Prologue to Greatness

 

Synopsis:  An answer to the question of Ivo Robotnik’s past and the woman he loved.  

 

                ‘Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of us all.’—Lucius Annas Senneca

                ‘Death often reveals its truest intentions.  Only after you’ve lost someone or something precious do you see a person’s truest nature.’—Elizabeth Berndt, 2016

 

 

Chapter 1—A Quiet Life

                Ivo Robotnik had always been a brilliant mind with a penchant for anything mechanical.   If something was broken, Ivo, with his engineering mindset and comprehension of mechanical inner workings to repair, replace and even renew something that had been otherwise ‘unfixable’.  

                Ivo was always the apple of his parents' Gerald and Octavia’s eyes.   The two of them only wanted young Ivo to achieve greatness.   They were delighted when Ivo naturally chose the field of robotics, using that precocious genius mind of his to build and create.    All was well until Octavia contracted a rare illness that no doctor seemed to understand.   It destroyed her from the inside out and she began to resemble a living corpse.   No longer able to care for Octavia, Gerald had to place Octavia into hospice.   After her inevitable demise, Gerald began to change into a rigid paternal figure that Ivo could no longer relate to.

                Ivo’s quiet life continued into his junior and high school years.   When once he had been surrounded by many friends, he was more secluded and preferred the company of research, academia and playing chess with some of his peers in the archaic chess club.  He missed his dear mother a lot.  Once in college, however, his life began to alter towards happier days once he met Eda.  

 

Chapter 2—The Lovely, Brilliant Eda

                Eda was a fellow scientist, but she delved into biology and horticulture of all kinds.   She loved all natural elements Mobius had to offer and Ivo couldn’t resist her.   Seeing her was an excuse to leave his father to debate with his fellows in university (one he didn’t attend, either).   Over subsequent years since emancipation, Gerald had disowned Ivo for attending a university that didn’t support his totalitarian views or his ‘vision’ for the future.    Little did he know that his father’s research on roboticization is exactly what he would return to in the musty study he remembered from his youth with an unfinished blueprint that would create a dastardly imprint in Mobian history for decades long after his passing. 

 

                Ivo never reconciled with his dad, not even after Cecil and Simone were born.   Gerald wanted absolutely nothing to do with his son.   His family was at the university, even if they didn’t accept his ‘solution to conquer death’.   It was the philosopher’s stone that had been spoken of in hushed tones, but no one ever believed there could be a device to cause someone to live forever.   This one, tragically, came at a price, but it was only hypothetical, theory and postulation at best. 

                ‘I don’t see why you want to bother with the roboticizer.’, Ivo said, Cecil piggybacking him, gleefully.  

                ‘I want to give people a fighting chance.  Your mother never had that.  I am shocked you call yourself a Robotnik.   You’ll give in soon enough.   They all do.   Only then will you be able to do something useful.   Not like those useless knickknacks back at home.’, Gerald scoffed.  

                ‘Let’s go.  I’m tired of the air of toxicity here.   It’s starting to choke me.’, Eda said, still regaining her regality.    Even now, as she was then, the long flaxen haired, bespectacled beauty caused Ivo’s heart to flutter.   Cecil looked exactly like her, while Simone, the younger, bore her father’s signature flame-red mop of hair. 

                Gerald was all too pleased to see them leave, and it wasn’t too long after their reunion that old age wreaked havoc on him.   He began to have dementia and succumbed to death’s icy grip in his sleep.  It had been a peaceful passing but at the convalescent home, he had been a holy terror.  

 

Chapter 3—A Peaceful Life, Interrupted

Meanwhile,

                A young hedgehog mother, mysteriously cloaked, was guarding her face from the raging wind. She held three bundles close. Tears staining her youthful cheeks, she handed her most precious possessions to the Oracle, knowing she could provide for them far better than she could.   She and her husband had gotten separated during the violent storm and she knew nothing of his whereabouts.   The Oracle gave her words about a vision she had seen and told the Queen to hide herself.  Knowing she could trust this Oracle implicitly from her aura and outward kindness, the Queen resigned her children to her, knowing they would go to good homes.

                ‘Don’t cry, little ones.  I promise we’ll get back together.’, she said, pivoting and returning into the vale from whence she had come.  Her tears nearly blinded her, but this greater sacrifice would be for Mobius’ good, even if she nor her absent husband had any idea how they would reunite or how Sonic and his siblings were Mobius’ saviors.

 

                Back at the Robotnik Residence…

                Ivo and his family led ideal lives, living as most nuclear family units do.   Eda and Ivo’s romance had continued to flourish.  The two joked, laughed and relished each other immensely.  Until the cancer hit and struck Eda down.

                It was worse than when Ivo had lost his beloved mother.

'Eda, no !', Ivo screamed in pure horror.   Where once rosy-pink skin and long, luscious blonde hair brightened a room, instead there was the ghastly pallor of grey and cold, rigid fingers, frozen by death.  Cecil and Simone never saw their mother in that state, nor did they get to see her buried.  Instead, Ivo sent them to play by themselves while he retreated to his father’s study.    In a manner of hours, he had created his notorious roboticizer.    Inasmuch as he wanted, nay, longed for the device to work, it couldn’t revive her.   He learned the hard way that the roboticizer only worked on living subjects. /

 

Chapter 4—Ivo’s Madness

            Cecil had started asking too many questions about Eda and Simone was too young to remember any of the trauma.   Her mind was more fascinated with the technology her papa had fabricated, so while papa Robotnick wasn’t looking, she made a coded version of Gerald’s blueprints should she need them in the future.

            It was simple to take over the monarchy.  Sonic was only a teenager at this point, but he knew the prophecy and even if he wanted to throw in the white towel at times, he was guided by his mother’s lullaby and conviction to return Mobius to what it once had been.

            Sonic deduced clues from his mother’s lullaby and the fact that most codes were made terribly simple to advanced logicians like himself.    Following the lyrics, he found his siblings and soon he was introduced to Miles, Antoine, Rotor, Sally and the remainder of the Freedom Fighters.  Knuckles was on the losing side, but like the modern allyship with the Tenrecs, it took some time to gain his trust and realize that Robotnik when he was his basest, was only looking to enact control and prove himself to his father.

 

Chapter 5—What about Other Robotnicks ? 

‘We all know how the story ended.   There has to be others.   I’ve been studying on it.  I don’t understand the theory explicitly…’, Surge began.   Just thinking of M theory made her cranium throb.   Cecil, Rotor and Tails drew out visual representations to make it more digestible,   9The simple answer to the question Surge had posited was a resounding ‘yes’, but they had considered themselves lucky not to have run into the other Universe’s Robotnicks.    That was all very probable, but Sonic had friends in vast numbers.   It wasn’t something he was overly concerned about.

            ‘We still have the issue of Reis, his wife and the coming baby.’, Antoine stated, obviously.

            ‘Yes, true.  We shouldn’t worry about them.   We can handle them.   After them, I am certain there will be others.  T’were always thus.’, Geoffrey said, eloquently.     Yes, it was accurate to state that the waltz of good and evil was eternal, but in the case of Sonic and his friends, they would always tip the scales in the favor of good. 

 

Chapter 6—Thus it Begins

            Aleena and Charles were putting the hedgehoglets to bed this time around.   It was Amy who had a fitful night of sleep, troubled by a vision of an electrified tesseract and the horror of Robotnicks.

            ‘You don’t think…’, Sonic said.

            ‘I do, but I don’t know when it will happen or how we can prevent it.’, Amy began, holding Sonic close and starting to weep.   All at once, Sonic felt ill-prepared to assuage his wife’s fear, but he let her know that whatever happened, they would all be together.

            In Hannibal’s Lair…

            All the while back in the cove that Hannibal called home, he had found an ancient emerald tablet that would give him unsurmounted power.    This, too, had come from a Hamarampi excavation and some unfortunate souls had been killed defending it, aware of its destructive capabilities in the wrong hands.

            ‘Finally, things are starting to come up Hannibal !’, Reis laughed.  From behind, his wife hugged his neck.   She was playfully pulled into his lap and he kissed her.

            ‘The sooner I can find the right Universe to tesseract, we will be saying hello to Nega Eggman and other alternate Eggmans.’, Reis smirked as he drew her into a kiss.    Patience was probably Reis’ only true virtue, but in his case, everything would work out according to his master plan soon enough.

 

Epilogue

            Alternatively…

            Nega fiddled with a project he had been fabricating for the past few months.  He had cloistered himself away just to put the final touches on it.   The mech-suit would give him super-strength, extra arms and firepower he hadn’t possessed before.   Plus, the jet pack would give him the ability to rocket away and hit that blasted hedgehog at full speed.  

            As he was trying it on and making sure any glitches in the pack had been worked out, a tear in the space-time continuum appeared.   Unable to stop, he found himself entrapped in a net.   Another crackle in space-time warped into view as well.

            ‘I can see my talent will be useful as well.   This world is in dire need of revision.’, Geras said, stoically observing his hosts and waiting for Reis to give him the command to hail the recruits. 

 

To Be Continued…