| abstract | - On a dark and stormy night, Dr. Robotnik demands Sonic to arrive and challenge him. As the hedgehog arrives at his usual pace, Robotnik taunts him by presenting Princess Sally as his hostage, who is paralyzed due to a mechanical helmet on her head. When Sonic demands that Robotnik let Sally go and focus on him, Robotnik summons a SWATbot unit to open fire... and succeeds in vaporizing Sonic. At that moment in another world, a human child named Steve is seen playing a video game, and it is revealed that Sonic's defeat is due to his gameplay. He and his sister Jessie are called by their mother to get to school and they leave the living room, not noticing Sonic's arm as he reaches through the screen. Rather than being dead, Sonic is now apparently trapped in a strange 'in-between' zone that even he cannot identify. Back in Mobius, Robotnik is gloating to the rest of the imprisoned Freedom Fighters over Sonic's death and how no one is coming to save them now. Steve and Jessie later return from school and start up the video game again, and Sonic sees Steve sitting in front of him. Deciding to try and make contact, Sonic reaches out through their TV screen again and manages to pull the kids into his side of reality. Steve and Jessie are instantly amazed to see their hero in the flesh, and the three of them journey together through another wall in hopes of returning to Mobius. Meanwhile, Robotnik has lined up the Freedom Fighters to load them into his newest weapon: a missile that will launch a network of killer satellites into orbit around Mobius and kill the heroes in the process. Sonic arrives with his new friends and manages to knock Robotnik unconscious, but Robotnik ends up falling onto his remote, which starts the missile's launch sequence. Sonic grabs Steve and Jessie and makes an incredible dash for the control room. While Sonic tries to figure out how to stop the missile, Robotnik recovers and sees a strange beam of light, which he deduces to be where Sonic entered from. Sonic manages to stop the missile, but he gets no time to catch his breath when the beam of light suddenly grows and sucks Jessie in, forcings Sonic and Steve to follow her into another strange zone. When they arrive, Robotnik appears with a SWATbot army to take them into a large facility, where many mechanical Robotniks are hard at work building weapons. After the tour, Robotnik has Sonic and the kids thrown into a prison cell. Inside, they meet a pair of prisoners named Mori and Jerry, who explain that in their world, Sonic is "just a character in a game cartridge". However, they explain that Sonic's creation as a video game character was not just the result of a staff artist's sketch. Rather, they were based on images received over a prototype multi-dimensional portal. Robotnik has also discovered the portal and is eagerly planning to use it to rule all the universes, but his ambition is halted when the robot Robotniks turn on him. One of the humans' friends manage to break Sonic and the other prisoners out while dressed as Robotnik, and Sonic (a bit reluctantly) saves his enemy from being killed. Jerry then tells Sonic to shut down the prototype via an access code, which coincidently matches a code from one of the Sonic video games. With help from Steve, who knows all the codes, Sonic turns off the prototype and the robot Robotniks for good. With control of the prototype returned to them, Jerry and Mori prepare to send everybody back to their own worlds, though they mention that it'll be a one-way trip. After saying goodbye to the kids, Sonic and Robotnik are returned to Mobius, where Sally and Tails reunite with the hedgehog. And in our own world, Steve has just gotten a new Sonic video game, and he and Jessie are looking forward to seeing what their hero is up to now.
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