History of the Hexis

Sonic and Tails made their way through a sugary wonderland of sweets and treats in the middle of the oasis. There were mountains made of gumdrops, and pathways made of chocolate bars. The sand was replaced by pure sugar, and there were artificial clouds made of cotton candy. The entire place was protected by some kind of aura made so that the food stayed fresh. It was a cute little place, but it felt… ingenuine. As if something darker was hiding beneath the sugarcoated surface. Sonic thought he saw a red-black horn poke out from behind one of the candy cane fences. But he quickly realized it was probably just a piece of candy cane with black instead of white. The colors reminded him of something.

"Whoever lives in this desert must be eating good," Sonic said, as he rail grinded through on a piece of licorice with Tails flying behind him. Tails spotted a tree made of mint candy and flew back around.

Tails began to pick mint candies off of the tree, when out of the corner of his eye, Sonic saw two large yellow eyes with red pupils sneaking up from an alleyway between two gingerbread houses. "Tails! Look out, it's a Hexi!" Sonic exclaimed. Tails turned around, frightened. It was Zomom again!

"Hey! Put those back right now!" Zomom pleaded, confronting Tails. "I need them…" Sonic and Tails looked at her, wide-eyed. She wasn't attacking.

"But… mint's my favorite! Sonic, tag out!" Tails cried with a mouthful of mint, running behind Sonic so his best friend could cover him while he ate. Zomom stood there, staring at Tails with a mix of anger and embarrassment. She sighed sadly.

"Why were you following us without attacking? Aren't we enemies?" Sonic asked, taking notice of the red and black-striped horns on Zomom's head. "You work for Robotnik, right?" Zomom blushed, surprised.

"I mean… if you WANT to be enemies?! SURE?!" Zomom sputtered, unsure of what to say. "I technically work for Robotnik… but that doesn't mean I want to. And, uh, that's why I'm following you." She hid her face with her hands.

"What?" Tails asked, promptly swallowing his stolen mints. Zomom looked around, and spotted many Badniks still patrolling the area. She could probably control most of them to leave the three of them alone, but if one spotted them…

"It's not safe out here," Zomom whispered. "Come on!" She held the door to a life-sized gingerbread house open. Sonic and Tails hesitantly went in. Zomom shut the door behind the three of them.

"Okay, you have some explaining to do after that tornado stunt in Windy Hill," Sonic told Zomom, now secure inside the gingerbread house.

"Yeah, I do..." Zomom whispered, anxiously. She darted her eyes around the room one more time. "For decades, my kind have been under control from Lord Robotnik. One day, he showed up and declared war on the entire Lost Hex." Visions of stories from many years ago flashed through her mind. A collection of steel clouds over the horizon of Windy Hill. People screaming and fleeing, only to be beaten down by swarms of robots. All while the overwhelmingly powerful national anthem of the Robotnik Empire played.

"As a peaceful and, for the most part, merely agricultural species at the time… we had no way to fight back! Quickly, Robotnik took over our entire world and enslaved everybody on it with these towers that are protected from our ability to manipulate machines. They are all programmed to play a recording of a Cacophonic Conch's Mystic Melody if someone steps out of line." Just imagining this sound made Zomom wince in pain.

"To most species, the song played by these Erian seashells is a pleasant one. But to us Hexis… it's incredibly painful, and can almost control us in a way. He uses these audio samples of the Mystic Melody to keep us in line, to make us destroy our sacred lands with pollution and colonization. It keeps us… orderly. I know you were in his empire, he always used to talk all about you until you escaped. So you know as well as I do that he doesn't want to make room for individuality. I'm just the 'fat one'. Zazz is the 'crazy one'. So on and so forth. It wasn't always like that." Zomom cleared her throat. "Eventually, the vast majority of Hexis were killed, being tortured and starved under these conditions until they died." Zomom's voice was cracking under the pressure. The more she talked about this, the worse she felt. "And now, there's only a few of us left. I believe you've met us all already. There's Zavok, Zazz, Zeena, Zik, me, Zor…" She was suddenly cut off by that Mystic Melody. Zomom covered her ears. Robotnik's voice started to play from the same source.

"Zomom! Get your act together!" Robotnik shouted. "Destroy that blue pest. Maybe then I'll let you eat again!" The sound ended, and Zomom let go of her head shortly after.

"I'm sorry, Sonic and Tails," Zomom mumbled, shambling towards them. She looked strained, almost like a puppet on strings. She was back under Robotnik's control. "I want you to know that, despite what he says, I'm not in it just to eat. Please run." Zomom spun into a tornado, and sent everything around Sonic and Tails into a whirlwind. Sonic covered his eyes from the plumes of sugar rising from the ground. Blindly, he grabbed Tails and jumped headfirst into the top of the tornado. Being launched was the only possible way out, even if it had a better chance of just killing them. Just standing there would make that chance a certainty.

"Sonic, what's happening? I can't see!" Tails cried as they were launched into the air. For most people, hopping into a tornado would be considered suicide. But Sonic and Tails weren't most people. They had beaten the odds so many times to get this far, and Sonic was confident they could do it again.

Tails, finally opening his eyes and choking out some sugar, saw that he and Sonic were approaching the ground. "Tails, it's your turn!" Sonic called. Tails, spinning his tails as fast as he could, beat back the great downward momentum and lowered himself and Sonic to the ground safely. As soon as his foot touched the ground, Sonic began to run.

Eventually, they left the oasis entirely and dashed into the desert. Zomom followed, spinning up a storm. The tornado grew until it touched the sky, and reached higher than any of the ruined pyramids in the area. Sonic still felt the pull of the vortex even with his distance from Zomom herself. It was pulling everything around him away. His speed was the only thing keeping him from being swept off too. That meant he couldn't allow anything to stop him for even a second. That kind of speed was very hard for him to maintain when there was sand in his eyes and ancient ruins blocking his path every step of the way. Even if he could blindly avoid all the obstacles forever, Sonic would soon black out because of the lack of oxygen going into his system. Through the haze of sand and rocks, Sonic could barely see a red light just within his field of vision.

"Sonic..." Tails coughed, his vision blurring together. "Is that… one of Robotnik's towers he's using to control the Hexis?"

"Remember, my loyal Hexi slaves… sun burns are serious!" An automated Robotnik PSA hollered happily from the tower's speakers. Multiple Swatbots that had been guarding the tower were swept up into the tornado. "If you feel pain or discomfort brought upon by extremely hot temperatures while working in the Desert Ruins, please trek roughly 70 miles under the blazing hot sun to the nearest hospital that is located in Tropical Coast!"

"Definitely," Sonic wheezed, trying to keep his eyes open. Just as he was about to pass out, he had one last complex thought. A plan, even. He swerved towards the tower, and just like that, the countdown began. He was about to run out of breath. 5… The tornado approached the tower, prompting the Mystic Melody. Zomom couldn't hear it over the sound of the wind. 4… The tower began to break from its hinges. 3… Sonic grabbed onto a to a piece of buried pyramid to avoid being swept away as his legs gave out. 2… Another hinge broke off from Robotnik's tower. The PSAs died out. 1… The limestone brick that Sonic was holding onto was swept away, along with Sonic.

0… The tower was swept away as well.

Realizing what had happened, Zomom stopped spinning. In a matter of seconds, the tornado stopped. Zomom was left in the center of all the destruction. Rubble began to fall from the sky and crash land all around her, plumes of sand rising everywhere as the once swept away objects collided with the ground. Zomom looked around, frantically. "Sonic?! Tails?!" She asked. When she gained no response, she started digging in the sand to see if they had been buried. "No! No no no!" She cried. She then heard two pairs of footsteps behind her. She turned around, to see Sonic and Tails standing there, crossing their arms. "There you are! You saved me!" She exclaimed, in disbelief. Sonic put his fists to his sides, proudly.

"I'd say it looks more like you saved yourself," Tails stated. Sonic eyed him unenthusiastically. "You took down the tower, after all. We just led you to it."

"I… guess I kind of did, didn't I?" Zomom chuckled, looking proud of herself. "We did it together!" Sonic and Tails smiled and nodded slightly. "But still, I wouldn't have been able to do it if you didn't trick me. So yeah, thank you. And uh… sorry about what I did." She looked to the ground, embarrassedly.

"No problem," Sonic replied. He extended a hand, and Zomom took it. She got up. "I was in more or less the same spot about a year ago. Robotnik… is a difficult person to say 'no' to." Sonic sighed. Zomom smiled understandingly.

"That's a good way of putting it," Zomom giggled. Sonic was surprised. He wouldn't expect someone who had tried to kill him twice to be so sweet. Tails held his own arm awkwardly and averted his eyes, but Sonic didn't see.

"So… what are you going to do now?" Sonic asked. "It's probably not safe to stay here. Robotnik's gonna find out if one of his towers went down… and then…" Sonic drifted off. He then got an idea. "What if you came with us?" He looked up at Zomom excitedly, stars in his eyes. Zomom turned red.

"You really think I should?" Zomom asked, her head smoking. "I mean, there's probably more of those towers up ahead. I would hate to lose control and be forced to fight you again…" She was quickly distracted by the sounds of loud wrenching, explosions, and toast popping out of a toaster. Tails walked over to her, soot covering his face.

"I made just the thing for that!" Tails exclaimed, presenting a pair of fresh-off-the-oven yellow headphones with his two-tailed insignia on it.

"Just now? How?" Sonic asked.

"I've built a TV out of paperclips," Tails replied. "And reprogrammed a super computer using dishwashing detergent and a toothpick." He handed Zomom the headphones. "So headphones specifically designed to only cancel out the frequencies produced by these Cacophonic Towers? That's about as easy as taking a nap!"

"You went through all that trouble just for me?" Zomom asked. Tails nodded. She hugged the headphones happily and spun around. "Nobody's ever given me a gift before! Thank you so much!" She placed the headphones on her head. "I guess this means I can tag along after all…"

"Awesome!" Sonic exclaimed. He looked off to the setting sun. "Now, we should break Robotnik's control over the rest of the Deadly Seven. That means destroying these Cacophonic Towers. The next one's in Tropical Coast, right?"

"Correctamundo!" A crackly woman's voice exclaimed. Sonic and Tails jumped back. A black and white figure with fizzy, root-beer-like hair swung down from offscreen. Zoga the Hexi! Sonic only noticed then how ridiculously tall she was. She even had a few inches on Zomom. Sonic and Tails got ready for a fight. Zoga's mouth broke off its hinges and let out a laugh. It sounded like a laugh track featuring multiple people. "Hey, there's no need to fight! I am your chummy buddy-like friend! You took out that tower keeping us all inhibited, so I'm forever on your side!" She wrapped her arm around a terrified Sonic's shoulder and gazed off into the distance. "In fact… I have a very useful object you may need!" She placed a black and red compass into Sonic's hand.

"What's this?" Sonic asked, looking at the compass then back to Zoga.

"It's the Cacophonic Compass!" Zoga announced. "I designed it specifically to point you to the nearest Cacophonic Tower. No more running around, no more GUESSING!"

"Thanks…?" Sonic replied.

"This makes things so much easier! Thank you, Zoga!" Tails exclaimed.

"No… thank you…" Zoga replied, shaking Tails' hand. She then fled with a cartoon running sound. "... For the 5 units of unknown currency I just took from you in exchange for the Cacophonic Compass!" Tails looked confused as Zoga scampered into the distance. At a loss for words, everybody continued on their journey.