please i have to know the turbo tails lore
bitcoin i can assure you there’s no fucking way you’re ready for what’s about to unfold in this lore post
i’m willing to talk about the turbo tails lore because it gives me the chance to explain my favorite panel from ALL of archie sonic:
below is over 2,000 words worth of turbo tails lore. don't say i didn't warn you lol
TL;DR: a convoluted prophecy, a cryptic grandpa, and a single lost backpack make turbo tails one of the strangest things to come out of archie sonic
THE TURBO TAILS LORE.
note: any time i say “it’s actually really simple!” in this explanation please know i’m saying it with the thickest tone of sarcasm and bitterness known to man
we gotta start wayyyy back in early archie sonic - specifically, at the tails miniseries. these issues follow tails as he travels alone to a place called “downunda” (aka the archie sonic equivalent of australia), where he helps the freedom fighters there defeat some badniks terrorizing their home.
tails’ journey is sparked by his own desire to become a hero and the frustration he feels when the rest of the freedom fighters treat him like a little kid. in the first part of the miniseries, we see a comic that tails makes about him becoming a superhero called “captain super foX-MAN” (the writers did a lot of comic references in early archie sonic).
when tails gets to downunda, however, he becomes injured and finds himself in the bottom of a crater. here, he meets an oldass echidna named athair. this dude is one of knuckles’ (many) relatives, and hopefully the only one i ever have to talk about
athair’s main character trait is that he’s cryptic as hell. nothing he says makes any fucking sense, but is treated as all-important because… he says it is. he’s gonna be relatively important through all of this, so we gotta keep peepaw around.
athair takes tails further into the comet and introduces him to some guys called the ancient walkers. you might think, “hey, are those just dinosaurs wearing masks?” and. yeah that’s exactly what they are
the ancient walkers are pagan dinosaurs that discovered the chaos emeralds and developed some sort of immortality and futuristic vision because of them. or. something like that
so what the hell does this have to do with tails? well, the ancient walkers speak of a prophecy: a chosen one who will realign the chaos emeralds for a “higher purpose,” and cause something called the great harmony.
we won’t be getting to THAT for a WHILE tho
after his adventure in downunda, the next important thing to cover is sonic, tails, and knuckles’ battle against a dude called mammoth mogul.
for simplicity’s sake, the main things you need to know about mogul is that:
he’s immortal and really old
he wants to take over the universe
he has a chaos emerald embedded in his chest
he’s ALSO going to be very important
i don't like him he’s really boring
at this point, mammoth mogul has stolen a bunch of power from another villain called enerjak (LONG story), and has used it to transform into his own sort of “super” form called master mogul.
mogul really wants to fight the sonic gang so he can use the three of them to take over the world, and this is what his vision of that looks like LMAO
sonic and knuckles go into their super and hyper forms respectively, but even the two of them can’t take down mogul. however, a mysterious caped hero shows up to help - TURBO TAILS.
turbo tails's design is in reference to the superhero tails was drawing at the beginning of his miniseries, captain fox-man. this is turbo tails' first official appearance, and he’s able to fight off mogul where BOTH super sonic and hyper knuckles couldn’t. kid’s strong.
once they defeat mogul, they trap his ass in the master emerald. however, note this all takes place before the comic’s adaptation of sonic adventure 1. and if you know SA1, you know that stuff inside the master emerald gets OUT of it eventually. and oh boy you’ll never guess who gets out of the emerald when eggman eventually destroys it
however, we’re not worrying about that right now. in the next bit we’re covering, tails is at SCHOOL! however, he’s lost his backpack and needs to find it. oh no!!!
but before he can find it -
athair teleports into the school, says tails is needed for something (but doesn’t say what), then teleports tails away.
BRO DIDN’T EVEN FIND HIS BACKPACK HE HAS GEOMETRY CLASS IN FIVE MINUTES
this specific teleportation will be really important later.
athair takes tails to angel island where he wants tails to… fight knuckles. i guess. currently, knuckles is stuck in a state called “chaos knuckles,” where he’s green, confused all the time, and really strong. homeboy’s going through it
before tails can really do a lot, he gets knocked out by some falling rubble, and ghost athair does nothing to help. have i mentioned that athair kinda sucks?
athair then takes tails to our favorite guy - tails’ uncle, merlin prower! merlin is a wizard and that’s all you need to know right now. athair wants merlin to wake up tails so he can go and fight knuckles, but merlin is FUCKING PISSED!! and reasonably so.
imagine. some oldass dude teleports into your house, hands your unconscious nephew to you, and then goes “hey can you fix him? i need him to fight the hulk.” like?? HE’S BUT A MERE LAD!
merlin is kinda right - tails has been dragged into echidna family drama for no reason other than athair seems to be out of ideas. and since tails' parents are gone, merlin's nephew is the only family he seems to have left.
unfortunately, merlin can’t find a way to argue with athair’s “we gotta do it for reasons i can’t explain” argument, and brings back our boy turbo tails.
however, turbo tails gets his ass kicked.
(side note: from here on out, turbo tails' cape is red. i don't know why that's just how it is)
when merlin goes back to his unconscious nephew (again), athair searches turbo tails’ mind to figure out why he got his ass kicked so bad. and the explanation is actually really simple!
this turbo tails is actually a duplicate of tails and the original tails is just. somewhere we don’t know.
so. yeah what the fuck
neither of them know how tails was duplicated or where this one came from. athair’s solution to this is just “let’s not tell anybody.” great job peepaw you really solved that one
after this, tails 2 just kinda keeps living his life without knowing he’s a duplicate of the original. however, he starts having nightmares about a weird, mysterious cave. when he and sonic eventually find this cave, they find the original turbo tails, trapped in a stasis.
and then, guess who shows up in the cave!! oh boy it’s everyone’s favorite character mammoth fucking mogul!!!!!
mogul explains the tails duplicate thing, and it’s actually really simple!
you know that one time athair teleported into tails’ school and kidnapped him while he was trying to find his backpack? yeah, so mogul basically kidnapped tails while he was being teleported, replaced him with a duplicate he created that was identical to the real tails, then placed the real turbo tails into stasis so he could harvest his power, thus regaining his original power before he was trapped in the master emerald.
do you see why i was dreading talking about turbo tails?
sonic fights mogul off, but tails 2 is kinda going through it. i don’t know how, but mogul made a duplicate that was near PERFECT, and tails 2 still has all of the original tails’ memories, emotions, and bonds. so when tails 2 disappears… it’s strangely tragic?
and then they just kinda move on lol
the original tails is released and returns to living his life, but unfortunately his life is kinda not so great at the moment. he just learned that his parents are alive on an alien planet (read THIS lore dump for more context), he’s part of this weird confusing prophecy he doesn’t understand, and he’s frustrated that he isn’t allowed to know about this great prophecy that directly affects HIS life.
and when tails confronts peepaw athair about this, athair does this.
good riddance
in the next issue, sonic and tails are visited by an alternate universe version of sonic called zonic, who serves as a sorta time cop that watches over the multiverse to make sure no one is messing with the space time continuum.
that’s obviously a bit to unpack, so here’s the main stuff you need to know:
the multiverse exists and is very important in archie sonic
all of the alternate universes and dimensions are called “zones”
the sonic and tails of the main story are called the “prime” versions, basically meaning they’re the true canon of the entire multiverse.
i don’t want to explain the existence of zonic rn. just know that he stands on things sideways
zonic is freaking out a little bit because someone’s in the process of destroying the entire multiverse, but he can’t figure out who. however, he heard about this weird “chosen one” prophecy thing, and he thinks that tails might be able to help.
while with zonic, tails and prime sonic realize that the person destroying the universe is our favorite guy mammoth fucking mogul, who collected enough power from the turbo tails he had in stasis and chaos knuckles (who he fought at a different time) to become all powerful enough to destroy the universe. plus, weird spacetime shenanigans are happening because knuckles died and was then resurrected (don’t ask), which kinda threw off the balance of the multiverse.
the prime bros and zonic are starting to run out of time, but zonic has a plan (sorta). see, he hoped that tails could help somehow, but he didn’t know WHICH tails across the multiverse would be the chosen one.
so he recruited ALL of them.
tails, knowing that he’s the chosen one and all that jazz, tries to fight the universe destroying god form mammoth mogul alone. this obviously does not work, so the rest of the tails and sonic come to his aid.
however, when sonic is injured in the fight, tails is convinced that he died. in his anger, he’s able to fulfill his destiny and converge with every single version of himself across the multiverse, becoming…
TITAN TAILS.
"YOU WILL NOT" is one of my favorite reaction images
titan tails might be one of the most powerful characters in all of sonic canon, as he’s able to defeat a universe-destroying mammoth mogul in a matter of seconds.
me when my energies are pulled away lol
with mammoth mogul defeated (again), titan tails uses his power to return the world back to the status quo and imprison mogul in yet another emerald.
so that’s the end of the prophecy, right? that’s all the chosen one jazz, and titan tails was a result of the great harmony?
well, no.
if you look back at that prophecy from the original tails miniseries, it never mentions anything about the multiverse. instead, it only mentions the chaos emeralds realigning for a higher purpose, brought about by the chosen one. so what’s all that about?
this brings us back to tommy turtle.
after the events of titan tails, an eggman AI named A.D.A.M. learns of the chosen one prophecy and the great harmony of chaos emeralds. A.D.A.M. has been working behind the scenes of a LOT of various plots as a figure named Anonymous, where he was working on a greater master plan to become an all powerful being. and man, that chosen one prophecy that speaks of realigning EVERY chaos emerald in the universe? that sounds promising.
i talked about A.D.A.M.’s plan a little more in my tommy turtle lore dump, but the basics of it is that he kidnaps both shadow and tails in order to use their super forms to cause the great harmony mentioned in the prophecy. through using super shadow’s chaos control, he can open up doorways through spacetime to summon them all. however, the emeralds won’t arrive unless he has the chosen one - turbo tails.
using both of them, A.D.A.M. summons every emerald in the universe, of which there are a LOT. in archie sonic, the chaos emerald lore is that each planet has a bunch of chaos emeralds, but only of one color. for example, the emeralds on mobius (sonic’s world) are all green, while the rest of the colors all originate from different alien planets.
so, with every emerald summoned, thus begins the great harmony and the end of the prophecy from the classic tails miniseries.
once super shadow and turbo tails are freed, they work together to finally complete the prophecy: realigning all of the chaos emeralds by placing them in the zone of silence, which is kinda like the distortion world of sonic lore. basically, they’re putting them in storage and out of reach because the writers didn't want to deal with a bajillion chaos emeralds anymore.
after the great harmony, the archie sonic chaos emeralds return to a form that are similar to that of the games - there are only seven, one of each color. thus ends the prophecy, the chosen one’s purpose, and the turbo tails lore.
and that's it! turbo tails never shows up in archie sonic again, and will likely never appear in any piece of sonic canon ever again. and really, there’s only one question i have after revisiting all of this again.
where the FUCK is tails’ backpack??????
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