Disclaimer: All characters that are not of my creating belong to Sega, Microsoft, or the people who own Dragon Ball Z

Chapter 5: Return of Two Heroes

Sonic and Tails zipped from the slide to enter Knothole, with grim looks.  As they slowed, they saw more unhopeful faces all around.  Some were hurrying to shelters, others preparing what weapons they could find.

"Uh oh," said Sonic.

" 'Uh oh' is right," said a voice from behind.

The duo turned to look and find Rotor readying a large, bazooka-like gun.

"Yo, Rotor, what's up around here?  It's like the entire village is preparing for battle!"

"If you had said 'war', Sonic, you would have been closer to the truth."

Tails spoke up, "OK, so what's going on anyway?"

Rotor sighed, "About two days ago, some of our outlying colonies were overrun by some unknown army, which seems to be bent on world domination.  Now, it's heading this way."

"Wow, that's bad," said Tails.

"REALLY bad," said Sonic.

"There's more too it, though," Rotor said, "We've also lost contact with the Floating Island, and there's some sort of interference keeping us from monitoring Robotropolis."

"Could the army be under Robotnik's control, and the interference could be deliberate?" asked Tails.

"Possibly, but it's highly unlikely, since the interference seems to be coming from somewhere in high orbit around Mobius," he glanced at the pair, "So, what's happened while you were gone, and where's Chris and Justin?"

"They…" Tails couldn't finish.

Sonic continued for him, "They were caught in an explosion.  We assume they died…"

Rotor nearly dropped his gun.  "What? How?"  So Sonic and Tails told Rotor everything that had happened, from when they met Knuckles to when the airship exploded.  By the time they were finished, Rotor's eyes were round.

"Even… even though we only just met them… they still seem like I've know them for a long time…" Then Rotor got a hold of himself, "Well, we still have this war to fight, and we'll just have to do our best." He then lifted the gun onto his shoulder and walked off to the Town Center.

* * * * *

2:00 A.M., the next day…

Sonic was awakened by the sound of an alarm, and a red light flashing through his window.  Then he remembered their conversation with Rotor the previous day, and quickly jumped out of bed and put his shoes on.  Tails was up a second after Sonic.  They both rushed outside, groggy but ready.  What they saw stunned them.

A seemingly huge group of dark figures were marching over the hill to the east, accompanied by periodic laser fire.

"The army… it's here!" said Tails.

Sonic looked grim, facing the figures, "Sure looks like it.  Lets just hope we can stop em'."  At that instant, the hedgehog bolted through the town and across the field, and immediately began attacking the mysterious army.  As he looked up, he noticed that the 'army' was only about 70 strong.  "More like a battalion, but I still don't know if we can stop them…" he thought to himself.

Tails was rushing up too, followed by Rotor, and they also noticed the small number of troops.  "Well, it looks better than it did before, but they have a lot better guns that we do," Tails remarked.

Rotor brought up his gun.  "Don't speak too soon Tails," he said as he aimed the huge bazooka.  He pulled the trigger, and a huge, flaming projectile launched itself from the barrel, streaking through the air, and landing with an inhumanly loud explosion.

Sonic turned to look, on reflex, at the loud noise.  Seeing an opening, a troop kicked the blue blur in the side, and proceeded to blast him with his rifle, but was caught off guard by Sonic's quick recovery.  After dealing with the offending obstacle appropriately, Sonic then turned his attention to several small, black ships approaching.  "Aww, man! There's more of these guys?" he thought as he started to jump to attack, but was then thrown back down, and looked straight into the barrel of a gun…

Tails and Rotor were having their own problems.  Surrounded, and without and help in sight, it looked grim.

"Ok, walrus, turn off the gun and toss it over here…" said one of the troops.

Just then, Rotor had an idea.  While folding up the gun, he secretly pushed a button, and then tossed it to the enemy soldiers.  One of them picked it up, and heard a beeping sound.

"Hey, whattya suppose this is?" the soldier said, pointing to a blinking, red dot.  He looked over to demand an answer from Rotor, but saw them on the ground, hands on their heads.  "Oh s-" he never finished, as the gun exploded in his hand and shrapnel flew everywhere.

Tails looked at Rotor, with a smirk on his face, "Good thing that gun had a self-destruct system on it," he said.

"Yeah, but I think we just ran out of luck," Tails turned to see the village overtaken.  People being taken out of their homes with their hand in the air, others under guard, and the princess was being 'escorted' from the front lines.  Some troops spotted the pair on the ground, and swiftly came over to take them.

"Well, looks like it's the end of the line, ol' buddy," Tails said to Rotor as they were both taken to a larger ship that had landed, presumably to be imprisoned.  As they approached the ship, a tall, cyborg echidna stepped out of the ship, and surveyed the battlefield.

"Pity, I had hoped that this battle would bring more of a challenge to the Dark Legion," he looked at Rotor, "But it seems your wimpy little village wasn't prepared."  Rotor spit at him, and the cyborg lifted his elbow, and brought it down squarely on Rotor's head, knocking him unconscious.

"I should have known, the Dark Legion was behind this!" Tails thought, as he was lead into the ship.

* * * * *

In the shadowy forest to the north of the village, two silhouetted figures hid behind some overgrowth, looking at the civilians being taken to the ship.

One had a look of anger and hatred on his face, "ARG!  Those good-for-nothing echidnas have taken Knothole!  I just want to go in there and blast them all to bits!"  He took a step.

The second one stopped him, "Calm yourself.  You will in time, but not before we strike from afar…" He then put his two hands to his side, palms toward each other, and powered up a red ball of energy…

* * * * *

While being escorted onto the ship, Sonic swore he could faintly hear someone yelling, "HA!!!"  A split-second later, a huge, red beam flew out of the forest, impacted the ground right near some smaller ships, and destroyed everything within 20 feet of the area.  Next, a hail of bullets rained down from the same spot.  Sonic wasted no time taking advantage of the situation by K.O.-ing a nearby guard with a strong punch to the head, and racing to free the others. Since most of the guards had rushed to take cover, it was an easy task to undo the handcuffs on the Knothole resident's wrists.

"Look!  Over there!" Tails said as Sonic freed him.  Sonic turned to look, and saw a figure sprinting to a group of guards firing at him.  The
Dark Legion troops lasers seemed to go around the speeding figure, curving away as they came within a few feet of him.  Another one, seemingly with a large gun on his shoulder, shot a few large shots at the large command ship's engine, seemingly to stop it from moving.  Then, the humanoid proceeded to lower his gun, and blast any guard in his way, while dodging any laser that came near him.  "Who… who are they?" the fox said.

Sonic grinned, "I think it's pretty obvious who they are.  Who else can turn away lasers with sheer willpower, or uses antique guns?"

The speeding figure came closer, revealing a familiar face.  Chris rushed through the troops shooting at him, then stopped, turned, and thrust his hand forward, releasing a sky-blue energy blast that wiped them out.  Justin was running towards the hedgehog.  A legionnaire hopped into a ship, lifted off, and pulled a trigger, releasing two, small heat-seeking missiles at Justin.  Justin saw this act, and to compromise, he lit and dropped a flare grenade that re-targeted the missiles.  Then he hefted the large gun on his shoulder again and fired a missile of his own.  In a huge explosion, the ship was destroyed, along with any traces of its occupant.

By the time Sonic and the rest had finished freeing all the captured civilians, the Dark Legion detachment had been reduced to only 15.  The rest had been bound and gagged or 'exterminated.'  Now, everyone was surrounding them.  Seeing the devastation brought on by the two individuals, they dropped their guns and held their hands up.  After they had been taken to the prison, Sonic and Tails rushed to meet their reincarnated friend.

Tails, smiling, said, "I think that an explanation is in order."

"Yeah, I think that you should, Chris," said Justin.

"Ok, then," he cleared his throat, as if he was preparing a speech, "It was a few years ago, but I think I remember.  After you had gotten off the ship, we ran for the engine room, and planted the bomb, but our escape was cut off as we tried to make our way out.  The only way was back into the room, unfortunately.  We had taken cover behind some metal crates that provided some relief, but time was running out, and they kept coming."

Justin continued for him, "There was just under 10 seconds left, when Chris here teleported us to our world, and to safety.  Unfortunately, he had intended to take us back to the spot where you guys landed.

"Hey, teleporting was a new concept to me back then.  But now…" he concentrated, and disappeared, reappearing about 10 feet away, then coming back, "it's easy."  He then looked as if he remembered something.  "I almost forgot, we also configured our inter-dimensional transported to go to several other worlds, like the Mechwarrior world, and the Dragon Ball Z dimension.  It's really amazing.  From every dimension, any idea someone thinks up is born into reality, and becomes another universe!  It's how we got to the Dragon Ball Z universe."

"Wow… I bet Rotor would like to find out about that.  But what's 'Dragon Ball Z'?"

"It's basically our universe, with Earth, but it takes place in the future, although it isn't our future.  In that dimension, a Sayjin warrior called Goku came to Earth to destroy it, but he was bumped on the head as a kid and forgot his real mission.  Anyone can use ki," he held his palm out, and created a sky-blue energy ball, "but only a few are extremely skilled, and Sayjins can use it with deadly results.  That's where I learned that big, red beam, Kamehameha, and other moves like Destructo Disc and Spirit Bomb.

Sonic looked puzzled, "You said, 'A few years ago," but it's only been a few days!"

"True, but in our universe, time moves faster, therefore, Justin and I are older.  We were 13 then, but now were 15," replied Chris.

"Well then, why don't we go the Town Center and have a round of sodas to celebrate the battle and the return of two heroes!" said Sonic.

Justin grinned, "Naw, we aren't heroes, we were just doing what we do best; saving someone's butt from sure destruction."

Suddenly, a metallic voice came from behind, "Don't party just yet, mortals…" The quad turned to see the commander of the Dark Legion strike force.  Justin, being the quick-witted person he is, drew his trusty P-10 rifle and emptied the clip on the cyborg, but the bullets just bounced off of his metal plating.  "Ha!  Those outdated guns won't do a thing to my nanotechnology-created plates.  You and this village will be destroyed!"  His wrist opened up revealing twin laser cannons.  No sooner then they were deployed, they spat fire into the night.  Chris teleported himself and Justin to the temporary safety of a nearby bunker while Sonic grabbed Tails and rushed by all of the houses, hoping to lose the echidna.  After dropping Tails off at their hut, he ran at full speed towards the offending figure, but even his speed and the force of the blow didn't put a dent in his armor.  The cyborg quickly belted Sonic in the stomach, and picked him up by the neck.

"Pitiful fool," he muttered as he smirked, and threw the hedgehog at least 15 feet into the roof of the nearest hut.  Sonic was smashed through the roof and he landed on the floor, half-conscious, but awake, as he sped out to attack again.  He stopped to see Chris facing the echidna, fists clenched and teeth set.

"Stop.  I'll handle him.  You go warn the villagers and prepare some reinforcements."

Sonic protested, "But…"

"Do it!  Justin'll follow," he paused, "Go…"

Sonic, unnaturally, obeyed, rushing for Tails, and shot towards the Town Center, Justin behind him.

Chris turned his head from the blue blur, to face his adversary.  "So, it's just you and me, one-on-one."

The cyborg looked semi-surprised; "Do you really think you can beat me?  You saw your fast friend there get blown away, and he is supposed to be one of the strongest fighters on Mobius!  How can an overlander such as you hope to stand up to one such as myself?" he smiled.

"I'll have you know I'm no ordinary 'overlander,' and I don't come from this universe.  And by the way, I'm human, not an overlander."  He clenched his fists even harder, "Go ahead, make the first move."

The echidna brought up his wrist with lightning speed and started shooting at Chris, but the human seemed to teleport behind him, and started a vast array of punches, chops, and kicks, using his Tae-Kwon-Doe techniques to his full advantage.  He then brought back his fist, and shoved it straight at the metal chestplate, cracking it and sending him flying backwards.

"Wha…?  How is this possible?" the Legionnaire said as he recovered.  "This armor is made up of the strongest material in the universe!!!  And you cracked it?!?  You will pay for this, upstart!!" He lunged for Chris, but landed only on ground, looking around for where the overlander had gotten.

"Up here, mister 'I'm so tough and can beat anyone.'"  Chris was hovering in the sky, sky-blue energy ripples surrounding him.  The echidna smiled evilly, and his metal boots lit up with flame as rockets carried him up to the altitude Chris was at.

"I've only been toying with you, human, but now the real battle begins," He seemed to teleport right in front of Chris, and brought up his other wrist, mounted with a larger cannon.  It spat green flame and a laser landed squarely on Chris's chest.  Chris's body flew backwards, limply falling to the ground from at least 30 feet, and landed with a sickening 'thump' as he lay still.