Trouble Within, Trouble Without

 

Synopsis: A conflict arises that threatens to separate the unity between Sonic and his two siblings. The social classes are becoming divided over an issue and each sibling is taking different sides.

 

 

Chapter 1—Cracks are Forming

 

                All had been flowing along so seamlessly in the Crystal Kingdom that a few Mobians had become indolent.   Some were even complaining that ‘nothing ever exciting’ happened in their region, but more than half of the population was content with the way things were and how prosperous their living had become since Sonic and his family had been ruling over them.   However, this little utopia wasn’t always going to be so rosy or ideal.    There was unrest occurring within the stock market, and no one could figure out why.    Also, there was a bit of a famine happening in an area that Sonic and his family weren’t used to, and it was rife with Indigenous Mobians who integrated technology with their native ways.    They had no reason to suspect anyone else around them, but days before the famine had stricken their land, there had been a very targeted swarm of tiny insectibots, indestructible metallic locusts who ate everything in sight, and the hybrids were starting to suffer.

                No one suspected that there was subterfuge happening inside the Castle itself.   Not long after Booster had been hired and she had begun working and living an absolutely divine life with the royals, she had been noticing another IT hire that she had befriended named Trevor who was scintillatingly brilliant, especially in his tinkering with gadgets and his wealth of knowledge considering all things human and Mobian tech, had started behaving shiftily.  

                Trevor had gained everyone’s trust immediately.   He was incredibly likeable and delightful in attitude even if he used Latinate words to communicate.   Oftentimes, he would have to ‘dumb down’ his vocabulary so others could comprehend what he was getting at.    Everyone else loved him, but Booster didn’t think he could be trusted.   From the beginning, she had been watching him, closer than even the Sentinels and the aviary staff around the archives and other ‘restricted access’ rooms that only the high-level IT security guards possessed with key badges and biometrics. 

                Booster had been used to working odd hours and staying up late in the wee hours of the night.   Others would be asleep, but she would take the ‘witching hour watch’ when the guards would change shifts and go to bed for the evening.    She was nocturnal, so this did nothing to unsettle her circadian rhythm.    One evening, she had heard Trevor skulking about in tactical gear.   She hadn’t seen him because he blended in with his surroundings in his black camouflage.    Stealthily, he moved into the restricted access room and Booster went in to investigate, only to be stopped by another fellow computer geek.  

                ‘Aren’t you supposed to be heading back to your quarters ?’, Belinda the Secretary bird queries, curiously.    She knew everyone’s schedule, but she hadn’t seen Trevor heading back into the research and reference area of the archives.   There were all sorts of items held there, including a lab, a makeshift shop to create whatever you liked, if you so desired.   

                ‘Yes, but I saw someone heading back into the restricted section.’, Booster said, trusting her instinct.

                ‘Lack of sleep must be getting to you, Boost.’, Belinda patted the young racoon on the back and went about her job.    It wasn’t until the next day that her worst fears were confirmed, and she encountered Sonic arguing with Sonia and Manic.   The children were worried most of all and commended Booster for her work once she admitted she had seen who was responsible, but now Trevor was on the loose, wearing a mind control helmet, piloting the deadly insectibots wherever he chose.    If he were successful, he could cripple Mobius, so the triplets needed to think fast before the populous began to fret and turn on them, or worse, each other.

 

Chapter 2—Just Listen a Moment !

                'Don't you think you're being—", Sonia asked her eldest brother Sonic, the King of Mobius, but he cut her off.

            ‘We didn’t encrypt our servers like I had warned Manic to do…’, he began.

            ‘I had, bro !  I triple checked !’, Manic shot back.   The three continued a back and forth bickering session about the servers and the famine among the hybrids.    The trio of hedgehoglet teens approached them with Booster by their side, wanting to get their attention.   When nothing could grasp it, Amethystia raised her voice, confidently.

            ‘Just listen a moment !’, she shouted.    The royal triplets ceased arguing and saw their well-grounded trio standing before them.  

            Booster explained what had happened and that Manic had done what Sonic had asked.  Before Manic could add a sophomoric ‘I told you so’ to refuting his argument, she informed them that the saboteur was still inside the Castle, but she wasn’t sure where.

            ‘Did anyone catch where Trevor was last ?’, Sonia asked, inquisitively.   The only anthro that could’ve been aware of Trevor’s whereabouts was Belinda, but her route through the castle had been different from his.   Then, an epiphany hit her.

            ‘We need to check the surveillance.   Since Belinda can’t prove anything, the security cameras can.’, Booster said, deductively.   

            The playback of the video revealed that Trevor had gotten into the servers and jacked up the stock market.   It wasn’t something that couldn’t be repaired, but it would take some time, especially since Mobian credits were starting to falter.    Other business practices could be done while the market was restabilized, but the Mobian people had to be informed and kept placid before anything got out of hand. Of course, the other matter that was worse than the economy was the famine happening alongside the crash.   

            ‘What are we going to do about the food supply ?  Trevor is destroying native lands and other agricultural areas are beginning to feel the insectibot’s wrath.’, Cyril Tinker reported.   Fortunately, his son, CJ, would be working on a device to disable and dismantle the signal between Trevor’s headset and his bots.  The disrupter would be quick to make and easy to operate.  It would only take a matter of minutes for it to be up and running.   His daughter, Aurora, would find a way to bring the native soil back to life.  Her botany and science background would surely return the land to the verdancy it once possessed.

 

Chapter 3—Damage Done, Damage Reversed

            ‘Just because I’m imprisoned doesn’t mean this is over, Sonic.’, Trevor sneered, manacled and behind the shocking field of the prison cell he had been placed in.   Even if he did figure out a way to escape, there were thousands of guards and one of them would stop him only to throw him back into confinement.  It was eerie though, what he had said, like a warning.  

            ‘Why so cryptic ?  Are you the mastermind or are you a mole ?  No offense, Rotor.’, Manic asked.  Rotor shrugged his shoulders, used to moles getting the short end of the stick at times.   

            ‘I can’t reveal that.  That would be showing my hand.  Besides, Manic, everything I did is working in my favor.   Sure, you have undone the crash and dismantled my insectibots.   But there’s a bit more working in my favor than you know.’, Trevor said, smirking sardonically.  

            ‘I had a feeling you were working under someone else.  There’s no way you would’ve produced this diabolical plan alone.’, Sonia stated.   The unseen force behind Trevor’s attack had been a mastermind known as Rancor, who was an armored warthog.    He was particularly nasty and deviously intelligent.   His plan to gain trust through Trevor had worked and he had inserted a computer virus into Crystal Castle’s mainframe.  Within time, this virus would affect not only the Castle but everything outside of it that was linked to it (and unfortunately, this happened to be all of Mobius).   Before long, Mobius would be so far back into the dark ages, it would be difficult to climb back out and into progress.   

            However, the triplets and their friends had other fish to fry for the time being.

 

Chapter 3—Rancor’s Plot Unfurls

            With the economy beginning to stabilize, Aurora Tinker had begun regrowing the destroyed ground using compounds to revitalize it.  The hybrids there were amazed at what she could do.  Many thought she was an enchantress, being able to inject health back into the fields, trees and whatever other foliage needed rebirth.  While she had been doing this, she got an alert from CJ, her elder brother and was told to stop what she was doing immediately.   She had only repaired a small swatch of the indigenous’ land and other areas needed her serum.

            ‘This cannot wait.  Seems that Rancor’s seed has taken root.’, an avian IT administrator named Visor said, gravely. 

            ‘Was anyone updating the firewalls while we were gone ?’, Sonic asked, feeling as though everyone could’ve done more to have deterred the virus from spreading.  Truth be told, each security officer had continually counter hacked Rancor’s virus, but it was so incredibly advanced that it had started shutting everything down.   Inside the cell, Trevor’s manacles fell off and the electric shield holding him in place powered down.  

            ‘Show time.’, the menacing mink said, using the lack of light to slip out and past the first two guards.   There were plenty of other sentinels to deter him from leaving the Castle, but no matter how hard they tried, Trevor was simply too slippery and had broken free of his confinement with little to no issue.    As he sprinted away, he laughed maniacally.            

            ‘Embrace the darkness, hedgehogs, for it’s coming upon you sooner than you think !’, he called, his voice, eerily echoing through the halls as he slipped into the darkness outside the Castle and into the forest beyond where Rancor and others in his employ were hidden.  

 

Chapter 4—Darkness Grips Mobius

            Again, the siblings had begun kvetching at one another, to the point where they wouldn’t listen or cooperate.

            ‘Mom, dad, Uncle Manic !  STOP !  All this contention gets us is trouble.’, Maverick said, worried that everything was beginning to fall apart as the power began to fail.   

The three hedgehogs stopped their bickering and turned towards him.

'Really ? What do you think ?', Manic said, somewhat sarcastically.   The rest of Mobius was blanketed in the cloak of night while the Castle thrived via auxiliary power.  

            ‘None of this arguing is helping us, dad.  You’re at each other’s throats and Mobius is suffering.’, Dashiel agreed.   Their rage started to quell, and they took a unitary breath together.       

            ‘The true problem is within our own computer system.  What are we going to do now ?’, Amethyst questioned, curiously.    Tails raised his finger. 

            ‘It’s experimental.  I have had trial runs with this virtual reality avatar system or VRAS before and thus far, fingers crossed, no glitches.   Booster, Belinda, and the other IT professionals helped me perfect it.   It can accommodate all six of you, but no more.’, Tails said.

            ‘What if we need more ?’, Sonia added, her tone full of concern.   Tails and the others hadn’t developed a contingency, but they knew that when the sextuple team ventured into the virtual realm, they were far more potent as a team than apart. 

            ‘We need to work together on this.   We’ll fix the problem from within and then start confronting Rancor and the Anti-Royal League once we finish the virus inside our system.’, Sonic said, starting to feel more confident about the situation.   None of them had ever been in this kind of situation before, but, having put aside petty arguments, the triplets decided to use their abilities to fight whatever destructive force Trevor had unleashed into Mobius’ primary control computer.

 

Epilogue

            Luckily from the moment that Sonic and his three eldest children had been linked into the VRAS, they could be monitored on Cyril’s high-powered tablet (one that he had developed himself).   The battery life on that device lasted days or even months as did the auxiliary power in Crystal Castle, which gave the team enough of an envelope to root out the virus causing Mobius’ blackout.  

            The sextuplet was dressed in Asiatic garb when they found themselves online.   There was a porcupine virus sparking and multiplying like mad, laughing derisively at them.   All of a sudden, there was a perfect zing of an arrow whooshing past Maverick’s mohawk. 

            ‘Woah, dude, watch it !’, he called, but then noticed that the arrow had eradicated one of the duplicates.    The ninja-clad sharpshooter with a shock of brunette hair leapt into action and caught another virus before it could attack.

            ‘You have to be more careful, alright ?’, he said as he and the others whizzed by on their own hovercraft. 

            ‘What is going on here ?  I am so completely lost.  Those look like humans.’, Amethystia said, noticing they were going after the many duplicates as they continued to spread.   They were hunting the main virus in charge and keeping it from replicating more.  

            ‘We’ve got no time to wonder.  Obviously, they’re on our side, my brave daughter.’, Amy said, ruffling her daughter’s quills affectionately.    Their questions would be answered in due time, but it was obvious that the humans that helped them were far more skilled and used to the wild and woolly world of the Virtual Realm were no strangers to this unusual environment.    With no further delay, the six of them followed their allies lead, getting the feeling that the destructive entity wreaking havoc in the Crystal Castle’s servers wasn’t just Mobius’ problem but had become much bigger than they all could’ve understood at the moment…

To Be Continued…