The World Caves In

Prologue

Alarms blare throughout a fully metallic facility, heavy metal blast doors closing to stop potential intruders, but a blur of blue easily passes through before they can close.

That blur, in fact, is actually a hedgehog. To be specific, the one and only Sonic the Hedgehog, no doubt on his way to stop yet another one of Doctor Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik's terrible plans.

As he enters a more open part of the facility, a storage bay for thousands upon thousands of robots, a flying orange-yellow fox approaches from a lower level, miraculously able to match Sonic's sheer speed.

"Tails! I'm glad you could catch up!" He smiles back at the fox, before looking forward again. "We gotta be close now! We can't let Eggman get away with whatever he's planning to do with the Chaos Emeralds!"

By now, this is just same old, same old. Eggman hatches a new evil plan, sometimes involving the Chaos Emeralds, Sonic comes and tears it all down

But this time, there's much higher stakes...

"We need to be careful Sonic! Eggman also has the Master Emerald!" Tails is more than a bit concerned, the Master Emerald holds immense power, and in the wrong hands...

"The Master Emerald? That knucklehead can barely keep it from being stolen for two minutes!" Sonic chuckles, but quickly becomes serious. "We've got no time to lose, then! He should be somewhere around here!"

Tails holds out some form of tracking device as he flies. A signal blips on the screen, seven smaller signals. And a much larger eighth.

"They're just up ahead! If we hurry, maybe we can recover them before it's too late!"

The two rush through the facility, picking up the pace even more, suddenly halting to a stop as they arrive before what appears to be a central control room, with a particularly familiar figure standing on the other side of the glass.

"It's over Eggman! Give up those Emeralds!" Sonic yelled. Eggman turns to face the Hedgehog, walking up to the glass.

"Is it? Is it really over? Yes, it certainly is. But maybe not in the way that you would think." The Doctor smirks. "By all means, feel free to try and stop me."

Sonic narrows his eyes, before spindashing into the glass... But he couldn't get through.

"What the- What's this glass made of?!" Sonic practically bounced off of the glass, only leaving a few scratch marks on it.

"Oh, you know, Polycarbonate, Acrylic, it's actually pretty basic stuff, Sonic. I'm sure Tails would know at least." Eggman laughs and turns to a machine in the room, shaped something like a gateway.

"Finally... With my newest scientific breakthrough... I can return... And you won't be there to bother me!" Eggman turns back to look at Sonic, pointing at him. "I can do whatever I want, and you won't be there trying to meddle in all of my plans!"

"With all seven Chaos Emeralds, as well as the Master Emerald, I can finally build the glorious Eggman Empire to my exact visions!" He starts messing with a control panel, the machine whirs to life...

"Out of my way!"

Knuckles has suddenly appeared, no doubt having sensed the location of the Master Emerald.

"Hey Knuckles! Been too busy to guard the emerald?" Sonic chimes up with a smirk. Knuckles ignores him and starts beating on the glass. Despite how reinforced it is, the glass begins to chip... Then crack...

"O-Oh! Uh- Oh god oh god oh god hurry up-" Eggman starts to plead with the machine, as it's taking it's time to power on. A flood of light takes over the room as the glass finally shatters, and the machine is fully on.

"So long Sonic! See you never!" Eggman laughs as he gathers all the emeralds and steps through the machine, it shuts down immediately after, the control panel shorting out...

"No!" Tails exclaims "He's gone!"

"Well, we'll just have to find him again! He can't have gone too far!" Sonic keeps his confidence up, but the same couldn't be said for Tails and Knuckles.

"The radar isn't getting a reading at all, not even a faint one..." he taps the screen, and nothing...

"And I can't even sense the Emeralds anymore, as if they're gone off the face of the planet." Knuckles groans. "There's no way that took him to another world, is there?"

"It's possible..." Tails sighs. "Maybe if I can reverse-engineer this machine, I can figure out where he went, and how we can follow him."

"Well that's great Tails! But the sooner you can do that the better! I'm just itching to get at that Egghead!" Sonic says, stretching just to make it clear that he's ready to go whenever.

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"Hows it coming along Tails?" Sonic walks into Tails' workshop, asking the same question that he's asked every day for the past six months.

"You know, I think I might almost have it." Tails turns to the fully reconstructed device. "I've just been trying to decrypt some of the logs that Eggman kept so that I can figure out what coordinates I'm supposed to put in."

Sonic huffs.

"Come on, it's been too long already, surely we can get going now? Who needs coordinates?" The Hedgehog tries to approach the machine and turn it on himself, but Tails quickly moves to stand in his way.

"If I don't at least have the galactic coordinates, we could end up in the middle of space! Just please be patient." Tails pleaded with Sonic. He knew his patience was starting to wear thin.

Who really knew what Eggman was even up to anyway?

Hours later, the sun has long since disappeared over the horizon, Tails still working at... Less than moderate efficiency, only running on two hours of sleep, he continued to make attempts to decrypt the files...

But finally, miraculously even, the decryption attempts yielded results! Finally, he could see the coordinates of where the machine should be set to! Who knows how complex and intricate it may be...

[0, 0, 0]

That's it. Those are the coordinates. All that time and effort spent for such a simple number. But it's not like he could have known.

Tails puts a hand to his forehead, sighing and jotting down the coordinates anyway. While the situation may still be urgent, it can wait until the morning.

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"Alright Tails, I got everyone here, what's going on?" Sonic shows up to Tails' workshop in the morning, along with many other Mobians, at Tails' request.

"Well, I finally found the coordinates of where Eggman went, but it's kind of vague." Tails starts to activate the machine. "I wanted you to gather everyone because we'd have a lot of ground to cover if we want to find Eggman. That, and we may end up seperated when we go through this portal..."

Sonic smirks.

"It's about time. Let's go show this Egghead that he can't hide from us!"

A number of cheers ring from the surrounding Mobians, but not all are too thrilled.

The machine powers on fully, in a swirl of colours... The Mobians enter, one by one.

An adventure in an entirely new world... This would surely be exciting, wouldn't it?

But the situation may be more dire than they thought...