World Tree MUSH

Every open world on the World Tree experiences strange phenomena, some more than others. Today the strange phenomena is a ridiculously fast object that just basically ended up in the world before anyone could even really get a chance to prepare or react. 

It's outpacing normal radar, but they definitely picked up something, scientists and defense forces trying to figure out wtf is going on. 

Is it some kind of strange attack, a bizarre natural phenomena? It's hard to tell, but whatever it is starts to slow down, to the point that it clears the entire United States in a few minutes, until it suddenly stops in Brighton, Massachusetts, skidding to a halt in front of a hotdog stand. 

"Hey!" he says as he looks up at the taller vendor, from his 5'2" height. "You got chili dogs?" 

Of course, the vendor freaks out, suddenly grabbing his phone to dial 911. 

He immediately yells on the phone about a talking blue monster. 

"Oh boy..." Sonic says, rubbing the side of his head.

    Moments ago, on the Brighton Community College campus:

"I dunno, why don't we try Yumi's world?" Anna is saying. "I don't think we've dropped by there since that thing with Elizabeth. They should totally be interesting data for your people!"

Spiral, perched on her shoulder, gives a catlike shrug. "I suppose 'interesting' is one -- Whoa, hello!" She stares off into space, her eyes flickering with light. "Okay, I just got a report from my bosses," she says. "Something is moving ridiculously fast! And it just landed in Brighton!"

    Now:

A pale blue light zips into the area where Sonic has landed! It's ... a brown-haired human girl who's a full foot taller than Sonic! She's wearing a cobalt blue T-shirt, a black skirt, and blue jeans under the skirt, her legs glowing as she runs across the sides of buildings, and one hand is holding a golden-furred catlike and vaguely squirrel-like creature onto her shoulder.

She leaps across the street, legs still glowing, and slides to a stop a dozen feet from the vendor. Anna raises her eyebrows as she looks between the blue-furred creature and the panicked man, and puts her hands on her hips. "Hello there," she says; she has a somewhat androgynous voice. "What's going on here, guys?" There's an obvious note of 'you had better not be causing trouble' in her voice as she turns to face Sonic.

"Uhh, see, I'm trying to get a chili dog, but I think I freaked this guy out." Sonic blows into his hand and sniffs. "Maybe it's my breath." 

"You're pretty fast." he observes, tapping his foot before he zooms over to her to cover the distance, staring down at her legs. "The name's Sonic. Sonic the Hedgehog." He offers his hand up to her.

The glow of her legs has long since faded. Anna's smile becomes a notch more friendly as she shakes his hand. "Anna Freeman," she says. "You new to the world tree? Because people in other worlds tend to be kind of startled when someone just pops up in their face at supersonic speeds like that."

Spiral's eyes flicker with pearlescent light as she looks Sonic up and down. "No magic, potential realized," she murmurs. "But it looks an awful lot like Windrunner."

Anna nods to Sonic. "My speed is my magical ability, Windrunner," she says. "Your ability seems way better at stopping on a dime than mine, though!"

"Hey, I don't always think through the whole speed thing. Sometimes I forget how slow everyone is." Sonic shrugs, holding his hands out a bit helplessly. "Sometimes a guy just needs a chili dog when he's passing through a world." 

He looks down at his legs, zipping over to the stand. "Hey, stop calling the cops and make a chili dog!" he calls out into the stand, before immediately zipping back in front of Anna. "Ability? Well, I -am- fast. I'm not magic or anything. Just trying to find a cool place to explore."

Spiral furrows her brow. "Well, that's ... good to know about," she says, slightly worried that the blue hedgehog in front of them is even more reckless than Anna is. "I'm Spiral, by the way. Anna, can you handle talking to the cops if they show up?" (Subtext that the civilians here don't need to know about: 'while I talk to the other Starbringers.')

Anna blinks at Sonic's comments about his speed. "Oh, okay then," she says. "And yeah, both me and Spiral know exactly how the 'cool place to explore' thing feels." She smiles. "The World Tree is chock full of interesting places, isn't it?"

"Yeah, lots of humans. Where I'm from there's a few human cities, but it's mostly animals." Sonic explains, shrugging again. Then he looks around, seemingly fascinated by the buildings. "We've got places like this, but not this clean and new. A lot of these worlds looks like Eggman took over, but it just seems to be how humans like to build their cities."

Spiral nods. "Yeah, a lot of the places in the World Tree seem to have humans, human-adjacent, or those who look human," she says. "Nobody I've been able to find knows why."

Anna nods along, as if this is all perfectly ordinary, right up until Sonic mentions a familiar name. "Eggman!?" she says. "He's from your world, huh? I helped fight him off when he invaded this one city on the World Tree last year."

"Unless it's a different Eggman," murmurs Spiral. "Or an alternate counterpart or something."

"Even if he's a different Eggman, he -sounds- like my Eggman. Round, egg shaped guy, weird mustache, red jacket thing, likes robots." Sonic laughs, then wags his finger a few times. "I'm kind of his arch enemy. I've been saving the world from him since I was a little kid."

Anna nods. "Yep, that's the guy I fought!" she says. "It was kind of a dumb thing that wouldn't have actually worked, the Gardeners took out his Egg Carrier like ten minutes after the invasion began. I still have no idea what he was actually trying to do there. Besides announce that he wanted to take over the entire World Tree." She nods in approval. "Good to know he's got heroes fighting back against him back home, too."

"That sounds like him." Sonic nods a few times, as if that's not at all out of place. "Sometimes he has a great plan and is an actual threat, other times he leaves a message on my voicemail to let me know he's going to blow up a dam or something." 

What's this place called, anyway?" he asks, before he suddenly zooms away and up the side of a building, standing on the roof as he waves for her to come up.

Anna nods. "Wow," she says. "Now I almost can't wait to fight him again --"

Spiral groans as Sonic abruptly runs off. Anna holds her down onto her shoulder again.

It takes a moment for Anna to catch up; she's nowhere near as fast as Sonic's top speed. On the other hand, she isn't remotely winded. "Brighton," she says. "Brighton, Massachusetts, United States of America. I don't know if the world has any particular name ... besides 'Earth', I mean, and that seems to be the name of like a full half of the worlds on the World Tree to begin with."

"I'm from Mobius. I've seen a few Earths. They always look kind of like Mobius, but everything is new, and there's barely any nature. We've been trying to keep Eggman from building new cities like Robotropolis for a long time." Sonic takes in the world, resting a foot on the edge of the building. "You have any annoying guys always trying to take over the world here?"

Anna nods, and considers this a moment. "Well, there's plenty of nature here, in designated places and forests and things," she says. She sits down on the edge of the roof next to him, and exchanges a look with Spiral.

"... No villains that we're aware of," says Spiral. "But -- and I should stress that this is kind of a secret within this world at the moment -- there are monsters made out of negative emotions, called Curse Phantoms. My people, the Starbringers, help people like Anna become magical warriors to fight them."

Anna nods. "I'm a magical girl, in case you have that particular kind of pop culture on Mobius."

"Never heard of it! But these Curse Phantoms sound serious. Never let Eggman get near something like that, he has this thing with making problems a lot worse and not thinking through the consequences." Sonic says before he scrunches his face again, perhaps thinking of the sick burn -Tails- would have right now. "Well, if you need help, here's my number. Not sure if it'll work, the World Tree is weird." He holds out his hand in a blur, immediately having a card with his number written on the back. But on the other side it's actually some dentist's card that he wrote on the back of.

Anna smiles and nods. "Thanks!" she says, swiping the card. "It probably won't work, I know you can't communicate easily across worlds, but feel free to drop by the next time you're in the Blossom!"

Spiral nods. "It was ... nice meeting you!"

"Cool meeting you too. I'll show you around my world some time!" Sonic suddenly zips off again, running down the building, then down the street, getting increasingly fast until he breaks the sound barrier with a crack of the sound barrier.