The Power Rings

Above: Sonic springs towards a Power Ring in the deadly Red Mountain Zone, from Sonic Adventure.

The Power Rings are the counterpart to the Chaos Emeralds--the second magical source of power that is so plentiful and important to Mobius--and so very mysterious. Chaos Emeralds and Power Rings are linked; one cannot work without the other, and you often find them in the same place. Such as in the Special Stages in Sonic 2 and Sonic 3-D Blast, to name just a couple--the number of rings you pick up directly affects whether or not you get an Emerald. And in the Special Stages in Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles, rings are a side-effect of your effort to get an Emerald. Also, when you DO have all the Emeralds, what does it take to actually activate your new-found powers? That's right, boys and girls--rings! 50 of them. Without that many rings, you can't go Super or Hyper--and when the rings run out, you turn back to normal again.
So what exactly ARE Power Rings, what do they do, and where do you find them?
Well, I'm going to just skip over the cartoon/comic book/fanfic explanations of where they can be found and just go with the games here: They are just...everywhere. Hanging in the air, turning around. Over grass, stone, ice, lava, trees, sky, clouds, metal, and more. Inside and outside. On a curve. On the ground. In the air. Upside down. Floating in the middle of nothing. Sliding on the ice.
WHEREVER--they're all over the place. And when you die, they all replace themselves on that level.
What do they do? Well, besides the above thing of activating Super or Hyper powers--which is a special case, not everyday--they prevent you from dying as long as you have at least one. Oh, you can still fall off a cliff, be crushed, or drown--but as long as you have at least one Ring, you cannot be killed by enemies, energy weapons, fire, lava, or other things of that nature. Things that HURT you but don't just wipe you right off the screen in one fell swoop--that kind of stuff. What happens is, if you get hit while you're carying rings--even just one--you loose the rings instead of getting killed. Then you have a few seconds to pick them up before they disappear into the ether. You NEVER get them ALL back, however, not unless you ony had like 2 or 3, because they go everywhere in random directions and move rather fast, and disappear even faster. Oh, and often if you get 50 of them in the Special Stage you get a continue; and 100 in the "real world" ALWAYS equals a new life, as far as I know.
That's the game terms--what about the fanfic stuff? First of all, where do they COME from? Well, I have NO idea. I don't hold with that "Ringpool" thing from the cartoons. Frankly, I think they are because they just...ARE! Maybe the Emeralds are powering a special machine hidden underground that cranks out rings by the dozen every single second and SOMEHOW also manages to teleport them to every single location all over the world, including to the Floating Island, undergound, and in outer space! But there are other problems besides this, such as: Where does Sonic CARRY 156 rings or more at one time? (If you NEVER loose any of them and just keep playing straight through you can have insanely huge numbers of rings at one time.) Especially considering that he's mostly NAKED and doesn't even have any pockets! Well, I've got some thoughts for this:
The rings are normally about as big as the average Mobian's head when they're hanging in the air, but when they are taken, they shrink down to fit the person's body. Maybe they even go invisible! But they're still there, and they go back to their normal size when the person is hit (and therefore looses their rings.)
Um...interdimensional invisible Pockets of Holding? I dunno...this is, frankly, one of the aspects of the game world that makes the least sense to me. I mean, sure, the Rings are useful, but I just don't GET them. And how would you write a fanfic that was even VAGUELY like the actual game world--you'd have your characters tripping over, sitting on, and banging their heads against rings at every turn if you did THAT! 'Cos they're everywhere, absolutely everywhere. So obviously you have to change the way, time, place, and reason that they appear.
But since I don't know the ORIGINAL answers to any of that stuff, how do I change it...?
So in my story, I'm just sorta dodging the bullet entirely. People are carrying a few Rings in their backpacks that they saved from their latest adventure...and I don't even go NEAR how they got the rings in the first place...



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curious tourists have wanted to read about the Power Rings since June 11, 1999. Of course, most of them made the mistake of traispsing off into the wilderness without ANY Rings...and they have all met with horribly bloody fates...