Oh hey, look, I'm alive. Have a chapter.
The fox heard nothing but the sound of his own feet and his teammates' hitting the steel floor. Surprisingly, Omega was the stealthiest one. Instead of walking, he used his boosters to quietly glide across de floor. Tails still didn't understand how they were so silent, and he tried to make a mental note to ask him about that later.
The first mission was simple enough. Infiltrate the closest of Eggman's bases and recover all the information possible. If there were any production machines or containers inside, disconnect and disable them.
They went to a stop near a corner, Shadow being in the lead at that moment. He looked over to see two Egg Pawns on patrol. He then turned back and pointed at Tails. The fox gulped and looked over where the black hedgehog's finger pointed, deducing he was telling him to target that robot.
He nodded and waited for Shadow's cue. This cue was, of course, Shadow simply jumping out and moving at blinding speeds towards his own target. Tails quickly followed and ran towards the other robot, noticing how it had its back to him while the other had already noticed Shadow. He had waited until they were on that position to make Tails' job easier, making his own harder.
The Egg Pawn that was alerted didn't have time to react, as Shadow quickly passed through it with a spindash, slicing it in half.
The second Egg Pawn detected Shadow and attempted to move in to attack, but was stopped when Tails did his own spindash on it, hitting it with a powerful slam of his appendages. The robot was cut open and effectively disabled, but not completely sliced apart. Compared to Shadow's target, his looked like an amateur's work.
Tails frowned at the results of his attack, but when he looked at Shadow, the black hedgehog simply gave him a thumbs up and motioned for everyone to follow.
They came across a steel door with a digital padlock, the metal composing it being too thick to break through, and there was a risk of an alarm going off if they did anyways.
Shadow looked back once again at Tails.
"Can you open it?"
Tails nodded and, without a single word, went up to the padlock.
The combination was 10 digits. Finding the code would most likely be impossible. But since Tails was expecting this kind of security, he gave something for Omega to hold on to inside his chest container.
"…Omega, I need the Zapper." He said as he looked back at the robot and extended his hand.
Omega's chest almost instantly opened and his clawed hand reached for the object inside. A small, square shaped panel with four buttons, none of them labeled because Tails remembered the function of each one by memory, and a small keyboard.
"The…Zapper?" Asked Rouge, slightly amused at the name.
"Um, yes…that's what I named it…" Tails said; a little embarrassed now that he had a second to reflect on the name he had chosen.
Focusing back on the task at hand, the fox placed the Zapper on top of the padlock, the magnet on the device attaching itself to it. He pressed the first button and then typed the number "10" on the keyboard.
The device accessed the padlock's system and began inputting codes at incredible speeds.
0000000001
0000000002
0000000003
He stepped back, smiling as the Zapper began the brute force attack* on the padlock.
"Alright, I'm done."
"That's all?" Shadow asked, inspecting the device questionably.
Tails nodded.
"It will take a little time, but it'll open."
As he finished saying that, from the hallway they had entered through appeared enormous waves of Egg Pawns.
"How did they find us?" Asked Tails, surprised at the large rows of robots.
"It doesn't matter how, just destroy them!" Yelled Shadow as he leapt towards the robots and accelerated into a spindash, destroying an entire line of Egg Pawns.
Omega raised his arms and his claws quickly gave way to a pair of machine guns. He sprayed bullets across the army of robots and tore a great portion down.
But just as quick as they went down, the Egg Pawns were replaced twofold.
Shadow prepared for another spin attack, but was tackled by the force of ten pawns that crashed into him at the same time. Rouge saw this and quickly flew towards him to help, kicking her way in and grabbing Shadow's hand to pull him out as they went back in for another assault.
The horde attacking Shadow and Rouge was only one half, however. The other half was charging towards Omega, who kept continuously firing at them. As fast as his bullets could go, the sheer numbers were outmatching him.
Tails then realized that, within seconds, Omega would be overrun and taken down. He had to think, and quick. Omega's safety was in his hands now.
Trying to destroy them himself would be useless. There were too much and he would have to watch for Omega's bullets as well. The only thing he thought was to get Omega away somehow.
He whirled up his tails, grabbed the tall robot's head, and began pulling up as hard as his tensing muscles would allow him.
The Egg Pawns were closing in, looking ready to jump headfirst into Omega.
A pair of metallic feet started rising above the ground. Very slowly. Not enough.
Omega calculated at enormous speeds the numbers of enemies still active, and their proximity to him. He maintained fire at all times, and at the calculated moment, activated his thrusters.
Tails struggled with all his power, until he suddenly felt a lot lighter. He began rising farther up, until he saw through his now blurry vision the Egg Pawns not in front, but below him and Omega.
He didn't understand what the sudden burst of force he got was, but it allowed him to hold Omega in the air as he redirected his arms below himself, decimating the Egg Pawns as they uselessly jumped, trying to grab his legs.
Finally, as the numbers of the robots were reduced to no more than five, Tails exhausted his energy and let go Omega, who fell back to the floor, crushing the remaining pawns with his enormous.
Tails let out one last breath before quickly falling off as well, getting caught by Omega's steel claws, now replacing the guns that caused the wreckage lying beside his feet.
Rouge delivered a kick to the last Egg Pawn standing and destroyed it, leaving only the remains of an obliterated army. She then turned around and ran towards Omega, Tails being still in his hands.
"Is he alright?" She asked with concern, before noticing the fox's chest rising and falling. She let out a sigh of relief.
After a few moments of silence, a beeping sound was heard. Everyone turned around to see the Zapper's buttons flashing. Soon enough, the impenetrable door slid open and the small device ceased its function on the keypad.
Omega walked towards the door and took the Zapper back.
"Let us advance."
They moved through the new corridor, inspecting carefully everything around them. As there only seemed to be glass panels showing to the larger rooms without any actual doors, Rouge took the opportunity to ask Omega a question.
"Hey…you're not gonna tell him you floated up yourself, right?" She asked while glancing towards the still unconscious fox.
"There is no need for that." The robot replied in the same monotone voice Rouge was expecting.
"…Good."
"Why do you care?" Shadow asked. Rouge glared at him for a second.
"It's better if he thinks he helped. It'll keep his spirits up; we don't need another downer on the team." She said, glancing at him. This time, Shadow sent back the same glare.
As they walked down the wide hallway, Tails stirred in Omega's claws.
"…Uuughh…" The yellow fox groaned as he regained consciousness. "What…what happened?"
"You passed out back there after…helping Omega." Rouge said, stopping for a second before finishing the sentence.
Tails looked at Omega and the robot, as expected, didn't offer any kind of reply.
"I…s-sorry." The fox quickly apologized as he dropped from Omega's claws and started walking along with them.
"Hm? Sorry for what?" Rouge asked.
"…For slowing you down. I'll try to keep myself up from now on." He said with a strange determination in his eyes. Shadow noticed this, but decided not to make a comment. The important thing at that moment was the door they were now facing, which led to what seemed to be a factory area.
"…Just what we were looking for." Rouge said as she carefully opened the door and the team made their way in.
Tails examined his surroundings carefully, looking at the massive machines that continuously assembled what looked like metallic body parts. Each one seemed to only produce one specific part that went through a conveyor belt towards another room through an opening in the wall.
"So this is where he's making his new toys…" Rouge said as she looked at them.
"We just have to cut the power and get rid of the parts." Shadow said as he went in one swift leap to one of the assemblers and found the power feed. He jumped into the air and started spinning rapidly before dropping down with full force on the middle of the thick line, snapping it in half as the machine dropped an unfinished arm and shut down.
They divided the task of shutting down the machines equally, finishing in only a few minutes.
"That's one task done, but we have to find the room these parts were going to." Shadow said as we walked back towards the door.
"There's probably a new batch of metal buckets on its way to us, so let's hurry." Rouge said as they moved out and started looking for their next objective.
They kept going through the main hallway looking through the windows at conveyor belt that now no longer transported robotic parts.
As they walked, they started hearing progressively louder clanking sounds, signaling the arrival of another squadron of Egg-Pawns.
"Let's go, we have to get this over with quick." Shadow said, as they started running through the hallway, no longer looking at the windows to check. As soon as they saw a door, they went through it. What they saw inside, though, told them that they wouldn't be able to finish before the robots got there.
In front of them were rows and rows of giant robots being assembled at dangerous speeds, the system working perfectly except for one part, which was trying to obtain more parts that were no longer coming through the conveyor belt.
No more than ten seconds later, the door was brutally demolished by a horde of Egg-Pawns. However, when they started coming in, Team Dark noticed that they wouldn't stop. They just kept pouring in and in, easily three times as many pawns as their last encounter. The immense army stopped in front of them and surrounded them.
"…So much for a simple mission…" Said Rouge as the army started closing in on them.
* Brute force attack: The action of inputting passwords attempts in a sequence such as "001, 002, 003…" until finding the code that unlocks. It's the slowest but most successful way of cracking a password "blindly".
A/N: So yeah. I promised myself and those who asked about it that I WOULDN'T abandon my stories. I'm keeping that promise. I may be the slowest and least consistent updater in the whole history of fanfiction but I'm gonna finish my stories even if it kills me. So thank you for those who're still sticking around for this and I hope this chapter reached at least a part of your expectations.