The EXE Arc - Official Novelization

CHAPTER 1: "Crash's side"

How big is the multiverse? It's a big place with infinite possibilities within possibilities. Throughout the years, the multiverse has changed thanks to one hedgehog, that's right. Flame the Hedgehog. The fastest thing alive in his respectful world, he is known to be a hero to all people's eyes. Within his world, he has encountered many versions of himself, and with due time, Flame will always be there for us.

Outside of the megaverse, there are different worlds that are separate to the megaverse, these worlds are not known by most beings. One of the worlds is populated by unique people that calls themselves the Rascal. Once lived in peace by the Rascal Family, it has been attacked by many infamous villains through the years, much similar to Flame.

In 2017, one Flame clone was experimented on and turned out to be a success. The portal gate transported him to the world of the Rascals, or the Rascalverse. In the year 2021 in the Rascalverse, the city and town was attacked by a villain named Nine, and took over Rascalville and the other cities, capturing every rascal and making them into villains. There are survivors, and one of them is Flame. He was lucky that Flame wasn't at full strength at that time, he had a girlfriend in this world, a different one from previous incarnations. He wasn't alone however, he has a rival, like most Flames, they have Crash the Hedgehog. This Crash appears to be the same one who first met Earth-314 Flame back in the world of Gravity Falls where Godzilla and Hydra were duking it out.

When Flame was being chased by a bigger skull crawler, he managed to kill it, with a cost. 1 hour has passed, and Flame disappears. Crash looks for him, until he sees Flame being possessed by the all-powerful being: Exetior, or Flame.EXE for short. He escaped and left Crash behind, planning his revenge who dares to banish him into the void between those worlds, he can finally feel freedom and justice.

—

As Crash was hiding from one of the skull crawlers, he go on to his way to find the big three of the Rascals in his view: Faith, Star, and Bailee, he believes, with their help, they have a big chance to defeating Exetior. The buildings were very tall to begin with, but since Nine's attack, Nomu's started to invade the place along with skull crawlers.

Crash: Well great, this can't get any worse from here..

As soon as he said that, one small skull crawler hissed behind him. Unexpected from this, he rolls into a ball and spin attack the creature, knocking him to the wall; he runs off as the skull crawler chases after him in hunger. Crash needs to find a way to get away from the skull crawler, he stumbles upon a jeep, it was empty and possibly left there when Nine destroys the tower. As the creature gets close, he grabs the jeep and hits the crawler with it, knocking him to one of the houses, then throws it towards the creature.

Crash: That should do it for now. Now, if I were Flame, where would I be?

He keeps on running and running, he expects another skull crawler to come, however he doesn't see one. But instead, a Nomu ambushed him, luckily, he avoided the attack and saw this strange beast. The Nomu roars as it's ready to fight Crash, the ultimate lifeform detecting his power level based on his energy sensing, it was no big deal for him to shrug this off.

Crash: Hmph, if it's a fight you want, you'll get a fight!

He jumps up and throws multiple chaos spears towards Nomu, as he charges towards him with a punch, Nomu sees this and takes the hit, never affects him from that attack. He jumps back, the Nomu charges at him for a punch, he avoids it with his speed.

Crash: (Whoever the hell this creature is, my attacks were not affected by it. Whatever it is, it must have a weakness!)

Nomu grabs him by the leg and slams him to one of the houses, destroying it, as it jumps down to Crash. He wasn't there, he looked around and found Crash shrug off that attack, he was predicting what his movement and attack would be. Nomu barges in and throws in every punch at him, Crash just keeps dodging and analyzing its attack pattern thanks to his hedgehog biology.

Crash holds one of its punches and throws him off, he runs towards him and spins dashes Nomu's lower body, completely clean. It slices through like knife cuts butter clean, he thought the fight was over, however, despite that, he tries to move with it upper body, it can't regenerate back somehow.

Crash: How the hell are you able to move?

Nomu couldn't speak but only growled. Crash scoff, he notices two adult skull crawlers are coming close. He ran off somewhere in RascalVille, leaving the half Nomu to be eaten alive. He continues his search for finding the three girls, he must admit, this universe has a large town to be considered a town. It has been several hours since that time, in RascalVille, he continues his search of finding the three girls, he was pretty close, he managed to get away from the skull crawlers from his search.

Crash: Since those Skull Crawlers are out of the way, where the hell are they?

Earth-5 Crash sees them not too far from the distance, not too far but close where the buildings are with the others.

Crash: And I found them... I gotta speak to them quickly.

—

RV Flame was stuck in an endless void, he lost his battle against Exetior for the 101th time while stuck in this world. He was in his mind, the evil god trapped him while he possessed his physical body. He missed every Rascal family, but mainly his girlfriend: Faith, all he can do is hope for the others to get him free and stop Exetior.

Flame: Wherever you are... please be okay.