Disclaimer: I own Nothing

To Set the World on Fire

Chapter One

"Are you sure this is the place sis? 'Cause I'm not seeing anything." Manic said, studying the hillside in front of him through his binoculars. According to Cyrus' intel Robotnik had a SWATbot factory in these hills, roughly a kilometer north of where they stood currently but all Manic saw was an unbroken sea of rolling green grass.

"Of course it's there," Sonia said impatiently. She pulled the binoculars from Manic's unresisting hands and brought the device up to her eyes. After a minute she pointed with one hand and gave Manic the binoculars back. "It's right there. You can see a slight color change in the grass. The stuff over the factory door is more pastel than the real grass." She sniffed, as if the color had personally insulted her, "it's atrocious."

Manic looked at the grass Sonia was pointing out and, after several moments of scrutiny, shrugged. He couldn't see any difference personally but he bowed to Sonia's superior knowledge on colors.

"Whatever sis, I just hope Sonic gets back soon so we can get this show on the road."

A powerful gust of wind rocked Manic back on his heels and then Sonic was there, signature grin stretching across his mouth.

"Somebody say my name?" he asked playfully.

"Great timing Sonic, how'd the perimeter sweep go?" Sonia asked, swinging her backpack up from the ground and settling it on her shoulders.

The smile disappeared from Sonic's face and he crossed his arms thoughtfully, "I'm getting really weird vibes from this place, sibs. I mean, there were no SWATbots out there, not even the wimpy sentry models. Normally Robuttnik has at least one or two."

"Well Cyrus said it's supposed to be a secret factory, right bro?" Manic pulled his own backpack on, careful not to jostle the plastic explosives inside and then slid his hoverboard under his arm. He held out Sonic's pack and the blue blur took it and put it on. "Having SWATbots just chillin' outside kinda ruins the whole secret thing, ya know?"

Sonic shrugged dismissively and grabbed their arms, "You guys clear on the plan?"

Sonia sighed irritably, "Yes Sonic we're clear on the plan. Manic handles Control, I get Production, and you get Assembly. We get it. After all we've only gone over it about a thousand times."

"Well alright," Sonic said brightly, not bothered by Sonia's snappy tone," then it's juice and jam time."

Manic smiled at that. Sonic had stopped saying that particular catchphrase of his when they were around 14 (he claimed that he had realized how uncool it was but Manic had always suspected that the girl he had been crushing on at the time had laughed at him for using it) but he still broke it out for special occasions. They took off so fast that Manic felt the air being forced from his chest. For several seconds the entire world was a blur of green and blue, the deafening roar of the wind, and the feeling of pressure pushing his eyes back into his skull. Then they were at the base of the hill, coming to a stop as abruptly as they had started.

Sonia bent down and stared intently at the grass, muttering to herself, "According to Cyrus' schematics it should be…right….here" she finished triumphantly, prying up a square of grass to reveal a control panel. Manic nearly laughed. He recognized this panel's model. It was ancient! Ferrel had taught him to hack on one of these; it would be a piece of cake!

"Step aside sibs," he said, adjusting his gloves, "This is gonna be too easy."

Less than five minutes later the previously amber display screen flashed green. With a near silent whirr of gears and motors a section of the hill in front of them began to slide down into the ground. The room behind the false hill was made of dark grey metal and was completely bare with only three large hallways branching deeper into the factory. The cloying smell of oil, grease, stale air, and superheated metal hit the hedgehogs like a solid wall. Sonic gagged, Sonia wrinkled her nose in distaste, and Manic grimaced as his throat seemed to clench shut. It was one of those smells that was strong enough that you could taste it on the back of your tongue and the green hedgehog found himself spitting repeatedly in a attempt to cleanse his mouth of it.

"Alright, communicators on," Sonic said as they stepped inside. He pulled a small earpiece from the side-pocket of his pack, flipped it on, and placed it in his ear. The other two hedgehogs followed suit. "Testing, testing, can you guys hear me?"

"Yes Sonic."

"No problems on my end dude."

"Good. Then let's get this show on the road. I'm dying for a chili dog and the sooner we finish up the sooner I can get one."

He took off down the hallway to the left and Sonia headed down the hallway to the right without preamble, leaving Manic to take the middle. The green hedgehog stepped onto his hoverboard and pressed down on the accelerator pad. He rocketed down the long hallway, keeping tense and alert in case he ran into SWATbots. Several uneventful minutes passed and Manic could see a set of metal doors at the end of the hall. His communicator crackled in his ear.

Sonic's voice came out tinny and distorted but still understandable, "Hey Manic, you run into any SWATbots yet?"

"No dude, have you?" He hoped off his hoverboard as he reached the doors. He entered an override code into the key pad and smiled as the doors slid open, revealing a large room filled to the brim with computer monitors and CPUs. Oddly enough there was a battered coffee maker resting on the floor in the far corner.

"Not a single one. It's weirding me out. There aren't even any in Assembly, it's all blasters."

"Bazaar man. Grab one and get up here then. I'll see what I can get from the computers."

"Ten-four bro."

"Oh, and don't forget Sonia." Manic said absentmindedly. He set the backpack on the ground and dropped into the chair in front of what appeared to be the main computer. It was the biggest one there, at any rate. The first couple of passwords that he tried didn't work, which was odd considering that Robotnik was rather fond of reusing the same three of four variations of 'die Sonic die' for everything. After one last try (iKillMeddlingHedgehogs) Manic resigned himself to some good old fashion hacking, which he admitted, would be a nice change of pace. He may be the most laid back and placid of his siblings but even he got bored if things got too easy.

Getting into the computer took longer than he had anticipated. Whatever was on it must be really important if the sheer number of firewalls and booby traps in the code were anything to go by. Three times Manic had to circumvent a program that, once triggered, would have wiped the computer's hard drive completely clean. When he was sure that he was in and that there were no programs or traps left to avoid he let out a whoop of joy and stood up to do a victory dance. He was halfway through said dance when he noticed his siblings, who looked like they were holding back laughter with difficulty. He must have been so absorbed with his task that he hadn't noticed them enter.

"Hey guys," he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly and chuckled, "I got in."

"We kinda figured." Sonic said, cuffing Manic playfully on the shoulder as he joined him in front of the monitor.

"So what's on it?" Sonia asked, gesturing to the computer from her position at Manic's other side.

"Let's find out." Manic said, plopping back down into the chair. He began to dig through the computer's files, looking for any messages or commands that could explain why the automated factory was producing blasters instead of 'bots. There wasn't much there, other than the programming that had switched the factory over to blaster manufacturing several months ago. Even that wasn't particularly helpful beyond proving that what was happening wasn't some kind of strange malfunction.

After nearly a half-hour of digging he finally found an email that, after being decrypted, was slightly helpful.

It read:

Prower,

Mephiles wants this place up and running at 100% in a month. I don't need to remind you what will happen if you disappoint.

N.

"Mephiles," Manic said thoughtfully, "don't suppose either of you know who he is 'cause I'm drawing a blank."

"It does sound familiar," Sonia said slowly, "I think I heard Lady Windermere mention him once while she was having tea with a friend. They talked about him in past tense though."

"Well I've never heard of him. Manic, think you can get into Robuttnik's database and try to find this guy?"

"No problem dude."

Manic went to work. Getting into Robotnik's database was the easy part. It was after that where it began to get difficult. All of the files regarding anything that had happened during the reign of Queen Aleena were heavily protected.

After a moment Sonic spoke up again, "Any idea who this Prower person is?" he directed this question mostly at Sonia because he knew that Manic would be too far into his own zone to hear him let alone answer. Plus Sonia had already recognized one name in the message so it was possible that she would recognize the other.

Sonia shook her head apologetically, "No I don't. I feel bad for them though, whoever they are. It sounds like they're being threatened with something pretty bad."

They lapsed into silence for several minutes.

"Alright I'm in." Manic leaned close to the screen and scrutinized it intensely, "Huge chunks of it have been deleted though. Let's see…Mephiles, last name redacted. That's unhelpful. There's no birthday but it says he was the eldest son of a respected aristocratic family. The family name has also been redacted but that's probably how your old lady knew him Sonia. Uh…huge blank spot here… He was the head of War Ministry's R&D Department during the Great War. Then there's another huge blank space after something called the Iblis Project. Wonder what that was, Blubberbolts has done a pretty good job deleting any info about it…He died during the coup." The green hedgehog leaned even closer. The tips of his shaggy quills brushed against the monitor and crackled slightly as they came in contact with the static-y film over the screen. "Him and his personal assistant were gunned down by 'bots when they were trying to bring the Palace's automated defenses back online."

"I don't get it." Sonic said after a moment, scratching his head, "so does this mean that the message is super old or what?"

"The message is only a couple months old and there's not nearly enough dust for this place to have been empty since the coup." Manic said without looking away from the screen. His chest felt tight. This man, Mephiles last-name-redacted, had died trying to protect the Palace. Manic knew it probably shouldn't get to him as much as it did but…he had died trying to save them and their mom. He could have fled, or bargained with Robotnik like the aristocrats had or-

"Manic? Manic, buddy, you okay?" Sonic's voice snapped him out of his thoughts.

"Wha? Oh, yeah, I'm fine." He tried to smile reassuringly but couldn't really pull it off.

"Someone's using his name." Sonia said. She sounded rather choked too; perhaps she had had some of the same thoughts that Manic had. "Someone's out there threatening people and producing guns and doing Chaos knows what else using a dead man's name. A noble dead man's name…it's monstrous."

Minutes passed in silence as they absorbed this information.

"Come on guys, let's get out of here." Sonic said finally, sounding uncharacteristically grave. "We still have to finish what we came here for."

The other two siblings nodded and, after retrieving the detonator from Manic's pack, left.

The factory exploded beautifully.

A/N: and that's the first chapter! Hope you enjoyed it. Anyway, as you may have noticed from previous experience, I am a bit of a review whore so leave a review, yeah?

Thanks for reading,

trancepanda

P.S. I'm looking for a beta reader that wouldn't mind a ridiculously erratic schedule. If you're interested shoot me a P.M.