Author Notes – Well…here it is. After being a fan of the show for ten years, here is my very first Sonic the Hedgehog SatAM story.

A few things that' cha need to know before going into this – this story follows the writer Ben Hurst's vision of Season III, Ixis Naugus taking over Robotropolis and enslaving Robotnik while Snively is left with little choice but to defect to The Knothole Freedom Fighters. As for how THAT will turn out, well…wait n' see.

I'd just like to thank the fan community for all the support and advice they've given me while writing this – particularly Thony Hedgehog from the Saturday Morning Sonic website thanks to whom this fic has a title.

Also all characters are the property of DIC and Sega of America…except, of course, for Zero.

Now that all of that's out of the way…I hope you enjoy this.

Mutant Body, Mobian Heart

Prologue

Past and Present

Then – Ten Years Ago, At An Uncertain Date Roughly One Year After The Coup

In the beginning there is darkness…nothing more, nothing less.

Such is natural in the world that comes before conception of a conscious being…a world that is the negative to our own and in which nothing can be thought or felt for there is nothing to be thought of or two feel or, more basically, nothing TO think or feel anything.

There is just sheer nothingness…a formless void which, depending on certain circumstances, may or may not one day become filled.

In the case of which I am about to expound…it DOES.

The darkness is pierced by a light that fills the emptiness and gives the void basic form…this light is that of a newly created life.

A new life which is nurtured as the union of sperm and ovum brings it to the point where its basic form begins to grow and develop – as it floats in the wet and sticky fluid which shall sustain it until it is ready for leave this place of warmth and safety, its consciousness too begins to grow and develop.

Slowly but surely, sensation by sensation, it experiences the basics of feelings and thoughts…as with its physical body and its mind, the full growth and development of these things called 'emotions' shall come later.

Next it reaches the foetal stage – limbs begin forming, struggling against the ball of nervous tissue to which they yet remain fused until certain areas of skin cell receive natural signals to die and the fresh new body-parts are allowed to unfold freely.

Two small legs which end in a pair of flat paws, two small arms which end in paws with opposable thumbs, one head with two pointed ears…and two tails.

The growth of fur will also come later…for the present however the growth and development of the foetus has culminated in one perfectly formed infant Vulpes volpes or, in plain Mobian, a baby fox.

A baby fox…who, as a result of some strange fluke, happens to possess two tails.

The creation of new life is one of this world's greatest and most miraculous natural gifts – but this particular new child's journey toward birth, toward the moment of his arrival in our world of light and life, has at some stage decidedly veered away from the natural.

Due to the wild card introduced into his genetic code as it was being written, the male cub now being nurtured in his mother's womb has one tail that is surplus to natural requirements – the Mobian Medical Dictionary would refer to him as "An individual, organism, of new genetic character arising or resulting from mutation."

To the world at large, a planet that regrettably contains people whose minds are much less understanding and sympathetic…he will be regarded simply as a freak of nature.

His story, now one turn of the page away from its beginning, is his alone to write – yet, whatever hardships he is to face and pain he is to endure and inner demons shall come to drive him, he will one day be forced to look into depths of his own soul and ask of himself the question that each and every one of us must ask ourselves at some stage or other in our lives.

'Who am I…?'

The Present Day – Three Months Following The Fall of Doctor Robotnik

The murky room was a small affair comprised of four walls, floor and ceiling all made from flat granite – all would also have been smooth and featureless were it not for the series of deep cracks running across them almost like ripples in the layer of dust which had settled upon them all so very long ago.

So long ago indeed that they came second only to the tangled myriad of cobwebs which hung, like veils of gauzy silk, all the way to the gritty floor – these heirlooms left in the wake of the generations of tiny eight-legged beasts which had made their way through the aforementioned fissures in order to enter this dusty and forgotten place were, along with the spreading of those fissures and the settling of those particles of dust, had marked the passage of time for a considerable number of years.

As a matter of fact…this small chink in the grim armour of Robotropolis had lain undiscovered here for centuries uncounted.

Long before the coming of the tyrant with a soul of iron and steel who had usurped it and perverted all it had once stood tribute to – the man who had overthrown its just and rightful ruler, condemned the greater part of its people to an endless future of living death.

Though there had been a time when the cold metallic city had been called 'Mobotropolis' and (during the reign of the House of Acorn and before the conquest of Doctor Robotnik) been home to a wondrous variety of people from all walks of life, a kingdom in which the concept of living had been synonymous with those of light and joy…this dark dank nook was older than them all.

The existence of this secret room, tucked away somewhere within the belly of the enslaved nightmarish city, had never been known to a native of the planet Mobius…for it was so old that it predated even the very name of the planet.

Time - an overwhelming force, the left hand of fate, which had swept clean from the face of this planet everything from an era that had passed and gone before the arrival of the Mobians.

An era over the course of which this planet had gone under an altogether different name, one now known to only a small number of people, and had been ruled by an altogether different species…one that had ultimately all but eradicated itself from existence.

And yet…there are always fragments of the past which contrive to somehow escape the cleansing passage of time.

Fragments such as crumbling ruins and elements of cultures that once arose and fell, all of which provide clues to the presently dominant species of the existence of those who have come and gone before them…and, in certain exceptional circumstances, those who happen to have hung on and stayed.

Such was the specific purpose of the hidden chamber…to outwait time.

And throughout the centuries since the fall of one civilisation and the rise and subjugation of another…this was precisely what it had done.

During the accumulation of dust and the expansion of the spiders realm and the weight of the dead silence…it had waited.

Waited for inevitability, fate's RIGHT hand, to determine the end of its indeterminate period of lying undisturbed and undiscovered…a day which was destined to arrive in the close future.

All of this because of the curious article that stood erect in the middle of the room, still waiting after all these years with a patience which was the one thing that hadn't changed in all that time – riveted to the floor by long (and now rusted) screws was a round platform that resembled a pedestal and had at one time probably gleamed beautifully.

Positioned at the edges of its flat surface were four curved talon-like clasps made from the same alloy – clutched in their tight grip which had not yielded in all this time was something which would have made anybody, even while being pursued by a platoon of SWATbots, stop and stare blankly at it.

An egg-shaped globe which was translucent and yet cloudy like stagnant water – this ambiguous consistency would have allowed such an aforementioned hypothetical observer to just glimpse though not quite discern the nature of the shadowy form encased within the strange substance.

And the nature and identity of the one who had slept inside this artificial cocoon throughout the long centuries…?

End of Prologue