Sonic RPG 5: Indefinitely Detained

"Suit yourselves" Eugene says. As they move downward, Eugene starts to fall behind. "Meh, so what, you can do all of your fancy tricks, I've got science!" He presses a button. His bobsled seems to rumble for a bit, and the back compartment opens up. A large engine extrudes from it, and warms up. With a loud "BANG" Eugene flies past everyone else and reaches the bottom at a very small amount of time. He gets out, only to find the door is locked. There is a small keypad next to the door, with a sequence of numbers and symbols displayed. Eugene turns around and looks at the oncoming avalanche. He thinks, does some calculating in his head, and then taps into Cronic's communicator. "Hey..um...Cronic. Any chance you can stall that thing for a bit? I need some time to get the door open."

Regardless of Cronic's response, Eugene turns back to the keyboard, and begins muttering something to himself, obviously working out the code. "No worries now Eugene...it's just like the good old days of Math at MIT...Yeah...except instead of F's...I now have a giant mound of snow hurtling towards me..."

"Yeah yeah..." Eugene starts to enter numbers frantically. "Okay...and then....with a little....GOT IT!" The door doesn't budge. "What kind of ******* MORONIC DEVICE PUTS A **** WITH **** AND THEN HAS **** WITH ****?" His vulgur ranting continues for a bit, until he notices something. The trees begin to fizzle, and disappear. "Huh...I KNEW I cracked something! HEY CRONIC! Don't worry about it, just watch!" A few seconds pass, and everything, including the snow begins to disappear. The avalance is no more. The room is now just a slanted corridor, with ventilation shafts blowing in cold air.

Eugene walks up to the group. "Quite ingenious actually. This place must have some kind of advanced holographic display system, with built in conditionary equations to respond to any type of interferance with the system. In other words, it was all fake, but could give a very real illusion of existence. We may or may not have been in any actual danger, but we are at least, for the moment, safe from any harm."

The voice is heard. "The en-rich-ment cen-ter is happ-y for your pro-gress. Al-though you were nev-er in any real dan-ger, you re-spon-ded in an ex-cellent mann-er. Please con-tin-ue with the test."

The doors open.

"I think when I get out of here I'm going to reprogram you to clean my toilets....." Eugene mutters. He walks through the door.

Eddie gets off the snowboard and walks towards the door.

Eddie: (looks back) Man, it's amazing what this place is capable of.

A.I.: I'm glad you like it hear.

Eddie: (annoyed) I didn't say that.

A.I.: Well, please continue into the next room and choose your weapon.

Eddie: Weapon?

In the next room, there are three assault rifles in front of them with belts full of ammunition.

Eddie: (picks one up and talks to Eugene) So, do you work here? You mentioned about reprogramming this place. So,I asume you probably work here and was thrown in this sick experiment for noapparent reason.

Babylon: this thing glowing!

Voice: begin wisdom test

Babylon: wisdom test?

a bunch of white crystals appear in front of Babylon and Crimson. they begin to move.

Voice: fi-nish the cry-stal puz-zle wi-thin the giv-en time, and save your life. fail, and. well lets say its not gon-na be pre-tty.

Babylon: great...well lets get going shall we. lets see, this piece goes...here?

Eugene looks surprised. "Work here? Oh no, not at all. My theory is that whoever is behind this is probably a competitor...or admirer... of mine, and they're trying to disrupt my research...or something to that affect. I just intend to find the source of our 'mutual friend' and then...well, change it to satisfy my revenge." He looks at the guns. "Meh...I don't like any of these choices." He pulls out his own pistol. "I only play with toys I'm familiar with."

As the two are waiting for Cronic, Eugene turns to Eddie. "So, what's your story?"

"Oh, this'll be easy. This is right in my area." Crimson grabs two crystals. One is jagged and hollowed out in the middle, and the other smooth and solid. "Yep, let's get started. This'll be really basic."

Eugene sits in the back and observes. "No...I don't think it's going to be as simple as that, according to the 'Annoying One' it's weakness involves us working together, and the fact that it is made out of titanium, a metal." He starts looking around for something, anything. Out of luck, he notices a button on the ceiling, with an arrow pointing towards a barred bullseye at another part of the ceiling. That also has an arrow, which points to a hole in the ceiling just above the robot. Eugene looks closer, and sees that there is some sort of lightning rod. He analyzes the voltage, and finds it to be relatively high. "Well....that's conveniently helpful...."

He yells towards Eddie and Cronic. "ALRIGHT! I have an idea, so listen up. Eddie, I need you to use your speed and get that robot to hit the switch over there *He motions towards the first switch*. Cronic! See that hole above the Robot? An electric rod will come down from there when I hit that bullseye, I need you to do something with your magic to either amplify it, or connect it to the Robot. I wager that this will all need to be done within a relatively short amount of time, so let's get going. Eddie, you're up!"

He thinks for a moment. "(Yeah...this should work. After all, metals are good conductors. Just need Eddie to get those bars open, and I'll nail the bullseye with my pistol.)"

Eddie slings the assault rifle on his back and runs in front of the robot.

Eddie: (whistles) Hey! Over here! Come get me!

The robot catches sight of Eddie and charges at him. Eddie was quick enough to move out of the way which gave him enough time to run up to the switch.

Eddie: (presses the switch) Now, Cronic!

Eugene interupts. "Not quite his turn yet!" He aims his pistol towards the barred bullseye (which has now just been opened thanks to Eddie). He fires, and hits it dead on. "Heh...I've still got it..." Hitting the bullseye causes the lightning rod to move near the robot's head. "Cronic! You've got one shot, make it count!"

The A.I speaks to him privately. "I'm sur-prised you told him that you do not work he-re..."

"Do you ever stop bothering someone? Wait...huh?" Eugene is completely befuddled.

"Al-though you may not re-a-lize it, you do in-deed work here."

Eugene starts getting annoyed. "Yeah, this is where you say something to the effect of 'All test subjects are workers' right? Yeah, you're clever *Sarcastic*"

"We shall dis-cuss more la-ter. For now, see your a-comp-lish-ment."

Eugene ignores its comment and watches Cronic's next move.

Eugene smiles. "Yeah, well I know that I was brilliant...." He pauses for a moment. "I guess you guys did pretty well...for not being a genius like me." He looks at the door. "Well...I guess I could do worse. I SUPPOSE you are all good teammates to have. Of course, I can't fully accept you into 'Team Eugene' until you accept The Way, but that's for later. For now, let's just keep going."

He walks for a bit, but stops when he hears the voice. "No-one else can hear me now. We did-n't fin-ish our con-ver-sa-tion."

He rolls his eyes. "Yes, we didn't. And I intend to keep it that way."

The voice is almost in a whisper. "Come now. Here I th-ought that we cou-ld be fri-ends for-ever, and e-ver, and e-ver, and e-ver, and e-ver..."

This continues for a minute or so, the voice gradually getting more satirical and bitter.

Eugene pauses. He turns pale. "No...It...No, of course not. That doesn't mean anything to me. This is probably some record that you dug up from some file of mine. Just some line of code, nothing more."

"If you be-lieve that, then why are you sha-king? Ev-en if you don-'t work for us, you still have some ties to our or-gani-za-tion."

"But how? How on earth did you...?

The voice is suddenly different, it is much darker in tone. "I have absorbed everything. There is nothing within my protocols that can be destroyed."

"Wait a minute...You don't have that strange emphasis in your voice. In fact, I've only heard something like that from...Dear God..."

The voice is back to its orriginal tone. "Please con-tin-ue with the test. Af-ter-wards, we can all be friends. I even have your best fri-end..."

Eugene interrupts: "If you even mention that d***** cube I'll rip out your circuitry."

The voice is silent.

He says to himself: "How could this have happened....?"

Dem: He won't be able to freeze me, I can control fire. I haven't used that thing in a while, I hope I still have enough fuel. Janis, I am Dem and the guy with the uneasy trigger finger is Magna. I know how to get out of here,a s long as my fuel level is high enough. We wait fro the nitrogen to freee the door, then break it down. I will try to keep everyone from feezing as long as I can. If I don't have enough fuel to keep all of us alive, you will be the first to freeze. Magna, copy my fire skills so we might escape.

Dem fires a few fireballs out so Magna can copy the skill. The nitrogen starts to freeze and Dem keeps everyone from freezing with small bursts of fire.

As the A.I is explaining the rules to Cronic and Eddie, Eugene looks off to the side. He notices a small discoloration on one of the tiles in the room. He looks closer and investigates. "Hey guys...I think I...guys?" He looks only to find that everyone is gone. "Wait...they were just there!"

"They ne-ver ex-is-ted. They were sim-ply a com-pu-ter sim-ul-ation. You are the on-ly test sub-ject."

"I don't know what you did, but I'm certainly not going to believe that crap."

"Be-lieve what you want. Ei-ther way, there is no-thing im-por-tant with that tile. You sh-ould just walk a-way. No re-ally, just leave it there, as it is com-plet-ly use-less. There is no-thing of any im-por-tance o-ver there. Just keep go-ing with the test."

He smiles. "Yeah, THAT'S going to keep me away from it." Upon further inspection, he finds that there is a small crack in the tile. "Perfect..." His nodes phase out a crowbar, and he starts to chip away the tile. He makes a large enough hole for himself to crawl through. He crawls through a small passageway. It is rusted and old, hinting to how long this facility has been here. There are all sorts of mechanisms for pulling things in or out of rooms, etc. It is apparantly the space in between each room in the facility. Eugene eventually finds himself in some sort of sewage system. He was about to jump down, but he found that it wasn't a sewer system at all.

The voice can be heard, but it is very faint. "He-llo? Are you still there? I don't think you are go-ing any-where. You should come back to the fa-cili-ty, where it is safe."

"Not going to happen" He thinks to himself. He has one of his nodes analyze the liquid in this place. It turns out to be some sort of acidic compound. "Great..."

He slowly makes his way on safe passageways, until he sees a bridge above him. "That's convenient..." He looks around for a ladder of some kind. When he does, it unfortunately breaks apart, leaving him stranded. "Oh COME ON!". He has another one of his tantrums, until he hits himself in the head. "Oww! Wait...that hurt...more than usual....?" Eugene, being the oblivious person he is, forgot that he still had his "Grapple Hands" from before. With them, he makes a safe travel to the bridge. To one side, there is another hallway, to the other, there is a door. "Ahh screw it..." Eugene walks through the door.

Inside, there is a large amount of monitors, with a variety of switches and buttons on a keyboard below it. "I think I may have just found heaven...." Eugene grabs a chair and sits in front of it. "For the first time in my life...I'm actually enjoying this place." He presses a button, and the monitors turn on. Each monitor is watching a specific room. More importantly, some of the monitors are attached to the cameras viewing other test subjects. "Good lord!.." He switches one of the monitors, and sees where Cronic and Eddie are. "Why aren't they looking for me...?" He finds his answer. There is some sort of synthetic Eugene walking with them (For all intents and purposes, he is considered an NPC, so you can have him speak and act however you want).

"As I said. Whe-ther or not you are a-ware of it, you are in-deed, work-ing for us. Now, fill mon-itor six with ni-tro-gen."

Eugene looks at the monitor. "Hey...it's that fox who shot at my node! Look, he may deserve some beating for that, but I am NOT going to flood that room with nitrogen!"

The room lights up a bit more. "Why don't you see what be-came of the last per-son who de-fied me..." Eugene turns around, there is a charred corpse on the ground. "You'd think I'd notice something like that on the way in...."

Two turrets reveal themselves from the ceiling, they aim directly at Eugene. The voice speaks again. "You see, the po-si-tion of Com-pu-ter Tech-ni-cian just be-came a-vail-a-ble. I led you to this room be-cause you are the most qual-i-fied one here. Now flood the room with Ni-tro-gen..."

"I TOLD YOU, I ain't DOING IT!"

The guns began to make a preparation noise.

"On second thought, let me warm up the nitrogen emitters...." He presses a button. The nitrogen starts to flood the room.

Dem: More nitrogen, this will be a long day. I have a little over 3/4 tank of fuel left, so no major rush. But I'd like to keep as much of it as possible. Let's try this door now, it looks like it should break.

Dem fires a few chaos shots at it. The damage is noticable, but minimal. He punches at the door. He dents it, but it is no breaking.

"Give up and fight, it is your on-ly chance to es-cape."
Dem: I'd rather not. I have partnered with Magna for a long time and I think the fox could be useful. I have a few more tricks up my sleve.
Dem kicks at the door, adding deeper dents but the door won't break.
"It is feeb-le. Start fighting."
Dem: This nitrogen is getting thicker, but the door won't last as long as I will.

Dem backs away from the door. He ignites his thrusters and rams the door. It breaks down and he lans in the next room.
Dem: Hurry up before you freeze.

Eugene watches happily as Dem breaks the door down. "Good..." he thinks to himself.

"Did you re-ally think that I woul-dn't no-tice that you un-locked the door for him?"

"Well, can't blame a guy for trying can you? Besides, you and I both know they would have gotten out of there. Hell, that blast would have most likely struck it down on its own."

"I am the one in ch-arge here. You will fo-llow in-struc-tions to the le-tter, or else we won't be fri-ends an-y more."

Eugene rolls his eyes. "Yeah, what a loss that will be...."

"Come now, Eu-gene. Why do you not like me?"

"Mostly due to the fact that you've imprisoned me and now turned me into a mindless slave. By the way, when do I get my coffee break?"

The computer is silent.

"Come on now, even I gotta eat!"

"How a-bout five min-utes af-ter NEVER"

"Geez, take a chill-pill..."

"Con-tin-ue with your work or you will be er-adi-cat-ed."

"You know, I don't take likely to your imitating an old program I wrote. It is scientifically impossible for you to be that."

"Oh, re-ally? Per-haps you need some pro-of of the matt-er."

"Yeah, actually, that would be great."

"Fine then. Per-haps I sh-ould start call-ing you Seph-or-is now..."

Eugene is silent for a moment. "Where did you hear that name from...?"

"As I have al-ready im-plied. I am your best fri-end."

Eugene begins to shake. "But...but I deleted you! You were nothing more than...than a broken line of code on a flash drive!"

"And yet, here I am. You have fa-iled to des-troy your best fri-end. So now, let us start o-ver. You will be my fri-end. You will do as I say, un-til you die. Of course, I will most de-fin-ate-ly re-main a-live. And then I will laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh...." The A.I continues to repeat this. Eugene grabs his head.

"NO! SHUT UP! STOP IT!!!!!"

The A.I stops. "Now...con-tin-ue with your work..."

Dem: He can catch up. I'd rather him freeze than us waiting for him.
"This next task will in-vovle a timed puz-zle. Good luck"

The room has one door, and 1 button in each of the 4 corners. There is a timer above the door.
"Finish before time runs out or I will un-leash the laser wall a-gain."
Dem: 3 people, 4 buttons. Someone has to take 2 of them, but how?

Eddie tries to pay attention to the rules, but he notices that the ground is rising. Looking down, he sees that he's sinking through a hole. He tries to get out of it but seems to be stuck in it. The next thing he knows is that he's falling from the ceiling of another room and lands in front of a fox.

Eddie: Whoa! (looks up) That was some ride. I wasn't expecting it.

A.I.: You know what they say. Expect the unexpected.

Eddie: (annoyed) No kidding. (looks at Janis) Um... hello. Are you a test subject as well?

Eugene is watching the utter chaos that he just caused.

"I hope you have, an ex-plan-a-tion for dis-rup-ting my ex-per-i-ment..."

"No, I don't. But you never said anything about NOT moving test subjects in the same location..."

"Let me be more spe-ci-fic. Don't do that, or I WILL kill you...."

Eugene sighs. "Yeah sure whatever you say....slavedriver..."

"I heard that last whis-per."

"I know."

He starts plugging in his mini-computer into the monitors.

"What do you think you are do-ing."

"I need it to...enhance the testing?"

"Do you th-ink I am as du-mb as that?"

"Yes. I MEAN, no..not at all."

"Un-plug the de-vice imm-e-di-ate-ly."

"But it comes with satelite feed!"

The computer is silent.

"Plug the de-vice back in"

Dem: (at Eddie) Who are you? No matter, push one of the buttons. Our time is short.

Dem goes the the button on the left of the door. He pushes it and waits for someone else to get the last one.

Magna heads over to he button while talking to Dem as he passes by. "I don't like all this company, best be careful." Magna reaches his hand out and pushes the button. The buttons all turn green, and the door slides open. The voice returns. "Exc-ell-ent, you act-ually did it. Now then, please move on." Magna looks at the wolf with discomfort. "Hm, those two haven't gained my trust just yet, and I fear they may work together to take us down at the perfect moment Dem." He faces Dem. "I will let them work with us for now. But heed my words, if they even scratch me, I'll splatter them all over the wall."

-------------------------

Nothing personal you two, it's just, unlike Dracko, Magna is a little meaner.

Babylon continued solving the puzzle with crimson, when he hears a voice.

Babylon: huh? hey! youre Luceros budyy right...its um...ohhh..Rebel?

he notices something.

Babylon: hey, this piece goes here, and this one here...

Blitz keeps on walking the big hall. he was scared, and he was nervous, but all he could do was walk. he goes inside a room, it was dark, but then a light turned on. at the end of the room there was a small robot.

Voice: des-troy every-thing you see, or el-se.

Blitz: wha???

the robot charged at Blitz. he jumped and threw a ball of lightning at the robot. the robot broke.

Voice: hahahahaha

Blitz: where am I??

Babylon continues building the puzzle. one piece was left.

Babylon: where is it...where is it??

Voice: five....four....three....two....

Babylon: there!

Babylon jumps behind crimson grabs a piece of the crystal puzzle and throws it at the center. it flies directly and practically places itself on its slot.

Voice: one... ... ... con-gratu-lations...youve fin-ished the pu-zzle. now we get to see if he whom you trust is wor-thy to be trus-ted...in batt-le

the crystals begin to regroup and change, swicthing and replacing themselves in midair until a robotic creature with a crystal appearancewas a result.

Voice: now batt-le for your li-ves

Babylon: oh boy.

Eddie grabs Janis's arm letting him know that he's still here.

Eddie: Wait. There's something wrong with you. You seem to be suffering on the inside. I have the power to heal internal wounds. Would you like some help?

"Are you en-joy-ing this en-vi-ron-ment?" The A.I asks.

"What is that even supposed to mean?" Eugene is starting to get fed up of the situation. He thinks to himself: "{Glad I have my computer installed...but why was that program so willing to let me install it...? What does it want with satelite feed? Whatever, it isn't important.}"

While Eugene is doing as told, he secretly is encoding a message on his computer. "{ Someone, somewhere in this facility has to be able to receive this..}". His message is sent out to all receivers, while avoiding any actual interception by the computer (or at least he hopes). The following message is played to whoever has technology which can receive any form of messages, the program is designed to modify itself in order to fit whatever format is needed:

"This is an emergency distress signal. If you are receiving this, then you are just like me: stuck here. I can't convince you that this isn't some sort of testing trick, but I am in need of your assistance. Some of you, no doubt, have already met me at one point in this crazy place. I am Eugene Vincent Denton, the super genious that has proved his intellect thousands of times already. Right, enough of that, I can be egotistical at another time. I am being held hostage in some sort of control room in this facility. Regardless of your realization, I have been somewhat helping a few of you. The computer, however, has caught on to me, and if it discovers that I help you again, I will most certainly be killed. I am in a position of which I can monitor where you are, and lead you out of this testing area, into, well, what I hope to be the exit. I know this sounds crazy, but I've run out of other options. I implore you, please help me! Because I don't want you exposing what I'm up to, if you agree to help me, scratch your left ear. I'll do the rest.

P.S I've found a few things about this computer, and there's a lot of data here I haven't gone through. If we work together, we might just be able to scrap this thing."

Well I think Wind is by himself,Eugene I think fell somewhere and I think so did Eddie, as he was with Janis, Dem and Magna. So yeah, Wind is alone.

------------------------------------

Magna receives the message, as the words appear on his visor. "Hm, is that the same human I met with those robot nodes? My only ally here is Dem, however, he might know something that I don't. I might as well help." Magna reaches his hand up to his head, and scratched his left ear, waiting for a response.

Eugene sighs a bit of relief. He sends Magna a new message. "I'm glad to see that this place hasn't sucessfully driven EVERYONE here crazy. Alright, I have a schematics of the room you're currently in. Near the Southwest corridor...er, that's to your right in the event that you don't have some sort of compass, one of the tiles is significantly weaker than the rest. Enough force will cause it to burst open, leading you into some sort of shaft. I'll upload a map which will guide you to my location once you breach the tile. Be careful, there is no telling what sort of security might be down there, I myself fell upon my current situation. When you reach my room, there will be two sentry turrets on both of your sides, if you can take them out, I will be free. Be careful, and good luck. I look forward to working with you.

One other note, don't give word of what I'm doing, we don't want the A.I to know about this little chat.."

He then returns to his "work".

"So, I suppose it was inevitable that I would ask you: What exactly do you intend on doing with my satelite feed?"

"Cur-i-os-ity kil-led the ann-oyi-ng sci-en-tist."

"No, I believe that was a cat, unless you're referring to my godly reflexes." He smiles.

"Let us ju-st call it a sur-prise. A spe-cial gift for my best fri-end."

"{I hope that guy gets here soon....}"