Sonic limped through Robotnik's fortress, heavily favoring his right leg as he searched for Amadeus Prower's kidnapped son, Miles. Or Tails, as most of the island kids called him, owing to the fact that he had two of them. Sonic wasn't terribly familiar with the kid; since there was a four year age difference between them they didn't hang out much, and from what he gathered the boy was extremely shy anyway.

"Hang tight little buddy, I'm comin' for ya," he said aloud, in no small part to distract himself from the pain in his leg. It had caught on a sharp piece on the underside of closing barricade as he slid through, and the metal had torn a long gash up the side of it. It wasn't bleeding too bad anymore, but it was really slowing him down, and it was only the largest of many cuts and scrapes, not to mention a dozen laser burns, at least.

A trio of Egg robos filed into the hall, marching out of one of the many, many uniform doors that lined it, which slid shut with a pressurized hiss behind them. Sonic launched into a spin attack, smashing the center one and ricocheting into its fellows. Scattered robot remains hit the ground before Sonic, but he almost collapsed on landing as searing pain lanced up his leg. He gritted his teeth and ignored it.

The problem with Robotnik's stupid base was that all the doors and hallways looked the same. Everything was constructed with unearthly uniformity. Color, shape, size, any quality one could think to ascribe to a stretch of hallway, they could find replicated many times throughout the base with such precision that there was no way to tell which was which, except perhaps the length of hallway and the number of doors. That was the case until Sonic started smashing things, anyway. Now many of the halls were missing doors entirely, labs were smashed, and the remains of robotic drones lay scattered haphazardly everywhere. He might have called it an artistic representation of the triumph of individuality over the imposed uniformity of science had he been philosophically minded. As it was, he was just tired and sore, and called it a lot of wasted time. He wished he had taken the time to memorize the floor plan better. As it was he had to have torn up at least half the rooms in the building. At least half, he told himself. He'd been to his room, Mighty's, Ray's, every room in their block, and every other section he could remember containing living space, which was admittedly only two of them. Tails could be anywhere in the fortress, but Sonic was really hoping he was somewhere in this section.

Tails huddled in his room, scared and miserable. Cell was really a better description for the eight-foot by eight-foot space, for while it contained things that one would not traditionally expect in a prison, such as the two way video conference unit, he was nonetheless incarcerated within the sterile, featureless steel walls. Robotnik hadn't done anything with him since he was brought here, which was fine by Tails, although he was rather hungry, given that his last meal had been at least twenty four hours ago by his estimate. Time positively crawled in the tiny room, although, again, he preferred monotony to facing the doctor or his robots. He slept as much as he could, curled up into a ball clutching his twin tails like a security blanket.

When he couldn't sleep anymore, he paced, tugging uneasily on the long hairs sprouting from his forehead until he was in danger of pulling them out. His fretful meandering was interrupted by the sound of metallic feet in the corridor outside. He stiffened, preparing for the door to open, but the feet tramped on past. Still within earshot, the feet stopped, and Tails heard them open fire. He hurried to the door and put his ear to it. There was a series of crashes, several loud thumping booms, as though something were impacting the walls over and over, and the horrific screech of metal on metal, grating even through the door. Through it all Tails thought he could make out shouting and an incredibly rapid patter, like someone had cranked a metronome up to the highest setting, recorded it, and played it back at triple speed, so fast that the beats almost merged into a continuous hum. Six seconds after he first heard the robots open fire, there was silence.

Tails pressed his ear harder to the door, trying to figure out what in the world was happening out there. Gongs went off inside his head as something impacted the door with incredible force, nearly shaking it out of its frame. He had the presence of mind to scramble backwards onto his bed, which got him out of the way of the door just in time, as a second impact tore it clean out of the wall and knocked it to the floor with a metallic boom. Tails peered fearfully at the figure standing in the doorframe. It was… Sonic? The blue hedgehog looked back at him, emerald eyes alive with weary triumph.

"There you are! I've been looking all over for you, bud. How're you holding up?"

"You look awful!" was all Tails could think to say, wincing in embarrassment as he realized this was probably not the best of greetings, even if it was entirely true. Livid burns stood out all over the hedgehogs' body, and he was bleeding from numerous shallow cuts, and two not so shallow ones, one along his left hip and the other down the length of his right left.

"I've been better," Sonic shrugged, just a trifle stiffly, and flashed a reassuring grin, "but I'll live. How about you?"

"I'm fine," Tails replied, feeling much better for the smile, "A little hungry, but that's all." Sonic's optimism was positively contagious.

"Well, I don't think I can do much about that, but what say I bust you outta here?"

"Yeah!" Tails replied, feeling slightly foolish as they stepped out into the hall. What did Sonic expect him to say to that? No, thanks?

"Hmm," Sonic stopped, tapping his foot and looking first one way, then the other, "What's the quickest way out of here?" he mused aloud.

"Uh," Tails said, trying to remember how he had been brought in, "That way, I think."

"Okay, good enough for me," Sonic said. He turned to face Tails, and put a hand on his shoulder. "Here's the deal. Follow me, but stay back a ways in case Egghead sends more robots at me, but don't get so far behind that we get separated either, okay?"

"Okay."

Tails followed him, stepping gingerly over the crumpled remains of a squad of Egg robos. Unease warred with curiosity in his mind as he contemplated the robots. Part of him desperately wanted to grab at least part of one and take it with him to study. Robotnik was a nasty person, but he built fascinating machinery. Tails had been very tempted to pull apart the gadgets in his room, but the thought of bringing Robotnik's drones down on his head over the vandalism had persuaded him to let them be. At the same time, he wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible. What if one of the apparently deactivated Egg robos came to life, or worse, what if fresh ones showed up? So while part of him wanted to stay and examine the machinery, another part wanted to run as far and as fast as he could. He ignored both instincts and kept a measured pace about ten feet behind Sonic.

The hedgehog was the biggest mystery of all. Tails studied him as he limped along ahead. Sonic was clearly downplaying his injuries as much as possible for Tails' benefit, but they were just as clearly hurting him quite a bit. Sonic was favoring his right leg rather heavily, and those burns had to be uncomfortable. It was not his injuries that mystified Tails, however. No, what Tails couldn't figure out was how he didn't have more. Sonic appeared to have entered the base all by himself, and not with Robotnik's consent either. Tails had been unable to witness the battle between Sonic and the Egg robo squad, but he had heard it, and the scrapped robots behind them were solid evidence that Sonic had won handily.

Furthermore, Tails noted as they progressed through the corridors, it had not been his first battle, not by a long shot. Almost every doorframe they passed was a gaping hole devoid of door, and wrecked robots lay scattered at intervals. Tails surmised that not only had Sonic destroyed these on his own, he had dealt with the ones outside Tails' door while already wounded. What had happened to him? Tails had never been close friends with Sonic, he was too young and too shy to dare to hang out with the blue hedgehog, but he had admired the way Sonic won every race and was invariably the best at any game that involved getting an object from one point to another, since nobody could catch him. Tails didn't often participate in these games, since he preferred to read in his father's library, but he always tried to be on Sonic's side when he did play, which was difficult because Sonic was chosen first when he wasn't captain, and Tails was middling or last.

Tails' thoughts were interrupted as a troop of four Egg robos marched into the hallway through one of the empty doorframes.

"Priority one hedgehog! Surrender Subject: Miles Prower!"

"No."

Tails gasped as Sonic launched his assault. One instant he was standing positioned between Tails and the Egg robo squad, and the next he was nothing but a blue blur, streaking between the Egg robos so fast that by the time the head of the first hit the floor, separated as it had been from its torso and sent flying by the kinetic energy of Sonic's strike, the others were on their way down. Sonic staggered as he landed, and fell to his knees.

"Nnngh," He grunted, as Tails rushed forward and helped him to his feet, "I'm okay, just couldn't stick the landing on this leg."

Luckily for them, they reached the doorway without meeting further robots. A shiny metallic cage protected it, welded to the outside of the frame and riveted in place as an extra precaution. Even braced as it was, Sonic ripped it free in two strikes. He was helped by the fact that it curved outward, meant to deflect impacts from the outside but concentrating those coming from inside it, but even so his momentum had to be truly incredible to move it.

"Ergh," Sonic said, picking himself up and shaking his quills, then grabbing Tails by the arm and dragging him toward the cover of the tree line as buzzbombers started to attack, "All right, here's the deal. I'm pretty sure Robotnik is somewhere in here, and I'm not letting him get away, so I'm going to take you as far as the beach. You get in the boat, and Matt will take you back to your dad and then come back for me, okay?"

"I understand," Tails said as they reached the treeline and slowed to a more sedate pace, "but are you sure you should do that? You're in pretty bad shape."

"I'll be fine," Sonic replied, grinning as though he knew something Tails didn't. "Watch this!"

Sonic had spotted a line of gleaming rings in the dappled shade of the forest, and as he scooped them up Tails watched his burns and cuts fade. They didn't outright vanish, not all of them, but he looked significantly better, as though he had spent days healing instead of seconds. Truthfully, he looked better than if he had been healing naturally. Natural healing left scars, but there was simply no trace that many of his injuries had ever even been.

"See? As long as I've got these things, I'll be fine. Come on, your dad's worried about you." Sonic trotted off through the forest without waiting for a reply, and Tails had to run to catch up with him.

The woods were eerily quiet except for the ominous buzzing of Robotnik's buzzbombers somewhere above the canopy. The area seemed entirely devoid of wildlife, although had Tails been a small animal he would have been hiding far away from the eerie metallic invaders too, so the silence wasn't terribly out of place. Even though a fair amount of light filtered through the trees what shadows there were made Tails extremely nervous. He kept eying them, expecting to see the gleam of polished steel guns emerging from behind the trees. However, Sonic had done a reasonably thorough job with Robotnik's squadrons, and they reached the edge of the beach without incident.

"Here's the plan," Sonic said, yet again, grabbing Tails by the arm and pulling him back under the cover of the tree line as he tried to leave it. Tails couldn't help feeling a bit condescended to. Given that Sonic had had plenty of time to explain it while they were walking, did Sonic not think he would be able to remember if it wasn't broken into bite sized chunks? Alternatively, he realized as Sonic paused, looking thoughtful, the blue hedgehog was making it up as he went along, and explaining things as he thought of them.

"Okay, I'm going to run out on the beach and get Matt to bring the boat in. There are still bunches of buzzbombers around, so I'll get their attention too. Then I'll lead them away and you go out to make sure Matt doesn't turn the boat around. He should be expecting me to lead them off and run back before they can turn around, but just in case. Then you tell him to come back for me after he drops you off. Got it?"

"Got it." Tails replied, although Sonic was standing on the beach before he finished the second syllable.

Sonic waved his arms vigorously toward a boat about three quarters of a mile offshore, shouting "Hey, pick me up!" He was still shouting when a squadron of buzzbombers swooped in and opened fire.

"Missed me!" he crowed, thumbing his nose at the mechanical wasps, who responded to the taunt by trying to shoot him again. Sonic danced around the sand, staying just ahead of the lasers by design, never moving more than a couple of feet from where they were aiming but always pausing just long enough to give them what looked like a clear shot.

"You rust buckets couldn't hit the broad side of a barn! Catch me if you can!" he shouted, and he was gone, leaving nothing but a spray of sand in his wake. The ominous hum of wings receded into the distance as the buzzbombers followed him.

Tails ran out onto the beach and waved his arms until he was sure the boat had spotted him and was approaching. He swam the last few yards as it approached so that Matt wouldn't have to waste time beaching it and then trying to get back into deeper water again. As he came up alongside it Matt reached out a hand. Tails grabbed it, and the rabbit helped him clambered over the side, where he flopped onto the deck before picking himself up and wringing as much water out of his fur as he could.

"Good to see you," Matt said, "I hope Sonic hurries back. I don't fancy staying so close to shore for very long."

"Good to see you too," Tails replied, "but Sonic told me not to have you wait for him."

"What? Why would he do that?"

"He's not done with Robotnik. He said you should take me to my dad and then go back for him."

"That boy is crazy," Matt said, shaking his head as they stepped into the cabin, "But I'm not going to argue with him. If that's what he wants, that's what I'll do." He spun the wheel and turned the boat around, then shifted the throttle forward. The craft accelerated comfortably and they headed away from the island. Tails walked back out onto the deck and watched it recede into the distance, glad to be getting further away with ever passing second.

A gleam in the distance caught his eye. At first he thought it was just the sun reflecting off the water, but as he looked closer his heart sped up. It was reflecting at the wrong angle to be the water, and it was getting brighter, closer. This was the gleam of burnished metal, and it was unmistakably bearing down on them. He ran back into the cabin.

"Matt, there's something following us! It looks like another boat."

"What?" he let go of the wheel momentarily and tusk his head out the window, looking behind them, "Where?"

"There!" Tails pointed at the patch of glare that marked the approaching object. It was definitely gaining on them.

"Damn!" Matt swore, "You keep an eye on it, I'm going to try to outrun it! Hold on to something!"

Tails did as he was told, bracing himself in the door as Matt cranked the throttle to full forward position. The boat jumped ahead and began to bounce on the small waves that were kicked up the light breeze. They had already been moving at the fastest clip the craft could reasonably manage in choppy water. Despite sacrificing stability for speed, the other craft was still gaining on them. Tails watched as it approached, trying to judge if they could make it to land before it drew even with them. Not a chance, he realized, it would catch them no less than a mile from shore, maybe two. He could do nothing but watch in consternation as the craft gained on them until he could make out what was on it.

It was essentially a flat metal deck about fifteen feet long and eight feet wide, the under side of which quickly tapered to a sharp and very streamlined draft. A squad of six Egg robos surrounded a nasty looking scorpion robot, all apparently held to the deck with magnetic restraints. Due to the disparate proportional size of this craft and its huge motor compared to the larger but more moderately powered boat Tails was on, it was able to move much faster but it bounced around on the waves more as well. Their boat must have been for Robotnik's personal use, Tails surmised.

"They've almost caught up!" He shouted to Matt, "Twenty yards behind! Fifteen!"

"Subject: Miles Prower: Surrender!" The Egg robos chorused in unnerving unison as they pulled alongside and the one driving cut speed to match Tails' vessel.

"Get inside!" Matt yelled.

Tails followed this very reasonable advice, slamming the door behind him and ducking to the floor as the Egg robos fired on the cabin. Luckily, the alloy Robotnik made it out of proved resistant to the attacks, and none of them penetrated to the interior, or even appeared to cause structural damage. Tails was about to stand up and cautiously make sure of that when an explosion rocked the cabin and threw him to his knees.

"What was that?!" Matted shouted, as he struggle to stay upright and keep the boat on course.

"Subject: Miles Prower and Accomplice: This is your final warning: Surrender or face termination." the Egg robos chorused. Their boat pulled sped past, then pulled in front of and abruptly cut speed, forcing Matt to pull back on the throttle and swerve to avoid crashing.

"Damn! They're herding us!" he shouted as he tried to alter his course back toward the island, only to be intercepted again, "If I-" he was cut off as the scorpion robot in the middle of the deck launched an explosive charge into the windshield. Tails threw his arms up instinctively as he was thrown back against the wall by the concussive force of the explosion, and felt heat envelop him. Pain lanced along his arms, chest and forehead as shards of the windshield ripped into them, leaving him with dozens of tiny, and a few not so tiny lacerations. When he opened his eyes we wasn't sure if the ringing in his ears was from noise of the explosion or from when the back of his head impacted the wall, maybe both. Matt, however, looked much worse for wear. He had borne the brunt of the glass, and his face, neck and chest were stained red with blood, which only partly hid his burns. He lay on his back, unmoving.

"Matt!" Tails shouted, "Matt!" There was no response. Matt was dead.

Tails scrambled over him to grab the wheel, fighting to keep the boat from capsizing as a second shot threatened to swamp it. He slammed the throttle all the way forward as the nose came clear of the Egg robos craft. The boat shot forward, glancing off the other vessel. Tails had to fight the wheel to keep it upright, but the smaller craft was rocked just as hard, and the Egg robo driving it had to get it stable before they could pursue, which bought him valuable time while they caught up. Tails wove back and forth, cutting back and surging forward as necessary to avoid their shots and attempts to cut him off as best he could, until he was maybe a third of a mile from shore.

He pulled the throttle all the way back as the Egg robos surged up beside him, causing them to overshoot dramatically, then threw it forward and threw himself out the door as they slowed down and attempted to back track into his path. So far he had been trying to avoid a collision at all costs, and they were anticipating that. As his boat accelerated Tails hopped over the side.

"Matt… I… Augh!," he sobbed incoherently as it collided with the Egg robo's craft.

Sonic made his tentative way along a corridor beneath Robotnik's base, listening to the slightly irregular metallic ring of his footfalls. He had never been to this part of the base before, having spent virtually all of his tenure on the ground floor. The upper floor was mostly devoted to observation rooms, secondary labs, and a large office where it wasn't taken up by the indoor arenas. Sonic had wrecked pretty much all of it.

Beneath the base was different though. The top floor was naturally restricted by the size of the ground floor, but the basements had no such limits. So far, Sonic had discovered a lot of empty space. Perhaps Robotnik just hadn't got around to filling them in, or maybe they were meant to be hangars of some sort. Maybe they were just intended to house his legions of robots. Sonic had found plenty of those, along with a few large pieces of machinery he didn't understand. Some were obviously scrap that was pending disassembly, others looked like they might only need some tweaking to be functional, whatever their function was. Sonic had smashed them, just to be sure.

Where the corridor he was following went, Sonic wasn't really sure, but he had a hunch he would find Robotnik at the end of it. Emergeny lighting strips in the floor provided enough illumination for him to see where he was going, but only just enough. He walked with one hand against the wall for orientation to compensate for the fact that his vision reached about as far as his outstretched arm.

He heard the scorpion tank before he saw it, and had run up one wall, along the ceiling, and down the other before the explosive charge hit the ground. The nice thing about walls, he reflected as he smashed the robot into pieces, was that they were significantly less likely to contain obstructions. He listened cautiously for signs of backup, and, hearing none, continued on his way. As near as he could figure, there didn't seem to be any pattern to where he encountered robots or how many he found in a group. Squads ranged from solitary units to outfits of ten or more, and they seemed to patrol at random, attacking whenever he entered their perimeter. Of course, he didn't exactly stay in one place long enough for them to come to him, but did Robotnik have them programmed to patrol randomly by default, or was it specifically in hopes of catching Sonic unawares?

The corridor ended in a solid steel door. Sonic was about to spindash it when it whooshed open. He stepped through it suspiciously. Doors opening on their own was usually a sign something on the other side was waiting for you, but on the other hand he was getting really sick and tired of knocking them down. They weren't that much of an obstacle, but they required energy to remove, energy that he'd rather conserve for destroying things that mattered, like robots, although he was getting tired of running into those all over the place too. His earlier infusion of rings had taken care of the lion's share of his injuries, though the cut on his leg still throbbed dully, but he'd acquired new scrapes, burns and bruises since, and he wasn't having any luck finding more rings in the bowels of Robotnik's base. The door closed behind him.

The room on the far side of the door was relatively empty and appeared to be little more than a hub leading to other underground garages. A hunk of machinery Sonic couldn't identify filled one corner, although it looked like an engine of some kind. Three doors identical to the one behind him led in each of the cardinal directions. The only other feature in the room was one of Robotnik's ubiquitous two-way video communicators, which was the major source of illumination in the room, bathing everything in harsh blue light. Sonic figured these must also be standard installation. It wasn't like there was usually anyone down here for Robotnik to talk to, with the exception of robots who he probably had more direct means of communicating with anyway. The screen flickered to life, displaying Robotnik's familiar loathsome face.

"Hello there, rodent," Robotnik sneered, and Sonic noticed that behind his dark glasses the doctor had dark rings under his eyes. For all that his teeth were bared in a nasty parody of a smile, like a man about to deliver very bad news to a person he disliked very much, Robotnik appeared to have not slept in some time. For that matter, Sonic realized, neither had he.

"What's up, Buttnik?" Sonic replied.

"Juvenile as ever. Calling names and breaking things won't get you very far in life, Sonic."

"I'm not the one calling people 'rodent', Egghead. If you want me to quit breaking your stuff, just say so. You haven't seriously hurt anybody so far, so if you promise to pack up your robots and leave these islands forever, I'll let you go. So long as I never have to see your ugly face again, I'm willing to call it even."

"Fancy yourself a comic book hero, do you? Well on the contrary, rodent, I've already hurt a great number of people. Your young fox friend and the rabbit are both fish food by now, and your precious island is burning to the ground as we speak."

"You're lying!" Sonic shouted. He had to be, because it couldn't be true.

"Perhaps, but you don't know that, and you won't live long enough to find out. Unlike you, I'm not given to letting my enemies go because I think I've won. So, hero, here's your chance to escape a death trap. I don't think the water is hot enough to scald you to death, but drowning should be sufficient."

Sonic snarled as Robotnik's face disappeared. He was distracted from exacting vengeance on the screen by the sound of rushing water. The door on his right opened to admit a flood of painfully hot water that rushed in to fill the room. Sonic was running up the walls before it reached him, but a good bit splashed upwards and hit him anyway. It was in fact scalding hot, painfully, if not fatally so. Worse than that, Sonic had nowhere to run. The room was sealed, the water was gushing in through the only open door, and he could only defy gravity for so long anyway.

He leapt onto the large engine type machine, balancing precariously above the rising flood while he took a brief instant to figure a way out of the trap. There was really only one thing to do; only one thing he could do. Sonic leapt off the machine and hurled himself at the other doors, careening between them at top speed, so that rebounding off the first propelled him across the room and into the second, from there to the third and then back to his perch, only to start all over again. Much to his frustration, these doors were considerably thicker than those separating lab from hallway on the ground floor. Three rounds later they were still standing and the water was lapping at the bottoms of his shoes as he clung to the giant engine. He launched himself at the first door again, rebounded around the room, and didn't even stop to reposition himself as he landed back on the engine, instead pushing off as soon as his feet touched it and hydroplaning across the rising water.

The door gave, and with a roar the water pushed it out of the frame and rushed it down the corridor beyond. Sonic rode the door on top of the raging flood for a split second before the immense weight of it overcame the momentum of the water beneath it and it sank. The water had barely touched his shoes before Sonic leapt off and ran along the wall, out pacing the surge a little more with every step. He really hoped he wasn't running into a dead end.