Chaos Born

"What You See Is What You Get."

Bubble, gubble, gurble, glub. Whrrrrr, beep boo-beep, drrrrrthrrrr, whrrreeep. Zrrrrr click-click zrrrrr, gubble, bubble, beep, glub glub, whrrrrr, vooooom, bubble, click, beep.

So went the harmonious ambience of your typical evil scientist laboratory.

This evil scientist laboratory may have had a similar tune once but, right now, it was deadly silent.

...Almost deadly silent...

Sat at one of his many desks, the infamous doctor of science could have been up to his spectacles in new information, new schemes, new possibilities - all hugely eclipsed by Dr Eggman's recent victory: The Successful Capture of Sonic The Hedgehog.

But he wasn't. He was actually listening to a much more rare laboratory sound:

Grrrrr.

"Now don't be so disheartened," Eggman had cooed, the smooth lens of his glasses reflecting the illuminated green writing from his only working computer screen. "You've had your... extremely numerous victories. Ever heard the expression that what goes up must come down?"

Silence.

"No? The point is... You can't expect to go on winning forever." Eggman turned in his chair, another dark shape to add to the arrangement of his domain. "Even you..." He spoke, "...with all your speed and all your endurance... even you have to submit to that."

At a lengthy distance from Eggman, clamped down on a ring of metal, steel gauntlets restraining his formidable legs, the fastest living creature in the whole of existence was presented as a work of art, his limbs stretched and only his head, neck and back supported. He was at a 120 degree tilt, liable for adjusting no doubt, taking pride of place upon an elevated platform.

Though he had growled, his head did not hang. He would not allow it to hang. He had been caught by Eggman before, in the past, but that hadn't lasted. What proof was there that he wasn't going to get out of this situation too?

"Then why am I still alive?" he asked.

To that question, Eggman rose from his chair.

"Why am I still alive?" he asked back.

One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Four: He and his adversary were a meter apart.

"Hmm? Why do I still draw breath, after everything I've done?"

Sonic knew Eggman well. Eggman knew Sonic. It was a mystery to everyone else as to why both still lived.

"...I don't take lives," so Sonic uttered in his head, "I free them."

"What is freedom? Life without law." Eggman uttered back.

Silent conversation, however, wasn't a hobby that either was particularly interested in partaking in.

"I sussed what was wrong with you a long time ago," Eggman said, aloud. "You thrive on chaos. Not that you can help that - it makes up your DNA, after all."

To say that Sonic felt vulnerable was a literal stretch. His respect for Eggman as a scientist was considerably more than his respect for him as an enemy though the very fact that he was not in total control of the circumstances was enough to cause the minor quills that grew from his tail to the base of his neck to prickle.

Despite all this, the one thing that Sonic the Hedgehog could easily find time to do when facing peril situations was to consider the glass half-full.

"So you're, what, the order to my chaos?"

Eggman shrugged. "Can't have one without the other, can you?"