Chapter One :

The darkness of night had fallen. A young blue hedgehog about the age of sixteen yawned drowsily as gusts of wind blew through his sapphire fur. Tensing his leg muscles a bit, he made sure his feet were planted firmly on the wing of the small yellow-and-red biplane before stretching his upper torso and shoulders slowly. As he did this he glanced up at the moon in the sky. It was nothing but a huge white circle surrounded by misty gray clouds.

"Are we there yet, Tails?" He turned to gaze at the yellow fox seated in the front seat and driving the airplane.

The two-tailed kitsune's bright-blue eyes glinted in the darkness, directing a tone of annoyance at his hedgehog friend. "I haven't landed the plane yet, have I, Sonic?"

The hedgehog, whose name was known the world over, rolled his emerald-green eyes. "No."

"Then we're obviously not there yet."

Sonic sighed and gave an exasperated sweatdrop to no one in particular. It was past 3 am in the morning, and although both of them were quite used to having to put with Eggman's predictable declarations of world domination, it was getting rather old. Especially if you were forced to do the same thing every night for two weeks in a row. Eggman just didn't give up, did he?

Being that the rotund villain had rudely intervened in everyone's beauty sleep, Sonic and Tails had dragged themselves out of bed to rush off to the doctor's base before he had hurt anyone- namely himself. Eggman was prone to unleash destruction, and since Sonic was the hero of Mobius, he had no choice to see what the madman was up to this time.

"So, Tails, you have the Chaos Emeralds, don't you?"

The fox gave Sonic another scowl. "Aren't you supposed to keep up with them?"

"I let you borrow two so you could power your new stupid invention!" Sonic retorted, rather irked that the usually cheerful Tails was now cranky with drowsiness.

"Yeah, and I gave them right back to you yesterday. Where did you leave them?"

Sonic started to grumble and thought back to the prior day's events. He scanned through the recent memories briefly.

Going home, getting tackleglomped by Amy, eating dinner... Ah yes.

The hedgehog reached behind his back and retrieved a glowing purple Emerald from beneath the quills on his backside. "I put them away."

"Good." Tails breathed a soft sigh of relief and returned to flying the plane.

Sonic, pleased with himself, also turned back around to stand and watch Tails bring the plane down towards Eggman's base. Since there was a wall consisting of gun-bearing robots surrounding the building, Tails landed the plane a good distance away where they would not be shot off-guard. He had some trouble trying to find a decent area to bring it down, but at last found a small clearing big enough to land it in the nearby woods.

Sonic immediately pounced down from the plane's wing and landed nimbly on his toes. He gave the base a sly smirk.

"So old Egghead wants to go another round?" He stood up straight. "Fine by me. All right, Eggman, take your best shot."

With that, the speedy blue hero sprinted off in a burst of speed before Tails could say a word. As soon as he approached the building he was confronted by the militia of robots, all of them firing bullets at him simultaneously. As usual, Sonic sped right through them, managing to tear each one of them in two with a single swift and solid kick. Sonic laughed to himself and ran on, quite adapted to being the winner in every fight he took up with Eggman.

Getting the very front gate was a different story, but once again Sonic kept calm. Two larger robots which walked on two mechanical feet stomped towards him, aiming giant missiles directly at him. Sonic coolly dodged the missiles, leaping into the air as they exploded where he'd been seconds before. When he returned to earth, he slammed his feet into the head of the first robot. He hopped out of the way as it exploded, kicking its companion, in turn destroying it as well. While all this happened, the hedgehog continued to sport his cocky grin. The entrance door opened, and five more robots came rushing out to dispose of Sonic. Sonic ignored them and easily ran between their legs, racing inside the base just before the gate would close inches behind him.

"Watch out, Eggman! I'm coming for you!"

In the meantime, said doctor was watching all that was transpiring from a screen in the main room of his base wrathfully. Each time Sonic would destroy one of his robots, he would press a different button on the dashboard, sending out an extra two robots to take the former's place. Much to the doctor's dismay and fury, every time he did this Sonic would only destroy those as well and proceed on further into the base.

"That cursed blue hedgehog!" spat the baddie to himself. "How dare he come in here! The nerve of him, wrecking all my robots! And they're not even insured!"

"We could have warned you, doctor. The 401K deal was actually not that bad, despite the sleazy appearance of the salesman," said a robotic voice behind him. A tall golden robot with magenta-pink eyes smiled helpfully, as best a robot could, at his creator.

"SHUT UP!" snapped Dr. Eggman, whirling around to cast a murderous glare at the golden robot and his shorter grey friend. Both robots cringed in fear and clung to one another, hoping the doctor would not consider disassembling them. Eggman sighed deeply and slid a gloved hand down his face stressfully. "Why did I ever invent such lame-brained lackies?... Oh well."

Turning back to the screens, Eggman grinned wickedly. The cameras displayed the image of the blue hedgehog speeding down each hallway; he was drawing closer to the heart of the base. Eggman clasped his hands together and rubbed them against one another, his smirk widening.

"What am I worried about? Sonic thinks he's come here to defeat me again, but he has NO idea of what he's gotten himself into this time."

Eggman's shoulders began to shake slightly. A light chuckle emitted from beneath his bushy mustache, and then it grew into a gruff, gleefully-malicious cackle.

"Ho ho. Hoh ho hoh. Oh hoh hoho hoh! OH HOH HOH HOH HOH HOHH!"

Sonic the Hedgehog continued running, unafraid of what lay around the next corner. And little did he know what might lay around that very corner...?