Chapter 7: Getting stormy, huh?

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"Hold on!" Tails shouted a warning just seconds before he pulled the plane into a dive. Sonic spread his legs wider, trying to keep his balance. Shadow gripped the edge of the wing, and crouched down even lower.

Wind whipped against his face, pulled and tucked at his quills, and roared in his ears. The Tornado dived, and they all pressed their ears flat against their skulls. Sonic couldn't hear a thing, but laughed nevertheless. He lived for things like this.

…And after a few seconds Tails started to steer the plane upwards again, as he had avoided the ship he wished to evade. They were now flying somewhere close to the middle of this fleet, and were surrounded by armed, shark-like airships everywhere. It was really sunny today, but also rather windy… or at least it blowed a lot up among the clouds. The sky was blue, blue like forget-me-not is blue, and like seas in children's paintings, but not like Sonic. He had a much deeper colour to his fur, than any sky could have…

And suddenly Tails shouted again, "They're landing! I'm going to follow, so don't fall off!"

Sonic snuck a quick glance at Shadow, who'd taken hold of the wing with his hands again. Deeming the black hedgehog's posture safe enough Sonic then crouched down he too, and took hold of the wing with his hands. Any moment now…

"I'm diving!" Tails shouted.

And here we go… Sonic thought, grinning excitedly. "Let's go! After them!"

"Aye!" And suddenly the sky was tilted sideways, and the Tornado dived. The other ships were already going down, looking like a shoal out of metallic fish. Sonic leaned forward to look at the ground, which right now consisted only of a green mass, as they still were too high up in the air. Tails pulled at some levers, and a screen flashed to life in front of the fox.

Sonic looked up at the monitor, and Tails pressed some keys. "They seem to be heading for…"

A forest could then be seen on the screen, and Sonic realised that it were the same woods as where he usually went to run. Why would Eggman want any airships to go there-? Sonic wondered, and threw a quick glance over his shoulder at the airships behind them. And as the blue hero did that, a look of horrified realisation took over Tails' features.

"I'TS A TRAP!" Sonic startled at the sudden shout, his brain barely registering the words. And then the sky erupted into fire…

Tails immediately pulled the Tornado upwards, flying in a zig-zag pattern to avoid a sudden stream of missiles. The battleships of the Egg fleet had regrouped, and were now trying to trap Tails' plane between them long enough for them to shoot him down.

Sonic gripped at the wing like a drowning hedgehog, and looked around frantically. What should he do? What could he actually do, to save them from becoming a wet puddle underneath the skeleton of what was once a plane?

"Watch out!" Tails shrieked, and the plane was abruptly turned upside down. Missiles shaped like fish soared past them, right behind Sonic's blue-furred ears, and he held onto the wing for dear life, not wanting to turn into a hedgehog-sized lump of mincemeat. He glanced at Tails and Shadow as panic started to make itself known in his mind, and relief then shone through as both the fox and the hedgehog were unscathed, and still on the plane.

"Getting stormy, huh?" Sonic commented jokingly, trying to light up the atmosphere. Shadow glared at him with a hateful expression, and Sonic felt agitated. The joke wasn't that bad, was it? Or maybe it was just not the right moment? Maybe-

"DOWN!" Sonic startled as Shadow screamed at him, and then he saw the chaos spear heading for him. The blue hero dodged on instinct, and then he started to wonder why on Mobius Shadow would throw a chaos spear at him, seriously, it wasn't that-

Oh

Burned pieces of a homing missile rained down over him, and he realised what Shadow had actually done. Emerald eyes looked up, and he blurted out, "Thanks!"

Shadow opened his mouth to answer, but then the plane lurched forward and downwards. For a brief fragment of a second Sonic thought that they had got hit, and his eyes snapped over to Tails. The fox had a determined expression, but no red lights were blinking on the screen, so Sonic supposed they were alright for now. Except that he was losing the feeling in his arm from holding on so tight to the wing, and Shadow-

Sonic turned to look at him, and saw a missile. Which was practically poking Shadow in the back and how is he not seeing it-!?

"Shads!" Sonic lunged forward, going into a spin-dash as he flew across the otherwise very short but right now endlessly long surface of the plane's wings. Shadow looked up, and then they hit-

BOOM!

…Sonic slowly opened his tightly closed eyes, and was met with black. Had he fallen of the plane and died? No, wait, it was moving and-

"…Shadow?" At the mention of his name said hedgehog winced, and Sonic became aware of the fact that he was laying on top of Shadow. And that they were hanging out over the edge of the wing, and more missiles were coming at them. And that one of the battleships had just exploded, and Sonic's foot hurt like hell. And also Shadow seemed to have overcome his temporary shock, and was now becoming very annoyed over the fact that Sonic was sitting on his stomach with one hand beside his head and the other holding his red-striped arm in a grip worse than Amy's.

…Check?

"Hey! We survived!" Sonic exclaimed happily and in slight surprise. And then the plane lurched again, this time upwards, and Sonic was thrown away from Shadow by the unexpected movement. He quickly got hold of the plane again, though…

Emerald eyes was glued at either Shadow, Tails, or both as Sonic then clung to the wing again for the next ten seconds as the plane jumped through the air to avoid missiles fired at them. Tails still looked determined, albeit more anxious, as he focused on the controls of the plane. He had been trying to get them out of the crowd ever since they got stuck in this trap, but with very little success. The ships were coming from all directions, even from below, and they just kept shooting.

(Though if anyone else had been manoeuvring the Tornado, then they would all have been toast by now)

Shadow, on the other hand, was gripping tightly at the wing like Sonic, but appeared to be looking for a way out of this disaster instead of checking how the others were doing. He looked kinda dishevelled from the encounter with the missile (Sonic assumed that he had managed to kick it away at the last millisecond, counting the pain in his foot), but his eyes were as determined as always, glowing in that garnet colour Sonic both loved and despised so much. The black hedgehog usually had that expression when he planned to kick Sonic's face in, and that was more than enough of a reason to hate it.

"I'm going to start firing at them, but I need you guys to LOOK OUT FOR ME!" Tails then shouted, not waiting for an answer before flying straight against one of the larger ships. Sonic let go of the wing, and curled into a ball. Tails then started to fire homing missiles at the aircraft in front of him, while the smaller ships started to shower them in bullets, like explosive hail.

It smelled like something was burning – no, blazing – as Tails then dove again, and Sonic knocked a few missiles out of the air with his spin-dash. He turned around to kick another missile, and glanced at Shadow for a split second as he did so. The black hedgehog was also helping to defend the plane, by shooting chaos spears at the missiles and – if they came to close – the ships too.

Sonic sent another missile straight into the ship which it originally came from, grinning as it exploded with a sound akin to a building collapsing. "Score!"

Tails fired another load of missiles at the ships in front of them, and they dissolved into bits with a loud boom and a smell of burning metal and oil, as smoke added to the clouds around them. A fragment of a ship or a missile – Sonic didn't really care – whizzed past, cutting his ear almost unnoticeable. He'd been standing still for too long. But the ships had stopped firing for a moment.

…It seemed the ships were regrouping again.

"I'm gonna try and fly through them! Sonic, destroy as many as you can!" Tails shouted, and Sonic nodded. "Shadow! Do the same as Sonic!" Sonic looked at Shadow, who also nodded, and their eyes met for a split second. Emerald stared into ruby, their expressions slightly different, but still so alike. Sonic grinned, his cheeks slightly rosy as he shouted,

"Bring it on!" Tails pulled a lever, and the plane accelerated with a jerk, shooting forward like a missile.

"Let's take out the trash!" Sonic shouted, still grinning. Shadow sighed at his comment, but got into his fighting stance he too.

Ships sped past them, still a bit too far away… and then they were suddenly right next to them. Sonic jumped, leaped out into the sky, aiming for a ship right in front of him. He landed with a metallic thud that made his legs shake, and broke into a run. Now, there was only him and the ships he was going to destroy. And he smirked, and it soon turned into a grin, as he leapt from ship to ship, destroying each and every one his feet managed to touch…


To be continued…