Sonic Ballistic

by Shblue

A few years after Sonic & Knuckles, Dr. Robotnik returns with a raging yet calculated vengance to conquer Mobius and punish Sonic forever. What seems like an ordinary adventure at first will slowly transform and change everything Sonic knows about being a hero. - Childhood fangame idea reimagined as a hardcore epic, and depicted in text. Finished 2010, uploaded here first.

10. Sonic Ballistic, Part 9

Part 9

Robotnikland [Act 1] (9/42)

Sonic lands in a completely transformed world. In less than the half second when he was in the air, all of the goo immediately transformed and solidified. His bare feet land on cold, hard metal. He is briefly stunned by the change, but looking around he understands what the goo did... to everything.

"Roboticization..."

All of the rubble and debris of the destroyed Nexus just barely resemble the piecemeal objects they once were. Pipes, wires, energy conduits, lights, rails: every form of industrial architecture is now firmly in place over the silhouette of ruins as one metallic mass. The complicated, precisely engineered machinery interlaps and interlocks into each other into ever greater structures. The technology is far beyond Sonic's understanding from the most minute parts to the whole gargantuan complex born from almost nothing. It is definitely Robotnik's style of design, this endless machinery. Sonic looks up, only to have his view of the bright morning sky obscured by towers and smoke freshly pumped en masse out of thousands of pipes.

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Sonic, having recovered his energy, tries running.

Although he still moves fast, his speed is drastically reduced now that he is without his trusty power shoes, which had given his steps their incredible spring. His jump, too, is shorter than before, such that he can only make one single spin in the air for his spin attack.

He tries climbing the steep slopes around him, but in only a few steps he loses traction and slides back down. And with no power rings, he cannot transform.

With no other option, he crouches down and charges his spin dash. He lets it loose and rolls up the sides of what was formerly the wall of a tilted skyscraper. Although his initial dash only carries him so far, he can charge his spin dash more while on the side of the wall, even as he starts to slip down. After a few such dashes he rolls up to the top and stops on the tilted 'roof'.

.

Looking past the far city limits of Nexus, Sonic watches as the goo mechanized all in its way with great speed. In no time at all, it already stretches out to the horizon. Meanwhile, everything already covered in the goo is constantly constructing and reconfiguring all the parts of the machine world, as if alive and conscious, following an unknowable intelligent design. The old world of nature and people he had come to experience, had instantly disappeared into endless artificiality as far as his eye could see. It was already done. Mobius was consumed whole.

"Right after I save the world from total destruction, the world is totally destroyed anyway..." Sonic thinks. He laughs to himself. "And I should be dead, but I was saved. Saved, only to see this... only to fail." He laughs again. "This was Robotnik's goal. To make the world in his image... Robotnikland. He succeeded, and there is nothing left for me. He won... it's all over..."

Sonic looks around the new world. All of the individual parts of this world are customized in shape and function from what it once was, but as a whole, everything seemed to keep the same shape. Only the blue sky, the clouds and the sun floated on as if nothing had happened.

"I saw his body... I saw Mechanix shoot down his ship. But I didn't see him die... like all the others I did... Maybe that video was faked. Tails did say he attacked Mobius while I was fighting him in space. He must have planned this all. He predicted everything down to this very moment. I can't... it doesn't even seem physically possible... to plan out that much. But he always seemed to be stupider than a super-genius should be. No... it's not over. It can't be. Robotnik is still alive." He laughs again. "Just like Mechanix... I should have stopped him earlier. I... I should have killed him... with my own hands." He looks at his hands, the blue fur and peach skin. He drops to his knees, looks down at the cement ground, at the tiny pulses of light buzzing between small electronics.

"It doesn't matter though... he won. I thought he was dead, I thought I could forget about him once and for all, just clear up his remains and... and he comes back, and takes away everything in an instant... I can't do anything now... There's nothing I can do. I can't even run... It's over. Haha. I lost. It's all over!" He stares blankly at the ground. He doesn't move. Doesn't think.

He raises his hands again, looks at them. "But I am alive. I have all of the Emeralds, too. I just need to... transform... and find him... and kill him... maybe there's even a way to deroboticize the world... a button on top of a capsule like before..." He laughs. "What am I saying? There's no way... there's never been a way..."

He stands up. "But... I can... I can kill him. I can definitely kill him now. For everyone, I must... He's the only one who wants this dead world... he killed and destroyed all for this... this lifeless, meaningless metal utopia. If I kill him... I can avenge everyone... pay back for everything he's ever done... everyone who's gone now... I kill him... end this battle once and for all... it's all... all I can do... need to kill him... have to... nothing else... nobody else... kill him... kill him... I'll search the entire world all over again... and again, and again and again... and I'll find him, and... I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him! I'll kill him..."

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Sonic must now adapt to his lower speed and his lower, more vulnerable jump. He can only wall-jump once, and not very far either. As an advantage, not having shoes frees Sonic from the slipping he typically gets from suddenly changing directions or stopping after a running jump. The traction and lower jump force him to practice his precision in platforming. Sonic needs all the precision he can get as has no rings and is only one hit away from death at all times. His most useful ability right now is his spin dash, which is now his best defense but also a temporary speed booster.

The level now truly begins. Sonic must navigate a landscape that is not meant to be traversed by organic creatures. His path is difficult. There are many deep chasms dangerously spanned by distant, small platforms. These chasms are interrupted every now and then by large towers and complexes requiring precise, timed platforming to pass through or over. The placement of horizontal, angled, and vertical surfaces are very nearly random due to the chaotic template of what was once the ruins of Nexus. However, there is always a method to proceed, which is sometimes impeded and sometimes assisted by the structures manifested from the unknowable design of the roboticizing goo. Such a lack of pattern necessitates great care on planning out how to proceed, especially taking into account Sonic's weakened movement. Otherwise, one or two errors in platforming may result in immediate death as over the chasms.

In this area, Sonic's path is occasionally blocked by non-structural obstructions of some sort. Most of these can be destroyed by spin dashing through them. When he's inside structures, most doors that shut behind or before him can also be destroyed in this way.

In this area, Sonic will come across gaps too wide to jump across at his decreased top speed. With no other recourse, Sonic must boost his speed with a spin dash instead, and then jump. This technique is called the 'spindash-jump', and while Sonic has always been able to do this, it is actually necessary to do it here.

Soon the difficult platforming is combined with environmental hazards such as spikes, energized platforms, and automatic turrets amongst many other types. In decreasing rate of occurrence, they can be:

- stationary,

- moving in a preset pattern,

- or targeting Sonic in some way.

Indeed, Sonic should be wary of anything that moves and any foothold that seems too convenient. With no speed and no rings, he should venture on the safe side when confronted with the laser, machine gun, and missile turrets. If he comes across a corridor of crushing pistons or a conveyor belt carrying materials that are machine-processed on-site, he might prefer to backtrack, explore around, and find a less dangerous path to take, although he could certainly take the dangerous paths if he feels confident enough. However, in some cases, particularly when he is inside, Sonic might not have any other choice but take the dangerous path. Regardless of the path he chooses and more important than anything else, Sonic must hone his timing to survive.

Furthermore, in some localized areas, Sonic will find that he is not alone after all. There are roboticized Mobians, both New and Old. Many of them only move their mechanical bodies to complete whatever function was assigned to them, but there are also many that are hostile and attack Sonic on sight. Roboticized soldiers from both armies will use their old, familiar weapons against Sonic, but what were once civillians may throw small objects or their fists at Sonic. Sonic can attack any and all of them, of course. But when he destroys them, the metal does not pop in a puff of smoke and the Mobian inside instantly returns to normal and jumps and dances. No, they are all completely machines now. When Sonic attacks them, he either disables them (like Silver Sonic II in S&K's Sky Sanctuary) or he dismembers their metallic parts in flashes of debris, sparks, and electric arcs. There is nothing organic inside any single one of them. Their remains are just metal shards, arcs, fire, and smoke. If Sonic waits long enough, he can watch the ground become amorphous and absorb the leftover materials back into the whole.

In addition to the roboticized anthropomorph enemies, Sonic also finds and fights the robotic minions of the New and Old Mobian armies. Every single one he has faced before, including the deadly ones he faced on the battlefield, will be somewhere patrolling. He must be stealthy and keep aware of the enemy's line of sight at all costs. Sonic should stay clear of the death-beam-androids and the death-bomb-octahedron-robots especially.

Oddly, the most familiar sight out of everything in Robotnikland are Robotnik's robots themselves. There are many of them everywhere, and surprisingly most of them are docile. While a few of them are new, most are types he has seen many times before. They are all weak. They are all destroyed and leave nothing but metal behind.

Actually, many robots use Black Stones which are removed when they are destroyed, but they are no use to Sonic despite appearing so often. However, a rare few are powered by a single power ring which will bounce out when the enemy is defeated. It cannot be stressed enough how much Sonic needs just one ring right now. Just one ring can act as a shield against hazards and attacks, and can be re-retrieved in most places. Still, even with a ring, Sonic must be careful of stronger attacks and hazards that can make him drop all of his rings, even if he painstakingly accumulated more than 20. The landscape is rarely forgiving enough to keep any more than a few rings bouncing around for Sonic.

At this point it is effectively assumed, unless stated otherwise, that all enemies in the level are robots of the above three types. Again: roboticized Mobians, Mobian robots, and Robotnik's robots. Thus all robots can be considered enemies, but it is up to Sonic as to which ones he deems must be destroyed.

.

Around the time the above becomes clear in-game, Sonic will find that starposts seem to appear in the safest spots, between large sections of difficulty. It doesn't matter why starposts exist even in Robotnikland... the player should never pass a starpost without activating it because of this level's very high difficulty.

At one point or another, Sonic will come across an Egg Robo that resembles Egg Hunter but with more dominating, angular and sinister forms in its design. It walks about quickly, with purpose. It holds a gun and saber attached to each hip, and a jetpack fused into its back. Even with rings, Sonic should avoid this enemy whenever it is near. This Egg Robo is called Egg Assassin. It is the deadliest Egg Robo. Its only purpose is to find Sonic and to kill him.

Egg Assassin tracks down interior corridors and flies around outside, constantly scanning its environment for any trace of where Sonic went. Broken robots, doors and obstructions catch its attention. It carefully scans the area it is in, and if Sonic is outside of that area but nearby, he should still hide out of sight and stay still. If Sonic tries to move, he should do so slowly, so as to make as little noise as possible. If Sonic makes a noise, or it is certain that Sonic is in the room from remaining evidence, such as when doors are shut but not destroyed, Egg Assassin will then perform a heat scan of the area. At this point, Sonic should either be out of the room or disguise his heat signature by being next to something that emanates heat.

- If Sonic is detected but he's far enough to try to escape, Egg Assassin pulls out its gun, aims at Sonic, and fires a gossamer beam that pierces through all surfaces and instantly kills Sonic, no matter how many rings he has. Sonic can try to feint out of Egg Assassin's aim, but it will try and predict where he will go next within a second. It is possible to escape at this range, but it's extremely difficult. At a long enough distance, its heat scanner becomes unable to make out Sonic and it will pursue him until it can again.

- If he is detected and nearby, Egg Assassin rockets towards Sonic. If there's nothing in the way to slow him down, Egg Assassin will move faster than Sonic and intercept him no matter what. It will pin Sonic to some surface, pull out its blade and stab Sonic in the heart, instantly killing him.

Sonic can try to attack Egg Assassin, but it moves much, much faster than he can at the moment. Even if Sonic somehow surprised it and landed a hit, it takes 60 hits to defeat before it simply flees for the time being.

Since it is highly unlikely that Sonic can avoid any (or all) of Egg Assassin's attacks and land 60 hits, the logistics of the battle will not be explained right now.

Being deadlier than everything else Sonic will encounter, Sonic should avoid the Egg Assassin whenever he sees it. It will kill him.

.

Besides staying alive, Sonic's secondary goal should be to attempt to accumulate 50 rings so he can transform to Ultra Sonic and become invincible to everything that is tormenting him here. This wasn't mentioned earlier, but Ultra Sonic can survive crushing hazards which will just stop at head-level instead. Ultra Sonic could fly over the landscape and just avoid everything except the flying enemies. With all the Black Stones around that sounds wonderful, but Ultra Sonic can still be killed if he's trapped in a strong ambush or if he fights Egg Assassin. Egg Assassin will stay at medium range facing Ultra Sonic constantly firing lasers, only dashing close for an instant kill whenever he detransforms. The main problem for Ultra Sonic is the dearth of rings. Aside from collecting rings from enemies one at a time, there are a few rare areas densely protected with robots guarding capsules containing from 10 to 100 rings.

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Sonic eventually reaches an area devoid of enemies or hazards or abysses. The ground is flat and steady. He moves slowly down the empty, transformed streets between abandoned towers of cement and steel. The relics of the immediate past, the broken automobiles, the vending machines, the street lamps and traffic lights, all are nowhere to be seen. The doors and windows of the thousands of Nexus buildings had disappeared under the new mechanizations, leaving the old ruined structures barren of any comprehensible function, with a sleek metal skin smooth, flat and alien. Sonic looks around once again and realizes he is lost. Lost within the endless matrix of cold inanimacy, deprived of all meaning, individual and collective.

"Sonic..." He hears! A young voice. He stops and looks around again. "Hello?" Sonic asks. Nobody responds. He turns his head, looking at every road and path in view. "Is anyone there?" Nothing. "I definitely heard someone..." Sonic thinks, and decides to run down an alleyway close to him to explore.

There are no dumpsters, bags of trash, boxes or fire escapes. No chain-link fences, back entryways, suspicious persons waiting with concealed plans. Just bare walls and ground; straight lines and flat planes; gray, black, white. At the end of the alley he comes to another wall, trying to imagine what the person could look like with that voice he heard. And trying to replay the voice in his head, he finds he can hardly recall it.

Something stares at him from the side. Noticing, he puts his attention into his peripherals an instant before he moves his eyes and head, watching a figure cast in shadows turn and run and disappear like smoke in the wind. "Wait!" Sonic shouts, his head turned completely, facing the direction. No one is there. He looks on both sides of the narrow passage and finds nothing to hide behind, nowhere to go. He looks up and the walls contain his eyesight until he cranks his neck back the farthest it can go, being able to see a sliver of blue sky trapped between the two walls high above. Nothing else.

"Whatever it is... it's fast," Sonic concludes. He continues on, walking down the alley, wondering if it's the same as the person that called his name. This alley intersects with another, and that alley with another. Sonic just selects each turn as randomly as possible, avoiding going in loops, but he seems lost in a labyrinth of narrow, perpendicular paths. Just as he thinks such, he sees an opening. On the other side are buildings only a few stories tall. Interested, he slowly walks close only to hide when he sees a group of robots walk by.

Yet, they walked by with an organic, springy pace. He peers out of the alley and sees hundreds of robots, both former organics and completely artificial new types, interacting with each other like commoners at a market. He looks at the short buildings ahead of him, with their open windows filled with raw ores and standardized parts. Robots behind the counters exchange them after a split-second laser scan on the purchasing robots' heads. They line up in queues, talking to each other in a very fast electronic language, before grabbing their items and moving on to some other area. Sonic walks out of the alley and nobody seems to notice him.

The robots walk in groups, coordinated in groups in several filed lines. He watches as they converse, moving their arms, hands and heads, seemingly reacting with emotion. Individually, they seem to be self-conscious and moving of their own will, but collectively, their movements are organized in precise patterns. He walks into the crowd strangely unnoticed.

Not long after Sonic starts exploring the labyrinth of the marketplace does he come across a commotion amongst the robots. Many of them move towards a common destination, forming a wide circle around something. Sonic squeezes through and sees in the center the familiar design of a Mechanix Child, surrounded by other robots of more mundane detail. There are several large cart robots filled with materials and packages grouped in tight rows. Two guard robots in chunky armor wielding electric halberds surround both sides of the taller Child who seems to be the center of attention. It has long, thin plates covering its bodies like feathers, with an aquiline head. It converses with a storeowner and hands over an emblem. The merchant retreats into the back of his small stall and shortly afterwards a steady stream of short bots roll over to the cart-bots, holding baskets full of Black Stones, and they attach the baskets to small hooks on the sides of the carts. The hooks then slowly elevate up a track and pour the contents into the cart proper.

As they do so, the Child suddenly turns to Sonic and the crowd to his sides backs away. He looks at them who look back at him. With all of them having only eyes and no mouthes or moving facial parts, he cannot tell their reaction. He looks back at the Child who walks three slow steps towards him.

"Thou Divine Destroyer, our father possesses desire for dialogue. Would thou be becoming of fulfillment?" it says, with a synthetic yet soft voice. Sonic is at once bewildered by what he was just called, and amused by its startling politeness.

The first thing Sonic asks is, "Your father? Do you mean... Robotnik?"

Immediately there is a reaction in every single robot besides the Child of a quick few spasms in their bodies. The Child calmly responds, "That is my foolish error; I disregarded the cultural parameter. In our world, the components of the great one machine whom had executed our functions before us are the ones we consider as our predecessors in the manner that most resembles what you lexically assign as 'family'. The Divine Creator, whom you identify as "Robotnik", does not execute any of our functions and therefore is not a 'father' in our cognitive operation. The Divine Creator is God and we know nought but to obey his perfect will. My father is - whom you assign string 'Mechanix'"

Now it's Sonic who reacts with a quick spasm. Right then the Child interjects, "Your error is equal to mine. 'Life' or 'death' are not relevant parameters of the great one machine. You of the flesh may understand more clearly during the exchange of information with my father. I humbly suggest it is towards your interest."

Sonic, who was considering the veracity of these robots' conscious existence in their so-called 'great one machine' in comparison to everything he has come to understand, realized through logic he had little other choice but to say, "I'll talk to him. Where is he?"

The Child slowly and gracefully bows low to him. At this, there is an even more powerful shock of spasms throughout the bystanders and a growing high-pitched murmur of analytical observations, incomprehensible to Sonic of course. Upon rising again, the Child shoots a glance around the crowd which causes their frantic movements to suddenly cease. In milliseconds, all of them became still. The Child returns to looking at Sonic.

"I have finished the summoning of a physical transport to the Hub. I shall go with you only so far as its entrance as I have tasks in queue to be completed. There, I will additionally make a request for a direct pathway to my father to be set at maximum priority for you, O Divine Destroyer. Continuing forward, I humbly make a request of you to accept a temporary change of my attention in this moment."

Before Sonic can respond, the Child again looks at the crowd. In less than a second they quickly turn and return to their previous affairs as if suddenly disinterested in Sonic and the Child. Sonic looks around and sees that the cart-robots had disappeared without him noticing it. As he turns his head then, he catches a sheen of light bounce off some metal zooming through the sky. The object slows down overhead and its wings rotate in place as it hovers above. It gradually lowers itself besides them. Sonic wonders at how fast things seem to go here, but being remotely familiar with the workings of such advanced machinery already, he concludes that there must be an invisible digital "world" that connects everything at speeds his organic mind couldn't match.

He looks around yet again, wondering, "If that's the case, then they could all create a plan to kill me in less than a second and I would never even know. Robots were attacking me earlier, so why all this peace and hospitality? If they all follow Robotnik's commands then..."

The ship hovers above the ground and lowers a large floating platform from its hull onto the metal floor of the plaza. The carts from before appear from elsewhere in the market and roll in a line onto the platform, while the Child and the two guards walk onto its other side. Sonic follows then, still thinking about the situation. "They say Robotnik is alive. They say Mechanix is alive... what the fuck?! And I'm just following them... these enemies... If I had my shoes – no, if I was Ultra Sonic, then... I could simply blast through all of these robots, obliterate them easily... Although, I still wouldn't know where to go... damn it, I actually need their help! I have to risk it. Trust in them just enough... fuck. Fucking damn it! This... None of this feels right!" And so Sonic finishes that train of thought as the platform rises back to the ship.

He watches the market stalls shrink away. The hundreds of robots moving in geometric paths at a steady pace like set on conveyor belts. He imagines what this place was in Nexus, perhaps a park or some public space. It is surrounded by tall, lifeless buildings in all directions. It's then he notices that all of the buildings had been slowly moving and reshaping themselves into new designs no longer chaotically laid about from the aftermath of New Chaos.

The platform rises inside the hull, attaches to the floor and locks shut, sealing the volume of air within. There are no windows inside the ship, just a strip of soft lighting and the rest is dark steel. The cart-bots move in reverse and wait in the back, as seats are pulled down tracks before Sonic and the Child. Even a table rolls in. Sonic carefully sits as the Child does, and the two guards remain standing behind it. Sonic eyes them.

"Why do you call me "Divine Destroyer"?" Sonic asks suddenly.

Not missing a beat, the Child responds, "I shall explain. The great one machine sustains an axiomatic perspective on the order of spatio-temporal events in all ranges, minute to absolute. It is perfected 'religion' and 'science'. In this semantic structure, it is known that our world, our duties, and our existence are nothing more than byproducts of the conflict between you, Sonic the hedgehog, the untouchable agent of annihilation, the Divine Destroyer, and Doctor Robotnik, the untouchable agent who begot our world in his image, the Divine Creator. Compared to God and Anti-God, the great one machine only exists and nothing more. We can be destroyed and recreated infinitely with no effect to either of you. There are millions of principles which follow, but in essence, individually and collectively it is known that we exist only for ourselves."

Sonic is amused. "I suppose that's true. Your world hasn't existed for more than a few hours at most."

"Our perception of the distance of greater and lesser intervals of asymmetric change, or 'time', from our individual experiences, is greatly different from your perception. I will illustrate it. In unstressed conditions, what would you consider as the smallest moment of 'time'?"

Sonic, for a split second, decides not to accurately answer the question. "A second."

"In the same conditions, it is 100 microseconds for us. Macro-operations such as physical movement and audible communication constantly test our mechanical consistency. The majority of the subjectivity of the great one machine operates within the much faster digital substrate. Now, I humbly ask you to stand."

Sonic does so and the chairs and table are pulled back away. The floor unlocks and the platform below them starts to lower. Sonic takes the chance to observe his new surroundings but finds every angle obscured by large walls all around. As it lowers farther, he sees a tremendous building standing before him, with sloping steel walls and sleek chrome roofs. Under the shadow of the wide eaves are hanging electric lanterns brightly shining multiple tints of color lengthwise across the smooth featureless surfaces. Two rows of columns stand about the sides of a thin, elevated glass walkway that rises from the landing pad straight into the castle. An unnatural silence pervades the air. The platform lands on the ground.

The Child bows and says, "O Divine Destroyer, from thee I remove my inferior presence. My father awaits thee within the Hub at the end of this path here. Thy life unending." It then briskly walks off in the opposite direction with its guards keeping pace behind. They watch Sonic as they walk past him.

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Sonic walks down the pathway and enters the castle. The main hall is long and narrow, one wall covered with windows and the other overlaid with colonnades and arches. As he walks, a pair of sliding doors to his left opens up.

He enters the next room. It is large but filled with columns, and its short ceiling lays bare the criss-crossing steel beams. He sees about 40 Mechanix Children sitting on their bended legs with heads bowed, making no motion or sound. On the distant other side of the room there is another pair of sliding doors which opens up before him. From there, a short hallway leads to a stairway.

As he ascends the stairs, Sonic looks out the windows. The castle is still largely obscured by tall, interior walls and towers, which themselves have their own walls and towers. On every floor is another short hallway leading to other wide rooms. The silhouettes of Children glide about in quiet business. Sonic climbs several flights until he reaches the top, noticing the connecting rooms shrink in size.

On the top floor, Sonic finds himself in a gigantic, windowless room with massive colonnades on both sides holding huge, sweeping beams that support a vaulted ceiling cast in darkness. The marble floor is completely empty save for a polished, bright red wood path down the center that stands in great contrast with the colorless, bleak metal and stone all around it. At the end of the path are 3 wide stairs below a very tall sliding door. To his right and left are small bowls holding some ever-flammable solid material that burned a bright blue, that nevertheless could not shine away the heavy darkness hanging down from above. He notices that between the columns are Children wearing heavy armor and wielding heavy weaponry, their tiny laser-like eyes following Sonic as he walked past. He reaches the small stairs and climbs them.

Just as he does, the great doors automatically slide before him. He enters a tall, yet small square room with a floor that has engraved with simple rectangles. The ceiling is flat and suspended under it is a single electric light glowing softly. The other 3 walls of the room have large sliding doors in them as well. There is a single pillow on the floor, a blue round one. Sonic eyes it suspiciously when the doors ahead of him suddenly start to open and those behind him move to close. The doors slide beyond the walls and this reveals ahead another square room exactly like this one. Sitting on a square white pillow on the other side is Mechanix in a new style of body. Its style is remarkably similar to the austere design of the castle, being very simple with every detail profoundly subtle in its form.

"I suppose you're surprised to see me," Mechanix says with the same familiar voice, although it seems more toneless than before. "You'll want to take a seat." He motions to the blue pillow. Sonic asks, "How do I know you're you?"

Mechanix answers, "I'm just the same me as I was before. My corpse was re-roboticized not long after you defeated me. I was not long enough in the darkness to forget. I can remember everything from before. I remember dying... and everyone I killed. I am free... but only to talk. Doctor Robotnik programmed new behavior locks that I cannot easily disable internally. But I am trying..."

"I think I'll stand." Sonic answers. "Are you saying he can now roboticize the dead?"

"No. He can roboticize anything now. He has mastered the rapid creation of minuscule roboticization machines that can reconstruct matter at the molecular level. The Eraser Egg used a prototype version."

Sonic asks, "So, if it's like that, everything I attack can now regenerate?"

"Yes. So when we do fight, you must absolutely obliterate me." Sonic looks at him. "After that, you can enter the First Gate. It will teleport you closer to where Robotnik is. There's two gates before you reach his central base, and him within it." Sonic sighs, looking away. "What's wrong, Sonic?"

"So, Robotnik must have roboticized himself, right? That's how he's still alive?"

There's a pause. Sonic looks at Mechanix and sees small quirks in his motionless composure. "I can't answer that question, Sonic... It's redirecting all of my actions. "

"Is he still alive?" Sonic asks.

Mechanix is silent.

"Robotnik is usually straightforward, but now he's playing with me?"

The door to Sonic's left slides open and a thin cylindrical robot moves rapidly across the floor without a sound. It crouches down and pushes a plastic box in front of Sonic. Glancing at the robot which quickly returns to behind the closing door, he takes the lid off and sees his power shoes.

He looks slowly up at Mechanix. "Can you talk now?"

Mechanix explains, "I'm tightly constrained. All I can say is that these are a gift from Doctor Robotnik."

"This is obviously a trap, as if I'm that stupid. Sometimes I wonder if Robotnik was ever as smart as he made out himself to be," Sonic states.

Mechanix suddenly lurches forward but quickly regains his composure. "He freed me... No, Sonic, don't underestimate him! He's hiding the truth from you...! Don't trust anything, not even me!"

Sonic doesn't move. "He wanted you to say that." Mechanix doesn't react.

"I was wondering... why would Robotnik re-use you, Mechanix, after you tried to kill him? That seemed the more important question than how you and him are still alive... if either of you even are. Here you are nothing more than an autonomous puppet, your strings visible. He wants me to think about it, doesn't he?"

Mechanix nods. "But don't think about it, Sonic. He's doing the same thing I did! Psychological warfare, Sonic!"

Sonic smiles, "I know that. I remember the hallucinations."

Mechanix, still motionless, says, "haha. Good, you don't trust me at all then? It makes my position rather redundant, does it not?"

Sonic looks at Mechanix. "I see now. It's a question he wants me to answer. Do I think you have the original conscience of the hedgehog inside Mechanix, or are you completely artificial? Do I destroy you or spare you... (and die myself)."

He starts walking into Mechanix's square room and ambles around him. "He obviously knows that I already know that you were nothing more than a very powerful roboticization of an actual person. He wants to play with my emotions, but I'm not letting him. If he's actually smart, he must have a plan for if I simply destroy you and move on, but he never does that. He never sends his stronger enemies first. I always succeed because I keep getting better. But he planned it out this far, it must all be intentional. It's almost like... he's shaping where I'm going to go, what I do. So I can't trust him at all. I can only use my talents, my skills, my power, to defeat this world, his world."

He stops, standing in front of him. "I've been in his bases before, surrounded by things he created meant to destroy me. I've defeated him so many times. I was young, at first, but I quickly realized he was horrible at what he was doing. I thought it was fun and I quickly perfected the art of bot-bashing."

He walks back to his square room, keeping his eyes on Mechanix. "He could never finish his life's goal until now, when he does it nearly instantly as if it everything before was a joke. Maybe he's gotten better or maybe he's always had this plan! Of course I'm suspicious of everything now, but it doesn't scare me if that's true. It's just more difficulty."

He smiles at the other side of the blue pillow. "His mind games can't be much worse than yours."

Mechanix is silent. He says, "You didn't answer my question."

Sonic laughs. "Maybe I should sit down."

Mechanix looks towards Sonic. "If you do, take off your shoes."

"Ha, I get it. You know, those shoes are good replicas-" Sonic says as he turns to look at them, although he did really do it to check his feet for shoes. "Ahh!" He shouts and nearly jumps while looking down. He is wearing the new power shoes. He did not actually expect them to be there despite checking.

"So now that you're here, am I going to hallucinate now? Is that it?" Sonic asks.

Mechanix stands up rather slowly. Sonic tries to hold up his grin. Mechanix chuckles once. "Psychological warfare is useful, but it is not real. I carefully slipped those shoes on you myself. When you were walking around."

Sonic knits his brow. "I was staring at you the entire time! You were that fast before... but I have the Emeralds now, not you!"

Mechanix laughs. "Sonic, I'm being swallowed up again. I can't stop it, he's going to make me attack you soon! Remember, you have to... have to destroy me!"

Sonic tries pulling off his shoes. They tighten as if by their own will. "A trap. I didn't have a choice after all."

Mechanix starts shaking and wobbles backwards into the wall behind him. "It's an experiment... Sonic... no! Don't listen to me, anymore! He's –" he stops talking.

All of the doors suddenly open around them. To the left and right are short hallways with windows that look out into the open blue sky. Behind him, a mechanical frame slides together from the slots where the doors were in. Connected, it immediately activates. Within the mechanical frame is a picture of an oblong tunnel that passes through what looks like a completely mechanical cityscape.

Mechanix looks up. His eyes have changed color to red. Sonic suddenly feels a wave of hostility drawing the cordiality away from the dry room. "Robotnik's final warning: prepare yourself."

The walls and ceiling start bending into one single smooth, curved surface. It forms a funnel leading into the frame. The transformation happens quicker than Sonic can realize what's happening and run away. He trips on the slippery surface and desperately grabs onto the blue pillow, which somehow remains still and just the same. Gravity seems to be changing direction as he hangs onto the pillow which is now floating high in the air inside the funnel. He looks up at Mechanix who bends and twists his body. Pieces of the surface of his body flake off and rain around Sonic into the portal. Mechanix's body underneath is a smaller, highly reflective body with globular arms, legs, body and head.

"You were the one who died then. This is hell!" He says in a much more sinister voice, heavily synthesized with sawtooth waves. The pillow dislodges like a feather blown in the wind. Sonic falls helplessly towards the portal when Mechanix zips around him and prepares to attack.

.

[Act 1 Boss: NEO-MECHANIX]

Sonic has only about a second to transform before he falls into Neo-Mechanix. If he does fall that close, at that very moment that they would touch, Neo-Mechanix will appear from behind him and strike him down into the portal at high speeds, to then punch him in the face on the other side. This will kill Sonic. He has no choice but to transform.

In Ultra form, Neo-Mechanix simply just falls back into the portal and causes the funnel to crumble into irregular pieces that topple down over Sonic. Even if he stays still, the weight will be enough to push him through. Once on the other side, the portal closes and Neo-Mechanix jets off backwards into the oblong tunnel while facing Sonic. Sonic chases.

They slowly accelerate down the tube as robot onlookers from the city stop their activities to observe the fight. At first only a few stop to look as they aren't going fast enough to be noticed. As the battle goes on, Sonic may suddenly find himself going at speeds beyond what he could even as Super Sonic. Entire blocks of buildings pass by in less than a second. Eerily, many of the robot citizens are observing the tube and the neon glow of their eyes leave tracers in the rushing blur of the background.

It should be noted how fast Neo-Mechanix is. Ultra Sonic moves much faster than normal or even Super Sonic, but here Ultra Sonic has to keep up and chase down Neo-Mechanix.

Also, if Ultra Sonic detransforms, the battle will quadruple in difficulty. Neo-Mechanix's lowest level attacks will take out nearly all of normal Sonic's rings with 1-2 hits, and conversely, normal Sonic's attack damage against Neo-Mechanix is a quarter of what Ultra Sonic can deal out.

.

Neo-Mechanix has two modes of attack: close-range and long-range. They do weak damage to Ultra Sonic and extremely strong damage to normal Sonic.

In close-range he can attack from any angle, including down from above and back to behind him. He can also vary his attacking rhythm to throw Sonic off. However, due to Sonic's new strength, his attacks have much less effect than before, and so Neo-Mechanix must make up for it with speed, baits and feints. He should not be underestimated even now, as if he is left to finish a combination, Neo-Mechanix can eliminate hundreds of rings.

His close-range attacks are:

- Punch

- He can change the direction of this in mid-air to a punch of any angle or height.

- He can change the power of the punch, rarely during the punch itself, between 6 levels. If it is stronger, it will be slightly slower and vice versa. He adjusts the level to Sonic's situational vulnerability.

- Kick

- He can change the power between 5 levels of kicks. His more powerful kicks require the rotation of his entire body, so they are significantly slower.

- Spin attack

- He can charge a spin dash 4 times faster than Sonic's charge speed and be shot out 4 times faster as well.

- He can untuck in mid-air to attack with a punch or kick instead.

- Explosive blast attack

- Along with radiating this explosion from himself, he can propel the fireball towards Sonic. He glows brightly before unleashing it and this makes him vulnerable to attack, but the power of being damaged from the fireball could take away all of Sonic's rings.

.

His long-range attacks are:

- Energy beams. They all have different patterns and rhythms of movement, such as a simple sine wave or a bouncing straight line. Although they are tiny and rather weak, they are everywhere in short notice and the interweaving patterns make it hard to avoid them all. This can drain Sonic's rings rather quickly if he does not evade effectively enough. There is a set limit to the amount of beams there can be nearby, and it's somewhere around 40.

- If he shoots from ahead, the beams are much faster but quickly disappear behind them. If he shoots from behind, the beams are slower and fill up the moving battle space.

- He can make the beams stronger at the expense of how many there are at once.

- Bombs

- Explosion bombs are thrown at and around Sonic to create spreading shock waves, that can push Sonic around, and spreading balls of fire, that Sonic can just barely squeeze through.

- Implosion bombs are thrown at and around Sonic to slow him down by pulling him towards their super-low pressure centers. If he falls in, he will lose rings at a very fast pace until the implosion ends.

- Both bomb types can link together as the implosion sucks in the fire in a wide vortex. The two spin around each other, making the attack larger, but they are exhausted more quickly too.

- He may also use an energy whip that he snaps at Sonic. If it connects, it wraps around Sonic's body and drains rings from him at a moderate pace. He can somewhat control Sonic's movements and try to slam him into the ceiling or floor. Sonic can only lose the whip by directly attacking Neo-Mechanix's body and dispeling the whip's energy.

.

After 40 hits, the tunnel goes underground, lit only by small, passing lights. The two and the tunnel are lit in strobes. Neo-Mechanix backs off and says, "I have created a utopia: a harmonious society made of autonomous individuals who choose altruistic work. There is no violence, no usury, no lies nor vice. It is perfect. A world only machines could make."

"I don't care," Sonic responds. Neo-Mechanix replies, "Everything you know is ours. You have no reason to fight."

Sonic repeats, "I don't care. I'll fight until Robotnik is dead. That's all. That's all that matters now." Neo-Mechanix laughs. It sounds like bursts of white noise.

"It's true. You are losing your sanity. You should have died thousands of times, but now the weight of reality is crushing your subconscious into its minimum state. He won. The Doctor won, Sonic..." Sonic doesn't respond, but his expression doesn't change either.

Neo-Mechanix continues. "You really don't care anymore. About reason, about history or the future. It's all a blur to you, isn't it? You're nothing more than the difference to your goal."

He is silent for a moment. So is Sonic, who knew that what he said was right. He didn't react to knowing that. He couldn't. He felt nothing.

"The great one machine questions all paths to find the optimum. You cling to only one until you die. You're more of a machine than us, Sonic."

Sonic says, "You're right. I only care about winning."

The tunnel suddenly stops moving, although both of them still are. All of the tube's surfaces are peeled away, polygon by polygon, and what is left behind is nothing but empty black space. Neo-Mechanix slows to a stop and Sonic does too. Neo-Mechanix hovers up, into what would be air. A dim, blurry light grows from behind him.

"If you were roboticized, you would be part of us. You would love it. We could be friends here..." He stops. Neo-Mechanix very slowly bends over his waist while floating. He very slowly raises his arms and clutches his head. He starts violently shaking his head back and forth at a frantic pace. His body twitches and convulses. "Sonic!" It's the same voice as in the castle. "They enslaved our entire species, ripped apart every family by decree of law, worked us to death, abused, tortured, slaughtered us. They sought our complete genocide. Zaga, Knuckles, those fucking echidnas!" A lick of fire flashes in his eyes. The distant light grows brighter, starting to shape space in the void.

"You and I are the last of the hedgehogs. We sought peace against injustice for people that were not our own, and we attained it countless times with a power beyond the gods'. I greatly wish to end this fighting with our power and know you as a brother in peace."

The light from behind suddenly bursts forward into view. Far in the distance are glowing concentric circles in 8 different magnitudes of size, made of nothing but light and shape. They are gently rotating against each other like toothless gears as small, constantly transforming line patterns dance in 3d revolutions around them. It is strangely very soothing to look at.

Sonic never looked at it. He watches as Neo-Mechanix's body glows white hot and his eyes burn an almost blinding red color. He expected Neo-Mechanix saying, "So I shall end this fight now."

At points in space very close to him, glowing white straight lines form small 3d wireframe objects that gather together and then connect onto Neo-Mechanix's body. In a flash they zip across space and drag Neo-Mechanix towards the largest circle of the light shapes far off in the distance. Sonic doesn't move but follows him with his eyes.

When he is attached to the center of the largest circle, his body flashes with light, a pinprick in the distance to Sonic's eye. A blip later and the light is charging through all of the circles and propagating even through the infinite grid-floor. The light flies towards and past Sonic. Neo-Mechanix flashes with light again, jouncing the circle's rotation which follows to all the others. The next wave of light comes at such speeds the green grid ground bends in a swiftly approaching transverse wave. Before it arrives there's another blink.

.

The camera rotates 90 degrees to connect Sonic's position with Neo-Mechanix and the light form. All of his attacks damage Sonic.

- Neo-Mechanix unleashes a bullet hell upon Sonic, thousands of bullets of differently moving and shaped types, together forming several interlocking patterns on the 2d plane. The new battle space is very wide and near-infinitely high above the mesh ground. His attacks become just as large as they expand out of the digital cannon he created, which Sonic doesn't see so far away at first. At Sonic's starting distance, their spacing is wide enough to be easily avoided, so Neo-Mechanix targets his position with laser beams.

- With the laser, he targets Sonic even to the minute angle change made when he merely jumps, and fires it even when changing his aim. Doing this weakens the beam's strength however, as it blurs from the starting to current firing position. Whether it's a straight or changed shot, the beam fades away quickly after. He targets Sonic and fires again after a few seconds, so Sonic must keep track of this along with the maze of bullets.

-Surprising Sonic the first time, in between laser shots Neo-Mechanix will detach and disappear from his position on the light circle and instantly appear right next to Sonic to attack him directly. He attacks without stopping, often throwing in feints to pressure Sonic towards the closest projectiles. This is only lasts a second to a second and a half, where there is a brief respite before another laser attack.

- As Sonic gets closer to the light, Neo-Mechanix creates large wireframe blocks that are then slammed and sent sliding or flying towards Sonic to push him away and remove his space to freely move. He will throw more and more until Sonic must seek the negative space between all of the hurtling blocks to get through. He can break through the blocks, but this requires a mid-air spindash which may send him into a laser or bullet wave if he's careless. When he creates blocks, he can't attack directly.

- He can cause the ground to pinch into a spike that bursts upwards below Sonic's position. It's not fatal in Ultra form, but it is still a very strong attack.

- He can also cause the ground to be pinched and stretched out into multiple polygonal tentacles that swat at Sonic for low but rapid damage.

- If Sonic is free of damage for a good while and when he is considerably close, Neo-Mechanix charges with light and flashes it through all the forms, projecting waves through the grid medium. This time, the waves' frequencies are much higher and they will deal severe damage to Ultra Sonic if he is hit by them. He may send out multiple wave fronts, with different altitudes, wavelengths, and rhythms.

- If Sonic is stationary for more than two seconds at any time, Neo-Mechanix will start forming a cage around his position. If it is completely built, it instantly fills with matter, disintegrating Sonic and killing him even in Ultra form.

.

Eventually, the space is filled with the bright light of the great circle and its matter-less surface and the even brighter bullets and lasers densely fill up the space of that light. Sonic finally sees Neo-Mechanix up close. He is contained in a large mechanical body of chrome armor, which then detaches from the circle which is effectively the back wall of the fighting space. Each piece of the armor takes up to 10 hits to be crumpled before fading into wireframes that then break apart and scatter.

Now on the defensive, Neo-Mechanix forsakes direct combat and environmental manipulation, and instead uses his digital over-body to run or fly around Sonic and attack with:

- punches and swings from his giant fists,

- large energy beams,

- swipes with his plasma sword

- and of course directed fire from the 50 cannons all over his armor.

Once Sonic can find space to attacks his actual body within, he must proceed to punish him relentlessly because Neo-Mechanix retains his innate ability to regenerate. He recovers 1 hit every 5 seconds.

.

Once Neo-Mechanix suffers 30 hits or more, he flies back onto the circle and reattaches. He glows white, and still glowing the whole light form is charged to the maximum limit with energy, spinning rapidly, the line patterns blurred into rings and ribbons. It slowly slides backwards but picks up speed, eventually accelerating to Neo-Mechanix's initial top speed.

- He fires massive energy beams of flashing rainbow color which create shockwaves that reverberate powerfully throughout the infinite grid of the digital space. The waves deal the same damage as before and are uniform in shape, but there is a continuous line of them down the side of the vast beam. This makes staying near the ground a tight squeeze between the wave crests and the beam's sizzling bottom. The energy beam itself is extremely strong and will kill Ultra Sonic at less than 300 rings. He cannot angle this attack, so the space above the beam is safest.

- He fires several smaller, moderately fast beams which curve around in space and follow Sonic's movements for up to 5 seconds.

Sonic must give chase, avoid the attacks and attack Neo-Mechanix even though he is filled with energy. He recovers 1 hit every 3 seconds.

.

After 20 more hits, all of the armor scatters and his light disappears. Neo-Mechanix stops attacking but he still flies backwards, away from Sonic. The two fly past the light forms now growing dimmer and dimmer. The largest circle stops moving instantly and each successively smaller circle slows down to a halt. A static-y white fuzz of light starts to brighten out of the darkness until they breach the last circle.

They are now in a dark, cold room made of blackened steel, lit only by the few tiny LEDs blinking on various machines and computers. Neo-Mechanix buckles over and falls down on the metal grating that is the floor and the hollow sound echoes throughout the room. Sonic looks below the grating and only sees darkness.

.

"Sonic! Kill me now!" Mechanix calls out. "Before I regenerate again... Hurry!"

Sonic instead looks at the new surroundings. "That must have been the First Gate then. The technology here... seems more advanced. More refined. If his nano-goo is evolving like this-"

"Don't ignore me, you stupid bastard! Kill me quickly! You'll die!"

Sonic looks at him indifferently. "If Robotnik can bring anyone back from the dead, then really, there's no point in fighting any of you besides getting you out of my way. The only person that really needs to die... is Robotnik. Everything else is meaningless." He starts walking away, towards the steel blast door on the other side of the room.

"You're not Mechanix, anyway. You're a stale copy with no living soul. The real Mechanix would have never lost to me a second time, if he really wanted me dead."

Neo-Mechanix's body starts convulsing, while his eyes stay focused on Sonic. "Mobius is ours, and it is ours forever. There is no de-roboticization, there is only deactivation. There is no destruction, there is only regeneration. Life is extinct. You deny that even you will die. And you will die. All victory is hopeless."

Sonic says neutrally, "I gave up thinking I can 'win' long ago. I've already lost everything before any of this even happened." He paused, reflecting intensely on something. The pause draws out into an uncanny silence as Sonic stares into space. Neo-Mechanix's body fizzles out and only his head remains active.

In a quiet, weak voice, Sonic speaks from somewhere else entirely, his body frozen. "I'm a warrior... not a hero... a man of battle... an agent of violence... All I've ever known, all I can ever do, all that ever happens is fighting. Enemy, place, enemy, place. Fight, fight, fight... or die. Fight, fight, fight..."

"Robotnik... always the enemy. Always the enemy. Now it's everything. Everything he can. A real fight. The final fight. All of Mobius... everyone... everything... always the enemy. Probably even holding back... Attacking my mind... hurting me in every way... everything... always the enemy... nothing left... is he scared, too?"

There is another silence, Neo-Mechanix no longer having enough energy to speak. Sonic hasn't moved even his eyes from the one fixed spot.

"Maybe... he's tired too... no... he isn't even trying. This is all a joke... a game... doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Him or anyone... no choice... nothing else... no one else... only the enemy... always the enemy..."

He slowly moves his legs, step by step, lumbering towards the door, stumbling on misplaced steps. "Have to fight... need to... kill him... need to kill him... everything... end it all... kill him... have to... must... do it... kill... kill him... kill him... kill him..." He continues mumbling, staring at nothing. The locks on the door unseal before him and the two blocks slide away, opening the way to the passage ahead. Sonic walks through, and the door seals shut again.

Mechanix stares at the door. In the iota of subjectivity within his digital mind, there was nothing but fear of an incomprehensible annihilation. Only thinking, "He's insane."

.

[Act 2]

From here on, it is assumed Sonic has enough rings to stay transformed as Ultra Sonic and never chooses to transform back. All enemies' attacks and death traps will affect him normally if he is in normal mode.

Sonic runs down a long, triangular hallway with its walls covered with machinery and piping. Dim fluorescents keep most of the red-tinged metal in darkness, flying by like laser pulses. The room starts twisting around at an increasing rate before opening into a large tunnel consisting of rotating cylinders holding together a large, complicated energy-creating device. Sonic will only slow down if he runs into the obstructions, so he can try spindashing in mid-air to fit into the small space within the machine. Within, he must carefully spin dash, air spin dash, and jump to clear the small gaps between the rotating structures. At the end, he'll enter one of several maintenance tunnels that curve around wildly, going in every direction before popping out the side of a massive, sheer metal wall.

Sonic is launched into the air of a massive mechanical city seemingly contained within an even more massive structure. Although most of the "buildings" have parallel planes, they are not all lined up and nor is there a shared floor or ceiling. Rectangular prisms and pyramids of various widths, faces and angles make up the majority of the solids. Everything is saturated with curved, orthogonal, rough, smooth, shiny, clear and opaque textures, as well as with bright lamps, sequential lights, glowing pipes transferring luminescent fluids, and pulsating energy tunnels. Everything had a purpose, all is necessary, but there is just so much that meaning and context become so macroscopic as to be invisible.

He lands on a long catwalk suspended between the last building and another far, far away with no supports, seemingly hovering. As he runs, he is immediately assaulted by the constant projectile fire of flying robots and mounted turrets. He is invincible, of course, and so this poses no threat. Rather quickly, the catwalk reaches a large net of other catwalks and pylons going in every direction. Sonic can choose to wall-jump up or leap off to go in a different direction, but even if he keeps on running it's all the same.

In any of the paths, he'll either enter a building or come to a tubular road. The buildings are standard fare for Robotnik's industrial design although more compressed in detail. They are filled with robots including roboticized people (although less of them relative to the last act), and containing many hazards that Sonic will be invincible to anyway. Indeed, inside, he may suddenly find himself in a room with a falling ceiling that can't crush him, or a room filled with harmless spikes or grinders. On the tubes, he can run around their perimeter while following their curvy course through the 3D maze of a mechanical city, sometimes even as they enter buildings through dark tunnels. Larger battle robots, flying or grounded, follow Sonic and let loose a constant barrage of all sorts of projectiles as well as attacking with mounted blades or ramming shields. They get in his way, but none of their attacks do any damage to him. A few hits dispatches each.

.

Either way, Sonic eventually finds himself back inside a building. He runs down a narrow corridor sparsely lit by small electric lamps, sharply, spontaneously turning. The many metal forms cast large angled shadows across the walls and floor. At some moment, Sonic feels a warm pressure overtake his head and he feels sleepy. Just as his eyes droop for a split second, he hears, "Sonic" and in the corner of his eye sees a face appear in the shadow, staring at him with an eerie toothy smile and... no eyes? Seeing this bizarre image so suddenly, he rapidly turns his head with wide eyes, only to see a blank, opaque, dark steel wall. Assuming the person escaped his sight, he turns further and looks down the path he just ran to the far corner, but there is no one. Sonic figures that the speed to reach that corner in those few seconds, no, the acceleration from a dead stop (when it stared at him) to that speed, would rival if not exceed his own. It seems impossible. Yet, he most definitely saw that person, and even heard him call his name. Maybe it was that fast...

"Robotnik... he's messing with me again. This is really low-level, though..."

So Sonic ignores it and continues down the corridor, which also rises and falls, twists and turns. But not long after he feels the same sleepiness and for a moment hears, "the signs are calling" and easily agrees with the sentiment. He stops immediately. He whips his head around and frantically looks for a person. He looks the other way. No one. "That is definitely something! He must have speakers beneath the walls... it's some kind of technology. Yeah, that explains it, it's some science I don't understand." Having determined the issue, Sonic runs on, forgetting what he heard.

.

At the end of the corridor, Sonic enters a sequence of wide, flat rooms each with a different death trap. The first is naturally a sinking ceiling, but it cannot crush him. The next is filled with a bed of spikes that yet cannot pierce him or even crush him against the ceiling. He runs across lava, through white electric arcs, and through fields of normal, sap, slow and shock energy, completely unaffected in his Ultra form. Then he reaches the final room, which has a single, normal-looking turret mounted above the door out. It begins firing at him, but the projectiles are completely new. They are shimmering spheres of pitch black, which seem to darken the light immediately around them. If Sonic is hit, he is stunned, literally, and loses rings in the tens. If he avoids it, he notices the spheres simply phase through the solid floor or wall. Still, the turret's rate of fire is rather slow and Sonic easily avoids them and spindashes down the door.

He emerges again into the 'outside', but notices at once that many of the tubes and conduits, if not all of them, are radiating from a single source to nearly every other structure. He flies through the spaces, following these tubes, often needing to move perpendicular to their direction to get past the large planes in his way, although at times he can break through thin walls and gates to take a more direct approach. Of course, he can run, jump and wall-jump across the surfaces, but flying accomplishes the same displacement with less movement. This time, besides a few enemies or defense doors or turrets, he is largely unopposed. In due time, the 'roads' expand widely and he sees the source.

It is an immensely large structure and a very complicated one at that, consisting of forms within forms and against forms, at once dissonant and incomprehensible and yet harmonious and easily understood as the junction of two hyperboloids. The many tubes and conduits fuse together in a network of branches out from the perimeter of its central circle. Lights underneath the many triangular planes of its surface give off patterns of moving, intermingling gradients. Combined with the pulsations of the branches it seems like some sort of supernatural superorganism.

Following the branches, Sonic comes to its outside shell and finds that the lines demarcating the triangular planes are actually rather wide chasms, their insides even more detailed and lively. Avoiding the many pylons connecting the different triangular prisms, he enters a very large and darker internal space disturbed only by large tree-like tubes which take branches from the various prisms and combine them into singular trunks that connect directly onto a very wide, smooth convex surface ahead. It curves away from Sonic in every direction, but vertically at a tighter angle. This doesn't mean much relative to Sonic, as the width of the entire structure makes it about half the size of the Death Egg. Thousands of spotlights shine on the tens of thousands of smaller steel manifolds that emerge from it. He approaches it.

.

Yet just as he comes within range of the very complex structures, something detects him and in an instant klaxons and spinning alarm lights radiate from that initial position and quickly envelop the entire surface. There is a steady wide circles of bright white light from above and the chaos of the mixing triangles of spinning hues and darkness.

He is then very suddenly assaulted by turrets that pop out of almost every space, as well as flying, track-mounted and ground-based moving robots. While their weapons have very varied media, such as rockets, single beams, multiple pulse shots and so on, uniformly all of the energies are the black energy type he encountered not too long ago which could deal significant damage to him. At once, the assumption of invincibility and safety is completely annihilated and Sonic must now return to very careful evasion as well as counter-attacks in order to survive.

Yet Sonic's speed makes the ordeal disappear relatively quickly. He moves over the top of the curve and finds that he is on the top of an exceptionally tremendous torus within the very center of the hyperboloid. He sees that situated even more in the center is a simple sphere suspended between three pairs of two opposite-facing cones, with the largest being above and below it. Emerging from all of their bases are twisted triangular prisms with no faces; its corners being pylons that make triple helices. The helices facing the torus naturally connect to its inner perimeter. Seeing this inner perimeter, he notices a rather large gap revealing a very bright interior with an even brighter mass revolving within at extremely high speeds. Looking again to the bridges he notices that there seems to be a dim movement of light out from the sphere. Naturally, Sonic concludes that the source of this black energy must be within it, and decides to destroy it before continuing. He looks at the vertical cones, observing the triple helix that goes vertically both ways has metal faces unlike the others. He figures he'll leave through there.

As he flies down the pylons that connect the torus and sphere, he is still continuously hounded down by flying robots while the ground robots take their final shots at him. However, attached to track-mounted trollies on the pylons themselves are even more turrets, which follow him and attempt to shoot him down. In addition, he also comes across a few of the large flying machines he faced earlier, now equipped with the black energy cannons.

Like the torus, the sphere is completely smooth. The only way of entry is within the pylons which connect them. The moving turrets still follow and shoot at him, and in such a closed space he has to be even more careful. The space gradually narrows in until Sonic finally enters the proper interior. Inside, black condensate coats both the ceiling and floor. The tunnels within move continuously, straight or curved, but also discontinuously in steps or sudden sharp turns. In addition, some of the ceilings and floors push together. Sonic won't immediately be crushed if he gets stuck, but he will very quickly lose all his rings and transform to normal form. Of course, he is also bombarded by turrets and a few flying robots (most that try to follow him end up destroying themselves in the goo). Very seldom are platforms floating alone which Sonic can use to rest.

.

Sonic lands on one. He feels sleepy again, much sleepier than before. His eyes sink deeply but he shakes his head. He notices that he feels heavy, but more than that, things are strange. He looks around, and it's the same, but yet, it's different. He tries to rest for a moment by kneeling but it doesn't give him relief. He moves his other leg and sits, but again he feels tense. It bothers him. He feels warm. A surge of pressure comes over his head. "Where am I? What is this place?!" Sonic tries to say, but finds his mouth not making the movement. "Why can't I talk?" Sonic thinks. He looks around. He sees transparent creatures crawling on the platform, stopping, then moving elsewhere. He looks at them, fascinated. They disappear at the edge and he looks into the glowing darkness covering the walls. He sees red pupil-less eyes staring back at him, and he turns away in fear. "What the hell was that..." Sonic thinks, and looks at the metal texture. The sequential bumps in front of him smoothly slide as if on a line. He watches this with great interest, but soon they stop moving. He feels lighter. He stands up and looks back into the darkness. There's nothing there.

Sonic grabs his head. "Okay, so I'm hallucinating again. Then those other times... they weren't real. This is all Robotnik. He's doing whatever he can to stop me... this is a good sign... I can get through it. I have before. I just need to keep on going..."

.

Sonic keeps on going. Flying through the tunnels, in short time he comes to the very center of the massive manufacturing plant. The spherical walls have a grid of linear lights making the large room rather bright. There are hundreds of containers of Black Stones with tubes connecting to many separate machines that in turn have tubes connecting to hundreds of containers of the black stuff. There is an Archimedian spherical spiral catwalk with both poles being a ring around a large vertical tube in the absolute center. All of the machinery, constantly moving in production, is contained within that ball around the tube.

Waiting for Sonic on the catwalk is none other than the Egg Assassin. Like before, he can either fight him or avoid him. Now that he stands a chance, the battle can be described in detail.

.

[Egg Assassin]

As mentioned earlier, it tries to predict where Sonic will go, and aim its beam that can pierce through all surfaces and harm Sonic. Even when firing, it tries to intercept Sonic. Unable to pin Sonic down in Ultra form, it instead makes slices with its blade at a very fast rate. They are still evadable even up close, and so Sonic can enter fighting mode to deal counters while he has the chance.

Its beam can also fire in different modes besides single beam, that is: rapid-fire pulse, expanding spray (like a flamethrower), and a charged-up shot which makes a wide, powerful explosion. It also can fire missiles of several types:

- "dumb" type

- rapidly fired, always directly aiming at Sonic

- about thirty sprayed around Sonic

- "smart" type (homing)

- fired in regular intervals

- "spawn" type (explode out ten smaller missiles in a circle)

- fired alone

- fired in conjunction with "dumb" type

- "flash" type (very large explosion radius which lasts longer)

- fired alone

- fired in conjunction with "dumb" type

- super missiles (create large explosions that often send off separate fireballs)

- fired alone

- fired in conjunction with "smart" type

Egg Assassin attacks Sonic with great intensity, attempting to corner him with his attacks. It only backs off when it's hit about 5 times. It attacks with long-distance while it recovers within an energy barrier. This shouldn't deter Sonic, as if he can chase him down and hit him, he'll deal two hits of damage instead of one. If it can't escape, it'll attempt to take the initiative in attacking.

It takes 60 hits to defeat it, and around the final 10 hits it only tries to recover. Once defeated, it sends all of its remaining energy into its thrusters and propels itself with a final burst to escape.

.

Sonic can stop the black condensate manufacturing while he's here by breaking through one of the many tubes and following it within the machine. It's a very narrow space inside with almost no room between the walls of black stuff. He must move through rapidly moving pistons and destroy several internal supports and electronics via spindash before escaping out the other end as it fills up with the deadly stuff.

Whether he tries to avoid Egg Assassin or has defeated it, and whether he has destroyed the machine or not, Sonic can simply fly upwards to follow the central tube up and out of the structure. The way down is blocked by a thick, solid floor, strangely enough.

Following the tube upwards, Sonic must first leave the sphere. The cylinder of space around the tube is often interrupted by walls with only a few if not just one small opening to pass through, if the openings aren't blocked by a breakable gate of some sort. Constantly moving so he can keep on constantly moving, this area is quickly navigated and Sonic emerges outside the sphere into the wide space he was in not too long ago. Briefly he flies (or runs on the tube's surface). If he destroyed the machine, he does so alone, but otherwise he is again bombarded by flying enemies galore before he enters the cone.

The space between the cone and tube is much more narrow, and filled with pylons that are at any angle parallel to the cylindrical space or at an angle to that, too, making a very complicated path to navigate. It may become so complicated that Sonic might take a detour into the thin tunnels that curve around the main one. Leaving this, Sonic then finds himself within the triple helix, which is much larger up close than what he saw earlier.

There are many small, thin structures within this helix generally at approximately parallel angles to the tube. Many of them and blotches on the surface of the tube itself are often covered in the black condensate for some reason. Sonic can attempt to fly in between them but he may find it slightly easier to run up the safe surfaces and jump/wall-jump to the next when these hazards quickly appear before him. It doesn't need to be said that the product of his current speed and the amount and density of these hazards necessitates a very quick reaction time. He cannot rely merely on instinct, however, as there is not always an easy pattern of when or how to jump, and at times Sonic may even need to return to flying to make it through unhurt.

As he makes his way up through the lateral center and up the narrowing curves of the greater hyperboloid structure, he faces a steady stream of enemies and moving turrets that attempt to impede his progress. Even if the manufacturing machine was destroyed, the flying robots will try to suicidally block his immediate path while the turrets try to obscure his view. In addition, in areas where the surface of the tube is clean, he may find himself surrounded by turrets moving on the tube itself (and not just the helical pylons).

.

It takes longer than the time he took from the exterior prisms to the most interior spherical space, but eventually Sonic manages to escape the structure. To his great surprise, he finds himself outside not just the hyperboloid but the 'city', as well! It is not a pleasant one, however, as he could only tell by the dark, sooty sky created by thousands of rising columns of smoke that blot out the sun. And yet the landscape all around him is absurdly bright due to an exceeding amount of lamps shining in every direction from almost everywhere. The landscape is clearly visible and yet bears little difference from the city he just escaped, except that it is relatively much flatter up here. Looking up, he sees massive floating structures in the sky, of such abstract and complex shapes that it almost seemed as if the world was virtually created and its graphics glitched inconceivable forms. The ground, however, is mostly flat save for giant smokestacks and a few towers and walls. The pipe he had been following finally changes direction in a right angle and enters an even larger pipe which zig zags across the artificial world. Sonic is somehow unsurprised to find that his pipe is one of a myriad, and presumably this means that destroying that one manufacturing plant is of little, if any, consequence.

.

Yet at this scale, with Mobius already this far from what it once was, especially being so far after so short of a time, Sonic did not really expect any different. In a way that Sonic recognized as somewhat disturbing, he enjoyed the challenge of having to face such an immense scale. It fits the godlike powers he is mastering. There was nothing left. Nobody left. Just him and Robotnik. Their battle had absorbed everything, leaving nothing but their separate wills, their separate powers. Maybe it's because of everything I've been through, Sonic thinks, that I find that this was going to happen, that our simple battle would grow to such proportions, and even further, too, definitely...

He scans the horizon, perhaps the only thing that stayed the same, looking for his next destination. It appears to him almost instantly, another massive megastructure sitting like a single mountain atop the world, nearly breaching the cover of smoke above. Just as he notices it, however, his eyes are drawn to the flat land and the open space between him and it. It is filled, absolutely flooded with robots and the roboticized, bombers, jets, tanks and trucks. He couldn't even begin counting, but he knew it was an army of hundreds of thousands of autonomous machines all moving towards him with the single intent of killing him once and for all. And Sonic knew that this was no desperate all-or-nothing blitz, it was just a simple attack perhaps not even with any strategic purpose. But that didn't bother Sonic. In truth, he was expecting it all along. It was a long time, but he made a small smile, acknowledging the truth of the moment. And he ran towards the onslaught, his smile already gone.

.

In less than a minute, bombs are dropped all around him and the fighters swoop in, trying to mow him down with black energy bullets. Soon after, the motorized robots, trucks and bikes roar in, letting loose walls of projectiles at Sonic. Right after that, he is met by the infantry, of every robot he's met before and many he hasn't, mixed together with roboticized New and Old Mobians attacking him with their respective weapons. Most of them don't have black energy and end up being destroyed one after another as Sonic charges through. He breaks through the tanks and the Old Mobians' deadly war machines with ease. The waves of foes keeps on coming, but Sonic quickly gets used to it. He leaves a path of fire and smoke behind him.

In really no time at all, he finds himself directly in front of the new megastructure, its great heights and size obscured by its own surface. Without spending time to observe it, Sonic focuses ahead on the large entrance from which the enemies continuously spawn. He tears through them, one by one by one, and enters. Within is an immense room with open elevators rising or lowering to the ground floor all around him, each carrying some new foe that directly attacks him. He sees a narrow hallway and enters it, finding himself in a bridge going through an even larger space, separated in many levels of flat floors filled with roboticizing capsules. All of them are inactive.

The bridge connects to a sequence of smooth catwalks that curve and spin and suddenly turn around in every direction as is typical, sometimes covered with the black condensate. Rushing at him from the other direction in a never-ending stream are the robots, unfazed by his progress or momentum. In the background are ships Sonic recognizes as from the Egg Tempest, but as he continues on he finds Egg Suits, rockets of all sizes as big as the Flying Fury and even bigger, and many other vehicles and inactive robots of large size. These storage areas are almost directly connected to humongous masses of machinery that extend to the very edges of the room seemingly halfway to the horizon, producing and assembling the millions of parts for all of the designs.

As he goes deeper into the factory, the rooms only get larger and larger, and so too the things they produce. He sees multiple Egg Colossi, gigantic ships and weapons. Even deeper into the earth, he comes to an absolutely tremendous room of baffling size, its extreme volume almost completely filled by the construction of what seems to be a new Death Egg. Yet at his top speed, Sonic leaves this room rather quickly.

.

The next room is atomic in size relative to the last one, being a cube whose bottom is centered on a straight line following from the catwalk. It's much darker, with slow-moving machines rhythmically pumping and pulsing on. The next room is just the same, and so is the next, and the one after that, and so on. There are no enemies here, and none chase him.

As the rooms repeat over and over, Sonic again feels a heaviness come over him. "It's going to happen again," Sonic thinks. It's much stronger than before, so much so that he stumbles over his own feet. "No... whatever happens, it's not real... I can keep on going." And then the feeling disappears.

Sonic runs through the sequence of rooms, with later rooms being organized on the other axis as well. Each room being identical to the last, no matter where he goes, he turns at random. "Another trick," Sonic thinks, "Where am I going? This room is new. I'll turn here... It's the same! Whoa, that's moving..." And he stops to look at the machine in the corner, the same as many machine in any corner. He looks into the deep shadows of the designed shapes, seeing shapes in the shadows, the fuzzy outlines like spindly legs. And looking at these legs, he sees them move, and they crawl out with small bodies, hundreds of spiders crawl out from each shadow. They move up and down and across the surfaces and then on the walls and floor, towards Sonic, who looks at them in awe. "So many..."

His entire vision flashes. He is surprised, looks around. He notices floating in the air many strings, not really moving, just being there. He looks through a doorway and through the doorway of the next room, into the building shadows, and sees at the end a man enveloped in darkness with bright red eyes. As he stares at this man staring at him maybe 10, 20 rooms away, he starts to hear a strange melody made from some kind of synthesizer. He hears a chaotic, slow beat, with each hit reverberating with immense gravity. It isn't music, it isn't noise, and it just absorbs Sonic. He then turns and sees a tall man of shadow standing high above him, and he looks up at his steady red eyes that did not blink or turn away, staring at him, through him, and Sonic feels like invisible claws are coming over him, in the corner of his eyes he sees them, hands grabbing at him, clawing at him, and he even feels sharp blades starting to slice the sides of his arms and legs and chest and he quickly looks at them in horrible anticipation, only to see his bare skin unmarked. He looks up again and sees the machine as a strange creature, breathing and dancing, and its mouth opens and closes and Sonic hears it talk.

"The understanding could not be considered, that any of it is said, to be said, is filtering the unsaid," it says.

Sonic is driven to respond, "You're right. That makes sense. It's not like people, always open, not fast enough, can't it?"

"It doesn't, importantly not carrying innumerable complications, don't take it, don't take it, don't take it Sonic, don't take it. Don't take it, Sonic, don't take it! Sonic. Sonic! Don't take it..."

"I won't!" Sonic interjects, suddenly scared by its change in tone. "I won't do it, I'm not."

The machine-person doesn't talk anymore, and instead it moves its strange arms towards Sonic at a fast speed. Thinking it's attacking him, Sonic turns and runs into the room the other way. Just as he enters it, he sees the machine again, and it attacks him again! Forgetting he just saw it happen, he runs in another room again, and again sees it, and runs again. He does this many times, but soon also sees more shadow people lining the walls of the rooms, and the music starts pounding in his skull, the melody spinning into something horrible and violent, and as he turns his head each time to run in a new direction, his eyes scan faces, staring, screaming, in the walls and the floor, and eventually he just closes his eyes and runs, and he hears many voices speaking, shouting at him, and the music tangles with them and his vision still flashes with brightness, and he feels things slide and hit and crawl and slice his skin.

He opens his eyes. He's in a small, simple bedroom, and Tails is sitting on the bed looking at him. Sonic is somehow not surprised. "Hey Tails. What's up?" Tails seems somewhat indifferent. "Not much, just hangin' around." "Cool. I'm alright, pretty tired. Feel heavy. Weird." "That's weird," Tails comments. "Yeah. I don't know. Hey, what do you think of the echidnas?" "Their architecture is strong and spiritual," Tails says, looking up, putting his hand against his chin. "Very interesting. A kind of floaty, sturdy, smooth but not always. So many types. Black Shards. Why locks?" He stops talking, seemingly caught up in thought. "Well, it must be since some can glide. Like Knuckles. Wonder how he feels. He..." Sonic thinks, "Why does Knuckles value his duty so much?" and finds it a significant pondering, and tries to say it to Tails. But, as soon as he tries, he wonders, "Wait... what did I think? It was important... Shit... I don't remember... why don't I remember it? I just... I just thought it!" And he looks at Tails, whose hand was at his side again, but he was looking down. "Tails, I-" Sonic starts, only to see Tails' head sinking slowly lower and lower, until his eyes are obscured by his brow, and Sonic suddenly realizes that something isn't right, that he fought Tails the last time they met. And then Sonic instantly understood, that he has been hallucinating. Yet Tails is right here... and so Sonic goes to touch Tails, just to see if he's real, and he figures Tails will find it weird, and he pokes his head...

Sonic is staring at the floor. He looks up and finds himself lying on the ground of the machine room. There's only the next room in front of him, nothing to the sides, and the one behind him. Sonic is very disturbed. "No... that... it was all a hallucination... all of it. I... what's happening to me? What the fuck... what is happening to me..." He stands and just runs ahead, down the path. He runs through room after room and eventually comes to a shut door at the end. He spin dashes through it and enters another massive space, so massive he can't even see any of the walls or the ceiling or floor. The entire space is taken up by the Eraser Egg, with the catwalk leading from the doorway to its vast side. He runs down it and then across the surface of the gargantuan battleship, but he stops. He is about to think.

Sonic is staring at the floor. He looks up and finds himself in the same machine room again. The exact same one. "I'm losing it... I'm going crazy! What's real?! How much of this is real?! Damn it... damn it! This is Robotnik's doing... I can't, I can't let him win!" He nearly cries from the frustration, and even shouts out, but he can't. His voice seems unable to leave his mouth. Just as he is aware of this, he feels light, so light, that his eyes start to open.

His eyes open to complete darkness. He feels cold cement touching his limbs, body and face. "Is it over?" Sonic asks. He pushes himself onto his knees and then stands. "Where am I?" he thinks, and turns around, to suddenly jump by seeing two bright red disc-like eyes with large pupils staring at him from a few arms' lengths away. As he looks at the eyes, they approach him, bobbing up and down to the sound of muffled pressurized air. Sonic backs away, but it continues towards him. The light from its eyes shines on a needle-like nose protruding from a shiny and smooth metal surface.

Sonic instantly recognized the face, as if it was his own. He stops, and it walks right up to his face. "This isn't Silver Sonic, or Mecha Sonic. I've never seen this one before...!" Sonic thinks. The robot lifts a metal fist right next to Sonic's chest and keeps it still. Sonic, suddenly realizing its motive, pulls up his hands as quick as he possibly can, just before the fist is launched into them at a mind-baffling speed. The force pushes Sonic back with such ferocity that he slides against the ground for hundreds of feet, only to suddenly feel his own feet lose grip and nearly fly into the air. The tightness of the punch is so sharp that Sonic feels a stabbing pain in his chest despite his hands blocking it in the air.

Before Sonic can take a single breath, he's attacked again.

[Act 2 Boss: METAL SONIC]

Metal Sonic has all of the same moves as Sonic, those being:

- spin attack (jump),

- spin charge (stationary),

- spin dash,

- wall jump,

- as well as flying,

- mid-air dash

- and even air shield.

It can fight in close combat, with four levels of punch strength which are thrown at the limit of Sonic's perception of speed. That said, it is just as fast as Ultra Sonic and occasionally faster when bursting in speed. It starts out with little strategy besides constantly attacking and avoiding Sonic's attacks until it starts learning how Sonic responds to him and uses that knowledge to its advantage.

After a set period of time, Metal Sonic suddenly doubles his speed and dashes around with explosions of color that light up a lot of the space (although nowhere near all of it). It moves faster and faster until it makes a stage of loops, quartercircles, slopes, curves and chutes and then moves on it, still faster than Sonic, attacking him as it passes by. It learns how Sonic moves through the stage and adjusts his movements (and thus the stage) accordingly to make it easier to attack him.

.

After 16 hits, Metal Sonic backs away while his body glows. It tucks in its arms and legs and then throws them outward like it's imitating Sonic's transformation, however the energy it contains explodes outwards. Just as it does this, lights flick on in the distance one after another, revealing a massive grid of alcoves each with their own stasis pod. Following the first wave of light, a second wave of signals and status beacons pop on in each alcove. Bars and gears push and turn while the hissing sound of depressurization fills the immense space. The door on each pod flips open and robots step out en masse. In the now bright light Sonic easily sees an army of Silver Sonics of the two types he's encountered before (in Sonic 2 and Sonic & Knuckles) as well as many new types. After a brief moment of motionlessness, they all immediately turn their heads at Sonic and then dash towards him.

None are as fast as Metal Sonic, which observes from a distance as the hundreds of Silvers attack Sonic at once, although it occasionally enters the fray to drop an attack or several. While at first the Silvers attack one by one, they then attack together, although in a disorganized fashion. But they quickly learn and organize. They attack in multiple flanks consisting of several waves to overwhelm Sonic on all sides, even though all of their attacks are useless against Ultra Sonic's invulnerability.

Soon they realize how to beat this, however, and organize the shape of their collective volume around Metal Sonic. As the organic Sonic attempts to break through their numbers, a large chunk of the Silvers take up the shape of a ball and simultaneously spin dash at Sonic. Ultra Sonic can actually get hurt by this unless he spin dashes himself, whereas he smashes the ball into its fragments of harmed Silvers. As Sonic approaches Metal, more of these Super spin balls are sent towards Sonic at increasing speeds, some trying to surprise him by "jumping" into the air and crashing down on him like the original Silver (in Sonic 1). It is made clear that Metal is the commander from the way the Silvers sacrifice themselves to protect it. Eventually, when Sonic gets close enough, Metal attacks on his own again. However, he doesn't let up with his army of lesser robots, who attack Sonic all at once, wave after wave.

.

After another 16 hits, a familiar big, detailed circle of light emerges from behind Metal. It turns its head , recognizing it, it then glows with energy again and stops moving away from Sonic. The light in the room dims significantly as it does this, and all of the Silvers stop attacking to instead form a boundary around Sonic. Most of the light around Sonic now come from the thousands of their lit eyes and the glow of Metal. Metal attacks immediately with a speed so high that the light around him seems unable to catch up, forming blurry but quick tracers, which Sonic can only dodge in an instant and no later.

It attacks ten times per second in bursts, and mixes up its own attacks, which are:

- "firing" Silvers in spin balls at Sonic at different angles and at high speeds like bullets,

- and forming "arms" or various shapes out of Silvers to best trap Sonic.

- One unique shape is a simple sphere created a distance away from Sonic, which then explodes from an energy burst from Metal Sonic who dashed into the center too fast to be seen.

Sonic can usually only attack Metal in a parry, but as Metal does not escape the confines of the Silver Sonic-made arena, it is possible for Sonic to corner it. However, Metal then resorts to close-combat fighting and Sonic's moves must border on perfect to brave Metal's much superior speed. Either way, only another 8 hits is all it takes for Metal to lose its power.

.

All of the Silvers suddenly deactivate, the light of their eyes extinguished, and they all collapse to the floor. Metal, unable to keep itself floating, also drops but manages to catch itself before slamming down. Sonic, without a moment's hesitation, dashes towards the Second Gate. Just as he does, portions of the ceiling, walls and floor explode. Huge chunks of debris are sent flying and colliding against each other all around Sonic and the room immediately starts caving in. Even the Gate flickers and distorts. Sonic makes very sharp turns to avoid slowing down, which is rather difficult given the speed of destruction. By consequence, it seems, time quickly slows down, but as he closes on the gate, a large platform from above falls before it, somehow parallel to the floor.

Metal Sonic kneels on one knee looking down, and standing next to it is a Silver Sonic that looks directly at Sonic. It holds out its hand at what Sonic perceives as normal speed, which naturally surprises him as everything else moves slow enough to seem almost still. He ignores it, knowing it is just a distraction, when suddenly filling Sonic's vision, on each "floating" piece of debris from the building, are single Silver Sonics, some of which are clinging on despite being destroyed even to just one gripping arm. Sonic stops there, looking around wildly, wondering if he's hallucinating, when other pieces of debris move down towards each of the Silvers, all at the same height and speed. The situation is uncanny. Sonic looks back to the Silver, with its hand held out.

Sonic is suddenly struck with the realization that this Silver is the same one he saved, but just as he thinks that, he consequently realizes this is also the same one that started the spread of the roboticizing goo across Mobius. And upon thinking that, he realized this Silver couldn't possibly be that one, which destroyed itself.

And just as he thought that, his brief feeling of empathy extinguished by logic, Metal looks up at him with a gaze that pierces time. In an instant, the debris crash into each other at normal speed and all of the other Silvers are crushed into pieces. Sonic, markedly disturbed and surprised, who turned his head to see it happen, looks back at Metal only to find the Silver in front of him reduced to its internal skeleton and circuits, with many chunks of its inner structure removed. It collapses in front of him very slowly, while the debris falls around very fast. Metal does not move at all, and Sonic looks at Metal's eyes in anticipation of possible death. Metal stared back with endless intensity and no emotion. Sonic then feels his skin start to tear and slip off his body when...

Sonic's memory snaps back to the real present as he jumps into the Gate which was being disconnected at that very moment. The inner circles of the frame sequentially push forward, following Sonic until he passes the final loop a quarter second later. As he does, his head and body are dunked with heavy weight.

.

[Act 3]

Sonic finds himself in a strange landscape of highly irregular form, resembling no distinct shape nor organization. It consists only of very small modules themselves consisting of flat planes and sharp corners, which build on each other almost randomly. Thus all of the surface around Sonic is extremely complex to the point of chaos, with the space between changing from small to large with hardly any indication of continuity.

However, Sonic himself doesn't analyze his surroundings, instead focusing on the change in his psychological state that he's perceiving. Recognizing the weight, he soon finds the edges of his vision filled with movement (likewise, the edges of the screen are made to constantly and erratically move, which limits the reaction time of the player even more) and his hearing filled with random sounds and voices, mostly speaking gibberish but sometimes saying his name or other words. Sonic doesn't let it get to him this time, knowing he's hallucinating, he decides to simply continue on.

So he does, navigating these hyper-mechanical caverns, having to squeeze through holes or even break through some barriers while almost always changing his direction. After only a short stint in those narrow corridors, one of them opens up into a very massive space. Like the area before, it consists of large chunks of "structures", but now everything consists of that same material. In addition, he now finds that many of them are constantly changing shape, and some even have tendrils of goo which add or subtract masses. Almost all of the tiny modules have even tinier lights, but in conjunction to this degree, visibly form a network superstructure, changing hue and value in subsequently greater waves of information, yet being at every level "noise". In the edges of Sonic's vision, however, the "noise" is greatly simplified to the point of forming faces and other simple, recognizable shapes, almost all of which seem to be not only alive, but sentient, and not only sentient, but aggressive.

There are no recognizable landmarks besides a remarkable sense of scale and space, and definitely no sense of orientation in this place, wherever it is. Sonic can do nothing but move ahead, but soon enough he has no choice. The shapeshifting environment soon becomes aware of his presence and immediately changes its shape all around Sonic to confuse him and make him go in loops. In addition, Sonic may notice Black Energy being rapidly transported from distance spaces towards his current or predicted locations. Once proximate, the Energy is secreted from every module on each surface, and the environment then attempts to trap, crush, impale, shoot or otherwise harm Sonic using its weapon.

It isn't long after that when he is suddenly onslaughted by Egg Robos. Actually, the environment, which really is the most advanced form of Nanoegg structure yet, holds off from certain movements in order to not harm its allies. However, it certainly continues to assist in the fight, providing caches of Black Energy for the Egg Robos to fuel all of their weapons, as well as barriers behind which they can hide and those to slow if not trap Sonic completely, and of course turrets to overwhelm Sonic at almost all times.

.

Only here does Sonic face Egg Robos again, and it's all of the types of Egg Robos he has met, as well as those he has never seen before, which shall be listed here:

- Egg Robo (normal): 2 hits, double damage if hit from behind on the jet-pack

- can fly, attacks from a distance

- fires pairs of pulses from two handheld guns

- punching up-close

- slow, smart missiles

- Egg Armor-Robo: 4 hits

- slow, cannot fly

- larger pulses

- punches are also long-distance, drawn back by chains

- 10 quick homing missiles, 3½s detonation time

- Egg Speed-Robo: 1 hit

- 1.5x Sonic's normal form's speed

- 1 slow dumb with large explosion

- rapid-fire pulses

- more powerful, but half the range

- Egg Tank-Robo: 9 hits

- large, arms and legs fold over into a large shell

- Its hands hold two large, rotatable cannons

- 5 second charge then fires both cannons rapidly and in alternation, 10 times. Sonic can jump or roll.

- One cannon can lock-on and shoot at Sonic at a time, 10 times.

- can hover into the air, to then crush Sonic (jetpack is only weakness)

- Egg Gunman-Robo: 1 hit

- has lock-on, fires rapid bursts of bullets

- grenades

- if Sonic is close, they back away but keep their fire.

- Egg Rocket-Robo: 4 hits

- slowly loads a rocket in its bazooka and then fires it in a straight line (explosion sends Black Condensate everywhere)

- fires many fast, tiny missiles from its backpack.

- if Sonic is close, they use a pistol and fire a powerful shot aimed at Sonic every 3s.

- Egg Commando-Robo: 8 hits

- Moves in the shadows only

- Occasionally aims at Sonic with a rifle from afar, the laser dot opposite his position (which is typically moving)

- Is equipped with automatic rifle, dual pistols, proximity and remote grenades, and a knife.

- May either command a platoon of the randomly selected Egg Robo types:

- normal

- A

- G

- R

- Or be part of a team with other C and S types.

- It can fight in close combat. Its attacks are heavy but now even slower, but it usually sticks with guns.

- Egg Killer-Robo: 8 hits

- A slim Egg Robo with arm-mounted blades.

- Its fast speed is still slow relative to Sonic, but faster than most Egg Robos.

- wide crescent slash projectile of Black Energy

- Also has remote and proximity grenades

- can send out its blades on a yo-yo like weapon

- Egg Bomb-Robo: 1 hit (it doesn't explode when hit)

- runs in and throws tens of bombs into the air which then explode off each other

- launches its jetpack towards Sonic as a high-speed missile

- leaps towards Sonic while spinning and/or doing a pose before suddenly rotating and opening into a large explosion

- Egg Laser-Robo: 3 hits

- has two laser guns which fire two moveable long streams of directed Black Energy (hurts him even faster than normal Black Energy)

- Putting both guns together and charging them for a large, rapidly moving ball of Black Energy which makes a huge explosion upon contact of a surface

- shoots sticky mirrors at the vertices of a polygon it "draws" and then fires a laser from one gun into the other. He is motionless then until Sonic comes close to him.

- Egg Robo-Robo: 16 hits

- A large Egg Robo, only seen in larger spaces. It looks similar to the Death Egg Robot (in Sonic 2).

- It is unarmed, but its fists and kicks are very powerful and charged with Black Energy

- It can try to grab Sonic, and if it does, it crushes him with Black Energy, possibly to the point where he transforms to normal

- Jetpack is replaced with a large Egg Robo creator.

- Its eyes have energy cannons within them, but the bare head is vulnerable. After a hit, it goes to grab Sonic.

- Egg Pressure-Robo: 1 hit, uncommon type

- An Egg Robo tries to stay the same distance from Sonic at all times.

- It increases the range of the hallucinations from peripheral to focus (adds on top of other P-Robos, decreases with every P-Robo destruction).

- Egg Question-Robo: 1 hit, uncommon type

- Blue, small, has a speaker for a head, no arms/legs. Floats through the act at random

- If Sonic is close, it comes towards him, asks a question, and then leaves. These are the questions:

- "How do you know what is real?"

- "Why do you never stop fighting?"

- "Are you happy?"

- "Where are your friends?"

- "Why do some people want to be roboticized?"

- "How do you know you're not wrong?"

- "Why do you think that you are still alive?"

- Egg, The Robo: 1 hit, uncommon type

- It's a smaller Egg-Robo without arms, legs or a head.

- It sucks up all of the Power Rings Sonic has except for 1.

- Egg Velocity-Robo: 2 hits, uncommon type

- Indigo, triangular, flies through the air, shoots small horizontal strips that cause other Egg Robos to dash forward

- Increases the speed of all Egg Robos.

- Egg Negative-Robo: 1 hit, rare type

- a purely white Egg Robo with no weapons that stays behind groups of other Egg Robos.

- if Sonic attacks any enemy but the Egg Negative-Robo, he receives damage; but if he receives an attack, the enemy is damaged instead.

- Egg Death-Robo: intangible, rare type

- A dark shadow that appears in Sonic's (the player)'s peripheral vision. It approaches very slowly to one side, and waits until Sonic is close enough. If he touches it, it will kill him even in Ultra form. It vanishes after a short while.

In addition, Sonic has to fight Nanoegg Robos. They are made of the same material as the environment, although in the much stabler form of an Egg Robo. They move at Sonic's speed and fire multiple Black Energy beams at once. Their fighting is also very fast, although relatively slow compared to Metal Sonic, of course with fists charged with Black Energy. They can change shape into any of the above Egg Robos and are even faster and more powerful, with the exception of types P, Q, V, N and D. Types T and Robo require 5 and 10 Nanoegg Robos to be together before they morph into one.

Sonic's delirium does not just lie on the corner of his mind. Every now and then, almost randomly, it spikes in intensity. Every Egg Robo moves with a horrifying frigidity and intensity and the environment seems to have sentient, prehensile interior walls like it is some malevolent superorganism. All sound is a combined into a gargantuan roar of a grating metal monster. On every surface of every thing around him, textures move extremely rapidly out of place before whipping back, as if twitching. Sonic may be especially hurt by an attack out of his immediate vision, as his memory of enemy positions around him is forgotten when seconds (the player sees enemies gliding around and returning to previous positions in a very surreal way). The delirium may seem to stop, only for Sonic to find himself back where he was minutes ago, and this may happen several times each time his delirium spikes. After a while, it does calm down temporarily.

Sonic eventually comes to an area where he is left alone. Hovering before him is Egg Assassin.

.

[Act 3 Boss: EGG ASSASSIN]

Egg Assassin is exactly the same as when Sonic faced it earlier. However, if it was defeated then, its attacks are less in number and it is defeated in 40 hits rather than 60.

This battle is tougher as the Nanoegg environment changes shape to give Egg Assassin the advantage. Often the surfaces change color and form less chaotic shapes that combine into familiar locations. It happens very rapidly while Sonic's delirium spikes again.

.

Sonic sees his parents. They are standing in the room of his house. They look at him without blinking, without moving. Sonic walks towards them, thinking of nowhere else to go. The fans are rotating over head. They make a whooshing sound. But Sonic can vaguely hear voices in the noise, as if calling out from him far, far away. He hears sentences, they are quiet at first, melancholy almost. They ask where he is. They call out, "Sonic! Sonic..." It's so soft to hear at first. They say, "We miss you, Sonic. Wherever you are... we want to see you again..." Sonic says, "Mom? Dad? I'm right here! Why can't you see me?!" Sonic sees his parents right in front of him. The two fans rotating overhead. Sharp blades whirling at an unnerving pace. The walls start disintegrating in the corner of Sonic's vision, but he can only stare at his parents. The bodies of his parents suddenly twitch unrealistically. "Are these actually my parents," Sonic thinks? The walls are torn away at once. Hidden behind every wall was a fan, all of the same size, some overlapping another. Light radiates out from the floor and from the floor only. He looks back to his parents. They're not there, but he can still hear their voices calling out to him. Before he can realize it, he notices that his body seems to be melting into the floor. He tries to tug against it, but his body doesn't respond in any way. He imagines it's because he's dying. He hears his parents screaming his name, calling him names, demanding he appears right now, wanting to hurt him, wanting to abandon him! The Nanoeggs then disassemble the floor and Sonic looks down in horror to find a gigantic fan the size of the Death Egg. Sonic no longer feels himself as anything more than the difference in size between him and the moon-sized fan, and his entire consciousness is nothing more than feeling the pressure from that difference and the extremely fast speed with which it moves its gargantuan fan blades. Even the massive sounds he hears is compressed into that feeling by the movement of the air itself. He felt so very tiny and constrained that the only way he could comprehend it was through the most direct way, fear. Nothing but fear. Why did he deserve this?! Surrounded by blades cutting the air in circular motion, fans that want to kill him, that scream his name, demand him, Sonic, come to them, be shredded to pieces!

.

Egg Assassin attacks him here. Sonic can move out into the greater space beyond the room for a less constricted battlefield if he chooses.

.

Sonic is in the forest at night. He has a flash light in hand. Near him are two of his childhood friends at that same age again. They're walking ahead of him. "C'mon, we'll get out of here," one says. Sonic looks into the great darkness enveloping everything around him, and the trees seemed to quiver and creep towards him, their branches bending around space to slowly impale him. Hidden behind every bush and rock that he could see is a creature made of pure shadow, waiting for him to be unaware to eat him up whole. There are several simple waveforms, square and sine and so on, stuck in the air without changing tone or volume. It almost seems to be the space above, the purest of darkness, from which all shadows originate. "We're out," the other says. Sonic hears silence. They stand in a well-lit but empty district of a local town. The walls and asphalt twitch lightly and occasionally form recognizable shapes, but the shadow creatures are subdued. Sonic walks down the streets, ignoring the people he sees in the corner of his vision who run towards him. He then looks around and realizes his friends are gone, and he is completely alone.

This town is actually a very large area with a lot of space between structures. In addition, Egg Assassin's attacks actually destroy the environment.

Once defeated, Egg Assassin collapses to its knees and almost instantly glows white hot. Sonic has to escape the resulting super-explosion which is of such surprisingly massive force that it rips asunder even the greater Nanoegg structure.

If he manages to fly away from the many shock waves, Sonic will find himself flying in the clear blue sky, high above the clouds. He looks at the Nanoegg structure to see a giant worm-like amoeboid with its lower surface glowing strongly from Black Energy, presumably to keep it afloat. Glancing around him, he sees many of these worms like floating freeways at various levels in the sky.

Looking down, he sees a small island with a tall mountain. A very familiar island, with a verdant coast with many waterfalls and tall flowers, ancient ruins, and a colorful city. Without another thought he drops down to it.

.

South Island [Act 1] (9/43)

It's sunny. He lands on the green hills he remembers from so long ago. Everything is the same. Did he stop the Nanoeggs from reaching here? He then notices a figure sitting next to a tree, looking out at the river with two tails wrapped around the trunk. As he walks nearer, the sun glints in his eyes. He holds up his hands and walks out of the way, strafing to the front of the figure. It's Tails.

"You're... roboticized..." Sonic mutters.

Tails stands up. He looks up at Sonic with his large neon blue eyes. "Sonic, I'm so sorry, for thinking it was you... it never was you, Sonic...! It was never any of us!" His voice has the same timbre and stress. He then quickly blasts his rotorized tails and rockets towards Sonic with a super-fast punch.

Sonic avoids Robo-Tails' attacks and counterattacks him.

Tails screams in pain with his true voice.

Sonic turns to see Tails lying on the ground, a deep gash in his robotic body. He can't move. "S-S-So-Sonic, w-w-why li-like th-thi-this..."

Sonic then hears all around him in a distinct, unified voice, "SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICC CCC!" that reverberates throughout the entire world, some horrible synthesized voice of millions, billions, trillions of Robotniks!

The mountain on the island suddenly explodes open and a crack, surprisingly straight, rips apart the entire island. Clouds suddenly appear in great number from the exposed geothermal heat, creating the largest storm system on the surface, leaving the rest of the world suddenly thrust into the sunlight, some with an suddenly ominous view of the world in its final throes of total cybernetic infection. Sonic can see the abyss open before him which is as deep as he could possibly see and farther... everything is already roboticized. All that was left of natural Mobius lied in the core and in Sonic.

A massive volume within Mobius changes, which configures its shape briefly before projecting a tower from within it. As the tower approaches, it opens up, revealing a dense structure of different floors and rooms all around a large space in the middle. In there are many blocks locked on each other around something within except for the very top, which has a large sphere with a glass dome. At this point the entire structure is now directly in front of him and on level with his vision. The glass rotates into the sphere, revealing the final space within which has a semi-reflective black floor, flat from side to side of the circle except for the center which is raised slightly. Standing upon it is a wide command console made of constantly changing Nanoeggs and behind it, a cushiony seat with keypads on its armrests. Sitting there, in the middle of all of it, looking back at Sonic, is Dr. Robotnik.

A large portion of the back of his head is roboticized, along with his left eye. He doesn't wear his glasses, instead staring intensely at Sonic with cold, dark eyes and an unmoving face. His mustache is even longer, but the left side has a flatter shape with more sparse whiskers. He wears a simple full-body black suit with two yellow lines making a v-shape on his upper chest.

.

"I told you at the very beginning, "Sonic, you are already deeply caught in my true plan. Even as I tell you, you will be blissfully unaware of how your reality will truly decay into fetid chunks from your inside-out." Do you even remember that?"

Sonic stares back at Robotnik. "Why would I?"

Robotnik presses a button and Robo-Tails falls down, deactivated. Sonic is undisturbed.

"So the Egg Eraser blowing up and Mechanix killing you was all a prank?" Sonic asks.

"No..." Robotnik hesitates. "I did not anticipate that Mechanix could program his own mind at that stage. Mechanix and the Eraser Egg were both two options of destroying the world, but I had many more plans." He paused.

"It is obvious that I have overwhelmingly more power than you right now in every possible way, so if you want to enjoy living for just a little more time, you should listen to my master plan."

At this point, Sonic can just stay still or he can directly attack Robotnik. If he attacks, skip to the boss section.

"Avoiding my past for now, I slowly began recording data and researched methods to attain complete control of Mobius. Given my advanced technology, almost any method would have worked were it not for you!

Sonic the Hedgehog

"My first attempt was a light probe into the dark. I started my campaign for mass roboticization and consequent mobilization of said forces. You just happened to be on the island I was experimenting on. All of those item boxes and springs? Mine. I was more lighthearted then."

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

"While you were fighting me, I was still increasing my infrastructure. I built Metropolis and then the Flying Fortress. With my tremendous supply of relatively free labor, I rather quickly built the Death Egg. I started playing with you in more than my Egg-o-Matic, such as with the first Silver Sonic and my first Egg Suit. Trial #2."

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

"I had discovered the Floating Island, or Angelia. At this point, I knew about the Special Zone but unable to access it I focused on the Master Emerald. I knew you would try to thwart me, so I organized a path through the island as I had been doing."

Sonic & Knuckles

"I admit that for every mini-plan I get a little hopeful that one would kill you. I knew Silver II would fail, I knew you'd destroy Egg Suit II and the second Death Egg, but I still had to wait in my Egg-o-Matic as it burned around me."

"I was getting tired of waiting. I had enough data on you, so while you were off thinking you defeated the biggest, baddest baddy that's ever threatened the world, I was effortlessly agglomerating millions of calculations and hundreds of backup plans. My network of bases covered the entire planet. I had billions of robots under my control. It was so much, and yet not enough. The world was already in my hand, the problem was you."

"I'm flattered," Sonic interjects.

"As you should be. Now, my plan was very simple: always keep you distracted with increasingly difficult obstacles. This required technology that even I had not thought of yet, but conveniently I was researching Old Mobius in great detail upon recognition of the Emeralds' common origin. I was amazed to find three separate triumphs of their civilization: the Black Emerald, the Zenith, and Mechanix. So I explored the ruins of Ka'ralei, found the connection to the orbiting research station and the location of the Black Emerald. I explored Nexus and recreated its entire history and then learned of Mechanix's location."

Blue Hill

"I began my true plan immediately, sending my robots after the Chaos and Master Emeralds. I easily abducted Tails and of course told you that the plan had already begun and there was nothing you could do. I had indeed factored in every possible course of action you could take, although I was gaining confidence that you really had no chance. I introduced you to Egg Hunter."

Part 1

"You had no choice but to rescue Tails. You had to hunt me down. So you did, and I slowly began your exposure to Old Mobius there. Now, I had already let the Deathegg descend towards Mobius but I let you know then. And I really did want to kill you. I did regret holding out on killing you, for quite a while. So you played the hero, saving the world, Apocalypse #1 stopped as planned. Meanwhile, I'm researching Mechanix in his sealed chamber, learning of his god-like potential in power and the more ingenious nano-scale regenerative ability. I create a road of energy that leads you to me for two reasons. One, to test out Mechanix's ability without Emeralds and the degree with which I could suppress both his preceding programming and his contained consciousness, and two, to make you later regret your lack of extremism. Yes, I planted that seed of doubt deep in you without so much as a word."

"It took me only a few hours, 20 at most, to understand all of Mechanix except for a few details. But note that I have been studying you, Sonic, for much, much longer than that. I have categorized and modeled your entire being from every layer imaginable, behavioral, subconscious, self-image, from the gestalt to statistics on the angle and distances of your tiniest movements, down to your very chemical construction."

Sonic looks at Robotnik, and says nothing. This doesn't surprise him.

"This doesn't surprise you, of course. You've always wondered what reflects the intelligence of the world's most intelligent creature, that is, myself. I continue."

Part 2

"I passed on freeing Zaga, knowing full well his entire history and what he intended to do. I knew you'd free him. And I knew you'd follow me to Ka'ralei, where your education would slowly continue. I had already configured the portal to follow Mechanix, and lead you to the Flying Fury where I had Tails. Did you consider that it was too convenient? And you detached the warhead with ease, did you not? I was in control. I detonated that warhead to separate you and Tails again."

Part 3

"While you were temporarily incapacitated, I launched the Egg Tempest. I was leading Knuckles towards you, having already used Mechanix to exploit his suggestibility. You reach Apocalypse #3, you follow Mechanix like a good hedgehog, and your ego is dropped a peg as I beat the shit out of you."

"How intelligent," Sonic remarks dryly.

"Don't try, fool."

Part 4

"I send you to the space station, having modified the teleporter to its original form as a starpost, which would send you to the Special Zone. Through indirect means I partially understood the Void, and I wanted to kill you by sending there, but secondarily for you to directly experience Old Mobius. You couldn't get it out of your mind, could you? Then you fought Mechanix and the difficulty made you stronger."

Part 5

"You navigated the Eraser Egg, a structure made from my prototype Nanoeggs. Maybe you thought it was all going to end then. I did, partially, as I said. My prototype failed but I learned from it. Mechanix betrayed me but still did what I wanted him to. I nearly died, but I knew I could save myself. And you thought I was gone, you focused on Mechanix as your new enemy, unable to stop this momentum you've been building."

Part 6

"Zaga would pressure you too, of course. You didn't even question it; you just had to destroy him. Knowing him so well, you knew where he'd go, and you went there. You probably took the path through the mountains which led you through some very ancient echidna ruins, a fairly decent probability really. I send Egg Hunter out to start Apocalypse #5, having decided to take advantage of being in the shadow of your mind."

Part 7

"I didn't expect Egg Hunter to turn, but it didn't matter when Mechanix destroyed it. I had a camera in that room; I laughed so hard when I saw how you reacted! It was a remote possibility but it had the effect that you focused on Mechanix all the more! Mechanix takes the Master Emerald right from before you and takes you into his floating, changeable ship. He follows my example and modifies your environment to train you even while he tries to kill you. He thought he was a god and got cocky. Still managed to resurrect Old Mobius, which is what I was going to do as Apocalypse #7 after I ravaged the world with Mechanix fully powered under my control for Apocalypse #6. I knew this tortured you, I knew you would beat yourself up for that so hard. 'No one else could save the world but me, and I failed.'"

"Now, I truly did think that when Mechanix finally transformed into Zexagalaxius form, you would most certainly die. I carefully observed your Hyper and Super use during that battle. I saw how you managed to survive every single attack almost flawlessly. But your victory, despite reflecting how much power my training has given you, also reflects how narrow and dull I scratched your mind down to. You even got a personal reason to hate the echidnas. I didn't even need to be there for you to do what I was going to. You were going to activate the Zenith the entire time, Sonic!"

Part 8

"I knew Old and New Mobius would wage war against each other, well, that's almost axiomatic. I knew you'd travel the world from wherever you are to stop it, as you had with both Mechanix and me. Your great skill and power decimated all of your opposition because you were no longer in my trained, difficult environment. I desensitized Tails just the same to the point that he, too, desired battle and murder on a subconscious level. It was easy. You fought him and won, of course. You disposed of Knuckles if he was in your way. And then Zaga would meet you there, desiring to expose his tiny plan to someone before he destroys the world based on some absurd philosophy. Then New Chaos was unleashed, which would have been my Final Apocalypse had I not been mistaken with Mechanix. You defeat Zaga and you somehow made the energy disappear. Now, I was expecting you to fail, so I wanted to send Silver Sonic to show that it was better than you by saving the world. However, taking your Emeralds after fucking with you was fine, too. It used the energy to activate my second version of Nanoegg which could roboticize anything it touched, and which promptly did so. At this point, I did what I told you I'd always do; that is, create the world in my image."

Part 9

"I had the world but you were still in it. So once again I led you through a trained course, mocking you recklessly with Neo-Mechanix, Metal Sonic and Egg Assassin. I quickly analyzed your Ultra form and knew it was taking its toll on your mind. So I tapped into that and activated the thousands of tiny probes installed in your brain. Oh, did I forget to mention that? That my Nanoeggs are on a smaller than microscopic scale? Because they are, and you didn't see them when they basically flew right through your body. By the way, that means I can roboticize you at any moment. Anyway, I decided delirious hallucinations were the most fun to try on you."

.

"So now what?" Sonic asks. "You've got me figured out 100% past, present and future. Even if it's all your fault, I don't even feel that much hate for you. I don't feel scared, either. I don't feel... anything. That's what you wanted, right?"

"I'll admit I had a cathartic desire for you to break down and reveal all of your vulnerability, but I wanted you in this state for a much more suitable purpose. Quite simply, I made you make yourself into nothing more than a fighting machine. I made you roboticize yourself!"

"Is that it? Was that the whole point?"

"No... of course not. The point was to win, and then enjoy abusing you."

"You don't say that with any conviction at all, Robotnik."

"It's just hollow, like some dry bone so dense it takes centuries to die but painfully slowly fleck by fleck. What am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to feel?"

"An endless expanse with no horizon, your body doesn't move, but you stare, you constantly stare and you want to scream. You can only stand."

Robotnik suddenly looks up and jumps over his chair. "We can't let this carry on any longer, Sonic."

"But I can't let you win. Not now. And neither can you."

Sonic says, "Don't speak for me. But yes, of course. I've already promised myself that I'm going to kill you."

Robotnik laughs. "I know that. Now, tell me, why am I wrong?"

"I don't need to tell you why you're wrong. I just need to kill you," Sonic says plainly.

"I don't care if nothing is left."

Robotnik is quiet. He is looking the other way. "Of course, you would rather die than become immortal."

"Than become a robot," Sonic corrects.

"Your consciousness and memories remain, Sonic. You can even delete your memories if it bothers you," Robotnik adds.

Appalled, Sonic asks, "Don't try to convert me, you think I'd give in now of all times?"

Robotnik explains. "Even if your roboticized body is destroyed, your consciousness remains in the virtual world. I would give you the most autonomy of all, Sonic, you could do almost whatever you want."

Sonic, unimpressed, argues, "Your master slave? Okay, listen, I started this journey with the intent to stop you, and now that I know how dangerous you are, I'm not going to relax until I am completely sure you're dead and you can't come back. I don't know why you even bother trying to trick me if you can really control me. Even if my options are predetermined by you, I'll still struggle in however tiny a box you squeeze me in, with all of my strength, no matter what the circumstance, until I destroy you!"

"Do you really think that limitless power you have is yours?" Robotnik suddenly asks.

"I'd do it even if I didn't have All of the Emeralds," Sonic responds.

"I don't mean that, you idiot! I mean your powerful propensity to never lose. Do you know how much you've actually experienced? Doesn't it linger on your mind how mind-numbingly long and complex your journey has been?" Robotnik asks.

"Of course it does! So!? I have a strong interest in staying alive, so I can kill the enemy."

"Such a good soldier, just as I trained you. No, Sonic, not even you could have possibly gotten this far without dying at least once. Your... luck... is very interesting."

.

"Fortunately, I factor luck into my equations," Robotnik says. He turns and looks at Sonic.

"And my equations are quite complex already," he continues. Sonic suddenly feels his shoes stiffen up. He looks down at them and tries to move, but the shoes resist. He looks up at Robotnik who is walking away, twiddling his moustache with no reaction.

"Your parents taught you to be careful where you 'tumble' in your young childhood."

The ground transformed into a flat, wide square that began slowly sinking into the earth.

"You loved exploring your house. Then you saw the outside, learned how to run and how to jump. Your parents bought you shoes from my business back before I had seriously begin expanding. I had installed sensors into all of the shoes and many of my other products, scanning the population for information. All of it was useful when amalgamated but you attracted my interest. You had a very rare ability that when cultivated could possibly challenge my intellect. That's what I thought at the time."

The platform is now twice Sonic's height below ground level. Sonic just stares back at Robotnik.

"You represent spontaneous nature, which grows through challenge into something that could contradict the universe, often destroying itself in the process. Me, I am logical nature, I am what always happens whether you happen or not. I am efficiency. I am cleaning up. I am death."

Rectangles in the wall suddenly slide up, revealing narrow chasm from which water begins gushing out into the square hole, splashing all over Sonic.

Sonic looks at Robotnik. "Alright, enough playing around."

He tries to pull out energy from the Emeralds, but the shoes simply absorb all of the power he pushes against them. The water starts rising up his shoe.

"I have solved all suffering, all problems of efficiency, all problems of organization."

The water rises above his ankles.

"Did you think I so simply forgot about water, your main weakness?" Robotnik asks.

The water rises above his knees.

Sonic grabs his shoes, trying to pull his feet out of them. They tighten against his efforts.

The water is rising up to Sonic's hips. His head is under the turbulent water, wondering how his Ultra power is ignored. His feet can barely move and for some reason stop moving. He rises above the water, breathes, looks down at his feet. It doesn't feel right.

"Remember, Sonic, the Emeralds are only conduits of power from the Special Zone. And yet, how were they made? By compressing Chaos Energy. Think! Power rings, star posts, Black Stones, living things, natural forces! Removing time, all energy is connected, no matter where it is. That's a hint, you know."

The water is halfway up Sonic's chest. Sonic is losing control of most of his body. He realizes that his feet are being roboticized and it's going up his legs very slowly.

"Was my hint too deep for you? Aha. Haha. Hahahaha!"

"You aren't moving, Sonic," Robotnik says.

The water is at his nipples. He can't move his waist.

"The water is cold, isn't it?" Robotnik

Sonic looks at Robotnik. Robotnik smiles and laughs, trying to be creepy. Sonic shrugs. "No, Robotnik. No. You can't beat me, no matter what you do. Even if you try to kill me, it's not possible. You can't kill me."

Robotnik laughs. "Finally, you said it. You admitted that it isn't normal. Because normally, you would die from this. What I'm about to do to you, I mean. And by do to you, I mean kill you."

The water is just above his shoulders and his chin is getting wet. His entire body is getting colder, seemingly immobile.

"You aren't roboticizing me?" Sonic asks. "I mean, why roboticize me in water as if the water would kill me? Are you trying to kill me and then roboticize me? I don't understand."

The water starts lapping at Sonic's face.

Robotnik smirked. "You cheeky little shit. Are you criticizing me while I am drowning you?

Sonic holds his breath as the water goes over his head, but he still stares defiantly back at Robotnik.

"I'm not roboticizing you," Robotnik robotistates.

The water is now starting to rise above Sonic's head, filling the entire pool halfway up. Robotnik says, "I need your body to be in prime condition to suffer tremendous amounts of physical pain before I then actually kill you in a way that will overload every form of consciousness you have with the extremes of pain and bad." He says this as the water rises, knowing well that Sonic couldn't understand any of it underwater, as he was now waiting on his stamina until he dies.

Sonic suddenly hears in his mind Robotnik's voice crystal clear and even moreso, saying, "All of the air is filled with Nanoeggs now, allowing me to transmit digital information directly into your brain through the Nanoeggs I installed there (but only there). Each Nanoegg is installed with a tiny bit of Power Ring like my first model but also a tiny Black Gem."

Sonic thinks, "I'll survive, and whenever I can get the chance, I'll fight you and win until I kill you and you die."

Robotnik laughs. "I don't know how you're going to survive when I take the Emeralds and all your Power Rings away from you."

But Sonic can't hear that, as he is drowning underwater. He drowns even in Ultra form. Seconds are forever lost, but Sonic is motionless in response. His mind screams for movement, for an escape, its awareness starting to fill with pain, with desire, to survive, to breathe! He gasps for air, and water rushes down his throat. He closes his larynx, drinks the water, and the feeling is maddening, and then, Sonic blacks out.

He slowly comes to, realizing his arms and legs are bound by something cold, metallic, unyielding. He opens his eyes, finding himself suspended in the air above a small platform. He stretches his eyes looking at its edges, and from what he can gather the platform is also suspended above some gigantic space he could mostly only imagine. It wasn't anything he recognized, but then again, it's not like that ever mattered. Robotnik stands before him.

He tries to say something, but his mouth doesn't respond. He can hardly taste anything, but his tongue and lips feel numb. Robotnik steps forward. "Of course I didn't want you to die," he says, answering a lingering thought on Sonic's mind.

"You must suffer slowly." His arms are held behind his back, but he brings them into view, showing the steel rod he held in both hands. He gradually lifts it to the side. "Painfully... slowly..."

.

[Warning: Disturbing graphic material ahead.]

He swings the rod and strikes Sonic in the stomach. He gasps, the air blown out of him. Before he can recover, Robotnik hits him again in the ribs, breaking a few, and then slams his arm, fracturing it. Sonic whines with what little air he has left. "Don't fucking whine, pitiful little shit."

Robotnik laughs, throws the rod over the edge and turns around. "I'm just getting started." He grabs something long, like a rope, piling it into loops on one arm. He turns again to Sonic, holding some kind of strip covered with thorns and razors. "I created the modern New Mobius. I developed its best technology, I supplied all industries with materials, innovation and finance. I set limits smart politicians wouldn't break." He starts wrapping the strip around Sonic's body, pushing the sharp points and edges deep into Sonic's skin. He groans, shouts from the back of his throat. "It wasn't enough. I controlled the system but the agents within still acted irrationally. Errors such as emotion and spirituality still dominated the world. I needed full control. I needed roboticization."

With a little bit of the strip left in his hold, Robotnik backs a few steps away and looks at Sonic, with no change in expression. Silence for a moment. He then yanks the strip as hard as he can, pulling it across Sonic's body. His skin tears all across his body, the wounds made deeper as the entire length of the strip is pulled around the same areas. Sonic screams. Blood splatters across the metal floor. As the final bit of the strip finally flops onto the floor, Robotnik throws the rest over the edge, carrying it all over.

"Even with the world shaking under my reign of terror, even as I developed bases and even cities of pure machinery, populated by my obedient automatons, I desired more control. I needed the entire world. I wouldn't be satisfied otherwise. I was obsessed with the idea. The ideal." He turns away again. Quickly turns back, holding a gun.

He walks up, holds it up, aims carefully at his torso. Sonic looks adamantly at Robotnik, wincing and moaning. "At first I found you remarkable, a variable that confounds entire plans of mine. Then I observed you and found you plain yet not any less remarkable. Your tendency, no, your necessary improvement against all obstacles... You should have died a long, long time ago, and yet you live, even now. Damn you." He blasts several rounds into Sonic's body.

"I've outsmarted you, I've got you trapped here, I'm torturing you, all while all of Mobius is completely roboticized, under my control." He shoots Sonic again. "I'm not satisfied."

He looks at the gun, and then throws it far off the edge. He turns away again, but doesn't look for anything else. He is quiet. Sonic makes labored breaths, his consciousness dipping under the immense pain and blood loss. He tastes the metallic tinge of blood in his mouth. He spits it out. The blood plops right behind Robotnik's feet.

.

"Y...you..." he tries.

"You can't... kill... me... You... need... me..." Sonic slowly says.

"We have conquered the mortal realm. Life, death, truth. Everything we once did no longer means anything. But we can't stop if nothing can stop us. Like a projectile accelerated until it escapes the gravity of successively larger masses until it is lost, alone in space. There is no closure. There is no end. There is only the process."

Sonic moves his arms, wiggles in what little space he is given. He looks around for the Emeralds, or something to power himself. Robotnik turns and looks at Sonic, who stares back at him. "It doesn't matter. None of this matters. Nothing I've ever done matters and nothing will ever matter. Math, physics, nothing meaningful, just rationalization, translation into language, into law. Dead words. Engineering, robotics, natural optimizations, law of least movement. Philosophy, personality, illusions, constructions of nothing from nothing. Emotions are just chemicals, damn it!"

He turns away, "I... I'm not satisfied. You're the last living being, the one I want to die the most and yet... I don't want you to die. I don't want to be alone. Victorious. Then what? The process. Only the process."

He looks at Sonic again. "I have designed sentience. I have escaped death. So have you. We're immortal, we are only the processes that carry us through meaningless differences in time and space. I hate you... but fuck it..." He operates a console to Sonic's side, and the locks suddenly release, making him fall flat on his face into the puddle of his blood.

"It isn't you that is immortal, and isn't me, either. There are grander forces, and we are just their avatars. I understand that, I understand that all of our actions here are predetermined, but I still can't accept it. My emotion... I still have a little, a tiny little left... and I want... I want to fight."

Sonic very slowly pushes himself to his feet, grimacing in pain. "I don't care who wins... I just want to engage my entire mind and body into a fight... something different, however temporary. Even if I win, I'll just... kill myself after the battle."

Sonic looks questioningly at Robotnik, who still continues.. "We pushed ourselves this far. This is our faults. We could have been happier in our boxes. But we wanted stupid shit like freedom and truth. We wanted. And thus the process. There is no escape, death only shuts our awareness of it."

Sonic leans against the machine he was constricted in. He breathes heavily, still bleeding profusely. Robotnik turns around and seats himself in the Egg-o-Matic situated in the platform. He presses a button, revealing a series of columns that jet out from below, each holding an Emerald and one holding a hundred Power Rings.

"This is the least you'll need to fight square with me."

Sonic stares at him with wide eyes.

"If I was going to kill you, I would have let you drowned. But... I can't kill you... I just... not any other way..."

There is a slight pause and then Robotnik looks startled. "I'm not going to hold back like I have been for the sake of my master plan. I am going to kill you," he says. He repeats this. "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you. I want to... I must... kill you..."

The platform suddenly shifts and Sonic falls off the edge along with the Emeralds and rings. Despite his weakened state, Sonic transforms to Ultra in mid-air as Robotnik's platform sinks into the great crater below, which wraps itself around it on command. Sonic manages to zip out before it closes on itself. Just as he does, the entire structure moves very rapidly, changing its shape.

Sonic looks down at the ground, at South Island, at Mobius, his only home, completely roboticized, shape-shifting under Robotnik's command. It builds itself up, mountain ranges upon continents rising before him, about to attack. Wounded but conscious, Sonic was never thinking about what to do or why. He avoids hearing his own voice, remembering his actions, seeing himself. He survives. He fights.

.

.

.

[Act 3 Boss: ROBOTNIK]

Sonic hovers far above a massive crater with a perimeter beyond the horizon, and he realizes this is still the same abyss he witnessed earlier. Looking at it, he notices it seemingly healing over, but its immense size makes the process seem like it's too long. As he stares into the darkness, he is suddenly caught unaware by an extremely powerful shock wave emitted from the collective energy of the entire planet. It comes with such speed and force that Sonic's seems to scramble, his vision and perception of the moment chopped into pieces.

He blinks, twitches his extremities, and looks around. In what seemed to be just a second, Sonic seemed to have been launched far into Mobius' exosphere. He turns around, seeing a black world crossed with straight lines of bright light. As he watches it, he notices that its hemispheres very slowly rotate in opposite directions, stopping only to alternate between the lateral and longitudinal like a Rubik's cube. From this distance he can see the scale of the Nanoegg transformation, although the details are vague beyond movement of the land masses around some points. Even the oceans are rerouted, blackening from the extreme amounts of industrial waste being generated.

Sonic heads back towards Mobius. As he does, multiple fields of translucent energy phase into visibility, covering the planet except from the poles where they are projected. Large cloud systems develop in the atmosphere in a very uncannily coordinated manner, a humongous vortex that points directly at Sonic. And while he slowly progresses through space to see all of this, he notices tiny pinpricks of light on the surface arise.

.

He has no time to think about it. He is suddenly surrounded by waves of energy and rocket fire, quickly followed by an entire armada of space robots. Turning around, he sees them radiating out from the moon, which is also undergoing a process of total roboticization. The robots are quite varied, from the size of Sonic's fist to giant battleships like Egg Eraser miniatures. Their shapes are free-formed, radial, or pointed, of course being extremely varied in composition beyond that. There are indeed hundreds of different types, some variations on the same theme, all organized by function and within every type there could be hundreds if not thousands of individual robots. And all of them, with the lights from their various propulsion systems and cockpits, flock en masse around Sonic with the sole intent to kill him. The vast majority of their attacks don't affect Sonic, using traditional energy sources, however by the sheer number of attacks and attackers Sonic still finds himself surrounded by harmful Black Energy from the size of arm-width lasers to mile-wide charged blasts with inversely proportional speeds. Some of the robots are equipped with "arms" holding melee weapons such as beam swords and whips amongst many others, to engage Sonic in direct combat. By the sheer amount of enemies he faces, Sonic can never relax. In addition, they move strategically to adapt to and exploit Sonic's orientation and movement as much as possible. In effect, this changes the shape and density of the vacuoles of safe space. Should Sonic ever stay still long enough, his enemies will attempt to coordinate their attacks such that solid rings of Black Energy are made to close in on him again and again until he dies.

Sonic's main concern besides staying alive, however, is moving around Mobius' energy field to the poles where he can re-enter the atmosphere and find Robotnik again. However, he continually finds more resistance as he flies on, still so incredibly far from the planet. Clouds of Nanoeggs assemble structures such as immensely large shields to physically block Sonic, although he can spin dash through them. Many of them create turrets and fields of Black Energy to make it dangerous to do so. Apparently directed by Robotnik's will, they strategically build in reaction to Sonic's movement and direction while assembling a greater structure meant to shape where he can go and ultimately to completely surround and trap him. This is a distinct possibility given the speed of assemblage, but not an immediate one given the scale.

Surviving and progressing are both ultimately tied to Sonic's movement, and although Robotnik attempts to remove his liberties, he can simply destroy whatever is in his path. As he closes in on Mobius, this is indeed what he must do as the pinpricks have expanded into large fireballs propelling giant rockets even larger than the Flying Fury, with rings around them holding even more battle robots which detach and form a new front against Sonic that largely acts in the same way. For some reason, they can pass through the energy fields with no consequence.

.

Once he reaches the pole (North or South), he starts his re-entry. However, the storm, perhaps hundreds if not thousands of miles wide, has followed him the entire time, making the entire planet seem like a giant eyeball. He accelerates through the thermosphere, avoiding a few rockets on the way. He passes through a few ELVES that last barely a fraction of a second. About 60 miles above the surface he hits the mesosphere, and just as he does an incredibly large red sprite discharges from above the storm directly at him! The discharge is relatively slower, consisting of many gigantic balls of ionized energy about the size of a city block extremely rapidly falling down and then others rising up. Sonic's speed at this point is just enough to avoid them. In addition, blue jets blast out from the tempest directly at his position, although not as often as the sprites.

Passing through the ionosphere, he eventually reaches the troposphere and the upper surface of the black storm. As he gets close enough to observe the texture of the whirling dark clouds, he notices that their movements seem very uncannily ordered. Diving into it, he is suddenly surrounded by darkness often illuminated by the explosive flashes of lightning that often seem to target him, and the fast whooshing currents of ice that can somehow harm Sonic, and indeed seem to whip around him to consciously trap and attack him as well. As Sonic drops through, pushed around haphazardly by wind and his own avoidance of hazards, he realizes that now even the air itself has been roboticized somehow.

Meanwhile, robots have been following him down from space, rocketing up from the ground and seemingly spawning within the tempest itself. While they all attack Sonic separately, a large portion of them begin to channel the various elements of the storm (that is, the electricity, the wind, and the ice) and to use them as directed weapons. For Sonic, all this means is that he won't be able to count on the hazards occasionally being out of his way, but on the other hand he's moving so fast he'll simply avoid most of their attacks.

.

Eventually, Sonic breaks through the eye walls into the eye of the storm which is remarkably narrow given the continent-spanning size of it all. Once within, looking down he sees an entire region of the planet contained between the walls like water and dirt at the bottom of a glass. Tentacles of nanomachinery stretch out from the storm, letting loose attacks of every sort it can manage along with plenty of spawning. Some of the tentacles stretch downward to the ocean, a majority becoming waterspouts all up and down the Fujita scale. The stormless sky is still full of robots and floating battleships from horizon to horizon, all, of course, targeting Sonic. The world is cast into almost pure shadow from the storm reflecting most of the sun's light back into space, and yet it is almost always flashing alit from the nearly constant lightning strikes and launched energy projectiles. Sonic then remembers Robotnik's air armada was called the Egg Tempest, and finds himself smirking somehow.

.

Although he can board many of the ships to destroy them, given the sheer number he just keeps on dropping straight for the ocean surface. As he does, looking at it, he notices that even the ocean is in apocalyptic chaos with multi-story waves tearing the surface, flowing around maelstroms the size of islands. As for the islands, they themselves are moving through the waters as if they were gigantic battleships, their mountains like giant cannons launching jets of smoking, molten rock at Sonic. With enough lateral distance from his shallow angle of attack, he realizes that even the tectonic plates are being moved to kill him.

Robots seem to emerge from every surface, from the ocean, the islands, the sky, space, and even the air itself. Everything attacks him, all of the air, all of the water, all of the earth and the fire underneath it channeled through, all of the electricity, all of the energy. And yet, Sonic continues. He can avoid a majority of it, he can find tiny bubbles of safe space and if he can't, he can restrict the damage he takes. His speed of movement and mind, his experience and his instinct just keep him alive.

.

In the center of the storm an island is forming, the earth pushing itself up and transforming into a gargantuan fortress, covered with thousands, if not millions of turrets. Large portions of it create massive weapons on the scale of tens of miles: circular saws, railguns, pistons. Endless waves of enemies flood out of the island in such great amounts that dwarf the ones coming from every other location.

Sonic lands on it. His degrees of freedom are greatly reduced as the ground underneath him changes very rapidly to trap and attack him. However, the speed he accumulated from his descent launch him through almost all of the obstacles and all of the enemies. Combined with the fireball around him, he cuts through everything like a hot knife through butter. He should take care not to enter the island as the machinery within the earth could easily stop his movements and lock him in a small box, to be filled with Black Energy so as to assuredly kill him.

.

He reaches the central mountain and notices that all of the ocean around the island is draining far away as more and more of the planet's material is pulled, stretched and shaped into nothing but war material. He effortlessly navigates the platforms and channels, avoiding the nearly constant danger arising from essentially every single thing, no matter how small or large. As he reaches the peak, it suddenly explodes open and the tower from before launches out, extending like a tentacle back into the sky. Sonic runs up its sides, avoiding the rings of turrets and energy dispersers, running and jumping through its shape-shifting structures that still can't slow him down. The tower splits into segments like a rocket but Sonic easily bridges the gaps. On the last one, internal engines launch out explosions of energy and fuel to blast it forward. Sonic follows it back through the sky while robots continue to rain from space and rise from the ocean and ground. Solid streams of energy are shot back at him but at this point it's hardly worth mentioning. Sonic decides to enter the tower through the huge exhaust into the engine, and although he takes significant damage, he does so.

The inside of the tower is very much a traditional base but Sonic is moving so fast that he can hardly make out its details besides the blurring fields of color rushing by. Doors and even walls are torn to pieces behind him, and no robot can withstand his attacks nor catch up to him. In seconds, he reaches the top of the tower, with the semi-spherical glass dome at the top containing Robotnik. Here, he stops.

.

"As I thought," Robotnik says through a loudspeaker. Sonic spindashes at the glass, but for some reason he can't cut through. This sudden change is quite surprising. "This is where I want you, this level of skill and speed. Now I can kill you at your best."

Sonic suddenly finds himself being launched away from the dome and thus jumps off the ground he's on. The tower has split apart, revealing what was contained in the space inside. It was a gigantic Egg Suit, five stories tall, massive wings with a rocket backpack. Robotnik's signature walrus teeth logo and egg-shaped body, fiercely shaped and defined with layers of non-Nanoegg structure. It is motionless in the air.

A heavy synthesized voice proclaims, "Mecha Robotnik: on-line."

"While Robo-Mobius has been stalling you, I have finished building this, my Final Apocalypse. Now, you... you suffer!"

.

A pulse of energy sends Sonic hurtling backwards but he manages to push against it. He's still somewhat far away, but before he can regain his orientation he is shot at by four separate beams of Black Energy from the four corners of Mecha Robotnik's two wings. They track him no matter where he goes with perfect precision, and his rings deplete at an incredibly fast rate. In addition, he lets out a constant stream of rockets, dumb and smart, bullet fire, bombs, proximity and timed, and energy projectiles of all shapes, sizes and trajectories. All of it is charged with Black Energy, of course.

Altogether, Robotnik attacks Sonic at once with perhaps fifty different types of projectile weapons. This essentially creates an extremely large field of pure damaging force with a few rapidly moving and changing islands of safety. In order to stay alive, Sonic must exploit the fact that he loses rings steadily and not all at once, and that he recovers whenever he's not taking damage.

As this happens, Mecha Robotnik will pursue Sonic at full speed, attempting to attack him with the force from an entire arm or leg. It can transform its limbs to various weapons:

- Sword

- Gun

- Explosion-thrower

Robotnik is very sharp, and as soon as Sonic is in range he will attack, and he won't stop until Sonic is dead. Sonic can try to run away, however the immense size and even more incredible speed of Mecha Robotnik will give him little more of a hair's breadth, so to speak. What's more, all of Robotnik's robots who originate from all over and inside the world and even from the Moon line up in a several 10-mile radius from their battle, watching and being ready just in case Sonic tries to escape. The lesser enemies essentially form a large and deep wall of their own bodies, constantly attack Sonic and push forwards so as to deflect his motion back into the "ring". Should Sonic somehow manage to push through anyway, he will eventually return to the tempest, which has increased in sheer power and violence to the point where Sonic can easily lose control and get swept away. The storm gradually lowers closer and closer to the ocean or ground, and as everything is roboticized everything will attack Sonic in some way. If he stays long enough in it, Mecha Robotnik will chase him down with ease as the storm essentially forms a bubble for it.

Sonic can alternatively push through the field of damage and Mecha Robotnik's gigantic, fast attacks by taking advantage of the miniscule recovery time he needs for each separate attack (including the beams, which are really 4 very rapid pulse-jets in rotating order.) At close range, it tries to grab or swipe away Sonic with its hands while the surface of its body closest to Sonic hardens up and the perimeter around that point forms a paraboloid of sorts that concentrates the fire on Sonic to an increasing degree.

.

If Sonic can somehow reach the surface despite Mecha Robotnik moving away from him at all levels, he can attack. He must dash straight into the hardened Nanoegg surface until he burns and crushes it with the force of his propulsion. Eventually, he breaks through and can bounce around the "softer" interior. The damage depends on how much material Sonic destroyed and touched and for how long he was inside Mecha Robotnik. 15 bounces per 5 seconds is equivalent to a single hit. He only has a few seconds before Robotnik transfers Black Energy from Mobius into Mecha Robotnik, to incinerate Sonic within him or to launch him away from him if he managed to get back outside. Sonic tries to fly away as far as possible to minimize the shock to his ring count.

Mecha Robotnik, being made of Nanoeggs, recovers the damage rather quickly, however the rate of recovery slows down for the accumulated damage Sonic gives. In addition, the sudden use of Black Energy causes Sonic to move faster and perceive things as moving slower. However, Robotnik also memorizes Sonic's movements and smartly blocks off ways he attacked him before. Sonic can still break through his blocks, which start from his entire limbs put in the way to an increased concentration of damage in the field, or move around them, especially near the end of the battle.

.

As the battle continues, Robotnik changes his strategy, taking advantage of Sonic's comfort in his familiarity of the attack patterns. He adapts several consistent patterns, one attack always following another, to classically condition Sonic's responses. He then takes advantage of any misstep Sonic makes and suddenly surprises him with a "random" attack, often a very fast or powerful one. In addition, he changes his movements from directly towards Sonic to circumambulating around him. He starts exposing his multi-layered strategy, with every backup plan having two more backup plans, each attack followed up by another.

He strategically moves and organizes his many groups of robots, bringing them in closer to their battle. He alters the ground below them to create several large cannons, which absorb a large amount of Black Energy from around them and fires it in a constant, straight beam that can very quickly kill Sonic. As more beams are fired, they form corners of planes of less dense Black Energy, which themselves form edges of larger prismatic shapes which become denser as more beams are fired. Finally, he demands the air itself to roboticize into various structures designed to slow down or even encapsulate Sonic so he could be more easily killed.

.

Despite such rigorous planning, Sonic is just too fast and getting ever faster. He avoids what he can, survives the rest. His attacks start piling up on Mecha Robotnik and it's clear to all parties involved who will ultimately win at this rate. Thus Robotnik suddenly lets loose his full force of attacks. He calls in all of his robots to assist his assault, creating traps and turrets in mid-air, directing the giant land cannons at Sonic, and attacking with full force and speed with Mecha's limbs. Most of the robots are obliterated in the extreme crossfire, but they constantly replenish their own numbers. The amount of Black Energy being drawn is so enormous that it can be visibly seen being pulled in in spherical waves from all around them, causing the field of danger to similarly rareify and compress with the energy. In the last few hits, Robotnik transforms Mecha's entire chest into a gigantic energy cannon which fires a beam so concentrated that it can instantly kill Sonic and so large that Sonic has no choice but to fly out of the way or die. Of course, Robotnik tries to block his way out but Sonic manages to squeeze through.

After 40 hits, the Nanoegg structure of Mecha slows its chaotic movement at an increasing scale, until even its giant limbs are motionless. Robotnik tries to pull in energy to counteract this, but by doing so large chunks of the robot simply explode without any restoration. This causes a chain reaction, and soon the entire thing is blasting itself to pieces. So as a last attack, Robotnik uses the explosions to propel what's left of the giant hunk of metal towards Sonic, spinning it around wildly so its limbs can whack Sonic when he tries to escape.

.

The glass dome or "head", however, detaches before this and floats on its own. The structure containing the room containing Robotnik reveals itself as a small house-sized, egg-shaped Egg-o-Matic. As this local area seems to have been somehow drained of energy, or perhaps that the Nanoeggs here have malfunctions, Robotnik immediately tries to make an escape through his forces but Sonic naturally chases him down. He easily avoids his robot super-military and all of the roboticized elements assaulting him or otherwise blasting straight through them. He catches up to the Super Egg-o-Matic in almost no time at all and rams into it again and again. However, the Nanoeggs in this machine are still functional. Instead of transforming, they regenerate at a faster rate than Sonic's, or at least just enough to prevent permanent damage. So Sonic simply targets the glass dome instead, which takes some pummeling but eventually breaks.

.

Sonic stops inside the room, and likewise Robotnik stops the movement of the small ship. They stare at each other, the only other thing in the room being the console and seat.

"You could have taken the Emeralds at any time. You could have killed me when I was normal. With them, I'm not only invincible, but I improve at an accelerating rate. You don't really want me to die, do you?" Sonic asks.

Robotnik smirks. He stands up, hands held behind his back and walks off the elevated platform, which then lowers itself, the console and seat down below the floor. A trap door slides seamlessly shut level to the floor, as if it was never there.

"I never said I was perfect. In fact, even now, I am learning. I am improving myself, as you are. I made this scenario a challenge for me despite having the power of an entire planet in my immediate control. But I've had enough of playing around. This time, there won't be any margin of error for you to indulge in."

He brings his hands in front of him. He holds out his left hand stretched in front, holding in his palm a normal egg. Sonic watches it, and him, very carefully.

It vanishes.

Sonic suddenly remembers the delirium, the hallucinations. He braces himself.

"You're the last living thing, the last autonomous being, besides myself. More than that, my archnemesis, my most hated enemy... I want you to die very sincerely, I assure you. But to simply overpower and kill you would be too easy. No, by growing you this strong, by putting limits on what I can do, I can..."

He stops, and suddenly looks away.

He then just says, "No," and suddenly pulls his arm forward. A pistol materializes in his hand and he immediately fires a pure-black shot at Sonic. If Sonic doesn't dodge, the shot will instantly kill him.

.

.

For once and for all, Sonic finally fights Robotnik face-to-face. The Super Egg-o-Matic slowly floats through the world. Many of the robots follow it, watching from afar. The tempest rages on but very gradually it begins to weaken and dissipate. Most of the ocean, sky and land around them is completely motionless, configured in some construction devoid of energy.

Although the space under the glass dome is nearly a hundred feet in diameter, compared to the boundless battlefields of the previous fight, it is relatively asphyxiating. Intensifying this pressure is the fact that all of Robotnik's actions including attacks and using some of the items he has (which shall be listed shortly) are either made of or charged with a Black Energy so concentrated that even at Sonic's current energy levels will kill him.

As Sonic may recall, Robotnik was actually faster than him in bursts several times in the past (e.g. in the Death Egg in Sonic 2) and this is true even now. Although space is limited, Robotnik can and will run a lot, around Sonic and even across the ceiling. He will also jump (off the ceiling, too) and roll whenever he finds an opportunity to escape or attack.

He can be faster than Sonic's perception in millisecond flashes of extreme speed. He often uses this just to feint with attacks and movements. He may go one way only to go another, or he may pull out a gun only to strike with a sword. Sonic won't know what to do until Robotnik stops feinting. However, especially as time goes on, he can continue feinting until he produces several afterimages that attack Sonic at once. He can only do this for a few seconds at first but later it can go up to several minutes. In addition, he can sprint while doing this although it drastically reduces the duration of both.

Robotnik has fought Sonic more than anyone else, and now he's mostly roboticized in addition to being extremely intelligent. His tactics are not only very responsive to whatever Sonic does, but they are indeed optimally structured to bring Robotnik the maximum advantage. There is a structured stream of events he produces, randomized when he wants to deal damage and consistent when he wants Sonic to act a certain way (often to lure him into damage). He memorizes every response Sonic makes and adjusts his tactics to discourage the most successful ones. He analyzes every attack, finding ways to avoid it in the future, ways to exploit it for damage, and the psychology behind it (being able to adjust his actions so that Sonic's actions create a more exploitable psychology). Robotnik is not completely independent of emotions, himself, and if he has a lot of success he becomes more confident and attacks more, and if it happens quickly he could even be cocky and try to kill Sonic quickly (leaving himself open for attack). Likewise, if he takes a lot of damage he will become cautious and back away more, and the faster he takes on all of that damage, the more scared he gets until he runs away completely. If Sonic corners him in this state, he will respond in the same way as Robotnik does near the end of the battle (which will be mentioned near the end of this battle description.)

Overall, Robotnik's strategy is to find what Sonic is most vulnerable to and force him to face it, while constantly engaging his senses and slowly whittling away his stamina. His main intent at all times is to win by completely destroying Sonic, and as the battle continues he improves at doing this so long as he scores some attacks, becoming faster, stronger and more accurate. However, he is aware of his own energy and indeed analyzes every scenario in terms of cost and benefit. As the battle nears the end, he may become slightly more desperate but he always keeps his cool whenever he can.

The full list of his actions is this:

- Movement

- running

- rolling

- leaping

- jumping

- Positioning for attacks

- Evasion

- Disorientation (feints, baits)

- Attacks

- Weaponry: Robotnik holds a cylinder in his hand made of Nanoeggs which transforms into the form he chooses.

- Blunt

- Hammer: Powerful but slow swings, can deflect Sonic if he's in a spin ball. He can spin the head on the ground, riding it like a top towards Sonic where he uses the inertia and rotation for a near-deadly strike.

- Morning Star: A little faster but also weaker. He can choose single spikes to extend out to poke Sonic, or extend almost all of them.

- Quarterstaff: Weak, but once Robotnik starts a combination attack, his momentum does not stop. He can use this to maneuver such as by vaulting or spinning around. He can extend the staff to push Sonic into a wall, and if he's stuck, spin down the staff and slam into him (deadly).

- Whip: Weak, but very fast, and can be extended to long distances.

- Blade

- Dagger: He can throw many of these towards Sonic, or conceal it when Sonic comes close or is unaware of what's behind him, to fatally stab him.

- Rapier: Robotnik uses a standard fencing pose, always facing Sonic, and attempts to stab him several times. Although it can be deadly, Sonic can easily avoid it.

- Scimitar: Robotnik spins the handle and tosses it between his hands as he moves, as if the scimitar was dancing in the air by itself, before slicing at Sonic in tight arcs. Sonic should be especially careful if Robotnik speeds up, as the attacks are already hard to avoid. Robotnik can also make several radiating, wide arcs from afar.

- Katana: Robotnik often moves fast with this weapon, which he cuts with split-second speed and fatal accuracy and power. Sonic should especially be wary of when Robotnik sheathes the sword but doesn't change the weapon, as his iai will kill him instantly unless he can strike him first (which counts as 2 hits if he does).

- Bastard sword: Despite its immense size, Robotnik can move this behemoth still rather quickly. The power of a single slice is near-fatal, and almost every slice sends a shockwave of energy through the air to boot. Surprisingly, Robotnik can even ride on the flat side of its blade as it flies towards Sonic, but this makes him rather vulnerable.

- Lance: Moderately fast and strong, Robotnik usually only uses this at medium ranges or when he's dashing.

- Halberd: Also used at mid-range, this is slightly stronger and faster as Robotnik can swing it, however it is almost never used otherwise (A counterexample being if he's flipping through the air several times per second, which is a fatal attack if it hits.)

- Ranged

- Pistol: Somewhat strong but accurate, often used in between other weapon attacks.

- Grenades: These grow like fruits out of the handle, which Robotnik plucks and lobs at Sonic. He may hide this, holding one behind his back until Sonic comes close and throws an explosion in his face. They are near-deadly.

- Sub-machine guns: A second one is created so Robotnik can have two streams of rapid-fire at Sonic. Often used while moving at mid-range, but they aren't that accurate.

- Shotgun: Used at mid-range or at close-range if Sonic is trapped. Deadly to near-deadly depending on how much shot hits Sonic.

- Automatic rifle: Accurate only if Robotnik is still, very strong but not that fast. He can toss the Rifle, too, which can explode.

- Sniper Rifle: Extremely accurate and deadly, especially used at the longest of distances. Robotnik can no-scope, however, so Sonic should be very careful to avoid the bullets or hit him.

- Rocket Launcher: Somewhat slow, the splash damage from the explosions is quite wide. A direct hit is deadly. He can fire multiple rockets at once to surprise Sonic.

- Hand-to-hand: At very close range, Robotnik might disarm himself and fight bare-handed. These attacks are nearly all faster than using weapons, and some are even stronger, too. The same rules for fighting anyone else applies with him, too.

- Strikes: Each of these can be thrown at five levels, with the first being the weakest and fastest and the last being the strongest and slowest.

- Punches: Can be curved, thrown at angles, thrown both at once, telescoped or not, using different sides of the hand.

- Elbow jabs: Stronger than punches at lower levels, but require an even closer range.

- Kicks: Strongest at the highest level at full range, can also be thrown at angles, curves, using different sides of the foot.

- Knee jabs: Stronger than kicks at lower levels, but require movement and proximity.

- Headbutts: Often a surprise attack, rather strong but easiest to avoid

- Grapples: Used at the closest range or if Sonic is knocked down nearby to pin him, and then when he's stuck, Robotnik immediately crushes his neck.

- Items: Held in his pockets, he seemingly has a hidden inventory.

- Upgrades: Temporary for a few minutes, can be layered only 5 times. They simply change the machinery of his body and suit, indicated by a change in its hue.

- Defense: Increases his strength when he's stationary and especially when blocking, halves damage at each level. Blue.

- Offense: Increases his strength when moving and especially when attacking, increases damage by 50% each level. Red.

- Speed: Increases his speed overall, especially when evading, 50% each level. Yellow.

- Recovery: All of these take a short moment to begin, leaving Robotnik vulnerable although he will probably defend himself.

- Regeneration: Lasts for several minutes, heals a hit every 15 seconds, can be taken to reduce to a hit every 5, then 3, and 1, significantly reducing the overall duration each time. He has 20 of these.

- Small recovery: Recovers 2 hits. He has 30 of these.

- Medium recovery: Recovers 5 hits. He has 10 of these.

- Large recovery: Recovers 10 hits. He has 5 of these.

- Full recovery: He has 2 of these. Each takes 8 seconds to start.

- Other

- Cloaking: He is transparent for a minute, although his body slightly distorts the light. The energy from his attacks are visible and his sounds are audible too.

- Muffling: Of course he has an item to silence his movement and attacks, as well. Sonic should be very careful if he uses both.

- Energy boost: He is charged with Black Energy, and not only are all of his attacks more powerful, his body is dangerous to touch, too. This only lasts a few seconds, but he can use up to 5 of these at once, making almost everything he does besides move (and maybe even that if he just touches Sonic) as deadly.

- Miscellaneous Actions

-Proximity Explosive: Planted usually when Sonic doesn't notice, not that powerful but rather annoying.

- Boundary: Energy emitters which shoot at each other to alter the playing field or even trap Sonic.

- Death Capsule: This is very rare, but he might suddenly transform the air around Sonic into one of these machines, and if Sonic is caught inside, the air within is slowly turned into metal, literally squishing Sonic to molecular pieces.

No matter what Robotnik does, Sonic needs to find an opportunity to hit him while being in spin ball form, without being hit back whenever he can help it. This is very difficult at first, but once Sonic gets used to how Robotnik fights and the rhythms of all of his attacks (which Robotnik does modulate in both speed and form to try to prevent this), it becomes easier to see the holes. Likewise, Robotnik will get used to Sonic's rhythms and try to exploit his weaknesses, too. Should Sonic and Robotnik 'progress' in this way, the battle can be divided into a careful and intense beginning that slowly opens into a very long midgame of constant give and take to a somewhat chaotic and intense end as both almost know what each other will do before they even do it while having low stamina and health. Robotnik can withstand 100 hits without recovery, each point of health being carefully guarded. This reflects in all of his expressions. He's confident and energetic with full health, but with less than 10 hits his limbs are quivering and he has a concerned expression on his face.

.

.

When the final hit is dealt, he starts shaking and falls to one knee, looking at the ground, panting. He gives a few small laughs. He slowly looks up at Sonic, smiling. "I... I suppressed my memories. They're coming back... so vividly..." Sonic blinks. Robotnik stands up very slowly.

"I fought someone like you... I fought a hedgehog... a long time ago... when I was a child. He took an egg I had found on the ground, one that could hatch... and he... he threw it against the asphalt. He pushed me. Called me names. I loved eggs... I watched them in nature... incubated a few... I was fascinated by how life could come from such a simple shape... and then it was all over the ground, the bird almost... alive..."

He turns away, walks. "Don't attack me, Sonic... These memories... they..." He stops, facing away. Sonic tenses his fist. He doesn't like it.

"I've never felt feelings like this... in... so long. This... unreal... everything... I remember everything. I wanted... to help life. Wanted to understand and help it grow. I understood things so clearly, but no matter what I made... years... decades... researching... alone... my parents were killed, my entire species discriminated against, and all I had were my machines... I wanted to use them to help the world, to help people..."

"Bullshit," Sonic says. "Humans did nothing but fuck up Mobius from the start. You were all selfish bastards who dragged the whole world into your wars about petty ideologies. You were hated for a reason."

Robotnik doesn't turn or change his voice. "I was. I know. I hated my species, I hated my parents for dying. Even as a kid, wanting to put an egg back in its nest, I was hated, too... Even as I had the means to help the world, I was hated... Yet machines always obeyed me, they had no emotions. I decided. The world wouldn't listen to me. I had to overwhelm it with my genius, turn it all into a giant machine, and then... then I could end the hatred. So I forced my own mind to repress my memories, to focus on that goal..."

Sonic laughs.

Robotnik pauses. "All of my philosophy, all of my ideals... meaningless. My entire past squandered. Nothing at all, not a thing, means anything. It is all so absurdly chaotic and contradictory. I wanted to save the world; I wanted to control the world. I loved life, so I extinguished all of it. It's not right. It can't be like this. No... I understood, how could I be wrong? Was this really all predetermined?" He turns his head, looking askew at Sonic. "It's centered on you. It must be. That explains it."

"What are you ranting about now?" Sonic asks, mostly indifferent. He's gone through this before.

Robotnik turns completely to face Sonic. "Sonic, I enjoyed fighting you. Not just now, but every time, no, the entire time. My entire plan would have been meaningless without you. It couldn't have been done without you. You pushed through all of it... you succeeded, you made me succeed, and yet somehow by doing exactly what I wanted, without even knowing it, you made me fail. You beat me, somehow. That... That... I see myself... my old-no, my young self, in you." Sonic looks at Robotnik funny, not really believing it but still feeling uneasy.

Robotnik says, "I like you, Sonic. I... I never wanted you to die. You're..." Sonic's breath is caught.

"You're better than me... I... look up to your infinite courage... even if it's not really yours... I could never say it, could never confront these feelings... fighting is as close as I could get to you. And..."

"Stop." Sonic says loudly, closing his eyes. Silence.

Sonic opens his eyes only to see that Robotnik is trembling violently now, his head tucked behind his hands. He can hear him mumbling very rapidly and incoherently. He does it for a while, twisting his body to and fro. The motions are jerky, uncannily so from the mechanical movements.

"I'll never forgive you, Robotnik. I don't care why you did what you did. You did it. It hurt me just like you got hurt, and I'm going to stop you like you tried to stop what happened to you. The difference is that you fucking eliminated the remainder of life on Mobius, so that when I win, I get to be alone until I die of starvation, or probably thirst. It ends here. It could have ended a long time ago, maybe from you, maybe from me killing you when I should have, the first time. I still punch myself for missing that chance. But it doesn't matter anymore. You're going to die, Robotnik." Robotnik, meanwhile, falls back down to his knees, shaking, his face in the shadows, his rambling, muffled voice mixed with sobs and sniffs.

Sonic starts walking towards him, unaffected. "I'm going to kill you."

Robotnik suddenly screams, "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! It's a lie. No, it's meant to be, no that's deluded no it's a lie it's a lie it's all a lie a lie a lie. It can't be like this. It can't be. Can't. It can't, I had it all planned out... all planned out... all planned out..."

Sonic stops, recognizing the pathetic display before him. He realizes that this is the only other living thing in the world, perhaps the universe. This thing. This enemy of his, this man who was his enemy from the start. This human.

"That's it... that's it..." Robotnik starts repeating, and suddenly stands up. "It's all planned out. He planned it all out. He wanted me like this. My plan was just a fragment of his... oh god... it's god, isn't it? God, huh?! Fucking smarter than me, huh?! Everything I've done is meaningless?!" He starts shouting at the ceiling. "Fuck you, god! You fucking mother fucker! Only you could make things turn out this way! No, no, no..."

He turns to the floor, repeating "no" over and over and over again. He has obviously forgotten about Sonic, who suddenly feels a surge of doubt rush through him, freeze his steps and makes his heart pound hard against his chest. Images of so many enemies flash through his mind. Tails. Tails with a gun. Zaga. Knuckles. So many... So many...

"It's all... it's all in my head... everything that makes sense is a delusion... every fact is a lie. Everything... no... no, no... it was all a waste... it's all... worthless! Meaningless! Auggh.. Argghhhh!..."

Just like when the entire world called out Sonic's name, the entire world now screams as Robotnik does, who stands, throwing his limbs out, tensing everything, his glasses thrown to the side, eyes pinched shut. The metal all around Sonic begins vibrating, and in the distance he notices all of the robots just dropping out of the sky. The storm, the ocean, the islands and even the sky start shaking, vibrating.

.

Sonic's shoes freeze, but Sonic jumps just as he feels them about to clench tightly. Just as he does, a net of energy-filled Nanoeggs in the air suddenly rush from behind, tangle around him and suddenly shock his entire body. Sonic is stunned at how he could drop his guard and the immense pain that suddenly filled him. Before he can even move, the net passes through, holding all of the Emeralds. Sonic drops to the floor, panting. He very quickly loses his rings (although he has hundreds to spare). He looks up at Robotnik, still screaming, and with wide eyes instantly tries to dash towards him. This all happens in 3 seconds, and Sonic is too late.

Robotnik is engulfed in rapidly, violently flashing lights, and the Super Egg-o-Matic around them suddenly vaporizes into a cloud of Nanoeggs. Bolts of plasma blast out from around him, with shock waves suddenly exploding out as well. The entire world is oscillating with an extreme, jerky frequency in-tune with the energy fluctuations. Sonic suddenly feels an immense growth of energy within Robotnik, a feeling that absolutely dwarfs the overwhelming power Sonic has.

The screaming itself is quieted in a din of the movement of the entire world, and the exploding lights are themselves dimmed by the flashing of sparks from grinding metal and changing wells of potential energy to the horizon. The storm twists and turns into the sky, forming gigantic spinning fans, discs, vortices and rings, rotating and moving at unearthly rates, before destroying themselves into chaotic wind movements that send balls of water exploding in the sky and thick branches of electricity literally creating arcs in the sky. The entire world seems to be thrown into its death throes.

Sonic tries to keep himself steady, but he is caught in an incredibly powerful jetstream that is being pulled around Robotnik. He just barely pushes himself out of it when he notices that a vortex of Nanoeggs is being sucked up from the surface miles below directly into Robotnik. "No, no, I'm running away, even now, now, I have to- I have to!" he thinks, and makes a mad dash towards him.

.

Explosions rocket out of his body, some containing an Emerald. He stops for a split-second, staring at the white ball of energy before him, curses, and then follows the fireballs, dipping inside of them, avoiding the shrapnel and grabbing each Emerald he can. Before he's even done, the air around Robotnik has significantly changed, filling up with glowing particles and gigantic vapor clouds. What little water was left below has evaporated, and even the metal ground is severely burnt. Looking down for a moment, Sonic is shocked to see that it's not just burnt. On the walls that somehow remained standing, there were pitch-black silhouettes of roboticized Mobians and Egg Robos. Patterned across the landscape were similar silhouettes exploded outwards.

Sonic looks around wildly, seeing not a single structure left on the ground but an almost impossibly flat surface forming a gargantuan crater directly below Robotnik. All of the robots that were around them just a few seconds ago, it seems, were completely annihilated. Sonic then understood. Somehow, he had survived it. It had happened only a few times in the distant past, he was told, before he was born, when the humans used weapons that were forever condemned and their technologies banned. He remembered hearing the sordidly grim tales of widespread devastation. Of no survivors. Those vivid descriptions, some told by men and women with distorted bodies filled with hard blobs of flesh permanently attached to machines. And yet, that was all a simplification, an minute comparison to this, to this which he didn't even notice.

Sonic realizes he just survived a nuclear explosion.

And upon that realization, he looks back at Robotnik and he sees his new form.

.

His body is muscular, what little flesh he can see. The majority of it is covered with a Nanoegg material so compressed that air, sound and even light to an extent curve around it. The suit has infinitesimally sharp angular blade-like shapes flying from a form with a continuous surface area so extremely wide yet so extremely tight that it could only be considered as sublime. That is, it is beautiful, and yet absolutely terrifying. Words cannot truly describe it, as despite its form the Nanoeggs are constantly moving and at a rate that seems to be a sizable fraction of the speed of light. And all the while, a spherical vortex constantly growing bigger sucks in Nanoeggs and Black Energy from all around them, compressing them further into Robotnik.

What is remaining of Robotnik's human flesh had been replaced by new machinery. His eyes are black tunnels with no light, his mustache replaced with two giant tongues of fire from a sharp muzzle-like nose. He is silent. Sonic is silent. All that is heard is the whoosh of air from the vortex.

And in another flash of a moment, Sonic finds himself rocketing through the air at hyper-fast speeds, the world spinning and flipping around him. He slows himself but it takes almost a quarter of a minute to get to a point where he realizes what directions he's actually spinning in. He manages to slow to a stop, and unwittingly takes a moment to rest as his eyes rapidly wag back and forth, the fluids in his head still spinning wildly. He suddenly feels very weak, and quickly drops to the ground where he lies against what could have been a house so long ago. He feels his energy just disappear from his body, and he transforms back to normal Sonic.

This is very disturbing. Sonic still has hundreds of rings. Robotnik... de-transformed him.

He gets up and looks around. He doesn't recognize it at all, of course. Everything is silent here, and unmoving. Even the lights that were once spread across all Nanoegg roboticized structures are all extinguished. But the clouds are gone. The air is somehow fresh. He feels warmth on his skin, his untransformed skin. He looks up at the blue sky, and shadows his eyes from the sun which still shines.

.

.

SUPER ROBOTNIK

.

Sonic must now fly through the entire roboticized world of Mobius trying to find Robotnik. The energy that he has accumulated in the last battle sticks with him for this one, and likewise his speed can reach the same level. In only a few minutes he picks up a trail, one of complete devastation. The inactive mechanical world becomes increasingly scarred and torn the closer he gets to him. At his speed, it doesn't take long until he's in his sights.

As Robotnik flies through the world, he absorbs both Nanoeggs and Black Energy. While he powers up, he also fires powerful blasts at the planet, ripping it apart in ever-larger explosions. Sonic is ignored until he attacks him first.

For a first-time player, this is the most difficult part of the entire game.

.

Super Robotnik is very, incredibly, extremely deadly because of the combined effect from four different factors:

1. his intellect,

2. his transforming, regenerating Nanoegg armor,

3. his immense reservoir of Black Energy,

4. and his unstoppable fury.

He plays no games and does not respond to Sonic's movements any more than is needed to optimize his death. This is advantageous only insofar as Robotnik is not concerned about his own health or defense.

His armor is extremely versatile and durable, and he can nearly instantly shape-shift to suit his purposes. These can be as small as the weapons he was just using, to creating gigantic mecha or airships loaded with hundreds if not thousands of such weapons all over it. He can pull and push the ground and sky to manipulate Sonic's movement if not trap him outright. He may use methods of attack he used previously (throughout this game and previous games), or improvise new ones on the spot. He can spawn every single enemy that has appeared since, including bosses even like Egg Hunter or Neo-Mechanix. Although Robotnik waits for nothing now, and if they are in his way, he'll destroy them without a thought.

.

All of his attacks are charged with Black Energy, and as he absorbs more it will become more concentrated until it's fatal to Sonic.

- He often uses planes and spaces completely filled with Black Energy,

- in addition to simply radiating it from his body.

- He also frequently uses explosions of energy, often clustered or layered in each other.

- Perhaps most startling is a new ability to use his energy absorption on Sonic, but he uses the energy in just as many ways as he his armor.

- Finally, and especially as he gets more energy, he may spike his output overall to increase his strength, speed and so on, which will cause Sonic to react by increasing his Hyper, and this may even happen several times once after another. Robotnik will never slow down and actually speed up when this happens, although anything outside of his direct control such as the environment or other robots will move much slower.

.

His power is constantly growing and his attacks rip apart Mobius into ever-larger pieces. Eventually, it reaches planetary proportions, and at this point the battle becomes much more grim and challenging. He may exploit the magnetic fields to carry the Nanoeggs from the opposite side of the world, or he might just cause an entire continent's worth of land to splinter towards Sonic.

At this point in the fight, Sonic has a time limit until Robotnik completely annihilates the world and both of them on it. Sonic might notice that a strand of Nanoeggs is twisting from the world out into space towards the moon. What is happening is that they slowly are wrapping around it and are pulling the giant rock directly towards the surface, in order to essentially liquify all that's left and scatter the remains throughout space. Even though both Sonic and Robotnik are technically invincible, when the two masses collide they will die. The time limit is 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, Robotnik splits the world open through the prime meridian and flies directly towards to the core. Sonic has no choice but to follow, watching as all that was left of the world gets pulled into its molten center, itself still somehow roboticized. There, Robotnik's structures are less free-form or free-moving and much more structured to take advantage of the contained space, pressure and temperature. His absorption of energy and metal is much slower than before, but still occurs at a constant rate.

Sonic can barely keep himself alive in this battle, especially near the end, much less plow through Robotnik's armor and hit his true body. Even if he did, Robotnik can withstand 250 hits. This essentially becomes impossible when the energy radiating from his body reaches the level of concentration that can kill Sonic, despite his own absorption (occurring at a much, much slower rate). If Sonic somehow survives to 2 minutes before collision, Robotnik's radiating energy will become large enough that Sonic has no choice but to fly away from him or else die.

.

With half a minute left, the moon is caught in Mobius' gravity field and its own gravity causes extreme tidal forces to send the world into transverse vibrations. Just as this starts to happen, all of the Nanoeggs in the world just suddenly freeze into their solid structures and become brittle. The planet thus starts to shatter as the moon comes in closer and closer. Robotnik is affected as well, however his energy suddenly gets a humongous increase.

Sonic must dash and break through the radius of Mobius at max speed. Although he hasn't noticed it in the very heavy core, his max speed has increased several times. Once he breaches the surface of Mobius he is then immediately greeted with the face of the moon.

In order to survive and protect the planet of Mobius, Sonic must dash directly at the moon and slam into it in spinball form. He cuts right through it, and before he even goes halfway through the moon cracks and starts to explode.

Mobius, fractured, is now bombarded by thousands of chunks of moon rock, tearing off large areas of crust and mantle in the most extreme cases but keeping the planet relatively intact otherwise due to the Nanoeggs' regeneration. Robotnik, however, is unphased and has followed Sonic the entire time while accelerating. However, his energy has dissipated in this mad dash, and finally they can fight on somewhat equal terms up in the disrupted mesosphere.

.

Robotnik will use many Black Energy projectiles and charged attacks, but for the most part he fights conventionally. His speed and strength are still extremely high, but there is also an extremely slim margin of error he makes that is occasionally exacerbated by his silent anger. Sonic can fly back to Mobius or into space, but wherever he goes Robotnik will follow. His only way out is to land all 250 hits.

.

.

.

When that happens, Robotnik loses his transformation, and if he is in the air he'll stop and fall. He drops to the ground, wherever it is. He is motionless, but he speaks.

"I must have really wanted it this way... I must have planned it from even before, before I played with machines... never wanted to live alone... I outsmarted myself."

Sonic gains his breath and sits down. He stares at Robotnik intently, silently judging him.

"There was always a greater power in you, Sonic. I knew it all along. I know about the whole thing, and how this all happened just proved it. I could have never won. It's not impossible, it's completely unthinkable. It's fantasy. A game. You beat me again and again and yet I always thought my plans weren't deep enough... but it wasn't me... no... there's no way you could have survived this far if it weren't for that power... when I tried to shoot you, drown you... that voice... it wasn't mine."

Sonic looks at Robotnik's twisted, mechanical head, turned away, unable to look Sonic in his cold, unyielding eyes. Sonic sees him crying.

"I could have spent all of that time, all of that energy and all of those resources... helping the world. Even if I was hated, even if nobody accepted it... maybe... somebody would. There's no justification. All rationalization. I was selfish... I'm smart, the smartest, so what? I was deluded... I was... insane... oh god, what madness have I wrought... even now, you saved the world... I... I'm..."

He turns, pushes himself onto his knees and looks directly at Sonic. He then bows deeply to the ground. "Sonic, everything... I apologize for everything! I... I'll do anything... everything... to bring it all back. I could design a deroboticization machine, reform Mobius and the moon... There's still millions of people who could come back... I would destroy all of my weapons... I would build all the infrastructure... but I'd let you manage it all... I'd just build, repair, I'd be the world's engineer... I'll do anything... I'll do anything, oh god, Sonic, I'm so sorry! This is all unreal... a nightmare..."

Sonic stands up, and Robotnik looks up to him suddenly.

The world is dead, not a single piece of nature remaining asides from the severely reduced atmosphere, gravitational and magnetic fields of the fractured planet. Sonic stares at Robotnik, at his face, into his eye that was always obscured by those glasses. He could only think of every scoff, every scorn, everything he's done, every crime and roboticization and murder, and of every chance, every missed chance, every missed chance, every missed chance, every missed chance!

Sonic kneeled down before Robotnik, and tucked into a spinball. He charged a spindash. He charged it to its limit. Robotnik, is still. Motionless. Paralyzed, on all fours, looking up.

Flesh, blood, metal and air all disappear before Sonic. He feels nothing.