outside her playroom, their bored ears always twitching toward her conversations with her stuffed animals. His latest gift—a jeweled music box that played the Kingdom's anthem—sat on her shelf, its delicate gears suspiciously silent despite the pheromonal sweetness clinging to its velvet lining. Sally's stubby fingers clenched around her fox plush's neck as she played another game with Sonic.
Sonic..., oh Sonic. The cobalt blue hedgehog had shown her that with him there was another way—a way that didn't involve diamond-plated collars or pheromone-laced music boxes. Sally pretended to adjust the fox plush's bowtie, her claws tracing the hidden seam where she'd stashed the stolen scalpel from Kintobor's med-kit. Not for violence—never that, at least for a while—but for the quiet, precise work of dismantling her father's gifts one screw at a time. The music box's inner workings now lay scattered beneath her bed, its pheromone reservoirs emptied into Maxx's own evening tea.
She watched Sonic now, his deep green eyes tracking the ceiling vents with eerie precision. Because of him she had plans—real plans, not her father's hollow ceremonies and hatred of anything he saw as unpure and barbaric. He made her think of fox dens hidden beneath Diamond Heights' glittering spires, of whispered songs passed between Overlander children and Mobian kits in Sector 7's shadows. She mimicked his stillness, her stubby fingers tightening around the plush fox's throat. Not for violence. For memory. The seam along its neck held three things: a scalpel, a sliver of Overlander synth-bread, and a single, crumpled note in Sonic's cramped handwriting. *"Entropy doesn't pause for kings."*
Her plans were somewhat similar to her father's she supposed—except where his had him as supreme ruler of Mobius untill he finally died, hers had Mobius be ruled by order—but Sally knew better than to voice that treason aloud.
The fox plush's neck seam split silently under her claws, revealing the scalpel's gleam alongside the synth-bread's stale crust. She'd watched Kintobor's medics use similar tools to remove shrapnel from Overlander refugees—precision cuts followed by swift healing. That was the difference between her and Maxx. He saw scalpels as weapons. She saw them as instruments of upheaval. The breadcrumb was harder to explain, even to herself. A childish impulse? She didn't know anymore.
Her plan was quite simple—if she could convince Sonic to kill her bastard of a father, she could rule Mobius not through fear, but through order. She wasn't foolish enough to believe in peace—Maxx had taught her better than that, and Sonic had reinforced that—but she could wield control differently. Sonic wouldn't be her weapon, no, he deserved so much more than just that.
He'd be her *shield*, the unstoppable force that would break the system so they could rebuild it together. She'd already begun carving the blueprint into the underside of her bedframe: ventilation schematics stolen from Maxx's war room, water flow charts memorized from Kintobor's filtration hub, and most importantly—the exact pressure points where Diamond Heights' structural supports would fail under sustained sonic vibration. The scalpel wasn't for violence; it was for etching truths into wood grain while her father's spies listened to nursery rhymes outside the door.
Phase one required patience—letting Maxx believe his pheromonal conditioning worked while she cataloged his tells: the way his claws flexed before executions, how his muzzle twitched at mentions of Overlander medics. Every weakness disguised as strength.
Phase two hinged on Sonic's cooperation, but she'd heard how he'd killed his father and uncle. Simply put, his power could reinforce any world order—or raze it to the ground. Her claws traced the scalpel's edge, considering. She was already invested in his vision—he did not have her as a pawn, but as an knight, an equal perhaps. Maxx's downfall would be engineered through overwhelming brute force.
Sometimes the simplest solution was actually the best.
Sally knew this better than most, and Sonic reinforced that with every unnervingly still breath. Weaponized innocence was phase one: let Maxx believe his conditioning held while she mapped the fault lines in his obsidian fortress. The scalpel under her fox plush wasn't just a tool—it was a promise. Every carved ventilation duct, every marked structural weakness beneath her bedframe whispered the same truth: Diamond Heights would collapse under its own weight if pressured *just* right.
Phase three required high patience. Sonic's indifference to suffering wasn't apathy—it was glacial efficiency, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. She'd seen it in how he studied Maxx's holograms, memorizing patrol routes like chess moves. Her own blueprint expanded nightly: Overlander refugee tunnels beneath Diamond Heights' foundations, ventilation shafts leading directly to Maxx's obsidian chambers, even the weak points in his robotic enforcers' knee joints. Sonic wouldn't just let her kill Maxx—he'd dismantle the entire system in one orchestrated collapse, leaving no martyrs, just rubble. And when the dust settled? Sally would be there with water ration charts and pre-drafted peace accords, the scalpel exchanged for a pen.
Phase four was riskier. Sonic's loyalty couldn't be bought with thrones or promises—only mutual annihilation. She'd leave Doctor Kintobor's medical files where Maxx's spies would find them: radiation charts spiking near Sonic's crib, neural scans showing impossible cognition. Let Maxx think he was breeding a perfect weapon. Let him send Echo Squad. Let them fail.
Because phase five required Maxx to make one simple error: that if he kept Doctor Kintobor alive for long enough Sonic would be a pacifist untill Maxx didn't need him to be one and wanted 'his' weapon back—but the moment Sonic saw the right moment, he wouldn't stop, no matter what tried to.
And she loved that about him.
Next was phase six: Timing is key, but patience is king. Maxx's pheromonal tea has already begun altering his very own judgment—subtle miscalculations in troop deployments, paranoid double-checks of guard rotations. His court physicians whisper about stress-induced tremors. Perfect. Sally's fingers traced the scalpel's edge absentmindedly as Sonic's ears twitched toward the ventilation shaft—right on schedule. Their synchronized stillness was its own language: *Wait. Watch. The crumbling has already begun.*
The seventh phase hinged on the people, especially in the Northern Baronies—Sally had studied their unrest through intercepted transmissions, noting how Maxx's neurotoxin deployments only deepened their resistance to him while leaving them desperate enough to rally behind *any* alternative. She'd whisper through the vents herself if needed—anonymous broadcasts from "Sector 7 sympathizers," doctored footage of Sonic helping irradiated refugees, anything to paint him as their natural invincible savior against Maxx's engineered plagues. Sonic wouldn't just lead them; he'd be the detonator they hurled at the throne.
Phase eight was surgical—literally. The scalpel wasn't just for etching plans into wood; it was a failsafe. Should Sonic hesitate at the critical moment, should Maxx's pheromonal conditioning somehow still grip them, Sally would carve that bastard king's throat herself mid-speech, letting his arterial spray christen the rubble of Diamond Heights. Sonic's speed would mask her strike—a blur of cobalt, then crimson—and by the time the court realized their monarch was dead, she'd already be screaming for medics, the grieving daughter cradling her father's corpse. Performance was everything.
Then it would be long live the queen
Phase nine required optics. Sonic's unnatural stillness worked in their favor—let the people project their hopes onto his silence. Sally had already drafted the speech she'd give over Maxx's cooling body, invoking his "tragic decline" while subtly crediting Sonic for ending his suffering. The scalpel would vanish into an Overlander medic's sterilization tray, her claws clean. Sonic would stand beside her, bathed in holographic spotlights—the reluctant savior, the silent executioner. Kintobor's medical reports would "leak" soon after, framing Sonic's radiation burns as wounds sustained protecting refugees from Maxx's neurotoxins. History was written by survivors, and Sally intended to write theirs in bold, bloody strokes.
Phase ten was the most delicate—the transition of her being queen, yet with Sonic by her side it would be much easier. You might ask about her mother, Queen Alicia, and Sally didn't need to even account for her. She hated her mother almost as much as she hated Maxx. Simply put, she was weak, and she hated that about her.
Her mother never bothered to have her own opinions different from Maxx's—that was her one true crime...