An Author's Note:

Alright, for those of you who don't know, this story is based off of a Sonic the Hedgehog-themed RPG. I thought that the plot was interesting and clear enough to be written as a story, so I've taken it apon myself to do just that (since Reverse Psychology won't be done anytime soon, I need something to take up time.) This story takes place in a Sonic storyline where Sonic and Tails haven't met yet. In fact, the only canon characters that know each other are Sonic and Eggman. Oh, and Tails is a girl. Just thought that you should know. ^^

Here are the other people's OCs. They don't belong to me. And Sonic and Eggman don't belong to me either, of course.

Bolt the Wolf's OCs: Marl the Fox, Ren Swanson the Cat, Bolt the Wolf, Freak the Weasel

DarkCloud 780's OCs: Riku the Hedgehog, Miles Prower (sort of, since she's a girl with a new personality)

Omega 445's OCs: Kyle the Kitsune

More authors' OCs will be added and credited in later chapters.

Also, if your OC was not included in this part of the plot, and they WERE part of the plot in the forum, don't worry; they ARE in the story. Just not now.

The Emerald Ocean's waves grew and shrank lazily against the sandy beaches. Sea foam frothed from the larger waves a few meters off of the coast, the perfect size and shape for surfing. The verdant closure of the Viridor Forest was not far from the sand, barely divided by the few feet of soft grass. The forest itself was always several degrees cooler than the shore, filled with the smell of bark and leaves, covered with moist moss from the constant rainfall that the Nektropolitan Peninsula offered. Marl the Fox reclined in the shade, laying in his hammock stretched between two trees. It was difficult to see his outline, since his gray fur and earthtoned cape camouflaged him so well. That was probably why Sonic ran into him.

The hammock flipped over, dumping Marl onto the ground. He angrily pulled out a trip cord, hurling it at Sonic's ankles, where it fastened, tripping him. Sonic had been running so fast the the speed of his fall dug a trench into the forest floor, scraping away a layer of fallen leaves.

"Woah, sorry dude. It was an accident." Sonic said, snapping the cord off of his feet and standing up, brushing dirt off of himself as he did so.

"I was sleeping, you idiot. Don't you know how obnoxious it is to hurl someone onto the ground while they're sleeping?" Marl said, his sharp canines flashing. "Who the hell do you think you are?" he demanded.

"Sonic the Hedgehog. Maybe you've heard of me?"

"No."

"Oh." he said, his cockiness knocked down a tick. "Well, who are you?"

"Marl." he answered.

"Marl...the what?"

"Just Marl."

"No last name? Not even 'The Fox?'"

"No." Marl said, clinging to his final thread of patience. But he soon became distracted as he heard something thrash through the woods, carelessly knocking aside brush and shrub as it ran. Probably a tourist, overexcited at seeing the beach, littering a truckload of trash as he skips over here. Marl thought cynically. Most people never really appreciated the forest like he did. But....the thrashing noises sounded more frantic than anything else.

"Shut up, I hear something." he ordered Sonic, who crossed his arms in annoyance. Marl pulled out his bow and cocked an arrow towards the noise, deep in the forest.

Eventually, the bushes parted. A white Hedgehog with gray streaks ran out, wearing a white sleeveless jacket with no shirt under it, and black pants with no shoes. Some sort of strange black tattoo covered his right arm, which also carried a lethal looking sword. He was bleeding through various shallow cuts.

Marl shot the arrow into a nearby tree, stopping the Hedgehog in his tracks, and quickly whipping out another arrow.

"What happened?" Marl asked simply.

Sonic rolled his eyes. "'Cuz that's the most polite way to greet somebody--"

"I said shut up." Marl interrupted.

"We don't have time for this!" the white Hedgehog shouted, glancing back over his shoulder. "If you heard me coming, then you've gotta be able to hear what's following me!"

The roar of several engines swelled loudly enough for all of them to hear it.

"Are there other people here?" the white Hedgehog asked.

"Yes, and--" Marl began.

"We need to get them the hell out of here!" the Hedgehog shouted again.

A swarm of bipedal robots shot out of the forest, their jet exhaust burning the moss that layered the ground, creating a horrible smell. Their arms collapsed in on themselves like telescopes, rotated, then extended again, forming rapid-fire guns. They rained bullets onto the three Animals, who dodged the firepower. As a result, several trees were shot. One tree was peppered with so many bullets that the entire trunk fell over, bleeding sap.

The white Hedgehog quickly sprang up and decapitated one of them with his sword. Marl shot an explosive arrow into another one, popping it nearly inside-out like a metal balloon. Sonic roundhouse kicked a robot in the chest, knocking the engine out of it's back.

"See what I mean?" The white Hedgehog asked. "C'mon!"

Rumbles from more robots came, accompanied by more bullets.

The black Weasel watched the scene intently from his hiding spot, furiously scribbling everything he saw into a notebook. Hmm. Interesting. That gray Fox could use a good lobotomy...no, I'll save that for the blue one. Note: find meaning for the white Hedgie's tattoo, may be useful later. He quietly shut the notebook and adjusted his hiding spot a few feet closer to the shore to observe the beachgoers.

The entire region of Nekrapolis was notorious for being green-themed, meaning that many of the natural flora and fauna were various shades of green. The constant rainfall kept the forests moist and fertile, along with the daily fog that blanketed it in thick gray vapor, maintaining a cool, wet atmosphere. Emerald Beach was named such because of the curious green seashells found there, naturally lacquered in viridian mother-of-pearl sheen, and valued as souvenirs by travelers.

The beach was just as peaceful as the forest had been, before the robots attacked. The weather was supposed to stay dry and very warm for the rest of the week, attracting visitors. Bolt the Wolf, one such visitor, looked for all the world like a clump of matching jade seaweed with his neon green fur, as he lay on his back in the water. His friend (hopefully to him, his soon-to-be girlfriend), Ren Swanson, was building an elaborate sandcastle. Being a Cat, she didn't want to be in the water. She herself looked like a sand sculpture with her tan fur.

A short ways down the beach, a two-tailed female Fox of the orange-furred, blue-eyed stock reclined on a beach towel, soaking up as much of the sun as possible. A paperback book was limply held in her left hand, which she had long since stopped reading in favor of simply relaxing. She planned on chatting with the Animals down the beach; the tan Cat seemed friendly.

Not far off shore, another Fox rushed by on his surfboard. Ren looked up from her castle, which she had adorned with chunks of malachite shells, staring at the unusual surfboard, which seemed to be jet-propelled. An uncommonly large wave came and knocked the teenage Fox off of his board. The same wave swept up and dissolved Ren's sand castle, toppling her spires and ramparts into the soft silt.

"Darn,"she said. She looked up again as Bolt yelled out a swear word, apparently having been struck by the still active surfboard. The Fox apologized to him as they both swam back to shore.

"It's okay, really. I'm fine." Bolt assured the Fox, as he held his clawed hand up against a growing bump on his skull.

"You sure? You looked like you got hit pretty badly," the Fox said worriedly.

"Don't worry, he's got a pretty hard head. He's been hit with worse things." Ren said. "I'm Ren, by the way." she added for the Fox's benefit, trying to be friendly.

"I'm Bolt," Bolt said, shaking himself to dry off and putting his armored vest back on. Ren grumbled in annoyance as she was sprinkled with water.

"I'm Kyle," he said. He looked to be about sixteen or seventeen, with silver fur, built slightly muscularly, and had three tails. "I was actually looking for someone who might have lost this. It looked really expensive, so I thought that I should return it." He pulled out a bright green gem from his black jacket pocket, creating a shower of refracted light along the ground. "I thought that it was another seashell at first, but it was making all these neat little green dots all around it, so I figured that it must be something shinier."

"Wow. That's definitely not ours. We don't have anything cool like that," Ren said.

"Speaking of cool things, turn around," Bolt said. Ren turned around like he'd suggested. Out from the cover of trees ran Marl, their friend, followed by a blue Hedgehog who looked like he was having fun, and a white Hedgehog who frequently glanced behind him. And following them, was a huge flood of robots, led by some sort of fat human in red and yellow with a giant ginger mustache, floating around in a metal pod.

"Torch the lot of them! That's an order!" the human yelled.

Riku, the white Hedgehog, ran out of the forest as quickly as he could to alert everyone on the beach of the coming robots. However, the robots were chasing them at such a short distance away, that an explanation as to what they were running from was going to be completely pointless.

Riku turned around and stabbed his sword into the crease between a robot's metal plates, twisting it as he did so and snapping apart the mechanizations inside. Sonic jumped up and somersaulted in a forward flip, his heel striking down onto a robot's cranium, collapsing it like a top hat. Marl shot one particularly sharp arrow through a robot, but the arrow continued moving, piercing through several more robots until it hit a final one, which exploded.

The first wave of robots had been destroyed, but Eggman was quickly calling for reinforcements. Marl ran over to Bolt, Ren, and Kyle as fast as one could run through soft beach sand.

"I don't think I need to state the obvious in saying 'We're under fire,' so I won't. Are we planning on staying to fight, or fleeing?" Marl asked.

"We're fighting, of course. Did you really just ask me that?" Bolt said enthusiastically, and as a result, everyone's fur stood up on end as Bolt wound up his electric abilities, thus aptly naming him Bolt.

"Yes, we're staying. The less robots in the area, the better." Ren agreed, her violet eyes flashing in the sun. Her ability to control air currents would be most useful here.

"What about you?" Marl asked Kyle, who had been lost in thought up until now.

"....Do you think you could lure them into the forest?" Kyle asked. "'Cuz I have something there that can take out a whole bunch of them at once. But it's gotta be in the forest."

"We'll go there if we have to," Marl said impatiently as a new wave of robots pullulated from the tree cover. Kyle disappeared through the foliage of the forest as he ducked around the robots, heading towards whatever secret weapon existed there.

A robot was instantly thrown into a tree by a strong gust of wind, the mass of moving air strong enough to blow out a trough of sand. Ren didn't let the wind abate, holding the robot against the trunk as Bolt fired an arc of blinding electricity at it. The robot's wires burst, destroying it. Riku decapitated several surrounding robots at once by swinging his sword in a circle, sending their heads flying like startled pigeons. Marl pulled out a dagger and hurled it at a robot, the blade sticking through it's optical sensor and stabbing into the self-destruct command. The robot exploded, throwing Marl's dagger into the back of another robot, deactivating it also.

Before long, the second wave of robots was destroyed, their metallic carcasses flaming and smoking on the ground. Eggman shouted something angry and unintelligible before steering his flying pod back into the forest.

"Dang, you guys know what your doin'" Sonic said as he ran up to them. "I'm Sonic, by the way." he added.

"I'm Bolt," he said, "and this is Ren Swanson the Cat, and I guess you already know Marl."

"Yeah, we've met," Sonic said, smirking.

The orange female Fox ran over to them, limping slightly, still holding her paperback book.

"Are you guys okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, are you?" Sonic asked, concerned. "You look like you got hurt."

"Huh? Oh, it's nothing. I just hurt my ankle as I kicked a robot over there," she said, jabbing a gloved thumb over towards her beach towel, which was surrounded by heaps of scrap metal that were recently robots.

"Cool." Sonic said. "What's your name?"

"Miles." she said, taking off her sunglasses.

Bolt stiffened slightly, glancing in several directions quickly, as if looking for something.

"Bolt, knock it off before you give yourself whiplash." Marl said. "What are you looking for?"

"Nobody else felt that?" Bolt asked.

"I didn't feel anything." Ren said.

"Me neither," Miles added.

"My fur just prickled a bit, like when you rub a balloon on it, and it gets all staticky," Bolt explained. "Something's going on in the forest."

"It's probably Kyle's weapon, remember?" Ren said. "I'm kinda curious as to what it is. Should we go check it out?"

"Heck yes!" Bolt cried, already running towards the fringe of trees.

"Bolt, you have to wait for us!" Ren yelled after him. Marl sighed in irritation and followed them.

"Wanna check it out?" Sonic asked Miles. She thought about it for a second, but then dropped her book onto the sand.

"Yeah, let's go."