The following short story is based on characters created and/or
copyrighted by SEGA! Enterprises, DiC Productions, Archie Comic
Publishers, Fleetway Comic Publishers, and the Taki Corporation.  All
other characters were created and copyrighted by Roland Lowery.
	The author gives permission to distribute this work freely as long
as it remains intact and unaltered, and the transfer of monetary units is
not involved.
	Questions, comments, suggestions, complaints?  Send them to me at
.  I enjoy hearing from people who can
spell.

	Chaotic Multiverse Tale #6

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote for the day:

	"Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future, . . ."

				-Fly Like an Eagle, Steve Miller Band
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


	Heroes Fallen (Part 2 - The Heroes Saga)
		by Roland Lowery


	SONIC TILTED his head forward and placed it gently in his hands.
What just happened? he had asked.  'Scuse me? Bunnie had said, like
nothing was wrong.
	But something WAS wrong.
	"I said, 'What just happened?', Bunnie."  His head was pounding.
	"Hmm, tha's a toughie, shugah," Bunnie said, "but ah believe we
was jus' sittin' here, an' you said, 'What jus' happened?'  Why?"
	His head thumped once, twice, then stopped.
	"I-" he started, but then the pain came back to him tenfold.  His
mind was suddenly unindated by millions upon millions of pictures and
scenes of familiar people, places, and things in unfamiliar situations.
Through the hurt, he was able to reason out that he was seeing . . .
memories.
	Finally, the pain subsided again, but the memories remaind, all
jumbled up and falling over one another inside his head.
	"Wha's wrong, shugah?"  There was a tinge of fear in Bunnie's
voice.  She quickly jumped over the campfire in between them and was at
his side in a split second.  Sonic uneasily stood up and grabbed her by
the shoulders.
	"Where . . . am . . . I?" he gasped.
	"Ah'm sorry, but ah jus' don' know what y'all are talkin' about!"
she replied.  Her face was clouded with confusion.
	Sonic let her go.  The headache had come back, but he talked
through it.  "The last thing I remember was standing with Knuckles and one
of the robots in Robotnik's new R&D plant when the machine we were looking
at seemed to change color.  Some kind of . . . energy . . . shot out of it
and hit me and Knux.  Now I'm here, not that I know where here IS, and you
. . . you have regular arms and legs, and my head feels like it's gonna
EXPLODE!"
	Bunnie was silent for a moment, staring at Sonic.  Finally, she
put her hand to her mouth and said, "Mah stars, shugah . . . Ah ain't had
mah ol' roboticized limbs f'almos' fifteen years!"
	Fifteen years.  The words reverberated in Sonic's head, getting
louder and louder, threatening his sanity.  He tried to speak again, but
his voice caught, his mouth suddenly dry.  He began to sway back and
forth.
	Bunnie stepped back over and caught him.  "Maybe y'all should lie
on down, Sonic," she said as she led him to a sleeping bag lying on the
ground.  After sitting down, Sonic found his voice.
	"Bunnie, how . . . how old am I?"
	Bunnie laughed gently.  "You've been thirty for nine years now,
Sonic."
	Sonic didn't laugh at the joke.  "I'm . . . I'm THIRTY-NINE?"
	"Yes, shugah," Bunnie replied, quietly.
	"No . . . "  Sonic's brain wouldn't accept it.  "No!  I'm only
sixteen . . . "  He couldn't have lost twenty-three years!
	"No, Sonic.  Ah'm sorry."
	He blacked out.

	Knuckles T. Echidna couldn't figure out why his left eye wouldn't
open.  He had reached up to the eye, but only felt some sort of patch
covering it.  He tried to move the patch, but it wouldn't budge, nor would
it peel off.
	"What the hell-" he said, then stopped as he was once again
suprised by the deep, gravelly voice that came out of his mouth.  It had
bewildered him completely the first time he heard it, so completely that
he had been sure it was someone else that had spoken.
	Great, he thought, NOW what do I-
	Suddenly, the bottom dropped out of his mind as a flood of images
packed into his brain faster than he could sort them out.  Images that
seemed perilously close to memories, but memories that were not - COULD
not - be his own.
	His knees buckled, and he fell to the ground.  A minute later, he
passed out.

	The Machine wasn't sure that it liked its current position.  It
instictively recognized the energies that flowed during time travel, but
something about it all was . . . not right.
	It was feeling the strange sensation of being in two places at
once.  It wasn't sure if that was right or not, as it had no true
experience with time travel.  Could it be that a temporally displace being
or thing occupied both the origin time and the destination time?  If this
were true, then it would explain the readings it was getting, and it was
also possible that the temporally displaced being or thing would occupy
the same SPACE as he/she/it would occupy in the destination time as well!
	That would explain why the Machine had been programmed to place
the past time hedgehog and echinda in stasis while they were connected
with their future time selves.  Their limited facilities would probably
not be able to handle being in two places, two times, or two bodies all at
once.
	The Machine, however, had no such problems.  It was easily able to
maintain itself within its new parameters.  It was suprised, though, that
it was still in the dimension that it had brought itself and the 'bots to
in the future.  It had been sure that . . . Phil, that was the name the
echidna had given the 'bots' leader . . . sure that Phile would've found a
way to get them back by then.
	Probably, it had something to do with the temporal mechanics of
linear time, a problem that could be relegated to a lower echelon of the
Machine's vast "brain".  It wasn't a very interesting or pertinant
problem, and was therefore given lower priority.
	Instead, the Machine decided to look through the future Machine's
file system to see how many functions it had performed in the 23.7489
years distancing them.  It recieved a confusing reply.
	The older Machine had all but ONE Level 2 function to perform
before it could unlock Level 1.  A rapid search found, however, that the
factors behind the unlocked functions would not be disclosed to the
younger Machine.
	It was quite an enigma.  The Machine was deliberately hiding
information from itself.  From its younger self, anyway.
	Actually, the Machine thought, that's no such a bad idea.  It
wouldn't be right for me to know such things, as it would disrupt the time
stream not only in this dimension, but possibly in others as well.
	But what of the hedgehog and echidna?  Wouldn't they cause
problems in at least their own time stream?  Maybe it would be best to
leave their younger selves in stasis forever.
	But no, that would mess up time even worse.  If the Machine had
kept them in stasis all those years, their older selves wouldn't be
roaming around, would they?
	So, apparently, it let them go at some point.  Maybe it should
just send them back now before they fully assimilated the memories of
their future selves?  But, no, it was unable to perform functions without
the necessary factors to go with it.  It was unable to take direct action,
so all of this speculation was moot.
	The Machine was unable to develop headaches, but knew that this
was the right time for one.

	Sonic woke up, a thick haze surrounding him.  A sudden thump from
his constant migraine brought him fully into the waking world with the
authority of a sledgehammer.
	"Ow."
	Bunnie was still awake, busy roasting a sausage over the embers of
the dying fire.  She looked up when she heard Sonic mumble.
	"You okay, honey?" she asked.
	"I feel like a thousand SWATbots are trying to kick my head in,"
he replied softly, holding his ailing skull in his hands, "but otherwise
I'm okay."
	Bunnie took the slightly scorched sausage off of its stick and
placed it on a slice of slightly stale bread, then poked it in Sonic's
direction.  "Hungry?"
	"Yah.  Thanks."  He took the sausage gratefully and bit into it.
	"So, c'n yuh remember anthin' yet?" Bunnie asked.
	Sonic swallowed, then said, "Yah, some of it.  It's still a little
mixed up, though.  Maybe . . . maybe if you start telling me about it,
it'd jog my memory."
	"Shoah.  You said that th'last thing you remembuh was you and
Knuckles going to check out that R&D plant?  That was . . . a little after
Knux showed up with Mecha-Sonic?"  Sonic nodded.  Bunnie closed her eyes
and sighed.  "So much has happened since then.  When y'all two didn'
return from Robotropolis that nahght, we was all worried near t'death, but
. . . well, we'all knew that you sometimes stayed on a job over nahght,
and if'n you ever got caught by ol' Robotnik, you'd get away in tahme.
	"But . . . we waited f'four days.  Sally was devestated, t'say
th'least.  We could only guess that you'n Knuckles had been captured an'
roboticized.  Well, we figured there was nuthin' we could do, so we trahd
to go on, business as usual.
	"But then th'two a'you come limpin' in after 'bout fahve days
aftuh yuh left, with no mem'ry a'what y'all had been doin'.  Ah still
remembuh you draggin' Knuckles in, him hangin' on t'yoah shoulduh.  both
of yuh looked like y'all had been in a war!
	"The worst part-" she choked on the words, "-was that Knuckles had
somehow lost -

	- my left eye."
	Knuckles had woken up a few minutes ago.  Though his head had
still been spinning, he knew he had to sort the memories stuck in his head
out, or he'd go crazy.  Since he had no one else to tell him the story, he
was telling it to himself, aloud since he also wanted to get used to his
new voice.
	"I don't know how it happened.  When I try to remember it . . . I
get the sensation of falling, but nothing else.  It's strange, though,
since I should'a been able to glide outta whatever danger I was in.  But,
however it happened, that memory got erased.  Probably . . .
whatchamacallit . . . 'retro-grade amnesia'."
	He had decided to start walking as he talked, to see if he could
find the Chaotix anywhere.  He wasn't sure if they were still residing on
this No-Longer-Floating Island, but it was worth a shot.
	"When I got back to Knothole, Rotor gave me an electronic eye, but
the blamed thing itched too bad.  About a year or two later, I switched it
for this patch.  I remember now that I can't move it, 'cause it's been
permanently drilled into my skull.  Nasty, that, but it was probably for
the best.  Don't want it getting infected . . .
	"Okay, so what happened -

	- next was what became known as 'The Battle for the Floating
Island'.  It was . . . awful.
	"Y'all got back jus' in time t'see th'results of Nicole's tests on
Mecha-Sonic.  There was a buncha elaborate plans t'steal one or more Chaos
Emeralds from th'Floatin' Island, startin' with th'one that held th'island
itself up!
	"We offered our help t'guard th'island, but Knuckles . . . he -

	-refused, blinded by my own ego, confident that I and the Chaotix
could hold the fort ourselves.  I didn't want any help from mainlanders,
especially that of Sonic.  Not that he made the choice any harder for me,
the creep.  When I told them of my decision, he told 'em to just let me
go, 'cause it was what I wanted.  Told me I was stuck up and that he'd be
glad to see me and my rotten island sink into the ocean.
	"Well, we agreed on one thing . . . I DID want them to leave it to
me.  Maybe if I showed them just how strong I and the other islanders
could be on our own, both sides would leave us out of the war.
	"But I was wrong.  By the Walkers, I was wrong.
	"Robotnik and his goon squad took one side of the island . . . I
didn't get to see the attack, because I was down in the Zoot Chute,
guarding the emerald, but I heard that it was massive.  The stuff of . . .
legends.  Legends I decided never to listen to.
	"Meanwhile, on the OTHER side of the island -

	- Nack the Weasel snuck in."
	"Nack?"  Sonic frowned at the unfamiliar name.  "Who the heck is
Nack?"
	"He was a bounty hunter hired bah Robotnik.  A purple weasel that
rode around on a hoverbike of his own design.  Ah heard tell that he came
over heah from the Far Eastern Territories after studyin' up on all kindsa
ninja mumbo jumbo . . .
	"Well, anyway, he slipped in and snatched the spare emerald that
Knux used to keep up there without ever tippin' off anyone.  He snuck inta
th'Chaos Chamber next, where he'n Knuckles tussled.  Nack got th'upper
hand, unforunately, and took took the emerald.
	"That was the day -

	- the Floating Island fell."
	Knuckles had stopped walking, and stood silent, contemplating what
he had just said.  Because of him, because he let his ego stand in the
way, the island had fallen down to Mobius.
	It had been over the ocean while the fight had been going on, just
off the coast near the Great Forest, but the way Nack had pulled the Chaos
Emerald out of its stand had sent the island careening sideways until it
crash landed onto the mainland.
	It was all his fault.
	"And now," he said quietly, "I've been roaming the Walker forsaken
island for over twenty years."
	He looked up, resolve in his face.  He knew what he had to do.  He
abandoned his search for the Chaotix, and began one for Sonic T. Hedgehog.

	"That's when everything went downhill," Sonic said.  He looked up
at Bunnie.  "I'm starting to remember it all clearly now.  Everyone lost
hope when they saw the crash.  More and more territory was lost to
Robotnik over time.  Fifteen years ago, he found Knothole.  Nine years ago
. . . he found US."
	He paused.  "You . . . you're a cyborg," he said quietly.
	Bunnie nodded.  "Robotnik tried to roboticize all of us.  It was
doin' just fahne, too, up until he got t'me.  See, Rotor had been
upgradin' mah arm'n legs over th'years, as Ah'm sure you remembuh.  Well,
the roboticizer couldn't handle 'em f'some reason.  It went haywahre an'
Ah ended up a tangled mess.  Only me, you, and Rotor was able t'get away.
	"At first, it was really jus' a patch-up job, but Rotor was able
t'keep me alahve long enough for you t'go and steal the rahght parts
to . . . "
	She trailed off when she noticed Sonic wasn't listening.
	"S-Sally . . . " Sonic choked.
	The image came to him unbidden.  He saw Sally standing behind a
podium on a raised platform.  On the side of her head sat a small device,
wires protruding from it sunk direction through her skull and into her
brain.  Her face and body gestures were animated to their fullest.  Arms
swinging, fists pounding, mouth shouting.  Her eyes, however, were dull
and lifeless, staring out into the cheering crowd of partially roboticized
Mobians.  Sally's legs were gleaming in the sunlight, catching what little
sunlight that filtered through the smog choked clouds, for she, too, was
partially roboticized.  From the waist down, she was nothing but robotic
parts.  And sitting behind her was evil incarnate, his own metallic parts
glittering.  He was controlling every word spat out of the twisted lips
that once belonged to Sally Alicia Acorn.  He was called Counselor Smalley
by the populace, but Sonic knew him for who he really was.
	Dr. Ivo Robotnik.
	Sonic laid over on his side and proceeded to cry himself to sleep.
Bunnie new better than to bother him while he was in this state.  She
quietly crawled into her own sleeping bag and drifted off into her own
private dreams.

	She awoke the next morning to find Sonic gone, just as she had
expected.  She didn't even attempt to go searching for him.
	She knew exactly where he would be.

	As he sped along towards the crumbling Robotropolis Sprawl, more
and more of Sonic's future memories were coming back as he felt himself
become more and more immersed in his future self's personality.
	After Robotnik's attempt to roboticize them all, Bunnie had been a
complete mess, as she had said.	 Rotor, fortunately, had been able to
stabilize her long enough for Sonic to gather the parts needed to fix her.
After several of these raids on Robotnik's factories and at least a
hundred operations, Bunnie was nearly 80% robotic.
	In many respects, she was vastly improved.  She was able to run
almost as fast as Sonic did in cruise mode - something her old roboticized
limbs wouldn't have been able to stand up to.  She was three times
stronger than before, could shut off her pain receptors, and had a head
computer that could store data and even interface with other computers.
Her eyes were able to register all known light and radio frequencies, as
well as magnify the distance she could see.
	This hadn't made it any easier on Bunnie, however.  The depression
she had been in ever since the island's crash was suddenly amplified.  She
had wanted to become less robotic, but instead had become even more so.
	Sonic still remembered many of the night rages she would go
through.  One time she had trashed her hut, then smashed every tree in
what was left of the Great Forest that stood directly between her and
Robotropolis.  Sonic and Rotor had found her in the Great Plains, sucking
her thumb and unable to remember who or where she was.
	It had been as if she had been semi-roboticized all over again.
And once again, Sonic cursed himself for being too slow to save her.
	And as if it wasn't bad enough that he had failed Bunnie, but he
hadn't been able to save the others at all . . . Antoine, Tails, even
little Amy Rose.  All the rest of the Freedom Fighters, either roboticized
or brain controlled by Dr. Robotnik.
	But the pain that cut the deepest was the loss of Sally Acorn.
Robotnik had roboticized her completely at first, but then later changed
her halfway back.  The evil doctor had infested her brain with a Mind
Bleeder, a small device that attached to the side of a living being's head
and controlled all of that being's motor functions and senses.
	It gave Robotnik complete control over the Princess, more complete
than even roboticization.  Not only could he control her directly, but he
could actually change information in transit from her extermnal sensory
collectors to her brain.  She saw only what he wanted her to see, hear
what he wanted her to hear, feel what he wanted her to feel.
	Using her, the doctor had been able to force almost all the
remaining Mobian populace into surrendering.  They, too, recieved Mind
Bleeders, and in many cases, partial roboticization as well.  Sonic had
learned from Rotor that the mind-bled Mobians were made to think that they
had finally escaped Robotnik's rule, that he was dead.  They saw all free
Mobians as robots in disguise, leftovers from Robotnik's reign.
	Robotnik himself had assumed the role of Smalley, the Princess'
personal assisstant and counselor.  None of the mind-bled Mobians knew the
difference.
	That was what made what Sonic was preparing to do so much harder.
He would be fighting SWATbots, Combots, and QUANTUMbots as usual, and he
might even have to face a few roboticized Mobians . . .
	. . . but he would have to face real, live, innocent people, as
well.

	Knuckles was high in the air, searching for Sonic from an eagle's
eyeview.  He had been sure the hedgehog would be on the Great Plains
somewhere, and he had, in fact, found a recently snuffed out campfire, but
Sonic himself was nowhere to be found.  This meant one of three things to
the echidna.
	One, Sonic was no longer on that part of the continent.  He may
have left for any number of reasons, but Knuckles thought this was
unlikely.
	Two, Sonic was moving around too fast for Knuckles to catch up, or
even see him if he DID catch up.  Again, unlikely, as there wouldn't be
any reason for Sonic to be doing weird things like doubling back or even
heading out too far from the Great Forest/Plains area.
	Or three, Sonic was in Robotropolis again.
	Number three was the more likely choice, so Knuckles turned
towards the stinking city.  Sonic would be found there, as he had been so
often before.  He would either be on some mission or another, or another
one of his "Sally Raids".
	After gliding along for a few more moments, Knuckles suprised
himself by pulling a cigar and a box of matches from his backpack,
sticking the cigar in his mouth, and lighting it with the match carefully
blocked from the wind.
	When did I start smoking? he wondered.  Searching his memory was
not help.  It seemed that he had been doing it forever.
	Bad habit, he thought, better stop.
	Just as he was getting ready to pull the stogie from his mouth and
drop it from his high altitude, he puffed deeply and though . . . Right
after I finish this one.

	Sonic's next trip through memory lane dealt with his constant,
screaming migraines.  He had been on one of these, as Bunnie termed it
once, "Sally Raids" when one of Robotnik's new and improved Mecha-Sonics
had confronted him just outside the city limits.
	The battle was a short but decisive one.  The evil mecha had dealt
Sonic a blow that had cracked the hedgehog's skull.  Some of the bone
splinters had sliced directly through the section of his brain that helped
his body ignore pain.
	His skull had repaired itself over time.  Rotor had debated on
trying to remove the shards, but since they hadn't killed Sonic and more
damage would probably have been caused by their removal than if they
stayed there, he decided against it.
	Ever since then, Sonic's head pounded every time he moved, and
oftentimes when he DIDN'T move.  Another reminder of the battle was his
left eye, which had been left permenantly black due to blood vessels that
were perpetually bursting, another contributor to his headaches.
	It was rather ironic, actually, considering Knuckles' own problems
with that same eye.  They had both paid for their arrogance in similar
ways, it had seemed.
	What made that fight the worst, however, was the fact that it was
the first Sonic/Mecha-Sonic confrontation that Sonic had lost.

	The Machine turned outwards and began to search for the hedgehog
and echidna's older selves, and was suprised to find that they were very
close and getting closer every second.
	Where they coming for it?  Unlikely, the Machine thought.  It was
more likely that they were beginning to believe they had only gone through
a temporary bout of amnesia and were sliding into their future selves'
lives.  The Machine was nothing more than a distant memory anymore.
	That left the doctor, then.  The Machine had sensed his evil,
older presence quite some time ago, just after the temporal displacement,
in fact.  For some reason, the Machine felt it necessary to watch the
doctor every second of every day, just in case.  It felt a loathing for
the digusting blob of organic flesh that it didn't - or, at least, was
unalbe to - feel for anyone or anything else.
	The machine mused that it might actually enjoy seeing the doctor
get what was coming to him.

	Dr. Robotnik sat silently in his massive control tower, looking
down upon the instruments and computer screens set before him.  All of the
instruments were scanning one thing, all of the screens showing him just
one view.
	Sonic the Hedgehog.
	The whole world was in Robotnik's grasp.  The Mobians were
subdued, mind controlled into submission.  Mobius was his.  EVERYTHING was
his.
	Everything . . . except the hedgehog and his two accomplices,
Rotor Walrus and Bunnie Rabbot.  Those three irritations still troubled
him with their incessant raids and terroist actions.  Even that bothersome
echidna had sense enough to just give up and keep to himself after his
precious island had crashed!  Why didn't Sonic just give up the ghost?
Why don't he and his rebel friends just give themselves in?
	Because, Robotnik thought, Sonic hates me with every fiber of his
being.  He will never give up until one or both of us are dead.
	And now, Sonic was headed straight for Robotropolis.  True, he had
done so many times in the past and been deflected from his main goal, but
this time . . . this time something in Robotnik's black heart told him
that maybe this time, it would end, once and for all.
	Maybe he'll finally kill me and be done with it, he thought.
	But then another, darker side of Robotnik spoke up.  Maybe, it
said, but I certainly won't make it easy for him.

	The original mission had to be aborted.  Bunnie had gathered up
the camp supplies and quickly run back to home base.  After exchanging a
few words with Rotor, telling him of the situation, she set out again.
	It was going to be a long, hard jog to Robotropolis.

	TO BE CONTINUED.

		Roland Lowery
			

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