Sonic and Rouge Wallpaper Cover Story (Parts 1 & 2)
Eggmanland: an expanse of love and desire* (*architect's opinion).
The demented amusement park, designed from Eggman's technological prowess and aesthetic sensibilities, had radiated an intensely disconcerting aura. Recreational fixtures were styled to fit a fairground and brutal defence systems rained hostility upon visitors, the grounds a combination between garish theme park and blindingly bright manufacturing base. Then, following Eggman's fleeing, nothing but towering debris remained on the far-reaching premises. Not a soul would go near them now.
Such was Eggmanland, where our story began on one cloudless, moonlit night.
Sonic arrived after pursuing a lead about a rainbow-coloured shooting star being sighted in the ruins. At least, they were supposed to be ruins. The sight of bright lights coming from Eggmanland shocked him.
"What in the world's going on?"
In the past, Eggman had wielded the energy given off from the awakening of the great force that was Dark Gaia to build his tasteless theme park. It had then been made, like the doctor's ambitions, completely defunct.
Who had resumed operations in the park? And how?
Sonic immediately stormed the grounds to find out what was going on. Then, from above his head, came a lady's voice: sleek, mellow...and in a good mood.
"Why, Sonic. I'm a lucky girl to find you here..."
———
Rouge the Bat: a female bat with a captivating figure, a master spy, and a treasure hunter with a singular interest in gems.
Her silhouette was a familiar one when he looked up, the moonlight on her winged back as she leisurely swooped down from the sky. She had come to fulfil a request from a certain circle to investigate Eggmanland. But a swarm of defensive robots had reactivated just as she was about to try and sneak in, leaving her no room to press on.
"So can't we scratch each other's backs a little?" she said after explaining. "I'd like you to distract those robots with that dear speed of yours for me. In exchange, I'll share the intel I found and even provide support for you as you go! ...Sound good?"
In other words, Sonic would be the decoy while she would investigate out of harm's way. Nothing unusual for Rouge.
"Well, all right. Sure." He smirked drily, an amusement to his resignation to work with her. It was just the kind of person she was, after all. "I was planning on doing that on my own anyway."
"Thanks." She gave a warm giggle. "I do love understanding boys."
"Much obliged."
"You're really saving my skin here," Rouge continued after passing him an earphone transceiver. "Seeing as I've been paid in advance"—she flaunted an emerald ring on her left hand—"I really don't want any snags coming up if I can help it..."
She seemed to enthral herself with her ring, her gaze that shifted to it one of rapture.
"And that pre-payment was another gem, huh?" Sonic asked, half-amazed. "After all the ones you got already, you still want more?"
"Oh, but you don't get it. When you manage to get your hands on a good jewel, it really isn't long..." With her line of sight shifting to Sonic, her eyes narrowed. "Before you know how valuable a better one is."
———
Explosions resounded one after another all over Eggmanland, neon lights glistening in the dead of night.
From the gaps of a power plant's plumbing behind a gigantic statue of Eggman, the doctor's frenetic robots had begun trying to destroy Sonic with style.
"Looking good, Sonic." Rouge's collected, chuckling voice came over the transceiver. "You've got five Egg Fighters on the rooftop of the building in front, with shields. Once you wrap up, head to the coffee cups on your 2 o'clock for me."
Rouge's instructions were broadly sound. Once she spotted critical-looking facilities with her keen vision, she would inform Sonic of the optimal route to take and where enemies were lurking.
Search, move, destroy. Search, move, destroy...
Sonic was gradually growing bored. When work went really well on occasions like these, time passed by like a rote task, in a matter-of-fact way.
"Still, though," Rouge sighed as though commiserating with him. "A lady and a gentleman in an amusement park, on a night with a lovely moon, for nothing but business? How terribly dull, wouldn't you say?"
"Gotta admit, kinda lost me when you called this place an amusement park... Same with that 'lady and gentleman' part."
She gave no response.
———
After a while of that so-called work, suspicion reared itself in Sonic's head.
Rouge's instructions were too precise.
On the face of it, it seemed like the whole process would be a dry run, even down to moving around the park. But not once did they double back this whole time. The same went for the direction he took, too, just about. It was unnatural. Put another way, he had the distinct feeling he was purposely being directed away from something.
Strangest of all was when he arrived in the important-looking facility that Rouge was supposed to start investigating when he had drawn away the enemy. There were traces of someone having already been there. Even the lock to the warp facility, which shouldn't have had any visitors before them, had been undone.
Rouge tittered. "The doctor has his forgetful moments. A blunder like this isn't out of place for him."
Despite addressing Sonic via the transceiver this whole time, she actually hadn't shown her face since they started working. Was she really following after him?
Well, I don't think there's anything I can't suspect her of, Sonic thought while surveying the area some more.
Then, the energy detector he had borrowed from Tails started beeping.
That reminded him: he was here to find the rainbow-coloured shooting star, or Chaos Emerald, in the first place. He took a look down at the energy detector before stopping in place. Then, a duly entertained smile played on his lips.
Now I get it...
The thrilling mystery in that expanse of love of desire started coming to a close.
———
Within the heart of Eggmanland yawned a pit gouged deep underground, a crossing of more than a hundred yards spanning across its diameter.
The Gaia Temple used to be there.
The temple made to heal the planet had once been pushed beneath Eggmanland. But now, after surfacing during a large-scale battle, it slumbered in the planet's depths.
A silhouette landed in the base of the pit without a sound. After a vigilant survey of the area, it let out a satisfied giggle.
"It's like he brought out all the robots that were here with him." Rouge chuckled, verifying with her portable radar that Sonic, just as she had directed, was well and far away. "You really can't do without an easy mark of a hedgehog friend."
It seemed like she had made no mistakes in this. She had gotten Sonic to lure the enemy from her target ahead of time: the centre of the pit at Eggmanland's core which she sauntered straight towards.
———
It wasn't long after arriving upon a tall stone steeple that lined the pit's innermost depths that Rouge had found a faintly shimmering rock.
"I finally found you." She picked up the rock and pressed it lovingly to her cheek. "My sweet, darling—"
"Your what now?"
With the rock still at her cheek, Rouge's expression turned serious.
"Oh...? You ditched the work I asked you to do?" Her usual, unhurried smile returned as she gradually turned around. "What a bad boy you are."
"Can't really hang about when you know there's a badder girl on the loose."
The one who answered her with an unreadable grin was, without a doubt, Sonic.
He had been lying in wait for Rouge after realising that she was planning to use him to snatch away the Chaos Emerald for herself. All it took for him to locate the Emerald was the energy detector. The transceiver that kept her notified of his location was likely left spinning in one of the large coffee cup attractions on the other side of the park.
"So," Sonic continued. "What are you gonna do with that Chaos Emerald?"
"What indeed?" Rouge smiled sweetly in response, not a trace of timidity to her. "I'm taking it with me, of course... Told you already, didn't I?" Her gaze slid from the ring on her left hand to the Chaos Emerald in her right. "When you get a good jewel, you end up wanting a better one!"
With that, she pulled out a smoke bomb from her bosom and smashed it onto the floor. White smoke engulfed the whole area in a boom.
"Hey! That wasn't what you said before!"
By the time Sonic had shaken off the smoke, Rouge was in the air, hanging off of a large balloon that would secure her escape.
"Truth be told, I finished my investigating a long while ago. But you did help me out some, so I'll share that intel I promised. The thing that powered up Eggmanland was a rainbow-coloured shooting star that just so happened to land here...this Chaos Emerald."
Her plans had gone slightly pear-shaped, but she managed to retrieve the Emerald in the end. Now she just had to buy some time to escape.
"The Gaia Temple that used to be here also had a place to house the Chaos Emerald's power, no?" Rouge started saying. "Maybe that's the reason it settled here. The Chaos Emerald passed by, reacted to the temple underground, and couldn't find it. Looks as though its energy began spreading over the whole area after." Sonic made no sign of moving. She carried on. "So then I got to thinking. If I just took the Chaos Emerald with me like this, things would settle down here as well. Case closed."
With that, all the pieces came together for Sonic.
"Well, sure," he said. "The world's not in a state where we need it right now. Plus, it's not like the Chaos Emeralds belong to anyone, either. So I don't mind the idea of you taking it at all, really. But..."
"But?"
"Having you snatch that up after taking me for a ride for so long? Just wouldn't feel great for anybody, would it?"
One moment, he was making that remark with a grin. The next, he was up in Rouge's face.
"Ah—!" she gasped. Using the incline of the stone steeple, Sonic had flown up into the air with a spin-dash, shot by her, and now had her Chaos Emerald in hand. "You thief...!"
With a wink, Sonic was falling towards the bottom of the pit with an unruffled smile. Rouge, thoroughly ruffled, was more than ready to dive after him.
But darkness then swallowed the area.
Just as they wondered whether the lights in Eggmanland all went out, the ground suddenly started quaking in loud, long rumbles.
One by one, dazzling strings of light started rising all along the pit, its shine spreading in every direction. Then, more light began welling up at the bottom of the hollow where Sonic had landed.
Then, in concert with the veins of light around them, the five Chaos Emeralds Sonic had on him also began to glow.
"What the...!?"
The blackened Emeralds were recovering.
Maybe it was because they were gathered where the Gaia Temple used to be. Maybe it was because Sonic, who shared a connection with the Gaia Temple, happened to be there at the same time. Whatever the reason, the master of the power that had laid dormant deep beneath the earth, sensing the Chaos Emeralds at long last, sent them its power after.
———
Rouge's breath caught in her throat.
The view from on high was beautiful beyond words. Now, in what had been the sprawling darkness of the murky ruins, the pit had turned into a vast seed of light with its contours thrown into stark relief, its brilliance growing as rainbow lights circulated through.
It looked like an invaluable gem placed on the finest roll of black velvet.
Her eyes widened. It was a beauty that she beheld in awe, regarded with longing. Then, she soon let out a gratified sigh.
Rouge was practical. Any gem she couldn't hold in her hand held no worth. But, as far as it served as a hint to that elusive 'better jewel', the view was one that she relished in to the absolute fullest. She was content.
"Hey!" Sonic's yell reached her from below. "Aren't you gonna try and take it back...?"
He might as well been asking where her fighting spirit had gone, calling out to her with one of the Chaos Emeralds in hand.
She had no intention of giving up that very real gem, of course. Whatever they did to each other here and now in Eggmanland would also be fair play.
She put on an intrepid smile through a squint.
"Fine, fine, you win!" she said. She would make it look like she had given up for now before an opportunity for a surprise attack came up. "I wouldn't want a jewel reeking of hedgehog like that. More importantly—"
Just then, the area outside the perimeter of the pit below started collapsing.
"Huh!?" Sonic whipped his head around. Tremors beneath the earth intensified. "Now what? It just never ends with this place...!"
The pit was a product of drilling, an unnatural formation from the start. It had no way of withstanding the torrent of light rapidly flooding it now. The entirety of Eggmanland was going to cave in, light surging out into the rest of its construction.
This was her chance.
If she struck now, hard and fast, she could swipe up all five of the Chaos Emeralds from him.
Almost as a favour to her, a gigantic statue of Eggman toppled over before her very eyes. In his bid to run away, Sonic slipped and then fell into a cloud of dust, she was fairly sure.
Sonic was a big boy. He could handle that much, probably.
Rouge steeled her every nerve on focusing, waiting for the moment the dust would clear to launch her surprise attack from above. She peeled her eyes onto the cloud for close to a minute.
Then, Sonic's cheery voice came through her transceiver.
"I'm not proud of leaving a lady waiting, but it was about time for me to split."
Rouge's shoulders went slack in heartbreak. Sonic was already long gone. On top of that, his transceiver was supposed to be a long ways from where she was. She could tell: it was impossible for her to chase him down now.
There really wasn't a single time where things went the way Rouge wanted when it came to that boy.
"Were you about to say something earlier, by the way?" Sonic asked.
"Oh, be quiet. It was nothing!"
Cutting off her transmission in a huff, Rouge let go of her balloon and glided off into the sky.
On the other side, Sonic's look of shock quickly settled to his usual expression.
"See ya, Rouge. I had a blast today."
After tossing up his goodbyes to a transceiver that wouldn't carry them, he scarpered off.
———
Morning called on a whitening night over the expanse of love and desire that was Eggmanland.
It cast a long shadow from a parched morning sun, now truly looking like little more than rubble. The theme park, broken down after reclaiming its former hustle and bustle for one night only, had fallen to complete silence after hosting its two guests.
With her back to the wreckage, Rouge flew through the sky while spitting swears over the night's events. All of that and she was returning empty-handed in the end.
But, suddenly, that gem fashioned out of light came to mind again.
She fell quiet for a short while. The unreal beauty of it was overwhelming, all things considered. What should she do when she grasped how valuable a better jewel was before obtaining the real thing?
"...Well. Guess I'll just have to find it myself."
You could call motivation a type of idealised jewel. If Rouge thought about it that way, she couldn't say she came out of the night completely empty-handed.
Her mood improved a little after making up her mind: she would consider this little tangle stricken off the record.
"Doesn't matter what kind of gem it is. I will acquire all of them..." she declared as she faded from view, into the morning sun. "All the world's jewels will be mine."
Sonic X Shadow Wallpaper Cover Story & Article (JP-EN Translation)
Sonic & Shadow
A full moon overlooked the starry skies above Mission Street, a trendy avenue lined with businesses and shops. On the rooftop of one of those shops stood Sonic, who looked upon the night sky.
He had arrived just to take a look at the modest light show the stars would put on for tonight.
But, as was usually the case for him, Sonic had come all too early for it. He gazed down upon the bustling city to kill some time…when he spotted a black hedgehog fighting something on the street across the way. It was Shadow.
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