Untamed (by RAWN)

Chapter 2: Discovery

Emerald eyes quickly darted across the room, desperately looking for a suitable hiding place.

Stoop down under the bed? Too low!

Jump back up into the vent? Not without making a lot of noise!

Run out the door leading to the hallway? Only if he wanted to risk triggering every alarm in the entire fortress!

"Guess that leaves me with the wardrobe," Sonic mentally scoffed, feeling like this situation suddenly reminded a little bit too much of Narnia, but unless he didn`t

act soon; his little 'sneak in and break anything that looks important and hightail out of there'-mission, would be falling apart before he even got to figure out what

the doctor`s big plan was. And this would all have been a complete waste of time. Not to mention the slight possibility of him having serious trouble getting out in

one piece, since being in the middle of enemy territory and all.

Faster than the eye could perceive, he sped across the room and entered the dressing room. Only when closing the door behind him shut, did he remember to slow

down and close it softly so to not make a sound.

It had been hard enough to make out the smaller room`s content when he had just so recently checked it, but after shutting the door after him it was pitch black in

there.

Fortunately, he still had that flashlight in his hand. He turned it on and took in his surroundings. If it weren`t for all the clothes, it kind of resembled a small hallway.

Not leading to a different world, thank Chaos, but to a new door.

Slightly intrigued, and without any other appealing options, he entered this hidden entrance.

The sight which met him on the other side, almost took his breath away. From the viewing platform he had just walked out on he had a clear outlook over what

seemed to be the inside of an entire factory, where attack-robots were manufactured at an inconceivably large scale in the center.

"Looks like he`s building an army!" Sonic thought, gasping in astonishment at how many of the metallic soldiers had already been made. Well over a hundred of them

stood lined up at the left side of the room, looking bigger and more heavily armed than the ones that the blue hero had previously been used to fight. To the right he

could see seven enormous robots that each looked so fierce that they gave the impression of impending doom. He also noticed that at least three of them seemed to

be empowered with a chaos emerald embedded safely inside a thick unbreakable glass either located on the head or on the chest of the machines.

Even though different in appearance, all of the robots shared one common trait; their eyes were dimly glowing red, signaling that they had been activated and would

likely attack him if he should show himself down there.

Sonic carefully studied the machinery in the middle. If he could only find a way to shut it down and at least prevent more of these creepy things to be made, without

being detected, it could buy him enough time to get help to destroy the ones already made later. Without the seven chaos emeralds in his possession, he stood little

chance to defeat the large number of enemies occupying this room. Much to his regret, even he couldn`t do solo missions this size and was forced to call for some

backup either from his friends or maybe even GUN.

Before he could leave though, he still had to slow down this production. Emerald eyes trailed over the machinery, following with his gaze in search of where the

engine producing power to this monstrous construction could be located.

"Aha!" he exclaimed in a whisper, when he finally found what he was looking for. Halfway concealed from his view on the far end of the room, a small machine

producing a constant humming sound and decorated with various warning signs had caught his attention.

For some unfathomable reason, there were no stairs that led down to the lower floor so far below him that even he wasn`t sure he would do so fine if he was to

jump.

Fortunately, he wasn`t too unfamiliar with the concept of running on walls…

At a speed that nearly made him invisible, he reached the other side of the room in the matter of a blink of an eye. While running he had let himself descend a few

centimeters for each step, leaving him with no more than five meters to jump down from when reaching his goal. In mid-air he curled himself into a spiky ball and

performed a homing attack that went straight through his target. Without a pause, he spun around and proceeded to repeat in reverse the method he had used to get

down to return to his kick-off. Above on the platform and safe from the following explosion and curious robots, he waited in mild suspense for his effort to take effect.

The lights flickered and went out, simultaneously as the machines powered down, leaving the room in utter darkness with the exception of the numerous ominously

glowing eyes of the robots. Although pleased he inwardly shuddered at the sight and was about to turn away from them to leave, when the power unexpectedly

returned.

"What?" he mumbled and blinked in surprise at the sharp light.

"He must have had a backup!" he thought with a growing sense of warning as he realized that his little plan had failed.

Suddenly he got an unsettling feeling of a presence behind him.

"Well, well…look who`s here," a familiar voice drawled venomously from behind, making the hedgehog turn with a startled expression.