Junior took Ayame for a walk around the park with Bokkun and Oomochao floating behind. Their conversation was casual, and Junior turned out to be quite charming. The original Eggman fancied himself something of a gentleman, so that naturally flowed through his clone. That somehow fused with his unique charisma, completely disarming any walls she might have had if he'd introduced himself as Eggman Junior right away.
Ayame stopped down one of the thruways filled with cheap carnival games. Her sudden halt didn't escape Junior, who attempted to find out what exactly had caught her eye. Girls could be peculiar, Junior knew, so naturally Shadow's daughter should be no exception. Her piercing jewel-red eyes darted over the carnival goods, the gaudy fake beads, the huge stuffed animals. She glanced over the various games, her mind calculating the odds for each. A smile drew on her face as she targeted one of the simplest carnival games: dart throwing.
"Why stop here?" Junior asked after a minute. He didn't particularly think the prizes were that good either. Then again, being technical owner and true heir to the whole place, he was quite familiar with the crap they peddled to their customers.
"Oh...just something Mom told me once." The grin spread. "She said that no matter what carnival or park she visited, she always had to play the balloon popping game at least once."
"Your...mom?" The young Eggman raised a bristly red brow. Actually, he hadn't thought much about the crimson and black hedgehog's mother. Until now, he'd actually only thought about Shadow. 'How amusing...now why didn't I think about this sooner?' he thought. Somehow there was a complete disconnect with him at the concept of a mother. Perhaps it came from being a clone, a created thing, like Shadow.
Ayame nodded in reply and stepped up to the stand. Somehow, she'd relaxed notably and her eyes were only scanning for the right prize. "Three darts, please!"
"Hey uh...my treat!" Junior cut in, breaking his own train of thought. He recovered his composure and adjusted his black lenses.
"Thanks," Ayame responded, finally settling on what she felt was a suitable prize. As soon as the darts were in hand, she was calculating their weight and eyeing a well blown up blue balloon.
"So umm...tell me about your mom?" Eggman's young clone found himself asking. 'This is totally irrelevant to what you want from her, Junio--Eggman!'
"Well..." Ayame flicked her wrist and a satisfying pop entered her ears as the point hit its mark. 'Bullseye. Two more...' "She likes Chinese food, loves sushi, blurts out Japanese phrases randomly, plays video games, and as Dad puts it, she's 'hell-bent' on making him socialize. That's kind of why we're here, actually…."
Bokkun was watching the exchange while floating upside down for no particular reason. He gave a yawn and glanced at his reconstructed friend. "Wonder how long this is going to go on..."
Oomochao shrugged. "Dunno... She's not even robotic." He turned his head to the left and saw a small black and red figure approaching the group. "Hey! What's that?" He tugged at Bokkun and made him face the creature.
"Oh...that's a real chao...dark type...I think that thing was in one of the rail cars," he recalled, but only because Junior had mentioned it while he was freaking out about Oomochao in the paint oven.
"A real one?" the metal mockery responded in amusement.
Eventually Babbit made his way over to his "mother" around the time of her tenth throw. "Chaoo!" he cooed happily. His little voice didn't make it past the noises of the crowds and the yells of the stall operators beckoning people to spend their money and waste their time. He also failed to break Ayame's state of concentration until his little arms wrapped around her ankle.
"EeeeK!" she squealed and her jaw dropped, thinking about the probably botched throw more than the fact she had just kicked the chao away. After a quick and confusing moment, several things happened. Firstly, the dart struck its target. Second, Junior quickly responded to Ayame's cry by helping her right herself. Third, she realized what had happened; she was a rather bad "mom" forgetting her "baby" like that. "Babbit!" Finally, she missed the stall robot calling that she'd won a prize.
"Bab--wha?" Junior looked down at the pale-eyed chao that was now crying and that the hedgehog had scooped into her arms.
"Babbit! My pet!" She smiled and stroked his head, then frowned apologetically to her little angel.
"Miss...? Your prize?" the robot queried.
"Isn't she cute? I got her for my fourth birthday, so she's been with me since," Ayame boasted. Babbit relaxed as he was lavished with attention.
"Your...prize?" it tried again.
"Yeah...cute..." the boy replied, though he was still confused himself as to what was going on. Somehow he'd gone from trying to manipulate Ayame into helping him emerald hunt to following her whims around the park.
"Ma'am! Will you please pick a prize?!" the stall attending robot finally let out in what sounded like exasperation.
"Oh! Right!" Ayame laughed. She picked up a light blue and white duffle bag, one of the most practical prizes in the lot, a couple of plush toys of her father, Silver holding a clear plastic ball, and Sonic, and stuffed them in the bag followed by Babbit and slung the bag over her shoulder. The robot was about to object but Junior cut him with a glance. Babbit then poked his head out of the bag happily and watched the park from his new point of view. Eventually he was just having fun making faces at Bokkun.
"You're so weird…." Junior commented as they started walking away from the stall.
The hedgehog girl shrugged. "You know...maybe Mom was right..."
"Huh?"
"Maybe being here is a good thing...I am feeling better," Ayame commented evenly and compensated for the added weight of Babbit and the bag while they walked. She inclined her head his way and took on a mature tone, "Thanks."
'Thanks….' The words repeated in his head and left him dumbfounded before he found himself falling behind. "Hey! Wait up!"
"Eggman-Sama! Eggman-Sama!!" the gold robot Decoe shouted, racing up to the rotund scientist at full speed.
"Big trouble! Really biiig trouble!" Bocoe added hastily.
"What is it!?" the elderly scientist bellowed at them, though he was surprised by the pieces of blue scrap they were carrying. 'What in the world…?' He braced himself, leaning heavily on his cane for support.
"Eggman-Sama..." Bocoe's voice was deep with concern.
"Someone's tearing apart all the Metal Sonics!" Decoe added, "We..." his voice strained with terror, "we found this in an alley…." The two hesitantly offered the body.
"How do you know it's all of them?" The doctor frowned deeply; this wasn't Sonic's style.
"We tried to contact them..." Decoe began.
"...None of them responded, Your Lardness! I mean...Largeness!"
Eggman pivoted on his heel and moved quickly toward the central chamber of the park. "This had better not be one of Junior's pranks!" he snarled and bolted for his main computer. From there, he could see any of the security videos. His eyes narrowed upon entering, though, noting the monitors around him showing static. Something was wrong...very wrong. "He wouldn't be this stupid…." Eggman muttered. Cautiously he approached his big reclining chair and sat down in it, his fingers grazing over twin keyboards at his wrists. 'It can't be Sonic either...he only just arrived...'
"Eggman-Sama?" Decoe inquired timidly.
Eggman maintained a grim expression, even as the monitors flicked on one by one at his command. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary...Sonic was racing his coasters as were his brats and Shadow's kid Ash...that was nothing new. The scientist wrinkled his face in disdain. Shadow was being his usual reserved self, though in black and white, he honestly couldn't tell that he was looking at Shadow and Maria waiting in line for the Ferris wheel rather than Shadow and Sara. The only other couple he cared to look in on were Rouge and Nack, who were seated inside one of his theaters, watching some dancing robots.
Just before he could lock in on Junior's location, the master screen, larger than the others, connected to another video feed. Green light cast a sickening hue on the sinister reflection of Eggman, and beyond him, the visage of Metal was slightly visible. "Why good day, Doctor! So glad to see you're in good health," Nega mocked with a snide grin on his face.
"...Nega..." Eggman's expression sank lower. "What the hell have you done?"
"Oh, nothing yet," he replied dismissively, though his grin widened.
"Destroying my worker robots?! You call that 'nothing?!'" Eggman fumed, his face beginning to turn a wonderful shade of red.
"Make an omelette, break a few eggs." Nega shrugged. "And I've made a pretty good one this time, don't you think?" He placed his foot against the desk before him and pushed the modified office chair back so he could have a good look at the robot. "This is Metal Sonic 3.3. I built him in the future, but that Blaze destroyed him." He snorted at that. "I do hope you'll forgive me, but he needed to borrow a few things from your little toys."
The color drained from the original Eggman's face as it dawned on him what that was. The parts that had been sitting in SCD V2.9's capsule were the casing needed for housing an emerald, and one of the park Sonics had the system needed for avoiding an overload. He had a sneaky suspicion of where exactly the stolen red emerald was. "Metal Sonic...you..."
Nega laughed, "Oh, it gets better. Do you know where I am at this moment?"
"What are you playing at?" Eggman insisted, hoping he could put up a front masking his nervousness. Granted, he hadn't exactly built the park Sonics for combat, but the fact Nega had obviously been running around the park like this made him suddenly fearful. What exactly had he been up to? How long had this been going on?
"I'm in an underground lair your son made." He smiled brightly. "Smart boy...genius, really. I'm guessing you didn't think I'd go along with you forever, so you wanted someone more malleable to your will?" Nega propped his head up on his hand, leaning on the armrest, and kicked his feet up casually while now holding a remote in his free hand. "Want to see what else he's been up to?"
'I don't think I'm going to like the answer to that question...' "Still thinking of world domination? Well, good luck, there's even more of Sonic's kind of brats running around, and they're all here at the park as we speak!"
Nega laughed once more, his face partly hidden in shadow, giving him a most demonic look as the green light reflected off his glasses. "No." He responded in such a flat and serious tone, it gave sharp contrast to his maniacal laughter moments ago. "What I want is revenge now. See...not only did you send me to the future…you also betrayed me with our last bargain." He shrugged. "As for Sonic and his friends? I know all about that. I've been watching, Doctor. I know none of their children pose the kind of threats their aging parents do, and the heroes themselves are losing their skills. You've all been far too complacent, but not me...not Junior. I'm going to destroy the park, Eggman. I'm going to take it down...all of it, and you with it."
"Nega! You can't possibly--" Eggman rose, his outrage squelched as the screen abruptly cut out. Around the central lab, capsules were opening. His own robots...turning on him. What bitter irony.
"Hold us, Eggman!" Decoe pleaded.
"We're scared!" Bocoe finished.
Out in the bright sunshine of day, nobody in the park could suspect what was going on. Nobody had the slightest inkling anything was amiss, or that a day of fun and excitement would be filled with far more of the latter than anyone would like. But nothing had happened yet...nothing obvious. So what if a few park extras were now scraps being swept up by maintenance robots? Nobody would ever notice it was out of the ordinary.
"Did you have to pick such a lame ride?" Shadow asked gently as he and Maria took their places on the swaying seats.
"Lame?" The indigo hedgehog placed her father with a slight pout. "I don't think so."
"I do," he responded dully. At the peak of the wheel's height, he could discern Sonic about fifty yards away, running backward on the track of one of the roller coasters. He snorted at that 'Typical.'
Maria saw it too and laughed. "At least someone's having fun."
As the wheel rose to its peak a second time, Shadow noted two flashes of purple and one sky and black streak speed by; he groaned. "Looks like they got Ash in on it too…."
Maria leaned against her dad and laughed, "Lighten up! We're at a park."
Shadow sighed a bit and put an arm around his little girl. He wondered if the human Maria would have been like her if she'd had a chance to grow up, but he knew she'd want him to relax too. "Because of your mother...not me...I think I have to agree with Ayame...coming here wasn't a great idea."
The wheel came to a stop about one-third of the way down to let passengers on before she responded, "And I agree with Mom, it's a good idea. You're the stick in the mud who doesn't like being spontaneous and having fun."
"I like having fun," he said with a scowl.
Maria tried to keep from snickering. "Yeah, you really look like it." The grin on her face was all too close to Sonic's, and as a matter of fact, he'd caught sight of them.
"I--" Shadow was about to protest when their seat suddenly shook from the force of a hedgehog landing on it, his hands gripping the safety bar and a wide smile on his cream muzzle. "...Sonic..." Shadow grumbled.
"Hiya, Cuz!" The blue blur smiled broadly. He turned to Maria with an equally wide smile. "How ya guys doing?"
"Oh good!" Maria responded as another thunk hit their seating from behind. One of the ride bots was now yelling at Sonic and Ash, while Rift and Blitz had helped themselves to an empty gondola above them.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times!" Ash said in a very important tone. "Do try to ignore the flying hedgehog brothers as they perform death-defying stunts before your very eyes!"
"Yes...please..." Shadow looked up at his son; a wild look was in Ash's eyes, one he hadn't seen before. 'Damnit…this is what I get for letting them socialize with Sara's half of the family.' "Son...don't encourage him...High One's sake...please don't..."
"Aww come on!" Sonic pleaded. "We were just going to have you two go for a spin!" Ash nodded vehemently.
"We don't want--" But before Shadow could object, Sonic and Ash were both bracing their legs on the metal seating, and the two of them began spinning the gondola faster and faster. For Shadow, even this was a bit much, and Maria was now clinging to her father for dear life and had her eyes shut tight. "Chaos Control!"
Once the world had slowed down to a manageable level, Shadow took Maria to an empty seat on the wheel and set her down gently. "Wait here," he said softly, then turned his attention back to his son and that hedgehog. When time resumed its normal course, Sonic and Ash were the ones spinning out of control as the gondola ripped off its hinges and the bottom mysteriously dropped out of the bottom of Blitz and Rift's seat. "Sorry, I think we'll have to find another ride," he said calmly to Maria, a smile curling his lips upward.
"I think I was wrong... You can have fun." Maria paused a moment. "Torturing Sonic."
At last, Shadow managed a laugh. "You know he deserved it."
"Maaaybe." Maria shook her head. "Well, what next? The paddle boats?"
Shadow thought about it while the ride bots were busy trying to calm down the other people on the ride and finding out what the contents were of Rift's and Blitz' stomachs. "Yeah. Sonic wouldn't be caught dead near water." Figuring the robots would be a while before they let anyone off the ride now, he decided to manually leave with Maria in his arms.