The Paradox Prism

 

Synopsis: King Sonic learns of the Paradox Prism, a powerful gemstone with mysterious powers located deep within a cavern of a familiar location of Mobius.

 

Chapter 1—It’s Only Getting Stranger

            In a grade school nestled in the countryside, the whole tesseract situation hadn’t reached its full-blown chaotic potential.     Quigly, an inquisitive quokka, had been playing with his best friends, Bertie, a bluebird, and Frisk, a wide-eyed Fennec.   

            ‘Quigly, what’s with all the holes in the sky ?’, Frisk questioned.    Quigly was unusually intelligent for his age and had wisdom far beyond his 7 years of age.  

            ‘Something’s gone terribly wrong…Bertie, Fennec, let’s get out of here before matters get a bit too weird.’, he said.   His best friends high-tailed it for the mountains near Crystal Castle.   The trio knew that their parents would be looking for them after school, since recess was the last period of the day and they would be picked up by their prospective caretakers, but the unrest had been so jarring that Quigly thought this action was better than waiting for their parents to arrive.

            All the while running, the trio was intercepted by Doctor Don’t, a member of the Chaos Council.

            ‘Hey, watch where you’re going…I was nearly gonna beat this level.’, Don’t said, dropping the game device by his side and hovering nearby on his transforming scooter.  Even though the teen was in excellent physical condition, he was pretty lazy hovering about in his transforming hoverchair.   

            ‘R-Robotnik ?’, Bertie blurted, running in full-fledged panic until she was grasped up by Doctor Babble.

            ‘Ah, good catch, Babble.   We can use her, and I think we can use these other two as well…’, Deep stated, with a sardonic grin.    None of them knew who the Chaos Council was, but they all knew that the 4 of them that had dropped literally from the sky were some sort of version of Robotnik.   Both Gerald and Ivo had been defeated on their own, which meant that in this alternate dimension, their Robotnik was still alive and kicking.   With how rapidly the tesseracts were dropping random people into their world, there was no telling if that world’s Robotnik would land in their dimension, if he hadn’t already.   

            Quigly recalled an old fashioned rallying call the Freedom Fighters sang when in distress or under duress.   Knowing that his voice naturally carried, he sang out, loud and strong;

            Rally for your fellow forest creature

            Big, small, short, or tall

            Lend a paw for the weak and needy

            Let’s bring forth Robotnik’s fall

            We are counting on you, on each other

            Let’s come together, sisters and brothers

            Now is the time, hear my cry

            Freedom fighters, together STRIVE ! 

 

            Although Sonic was searching for the cause of the tears in the fabric of reality in space and time, others in his court had come once they had heard the song.   Firstly, it was the Chaotix, who found it unusual and ironic they were seeing Eggmen again.   They were all different versions of Eggman at different stages of his life.   They noticed that the group worked together, better than a well-oiled machine and they called themselves ‘The Chaos Council’.    Vector had a bad feeling, although he and the others saved Quigly, Birdy and Fennec.    These four were searching for their leader, Ivo Robotnik.       For now, they had done what they came to do in freeing The Chaos Council’s victims.    They had outwitted and beaten the Council and could return to the Castle, because, just as Vector predicted, Don’t had a ping on his video watch, pinpointing the location where Ivo was waiting for them in order to regroup and begin planning something nefarious.   

 

Chapter 2—Cave of Wonder and Peril

            Sonia, Manic and Sonic had gotten specific directions where to find the cause of the quantum disruption that had begun mere hours earlier.   They were warned that getting too close to the source would cause probability storms and they could lose themselves in their own confusion.   Given how intelligent they all were it would take quite a bit to befuddle the best of them, but they still had their wits about them.                       

            Being the inventor of the group, Tails headed the search, and he was close to finding the root of the problem.   Deep down in the cave, a ringing was heard.   There was something unusually rhythmic and musical about it.    The four friends wondered if they should grab the prism or encapsulate it. 

            ‘I never thought I would see the paradox prism.   For so long I ascribed it to the realm of fiction.’, Miles confessed.   It seemed that he was moved by seeing it firsthand himself, but didn’t allow himself to become too overly emotional on how tremendously beautiful it was.    The light had been shining through it from above, scattering rainbows every which way they looked.   Yes, it was dazzling, but the quartet was aware that this little piece of the quantum world was undoing everything.   They needed Tails to bring it back to the castle and study it further to see if there was a way of saving time and space as they knew and understood it.   If they didn’t, their world would fall apart and everything else in it.

 

Chapter 3—Experimenting in Earnest

            'Break the Prism, and our world is destroyed.', Tails stated. 'The entire Videogame Solar System will as well !'

            ‘Wait a minute, rewind.    Videogame Solar System ?’, Manic asked, genuinely curious.    

            ‘There’s a whole solar system out there.   We’re just part of the greater whole.’, Tails said.     This only confused the court and Tails wasn’t certain how to make an illustration that would put everything into plain language. 

            ‘What Miles is trying to say is that if the Prism is tampered with in any way, chaos will ensue.’, Cyril stated, plainly. 

            ‘Well why didn’t you just say that !’, Rouge giggled anxiously.     The news was far more dire than they had ever anticipated.    The air hung thick with suspense, instability and a general feeling of malaise.     Not only that but Quanta was dying, but thankfully an M had placed her into quarantine so he could heal her.    He had isolated the nanoparticle that had begun nibbling at her quantum fabric and essence.   Literally, the particle had begun eating her alive, which, when any of the court thought about it too long, their stomachs turned slightly.    

            ‘Is my daughter going to survive this in your quantum containment ?’, Q asked, for the first time, annoyed he didn’t have a plan or a solution like usual.   He was just as inept as anyone else, but more random, somehow familiar characters had continued appearing through tesseracts.   All Q wanted was for everything to revert to normal.    The M could only help so much, but they needed help from someone far more powerful.   Someone who was not only Lord over time, but created from its essence.   

            None of them were certain they could trust He Who Remains, but they had no other viable choice.   The version that had landed in Mobius had come with a snarkier than usual Loki, a female version he fancied named Sylvie, an analyst from the Time Variance Authority named Mobius and the best possible variant of He Who Remains himself.     

 

Chapter 4—Disputing Like Adults

            The Chaos Council thought of the plan they had hatched earlier but nothing seemed to work amidst all the chaos.    When they had run into random falling people and tripping over them every which way, Doctor Deep had gotten annoyed.

            ‘If you want to go after Sonic, do so.   I’m portalling out of here before it gets weirder.’, Deep said, getting even angrier.  

            ‘Wait !  Hone in on our particular paths too, if you can, Deep.’, Don’t said.    Babble, Don’t, Done It and Ivo were all sent to their own subsequent times on their own paths.     Even though they were out of the picture, everything was still a garbled mess.    Quanta, luckily, was being healed, and she had seen enough insanity to ruffle her feathers.  

            ‘Mortimer, I want to thank you for isolating that nasty parasite that wanted to do me in…’, she said to the M that assisted her.    Under her electron microscope that she apparated into existence, she could view that naughty parasite that had been the cause of all their trouble.   It was, quite literally, guffawing, rolling on its back, roaring in hysterics.    

            ‘That little menace is a time tick.   We have no idea where he came from or how he even got here.’, Mortimer said, noticing that simply seeing the tick was making him itchy.   He had prestidigitated a fortified jar and sealed the tick in it for safe keeping.    Q looked at the M that had saved his daughter, Princess Quanta’s life.    There were more pressing things at steak, like how timelines were starting to develop free will of their own, all because the tick had infected and liberated them.  

            ‘We aren’t out of the woods yet.  We need a brigade of healers…’, he began.

            ‘I’ll seek them out.’, Discord added, winking out of existence.    In any event, they were all adults, and they would solve this like the adults they were.

 

 

Chapter 5—The Prism is Healed           

            The Paradox Prism was encased in multi-veritable sigils and runes before the magicians were able to seal the crack that the time tick had created.    The real mystery was how the tick arrived there and caused that much chaos.   It was an agent working through someone or something else.   It hadn’t been the Chaos Council, since none of them would ever devise something so diabolical, but in any event, Sonic’s finest, brightest quantum mechanics were working on tracing the tick’s previous meals to whatever universes it had already devoured.   Luckily it had left them alone, but who wasn’t counting on the destructive louse to return ?   There was always a probability of that occurring, and even though they weren’t sure when and how, they would be prepared when it did.   

            Currently, the Paradox Prism had been completely restored and it was encased in non-shatter, non-tamper, force-field enforced energy.    Even if the time tick returned, it would break its diamond-encrusted teeth on the shielding that surrounded it.   Since that abysmal tick was being studied by M scientists took it upon themselves to study, it seemed that they and the Q had been brought closer together.    An alliance like theirs would be the glue that held the cosmos together someday.   

            Meanwhile…

            On Melis, Tsar Tusk tsked at seeing King Sonic victorious after repairing the notorious Paradox Prism.  

            ‘Ugh, I already can’t stand this guy.    Who does he think he is ?  Supermelis ?’, Tusk wondered aloud.    On Melis, there had been an ‘ubermelis’ once known as Supermelis.  He had come with godlike power and talent, bringing harmony to all.   He had been someone to model one’s life after.    This blue hedgehog, however, seemed a bit conceited, brash and egotistical.     If anything, Tusk felt that the planet needed a bit of a makeover and a new ruler.    Besides, the tech there was far more advanced than it had been on his own planet.   While Supermelis had been myth and there was still a cult that worshipped him, Tusk would embody everything Supermelis was to the Melisians.    He would pay Mobius a visit and rattle King Sonic’s world a little.   

 

Epilogue

            Victory hadn’t even had a chance to be celebrated when the gargantuan ships began to descend into the stratosphere.

            ‘Holy Moley, those are huge.’, Big said, with great concern.  

            ‘Yeah, but, we’ve got mechs and other weapons if we need them.’, Blaze said, grinning, patting his shoulder to calm him.     There was an unearthly calm before Tusk began firing on them with lasers, pell mell, no holds barred.      That was when, before they were certain everything had come to Armageddon, that time stopped. 

            It was Quanta, Mortimer, Q, Loki and Discord, to name a few.    A few other heavy quantum hitters appeared too.    If it was to be the end of Mobius, they thought, why not even the odds for the little guy ?

 

To Be Continued…