The story thus far……

In 'Child Of Madness', Porker Lewis and Knuckles, whilst looting one of Robotnik's abandoned bases under the Emerald Hill Zone, accidentally stumbled across and re-activated a long-dormant android monstrosity known as Cryax, a hitherto unknown creation of Doctor Robotnik's and, apparently, the intended successor to Robotnik's legacy as dictator of Mobius.. The robot soon proved itself to be exceptionally strong, brutally overpowering both Knuckles and later Sonic in hand-to-hand combat and coming extremely close to killing both of them, during which times he also revealed himself to be possessed of unusual traits for a supposedly lifeless machine, including a liking for poetry and a savage, macabre sense of humour. By cooperating as a unit with Tails, the heroes eventually managed to wear the psychotic machine down, with Cryax himself apparently being weakened by a degenerating mental condition and an onset of primal, animalistic rage. By the time Amy Rose arrived on the scene to aid the fighters, Cryax was himself badly wounded, and knew he needed to retreat. Escaping a last minute ditch effort by Sonic to end the fight, Cryax used the energy blasters on his wrists to collapse the cave roof and escape.

While regrouping at the Emerald Hill Control Centre, Sonic and his team learned that Cryax is powered by experimental nano-technology, microscopic robots riddling his structure that repair battle damage, record data on enemy fighting tactics and augment his strength, speed and endurance to their impossible levels. Tails theorized that, with so many individual minds evolving all over his body, Cryax might soon become paralysed by his own body, or some other unforeseen event may occur. In any case, the Freedom Fighters realised they had a new enemy on their hands, and got to work immediately searching for the fugitive. Knuckles also began intensive combat training in preparation for his next foray against Cryax, and advised a flippant Sonic to do the same. Meanwhile, Cryax eventually lost the battle for his sanity while in hiding underground, and unable to hold his conflicting mind and body together he eventually went mad. He now adopted a new, clear-cut purpose. Namely, the elimination of all life on Planet Mobius and beyond….

Now read on…..

Old Toys

The specimen on the operating table, insofar as was possible for something that had never technically been alive, was most definitely dead.

It glared up from its rigid position under the operating lights through lenses of deadened emerald, covered in a film of dust, scratches and fingerprints. The metal of its skin was cracked and rusting, heavily pitted with furrows and dents along the ridge of its distinctive, spiked skull. Its muzzle bore no opening for a mouth, just a series of screws and bolts that locked its face into place against a robotic skeleton. And this long forgotten freak of engineering was currently being subjected to the gaze of both an eagerly expectant two-tailed fox and a thoroughly unimpressed blue hedgehog.

"So, I'm meant to be jumping for joy right about now, is that it?"

Tails groaned inwardly; he had guessed that Sonic would not be thrilled to come face to face with his new science project.

"I admit, it isn't exactly friendly…"

"Tell me about it….."

Sonic examined the disused badnik on Tails' workbench along the bridge of his nose, practically radiating distaste. The creature he was currently giving a good deal of his attention to was something just out of the shallow minnow pool where most of Robotnik's spent terrors were content to wallow, a fraction of a degree more powerful than the Spin-Attack fodder that he had spent his heroic career dispatching, and even then it had not been much of a challenge. But it was the intervening years since that first meeting, and the near apocalyptic events that accompanied it, were what sent spears of cold disgust driving into his bowels.

The Silver Sonic. Robitnik's first attempt at creating a robotic replica of his arch-nemesis, a machine that could compete on equal terms with the faster-than-sound hedgehog. When Sonic had first encountered it, it had been the guardian of the Death Egg, but it had been no obstacle to Sonic at that stage. It had been slow, clumsy and heavily built, the polar opposite of the lightning-quick opponent it was trying to bring down. Silver Sonic, at least the Mk I, had been a miserable failure on Robotnik's part, but it hadn't stopped him pursuing the design. Silver himself had been rebuilt at a much later date, and once again the Mk II, the model which Sonic now recognised as the specimen before him, had been set the task of defending the Death Egg II from the combined assault of Sonic and Knuckles on the Floating Island. It had put up a much tougher fight at that stage, but in the end it had still been no match for the power of Super Sonic. No, Silver wasn't what bothered Sonic. Silver had spawned a cousin in the long line of badniks, a deadly relative in the legacy of Sonic replicas. Metallix, the Metal Sonic. That demonic creature had been far more dangerous than Silver had ever been; from that initial duel to the death on the Miracle Planet, right up to the rise of the Brotherhood, and the events that had led to Sonic brawling for his life, hopping between timelines, against an army of sociopathic robotic clones as he attempted to break their grip on Mobius. Even in the triumphant moment he had finally brought the Alpha Device down and seen greenery and life creep back once more into dominance of their hideously crafted base of operations, the ordeal had been far from over. Images still flashed backwards and forwards across his fervent dreams of a second incarnation of the armoured titan, in the shape of Knuckles, hammering him effortlessly into submission in the heat of a Drakon battle arena.

To have this world-defeating, recurring nightmare suddenly launched back to the surface in the form of this lifeless hulk was, to say the least, a jarring experience. And Sonic wasn't about to take it lying down.

"So remind me again," he persisted, rounding on Tails, "why exactly do we continue to crawl through Robotnik's rubbish just for the sake of finding you something to tinker with?"

Tails frowned and straightened a pair of safety goggles recently strapped to his head.

"Sonic, why do you always assume that something will go horribly wrong whenever we start dealing with machines? How do you know that the reverse engineering project I have planned for this guy isn't going to be a complete success?"

"Experience tells me otherwise," Sonic drawled, "besides which I really don't see what an old Silver Sonic is going to be able to do to help us. I licked that pile of scrap no problem the last time we fought, so if you're looking for something to use against Cryax…"

"As a matter of fact, this guy may just be the solution we're looking for," Tails proclaimed, slapping the metal head of the prone robot with vigour, "I mean, with some minor adjustments I might just be able to re-program it to fight on our side, maybe even start mass-producing it. Who knows, in a couple of months these things might even replace policemen…"

Sonic shook his head, pivoting on one heel. His part in this exchange was over.

"Somehow Tails, the idea of an army of Robotnik's old toys trooping about all over Mobius doesn't really do wonders for my sense of optimism. Call me crazy, but perhaps spending half your life smacking the living daylights out of these creeps does that to you. Now, I need some air…."

Tails watched Sonic go with a familiar pang of frustration, making him unconsciously narrow his eyes and clench his fists. For all the great qualities Sonic had as a mentor, and for all the times they had fought together, Sonic could still be one of the most persistent annoyances in Tails' life. On rare occasions, it seemed that everything about him was something that made Tails angry; his condescension, his dismissivness, his arrogance…. Or was all of this simply Sonic's safeguard? Did he harbour some kind of natural distrust of Robotnik's creations, whoever was helming them? Was all of his apparent loathing of Tails' new subject, the Silver Sonic, just one facet of his hatred for all of Robotnik's legacy? Tails allowed himself to relax, and fastened the goggles around his head into a tighter position. He reached out for the welding torch to his left and focussed on the machine's chest piece, the doorway into its inner workings. He could only gain Sonic's approval, he realised, if Sonic could see that the machine was harmless. And it would only be harmless once Tails had finished with it….

As Sonic traipsed back down the corridors, the yearning for fresh air stealing back over him, he turned his glance once again on the storeroom. It was on this route, he remembered, that he had encountered Knuckles and his outrageous training regime. He smiled wryly at the memory of Knuckles tearing his body to pieces under his mind's ruthless tuition, of him vainly swapping blows with empty air…. He wondered as he neared the room if Knuckles had kept up with the schedule he had set himself. It would certainly help his cause, the near-militaristic patrol of sniggers and sneers, if Knuckles would persist in giving him such ample ammunition. With this in mind, he approached the storeroom door and stretched out one hand to the touch-pad that would open it….

Sonic froze briefly as an unfamiliar sound rang across the busy silence of the Control Tower. The sound of Knuckles' furious sparring was still there; the thin, razor-edged whine of his fists tearing the air apart, and the brisk series of grunts and gasps as he pushed his body closer and closer to breaking point. But now the rising crescendo of violence had an undercurrent. An accompaniment. Sonic listened more closely, setting his ears to the cold metal. Against the background of Knuckles' loudening cries, he could hear his blows rebounding and striking occasionally as they swept through the air. They were hitting flesh, landing against an organic opponent. So he wasn't fighting against a ghost this time. And as he listened more, Sonic could make out the patter of a second set of footsteps, lighter and quicker than Knuckles' stony tread. Quicker, higher breaths ran concurrent with the echidna's guttural roars. The emerging voice of this enemy, he also had to admit, sounded distinctly…. Feminine?

Deciding to confirm his suspicions, Sonic leant against the pad and let the doors sweep aside. The space inside the room leapt out at him with a spatial aggression, swimming and blurring with almighty speed before his eyes. But Sonic's eyes were used to following things that moved at speed. Separating out the whirl of colour and sound that the match had become, he instantly recognised Knuckles, lunging forward with a straight-arm barge, teeth bared like a hunting predator, eyes blazing with bloodlust. Dodging the strike, white cotton T-shirt billowing in the wind of her own passage, was Amy.

That in itself, the sight of two of his best friends apparently at each others' throats, was enough to stall Sonic for a moment. What happened next pretty much put the nail in the coffin, as Amy flipped nimbly over Knuckles' shoulder, escaping the sweep of his foot on the counter-strike, and buried her heel in his collarbone. The echidna howled and flew to the floor, his face a mask of agony as he clutched at the spot where Amy's trainer had struck. It was enough to loosen Sonic's tongue at last, to see Amy poised over her sparring partner for the next blow.

"Having fun kids?"

Knuckles craned his neck to grimace in Sonic's direction.

"Never better, as it happens."

"Good. Hate to think you were busting your bodies up in here and not enjoying yourselves."

Amy smiled wryly and shook her head.

"It's better than you might imagine Sonic," she said, gently massaging her shoulders and upper-body as she spoke, "it really gets the blood flowing."

"Yeah, looks pretty invigorating," Sonic drawled, "just a shame poor Knux here can't seem to get a punch in edgeways."

By now, Knuckles had picked himself back to his feet, and shot a venomous glance at his smirking rival.

"You saying something about my technique?"

Sonic couldn't help but chuckle.

"Knuckles, this is getting ridiculous. I mean, maybe if it was me fighting you then we'd expect you to lose, but Amy? Man, you need this practice more than I thought!"

Now it was Amy's turn to look daggers. Warmth gradually crept out of her face as she settled a fighter's gaze on Sonic, both fists clenching as she ran her fingers over the bruises on her knuckles.

"You don't think I can fight Sonic? Is that what you're saying?"

Aware that he might have let his tongue run away with him, Sonic tried to keep up his shield of bravado.

"Well, no offence intended Amy. I know you're a crack-shot with that crossbow…."

"… but one-on-one I don't stand a chance, right?"

Momentarily stalled by the rising coldness in Amy's voice, Sonic's smile faded. Knuckles allowed himself the pleasure of one of his fang-toothed grins.

"I think you might be giving Amy too little credit Sonic. I've been sparring with her for the last hour straight, and she isn't to be taken lightly."

"An hour?" Sonic scoffed, "I can make laps of the whole planet without breaking a sweat. Still, I'm surprised you managed that much Knuckles. Congratulations, maybe you'll actually be ready to go toe-to-toe with me someday."

"I don't know about Knuckles," Amy cut in, the poison in her voice tangible, "but I reckon I could give you a run for your money. What do you say Sonic; you could handle little-old-me in a bit of hand to hand, right?"

Sonic raised his eyebrow as he watched Amy settle into a combat stance, her muscles stiffening under her skin.

"You serious?"

Amy smiled back, sensing the tremble in Sonic's armour.

"You scared?"

That settled it for Sonic; an assault on his pride was not something that would go unpunished. But still, he reminded himself, it is only Amy. How hard can it be? He relaxed his own muscles and focussed, energy pulsing back to life in his body.

"Alright, you win. Let's dance."

"Amen. I promise I won't be too hard on you."

Sonic shot off another cocky smile as Amy began to stalk around him. This was going to be a short fight, he knew that. Amy's manner, her sheer seriousness, unnerved him slightly, but he knew his own strength. Meanwhile, Knuckles settled back against a wall and relaxed, trying to keep his guffaws of mirth to himself. Sonic really had no idea what fury he had let himself in for. But it would do the arrogant little runt some spiritual good to find out. Knuckles almost felt sorry for his long-time ally as he swooped in for the opening punch.

Almost, but not quite.