World Tree MUSH

It's a weird day, or night, or morning, depending on where everyone is when this happens. 

Blazing through multiple worlds in the span of a few minutes, a ridiculously high number of alarms go off just by virtue of the speeds being reached. 

Now, this might not be too out of the ordinary for worlds that are used to strange things happening, but the near relativistic speeds of this object are picked up by people who might be just a -tad- curious about what exactly just blew by their radar or security systems. 

Obviously the object is long gone before most worlds can even react. 

But soon it finally stops, in the middle of some strange part of a branch where a few worlds meet. Spirals of plants and abnormally picturesque ruins, a truly colorful and beautiful place to behold. 

Standing in the middle of it all is Sonic the Hedgehog, staring up at the sky as he just takes a deep breath, enjoying nature, not really thinking about the fact that he's just set off god knows how many alarms and radars again. There are people tracking him, there's always people tracking him. Most of them will never catch up, or even figure out how to rack him. But some are close enough, some are fortunate enough to perhaps catch him in this rare moment when he's decided to stop.

    Sipping on a can of some kind of (literal) energy drink, Blues is just trying to relax and enjoy nature when his own sensors go off. Huh, what was that? The blaring internal alarms barely registered it, but the Light Bot can pick up a few radio signals down the 'line' of Branches and other worlds.

    "Eh, this isn't as good as an E-can either," Blues remarks. He doesn't toss it aside - littering is wrong! Funny how some minor lessons stick - but stows it in a section of his bag and shoulders it.

    "Let's see... huh, it stopped just a Vine jump away from a place I have on record," he mutters. A quick blip of light, and Blues has teleported there, to make the short trip to where the tracking stopped.

    He's not actually expecting trouble exactly, so Blues doeesn't have his shield and helmet out and on. Just that wild hair of his. It still takes a few minutes for him to arrive, trudging like a backpacker or camper toward Sonic, with that mild curiosity to see if the source stopped around here.

<LOUD!>

Eddie didn't so much sit up as get yanked off of the couch he was sleeping on by unseen strings. Distant car alarms. And nearby car alarms. And... well 

ALL of the alarms. All at once. Everywhere. One or two? Fine. This is San Fransisco. All of them? He stepped out of his Ex's home just as Venom finished covering him. "What?" Veom looked out at the world, snarling at the noise before bounding towards where it and Eddie last knew a vine may be. 

<Got no idea, but it feels like something not from around here. You holding up alright?> Eddie was little more than a voice in Venom's head at tis point as the pair stepped across worlds, and found much the same in this place too Alarms, startled animals...

Eventually though, They would land in a place with no alarms and near a strange blue creature. "You make too much noise." 

Venom. A nineish foot tall bipedal creature of teeth, muscle, wide buglike miley white eyes, and teeth about the size of your average basketball player's foot. And it is making annoyed noises.

One of Sonic's ears perks, and he immediately turns to spot Blues. "Hey! This place is pretty wild." And then he observes the sort of long rail he left in the grass behind him, cringing and making a sort of 'oops' face. "I'm trying to find a place with ancient ruins or something. This place seems full of ruins, but they look pretty explored." 

"Sonic, Sonic the Hedgehog." he offers a hand, and then suddenly stumbles back, wide-eyed at Venom. "Holy..." 

"Okay, I don't want to judge here." He holds up both hands, taking a deep breath. "But where exactly are you on the scale of evil monsters?"

    From a distance, Blues looks entirely human. He isn't disguised as a human though... both scent and up close the artificial nature can be distinguished. But for now, he looks like a young man with hands in the backpack straps, hiking. And... well, he is staring at the hedgehog and Venom, but not in terror. Wariness? Sure. But he ain't picking sides until...

    Well yeah, Venom looks about ready to bite someething.

    "You were pretty noisy," Blues says, "But looks like it was an accident. I'm Blues, what say we all chill a bit and figure this out?"

THe question caused Venom's expression to shift, one eye enlarging as the other squinted, an almost cartoonish parody of an eyebrow raise. It might even be funny for people not immediately terrified by the fairly large toothy muscley alien critters.

<Hey can you blame him?> Eddie's voice chided, <Your teeth are literally bigger than that thing is.>

Then Venom squinted, both eyes narrowing as it knelt down to something closer to eye level with Sonic. "We beat up what Eddie likes to refer to as... 'Bad' ...People." Venom purred at its own words. "We have no interest in harming you." The rumblng bass filled voice, that might have been two voices speaking together or simply a really interesting vocal system, might have even tried to sound reassuring.

<Hey uh, can I?> Eddie asked.

Venom's shoulders sighed as it sighed before starting to wilt. No actually it was shrinking, muscle mass decreasing, height melting away until the black of its substance pulled back, revealing a man in his thirties wearing sweatpants, t-shirt, and house shoes. 

"Hi," The man would wave shyly at Sonic, "I'm Eddie, the big guy's Venom... like... EVERY alarm went off. Cars, stores, homes..."

His head would turn to Blues and smiled, revealing normal human teeth, "Yea. Not trying to start anything."

THEN:

"Order up!" Aunt Cass screams from the kitchen in the middle of the day where there's a packed house at the Lucky Cat Cafe. People are enjoying their meals and hot wings and everything else. It's a good day to be a restaurant owner.

Not to much the Nephew'd Help.

Hiro's trying to balance a few trays of food as he stumbles around at the outside tables, trying to drop off the various delectable delights that he's carrying. His balloon-bodied buddy, BAYMAX, is following behind him with a few trays of his own. They are definitely working together to make this mission a success. Hopefully.

"I got these tables, Baymax. Take those soups over to that one." Hiro gives an unsteady nod towards the table with the only angry looking patron.

Baymax starts his wobble-steps in that direction. "Here is your soup. I hope that it is to your satisfaction. Hiro's Aunt, Cassandra, has made it for you. Ingredients include..."

"JUST PUT DOWN THE SOUP!" The patron slams his newspaper closed and fumes.

BLUE STREAK, SPEEDS BY o/~ !!

Hiro catches sight (or maybe just wind) of it in the moment he sets down his last plate of food. He's almost knocked over but manages to keep his balance against the table.

Baymax's already not-so-grippy hands were in the middle of setting down the soup when such tremendous speed happens. He looks back from watching (and scanning) blue blurred speed stuffs and sees that the soup bowl is no longer in his hands. It is, instead, on the Meanie Patron's head. And the soup itself is drenching him and dripping from his all over. Baymax intones, "Oh. No."

Hiro leaps over to Baymax. "Did you see that, buddy?! Please tell me you scanned that! You got that-- that--- whatever it was, right?!" Hiro can hardly contain his excitement and yanks Baymax into a spin towards him.

Baymax looks up and at the path the speeding whatever took and his receptors have definitely picked up on a trail. "I scanned it. Would you like to follow it?"

Hiro rolls his eyes, "No, I'd rather stay here and wait tables all day."

Baymax nods, "Okay." And then proceeds to start wobbling towards the nearest table to clean it off.

Hiro facepalms. "Unbelievable." Another snatching up of Baymax by the hand. "I was kidding! Let's go!" And the two of them are off to have a cool change into superhero gear montage. We'll skip that in favor of...

NOW:

Super Hiro & the Mighty Baymax have arrived. Hiro, as per usual, armored up and riding on the back of his armored companion! They soar onto the scene with the greatest of ease. Or just the way that looks the most fun. Give the kid a break, okay? He loves this flying stuff.

They keep to the skies of this branch to give Baymax room to scan for the adrenal levels that he clocked during the first speed-burst of soup-spilling, alarm-wailing proportions.

Baymax hits his signature line again, "Oh. No." and Hiro catches sight of the, well, /everything/ that's down below. Everyone? Whatever works. "We better check this out."

DIVEBOMB MODE ACTIVATED!

"Oh, oops... I was running around a little. I found this cool spot. Sometimes running through worlds is the best shortcut, you know? The other day I discovered a place called Massachusetts! Great chili dogs." Sonic admits, starting to casually jump from foot to foot, as if he just can't quite stand still for too long. 

"That's a cool..." He motions a hand toward Eddie's, well, "Everything you've got there." 

There's no easy way to describe Venom politely. 

Then he looks up, sighing. "Oh boy."

A black tendril snaked out of Eddie's body to yank him out of the immediate splash zone. Nevermind he didn't look up to see the actual thing about to impact. Nor did he seem to realize he was being yanked out of the way. Just one moment 'Yay the situatinon is calming down.' The next has him flailing as he's yanked to one side. "WHAA?!?!"

<It seems we are not alone in being displeased by this... Sonic's... morning run.> 

Eddie took a deep breath and patted himself down to make sure everything was where he thought it was, "Hey easy now, just some kid and a.... Robot?"

<I do not like how much waiting we must do.>

"Just chill buddy. Just chill," Eddie kept repeting himself as hestayed crouched there. There was a pair of black tendrils snaking outfrom Eddie's back, twitching like a pair of cat tails, or possibly octopus arms.

    "That's a lot easier to deal with," Blues says, giving Eddie a thumbs up. "Yeah, just try to be a little more careful, Sonic. You'll get some nasty attention if you blow through the wrong worlds. I was just curious, myself..."

    What's that? Dropping down from the sky, that is? Blues looks up, frowning, but it doesn't seem like a threat exactly. Usually threats come with undead armies or something. Once again he readies himself for trouble, but steps aside so that there's room for a friendly landing.

    Eddie gets one more look, then Blues mentions to Sonic, "I don't know ruins very well, but I've seen a few around. I'll try to remember where they were. Pharoah Man is the real archaeologist."

    As Baymax and Hiro get closer, he gives a cautious wave.

Hiro pulls up on the Baymax ride and the two armored heroes drop to the ground for a dramatic pose. They keep the pose for a moment too long before Hiro looks around and realizes that there's nothing like trouble afoot.

"Uhhhh..." Hiro stops his posing but Baymax just continues. Because it's Baymax.

"So uh. Anybody see a super fast nobody knows what come through here? Me and my pal here are tracking it." Hiro thumbs over his shoulder at the Mighty Baymax and his muscle pose. Hiro has no idea Baymax is doing this but that's fine.

"For science!" And probably to upgrade Gogo's speed even more. Because who doesn't want to go /faster/?!?!

"Robots are almost never a good sign." Sonic says with some suspicion, and nods to Blues. "Guess I never really noticed. Usually I run through cities so fast no one really knows what happened. But since Massachusetts I keep slowing down just enough to try the local chili dogs." 

He suddenly blurs backward and away from Hiro and Baymax when they're about to land. Then he starts zooming from one end of Baymax to the other, taking a look at it from different angles. "This doesn't look like one of Eggman's robots, but you never know." 

Holding up a hand, he waves. "I'd be the fast thing. The fastest thing alive, that's what the songs say."

    Robots are never a good sign? Blues frowns, then makes a fake cough into his hand. "I'm a robot," he points out. No point in hiding it, since it'd be obvious if he got too close. And to the others, "He is pretty fast. I wonder if he could keep up with Quick Man."

    Then speaking directly to Sonic, "I haven't seen any of the Robot Masters here, so that might be a contest we never see."

    Baymax and Hiro are getting his eyes over them though. He glances at Eddie. "Never seen anything like any of you yet, but most of the worlds I've wandered through are magical. Takes some getting used to."

"Yeeeaa kid you might wanna dial back the 'For Science' thing," Eddie said warningly. He watched Sonic blur from point to point and blinked slowly.

<I have no idea Eddie, but none of them seem intentionally ostile.>

"Yea kinda getting that feel," He muttered before looking from Hiro then to Blues. Both were... short? Blues was saying something about Robots? "Technically I'm human. My buddy's... uh..." He tapped his chest.

<Klyntar. My people originally come from a planet we named Klyntar.>

"Uh... he says he's a Klyntar, or it's the planet name or kinda.. .both?" He shrugged, "Long story and well chilli dogs dont' sound liek the worst thing in the world to talk over," He chuckled in spite of himself. "Short version is he got drug from a comet he was riding and got stuck in a lab and... Thigns kinda happened and now hes' living with me." His hands spread wide as if to uggest a lot more to the story. "So like... you werne't intending on blowing every window in the block off then? Just out for a run and 'oops'?"

"Whoooooooooooooa."

So that's pretty much Hiro's response to everyone that's hanging around here. "I'm Hiro. This is Baymax. We're..."

Baymax finally stops posing the moment he's introduced and starts the process of moving around to greet each of the beings in the immediate vicinity with a peaceful wave and, "Hello. I am Baymax. Your Personal Healthcare Companion..."

Hiro just lets Baymax do the introductory rounds, starting with Blues, then Eddie and then Sonic. Ho specific reason, he's just busy talking to everybody at once.

"Um, if this is the kind of stuff I'm going to run into when I leave San Fransokyo... guess who's never going back there." Hiro's eyes are a bit wide as he takes in the marvelous sights of the ruins and the others. "Wait wait. Did you say Magic?" Hiro's eyes pull over to Blues. "Wait, and you have your own songs?!" Eyes cut over to Sonic (if he can catch him still long enough.). "And you... got a... Klyntar in your chest?! I mean, I don't know what a Klyntar is but I'm pretty sure it's cool!"

Excitment Levels RISING.

"The Robot Masters? You mean like Eggman?" Sonic might be interpreting that in an odd way, then waves his hand a bit dismissively. "Sorry, sorry. Back in my world impending robot oppression is a big thing." 

He squints at Blues, and asks, "Are you actually a small animal?" 

"Aliens. I'm still not used to aliens." he says with a sigh, looking back in the very long direction he ran from. "I'll be more careful. When I only had one world, I held back a lot. But with so much to see, so many places to go, I wasn't thinking about what my speed might do to a place! If I run through a world in a few seconds again, I'll stay out of the cities." 

When asked about his songs, he just shrugs. "If you save the world enough times, people write songs about you. I'm not exactly a hero or anything, I just don't like Eggman trying to turn forests into cities or animals into robots, or whatever his plan is this week."

Eddie chuckled goodnaturdly at Hiro's joyful enthusiasm at ALL OF THE THINGS, "Kid not sure what your home's like, but I like your 'grab everything and run with it' attitude." 

Meanwhile the tendrils coming out of Eddie's back withdrawl, and would do so even faster if Beymax tried poking or otherwise interacting with. "And... uh," He rubbed the back of his head. "Teeechnically Venom was part of an invasion that was going to happen and decided to stay since he liked the place."

<Yes,> Venom purred, <Many wonderful things, even if we must be mindful of the small squishy people.>

"I'd... be careful since like most of 'em just puppet you around til you dop. Plus we're kindof a black hole foodfalls into." WHich tracks. You can only cheat so much when changing size, creating mass from nothing, and doing things the human body was never meant to. It takes a lot of calories. 

Then when Sonic spoke he nodded, "Yea, we," He pointed at himself to try indicating Eddie and Venom rather than Eddie and everyone else in the group, "totally get suddenly not having to hold back. Big guy's able to do a lot and it's like... constnat pulling at a chain to keep him from just going on a big tear. He's not really wanting to just rampage for the sake of hurting people it's more... Grabbing everything life has, and well sometimes stuff happens."

Then he processes the rest of what the little blue critter says, "Hooboy... Diantha'd hate this Robotnik guy." He shrugged, "Lady I met a few dyas back from a more swords and magic kinda place. Biginto forests and nature and all that."

    There's a lot to take in. Alien invaders and so on. Blues shrugs. "I... uh... what? No, I was built as a prototype military combat robot. Dad just gave me a little too much free will and I decided I liked making music better."

    He starts nodding. "Magic, walking gods, all sorts of things. I had to fight a mummy a few months back. Haven't seen a ton of alien-type things, but I've been to a few places with tech even more advanced than mine. Never heard of a Klyntar before though."

    That tangent done Blues looks at Sonic again. "A lot of people worry about robot uprisings in my world too. There have even been one or two that almost happened. I guess I can't blame you. Most of my siblings are hardwired to not harm humans except in self defense... and I think talking hedgehogs would qualify as human enough, Doctor Light would probably think so anyway."

"The robots wouldn't be a problem if Eggman didn't use them for mad science plans." Sonic suddenly blurs forward in a flash, taking a closer look at Blues as he instantaneously closes the distance between them. "You don't -look- much like a robot." 

"You sure that's healthy?" he asks Venom, looking over with a raised eyebrow. "You know, the whole... alien sludge thing."

"Hey buddy don't feel bad we're still trying to figure the whole 'robot and AI and rights' thing out." Eddie looked from Blues to Sonic before adding. "As far as I know we don't have anything human level. I mean there was this big clickbait headline about an AI that passed a turing test, butit was like... cripple what the examiners could ask, and constant lowering the bar once you actually looked into it. Buddy of mine wrote a few pieces about i." Well, technically true. Said'buddy' was in New York still, so they didn't exactly talk much. "Kinda not looking forward ot it, but so long as it doens't immediately go mashing the nuclear holocost button I'd want to give it a chance."

He offered a hand to Blues. "Then again you were like... Millitary and decided t ogo into music? Ther'es a joke in there and there are a lot of old hippies that would love to talk to you." In all bluntness Eddie himself would love to sit Blues down for an interview, but now was not the place and ehe would have to ask too many background questionsto give any theoretical audiance a baseline to work off of anyway.

He then looked between Sonic and Blues, "Guy that built him must have realized people would react poorly to a giant hulking slab of armor and guns shouting in a monotone 'DO NOT BE AFRAID WE ARE HERE TO LIBERATE YOU. LIBERATE. LIBERATE.' while shooting at people." THen a look to Blues and an eyebrow, "I do have to wonder what prosthetics are like where your from since if you could interface what youv'e got with a human nervose system..." He trailed off at the thought before coughing into his fist. "Anyway. Glad nobody seems to be interested in a fight."

<I want to fight!> Venom sulked. Fortunately nobody other than telepaths would have heard Venom.

    Sonic's examination makes Blues take a step back, then he shakes his head. "My immediate siblings and I are prototypes, and Doctor Light wanted us to look human. Me, Rock, and Roll are all as human as they come in shape. My other siblings, the Robot Masters, tend to look a lot less human. And the more simple AI robots don't even look human at all." He stops to clarify, "They're called Robot Masters because they're meant to direct and manage the simpler AIs."

    Blues is looking at Baymax more, but decides not to comment on him yet. Eddie asked ssome questions. "Yeah, that seems a little dangerous, but I guess it works for you. Some kind of host-symbiont thing going on? I haven't read up on that. Can't keep straight symbionts, parasites, uh... remora?" He thinks.

    "Anyway yeah, we have prosthetics. Arms, eyes, some organs. Roll would know a lot more about that stuff. They don't always look natural but they work."

"Now -that- sounds like an Eggman robot." Sonic points to Venom, nodding with some familiarity. 

Finally, someone gets it. 

"Rock, Roll, what's your name again?" he asks, perhaps forgetting it if he said it already. "Robot Masters, that seems like an unfortunate name. But scientists are weird like that!" 

"Everyone's got something interesting going on. A robot, a guy with an alien inside of him, whatever's going on with those guys." He thumbs over at Baymax and Hiro. "I'm just a simple hedgehog, but I think I get by with coolness."

"Symbiote yea," Eddie smiled, either because Blues got it in one or because he wouldn't have to deal with Venom throwing a tantrum. "And, having guys like you directing traffic sounds like it makessense. People are comfortable tlaking to people instead of a box on wheels most of the time." His mind flashed to one of his show producers talking to and petting the editing bay console like it were a puppy.

Then Eddie stared at Sonic, "We don't have hedgehogs like you buddy." He held a hand out, then another hand over it to show relative sizes. "The ones we've got are about yay big, covered in spikey bits. Actually kinda cute. You're... uh." His head tilted as he looked sonic over, "You're... Blue?"

    "The name is Blues, serial number DLN-000," Blues replies. "My world isn't... around. So I'm probably the only one you'll run into." Haha, little does he know. "Yeah we have a lot of robots helping out in my world though. It's only once they started to think that people got scared." He taps his head. "They didn't really like free will."

    He grins, "Yeah, a blue hedgehog that talks is pretty weird where I'm from, but there are other worlds where that would be... maybe not common but wouldn't really get a second look."

"Well I am the -fastest- hedgehog, anywhere." Sonic proudly proclaims, then reaches back to run his fingers through his strange hair/spikes. "And I totally have spiky bits!" 

"Worlds where the only things that can talk are humans are pretty weird if you ask me." He shrugs, looking off into the distance. "So many worlds are covered in human cities. It's like if Eggman completely took over or something."

"Aw c'mon we can't be all that bad." Eddie tried to sound reassuring. "We're just missingout on the fun."

<If there is no danger it may be good t ogo make sure Anne knwos we are not in danger. She will worry.>

Eddie's eyes widened, "Oooooh right we forgot to leave Anne any sort of note. She'll get back see me gone, alarms, and... Yea I better get going." He got up as Venom's black substance started coating him. "HOpefully," The large symbiotic being's voicerumbled at Sonic, "We will meet again."

Then the bulky being ran off, perhaps far faster than anything of its bulk had right to run but would seem positively slow by Sonic Standards.

    "This Eggman sounds a little like someone I know in my world," Blues says. When Venom says he needs to go though, Blues taps his head, "Ah, I should probably get back, too. Glad it wasn't a problem. Be a bit more careful, Sonic, and if you're doing any thwarting of mad scientists, I'm sure I'll see you again."

"Hey, careful's my middle name." Sonic offers a thumbs up to Venom, then nods to Blues. "I'll see you around." 

He turns around, does a few stretches, then crouches. 

In a sudden sonic boom, he speeds off into the distance, the sudden air pressure rather ridiculous as he hits relativistic speeds. 

Then he's just sort of gone. 

Off to a gangster's paradise far, far away.