With season 2 of Boom coming to a close, it felt like the right time to upload this story. Not that I think the show or the games are great (or that Knuckles' design was an improvement in any way) but discovering it via youtube got me back into Sonic the Hedgehog (the last time I was into StH I didn't even realise there was such a thing as fandoms, I was that young). I almost feel bad putting this out when I have so many big fanfiction projects but while those other things languish in writer's block it's kinda nice to have a break and try to put something different out.

Discovering the fandom for the first time has been really cool, seeing all of the fiction and art and animations out there. I was especially inspired to write this by E-Vay's comics (if you haven't already seen them, find her on tumblr). Even if my time here is brief before I inevitably end up back into my main haunts, I hope this story entertains you guys and gives you a good chuckle.

Please review and let me know whether you like this or not. You never know, I may end up deciding to stay.

Chapter 1: Nothing But Mammals

There was a loud BANG that reverberated through the walls of Dr Eggman's evil lair as the door to the main lab was kicked in. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Sticks stood on the other side with fists balled or weapons out, ready to fight. Startled and infuriated by their typical bad manners, Eggman turned around.

"Why don't you ever just use the doorbell?!"

"Jig's up, Egghead," Sonic said, "now call off your cymbal-monkeybots wrecking havoc in town, they're really annoying."

"Why do you always assume it's my fault whenever a legion of robots so innovatively designed and built that only a handsome genius - not unlike myself - could have pulled it off attacks your village."

"Oh, I don't know, maybe because it always is you?"

"Good point." Eggman pressed a button on his console. The hero teamed leaped forward, expecting the move to be followed with a typical cry of "robots, ATTACK!" but it didn't come. As soon as all feet were off the ground they were all trapped in a tractor beam, frozen in place. Tails tried to say something but all that came out were muffled sounds and squeaks. Every external muscle was paralysed. Seeing his plan come to such a grand success, Dr Eggman laughed maniacally.

"Marvellously done, sir," Orbot praised. He'd raise his eyebrows in pleasant surprise if he had any. "With Sonic and all of his friends incapacitated like this there's no way for any of them to stop you in any future endeavours."

"Your plan to capture Sonic actually worked for a change," Cubot said stupidly.

"Shut up, you waste of bolts! This is only part one of my most evil and most genius plan to date."

"Part one?" the robots questioned, fearing that Dr Eggman was about to come to his own undoing again.

"Of course, dimwits! I can't just leave them here like this. What if someone breaks in and lets them free? Not to mention, running five tractor beams at the same time is a huge drain on the grid—if it keeps going the lab will run out of power in 12 hours. Then they'll be back to stop me. No, I need to have a failsafe to ensure that even if they did escape they will be incapable of enacting their usual heroic shenanigans."

"Excellent thinking!" Orbot gushed. "I must say, your villainous game has never been quite as high as it has been today."

"You actually did something smart for once!" Cubot exclaimed.

Dr Eggman growled. "As soon as I finish taking over this pathetic island I'm dismantling both of you and building new minions."

The robots hung their heads but stayed silent after that. Eggman swivelled back to the control panel and got to work. A panel popped open next to the tractor beam machinery on the ceiling and five mechanical arms slid out to attach a headband to Sonic and his friends. Each one fit perfectly, designed for the individual head it was made for. Once they were securely mounted, the headbands beeped and lit up. Eggman disabled the tractor beams. The five animal people slumped to the floor.

To Orbot and Cubot's surprise, they didn't just leap back up into a fighting position. They slowly lifted themselves up and looked around with big curious eyes and twitching noses as if they'd never seen the place before.

"What have you done to them?" Orbot asked, a little disturbed when Tails leaned down to lick his own crotch while Sticks and Knuckles noticed each other and began to growl threateningly.

"Hehehe, those special headbands are brainwave scramblers," Dr Eggman chuckled. "Specifically for scrambling the more human-like thought processes. They're nothing more than animals now. Even if someone tried to ask for their help they don't have the faculties to be heroes."

"That's... actually genius," Orbot remarked.

"Forget that, it's genius!" Cubot chimed.

"I know. Now, seeing as those cymbal-monkeys were just a false flag to get Sonic and his dumb friends to come here, I'm taking the actually-deadly robots to the village to wreak havoc. Don't let these stupid animals poop on the carpet while I'm gone."

He strode out of his lab without a backward glance. The door closed behind him just before he could notice Knuckles scamper past on the run from Sticks. They loped awkwardly on all fours (anthropomorphic animals were meant to stand erect, after all), jumping all over the furniture and tipping over Eggman's possessions. Tails scurried over to the computers and control panel to snoop around for interesting nooks to investigate. Sonic sniffed at Amy like he'd never met her before but she just crawled away. He went after her. Orbot and Cubot exchanged worried looks. How were they going to keep this lot under control?

Cages. Obviously. It took some doing but the minion robots managed to herd Team Sonic into cages. It also took some doing over because now that they were as simple-minded as wild animals they weren't quite as good friends as they used to be. So far, segregating them by species seemed to be going well. Now all that was left was to clean up the mess they'd made in the meantime. Orbot looked around at the chewed cables, shredded paper, dripping chemicals and liberal amounts of pungent animal spray around the lab and sighed. He was about to go and get the mop but was interrupted by a banging sound.

"Hey! Bad hedgehogs!" Cubot shouted, hitting a rolled up magazine against the bars of a cage, making the sound Orbot had heard. "No fighting! Don't make me separate you two!"

Orbot cringed. "Cubot... they're not fighting."

"Really? Oh, that's a relief." Cubot stopped hitting the cage and turned to him. "Here I was thinking we'd have to go and find another cage and then let them out again and catch them again and try to put them back in again and, you know, I'm not really up for going through all that again."

"We should try to separate them or we may have a more complicated situation on our hands," Orbot insisted.

"Ooookaaay," Cubot whined with as pouty an expression as he could make. "I'll go back to the prison implements storeroom and- oh, hey! There's a spare cage right here. Phew, lucky I don't have to go all that way again."

"We shouldn't have a spare cage," Orbot said, looking over to Cubot standing next to an empty cage where Tails was supposed to be. "The fox is gone?!"

"Dr Eggman had a fox? Why didn't you guys tell me? Foxes are so cute."

"No, Cubot," Orbot sighed. "I think your memory needs a defrag. We put Tails in that cage just half an hour ago and now he's gone."

"How? It's not as if foxes are infamous escape artists."

Orbot stared at Cubot disappointedly. "Regardless, we need to find him before he does any damage. Let's see what the security camera picked up."

Orbot hovered up to the console and swiped his hand across it. Nothing happened. Confused and fearing that the worst had already happened, he went around to the back of the console where one of the access panels was. The panel lay on the floor, slightly bent out of shape from being chewed out of position. Inside the crawl space sat a little yellow fox chewing and scratching the hardware.

"Hey! Bad fox!" Cubot exclaimed, brandishing the rolled up magazine.

Tails glanced at them. Cubot took a swing but narrowly missed as Tails jumped out of the crawl space and barrelled between them, sending them both spinning out. He dragged some of the cables out as he went. The broken wires sparked furiously. Then the machinery burst into flames.

"What do we do?!" Cubot screamed.

"You put out the fire, I'll catch Tails," Orbot ordered.

While Cubot beat at the flames with his rolled up magazine, Orbot zoomed off to do just that, first making a beeline to the nets and lassos they'd brought up to wrangle the anthropomorphic animals. Just as he got there Tails sprang out in front of him, grabbing the bars in his teeth and scampering off with them.

"You've got to be kidding me," Orbot groaned. Now he'd have to try to catch the fox by hand. Which turned out to be extremely hard because even though Tails couldn't remember how to fly in his current state he was still fast on all fours. Orbot had a golden opportunity when Tails jumped up onto one of the lab benches - the one with the burners - and tripped over a gas valve. The net and lasso dropped from his mouth as he tumbled over the rest of the valves, knocked over the few beakers and flasks that were unbroken, and then rolled over the end of the bench. He sat up, seemingly bewildered by the turn of events. Orbot swiftly tossed the net over him.

Orbot sighed and wiped his brow - nothing more than a programmed gesture for emotive effect since robots couldn't sweat. Things were back on track to getting under control.

"Uh, need a little help..." Cubot called.

On the other side of the lab the console was up in full flame and Cubot was trying to shake the fire off his magazine.

"You were supposed to use a fire extinguisher!"

"Well how was I supposed to know that?" Cubot said angrily with his arms akimbo.

Suddenly the air itself caught alight.

"The gas!" Orbot exclaimed, remembering the valves only seconds before the entire lab exploded.

Somehow, nobody died. Several minutes later, five anthropomorphic animals with charred fur stirred among the rubble and twisted metal of what was once a lab. Their robot keepers were bent out of shape and shorted by the shockwave from the explosion. Everything electrical had malfunctioned but there was a wealth of sunlight streaming in from a giant hole in the wall.

"How long have we been out?" Sonic groaned. "I remember busting into Egghead's lair and then—"

He rubbed his head and paused. He pulled the headband off and stared at it. The computer nodes hissed sparks, the one that had been pressed against his right temple exploded with a pathetic pop. Looking to each of his friends, they all had one and were also gradually discovering it.

"What are these?" Amy wondered, staring at hers.

"They look like the mind control bands that Lyric used," Tails observed.

"Well, he's gone so it can't be that," Sonic said. "So the only person left is Eggface."

"But why put us under mind control and then just leave us in his lab?" Amy asked.

"I don't know why every villain we face is deliberately incompetent," Sonic replied, "which is partly why I'm so disconcerted as to the fact that we're sitting here with mind control devices on us and don't remember what we did after coming to Eggman's lair."

"Whatever we did, it probably has nothing to do with all the smoke coming from the village," Knuckles remarked, pointing out the hole in the wall to the columns of black smoke rising from Hedgehog Village.

"WHAT?!" the others screamed, racing over to the opening and staring out.

"It was all a trap to lure us away from the village so we couldn't protect people," cried Sticks.

"For once, what Sticks said isn't crazy," Sonic said. "Let's get back to the village pronto."

Everyone else voiced their agreement and they all leaped out of the lab to see if the Tornado was in a condition to fly. Tails went full throttle with the others dragging behind on their way to confront Dr Eggman.

(And they win. Obviously.)