Sonic sat on one of Tails' incredibly comfortable lounge chairs in his living room, tearing through chilidogs like Robotnik's machines. Being best friends with a genius did have its perks; namely, enough funds to purchase an unlimited supply of chilidogs. When they said "unlimited", they meant unlimited. On a holder next to the chair he had a soda, which he was sipping from time to time in between monstrous bites. The phrase "chilidogs were his favorite food" was an understatement. They weren't his favorite… They were his life.
Tails, meanwhile, was currently hard at work on a new invention. The kitsune was always working, even when he wasn't! If he wasn't tinkering with some machinery, he was drawing detailed blueprints in 3-D in that big brain of his. Even when he was sleeping he had a thought recorder next to his bed to record his dreams. At that rate, the Tornado series of airplanes were built faster than an assembly line could even dream of assembling them. A Chaos Emerald glinted on the floor next to Tails, as he used it to power his inventions. Seemingly random charges pulsed from the intricate gemstone at irregular intervals, almost like a heartbeat. By attuning small negative and positive ion transformers near the outside of the gem, he could make an electrical current rush through the system. Batteries charged within minutes. Seemingly endless energy: an inventor's dream.
So here he was, building the latest of a new line of hover boards. Sonic could be heard munching on chilidogs in the background. In his head, music was playing gently, a soothing balm to his fast paced inventing mind. All of a sudden, Sonic's wrist communicator began to buzz, almost like an alarm on a digital wristwatch. Tails dashed over to him, spinning his namesakes to give him an extra burst. By the time Sonic had set down the platter of dogs and pressed the "Receive" button, Tails was right there next to him.
"Sonic. Get Tails and get over to Eggman's base. I got a job for ya." Rouge's silken tones purred through the digital sound system he had implanted into the device. A 3-D cyber rendition of Rouge's frame appeared in the space above the watch-like mechanism. She had her arms crossed, as if she were giving an order that she expected them to follow. Sonic, having been expertly trained on using the communicator, immediately locked onto the coordinates of the transmission. Rouge was currently in GUN headquarters, which meant that the orders came from higher up. With Eggman… that didn't bode well.
"Alright. Meet ya there, batgirl. Don't be late." Sonic replied, his voice switching on the microphone within the system. Rouge chuckled and hung up the line. The nerve! She didn't even give them specific to-the-minute coordinates! Why did he build all of these electronics if no one would ever use them?! Next to him, Sonic shrugged it off, powering down the digital display. Naturally, he was already ready to go. Becoming a blue streak of light within seconds, he nimbly returned the platter of dogs to the fridge, saving them for later. His soda was also returned in swift order. Before Tails could even register that he had moved at all, Sonic had taken out the tiny vacuum and cleaned up after himself. Originally, Sonic had been a slob, but Tails had been very explicit that Sonic had to be cleaner if he wanted access to chilidogs. And just like that, his living room became ten times cleaner. Snapping out of it, he noticed that Sonic was leaning against the wall near the doorway, waiting for Tails to grab his gear.
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Nodding, Tails walked over and grabbed his prototype hover board. The Cyclone II: a board containing Chaos powered turbo thrusters, heat seeking RPGs, and various other types of equipment. As a bonus, Tails had made the electronics so versatile on the communicators that he could control the thing simply by manipulating the rectangular touch pad on the display. Tails kicked the board into the air, watching it suspend itself mid-fall, waiting for its rider. Spinning his namesakes, he rose, landing onto the board while planting his feet firmly as if it were any old skateboard off the street. At first, he was a bit wobbly, but his namesakes helped to prevent him from toppling over. Soon he was zooming past Sonic out in the Mystic Ruins, on the way to Eggman's base. Sonic, the cobalt blur, was right behind him. Together, they raced through the thick jungle out into the wilderness beyond.
Eggman's fortress was surprisingly inconspicuous… Not. A big egg-shaped dome surrounded by three sets of walls topped with barbed wire, badniks and egg-bots patrolling the perimeter of each zone, and spotlights shining up the place completely. Eggman's face was imprinted upon the egg-dome, as if to say "If you weren't sure whether it was me or not, this should help you out a bit." Sonic and Tails soon reached the outer perimeter of the base, sheltered in the tree line, and waited for Rouge to arrive. It was obvious considering their super-sonic speeds that they would beat her, so they occupied themselves with scanning the defense systems.
Eggman had taken no chances, it seemed. Around the platform that the egg-dome sat on, several circular indents were quite plainly obvious to them. They had seen these before, hedgehog seeking rocket turrets that would rise out of the metalwork to harass Sonic as he ran. Sonic shouldn't have any problem avoiding them though, and Tails could easily shoot out flares if one decided to go after him. Flares were tiny rockets that fanned out to envelop and destroy incoming rockets. Tails dubbed them "flares" because of their distinctive red tail jets.
Atop the towers, spaced evenly apart across the walls, lay gun turrets, and not those ordinary GUN issue ones either: these looked to be much more powerful. Tails estimated that they could shoot anti-personnel rounds specifically designed for fleshy targets faster than Sonic could run. But… Sonic could run faster than they could aim. Tails, providing that he could dodge the incoming hailstorm of bullets, could probably take them out with a well placed RPG as well. The golden kitsune would be busy, but he wouldn't have it any other way.
A different complication arose as Tails spotted the tiny bunkers on the ground, sunk into the zones between the outer walls. Tails immediately recognized them as flame turrets. These bad boys could fire napalm and flame quite quickly in all directions. If Sonic could avoid the flame, he might be able to destroy most of them… provided of course that he didn't get charred to a crisp in the process.
What Eggman ensemble wouldn't be complete with fricken laser beams? Honestly, what would the world have come to if you couldn't have fricken LASER beams on top of your structures? Eggman had taken this philosophy to heart, it seemed, and had nearly coated the outside of the egg-dome with laser turrets. And not just any laser turrets. These ones used the new plasma models currently being tested in GUN laboratories. A superheated beam of highly concentrated infrared rays shot out from these death dealers, slicing clean through anything that happened to be in their path. The infrared was so hot, the energy sped up fast enough to be shown in the visible light range, specifically in the red color…
Tails nearly did a double take as GUN choppers began to encircle the compound. No alarms? No bots attacking there? The GUN just up and walked right in without a hitch? No. It couldn't be that simple. And indeed it wasn't. Eggman had apparently gotten about four models of GUN helicopters and used them for his own purposes. Luckily, blueprints were readily available through Tails' hacking tools within his communicator. Within seconds, weak spots were already visible to his locking mechanisms within his board. Easy targets.
Finally, Rouge arrived, landing nearly silently on the dirt ground next to them. She was panting slightly from the long flight, but it didn't seem to matter to her. Her communicator hadn't turned off yet, for some odd reason that made no sense to Tails, and she was opening her mouth to begin to explain the situation. The kitsune turned to face her, terminating his survey of the defensive system.
"Alright, you two. The situation is pretty straightforward. We received an unusual radar signal from within the base. Your job is to analyze, and if possible, destroy any threat it may pose. Any questions?" Rouge spat it all out quickly, almost in a hurry to finish the job and get the hell out of there. As usual, Tails took the opportunity to ask the questions. In the absence of anyone else who would ask them, he got stuck with the pleasure.
"Question one: Why is your communicator still on? Don't you know how to turn it off? Question two: What are you going to be doing? Question 3: What exactly did this damn signal have in it that makes you guys so afraid?" Tails listed them off on his fingers. In any other circumstance, Tails would be receiving the blunt and heavy end of a steel toed boot to his face, followed up by a quick punt to his nuts. But his skills were needed right now, and he currently had a treaty with every country on Mobius, GUN, all of his friends, and the ARK, not to hurt him in any way shape or form until Eggman was taken down; so he was allowed to be a complete ass.
"I'll ignore that for now. But mind that you don't get on my bad side too much… There are other ways to inflict pain than boots." Rouge warned, and Tails got a sense of dread, as if this indeed was not an idle threat. With Tails suitably terrorized, Rouge now felt it necessary to answer his questions.
"One: Do you expect me to know how to use your damn communicator if you don't provide a manual at least?! Two: I'm going to be back here, keeping intelligence fed to you and watching your backs. Three: Possible residual Chaos energy, and other unknown radiant electromagnetic waves in the cosmic spectrum." Rouge, too, listed them off on her fingers. Tails face palmed himself as he heard the first one. Why did he have to be stuck with people who don't have any experience with technology? One of these days, he was going to make a toaster with a built in calculator, calendar, tranquilizer dart shooter, alarm clock, and GPS navigation system, place them all inside the unit, and sell it commercially without telling ANYONE that there was so much shit inside of it. And the toast it made was probably good for something too…
Tails nodded at the second one, as it made sense for her to stay behind. If there was something that he had missed, it would be quite useful to know if there was a Tails-seeking missile coming at him from behind. Plus, GUN probably didn't want to lose their best agent to a mere scouting mission. At the third one, Tails gulped audibly. The scientists back at GUN laboratories had only just begun to find these rays, much less understand them; although Tails already knew a lot about them. Stars emit energy at least partially in all wavelengths. The wavelength of cosmic rays was so short, the ARK had to be triple reinforced with the strongest stuff Mobius had to offer. And even still the plates had to be changed every month or so. Eventually they came up with a magnetic system to repel the waves, much like Mobius' atmosphere did. However, it was only shortly thereafter that the ARK incident occurred, and maintenance no longer paid attention to the colony.
Tails nodded, hopping onto his board again. Tapping out a set of code into his communicator, a digital keyboard appeared composed of neon blue shimmering cord. It was completely insubstantial, but the communicator could read the keystrokes through the air. The golden kitsune had long since mastered the art of using both the top and bottom of the keyboard to type, flipping the watch-like device over so it was face up on the bottom of his wrist. This way, he could easily maneuver and control the board. Next to him, Sonic finished his little nap, finally getting up with a yawn and stretching. If he wasn't running, he was napping, and he was sometimes napping while he was running too. If he couldn't run, he would either nap or eat chilidogs; whichever opportunity presented itself first.
"'Kay, Sonic. Head for the springs, bounce over the walls, home in on those flame turrets. I'm covering you, so watch out for the missiles, bullets, and lasers." Tails listed off, typing in short commands on his cybernetic keyboard. At once, the hover board flared into life, and the duo took off toward the base.
"Watch out for the helicopters. Aim for their tails." Rouge's voice cut in through his communicator, prompting Tails to roll his eyes. As if he hadn't already known that… but he had decided not to be a little asshole anymore. Rouge's payback was not something he wanted to experience. Rule number one of society: Never fuck with a female bat that has steel toed boots on and stealth to match a ninja. Below, Sonic turned off to the right at an angle, heading towards a group of robots in an adjacent zone. Tails didn't notice as he was busy homing in on one of the helicopters.
And then the Chaos began. Tails charged right at one of the copters, letting loose a steady stream of Vulcan cannon shots from the front of the board. A few improvised commands allowed him to flip to the side to avoid the flaming debris created by the destroyed copter. Spinning around, he sped down toward one of the machine turrets, currently aimed at Sonic.
Speaking of which, Sonic had quickly dashed through the squad of badniks while Tails was preoccupied above. Leaping into the air, he used consecutive Homing attacks to obliterate one after another. Their mangled parts littered the ground as Sonic finished, standing alone amongst the wreckage. Other squads converged upon his position, but by the time they got close enough to fire he was long gone, dashing around from platform to platform. Eggman had apparently forgotten to take out the springs, so Sonic was allowed to jump easily over the wall and into the next zone.
Tails, in the interim, was gunning straight for the missile turret who had apparently just noticed him. Before even a single shot was fired, Tails had zoomed straight past the guy, knocking him off the tower with an outstretched arm. That's right: Tails just side-clothesline-d a guy in mid-flight. Who's the badass now? The kitsune made a sharp turn, his body almost parallel to the ground as he stopped his death charge. The laser turrets began to open fire, and the machine gun turrets began to see the bigger threat. Of course, that was the point: If everyone thought Tails was more dangerous, Sonic could easily take care of the flamethrowers. Now… how to get out alive…?
"Do a barrel roll! Press A to shoot!" Rouge added in through the communicator, not without a bit of sarcastic humor. Tails had no clue what she was talking about, probably some videogame involving a fox flying around space with big laser cannons or something. That wasn't the point. The point was that Tails was actually using the advice… sort of. Flipping to the left and right, he was able to avoid the more lethal lasers. Hedgehog seeking cannons began to rise out of the platforms around the base, forcing the kitsune to type in a long command string to his board. Within seconds, a hundred tiny sticks broke off from the underside, and shot out towards the cannons. Without even looking to see the results, Tails switched his target over to a helicopter that had begun to make its presence known. The craft had already begun to fire, and Tails had been too slow to react. A tiny chunk of metal dropped off from the board as it was hit by at least a dozen tiny pellets fired from the pathetic machine guns mounted to the helicopter. Baring his teeth, he unleashed hell upon the helicopter, commanding a laser cannon to telescope out of the front of the board (defying the laws of physics YET AGAIN…) and aim directly at the craft. A beam the size of a telephone pole tore through the front of the copter and burst out the back like the hull was made of no more than tissue paper. Tails grinned psychopathically as his deadly machine went into action.
Sonic below was having a bit of trouble negotiating with the flamethrowers. They had long since figured out that they weren't going to get anywhere by aiming at him, so they just went in random directions now, hoping to get him. Sonic was forced to time his attacks perfectly in order to destroy one in time, before a scorching blast came rocketing toward him. And of course, the first couple times he nearly got singed, due to his horrible timing. By now, his arm fur was completely burned off, one of his legs was smoking, and he was pretty sure his backside wasn't faring too well either. But more than half of the turrets had already gone down due to his tenacious assault, and more were on the way as Sonic leapt up from the ruins of yet another broken down hunk of junk and assaulted the next flamethrower. The man operating it tried to turn it Sonic's way fast enough, but he met the fate of all of the other flame jockeys that had tried to hit Sonic the Hedgehog: the man was crushed beneath the weight of his own weapon. Sonic dropped out of his position spinning in the air, careful to land on metal and not get de-balled on a sharp flange of shrapnel sticking out somewhere. Looking up, he could see the fantastic light show display coming from Tails' new laser cannon. Reminding himself never to piss off his little bro, he leapt into the air again, and was off to break some more of Eggman's crap.
Up in the air, Tails was now dodging a combined assault of lasers, missiles, cannon fire, bullets, and helicopters, trying to shoot the latter down without getting blown to bits. Down below, Sonic was having the time of his life destroying the flame turrets, while Tails was stuck between fiery hammers and tiny, painful anvils. But that didn't stop Tails from being a stupendous badass. Nope. Tails kicked off from his board, allowing himself to fall headfirst toward the ground at more than a mile a minute while his board struggled to catch up. A few more commands into his communicator caused the board to spin as it fell through the air, making a beeline to Tails as he fell. Miniature Vulcan blasts shot out of his machine, completely destroying a good amount of missiles and bullets in the process. Spinning his namesakes, he controlled the fall so he could drop right back down onto the board as if he had just jumped off a swing set in mid-swing. Not painful at all. By now, he had fallen below the helicopters, which were both right in front of him, facing him, and trying to aim their weapons at him. Another quick command into his communicator ensured that the helicopters' last moments were to be a fiery hell. In keeping with his stupendous badass-ness, he didn't even watch as they exploded in a fantastic fireworks display, already locking on to a couple more gun turrets who were trying to turn him into swiss cheese.
Down below, Sonic had just finished making a complete mess of the last flame turret, standing on the fringe of an apocalypse of machinery. The ground-to-hedgehog missiles were just beginning to fire up it seemed, and Eggman was beginning to focus more on him with his lasers now. Perfect. His form became a blur as he swiftly sidestepped a powerful laser attack from one of the turrets above. Missiles poured over the walls as they took off from the inner cloister. Grinning from ear to ear Sonic leapt, light as a feather, from one missile to the next as they made a sort of bridge for him to walk on. It did not take long for him to reach the inner ring at this pace. The missiles were all reversing on themselves now, trying to follow him as he zoomed past. Most collided with each other, enveloping each other in huge explosions. Honestly, was Egg-head trying to make this easy for him? Tails didn't even have to bother helping him destroy these. Almost contemptuously, Sonic dashed from one launcher to the next, jumping up only to come slamming down upon the assembly and dash away as it exploded in a shower of sparks. Not even the scrap metal he left behind was going to be good for anything in the state he left it in. Within minutes, the only menace left to face was the badniks, machine turrets, and laser beams. Sonic was about to leave the task to Tails when his voice came through on his communicator.
"You're inside, right? I'm not having too much fun up here, Sonic! I just located a self destruct mechanism for his security. It's located next to the front door. Eggman got stupid again, so just use it!" Machine gun fire nearly made the message unintelligible, but he was able to understand the gist of it. Eggman was stupid enough to create a self destruct button and place it on the outside… again… Sure enough, as he raced around the dome, right next to the front door there was a capsule with a button on top just begging him to jump on it. And so he did. And so the entire security system shut down, the robots exploded, the turrets cooled down, and the laser cannons returned to their homes on the interior of the dome. Tails dropped out of the air like an eagle swooping down to attack its prey. At the last minute he pulled back up, stopping with less than five feet to go before he slammed into the ground. Not bad for his first time on the board. He looked bad, his board having been pierced in more than one spot by bullets. No matter how hard the fox tried to conceal it, he was breathing heavily too. But he waved off Sonic's concerned look before it even formed.
"Let's just get in there, Sonic. Bios: negotiate us an entrance." Tails said the last command to his communicator. BIOS stood for Basic Input-Output System, conspicuously named after the latin root meaning life. The BIOS was what made computers… well, computers. Without it, it would just be a dull bucket of circuits. Tails had just ended up calling it what it was, and letting it do the rest. The laser cannon reappeared on the front of his board, and at Tails' command, blasted a hedgehog-sized hole right through the titanium plated door.
"Shall we?" Tails gestured in towards the door, and Sonic nodded back.
"We shall." And together they entered the abyss that was Eggman's fortress.
