…

13:04

Desert Area

Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy have exited the plane, and look off towards a pyramid in the distance. Knuckles seems to be indicating towards it, explaining something. Sonic asks, "Inside that pyramid?"

Knuckles answers, "I saw Eggman go inside the pyramid. And more importantly, I saw that bat girl go inside with him as well." He turns to Amy. "You saw them too, right?"

Amy, somewhat surprised, answers, "Well, yeah."

Sonic steps forward. "We should be able to get into outer space from there! I don't know what this space colony is all about, but I'll find and destroy that cannon…and then kick their imperial butts!"

Knuckles steps forward. "All right!"

Tails steps forward in his Tornado mech. "I'll go and find the entrance!" With that, he runs off into the desert.

—–—

Tails blasts open the door to the pyramid with a missile. Sonic, Knuckles, and Amy come up from behind him, some of them struggling to keep up. The inside is a very small room with a hole in the middle, leading downwards. Sonic takes a step into the room. "I'll take lead. Try to keep up." He jumps into the hole, and lands in a long, torch-lit hallway. He hardly takes a moment to look around before running off through the hall.

—–—

The group of heroes stands stopped by a massive door bearing Eggman's insignia. Tails observes, "Looks like we're heading toward the center of the base."

Sonic says with irritation, "That Egghead sure likes mechanical things, doesn't he? I'll bet he has one or two spaceships lying around here somewhere."

Tails steps forward, and begins carefully examining the door. "…The door is locked. We need a key to get in there."

"No problem." Sonic turns to his other friends. "We can find it, right Knuckles?"

"What? Why do I have to find the key?"

"We're counting on you, buddy. The world's greatest treasure hunter!"

Left with no other option, Knuckles turns to look for the key. He thinks, grudgingly, "I know what I've said before about haunted places…but I'm absolutely sure that I saw a ghost on the way in here. This isn't gonna be fun…"

—–—

Knuckles strolls back towards the main door, examining the key that he's found. "I guess that wasn't too bad. Those ghosts were all wimps." Suddenly, a terrifying sound which resembles a cross between a snarl, a laugh, and a gargle, can be heard from behind him.

"Huh!? Who's there?" He turns back towards the noise and looks around. Emerging from the shadows behind him is a massive ghost, with two great arms extending from near its bottom, two bulbous yellow eyes, and a mouth taking up nearly its entire girth, even extending back around the sides of its head area. Its teeth are sharpened to a point. "What the…a ghost!?" He gapes at the horrendous figure with wide eyes.

The ghost king makes the sound again, and begins moving rapidly towards Knuckles. He flees in terror, and the chase begins.

—–—

Sonic, Tails, and Amy all stand around by the door, in an awkward silence. Sonic taps his foot. Finally, Amy speaks up. "Do you think…maybe something happened to him?"

Tails responds, "No way, Amy. I'm sure he's fine."

Sonic comments jokingly, "Maybe he was just lying about being a great treasure hunter." Suddenly, a sound can be heard off in the distance. Everyone turns to face it. The torch light casts a massive shadow over them. "What is that?"

The shadow diminishes as Knuckles steps into view, cockily displaying the key to the door. "Oh, what a hassle it was to get this." The group cheers. "Now let's get this door open." He steps forward, places the key in the center of the door, and turns it. The door begins to slide open. Knuckles breathes a sigh of relief, now certain that his troubles are over. "…That was pretty rough…"

Sonic is stretching out his muscles, grown stiff from waiting. Tails turns back to his friends. "We did it! Let's go, Amy!"

Amy can hardly let out a "Yeah!" before Eggman's voice declares from the next room, "You little thieves! Did you really think you could get out of here alive?"

Sonic is ready for action. "Come and get some, Eggman!"

Tails shouts a surprised, "Sonic!"

Sonic waves him back. "Just leave it to me!"

Eggman seems to be in a bit of a hurry. "This time, I'll take your lives as well as the Chaos Emerald." He turns to a great sand pit in the center of the room. "I call on you to destroy these pests—come out, my servant!" From the sand pit rises one giant, rocky hand which latches onto a ground-level platform, and begins lifting up the rest of it.

Even Sonic lets out a "Whoa." The rest of the massive rocky figure rises from the sand, revealing a golem in the shape of a muscular humanoid, with a head which loosely resembles a sphynx. It has some sort of glowing blue machinery on the top of its head.

Eggman commands, "Now go, and squash that blue hedgehog, Sonic!"

The golem obeys, and goes in to pound its massive fist into Sonic. Sonic speeds out of the way just in time, and manages to run around to its back while its fist is stuck in the ground. He leaps up and begins rapidly scaling a series of sharp rocks jutting out of the golem's back, ending up leaping to above the level of its head. He lets out a loud battle cry as he dives into a kick straight at the glowing mechanism on the top of the head. The machine explodes and the golem begins twitching and moving in strange and unpredictable ways, as Sonic lands back on the ground. "Nice try, rocky."

Eggman observes the strange actions of his golem. He comes to the aggravating conclusion, "When Sonic struck his head, he must have broken the restraining mechanism! Arrgh! What a piece of junk!" The golem turns to Eggman, and moves to swipe at him. "No!" He is forced to unload a volley of missiles into his golem aiming in particular for cracks in the rocks. The golem recoils, and bit by bit begins to crumble.

Meanwhile Sonic returns to his friends, and points at something on the other side of the room. It's an entire space shuttle. They all nod and run off towards it. Tails, Knuckles, and Amy get in first, but Sonic waits outside for a moment. One last missile from Eggman has the golem crumbling to pieces. The shuttle shudders and lurches as it powers on, and the entire top tier of the pyramid parts open to make room for it. Sonic takes one last look at Eggman before rushing on to the launching shuttle. Eggman turns just in time to watch his Chaos Emerald and Sonic the Hedgehog escape to the ARK.

—–—

The space shuttle flies through the newly-formed rock field around the ARK, careful not to impact any of them. "So this is the space colony where Eggman is hiding…" An especially large rock suddenly crosses right in front of the shuttle's path, cutting it off entirely. The shuttle veers off to the side to avoid the rock, but the rock is much too large, and the shuttle makes a glancing impact off its side. The whole crew shouts in surprise. The shuttle spirals out of control, and the top hatch flies open. Something shiny scatters off and away into space. A series of jets on various sides of the shuttle begin to stabilize its path, and Tails shouts, "Is everyone alright!? We should be–"

Knuckles interrupts, "Oh no! The hatch doors are open!"

Sonic comforts, "Don't sweat it, Knuckles. The only thing in the cargo bay…are those Master Emeralds!"

"What do you mean, 'don't sweat it!?'" The shuttle starts moving out of control again as Knuckles grabs the controls. "Land this shuttle right–"

"Knock it off, Knuckles! We're gonna crash this thing if you keep that up!"

"Let me out!"

"Oh no! Don't touch that lever!" The shuttle trails smoke as it spirals completely away from the space station. The crew, besides Knuckles, begins screaming again.

—–—

ARK: Central control room

Cannon countdown: 2 hours 11 minutes

Rouge now oversees the Eclipse Cannon in the ARK control room. She speaks into her radio. "Hi, Doctor. How's it going?…What! What do you mean 'they escaped?'…That's okay. I will go after them myself.…Can you tell me the password for the space colony control?…Mm hmm…" She shuts off the radio. "Tricking that old doctor is just too easy! All right, it's time to get to work."

She walks up to the control console. "The password is MA-RI-A.…Maria, hmm? I've heard that name somewhere before…Oh, well…" All sorts of data files start appearing on the main screen. Finally, the file she's looking for appears. "This is it! Research Project Shadow, the Ultimate Life Form. Let's see now…" Suddenly, a large red warning sign appears in front of all of the files on screen. "What in the world is this? This can't be right! Just what is Shadow, anyway?" A new file appears on screen, live recorded security footage revealing Knuckles searching the surface of the colony for his lost pieces of the emerald. Rouge is forced to put her mind on other things. "Hmm…I guess I'll just take the last pieces of the Master Emerald!" She turns and runs off.