A/N: This prompt came from GodOfStorms. Thanks!
Disclaimer: Look at your bard, now back to me, now back to your bard, now back to me! Your bard is now Jigglypuff!
"Monsters!" he groans, and frantically pounds the controls of his walker. The nearest Egg Pawn catches a round with its chest and explodes obligingly, littering the floor with some of the most advanced circuitry mankind has to offer. He crushes it underfoot in his walker as he retreats; it is of no use to him.
The day had begun with fire, crisp and blue with heat, licking its way through his hanger doors and devouring his new prototype. Awake and bleary eyed after a long night in the workshop, he took a moment to regret what could have been before throwing himself into the last model, the 'old faithful'. It took seconds for it to transform from cumbersome transport to deadly battler, but by then the robots had already rushed into the hanger.
Firing his jets, he traces a wild, haphazard path through the air above the fray, wincing when a stray bullet ricochets from the polished sides of his mech. Taking no chances, he swings hard left, and is immediately glad of it; where one bullet had lead a volley follows, droning like a squad of hornets as they pass.
Cutting his engines, he drops like a stone, hoping beyond hope that no Egg Pawns greet him as he lands. One does, but crumples underneath one great steel foot; it wasn't quite quick enough. The smell of oil and gunpowder hangs heavy in the air. With the very tips of his whiskers he senses the approach of death, and hastens from the hangar with all due speed.
The doors to his living quarters are too small for his mech, so he takes a few precious seconds to fire at the walls. The concrete weakened, he braces himself and charges through. Although weakened, it was still reinforced; sparks fly from his mech as it pulls the wall through the doorway with it.
Ignoring his furniture (so far untouched by the conflagration or the flying bullets) he charges through the next door, his teeth rattling in their sockets from the impact. He can taste the iron in the air, now, and silently begs his mech for that last little push; it has lain unmaintained for far too long. As he clears his kitchen, the wall explodes towards him without warning, followed by the concussive boom of sonic weaponry. A chunk of debris (concrete? Plaster? Piping?) catches him on the scalp; his head immediately begins to feel slick and he pulls on his goggles, conscious of blood falling into his eyes and blinding him. Somewhere in the haze of destruction, he sees a flash of red and black; the adversary.
Making one final dash for life and freedom, he barrels through the final wall of his house and emerges into glorious, sweet air that quickly turns foul and brackish with the scent of smoke in his lungs. But he knows his enemy approaches from the side, and he has effectively outflanked him; if he keeps running, he'll get away to find help and safety elsewhere.
At the very edge of his vision, he sees a flash of blue arc under his mech from the left flank and then rise from the front; it moves too fast for him to even think of hitting, and flies so gracefully that he's not sure his aim would suffice anyway. In the split second it takes him to register it and ponder what it is (a new type of flying drone, perhaps?) he misses the tell-tale beep of a timed explosive about to detonate.
He is, therefore, more than a little surprised when the left leg of his mech explodes violently under him.
Bracing himself for secondary impact a quarter of a second too late, he crashes through the protective cockpit glass and tumbles to the floor. For a second he tries wildly to get to his feet and run, but his legs are wobbly from the surge of adrenaline, and the effort would be futile anyway; his adversary walks up to him casually, wearing his uniform of red and black and with his face still discernible under the layer of soot.
Looking back at his totalled mech, and ahead at an adversary that has thoroughly outplayed him, he feels the iron weight of defeat upon his shoulders.
"Well played," he says. "Well played, Tails."
Tails rubs the soot from his face and grins a little more bitterly than he used to. His greatcoat, long, red, and cut shabbily above the knee, is charred and smells bitterly of fuel. Like his scuffed black trousers, it's hard-wearing and durable, probably layered with teflon or perhaps something even more advanced to make it viable body armour. Anything heavier would disrupt flight, and anything lighter would be a waste of time.
"You knew it was coming eventually, Eggman," Tails says, almost sadly. "Nice work, Cream."
Silently moving into view, the rabbit smiles; she, too, has changed since Eggman last saw her. Taller, more confident, and dressed much the same way as Tails; clearly, whilst the fox's armour design has advanced, his fashion sense has not. The flash of blue curves down from the clouds and alights on her shoulder; Cheese, with all the latent power of a much-loved chao, looks at Eggman's mech with interest, quite aware of the damage done by the explosive it placed.
"You disappeared on us for a while there, you know. You should be proud. I almost thought you'd gone straight, until I saw that a suspicious amount of radioactive material had gone missing from nuclear facilities nearby. Nothing that'd be missed in any one place, but over a bunch of them and a couple of months? You were getting dangerous," Tails explains, and takes a grenade from the pocket of his coat. He tosses it easily into the seat of the Egg Walker, and the explosion almost blows Eggman's ears out.
"But why? Why you? Why not Sonic?" the Doctor asks, sadly.
"Because, Mr. Eggman. You reap what you sow. We fought you for eight whole years. Eight long years. That's more than half my life," Cream explains softly. Some part of her cannot forget that he is an injured old man, as well as a mad doctor.
"In the end, we were the ones you hurt the most. You stole all that time from us, Eggman. And you made us what we are now. After eight years of war, did you never realise that we were starting to get good at it? That it might come back to bite you?" Tails asks.
"But, Sonic! He was my rival. If anyone-"
"-deserves resolution less than you, Eggman, I haven't met them. We're not kids anymore, and we've stopped playing games," Tails finishes, and for the first time, Eggman notes the new deepness in his voice. "Like it or not, this- us, the coup, your defeat- is all your fault."
For the first time in a long time, Cream sees a grown man cry. And later, for the last time ever, she watches Eggman struggle in his new handcuffs as he's led into the GUN base for his final punishment.
A/N: Seeing as last chapter was a tutorial on how to write an endnote longer than the actual story it was attached to, I won't explain what I was going for here. All I'll say is that I purposefully kept the piece from having a 'true' sense of resolution, and that the theme of growth (or the lack thereof) was of some importance. Also, it kind've reads like a chapter in a 'bad future' style fanfic...oh well.
On a different note, I know that the Sonic fandom has (or used to) have a somewhat large deviantart following. If anyone with any skill in drawing would like to help me out and design a logo I can use for the picture on the audio recording videos, I'd really appreciate it!
Review Etiquette: If you have something to say about the story and a request/prompt, please leave both in a review. However, if you just have a prompt and aren't going to say anything about the story, please do not review. Instead, please PM me with it. I feel that it isn't fair to get reviews just for prompts or requests; reviews should be earned through either quality of work, or the willingness to improve quality of work, and it would be disrespectful to the other writers on this site to add unearned reviews to the story. Thanks for appreciating this!