Something New

[Chadin]

[posting as Mammoth under this account because I'm feeling lazy]

"As you wish, my dear." Mogul nodded in consent.

Mogul's large finger flicked on the intercom between their compartment and the front seat. "Be so kind as to drop Miss Zyra off near the museum, then take me back to the estate, would you?"

"Yes, Sir." The driver replied.

"I'll inform my agent on the ground to be expecting you. His name is Sleuth Doggie Dog. He should have no difficulty picking you out from the crowd once you're inside the museum."

Before long, Zyra would find herself dropped off a discret distance away from the museum, but close enough that Zyra could easily make out the prominent building about block away.

After depositing Zyra, Mogul rubbed his chin and contemplated recent revelations. If the Inter-dimensional Highway, and the Zone Cop's by extension were as extensively damaged by the merge as Zyra's information implied, it bode very ill indeed for this fragile world he found himself residing in.

Worse still, Zyra hinted at something called Sol Emeralds. Something otherwise foreign to him. If he was extrapolating Zyra's allusion correctly, then these Sol Emeralds might in fact be something akin to Chaos Emeralds. Something from an alternate zone perhaps? It seemed unlikely to him. He knew from experience that the Chaos Emeralds were an almost universal constant across the zones. But, upon reflection, the inhabitants of any given zone most likely had different names for the same thing. Perhaps even, the Sol Emeralds were a polar opposite to the Chaos Emeralds. Mogul may not be a brilliant scientist, but considering he'd lived through all the scientific breakthroughs since the invention of the wheel, he was certainly no stranger to the theory of equal and opposite forces. Applying that theory to the Chaos Emeralds, whether they be a positive or negative force in the universe, by that law, there would logically be it's equal and opposite. Further to that, if these Sol Emeralds truly were the equal and opposite of the Chaos Emeralds, a clash involving their use could easily be enough to explain the titanic amount of energy needed to collapse the very fabric of time and space.

That thought alone sent a shiver down Mogul's spine. With such power at his command, Mogul could LITERALLY achieve achieve anything. But at what cost? Not for the first time in his considerable lifetime, Mogul contemplated the magnitude of the forces at play. With such power, limitless possibilities lay before him. And yet... It would be so easy for some unforeseen event to catapult the very fabric of reality into oblivion. Already Mogul, no the entire cosmos has seen the consequences of such potential power. Were the limitless power truly worth the risk?

Bah, such thoughts could wait until after he had retrieved the various emerald shards and prevented their on-coming apocalypse. That would mean snatching the remaining emerald shards from that bloated fool Robotnik. It would also mean potentially coming to blows with the Freedom Fighters; and quite possibly Sonic and Tails if they even exist in this reality. Robotnik, Mogul estimated could be dealt with in short order. But Sonic and Tails... those two repeatedly had thwarted his every effort to conquer Mobius. If they do exist here, then their confrontation would be all but inevitable...

With the stakes so high, could he really afford their interference at the critical moment?

This would require more thought.

[Tails]

Slightly put off by the excited man before him, Tails quickly recovered and raised his hand in greeting.

"Hello Mr. Dulland, you would be correct. We have come to see the gems, but if it's all the same to you could we please try and keep the media back for a little bit? This is our first real visit to the city in a long time and we would really appreciate it if we weren't harassed while sightseeing."

Deciding to leave his real motives hidden, Tails turned to look at the exhibit in question. After examining the case for a moment, he turned back to Mr. Dulland and decided to field the curator a question.

"When did the museum come into possession of these artifacts?"

[Zyra Zteller]

Zyra exited the vehicle, then waited about 5 minutes for Mammoth to drive off, to help further disassociate herself from him, at least while she was in the field. Best to try and act like a normal...ish displaced person. She began walking toward the museum, thinking to herself what the best way to go about this task would be, before scrapping the budding ideas due to the lack of information.

As she made her way to the museum, she lowered her visor, and turned it on once more, attempting to get a reading on the Zone Cop HQ, or some kind of stability reading on this mixed up world, but as last time, she couldn't get anything. The database link was still down, and the energy fluctuations scrambled the computer too much.

As she rounded the corner to the building's front entrance, however, she stopped and stared at the characters assembled there. It was either a stroke of grand luck, or the shortest jailbreak she'd ever heard of. She took a few more steps toward them, trying to gauge their reaction to her, mostly hoping one of them would recognize her uniform over her face, especially after Mogul said it was unlikely anyone in this world knew of the Zone Cops.

"Excuse me, Sonic and Tails?"

[You were all in front of the building still, right? No one said anything about going inside yet, so I'm going off that information. If you aren't, then I'll edit this to fix that mistake.]

[Mammoth Mogul]

[For now, feel free to skip over Mogul. His major role in things won't kick off again until the heist so feel free to play amongst yourselves]

[Tails]

(I will wait until tomorrow evening for someone to reply before I do. Sonic and Stormer have not posted much in the last few weeks.)

[Tails]

Further questioning of the curator was put off by the arrival of a new individual, one who clearly recognized Sonic and himself. Turning to face the new arrival, Tails was shocked to see the uniform of a Zone Cop. Several hypothesis had crossed his mind as more details had become available. One of them was that with the scattering of time and space the Cosmic Interstate should have been in shambles, but the presence of a Zone Cop meant one of two things. Either the Cosmic Interstate was intact or this Zone Cop was here before the collapse, either way, this was a good sign.

Running up to meet her, Tails quickly realized that she was more than twice his size and balked. Being a kit meant that Tails had the unfortunate position of being smaller than most, but it still got annoying to constantly be looking up at folks.

"Thank the Emeralds, finally a person who may be able to explain what is on Mobius is going on here! I have so many questions. How did you get here? Is the Cosmic Interstate okay? Did any of the other Zone Cops come with you? Do you know how to fix this? Can this be fixed?"

Tails looked up expectantly at the Zone Cop getting rather excited at the prospect of the whole thing being handled without hassle.

[Zyra Zteller]

Zyra took a step back as the iconic fox ran up to her. She put her hands up in a warding gesture, before taking a deep breath to begin explaining.

"Whoa, relax, relax. I'll answer what questions I can, but I don't know how much you'll like my answers. The first few can be answered all at once. I was on the Cosmic Interstate when the burst of energy that caused this mis-mash world to come into being shattered it, and I was alone. So no way back, and I'm the only one here. As for fixing it, it will require the collection and careful reassembly of all the Emeralds involved, Chaos, Sol, and Master. That's why I came here, I was hoping to inspect and collect the jewels that were put on display, should they prove to fall into any of the three categories." She exhaled, glad to be rid of the information. "By the way, my name is Zily. I don't suppose either of you have any more knowledge to contribute to the situation?"

[Mammoth Mogul]

The curator seemed to visibly pale as Zily spoke of possible confiscation of his museum's newest attraction. "Puh... heheheh... surely you must be mistaken... Surely someone would have realized we were in possession of such emeralds by now. A-and even if there are one or two, surely you needn't take them immediately? After all, this exhibit only just opened. This could ruin our new attraction!"

[Tails]

"Unfortunately, I don't know any more than you do. I just happened to spot Sonic here when I was flying by." Looking to his left and right, Tails immediately noticed that said blue hedgehog was not in his immediate area, along with the human who had approached them not too long ago.

"Hmm, odd. He was here a second ago. Sometimes I think he might explode if forced to sit still for five minutes. Anyway, I was gonna go and take a look at those gems, wanna lend me a hand?"

[Zyra Zteller]

She turned to the curator, and shrugged. "I'm sorry, but the sooner we find out the truth, and remove any possible shards, the better. You wouldn't want someone like Robotnik to catch wind of this, and invade your little museum, would you? You wouldn't have any exhibits left after that."

She turned and looked down at the fox child, and nodded. "Yeah, let's head in, and learn what we can."