by Kiel Phegley
“I don’t deserve you, you know that?” Tom said, and then kissed her before they headed out.
Sonic stood in the middle of the room, a toe tapping like a drum roll. “What took you guys so long?” he said. “Let’s go climb a building.”
The Transamerica building rose up in the heart of San Francisco’s financial district. Tom was certain that from its pyramid-shaped top, you could see everything from the Mission District to the Golden Gate Bridge out across the water. But after Sonic sprinted up the side of the skyscraper at top speed, the hedgehog said the one thing that was out of reach was his bag of rings. The prize had warped on a section of roof fenced off from the ledge, so the only way to get to it was by going inside.
“It’s surprising how much people will get out of your way when you flash a badge . . . even an out-of-state one,” Tom said as the elevator beeped through dozens of floors. “How long do you think before they call in my future coworkers?”
“Let’s hope it’s long enough,” said Maddie.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get him where he needs to go and then SFPD can background check me to their hearts’ content because he’ll be back to being a figment of Crazy Carl’s imagination.”
“Hey, this figment can hear you, ya know!” Sonic called from inside the duffle bag.
A woman next to them turned in horror. “Do you have your CHILD in that bag?”
“No,” said Tom. “I mean, yes it’s a child, but no it’s not mine.” The woman fled at the next floor.
They got off on the top floor and climbed the stairwell to the roof access. Sonic gagged his way out of the bag dramatically. “It smells like Right Guard and old ham sandwich in there,” he said, coughing. “What do you do to your body, man?”
“Listen, pal.” Tom stopped the hedgehog at the door. “Are you sure you’re ready for this? Back on the highway . . . what was with that crazy lightning display?”
“I don’t know . . . it’s only happened one other time . . . at the baseball field.”
“The blackout. What were you doing then?”
“Just playing baseball,” Sonic said. He hesitated, then added, “Okay, there might have been some light crying involved.”
Tom smiled. “Emotions are powerful things, Sonic. Humans struggle with them all the time. But you don’t have to struggle alone. You don’t have to bottle it all up.”
“Donut Lord, you don’t know what it’s like when I let that chaos out of me,” he said. “I’ve never seen humans shoot lightning out of their butts.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Tom said with a laugh. “But wherever you go or whatever you do, you’re not just meant for breaking stuff. Leaving Earth, leaving Green Hills behind. That’s not you ending something. You can build something good from it, too.” Tom didn’t want to send Sonic off with the little guy feeling bad about himself. He was going to be a better cop and a better person for having called this troublemaker his friend—and he told Sonic that.
“Thanks, Tom,” said the hedgehog. “And thanks for saving my life.” They hugged, and then Tom opened the door to the roof.
The rings shone bright in the sun, and as Sonic walked toward them, he began to shimmer with blue energy, too. His nervousness was electric.
Sonic pulled the bag out from its sheltered spot. He held one ring in front of him toward the open sky, focusing hard. Then he turned and said, “Think of where I want to be, and the ring will do the rest.” The golden circle in front of him began to glow—
Kra-Boom!
A swarm of drones burst up over the ledge of the building, scattering glass and rubble across the roof. Their high-pitched hum rang in Tom’s ears as it was joined by the hum of a rocket. A massive, egg-shaped drone loomed up above them. No, it wasn’t a drone. It was a ship of some kind—a sphere of blades and bombs with Robotnik wearing the control harness.
“Don’t leave without saying goodbye, hedgehog!” the mad scientist cackled. “Not when I find myself so attracted to you!” The spook was in full supervillain mode, his red jacket fluttering like a vampire’s cape.
Tom stepped between Robotnik and Maddie and steeled himself for a fight. “Sonic, I’ve got things here. You just run!”
“I’m not running away anymore!” Sonic called. Instead, the hedgehog turned and ran straight at Tom and Maddie as hard as he could. “I’m sorry!” he cried.
And then he pushed them over the skyscraper’s ledge.
“Well, I was not expecting that,” Robotnik said as Tom and Maddie dropped out of sight.
Sonic spun around and faced his tormentor with power crackling across his quills. He only had one chance to make this work. It was a moon shot. A William Tell. A blindfolded bull’s-eye attempt in a hailstorm.
And he’d have to do it faster than anything he’d ever tried in his whole life.
“You want to feel the power of the real chaos so bad?” Sonic taunted. “You’ll have to catch me first, Ro-Butt-Nik!”
“Name-calling hurts, you petulant sack of spikes! And challenge accepted!” Robotnik slapped at his controls with fury, and the spinning cloud of mini drones twisted in the air toward Sonic like a slithering tech tentacle.
Sonic launched himself in the air, and suddenly he could see everything in fine detail. He had sensed it at the roadhouse, too, but he was having too much fun then to understand what was happening. All the madness, the mayhem, the pure chaos of the fight slowed down in his mind, and he could perceive every motion of Robotnik’s mindless Badniks.
With a light step, Sonic ran up the line of drones and into the air like a kid skipping across rocks in a creek. His sneakers pushed off the bots and sent him spinning right underneath the egg’s bulky body. The bag of rings hung loosely in his hand as Sonic spiraled out and ran down the length of the building. He was in some kind of hyperspeed now—traveling at a pace outside the boundaries of reality.
“Aw man, no one’s going to be able to hear my jokes now,” Sonic said as his feet slapped cracks into the windows of the building. “At least I’m used to talking to myself.”
As the cityscape blurred around him, Sonic caught a glimpse of Robotnik’s egg-pod flying down the Transamerica building trying to catch him. Fat chance. That thing was a drag. An anchor. A dead weight. But then Sonic caught a glimmer of something in the corner of his eye. It was blue.
Robotnik had pulled up a glass case containing Sonic’s lost quill. And with a click, he activated the quill as a chaos power battery. The egg-pod shuttered with a reactive spark, and blue energy started coursing through the entire machine—Robotnik included. Shivers of electricity surged through his mustache, and the creep sped up not quite to Sonic’s hyperspeed but close enough.
“Yoo-hooooooooo!” he called to Sonic as the drones caught his pace and came into focus. “Don’t run off now, hedgehog! It’ll only hurt worse if you do!”
“Don’t go too fast, Robotnik! You’re bound to hit the wall!” Sonic yelled as he cut back and ran around the corner of the building. He headed for the ground as Robotnik’s cloud of metal clashed with the glass, sending shards flying to the street below. Sonic pumped a fist in the air at the sound. He was home free now . . .
Until the egg-pod’s missiles blasted off.
Shoooom! Shoooom! Shoooom!
A trio of rocket-propelled explosives curved around the building hot on Sonic’s heels. He leaned harder into the run, pockets of glass shattering with each footfall. He could feel the rocket’s heat behind him. Sonic needed speed. Crazy, mega, superspeed. He began twisting around and around the building, covering the skyscraper in a net of electric blue lines.
With a zig, he led one missile astray, and it careened into the waters of the bay. Sonic spun around and ran head-on at another. Then, with a jump, he leaped over its nose, tapped a toe on its tail fin, and shot it far into the sky, where it burst like a fiery balloon. The last missile caught up to
him at the top of the building, and Sonic led it straight toward Robotnik.
“You think I can’t see you?” the doctor cried with wild eyes. “With this power, I can see everything! I’ll be able to destroy all that is worthless in this world! Everything will be laid to waste by the botniks, and I will rebuild a flawless world as its god!”
“Speedy delivery for the godhead!” Sonic called, and jumped aside as the missile collided with the cloud of mini drones.
BOOM! The drones shredded to ash across the sky, but the force of the explosion kicked Sonic off his feet. He fell to see Robotnik holding firm in his egg-pod.
“He’s got the power of chaos now,” Sonic said as he dropped through the air in free fall. “I can’t leave him with even a drop of that power.” The street below rushed up to Sonic’s face, but he grabbed a loose ring and called out. “You want power, Ro-Butt-Nik? You’ve never seen power like this!”
ZAM!
The ring opened up a portal in the ground, and Sonic fell through, building back up to hyperspeed. The doctor screamed as he flew down after him. “What are those?! What are you hiding from me, you illogical hunk of meat?!”
Sonic tore a path through new ground, and on the other side of the portal stood a sight he’d only ever beheld in the poster on his cave wall: the Eiffel Tower. The ring had delivered them to Paris! Sonic sped through the streets in a haze of blue energy and sampled Paris life as much as he could in the seconds he was there. He inhaled a loaf of French bread to carb up, downed a dozen shots of coffee for a caffeine boost, and slapped a beret on his head for style.
“Ooh là là!” he called, and whipped the hat off to slap Robotnik in the face. The egg-pod was careening wildly, never as fast or as precise as Sonic was when in control of his powers. “Come on, and follow the leader!”
Schwooooooosh! Sonic sped up the side of the Eiffel Tower and left a streak of flames behind him. At its apex, he looked out over the great city and said goodbye. Robotnik rocketed up after him, but before he could reach Sonic—
ZAM!
Another ring warp, and the pair fell onto the top of China’s Great Wall. Sonic crouched low and sprinted down the length of the ancient structure. Robotnik swung in the air behind him, but no matter how many missiles the egg-pod shot off, they were all incapacitated by the waves of blue energy spiking off Sonic’s body.
Sonic reached into his bag, and he saw that there were only three rings left. “Gotta make it count,” he said as he thought of the next place.
ZAM!
* * *
A ring warp sent them up into a cloud of thick desert sand, most of it kicked up by Sonic’s smoking feet. In the distance, the Pyramids of Giza towered like alien arrows. Sonic spun into a superfast ball, and the lightning he discharged turned sand to chunks of glass as he zoomed toward the tallest Egyptian pyramid.
“There’s nowhere you can run from me!” cried Robotnik, his eyes mad with electric power. “I’ll destroy everyone and everything in my path to get you, hedgehog!” A final missile launched from Robotnik’s egg-pod and bore down on him.
Sonic looked up the length of the pyramid, knowing another second wasted could mean its destruction. “It was a good run while it lasted,” he said, and tossed his second-to-last ring in the air.
Zam! Boooooom!
Fire and smoke poured through the other end of the ring portal, and Sonic collided with the ground in the heart of the Green Hills town square. The ring bag bounced off into the gutter. He crawled up on his knees, but the impact of the bomb had shaken him. This was his last chance. His last hope. His final destination. One way or another, it ended here.
“You’re an astonishing little creature. It will be fun taking you back to the lab and examining you,” Robotnik said as he hovered over him triumphantly. “Any last words?”
“Guac. I like that word.”
Zam!
Tom fell flat on his back. Then Maddie fell flat on him. It was like the drop from a tree branch times a hundred. “There’s no place like home,” he said with a cough.
“Home?” Maddie jumped up and surveyed Farmer Zimmer’s barn. “We’re in Green Hills! How are we here and not dead?”
“Sonic must have tossed one of his magic rings underneath us as we fell off the building,” Tom said, pulling himself up. “Little dude is pretty fast.”
“But where is he? How can we help him?”
“I don’t know. He may have already warped away, but who knows what happened to Robotnik. All we can do is what Sonic would do . . . keep moving!”
Despite their aches and pains, the pair headed for home at a sprint. Tom burst through the door and surveyed the damage done by Robotnik’s drones after his and Sonic’s desperate escape. It felt like weeks ago. The room was overturned, books and artwork ripped off the shelves, and Tom’s map of San Francisco had been shredded to pieces.
“Someday soon, you’re really going to have to tell me what happened to you,” Maddie said over his shoulder.
Tom reached down in the mess and picked up the keys to his police cruiser. “The short version is that robot fandoms can be extremely unhealthy,” he said. “But at least we still have a set of wheels to take. Thanks, taxpayers!”
“Where should we go?” Maddie asked. “Back to San Francisco?”
And then, in the distance, they heard the sound of an explosion in Green Hills.
“I’ve got a feeling we won’t need to go that far,” Tom said. He nodded to the car. “It might be best if you get in the back.”
Tom hopped in and floored it, sirens blazing—the first time he’d ever had an excuse to drive like that as a Green Hills police officer. Within moments, they were approaching a smoldering crater in the town square. Robotnik’s egg-pod had come to rest just above the familiar outline of a spiky blue hedgehog.
“Do you trust me?” Tom asked.
“Always,” said Maddie.
“Then brace yourself!”
Tom launched the cruiser over a curb and brought it into a head-on collision with the egg-pod. The two vehicles clanged off each other with a scrunch, and Robotnik flew from his pilot’s seat and onto the ground. The airbag hit Tom square in the face, but he shook it off and checked to find Maddie, unhurt but squeezing the cruiser’s cage divider for dear life.
“Now I know what it feels like to be in a cat carrier,” she said. “This is professional development, really.”
“Stay there and stay safe,” Tom said, and jumped out of the crumpled driver’s seat toward the action.
“Wachowski!” Robotnik growled as he pulled himself up. From the wreckage of the egg-pod, strands of blue lightning were still clinging to his warped face. “Who do you think you are, you simpleton?”
“I’m the Donut Lord, chump!” Tom said, and swung his fist hard, connecting with a right hook. The last vestiges of the chaos lightning lifted him off the ground. Tom flipped over and landed in the dirt next to a smiling Sonic.
“I knew you’d make it!” the hedgehog cheered. “Sorry about pushing you off a skyscraper.”
“If you had to do it, that was the best way, I guess,” Tom said with a laugh.
Robotnik reared up with a snarl and began banging at his busted controls. “Why? Why would you throw your life away for this . . . thing? That’s why I only have robots, never friends,” he said. “They make you irrational.”
Ping!
A D battery bounced hard off of the doctor’s head, and Tom turned to see an army of Green Hills citizens, led by Crazy Carl. “That’s our sheriff you’re messing with!” Carl cried. “And our Blue Devil . . . who everyone can now see is a very real creature who was not at all invented by me.”
The townsfolk circled in, but like a rabid animal, Robotnik wouldn’t go down without violence. He slammed and swiveled the controls on his glove, and Tom could hear the egg-pod sputtering to life again.
> “Do you think you yokels can stop me? ME?!? I am authorized by the United States government to eliminate any and all threats to my investigation, and a much higher power authorizes me to replace each and every one of you with botnik magnificence!”
Zzzzaaaak!
A blue blur crossed Robotnik’s face and left him spinning. Sonic the Hedgehog, Tom’s friend, was back at full speed and ready to run this creep down.
“You think you got it all figured out, but you played yourself,” Sonic said with a jeer as he sped from spot to spot, just ahead of the egg-pod’s busted cannons. “You thought you could steal a bit of my chaos energy and use it to bend the world to your will. But it doesn’t work like that. Chaos doesn’t get controlled, and neither do I, Ro-Butt-Nik!”
“Stop! Saying! That! Name!”
Sonic’s quills were charging faster and faster, and his body radiated blue light. Each time Sonic spun around Robotnik, it almost seemed like his body was morphing into a hot, bright yellow flame. Through the blaze of the energy, Tom spotted the X factor for the battle across the field and ran to it.
“Chaos doesn’t have to mean destruction,” Sonic said, dodging from side to side. “I know how it works now. I know what I’m here for. Introduce a little mayhem into life, and the random ride can bring people closer. That’s how you make friends—by sticking together. Right, Donut Lord?”
Tom spun around, the prize in his hand. Sonic had known what he was up to the whole time. The hedgehog could see the big picture after all. Maybe better than he did. “You got it, pal!” Tom called out, and threw the ring sack back toward his friend.
“We’ll see how much your friends can offer when I dissect you in my lab!” Robotnik called, though there was fear in his eyes now.
“Yeah, that’s gonna be a hard pass from me,” Sonic said. “Here’s my counteroffer.”
The hedgehog caught the bag, pulled out his last ring and sped into an electric tornado. From inside, a golden circle rose in the air, revealing in its center a distant planet populated with mushrooms. Sonic burst out of his whirlwind, supercharged and with eyes like daggers. He clapped his hands together and—