Chemical Plant.

A miserable, grim effigy to industrial excess, Chemical Plant towered over the portion of Grand Metropolis that had—since the plant’s sudden and catastrophic system failure at the hands of Eggman—been rendered an unliveable superdrain of caustic chemicals.

It had been built in a concrete reservoir, to ultimately contain any of the chemicals should the plant leak, and in this way the plant’s infrastructure had been a huge success. The majority of the planet was now sunk hundreds of feet beneath the surface of an artificial lake, prevented from reacting by the thousands of gallons of emergency water that had been diverted into the plant’s system when Eggman’s pursuit of Sonic had started a massive leak.

It had been years since Eggman’s actions on Westside Island, and since then, the chemicals in the water had combined and reacted, forming a foaming, crusted sludge that floated over the surface of the eerie purple soup.

From the surface of the soup, burnt-out metal buildings comprised the skyline for miles, gaping structures framed against the sky in endless juxtaposition of pipes and strange angles.

A particularly strange angle moved, out of the shadows, and revealed itself to be Coop, the Eagle.

He looked up at the distant skyline of Grand Metropolis, and past that, the glimmering light of Casino Park.

“Hmmf,” he said.

Coop was standing in the doorway of what had once been a relatively nice balcony. The balcony connected to an overseer’s office, which in turn connected to a rather dank and overly complex office block, which now connected to absolutely nothing—its lower floors having been lost to the flood.

“Hrm.”

Coop looked down at a stopwatch, which he held in one massive hand. He looked back up again. He squinted at the skyline, thoughtfully. His brow wrinkled like he was trying to solve a complex math equation.

From his vantage point near the top of the building, Coop stared out at the distantly alive city, for a few more moments, in silence, before turning away and walking back inside.

Near the door of the office block, a series of pneumatic tubes—part of a defunct delivery system—jutted out of the floor. Their covers were empty, and the air pumps that powered them had long since shut down, but Coop approached one of them, and reached in to produce a sandwich, wrapped in waxed paper.

“Oooh, baby,” he mumbled, a smile creeping across his face as he unwrapped the sandwich. It was comprised almost entirely of meat and barbecue sauce, the fact that it had bread was purely as a matter of form, and also—possibly—so that Coop would not get his hands sticky as he ate it.

They got sticky anyway; barbecue sauce oozed slowly out from between the slices as he took a first, enormous bite.

“‘Shright, “ he said to himself through his mouthful, “dshgumby srs bivuss phoonigh’.”

Somewhere unseen, Coop's colorful thermal silhouette was being watched from a top-down perspective as he chomped and chewed and snarfed down his delicious (but apparently lukewarm to cool, judging by the imagery) sandwich.

There was a sound from the ceiling, near the balcony, like something landing, but then nothing. Then, a sound like a scurry came from the hall—like lightly-stepping feet. They stopped abruptly, though.

The game of back-and-forth only went one more round, though. The next time a sound came, it was definitively from the balcony, and standing just inside the door was a human child. It was one that would be familiar to many others, but probably not the eagle—not yet. The adolescent, with his just-barely-unnatural hair color, his sporty sweatshirt, and his big, "7" emblazoned shorts, looked entirely too casual for the setting he'd just barged in on.

He didn't say anything yet. For the time being, he just looked a foul, smirking, detestable look, his eyes half-lidded, hands on his waist, and his head cockily cocked. He hadn't done a thing yet, but he already looked like he deserved a good backhand from his mother, wherever she was.

Coop did not seem to notice the noises. There was no change in his posture as he continued to eat the sandwich, but—as the big eagle stooped over his pan con carne extravaganza, his chewing slowed to a more deliberate pace, and his eyes fixated on the floor tiles in front of him.

His eyes narrowed, and he carefully placed the remainder of his sandwich in his mouth and bit down.

He looked around, sandwich in mouth—across the room, and back, and saw…

The kid.

Coop's body tensed.

After a few seconds, he took the sandwich out of his mouth again.

"Whoa," he muttered, with rather less surprise than he might have, but still with a fair amount of grudging awe in his voice, "what…?"

Finally, an actual thought seemed to catch and lift him out his reverie.

"Hah," he said, and then he laughed—a short laugh, but not a hostile one—"hah! What's up, kid? What are you doing out here, this late?"

"Ohhh, I got lost," he sighed sarcastically. He raised a hand and picked at the nail of his index finger with his thumb. "I was hopin' you could help me, mister. I'm looking for a big, bad bunch of thieves. Maybe... mayyybe you've heard of them."

He quickly added: "I heard they were pretty amazing. That they made GUN's best troops look like mall cops."

"Mhaah," Coop laughed again—this laugh was a decidedly more hostile one, but still relatively tolerant—"hah hah, hahhh…"

As his mouth remained smiling, however, his brow furrowed.

"Yeah?" he said, levelly, through the smile, "I think they're a few hundred feet down from here. Look," he went on, "I don't want to fight you, but I think you just caused yourself a few problems."

He squared up to face the boy, sandwich still in hand.

"Problems?" Seven echoed, looking falsely surprised, then repeated thoughtfully, "Problems."

He shook his head slowly. The one orange eye that was visible, not covered by a lens, flitted toward the floor. He quickly looked back into Coop's eyes, but still with that narrow, sass-filled expression. Maybe his face was just... stuck that way.

"I think you've caused the problems." He took a loose step forward, his weight shifting kind of irregularly; the coarse grain of the floor scraped with a little crunch under his sneaker. "Not to sound, you know. Hostile. Or irreverent of your power, Mr. Huge Bird Man. But, I've been just waiting to meet you, and tell you about a world of problems."

Coop rocked back and forth stiffly a few times, shifting his weight across the surface of his feet boots as he did so.

"Ok," he said, "ok…"

He cast around the environment, loosely, as if searching for something. He did not seem to find it, whatever it was, and looked back up at Seven. He waved his hands open in a helpless shrug.

"What—" he said, annoyance creeping into his voice, "what are you, ok? What's that thing on your face? Are you some kind of… mercenary super-hero? Is that it? Are you here to take the big bad guy down?"

"Oh, no, I'm only human," he replied through a heavy glaze of sarcasm. He stopped midstep right around when Coop shifted in that almost uncomfortable-looking search. "Guys like you handle humans like ants on a sidewalk. A kid like me shouldn't be any concern for you."

He scuffed and dragged his shoe into another slow, advancing step.

"You people—you freaks—you act like you're above the law, like you're so special, like you're chosen for some great purpose," he spat bitterly. "All of you. Not just you 'separatist' freaks, but you, all those hedgehogs—the blue one, the black one... and, especially that joke of a president of ours the people let off his leash. Putting a mongrel like that at the head of the world's dinner table..."

He stopped fully, and straightened up.

"No, I'm not here to beat you today. I'm here to do two things: the first is make sure you know who I am."

Coop's face, from being initially somewhat relaxed, crinkled up further and further through the duration of Seven's speech. Not an expression of anger, disgust or disdain—the expression was almost akin to one of extreme pain.

He stood there, listening to the tirade, looking more and more intense in whatever emotion he was feeling.

As Seven finished, Coop opened his mouth. It was a few seconds before any sound came out.

"…I guess you already have an explanation for the fact that Dr. Eggman happens to be—you know—one of you guys," he said, bitterly, "I mean, if anyone could do a really great job as president of the world it's him, right?"

Seven suddenly jolted back and made a sound not unlike a raspberry. He shook his head, clucked his tongue, and laugh-expectorated-sighed, "Eggman? Everybody's got their 'rotten egg', don't they? No, no, that's why I'm here now. And I'm why you haven't even heard from Eggman since the Yellow Desert incident."

He corrected his posture from his little humorous breakdown, and folded his hands solemnly behind his back.

"You freaks kept playing his games. Every fight was this... this lightning transaction of super powers, these mini-wars that lasted one or two days, you know? The civilized world never had a chance to react and handle things itself without some hotshot running in at the speed of sound, always letting the bad guy get away for sport in the end..."

He lowered his head, smiling broadly, staring toward the floor with slit-like eyes, face full of pride. "That's why I'm here. The writings said you furry... feathery... scaly circus sideshows were going to be the end of this world. But I go beyond you, beyond my fragile little organization. I'm the Seventh Son, and my generation will set the order right once and for all. That's who I am."

In the after-math of Seven's abrupt announcement, the hollow, expressionless pit of Coop's face echoed back one unspoken sentiment, which could only be summed up in the words:

'Oh sweet moses.'


"Wow," he said, after a few seconds of contemplation, "that's—you know," he gestured vaguely with the sandwich, "that's pretty serious. Um."

With that, he flicked the remains of the sandwich across the room at Seven's face. Coming up milliseconds behind it, Coop bolted across the floor in a wide-armed tackle.

That actually surprised Seven. I mean, who expects to get a sandwich thrown at their face? It's just not on the list of things that might happen. But he not only averted a face-sandwich crisis with a limber swerve, but also jumped straight to the ceiling with but a pop off the flats of his feet, no crouch needed—pure ankle. There he clung with all four limbs to the bare rails that used to hold ceiling tiles.

"Typical response," he blurted hastily as he flung himself quickly from the spot, toward where Coop had been standing with his sandwich a second before. He knew full-well that he wouldn't have time for much more chiding than that before a big, burly fist or other unpleasant object embedded itself at his former location.

The sandwich sailed through the open door and landed just outside, on the balcony, coming down onto the concrete with a rather sad, wet splat.

The doorframe shuddered immediately after as Coop crashed into it, stoping his onrush by bracing his hands against the outside of the frame. He whirled around, a dark scowl on his face.

"Hmmnk," he growled, "right."

He slammed down his pocket watch on the inside rim of one of the pneumatic tubes that lined the wall near the door, kicking the door shut behind him as he did. It closed on the sight of the sandwich, banishing the hapless meal to the inhospitable outdoors, and providing a barrier—however ineffectual—between Seven and balcony.

“Okay,” he said, rolling his shoulders back and forth once or twice, before hunching down to be at eye-level with the boy. With a wide body stance—his legs spread for a more stable centre of balance—he very nearly seemed to be playing the part of a linebacker.

“What now,” he asked, flatly impersonal, as if the answer of the question was secondary to the asking of it, “you gonna come at me?”