Chapter 10: C.M.D. Combo of Mass Destruction

-Southern peninsula of Yurashia, 4:00 PM-

Just as Tails exited the portal, Sonic detected his presence, and was already upside down above him, foot raised, about to slam him into the sea. Knuckles had teleported as Tails entered the portal and met Sonic with a double handed side swing firing him away. Sonic pulled out of the momentum from the hit and now hovered in front of his adversaries. "So boy, come to die? Killing your protector will be that much easier while he's constantly saving you; though it will lessen my victory in the end."

"You wish Goldie. Inexperienced maybe, but he's strong enough to make this fight way out of your favor." Knuckles ends with a snide grin.

"Your faith in the child is misplaced Chaos. He will only tarnish the brilliance of this, Mobius' last true war, our final battle." Sonic's eyes close as the old one driving him shakes his head.

"Prove it." Knuckles pats Tails on the shoulder and they both makes ready to continue.

Sonic frowns slightly as Tails charges straight at him, avoiding the attack with little effort as he blocks Knuckles multiple teleporting attacks. Tails comes in again on Sonic's blind spot as he's blocking one of Knuckles punches and swings down with a double axe handle. Sonic sees Tails reflected in Knuckles eyes and instantly uses Knuckles as a support to mule kick up into Tails' gut and push off firing him away into the sky. Having removed Tails for the moment, Sonic spins over Knuckles shoulders and plants a kick in his side launching him. Before Knuckles can react Sonic lands an arrow like extended kick to the chest from below and then rolls in the air above Knuckles, before inertia can catch up, and finishes with an axe kick. The hit comes with so much continuous momentum that at first Knuckles doesn't even seem to break the water's surface. It takes until he hits bottom, crashing down through almost a mile of sea floor, for a geyser like torrent of water to practically rocket up through the clouds and out of sight.

Tails finally manages to catch Sonic unaware and lands a kick across the side of his head. Sonic pulls up just before he hits the cliff side of Yurashia. As he flies up the cliff face Tails shoulder checks him into the solid rock. The two begin punching and shifting through the rock as if it was tissue paper. After minutes wailing on each other, the rock has fallen away and Tails has visibly taken a great deal more damage during the melee than Sonic.

"You are no match for me boy. You're barely conscious; Chaos is a fool to think that you are our equal."

"You're right; I don't have as much experience as you guys when it comes to fighting. And I probably can't beat you one on one. So I guess it's a good thing I was just distracting you" As Tails' sentence turns into a smile, Knuckles wraps Sonic in a crushing sleeper hold from behind.

"Ggrrrraa. Damn you boy!" Sonic struggles to break free but the strength of Hyper Knuckles vice grip is not easily escaped.

'Now Tails, start the siphoning process.'

'Right.' Tails focuses on Sonic's variant chaos energy and begins absorbing it.

Feeling his strength draining, Sonic vibrates his molecules at the speed of light and passes through Knuckles, body and all as he vanishes from sight.

'Damn, I was hoping we'd broken his concentration so he couldn't do that.'

'Sorry, I wasn't fast enough. A few more seconds and he wouldn't have had the energy to escape. I did get a decent chunk of it though. Where ever he went, it was for breathing room that's for sure.'

'Now we just need to find him before he gets too much strength back. The good news is that he's way too arrogant to have gone far. The bad news is that he's too smart to be caught twice.'

'If we could figure out what kind of energy we need to use to do blast damage to a super form I might be more useful.'

'The only kind of energy I know of that has any effect is kinetic energy. We can alter chaos energy into kinetic, but making it strong enough to do serious damage is the problem. It's too bad we don't have time to think about it right now. I found Sonic. Wait for him to surface then follow my lead.'

'Got it.'

With that Knuckles warps to the sea floor and feigns an uppercut. On reflex, Sonic jumps up to avoid it. Knuckles then spins and uses his hands as springs to take off like a comet, kicking Sonic under the jaw, and shooting him into the sky atop a pillar of water. Tails comes hurtling across with a straight kick, sending him to were Knuckles is waiting, as he moves in for another follow up attack. Sonic manages to spin-dash off of Knuckles punch and use the force of the hit to bounce back into Tails, who can't react fast enough to avoid it. As Tails is sent careening off into the sky, Knuckles teleports in front of Sonic close-lining him and then again above him for a straight downward punch. The second hit grazes Sonic and the two begin exchanging blows; kicking, punching, blocking and dodging as they fall, slowly losing altitude, heading for the water below. Right above the water's surface Sonic's foot and Knuckles' fist collide full force, causing two enormous tidal waves to spring up behind them both heading in opposing directions. Immediately after their collision they begin fighting in stationary close quarters, not moving from that spot but firing attacks at each other at ridiculous speeds. Sonic's attacks prove faster, but Knuckles avoids what he can't block through his skill in heightened sensing. Knuckles makes up for the disparity in their speed by mixing in heavy blows with his speed jabs. Sonic is forced to dodge these as they are too strong to stop. Deadlocked, the two fight, at what was once water level, each waiting for the other to make a mistake; the pressure generated by their attacks preventing the water from filling the chasm beneath them as if it were afraid to approach.

As Sonic and Knuckles exchange continues, Tails has halted and hoisted the continent breaker waves into the air and has begun to spiral them into funnels compressing the hydrogen and oxygen. Once he feels they are strong enough, he fires them on a collision course for the two enthralled combatants below.

Sonic's guard drops for a split second when he notices the attack overhead and Knuckles takes advantage landing a full force strike to the mid-section that actually implodes the air around the impact zone. The gravity field created from the implosion of air speeds up the pressurized tsunamis. As they connect, Knuckles warps to Tails and then miles away, as a pillar of soundless light fires up into space and rolls out across the sea and land, devastating everything in a ten mile radius instantly. Knuckles had miscalculated the reach of the attack and can only shield Tails from the brunt of the damage as they're hit by the blast.

Tails comes to floating in the sea. After a few seconds he remembers what's happened and starts looking around for Knuckles, but realizes he's alone. At least he is for a moment, until a heavily damaged and bleeding Sonic floats down, eyes emblazoned with rage. Tails just barely reacts in time to defend against a spin kick. But before he can distance himself, Sonic grabs him by the neck and kicks him skipping his body across the waters surface. Sonic catches up to him and kicks him again as if leisurely kicking a rock on the ground. Tails ends up on a small piece of land, barely an island, off the coast of Yurashia. As Tails struggles with his bruised body to sit up, the lights are turning out fast and Sonic is now standing over him. Tails closes his eyes and a shock wave booms out for miles. Tails opens his eyes as he fades to black and sees Knuckles holding Sonic's unconscious blue ragged form.

'Man that was a pain in the ass. And now they're both sleeping like everything's great.' Knuckles sighs "Looks like I'm dropping these two off at Angel Island and helping Shadow with the wonder twins by myself." 'Shadow, how are you holding up?'

'Open a portal to your location now!'

'Damn, not even time to change my batteries.' Knuckles opens the portal and the second it's open, Shadow and both Metal Sonic and Mecha Knuckles come barreling through in one big heap. As soon as they hit the water Knuckles warps over Mecha Knuckles and delivers a right hook sailing the robot off toward the continent. Shadow takes advantage of the distraction and spin-dashes out of Metal's grip before connecting a side kick to its head sending it after Mecha. "No rest for the wicked huh?"

"Nor for us." Shadow is still catching his breath.

"Bet you'd let them if they called a time out."

"I thought this was the time out."

"For you maybe." Knuckles opens a portal to Shrine Isle and picks up Sonic and Tails. After placing them by the Master Emerald and returning he closes the door.

"How much energy do you burn opening those?"

"Compared to teleportation? A lot."

Shadow stands back up straight, "You know, I was kind of hoping you guys were doing better over here than I was."

"So was I. Been alive about an hour, already dead tired."

Shadow cracks a small smile, "So what was with that massive tremor and the light show a few minutes ago?"

"Would you believe a really big water balloon fight?"

"You're kidding right?"

"Only about half so actually. …Well, breather's over, looks like our dance partners have put themselves back together again."

Shadow lets out a half sigh, half wheeze. "Why won't they just die already?"

"Don't know," Knuckles cracks the knuckles on his hands and then his neck, "but we might as well go ask um."